New Email message from UK ex-Ambassador Craig Murray

[dutchdemocrat]

Can I pass on my thanks to everyone who is posting the documents and making
them public. You are striking a real blow for humanity and against the
appalling decline in our civil liberties and standards.

We have also proved that, as long as we have good people out there,
technology now makes it impossible for Western governments and political
establishments to bury the truth, no matter how much they control the
mainstream media."

And he attaches another document, this time one that is already in the
public domain, but seems pertinant to what so many of us are posting.



http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2005/12/more_old_news.html

From the chatter on the web, it's clear that there are still a few
diehard Bush/Blair supporters out there who believe this is about
democracy and security.

I hate to disillusion such people, but everyone should be aware of this
document:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/bushlay12.html

(This was released with other Enron court documents. To anyone covering
the Enron story, it meant very little. Now, however....)"

Craig Murray.

See DU posts here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5711124

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5714818

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

1. Thanks. nt

[enough]

2. KICK

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

3. Regards Enron - a new documentary

I just heard of this for the first time a couple of hours ago, where Emma Thompson named it her best film of 2005.

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

Official Site: http://www.enronmovie.com/
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0413845/

DVD comes out on January 17th: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000C3L2IO

[glitch]

15. January 17th! Finally! I have been asking my local video shop for this

every time I've gone in for the last 6 months, at least. They'll be so happy when I am satisfied. :)

[redacted]

17. Thank You! Now #1 in my Netflix Queue

[Sydnie]

4. Are these related to the Delay/Abramoff Russians?

It just keeps getting curiouser and curiouser.

[Joanne98]

7. keep your fingers crossed.......

[Al-CIAda]

5. K&R'd

[stellanoir]

6. "Kenny boy. . ."

who ????? LOL

The house of cards is mid tumble.

Woohoo !!!

[BuyingThyme]

8. We're listening, Mr. Murray.

And we're with you.

[stop the bleeding]

9. OK -dd I am back from a little break,

I have been reading some of the papers and the stories with this.

What do you think the likely hood of the real details of all this coming out?

ie: the types of torture, oil, Enron ect...

I have to step out for a few hours but will check back later.

Happy New Year and great work as always.:toast:

[dutchdemocrat]

10. Let me leave you with Chris's addition - our collaboration.

Moderators... don't need four paragraphs as this is our work. Thank you.

Ours is a brand-new world of allatonceness - The Murray Torture Telegrams

The Murray Torture Telegrams

Chris Floyd

By now, the world -- or at least the blogosphere - has seen the documents released by former UK diplomat Craig Murray, proving that the Bush and Blair governments both knew that the "intelligence" they were receiving from Uzbekistan was the result of gruesome and agonizing tortures on thousands of innocent people. Bush and Blair knew this -- yet Bush continued to "render" his Terror War captives to Uzbekistan, and shower the nation's Stalinist dictator, Karimov, with gold, guns and public honor. And despite Blair's repeated and strenuous denials of any complicity in America's heinous practice of "rendition" (indeed, in one recent Parliamentary appearance, Blair pretended that he didn't even understand what the term meant), Murray's documents prove that Britain's leadership knew full well what was happening in Karimov's torture chambers. Yet, like their American counterparts, British officials not only condoned the Uzbek tortures, they also spent considerable energy in devising contorted -- and specious -- "justifications" for using the tainted fruits of these evil practices.

And evil is the word for it. Murray, while still serving as UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, dug up proof that the tortures condoned by Bush and Blair included boiling prisoners to death, in addition to the traditional methods of pulling out fingernails, beating, starving, and raping. Nor were these refinements limited to the prisoners themselves -- their family members were also tortured to produce "confessions." One chilling case unearthed by Murray, who witnessed the Stalinist show trials mounted by Karimov's judicial goons, featured a peasant farmer who was forced to confess to extensive family links to Osama Bin Laden -- after seeing his children tortured before his eyes. At the show trial, the old man renounced his confession and exposed the torture of children -- and was promptly hustled away.

All of this -- and much more -- Murray reported at the time to his superiors in London, and to his diplomatic colleagues from Europe and the United States. At every turn, he found either resigned complicity -- "What can we do? The US supports Karimov?" -- to outright embrace of torture from -- who else? -- Bush's own man in Tashkent, who told Murray that the "reduction of civil liberties" under Karimov was "no bad thing," since it was being done in the name of combatting Islamic extremism. Here we see the Bushist ethos in essence: Everything is permitted -- torture, murder, rape, kidnapping, aggression -- in the name of "fighting terrorism." Bush has of course brought this police state philosophy to America, as even the mainstream media is beginning to report.

Murray's release of these documents -- an end run around the Blair government's threat to censor his whistle-blowing book on his tenure in Uzbekistan -- is yet another of a whole battery of smoking guns proving the pervasive criminality of the oh-so-Christian Coalition of Bush and Blair. Empire Burlesque's intrepid webmaster, RichardK, has been on top of this story quite literally from the beginning; he was among the first to receive Murray's documents upon their release this week, and one of the first to get them out into the blogosphere. He has compiled a detailed -- and growing -- compendium of stories and documents relating to Murray's revelations, which can be found here.

One very significant item unearthed by Richard is a speech Murray gave at York University last February. Here you will find a good overview of Murray's "journey through dark heat" in Tashkent. But there is also another telling revelation buried in the speech, almost as an aside, which does much to explain how the "intelligence" community -- which now appears to have swallowed the US-UK governments whole -- really works. Murray tells of his time as a diplomatic officer in Warsaw in the 1990s. He meets a Polish informant, who retails some hot gossip about something the Polish prime minister allegedly did. But Murray was at the event where the indiscretion supposedly took place, and knew that the story was false. The next day, Murray saw the same informant talking with another UK "diplomat" who was in fact an undercover MI6 man. "Low and behold the very next day I received on my desk in its striking bright red cover a piece of MI6 intelligence material containing this story about the Polish Prime Minister," Murray told the students. The next time he saw the informant, he asked why he'd given the false information to the MI6 agent. The informant smiled and said, "Well, he paid me $8,000 for it."

And that, dear friends, is the basis of much of the "intelligence" upon which the "War on Terror" is now based: grasping informants selling false information to agents looking for anything to justify the policies of their leaders. We already know of cases of innocent captives in Guantanamo Bay who were sold outright to U.S. agents by "bounty hunters" -- human traffickers, actually -- in Afghanistan and Pakistan. As Murray points out, we now know that much of the "intelligence" used by Bush and Blair to manufacture war fever was sold by proven liars and shady operators willing to tell the warmongers what they wanted to hear.

So when you hear Bush and Cheney -- and the pipsqueaking bootlickers in the blogosphere and mainstream press -- defending the use of torture, rendition, and lawlessness in the "fight against terrorism," remember that British bagman in Warsaw. For this is how the world really works. This is the true foundation of the malevolent edifices of fear and repression that Bush and Blair are building on the ruins of ancient liberties.





Ours is a brand-new world of allatonceness

By RichardK (webmaster)

Crossposted at Empire Burlesque

The UK government has been quick to deny that they practice, or tolerate the practice of torture. So it is perhaps not surprising that they are determined that you should not see the following documents that were leaked to Empire Burlesque soon after they were leaked in the UK.

Craig Murray was the UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, until his complaints and protest at the use of intelligence gained by torture got too much for Jack Straw and the Foreign Office, who set about attempting to unsuccessfully smear him, and to boot him from office.

He retaliated by digitally unleashing telegrams and memorandums that he was told to 'burn' and were not to be unveiled under the draconian Secrecy Act. This has turned out to be somewhat of a circus event for the blogosphere. The realisation that whistleblowing may have a future online has arrived and there is little officials can do when sensitive data is propogated to ten of thousands of people via blogs in a matter of hours.

The Wiretap story story I've been covering behind the scenes has suddenly taken on a whole new colour since this unveiling and subsequent data burst by Murray. It's possible that the Bush administration has been targeting dissidents and those who don't fit into the 'With Us" slice of George's ridiculously dogmatic and stark view of the world because we are a threat to his war mongering family dynasty when it's possible that the real truth can be unveiled to many.

Over the last couple of days, bloggers and forumists have proven that they truly do represent a force in the war of ideas. Now - underlying layers - which have been blanketed from the masses by corporate and government enslaved media can be disseminated by hundreds of thousands of online social networks that are only a few bytes removed from one another.

Media guru and electronic anthropologist Marshall McLuhan brilliantly predicted this in his 1967 work - The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects. It's close to 40 year ago that McLuhan coined the term "the global village."

"...Ours is a brand-new world of allatonceness. 'Time' has ceased, 'space' has vanished. We now live in a global village...a simultaneous happening."... "Electric circuitry profoundly involves men with one another. Information pours upon us, instantaneously and continuously. As soon as information is acquired, it is very rapidly replaced by still newer information. Our electrically-configured world has forced us to move from the habit of data classification to the mode of pattern recognition. We can no longer build serially, block-by-block, step-by-step, because instant communication insures that all factors of the environment and of experience co-exist in a state of active interplay."

...Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication.... The alphabet and print technology fostered and encouraged a fragmenting process, a process of specialism and of detachment. Electric technology fosters and encourages unification and involvement. It is impossible to understand social and cultural changes without a knowledge of the workings of media. Anxiety is, in great part, a result of trying to do do today's jobs with yesterday's tools, with yesterday's concepts.

from McLuhan's The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects (1967)

As a member of I'll Publish the al Jazzera memo group at Blair Watch, we were one of the first to get the memo outside of the UK - and have had some time to develop the idea of how to build a blogswarming monitor. With Technorati and Google it is truly possible to view how this story unfolds in close to real time due to their intense data gathering and the Open Source software we used for RSS scraping. It's pretty geeky I know. But the page has been attracting swarms of blogophiles as this story gets mapped out in virtual real time on the page. And it provided me with a way to approach the story from a different angle.

Empire Burlesque also has the fresh Channel 4 interview radio stream with Murray on it's podcaster to help take some of the stress of Blair Watch. You can stream it on the page or download it.

There's also a 'must see' Channel 4 video below by Andrew Gilligan that we uploaded last week in flash.

Dispatches: Kidnap and Torture American Style(pops in new window and you may need Macromedia Flash 8 Player to view it) follows the stories of terror suspects.
Some of them are British residents, who have been snatched from streets and airports throughout the world before being flown to the Middle-East and Africa. In countries such as Syria and Egypt, they undergo agonising ordeals before being incarcerated, without ever facing an open trial.

Andrew Gilligan : Megan - we should stop calling it a war for one thing. You can't wage war on an abstraction and this isn't a problemthat's solvable through military means because terrorists have no fixed assets which you can attack. Terrorism is an idea and the only way we can defeat it is intellectually and by causing those extremists to cast out those ideas. Terrorism thrives from repression. Terrorists can argue that we are no better than they are (falsely).

This is also being discussed at Daily Kos, and My Left Wing

[stop the bleeding]

11. This should be it's own thread - this is an incredible but easy way

to understand this story.

I can not say thank you enough, I truly believe that a corner may have been turned in light of the past days events and everything C. Murray said in his email was exactly the same thing(s) that have been running through my head since I came across your work on this story. I do feel a bit privileged to be one of the first groups of people that were able to witness this moment. I hope that more potential whistle blowers will look to how C. Murray, Blairwitch and you did this and then maybe all of the truth(s) will come out.

Good luck with everything. It is about 7pm here on the east coast so I will be stepping out for some evening festivities, I am looking forward to sitting down and spending some serious time on this. BTW besides the NYT this story is on the AP via yahoo page, but I guess you already new that.

Cheers and Happy New Year!:party::toast:

[donkeyotay]

12. It's a heckuva speech. Who will protect us from those protecting us?

And how low are we willing to set our moral standards for the alleged protection? Is it ever okay to torture a human's children in front of them to obtain a confession? Ever? Even with the ridiculous, "but suppose there's a plane getting ready to fly into a building" bullcrap scenario, this is an unacceptable line our government has crossed in our name, with our taxes, and supposedly, for our benefit. Who is really benefiting from making the world into this place of monsters and endless war?

I told you the story of my mate Tom and Stephan; the dossier on weapons of mass destruction which contained 152 articles all of which turned out to be untrue, every bloody single one of them. Almost all of those had come from paying wadges of cash to dodgy informants. Not only that they were getting the information they wanted to hear. They wanted to hear that Saddam Hussein was a terrible threat; they want to hear that the opposition in Uzbekistan are all linked to Al-Qaeda and all want to blow up Canary Wharf. Why? Well if you’re going to be totally cynical you’d say that whether subconsciously or not the truth is the bigger the threat out there the more we need the security services, the more they need massive budgets and resources and pay increases and toys to play with. And you have to ask ’who benefits?’ Well they benefit, they benefit. They also benefit government by providing these excuses for Tony Blair to stand up in the house of commons and say ’because I am responsible for the safety of all the people in the UK we can abolish freedoms that have existed in this country since Magna Carta. They benefit from this edifice of lies, and lies gained through torture. There are people still today in Belmarsh prison who have been in there for three years without charge, without trial. Without even being told what they are accused of, on the basis of intelligence material.

http://www.ukwatch.net/article/251

[dutchdemocrat]

19. Honey Not Acetic Acid.

King George's geopolitical oil-lust-driven land grab in Central Asia is ending up in complete abject failure. China and Russia will assert control over most of the oil saturated areas. He has created enemies everywhere and lost the battle with vinager instead of honey.

Islam Karimov Hit by EU Boycott

The European Union announced yesterday the embargo for the sale of weapons to Uzbekistan and said it will prohibit high ranking Uzbek officials from enter EU countries. The sanctions were imposed for "indiscriminate use of force" during the suppression of the uprising in Andijan and prevention of independent investigation of the events. In fact, it is a beginning of international process to isolate Islam Karimov regime. Russia intends to use this situation to its advantage and turn Uzbekistan in Moscow's main geopolitical partner in the region.

Regime Non Grata

Yesterday the countries of European Union lost the right to supply Uzbekistan weapons, military equipment and everything that can be used by local armed forces. The decision was made during the session in Luxemburg by the heads of the foreign ministries of EU countries. The European countries decided that Uzbek special services and army "indiscriminately used excessive force" against the demonstrations in Andijan. Because EU did not supply weapons to Tashkent anyway, the European countries attempted to make a step further. It was decided to create a list of Uzbek officials, who would not get entry visas to the EU countries. Moreover, the European Union decided to suspend the Agreement of partnership and cooperation with Uzbekistan. Brussels does not exclude a possibility to freeze later on bank accounts of those, who, according to European authorities, were participating in the shooting, if Karimov will continue to prevent an independent investigation.

It is interesting that the sanctions were imposed on Uzbekistan right after the visit in Tashkent by Daniel Freed, deputy of the US Secretary of State for Eurasia. On Friday, he was discussing with Uzbek authorities the issue of American military base Karshi-Khanabad. Uzbekistan insists on immediate withdrawal of the base. There were no agreements reached. In the same moment the US Congress received the project resolution, which demands from President George Bush " to use the voice and influence of United States" to make the UN Security Council send the Islam Karimov's case, "who is guilty in the massacre on May 13, 2005, in Andijan," to International Court. One of the document authors, Congressman William Delahunt, Democrat, said the no actions policy of the American administration toward theregime of Islam Karimov "feeds up the feeling of mistrust to America around the world" and "gives a reason to accuse the United States in double standards." If the resolution would be adopted, it will become a law. In the same time the Department of State completely froze financial aid to Tashkent (about $21 million per year).

The First Step towards Isolation

The news about the introduction of the sanctions by European Union against Uzbekistan caught Uzbek president while he was outside of the country. Right before, he made an official visit to Malaysia, which government holds harsh anti-Western positions. Nobody from the Uzbek officials had the courage to comment on the Brussels decision without the boss. Those who spoke up on the condition of anonymity, said that Uzbekistan will not suffer from the sanction. According to Kommersant source from the Uzbek Defense Ministry, the absence of the European weapons will not lower the Uzbek army combat readiness: "The weapons that are left after USSR would be enough to the end of the century. And if we have to buy new ones, than we have contracts with Russia."

Tashkent understood that sooner or later the confrontation with the West would end up with full break up. For that reason, Karimov made a earlier bet for Moscow and Beijing. The Uzbek army equipped mostly with Soviet arms and equipment. The parts and new weapons are being supplied from Russia. Moreover, within the framework of Shanghai Organization of Cooperation Tashkent can buy light arms and ammunition in China. The U.S. was also helping to supply Uzbek army before the Andijan events. Washington was delivering light weapons, uniforms and non-combat equipment. The shipment stopped when Washington started to demand from Tashkent the independent investigation of Andijan tragedy. In the same time, Uzbekistan asks to withdraw American military base in Karshi-Khanabad. Condoleezza Rice, US Secretary of State clearly warned Uzbek authorities that their actions could lead to full international isolation of Uzbekistan.

SNIP

http://www.kommersant.com/tree.asp?rubric=2&node=20&doc_id=614838

[BuyingThyme]

13. kcik

[bleever]

14. Kick.

[AuntiBush]

16. Big Kick for your Patriotism & Courage.

[malaise]

18. I see Gasprom has cut its oil links

with the Ukraine starting from today. Their strange election (what with all the exit poll nonsense) takes on new meaning. Any connections between bumpy face's wife and the Rethugs?

[Stephanie]

20. That brings us back to Dabhol >

http://www.alternet.org/story/12525/





The Enron-Cheney-Taliban Connection?
By Ron Callari, Albion Monitor. Posted February 28, 2002.


<snip>

Could the Big Secret be that the highest levels of the Bush Administration knew during the summer of 2001 that the largest bankruptcy in history was imminent? Or was it that Enron and the White House were working closely with the Taliban -- including Osama bin Laden -- up to weeks before the Sept. 11 attack? Was a deal in Afghanistan part of a desperate last-ditch "end run" to bail out Enron? Here's a tip for Congressional investigators and federal prosecutors: Start by looking at the India deal. Closely.

Enron had a $3 billion investment in the Dabhol power plant, near Bombay on India's west coast. The project began in 1992, and the liquefied natural gas- powered plant was supposed to supply energy- hungry India with about one-fifth of its energy needs by 1997. It was one of Enron's largest development projects ever (and the single largest direct foreign investment in India's history). The company owned 65 percent of Dabhol; the other partners were Bechtel, General Electric and State Electricity Board.

***

Construction of oil and natural gas export pipelines through Afghanistan was under serious consideration during the Clinton years. In 1996, Unocal -- one of the world's leading energy resource and project development companies -- won a contract to build a 1,005-mile oil pipeline in order to exploit the vast Turkmenistan natural gas fields in Duletabad. The pipeline would extend through Afghanistan and Pakistan, terminating in Multan, near the India border.

Multan was also the end point for another proposed pipeline, this one from Iran. This project never left the drawing boards, however; the pipeline would be much longer (over 1,600 miles) and more expensive. Still, this route was being seriously considered as of early 2001, and it increased the odds that gas would be flowing into Multan from somewhere.

Unocal wasn't the only energy company laying pipe. In 1997, Enron announced that it was going to spend over $1 billion building and improving the lines between the Dabhol plant and India's network of gas pipelines.

Follow the map: Once a proposed 400-mile extension from Multan, Pakistan to New Delhi, India was built, Caspian Sea gas could flow into India's network to New Delhi, follow the route to Bombay -- and bingo! A plentiful source of ultra-cheap LNG that could supply Enron's plant in India for three decades or more.

http://www.alternet.org/story/12525/