Saif Al Gaddafi & Megrahi Vs Moussa Koussa - Patsies vs Real Criminal aided and abetted by the US government?

(the latter a proven torturer and Gaddafi’s intelligence chief at the time of the Lockerbie bombing but “free to travel to and from the UK as he wishes”)

The propagandists tell us that Saif Al Gaddafi is a war criminal who must be brought to justice for the torture and killing of civilians. Yet Gaddafi’s torturer in chief Moussa Koussa, who has been identified by survivors as having personally tortured them himself, faces no ICC charges after he defected from the Gaddafi regime once he realised the writing was on the wall for it. British government spokespeople told the BBC that Koussa is “a free individual, who can travel to and from the UK as he wishes” and allowed him to go into exile in Qatar, another US allied dictatorship which refuses to extradite him (1) – (3).

Koussa had a parallel in Omar Suleiman, Mubarak’s Vice President and torturer in chief, who was the favoured candidate of the US government and it’s allies to take over from Mubarak. He, like Koussa, was one of the people that the CIA and MI6 contract out to for torture of prisoners kidnapped illegally under “extra-ordinary rendition” procedures (really just a vaguely legalistic sounding term to cover up illegal kidnapping and torture).

Muammar Gaddafi was certainly guilty of ordering massacres of civilians and torture, but the brutal, sickening, way he was killed did not suggest those who replace him will be any better. The Libyan rebels respond that ‘Gaddafi was a monster’.

Well, if you’re looking for a definition of a monster, a sadist who stabs an unarmed prisoner in the anus with a knife or metal rod to torture them before killing them, as one of the men who captured Gaddafi did, is a pretty good definition. One monster behaving like a monster to another is not justice, it’s just another atrocity (4).

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch confirm that the rebels have already been involved in torturing and killing prisoners and suspected Gaddafi supporters, though so far not nearly as many as were killed or tortured by Gaddafi’s forces. The way Gaddafi was treated does not suggest this will become a smaller problem (5).

If Saif Al Gaddafi is tortured and is not given a fair trial it will be another sign to the world that the Libyan rebels are at least as bad as Gaddafi’s killers were – and if at the same time Koussa, who co-operated with the US and its allies in torturing people based on mere suspicion is allowed to go free, the US government and it’s allies will look like total hypocrites with no moral standing, desperate to have people like Saif, who might reveal it’s involvement in these crimes, silenced, not for his crimes, but to cover up theirs and Koussa’s.

There are plenty of people who knew Saif who say he was attempting to make reforms which his father and hardliners in the regime refused to implement (6).

Then he was forced to make a choice between turning on his own father and helping people who were trying to kill him, or else backing a dictatorship that was killing it’s own people. Can anyone pretend that that would be an easy choice to make if they were put in the same position?

If there is evidence that Saif was involved in ordering torture and murders of civilians then by all means give him a fair trial with witnesses for the defence and prosecution and if he’s found guilty, jail him for it.

Incidentally Koussa, who claims Gaddafi ordered Lockerbie, was Gaddafi’s head of intelligence at the time of Lockerbie – so if the US and British governments believe him, why are they letting him go free, since he would be guilty of that atrocity? Too many people are tripping over their own lies here.

There are many reasons to doubt that another US and British scapegoat – Abdul Baset Al Megrahi – was ever involved in the Lockerbie bombing. His trial was a sham with bribed witnesses, no jury and evidence tampered with according to Scots Law Professor Robert Black, UN Observer Dr. Hans Koechler and Dr. Jim Swire, whose daughter died in the bombing.

Is Saif a real war criminal or just another patsy set up by the US and it’s allies?  Unless he gets a fair trial, I’d have to suspect it could be the latter.

(1) = BBC News 26 Oct 2011 ‘Gaddafi spy chief Koussa 'tortured' Libya prisoners’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-15415793

(2) = BBC News 13 Apr 2011 ‘Moussa Koussa, ex-Gaddafi aide, leaves for Doha talks’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13049308 ‘The most high-profile minister to flee Libya, Moussa Koussa, has left the UK for Qatar, the Foreign Office has said. The former foreign minister had been staying at an undisclosed location in the UK after travelling from Tunisia.

An FCO spokesman said it was understood he would meet the Qatari government and a range of other Libyan representatives in the capital city Doha. A spokesman said Moussa Koussa was "a free individual, who can travel to and from the UK as he wishes".’

(3) = BBC News 23 Oct 2011 ‘Libyan spy chief tracked to Qatar’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15417947

(4) = ‘Libyan rebels 'guilty of torture' says Amnesty’ http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/libyan-rebels-guilty-of-torture-says-amnesty-2353988.html , ‘Rebels fighting to topple Muammar Gaddafi carried out unlawful killings and torture, human rights group Amnesty International has said….A report based on three months of investigation in Libya, said the crimes of Gaddafi loyalists were far worse than those of the former rebels, who now hold power in Tripoli:….But it said the crimes of the rebels were not insignificant…."Members and supporters of the opposition, loosely structured under the leadership of the National Transitional Council (NTC) ... have also committed human rights abuses, in some cases amounting to war crimes, albeit on a smaller scale," the Amnesty report said.’

(5) = Channel 4 News 25 Oct 2011 ‘Gaddafi buried at dawn in ‘secret’ location’, http://www.channel4.com/news/gaddafi-buried-at-dawn-in-secret-location (scroll down to video and then see under sub-heading ‘Concerns over human rights abuses)

(6) = Time 19 Nov 2011 ‘The Capture of Gaddafi's Son: The Reformer Who Refused to Reform’, http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2099890,00.html?xid=gonewsedit , ‘Sawani, who has a political-science doctorate from the University of Canterbury, had been hired by Saif in 2007 to oversee sweeping political reforms in Libya — changes that Saif has long claimed were blocked by his father's hard-liners. In interviews in February 2010 and in March this year, Saif told me that his strong efforts to bring democracy to Libya had been stymied by the Gaddafi regime.’

One way the SSP and Solidarity / TUSC could move forward after the Sheridan trial

Photo : Tommy Sheridan and Rosie Kane campaign together before the split in the SSP

One solution would be for Sheridan and Fox to both stand down as party leaders, allowing the members of both parties to choose a new leader acceptable to all of them, while Fox, Sheridan, Kane and Leckie could still stand for the Scottish Parliament in future.

My previous posts have probably been too strident in taking one side of the argument in the dispute between Sheridan and Solidarity / TUSC (Trade Union and Socialist Coalition) on the one hand and Colin Fox, Rosie Kane, Carolyn Leckie and the Scottish Socialist Party on the other.

Anyone with any sympathies towards the left in politics – or even for social justice or the poor even if not on the left – should have some admiration for Tommy Sheridan for managing to get fractious left wing splinter parties to join into a single party and for getting warrant sales abolished ; and many will share some pity for the Sheridans whether they share their political views or not.

However Rosie Kane did have a point when she implied that a ‘swinger’s club’ which only charges entrance to men might be a front for prostitution – and that that could included trafficked sex slaves for all that the men going there knew.

Even if Sheridan made that mistake though, no-one is perfect and he should have had another chance. If he demanded other party members lie about it, that is far less forgivable.

Jack of the SSP Youth Wing also responded to my argument that Solidarity could not be misogynists as they had given a woman candidate a winnable council seat by saying ‘of course it's possible to be a misogynist organisation and put up women for leading positions! By that reasoning the Tories are feminists for electing Thatcher.’

This is a fair point, although, from attending a couple of Solidarity meetings in the past I don’t believe all or even the majority of Solidarity are misogynists in any way.

I don’t know the truth of the matter one way or the other for certain, beyond that it seems unlikely that Alan McCombes, who founded the SSP along with Sheridan and co-wrote books and pamphlets with him, would have testified against Sheridan if there wasn’t at least some small kernel of truth to the News of the World’s claims - though it's still possible, as he, along with Colin Fox, was one of the candidates for 'Convenor' or leader of the SSP to replace Sheridan in 2004.

Equally the News of the World added many lies to their accounts of events, paying at least two people – George McNeilage and Anvar Khan. McNeilage admits taking money to provide his dodgy video and testimony. Khan admitted to adding lies about Sheridan to her book to increase sales and said the newspaper offered money to set Sheridan up (which she refused).

The question now though is how the SSP and Solidarity can move forward from what has been a disaster for them both electorally.

One solution could be for Sheridan to stand down as leader of Solidarity and Colin Fox to stand down as leader of the SSP. Then the members of the two parties could vote on a leader acceptable to both parties (which would rule out Rosie Kane or Carolyn Leckie or Alan McCombes as they, like Fox and Sheridan, have been too prominent in the bitter dispute between the parties).

Sheridan, Fox, Kane, Leckie and McCombes could still all be candidates for the Scottish Parliament in the future.

As for me I’ve joined the Green party, which is also progressive on reducing inequality and poverty but is not nearly so divided and (from my perspective) more balanced in it's policies.

I hope Solidarity and the SSP manage to overcome their differences and make some progress in future elections though, because we need a counter-weight to the constant shift to the right among the main parties over the decades.

Join the police and get away with murder

Ian Tomlinson lies dead or dying after being hit with a baton and then knocked to the ground by policeman Simon Harwood. As in the Jean Charles De Menezes case the Crown Prosecution Service refused to bring any charges.

Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, claims there is no realistic prospect of a prosecution against Police Officer Simon Harwood for the death of Ian Tomlinson succeeding despite video evidence and many eyewitnesses (1) – (3). Two reputable pathologists also say Tomlinson died of internal bleeding caused by “blunt force trauma”. They say the likely cause is the baton attack on Tomlinson by Harwood and/or him pushing Tomlinson over onto the pavement (4) - (5).

Liver disease caused by Ian Tomlinson's alcoholism made him more vulnerable to these kind of injuries according to the pathologists. It's also unlikly Harwood was deliberately trying to kill Tomlinson, but his actions were clearly assault - and since they also caused Tomlinson's death - manslaughter

Mr Starmer claimed the lack of a prospect of a successful prosecution was due to the “fundamental disagreement between the experts about the cause of Mr Tomlinson's death”, as if the word of Dr. Patel, who is facing multiple disciplinary hearings from the General Medical Council over his conduct of previous pathological reports – and is banned from carrying out further ones for the Home Office, is testimony as reliable as that from two other pathologists, neither of whom are facing any charges (5).

The delay of over 6 months by the DPP in coming to a decision on whether to bring charges against the policeman involved is very convenient for that officer as it means no assault charge can be brought against him (6).

The Crown Prosecution Service’s website claims that “The CPS exists to ensure that wrongdoers are brought to justice, victims of crime are supported and that people feel safer in their communities.” (7)

After going out of their way to prevent anyone being brought to justice for the killings of Jean Charles De Menezes or Ian Tomlinson, perhaps they should add the qualification “unless those responsible are police officers, in which case we’re here to make sure they get off with it”.

They might as well put up recruitment signs saying “Join the police and get away with assault, GBH, mansalughter, maybe even murder!”.

Those newspapers which reported false police claims that officers had tried to help Tomlinson while being pelted with bottles and bricks by protesters should be made to correct those false claims with headlines just as prominent (8). Multiple eye-witnesses say Tomlinson was helped by protesters who phoned an ambulance while police ordered them to “move on”. They also said the only bottles thrown were plastic ones, by people in the centre of the crowd who didn’t know what was going on – and stopped when they were told (9).

In China a woman was beaten for 15 minutes by police officers for trying to petition a Communist Party Official about a problem. The beating stopped when police realised she wasn’t a petitioner but the wife of the official, which, apparently, is the only reason it’s news, as it’s common to assign police to beat up petitioners to discourage them from complaining to officials (10). So much for free market reform bringing democracy to China. So far, at least, it’s clearly not working.

In the US something similar happened to a black man suspected of being on drugs when he refused to change into a medical gown in a hospital. Hospital security guards began beating and tasering  him until they found out he was the nephew of Supreme Court Justice Thomas Clarence (11).

It seems that wherever you go in the world, democracy, dictatorship or one party state, police can break the law by beating people for little or nothing, even commit manslaughter or murder, and get off with it. That doesn’t seem that democratic.

(1) = CPS ‘The death of Ian Tomlinson - decision on prosecution’, http://www.cps.gov.uk/news/articles/the_death_of_ian_tomlinson_decision_on_prosecution/ , (for summary see BBC News 22 July 2010 ‘G20: No charges over Ian Tomlinson demo death’,http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-10723274 )

(2) = Guardian 07 Apr 2009 ‘Ian Tomlinson death: Guardian video reveals police attack on man who died at G20 protest’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/07/ian-tomlinson-g20-death-video

(3) = Guardian 08 April 2009 ‘Ian Tomlinson death: G20 witnesses tell of dogs, batons and an attack by police’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/08/g20-ian-tomlinson-death-witnesses

(4) =  BBC News 22 July 2010 ‘G20: No charges over Ian Tomlinson demo death’,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-10723274 - see sub-section headed ‘Analysis’ half-way down the page and to the right of the main report, which says ‘In the case of Mr Tomlinson, two pathologists - one instructed by the police and the other by his family - agreed that he died partly from internal bleeding caused by "blunt-force trauma".But the first examination was carried out by Dr Freddy Patel, a Home Office pathologist, who says Mr Tomlinson died of a heart attack. ‘

(5) = BBC News 22 July 2010 ‘Tomlinson pathologist facing GMC’,http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10729545

(6) = BBC News 22 July 2010 ‘G20: No charges over Ian Tomlinson demo death’,http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-10723274 ‘Jenny Jones, a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority, said......."If everybody had moved a bit faster wemight have actually been in the time-frame for an assault charge to be brought," ‘

(7) = Crown Prosecution Service ‘Your CPS’, http://www.cps.gov.uk/yourcps.html

(8) = e.g Evening Standard 02 Apr 2009 ‘Police pelted with bricks as they help dying man’, http://www.chickyog.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/esp67-02042009.pdf

(9) = Guardian 08 April 2009 ‘Ian Tomlinson death: G20 witnesses tell of dogs, batons and an attack by police’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/08/g20-ian-tomlinson-death-witnesses

(10) = Guardian 22 July 2010 ‘Chinese police beat official's wife by mistake’,http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/22/china-police-beat-wife-official

(11) = ABC News 09 July 2010 ‘Judge Clarence Thomas' Nephew Derek Tasered by Hospital Staff, Family Says’, http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2010/07/judge-clarence-thomas-nephew-derek-tasered-by-hospital-staff-family-says.html

MPs accepting any money except their salary and work-related expenses should be a criminal offence

- and why we need public funding of all candidates in elections so we can make parties taking money from any other person, company or organisation a criminal offence too.

Smug, money grabbing, brass-necked, dishonest, chancer Stephen Byers MP (Labour), above, competes with smug, money grabbing, dishonest, brass-necked chancer John Butterfill MP (Conservative), below, for the title of smuggest, most grasping, dishonest and brass-necked chancer 2010 (oh and if either of you are going to sue me for saying that then i 'retract' it, never said it and 'deny all allegations of wrongdoing', just like you both do with the statements you made which are recorded on video).

Videos of MPs and former ministers including former transport minister Stephen Byers MP telling investigative journalists posing as lobbyists that they will hire out to private firms to get government policy changed for £3,000 to £5,000 a day make the expenses scandal look like chicken feed. (The Times newspaper has an article summarising the revelations here.)

What’s most shocking about it is that it may well not be illegal. It f***ing well should be.

These videos also show why we need to have modest public funding of all political candidates, so any of them accepting money other than that funding, their salaries and justified expenses relating to their job can be tried, fined or jailed and kicked out of their jobs as MPs or ministers – as well as being banned by law from working for 5 years. They may complain that that’s unfair. It’s not, it’s entirely justified for someone found involved in serious corruption. They can live on their pension for those 5 years, which will be much more generous than the unemployment benefit they give to millions of people often out of work for years through no fault of their own. The job of an MP is to represent all their constituents equally – not to represent their party or donors to their own or their party’s campaign funds, much less people agreeing to bribe them personally.

They should also be banned from standing for public office or being a director or lobbyist for any company or from being appointed to the House of Lords for a period of 10 years, or for life, depending on the amounts involved. Forcing them to stand down as MPs is not enough, because most of those involved are standing down at the next election anyway – and probably going on to Lordships (as Conservative MP John Butterfill – who from the video is butter-filled both by name and by nature - suggested he probably will when selling his services to people he thought were lobbyists).

All political parties and independent candidates should also be banned from accepting any private donations, but all should be given modest public funding of their election campaigns, so the ban on private donations does not turn politics into the preserve of the wealthiest. Any party found accepting private donations should also be banned from having candidates in elections for 10 years.

Some may see this as handing politicians public money, but it would save us a fortune in the future by ending the mis-use of thousands of billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money going to PFIs/PPPs (which result in both higher taxes and cuts in the number of hospital beds and fully trained nurses and teachers), privatised rail firms and arms companies selling arms to dictators and those committing genocide, which is the result of allowing political parties to accept private donations. When Saddam Hussein stopped paying for arms exported by BAE under British government licences after the 1991 Gulf War the taxpayer picked up the tab. There have been many similar instances since.

The corruption involves MPs from both main parties – Labour and the Conservatives, as Conservative MP John Butterfill was involved. He was caught on video boasting about his influence with David Cameron; So if anyone is still under the illusion that either major party is free of corruption, or that it’s just ‘a few bad apples’ think again – these are people close to Blair and close to Cameron.

Stephen Byers is perhaps the most sickening of all in the way he boasted about conning the public into believing the government was going to crack down on the private rail companies, while he was taking money from the same companies to ensure the government didn’t crack down on either the vast subsidies these firms get from taxpayers (while keeping all the profits for themselves) or the way they keep raising fares at several times the rate of inflation. Byers is the kind of smug spiv who has spent his career looking down on anyone with any principles as ‘an extremist’ or a ‘loony’. Most of the people this spiv looks down on are simply more honest than he will ever be and actually have some principles.

Byers took a hissy fit when Peter Hain MP suggested a 50% tax rate on the highest earners to help the poorest. He took another one when Brown put it into practice (though not permanently) after the credit crisis. I wonder if any of that ‘work’ was on the ‘cab for hire’ £3,000 to £5,000 a day rate Byers said he charged in the Dispatches video?

Another interesting fact is that both Byers and Butterfill are members of their parties’ respective ‘Friends of Israel’ groups, who refuse to make any criticism of Israeli war crimes and frequent killings of unarmed Palestinian children and teenagers (to be fair sometimes the children throw stones, which no doubt completely justifies Israeli soldiers in helmets and body armour shooting them in the head – or perhaps the fact that Hamas and Fatah have terrorist arms who kill Israeli civilians somehow makes it fine for the Israeli military to kill many times as many Palestinian civilians). In a recent case they claimed a boy they shot in the head while he and his brother were working on their family’s olive grove threatened troops with a knife. They also said they fired no live ammunition though – yet the bullet removed from the dead boy’s head was a metal bullet, not a rubber bullet – and even rubber bullets can kill at short range.

How much Byers’ and Butterfill’s uncritical support for the Israeli government and military’s actions is down to their principled beliefs and how much might be down to the millions donated by LFI to the Labour party’s campaign funds and the millions donated by CFI members to the Conservative party’s election campaign funds since 1997 (for instance £2 million from Lord Sainsbury – an LFI member and made a Lord and Cabinet Minister by Tony Blair), is a matter for speculation. I couldn’t possibly comment.

Byers, Butterfill and associates have now ‘retracted’ all the things they were caught saying on video, claiming there is ‘no truth’ in the allegations that they said these things. Since, unlike them, i’m not protected by parliamentary immunity from our country’s ridiculously unbalanced libel laws i can’t say they’re caught red handed, nor can i claim for instance that they’re guilty as hell.

I can however point out that if any ordinary person accused of fraud was caught admitting it on video and then ‘retracted’ their statement and said the evidence didn’t count because they ‘denied the allegations’ the court would laugh them all the way to jail.

Since what they’ve done probably isn’t illegal (yet) I can’t say they must be fined for every penny they have or put in jail. I can say it should be illegal though – and I can say that once a law making it illegal is passed any MP or minister or Lord caught doing the same and tried in court and found guilty should not have their feet touching the floor as their corrupt arses are kicked out of parliament or the Lords, their money is taken in fines, they are banned from any kind of employment for 5 years and from any directorship or public office permanently.

I can also say that if you want this kind of behaviour made illegal don’t bother looking to the leaders of the major parties or any MP who doesn’t routinely rebel against the party whips (on issues other than voting themselves higher expenses or a bigger pay rise) to get that law through parliament.