[NYTr] Rendition: The Use and Abuse of the English Language

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by MichaelP

[Questioning authority in Blair's England !! -MP]

The Cyprus Observer
Weekly English-language newspaper available in Cyprus and the UK
http://www.observercyprus.com/observer/NewsDetails.aspx?id=2574

The Use and Abuse of the English language

by Brian Self

"Political language," wrote George Orwell, "is designed to make lies
sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of
solidity to pure wind."

On December 7 2005 at Prime Minister's Question time in the British
House of Commons, the then Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy
asked the then British Prime Minister Tony Blair a question concerning
the practice of `Extraordinary Rendition'.

Kennedy referred to a statement made the previous day by US Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice, in which she said that Extraordinary
Rendition had been conducted in co-operation with European Governments.

Kennedy asked Blair:

"To what extent, therefore, have the Government co-operated in the 
transport of terrorist suspects to Afghanistan and elsewhere,
apparently for torture purposes?"

Blair's answer was as dissimulating an example of Orwellian
`doublespeak', as Kennedy's question was straightforward plain English.

"Let me draw a very clear distinction indeed," Blair said that
day in the Commons, "between the idea of suspects being taken from one
country to another and any sense whatever that ourselves, the United
States or anyone condones the use of torture. Torture cannot be
justified in any set of circumstances at all.

The practice of rendition as described by Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice has been American policy for many years.We have not
had such a situation here, but that has been American policy for many,
many years. However, it must be applied in accordance with
international conventions, and I accept entirely Secretary of State
Rice's assurance that it has been."

The matter of Extraordinary Rendition is a deeply shameful one for the 
British Government.

Sometime this year the trial will begin of the man who let us know that
on December 7 2005 the British Prime Minister's statements to the
Commons were a cover-up of the truth.

If you have not heard his name before it's because there was little
press coverage; in its section News in Brief the Times reported the
case on October 9 last year under the title `Secrets Act charges'.

"A Foreign and Commonwealth official will appear before City of 
Westminster magistrates on Thursday charged with six offences under the 
Official Secrets Act. It will be alleged that Derek Pasquill, 48,
leaked confidential documents relating to Islamist groups to a
journalist, forming the basis for articles in the New Statesman and The
Observer and a think-tank pamphlet."

It seemed odd the Times omitted the matter of Pasquill's disclosures of 
British policy on and acquiescence in America's Extraordinary Rendition 
programme. And "documents relating to Islamist groups" is innocuous
stuff compared to the fact that papers leaked by Pasquill revealed
covert diplomatic engagement with Egypt's banned extremist Islamic
opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood.

But then to newspaper proprietors like Rupert Murdoch `whistleblowers'
are not brave patriots whose conscience forces them to act in the
public interest; they mean trouble for those in power. For the New
Statesman's political editor Martin Bright, the series of documents he
was given access to at the end of 2005 were `a journalistic goldmine'.

Bright has not heard from his source since Pasquill was arrested at the 
end of January 2006 under suspicion of breaking the Official Secrets
Act.

Since his suspension from the FCO almost two years ago Pasquill has
been in a frightening legal limbo while it took the authorities 18
months to bring charges against him; the trial might not take place
before the middle of the year or even later.

Compare this to the furore made by Labour Party politicians, who 
complained that no charges had been made by the authorities in their 
investigation of the `loans for peerages' scandal, an investigation
"which had already dragged on for 12 months."

Contrast this with Gordon Brown's speech to the Labour Party conference 
made three days before Pasquill was charged, in which the Premier said:
"I have no doubt that the best answer to disengagement from our
democracy is to renew our democracy. And that means change, change to
strengthen our liberties to uphold the freedom of speech, freedom of
information and the freedom to protest."

And finally, if there is any doubt that in Britain there is a steady 
erosion of civil liberties and the rule of law, consider the report by 
Privacy International published on 30 December, the most comprehensive 
survey of global privacy ever published.

A cursory glance at the report suggests that Britain is ranked bottom
of the list of European countries because of its surveillance cameras, 
estimated to number around 5 million - one for every 12 citizens, a 
staggering fifth of the world's total. But digging deeper into the
survey reveals more than the description of Britain as "an endemic
surveillance society," a distinction shared with Russia, China and the
US.

"Lack of accountability and no data breach law; Interception
of communications is authorised by politicians, evidence not used in
court, and oversight is by commissioner who reports only once a year
upon reviewing a subset of applications; hundreds of thousands of
requests from government agencies to telecommunications providers for
traffic data; identity scheme still planned to be the most invasive in
the world, highly centralised and biometrics-driven, plan to issue all
foreigners with cards in 2008 are continuing; E borders plans include
increased data collection on travellers."

That is not all, but enough to suggest Brown's concept of individual 
rights may be different than yours or mine. The report was not able to 
include the recent - almost unnoticed - decision by Parliament to allow 
almost every public body in Britain to view its citizen's telephone 
records. I write Britain and not the UK because for the first time, 
Privacy International gave Scotland its own ranking score; it was 
significantly better than England and Wales.

A steady and systematic increase in the British Government's ability to 
reach deeper into the private lives of almost all citizens -- can,
after lost discs and mislaid personal records -- hardly be justified on
the grounds of administrative efficiency.

But the war on terror and the protection of national security (they
have long become interchangeable) is used to justify any abuse of
power, violation of basic human rights and, frequently to protect civil
servants, Ministers and leaders from embarrassment.

It is difficult to see the hounding of Derek Pasquill as anything other 
than an attempt to intimidate a civil servant whose conscience told him 
government policy on certain issues was wrong.

 From the time that ex MI5 agent David Shayler returned to England to
face trial in 2000, the present government has used the Official
Secrets Act to prosecute whistleblowers and muzzle journalists with
alarming regularity. Shayler's `crime' was having revealed that the
government before Labour had maintained files on senior Labour
politicians.

Before the invasion of Iraq, Katharine Gun sacrificed her career as a 
translator at the government's secret listening centre (GCHQ) in 
Cheltenham, after admitting she had leaked a document of the highest 
classification of secrecy. The document, an email, from the US National 
Security Agency asked for British assistance in spying on the United 
Nations, to know the voting intentions of certain countries and to
collect information in case individual diplomats were to be blackmailed.

Gun believed lives could be saved by averting invasion, unaware Bush
was going to remove Saddam Hussein with or without UN sanction.

In 2006 a Cabinet Office civil servant, David Keogh, and a
parliamentary researcher, Leo O'Connor, were sentenced under the Act to
short prison terms for leaking a memo of a meeting between Bush and
Blair in which the US President outlined plans to bomb the Al Jazeera
TV station in Qatar.

The matter of the British Foreign Office `courting' the Muslim
Brotherhood is too long and complex to go into here. Martin Bright
admitted he received so many documents - emails, position papers and
policy discussions he found it difficult to read them all.

But apart from the memo on Rendition there is a letter from Michael
Jay, the Foreign Office permanent under-secretary to the cabinet
secretary, Sir Michael Turnbull, warning that the Iraq war was fuelling
Muslim extremism in Britain. The letter was sent a year before the
London July 7 bombings, and an attachment clearly states that Britain
was viewed as a `crusader state,' equal to the US as a potential target.

That Blair at the time denied any link caused dismay among many
Muslims; the issue here is that of trying to cover up the fact that
senior civil servants saw the negative effect of British foreign policy
on Muslims worldwide, while Ministers denied a connection.

The briefing notes used by Blair on December 7 2005, titled `Detainees' 
were signed by a private secretary at the Foreign Office and addressed
to Grace Cassey, assistant private secretary at 10 Downing Street.

The document is a shocking revelation not of what the government knew,
but what it did not wish to know, and admits complacency and ignorance.

It states clearly that Extraordinary Rendition "is almost certainly 
illegal," and advises Blair that in dealing with the issue in public,

"We should try to avoid getting drawn on detail, at least until we
have been able to complete the substantial research required to
establish what has happened even since 1997; and try to move the debate
on."

If Blair had given an honest answer that day he would have told
Charles Kennedy that he had no idea whether renditions had taken place
in the past few years, we are urgently examining our files but if they
have they would certainly have been illegal, but the government
supports the US anyway because they have promised no one is being
tortured, although some "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment does
take place.

In paragraph 17 the advice says: "But we now cannot say that we have 
received no such requests for the use of UK territory or air space for
the purposes of "Extraordinary Rendition."