Scotland and the Repudiation of America
This is a guest post by Professor Tom Gallagher. Tom’s new book, The Illusion of Freedom: Scotland Under Nationalism, is published next month
Robert S. Mueller III, director of the FBI for nearly a decade, wrote to the Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill in terms which have not been used by a senior US official to a friendly state, not even when relations were strained with France and Germany back in 2003 when the Americans removed Saddam Hussein. Perhaps it is necessary to go back to the late 1980s when a West European Haed of State, Kurt Waldheim was actually persona non gratae in the US.
What prompted him to write:
‘I have made it a practice not to comment on the actions of other prosecutors…Your decision to release [Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed] al-Megrahi causes me to abandon that practice…I do so because I am familiar with the facts and the law, having been the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the investigation and indictment of Megrahi in 1991. And I do so because I am outraged by your decision, blithely defended on the grounds of “compassion”’.
Could it have been MacAskill’s visit on 6 August to Greenock prison to meet the man convicted for blowing up the Pan Am jet over Lockerbie in 1988 with the loss of 270 people? This fuelled speculation about a secret deal and, within days, al-Megrahi would withdraw his appeal, one which family relatives and justice experts hoped might push fresh evidence about this murky affair into the public domain. The prisoner needed to take this step if he was to obtain release on compassionate grounds. Very soon indeed this was granted.
Is this the sequence of events which drove the FBI director to write that ‘your action makes a mockery of the grief of the families who lost their own on December 21 1988? Or did his outrage over MacAskill’s move stem more from the way that he turned the release announcement into a big media news drama with himself centre-stage. His 25 minute statement took up nearly the whole of BBC Radio 4’s The World at One and there’s little doubt the timing was also influenced by the fact that it was bound to be given a lot of prominence on the US morning news shows just starting up.
MacAskill’s endless insistence that al-Megrahi’s release stemmed from the genius of Scottish laws and collective social values must have also touched a raw nerve; as indeed I am sure did the announcement to a no doubt startled world that ‘the Scots are a compassionate people’. A look at the dark underbelly of Scottish life would suggest that the basis for a politician to crow in this way about his country is a flimsy one.
As the philosopher A.C.Grayling pointed out in the Guardian on Friday, al-Megrahi received infinitely better treatment while in custody than any terrorist’s treatment of his victims.:
‘The interests of justice and compassion often clash, though people forget that in a case like Lockerbie) compassion towards the families and friends of the 270 victims requires that justice be properly done: each individual member of those families and friends has a life sentence that can never be abbreviated. For mass murders, life sentences should mean life, no matter what: provided the conviction is secure’.
But thanks to the events choreographed by the Scottish government , how secure al-Megrahi’s conviction was is likely to remain shrouded in mystery. MacAskill and his government have been poor guardians of the Scottish legal system about whose qualities they have been so keen to inform the world. The centrality of a particular legal code was shown in the edgy response from Edinburgh to the US FBI Director: Macaskill’s office emphasised that, unlike its US counterpart, compassion is an integral element of the Scottish justice system.
Here the Scottish legal system is indeed probably superior to the one which locks up a disturbingly high proportion of its citizens. But if compassion for the families of the victims is set aside, and is weighted instead in favour of a man whose guilt for the deaths of their loved ones was established in court, then that compassion has a hollow ring to it. (Allowing al-Megrahi to live out his remaining months in a house near to the prison would have been infinitely more compassionate since it would have prevented the deeply hurtful scenes that awaited his return to Libya).
MacAskill had already started the grandstanding for the purposes of extolling his brand of political nationalism. He was no doubt egged on by his Machiavellian leader Alex Salmond who knows that it his impetuous colleague who will face the long-term opprobrium while the First Minister will make capital at home and renew his effort to strike a deal with wealthy Middle Easterners to finance his separatist plans.
But the SNP’s parochialism and infatuation with their own cause was shown by their total failure to comprehend that others would wish to turn al-Megrahi’s release into an even grander spectacle. The reception when al-Megrahi disembarked from the jet Colonel Qadafi dispatched for him was like the climax in Fidelio when the prisoner Floristan at last emerges from the dungeon of the wicked Pizarro. But, unlike Beethoven’s opera, al-Megrahi has not returned to a land of freedom but to a durable police state. The SNP’ showed the minor league it operated in by failing to realise that Qadafi was likely to turn it into a centre-point for marking the 40th anniversary of the sprightly Colonel’s revolution.
For a long time, the Libyan regime provided the Semtex for IRA outrages as well as training terrorists operating from the Philipines to West Africa. The SNP’s readiness to play into the hands of a regime with such a record surely prompted Robert Mueller to writer to MacAskill:
‘your action rewards a terrorist even though he never admitted to his role in this act of mass murder and even though neither he nor the government of Libya ever disclosed the name and roles of others who were responsible’.
Macaskil has forgotten the wisdom that has been painstakingly acquired down the ages about how far the preservation of freedom is depended on maintaining order and adherence to the rule of law. The decline of this culture of received wisdom occurred during the Dark Ages, again for a time during the collapse of the medieval world in the 14th century, and of course with the rise of totalitarianism n the 20th century. George Bernard Shaw was not the only thinker who was able to glimpse that if no norms are observed, men behave like the beats from which they are ascended (see his 1921 play Back to Methuselah).
In his 1930 book The Revolt of the Masses, Jose Ortega y Gasset delivered a warning to America. Its civilization would not endure if it was severed from European culture. He believed that the American civil order shared with European civilization a common patrimony. Its principal elements (due allowance being made for the time he was writing) were thought to be the inheritance of the Christian faith (and its Judaic roots), a Roman and also medieval heritage of ordered liberty; and contested contributions from the 18th century Enlightenment where rationality and romanticism were, however, uneasy bedfellows.
By now, the rupture which Ortega and others had feared has surely already occurred but not in the way perhaps anticipated. The European inheritance still endures but it is in America itself that the best of it can now be found, certainly in terms of civic endeavours, belief in freedom, and intellectual renown (as clearly shown by how the best of its universities eclipse those of Europe).
America is also perhaps the most successful international society in history (leaving aside the Roman Empire). It is able to absorb huge waves of immigrants and because of the strength of its institutions and a social order which emphasises common value and inclusion, this provides the basis for liberty and order to co-exist (of course with exceptions that Louis Theroux and others are given prime television slots in europe to pore over).
Europe by contrast encourages its still much smaller wave of immigrants to embrace ‘diversity ‘and their arrival has coincided with the creation of a vacuum of feel good slogans where there once was a common set of values (however imperfect and in need of modification). The multi-cultural left and the far-right now struggle to fill that vacuum, both championing the affirmation of ethnic identity for their respective target groups over citizenship based on common values.
Alex Salmond has been particularly active in this work of deconstruction. Not only does he champion separation for a small country despite its precarious economic condition but he has been busy encouraging ethnic and religious separation within its boundaries.
These facts are surely well-known by now to the US authorities (and allegations from the more militant Nats of CIA ‘interference’ are surely not long to follow). Perhaps the vigour of FBI Director Mueller’s remarks stem from recent discovery of disquieting cooperation between the SNP and deeply anti-American forces occurring just beneath the radar screen. Given the company Salmond keeps, Mueller will know that ‘compassion’ was not uppermost in his party’s mind when al-Megrahi was released. It is a foregone conclusion that tomorrow when the Scottish Parliament has its special session, nobody is even likely to bother putting on record what were the bonds that once drew Scotland and the USA so closely together – commercial, religious, and intellectual ones as well as shared social reform efforts, and similar popular cultures.
Scoto-American ties were exceptionally close for 175 years and perhaps their moral and practical high point was reached in January 1941 and, if asked for a place, I would nominate the North British Hotel in Glasgow’s George Square. It was the worst period of the war and Britain appeared totally alone. German U Boats stalked its waters, Stalin was still maintaining his non-aggression pact with Hitler, and isolationists still counted for much in the USA. A light in the darkness was provided by Harry Hopkins, an architect of the New Deal and later one of Roosevelt’s chief diplomatic troubleshooters. He had been sent by the President to assess the determination of the British people to continue the fight and the likely effects of American help. His hosts were Tom Johnston, the Scottish secretary of State and Patrick Dollan, the Lord Provost of Glasgow, both from the Labour Party; Churchill too was there. Energised by their defiance and that of the ordinary people he had met on his tour, Hopkins delivered an emotional speech promising that he would do all in his power to ensure the support of the US for Britain’s stand against Hitler.
If a new peril arose and all the objectionable features of America suddenly vanished with the realisation that its help was imperative, where are the prominent Scots an Amercan envoy would meet. Would Alex Salmond for example introduce the visitor to Lesley Riddoch, the doyenne of Scottish broadcasting who in Friday’s Guardian hailed the SNP for not ‘kow-towing to the world’s most powerful nation’. Or to the Pope of multicultural Scotland, Chair of the Scottish Arts Council and much else besides, Bishop Richard Holloway who wrote in Saturday’s Guardian: about he ‘bravery’ shown by the Scottish government in resisting ‘the enormous pressure they were under’. I think if Hopkins had met such people in January 1941 he would have assumed that his plane had been diverted to Vichy France.
There are virtually no Scots left who are prominent in public life and who could talk with knowledge and feeling about how the common defence of freedom and responsible conduct in the world should bind together Americans and Scots as occurred in previous epochs. Instead, astride Scotland is a party which makes no secret of the fact that a love of county implies disdain for another, across the Atlantic, and the values, some of which were set out in Robert Mueller’s letter.
Comments
| 23 August 2009, 6:35 pm |
Is this Tom Gallagher of NED fame?
| 23 August 2009, 6:53 pm |
“virtually no Scots left who are prominent in public life and who could talk with knowledge and feeling about how the common defence of freedom and responsible conduct in the world should bind together Americans and Scots as occurred in previous epochs”
Ain’t you heard of Gordon Brown?
| 23 August 2009, 7:00 pm |
Muzza,
Could you be the Nationalist supporter whom i recall writing in the Scotsman blog a few days ago warning that the National Endowment for Democracy (funded by the US Congress) was as we write planning to mount a coup against the Scottish government?
Of course i may not have agreed with all of the NED’s ideas but i was proud to be a scholar in residence for part of last year and therefoe able to observe close-up a liberal-minded organization committed to strengthening democracy across the world.
| 23 August 2009, 7:12 pm |
Good piece Tom. You tutored me about 25 years ago!
| 23 August 2009, 7:13 pm |
This guy is supposedly an “academic”, aye right.
| 23 August 2009, 7:39 pm |
The SNP are hopelessly out of their depth. Doubt does surround Megrahi’s conviction, especially since the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission reported in June 2007 (just as the SNP came into adminstration) that there could have been a miscarriage of justice. This was a bombshell, as it cast doubt on the probity of Scotland’s famed justice system and the 2001 procedings at a US base in Holland, Camp Zeist, where a small team of Scottish judges were both judge and jury. (It was decided to dispense with the normal process of a jury trial of 15 ordinary citizens).
But not a tweet, hardly, from the moribund Scottish press, and the matter seems to have been ignored by the SNP, who had smaller fish to fry.
The Lockerbie incident was only the most significant foreign policy conundrum to hit Scotland since Charles Edward Stewart landed in Moidart in 1745 with French backing to take the British Crown, and got as far as Preston. But the international dimensions of Lockerbie and of the potential damage of Megrahi’s appeal appeared lost on the SNP.
So no particular strategies or consultations were developed to meet this potential hazard to the honour of the famed Scottish judicial system should the appeal have any substance. The SNP were content to let legal matters drag on at a glacial pace, until Megrahi unexpectedly developed cancer in the autumn of 2008.
This brought his appeal into sudden focus, especially as by the spring of 2009 it was realised the cancer was aggressive and terminal. The safety of the 2001 conviction (and of the reputation of Scottish justice) was suddenly in the frame.
The fact remains that Megrahi is guilty (in the legal sense, of having been convicted). That is his technical status in law. MacAskill acknowledges that, yet he behaved as though he believed the opposite.
Nothing but ineptitude could have allowed him to get into that incoherent, muddled situation, of releasing a mass murderer on compassionate grounds.
Then there is the matter of MacAskill turning down Gaddafi’s May request for transfer of Megrahi under the PTA. MacAskill replied that this would disappoint the US relatives who had been promised that Megrahi would serve out the rest of his sentence in Scotland.
What happenned between May and August to make MacAskill change his mind?
| 23 August 2009, 7:44 pm |
Instead, astride Scotland is a party which makes no secret of the fact that a love of county implies disdain for another, across the Atlantic, and the values, some of which were set out in Robert Mueller’s letter.
I would try harder to take Prof. Gallagher’s posts seriously if he would try harder to write coherent English.
In what sense is the SNP “astride” Scotland? Wouldn’t “forming the minority administration in Scotland” be a more accurate phrase?
Oh and I suspect you meant “country”, by the way.
| 23 August 2009, 7:51 pm |
The prisoner transfer agreement with Libya is the biggest of Blair’s booby traps for Brown to go off so far. But it is not the first. Nor will it be the last.
What Scots think of Kenny McAskill’s decision will be made clear at the Glasgow North-East by-election. Even the prospect of electing an Opus Dei MP is not quite a good enough reason to vote SNP even in general, never mind now.
And as for Blair, considering how fabulously rich he has become as his reward for the Iraq War, the Statute Law should be amended to bill him by name for the cost of it.
The Libya deal was also vintage neoconservatism in action – pretending to get rid of non-existent WMD so that the oil money could flow.
| 23 August 2009, 7:56 pm |
Odd situation when the SNP does the pro-BP dirty work for the bigbusiness-loving UK government and gets slagged off by a New Labour crone.
Oh, and lest we forget, the guy was framed – as everyone involved shurely kno.
So lets all be more context-aware, people, please.
| 23 August 2009, 8:06 pm |
Why hasn’t al-Megrahi’s release provoked more anger among Scots– especially given the victims on the ground in Lockerbie?
| 23 August 2009, 8:07 pm |
The source of the compassion which is an integral element of the Scottish justice system is section three of the Prisoners and Criminal Proceedings (Scotland) Act 1993 which provides that the Scottish Ministers may at any time, if satisfied that there are compassionate grounds justifying the release of a person serving a sentence of imprisonment, release him on licence.
The nationalist party line, led today by First Minister Mister Salmond, is that “we understand the upset. We understand the disagreement. But we have to do what is right in terms of our legal system, that is what we are duty-bound to do.”
In other words, Kenny McAskill had no choice, it was his duty to let the Lockerbie bomber out. That is not what the statute says, but never mind. Mister Salmond says they had no choice.
These are such miserable amateurs. And they’re in charge of my country!
| 23 August 2009, 8:08 pm |
The damage the Scot Executive’s decision has had will long outlast any political benefit from it.
Further, the Libyans have underscored their status as the dominant partner in their relationship with the UK… Now that Scotland has folded under, it can look forward to many more episodes of Libya flexing its petromuscles to force Britain into submission.
How sad for the UK government to trade a successful partnership in for vassal servitude to the Lord of Tripoli.
| 23 August 2009, 8:10 pm |
‘Why hasn’t al-Megrahi’s release provoked more anger among Scots– especially given the victims on the ground in Lockerbie?
How do you know it hasn’t?
| 23 August 2009, 8:18 pm |
‘Why hasn’t al-Megrahi’s release provoked more anger among Scots– especially given the victims on the ground in Lockerbie?
How do you know it hasn’t?
I don’t, but I haven’t seen any reports of massive anger. I’d be pleased to be corrected.
| 23 August 2009, 8:26 pm |
It was sickeninlgy pathetic to hear McAskill sanctimoniously conclude that ultimate deliverance of justice for Al McGahki would come from an oh-so PC “higher power”.
If that is the driving force and logic at the heart of Scottish jurisprudence then why not let them release every one they have locked up as they are (as we all are) going to die sooner or later and ’suffer’ the same fate. What a self serving first rate fukkin NUMPTIE!
I wonder how long it will be before some smart arsed Scottish lawyer chances a punt that a Human Rights precident has been set in this debacle.
| 23 August 2009, 8:27 pm |
The apoplexy from many US citizens and even its highest officials seems rather at odds with their (non) reaction to reports about another convicted mass murderer this week. Former US army Lt Calley this week offered a belated public apology for his part in the murder of 500 Vietnamese men women and children. He is and has been a free man living a comfortable free life. He didn’t murder any Americans .. so thats OK then.
“Calley, 66, was a young Army lieutenant when a court-martial at nearby Fort Benning convicted him of murder in 1971 for killing 22 civilians during the infamous massacre of 500 men, women and children in Vietnam.
Though sentenced to life in prison, Calley ended up serving three years under house arrest after President Richard Nixon later reduced his sentence.
“
| 23 August 2009, 8:29 pm |
No Presidential Apology for Scotland, I reckon.
| 23 August 2009, 8:34 pm |
I’ve seen/read various hostile reactions in the Scottish media (Sunday Herald; BBC Scotland; Scotland on Sunday), from the public and politicians alike. Tomorrow there will be an emergency debate in the re-call of the Scottish Parliament which I hope to attend.
Doubt about the conviction has however grown here since the SCCRC’s June 2007 report. Those with no doubt about the verdict are almost universally angry.
Many Scots were appalled at seeing Scottish Saltires greet Megrahi in Tripoli, and described it as ’sickening’ and that it made them ashamed of their nationality.
| 23 August 2009, 8:36 pm |
| 23 August 2009, 8:43 pm |
The Moors Murderers chose the wrong moor. They’d have been freed years ago.
A good theory says that he is actually innocent and its Iran who set it up in retaliation to an Iranian airliner blown-up by the Americans. The theory says that if he had been allowed an appeal so the new evidence might have freed him and embarrassed some countries. This way he avoids the appeal hearing and gets free ‘om compassionate grounds’.
If we ignore all that and take his guilty verdict as perfect then I’m with the Americans on this. It damages the UK (because the World doesn’t understand the subtelty of Scotland being separately governed)
If you commit your terrorism in Scotland you can be sure of a hero’s welcome.
| 23 August 2009, 9:12 pm |
Thanks for the information, devorgilla.
| 23 August 2009, 9:18 pm |
I believe what is required is greater use of international courts in terrorism cases, and give them jurisdiction over the detention (and I would also allow the option of capital punishment). That would certainly reduce the risk of an individual spineless, appeasing government releasing convicted mass murderers on spurious ‘compassionate’ grounds. For this alone, the SNP need to be drummed out of power, permanently.
| 23 August 2009, 9:27 pm |
“He was no doubt egged on by his Machiavellian leader Alex Salmond…the First Minister will make capital at home and renew his effort to strike a deal with wealthy Middle Easterners to finance his separatist plans.”
I’ve met Alex Salmond and he couldn’t “Machiavell” his way out of a paper poke – especially in comparison to the slimy power-seeking ideological chimeras of Scotland’s Nu-Labour cabal: McConnel, Connarty, Ritchie et al (I knew them at University, self-serving mercenaries every one). But Gallagher knows that and is now – suprise, suprise – writing that only he can see through Salmond’s evil schemes. Gallagher has already suggested that the SNP are deliberately cultivating extremist Moslem support in Scotland, he’s compared Salmond to tyrant Gen. Nasser and the IRA’s Micheal Collins, and now he’s connecting Salmond’s actively seeking investment from the Middle East that implicitly is meant to suggest the SNP are seeking political funding from the Libyans and other M.E. state supporters of terrorism. That’s called jumping the shark. He should show documentation to substantiate such an allegation or be consigned to the ranks of ranting conspiracy theorists.
| 23 August 2009, 9:42 pm |
The decision doesn’t appear to be popular in Scotland judging from the polls:
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/2220
11% agree that he should have been released on compassionate grounds and I would guess that most of those believe that he is not guilty of the crime.
| 23 August 2009, 9:54 pm |
Salmond “out-macchiavelled” by London and Washington.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6806482.ece
| 23 August 2009, 9:58 pm |
Here’s the latest:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article6807186.ece
This says that most of the grounds raised by Megrahi’s appeal were dismissed by the Crown… I’m a bit confused. The appeal never went ahead. MacAskill however said he accepted Megrahi’s guilt and I assume he read all the legal literature that was available. He was 20 years a lawyer.
| 23 August 2009, 10:05 pm |
Don’t worry, Scotland. Daily Kos has your back.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/8/22/770992/-Boycott-Scotland-Go-F**k-Yourself.
| 23 August 2009, 10:35 pm |
Gene, there is a groundswell which is fucking furious. There’s talk of a vote of no-confidence tomorrow.
Even if talk of a Syrian/US citizen being named (which wasn’t mentioned til now) are true, Macaskill said he considered al-Megrahi to be guilty. At the very least, Macaskill and Salmond should be disbarred from ever running for political office ever again.
| 23 August 2009, 10:48 pm |
More hyperventilation from Gallagher.
A more sober academic, Professor Robert Black, makes a very telling point about the publicity-seeking FBI Director Robert Mueller so admired by Gallagher.
Black points out the obvious deficiencies and indeed contradictions of the posture Mueller adopted:
“On 6 August 2009, The Times published a report containing the following:
“The investigating officers who led the original inquiry into the Lockerbie bombing have made an unprecedented intervention in the case to argue against the release of the Libyan convicted of the attack.
“In a letter to the Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish police chief and the FBI boss who led the international investigation 20 years ago launch a powerfully worded plea against the release of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, who is serving a minimum sentence of 25 years for his part in the bombing.
“In the letter obtained by The Times, Stuart Henderson, the retired senior investigating officer at the Lockerbie Incident Control Centre, and Richard Marquise, the FBI special agent in charge of the US taskforce, whose detective work helped to convict Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, insist that he is guilty. They also argue that his release would “nullify the dedicated work of dozens of law enforcement and intelligence officials around the world”.”
It is therefore untrue for the Director [ i.e. Mueller] to suggest that the decision was taken without regard to, or in ignorance of, the views of the investigators (or at least some of them).
His complaint (if he has one at all) therefore has to be that the ultimate decision was not one that they approved of.
In civilised countries decisions regarding liberation of prisoners are not placed in the hands of policemen and prosecutors, nor are they accorded a veto over those decisions. Mr Mueller (and Mr Marquise) would probably wish that this were otherwise. The rest of us can be grateful that it is not”
Its worth spelling out that last point. The FBI director is saying that the police should decide who gets to leave and who gets to stay.
For the purpose of selling his odd little book, Gallagher is praising to the skies the belief that Justice is best served by a police state (such as, er, Gaddafi’s).
That seems a little irresponsible.
| 23 August 2009, 11:11 pm |
Gene, here is the latest on the anger of politicians.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article6807186.ece
| 23 August 2009, 11:19 pm |
“A light in the darkness was provided by Harry Hopkins, an architect of the New Deal and later one of Roosevelt’s chief diplomatic troubleshooters.”
Harry Hopkins – was he not outed by the Venona transcripts and the Mitrokhin Archives as a Soviet agent i.e. a traitor?
When the dust settles on Megrahi’s release, I’m sure that Brown and Blair will be up to their necks in that dust. Just a pity it won’t cover their heads.
| 23 August 2009, 11:25 pm |
“It is a foregone conclusion that tomorrow when the Scottish Parliament has its special session, nobody is even likely to bother putting on record what were the bonds that once drew Scotland and the USA so closely together – commercial, religious, and intellectual ones as well as shared social reform efforts, and similar popular cultures.”
And, er, the slave trade?
| 23 August 2009, 11:25 pm |
ratzo, your Professor Robert Black was the architect of the 2001 Camp Zeist trial arrangements, whereby a jury was dispensed with in favour of a clutch of Scottish High Court judges. (Some reports say three; others, five).
Black now admits this was an error, to make the judges both judge and jury… and says he regrets this deeply. No jury of fifteen ordinary citizens would, he says, have convicted Megrahi on the circumstantial evidence presented.
Where is your source for your Black material, BTW?
| 23 August 2009, 11:40 pm |
Allan, that’s the bummer about wishing for influence without responsibility – the Fish-heid just ain’t up to it. He thought he could rake in the kudos about being “compassinate”, and speak for “Scotland” as he always does.
He failed.
Let’s say this always was going to happen. The Fish-heid could havd overseen a refusal, only to have it over-ruled. Think of the fillip Scottish free-thought would have received.
He choose his foes badly.
| 23 August 2009, 11:46 pm |
Can someone explain me why a criminal whose crime was commited over Scotland can be sent back to a hero’s welcome in his peace-loving country while those who commit crimes in more or less neighbouring and also pecae-loving countries like Egypt or Jordan are not sent back to those countries and, instead, are allowed to live in liberty in the UK?
| 23 August 2009, 11:51 pm |
Immediately after 1945 European mass murderers ran away to South America. Now Europe is paying this favour back with interests. Mass murderers from all over the world, from Rwandan Hutus to Palestinian terrorists (oh, sorry, freedom fighters) can either count on Europe to accept them or to find a way to save their skins.
I’m almost a 100% sure Osama bin Laden has been dead for a long time now but, if he were alive and turned up in Glasgow, what would the Scottish government do with him? Give him a medal? They wouldn’t even deport him to the KSA.
| 24 August 2009, 12:17 am |
It is particularly damning that the Scottish administration have stirred up such a hornets nest about an issue they could have dodged altogether. The mere fact that an appeal had been lodged would have given them a rationale for holding back until the thing had run it’s course.
| 24 August 2009, 4:33 am |
Suppose all 270 of the dead were Scots would MacAskill have been so quick to play the compassion angle? He would be among the walking dead had he done so. The release was a clear poke in the eye at the Americans. As for Brown and Blair is there any any scruple they have that cannot be overcome by cold cash? The silver lining here is that some of the fools who think that international terrorism can be overcome by judicial actions will be having second thoughts.
| 24 August 2009, 4:44 am |
doesn’t look look today’s (Glasgow) ‘Herald’ newspaper leader writer much agrees with Tom either – the words ‘opportunistic’ & ‘cheap grandstanding’ are apposite:
For the second time in less than a week, Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill will make a public statement about his decision to release the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, on compassionate grounds. MacAskill’s audience today is the Scottish Parliament but as he and the Scottish Government know all too well, the eyes of the world will be upon him. For good or ill, never before in Scottish political history has there been such international focus on its activities. Since the release of Megrahi, every country affected by the Lockerbie bombing, and many who were not, have expressed an opinion on this controversial decision.
It has brought plaudits from those impressed by the humanity the Scottish Government has shown. Inevitably, though, there has been more front page mileage in comments from MacAskill’s detractors, most prominently the director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, who decried the decision as “making a mockery of justice”.
In Holyrood, an opportunistic Jack McConnell has claimed this act has brought Scotland’s global reputation into disrepute, while Labour leader Iain Gray has leapt onto the derogatory bandwagon by saying that in MacAskill’s position he would not have ordered the bomber’s release. There is even a suggestion that Labour and the Lib Dems are considering tabling a motion against the decision, although this could not be put in place for some days. Thus, no matter how measured or justifiably unapologetic MacAskill’s statement is today, he will face hostility from his fellow MSPs.
It is to be hoped, however, that the level and tone of questioning demonstrates the best of Scottish political discourse, rather than cheap grandstanding by his opponents. This newspaper believes MacAskill made the right decision, and is right to defend it. He should be applauded, not condemned, for his insistence on applying the law to this ethical minefield and sticking to his decision. If more small countries stood up to superpowers, the world might well be a better place.
In contrast to Mueller’s impassioned comments, which were clearly aimed at his home audience in the US, First Minister Alex Salmond has made a point of trying to address international onlookers by explaining the Scottish appeals process under which Megrahi was released. It is a legal concept alien to many, and the hope is that when its import is understood, so too will be MacAskill’s courageous decision. Thus while Mueller has been digging a trench between America and Scotland – expressing condemnation stronger than the noticeably low-key reservations voiced by Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama – Mr Salmond has been trying to bridge what otherwise might become a conceptual and political gulf.
Ahead of today’s session, all sides of the chamber will be trying to gauge how Megrahi’s release has been received by the public, the court whose opinion is, ultimately, the most important to political parties. We hope that, with stakes this high in terms of international and national status, today’s speakers will rise to the eloquent heights we have seen before in Holyrood on its most momentous occasions, as when, for instance, the Iraq war was debated, with passion, fluency and dignity.
Those who do not agree with MacAskill’s decision should have the opportunity to air their views fully, and without reservation. On such a vexed subject there are many angles to cover, and many questions to ask. Scotland, fortunately, is renowned as a country where argument not only flourishes, but is encouraged. Without this liberty to voice what we think, it would be a stale and dreary place. And as today’s session in Holyrood will prove, Scotland is many things, but it is not dull.
| 24 August 2009, 7:43 am |
Following the release of the Lockerbie bomber to be all too predictably feted as a returning hero back in Libiya, I suspect many American individuals and institutions, will be ‘voting’ on Scotland and the UK with their wallets.
If I was involved in any Scottish company the bulk whose turnover came from exports to the US, I’d be kaking myself right now.
| 24 August 2009, 7:53 am |
Oh, I should have said, a truly excellent article!
| 24 August 2009, 9:25 am |
For Steve Hynd.
Don’t expect Alex Salmond to be happy when you absolve him of being an Machiavellian so-and-so.
He actually relishes this role and there are not a few nationalists who could give you chapter and verse about how he performs it within his own party.
I probably agree with you about the values which have corroded the Labour party but i don’t refer to individuals as you have done). But if you think that Scotland’s ‘change party’ is necssarilly that different, I fear you are due a rude awakening.
Alex has turned the anry and frustrated ones inside the SNP into his power-base; their views are echoed in the cyberspace of the Scottish press and occasionally furthe afield if they can modify their ranting. It’s a tragedy that Scotland lacks a left nationalist-inclined party in the businss of rebuilding Scotland rather than making a world spectacle of itself by glorifying egos and resentment towards other counties.
| 24 August 2009, 9:40 am |
Let’s face it, this was never about ‘compassion’ or ‘the law’, but always about Alex Salmond giving the Big Boys (Brown and Obama just in case nobody guessed) the finger.
| 24 August 2009, 9:54 am |
As a general rule, convicted mass murderers die in prison, and I’m not sure why having a terminal illness should be an exception. We’re all terminal cases, ultimately.
There’s an absurdity in that we expect such cases to die in prison, excepting those for whom there is medical evidence that they will probably die in prison.
The real reason he’s been released seems to be the sentiment that Megrahi is innocent. It’s a terrible indictment on the SNP’s attitude to the Scottish justice system, that they allow sentiment to dictate that a convicted mass murderer be released. They’re unfit to govern.
| 24 August 2009, 9:58 am |
But thanks to the events choreographed by the Scottish government , how secure al-Megrahi’s conviction was is likely to remain shrouded in mystery.
Milliband was asked what he thought of the judgment. It’s difficult for him to answer obviously since this is a decision they approve of but don’t have the balls to back publicly. Personally I think it would have been better to ask why Milliband slapped a PIIC on the Lockerbie Papers but by definition we won’t get an answer to that either. But the point should be made. Brown refused MacAskill’s invitation to participate in the discussions with the Americans concerning Megrahi’s release because he wanted the release to go ahead but also wanted to disassociate himself from it if things became too heated – which clearly now they have. The point is, you’re making too much of the nationalist point. This was not a decision taken independently from London. Some of us think Washington’s outrage is looking a bit manufactured. Does anyone seriously believe Hillary Clinton screeching across the Atlantic is going to influence any legal decision? You may – but I don’t think she thought so for a minute.
There’s a couple of other things you haven’t acknowledged:
1) Not even the official narrative, which I for one don’t believe for a minute, has Megrahi acting as a sort of Lee Harvey Oswald of international terrorism. If he was acting for the regime, shouldn’t we be asking why the Americans are insisting Megrahi should continue to be punished whilst they – along with Blair obviously – decided to make nice with Gaddafi as part of the carrot/stick rehabilitation of international offenders policy introduced in the Bush/Balir years?
2) Rightwing windbag Fraser Nelson wrote that the evidence against Megrahi was ‘overwhelming’. But anyone who’s read the judges’ ruling knows not even they thought that – and given what they did say about the evidence, there are some of us who continue to find it astonishing that they then went on to find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Now what the numerous commentators and politicians condeming this decision don’t seem to be able to grasp is that doubt about Megrahi’s conviction is a political fact and insisting this couldn’t or shouldn’t be taken into account ignores both this and the fact that neither Megrahi nor the Scottish legal establishment has any time left for an appeal.
| 24 August 2009, 10:01 am |
Oooh, look:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/23/lockerbie-bomber-release-us-criticism
“The central defence of British ministers – that Megrahi’s release was entirely a matter for the Scottish justice secretary, Kenny MacAskill – was called into question yesterday when it emerged that the Foreign Office had intervened.”
| 24 August 2009, 10:45 am |
This will merely confirm the belief of many that it was a mistake to grant autonomy to Northern England.
| 24 August 2009, 10:47 am |
Quite frankly, Shuggy, you’re a moral blackhole on this. I am ashamed to be a member of the Scottish Blogging Community.
| 24 August 2009, 10:51 am |
The Law of Unintended Consequences applies here. I doubt very much if Alex Salmond (let us address the organ grinder rather than the monkey) would have allowed this release knowing what he does today.
This is one of those issues which cannot be decided just by law. On the face of it Mr al Megrahi’s case should be considered by the Law exactly as if he were just another prisoner – the Law is based upon such notions of impartiality, or it is no law at all but a series of partialities execised by individuals, changing and changeable according to whim.
But, it turns out his case cannot be so considered and no one, for or against his release, can see it that way.
Then there exists doubts as to the security of the verdict against him. Even if the verdict is secure, no one feels this to be in any way conclusive. No one entertains the idea that he acted alone. But this fact seems not to bear on recent welcome improvements in British – and American, we need to remember – Libyan relations, including the re-entry of western countries to the Libyan economy. Can Mr al Megrahi be punished and not his most likely seniors in the plot for which he solely was convicted?
America’s anger at his release should be viewed in a certain light also, and given the bombing took place in 1988, a long distance one. Nations do not come to this with clean hands. Whatever Prof. Gallagher’s views of the Scottish Executive are – in a fine piece of writing – I would draw attention to the fact that not very far away in another place terrorists who just as assuredly blew up those who they disliked the better to win approval for their own politics sit in government, placed there by the muscle of the United States of America.
Goerge Orwell wrote at the end of World War Two “Who are the War Criminals?” He concluded that there could be none, since in international politics there are no rules. He might also have written ‘laws’.
| 24 August 2009, 10:52 am |
The post is very interesting about the grandstanding politics and the nature of Scottish-US relations, obviously based on extensive and authoritative research.
However, both the post and the overwhelming majority of the commentary and huffing and puffing about the SNP administration’s grandstanding and posturing ignores the clear and irrefutable evidence that the Treaty which enables Megrahi’s transfer to take place required the consent of the two nations which signed it: the UK and Libya.
It thus could not conceivably have taken place without Gordon Brown’s direct consent and substantial involvement. My view is that Gordon Brown has played this one with his usual deviousness, presenting the usual Macavity gambit and allowing the flak and sound and fury to settle elsewhere. I think he may well regard himself as being in a win-win situation here.
I’ve blogged about it, including quoting the key Treaty clause which proves my point, and demonstrates that Gordon Brown could have stopped the transfer (as Megrahi’s own lawyer suggested by his references to transfer to a British hospital for treatment.) No way, in my view, that Brown would have agreed that. Imagine the flak he would have taken for refusing the Scottish admin and demonstrating that devolution amounts to little more than a regional local authority setup. For now, it suits him beautifully to have Scotland played up by the SNP and the press as if it was an all-but nation-state.
| 24 August 2009, 10:52 am |
The post is very interesting about the grandstanding politics and the nature of Scottish-US relations, obviously based on extensive and authoritative research.
However, both the post and the overwhelming majority of the commentary and huffing and puffing about the SNP administration’s grandstanding and posturing ignores the clear and irrefutable evidence that the Treaty which enables Megrahi’s transfer to take place required the consent of the two nations which signed it: the UK and Libya.
It thus could not conceivably have taken place without Gordon Brown’s direct consent and substantial involvement. My view is that Gordon Brown has played this one with his usual deviousness, presenting the usual Macavity gambit and allowing the flak and sound and fury to settle elsewhere. I think he may well regard himself as being in a win-win situation here.
I’ve blogged about it, including quoting the key Treaty clause which proves my point, and demonstrates that Gordon Brown could have stopped the transfer (as Megrahi’s own lawyer suggested by his references to transfer to a British hospital for treatment.) No way, in my view, that Brown would have agreed that. Imagine the flak he would have taken for refusing the Scottish admin and demonstrating that devolution amounts to little more than a regional local authority setup. For now, it suits him beautifully to have Scotland played up by the SNP and the press as if it was an all-but nation-state.
| 24 August 2009, 11:12 am |
“It thus could not conceivably have taken place without Gordon Brown’s direct consent and substantial involvement. ”
Therefore should the Law (of Scotland not England and Wales) be applied here or not? Using Gordon Brown as a whipping boy is wearing thin.
It is a feature of all legal procedures that there should be evidence presented for consideration. Where is yours, pray?
| 24 August 2009, 11:21 am |
To clarify the point about the Treaty on prisoner transfer I made above, I should explain that the Treaty requires each and every prisoner transfer to take place with the consent of the two nations–the UK and Libya. Megrahi’s release required the formal signing off by the UK government of his specific transfer. As the nation involved, faced with an internal province with its own legal system, as has always existed long before devolution, Brown had the option, even if the SNP government really had acted independently of and against the UK government’s wishes, of refusing to allow him to leave the UK for Libya. He could have insisted he was kept in a released condition in the UK (for example in a secure hospital) and support given for his family to visit.
The very fact that such a lowly form of ministerial life as Ivan Lewis was used to write to Salmond/MacAskill to ask on behalf of the Foreign Office to press for the release demonstrates the reality of the power relationships here. Had the Scottish administration really had this genuinely independent power to decide on releasing Megrahi and returning him to Libya, you can be sure it would have required top level negotiations to achieve it. Whatever powers Scotland may have had to open the jail door, it had no powers whatsoever to allow him to be moved to Libya. Nor did Megrahi himself have the power to take himself off to Libya. In fact, the Treaty allows for prisoners to be transferred against their will. Hence it was the UK government–and not the Scottish administration– that held all the cards that could have been used by Megrahi to insist on going ahead with his appeals.
All the evidence defies any view that the UK government took a totally hands off attitude and had no option but to sign off on the basis of whatever the SNP decided. It is the equivalent of the UK having agreed to stop transporting nukes when the radical socialist municipalities of Livingstone’s era set up all their “nuclear-free zones” and passed by-laws accordingly.
| 24 August 2009, 11:33 am |
I am ashamed to be a member of the Scottish Blogging Community.
I didn’t know you were – but anyway, have you any substantive points to make, rather than this empty and ungrounded moralising?
| 24 August 2009, 11:45 am |
Larkers, read the blog post I’ve written on the subject. I’ve given a link to the key Treaty which is sitting on the Foreign and Colonial Office web site. Read the quote which I’ve quoted as the key one. Read the Treaty in full. I did years of research on the EU and the extent to which the Treaties imposed legal obligations on the UK which were never taken into account by the overwhelming majority of prestigious academic researchers. I interviewed many civil servants about the phenomenon of “spontaneous legislation”. This is the process by which governments for which EU membership is highly contentious and contested draft and pass legislation which they know they are going to have to pass to meet EU requirements so that the local national legislation is passed in advance of the EU requirements, and so can be presented as arising purely out of local issues and initiatives. But they are in fact closely based on EU requirements which are available at that stage in draft-under-negotiation terms. This process is a well-known feature widely written up in specialist EU research. Helen Wallace described it and was writing about it before the UK joined the then EEC. My own research tracked how the supposedly uniquely English “national curriculum” furore, starting from Jim Callaghan’s 1976 speech which all those terribly sophisticated marxist sociologists of education wrote about in the late 70s &80s, was directly and almost word for word agreed as an education policy framework for all the EU states well in advance of the furore. The match between the features and the terminology was unmistakable. The EU needed to be able to extend the level of agreement on common qualifications at every level in the same way it had already done at higher levels. Prior to EU membership, the people who prescribed spectacles and contact lenses were called opticians. Under the EU legislation a completely new professional level called optometrist was created, with specific study and content requirements across the EU.
The issue is always that Treaties are regarded by too many researchers and most journalists and commentators as just so much paper work which can be ignored or wildly misinterpreted or ignored at will. As is inevitably done by the whole tradition of references to “breaches of the Geneva conventions’, “war crimes’, “illegal occupation” etc etc which characterises the various positions of public UK policy discourse (as well as anti-zionist ideologies of these days) in relation to UK resolutions and the legal status of land in the former Palestine mandate. But that’s off-topic here.
When all else fails, Larker, read the ****** Treaty.
| 24 August 2009, 11:46 am |
This is good.
So is this.
A mirror for some of you…
However, both the post and the overwhelming majority of the commentary and huffing and puffing about the SNP administration’s grandstanding and posturing ignores the clear and irrefutable evidence that the Treaty which enables Megrahi’s transfer to take place required the consent of the two nations which signed it: the UK and Libya.
Judy – as no doubt you are aware, the Treaty was set up in the full knowledge that the only Lybian prisoner was Megrahi who was held in Scottish custody. A piece of cynicism by Blair that seems to have passed this essentially Blairite site by completely.
| 24 August 2009, 11:49 am |
Judy,
I’m afraid I don’t follow your use of the evidence. The preamble you have cited from the FCO website states;
‘…the transfer of prisoners to or from Scotland is the responsibility of Scottish Ministers…’
Clearly the Scottish Government did not see this as a reserved power, did they? As MacAskill outlined in his statement -
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/News/This-Week/Speeches/Safer-and-stronger/lockerbiedecision
- he offered the Westminster government the ‘right to make representations and information’; he did not argue that the decision was theirs to approve or deny. Aside from blaming the UK government for refusing to pass on details of any undertakings they provided to the US relatives of Lockerbie victims (even though they specifically denied making any), and stating that they saw ‘no legal barrier’ to the transfer, he makes it clear that the decision was his to make and he made it.
If they wanted Brown to carry the can they should have handed it to him. If there was a legal technicality they could have exploited to do that, they failed to do so. On the contrary, they embraced the responsibility. Therefore they can take the consequences.
| 24 August 2009, 12:00 pm |
But, Shuggy, as I’ve pointed out, a reading of Tom Bower’s biography of Blair shows that he has never hesitated to overrule, ignore or stop in their tracks anything initiated by Blair and his allies.
All the key provisions were actually not agreed by Blair–they were agreed by Brown and ratified by Brown. He had no obligation to do so.
Blair was very sophisticated. He set up a Treaty — but never agreed to take it to the point of agreement, let alone ratification. One possible view is that this is because he was incompetent, or hadn’t got it enough to make it worthwhile. But remember Blair’s stand on fighting terrorism and standing up to pressure from irredentist oil-rich regimes was such that he ended up sacrificing his career for sticking to his principles on those very points. On that basis, the evidence points to his being unwilling to agree to a deal on Megrahi, whilst agreeing that Libya could have its pariah status removed in return for giving up its nukes and direct sponsorship of terrorist and revolutionary groups like the WRP et al.
You may regard Blair as cynical. He does not begin to approach the same level as Brown. Read and consider deeply the Bower biog of Brown, and consider its extraordinary accuracy–you cannot really call it prescience, since all the disasters were set in motion by Brown’s decisions and machinations years ago, in relation both to what has happened to the economy and public services and to Brown himself in office, since even its 2007 update (prior to the credit crunch crash) was published.
And remember, Blair did not agree the Treaty although he had many years to do so with potentially very lucrative incentives to do so. Every poiitician has to have a huge reserve of practical cyncism, which is usually politely called realpolitik. Blair’s track record shows that the most thoroughly cyncial thing he did was to allow Livingstone back into the Labour fold. I don’t think his stance and track record here deserves to be sneered at.
| 24 August 2009, 12:14 pm |
As any expert academic in the analysis of the powers conferred by Treaties will tell you, preambles have no legal status to override the Treaty’s specific provisions.
To put it very plainly and brutally, they are just so much political guff, which can be presented to the local constituencies concerned as proof that their concerns are taken care of. It is a standard ploy of Treaty drafters for soothing over whatever contentious issues have created the need for the Treaty in the first place. They are like a sort of political commentary and gloss on the provisions.
They are routinely used in each successive Treaty which expands the scope of the EU. For example, each nation has its little agenda and red lines. They will usually be placated or dealt with by incorporating something into the preamble. There are also a sort of equivalent footnote clause which individual nations insert where they declare their own chosen provisions as if they had some sort of force, which they do not. The governments can then go back to their countries and proclaim their successes in the EU negotiations because it’s been written into the Treaty (or in the case of the EU, the latest Directive).
Whatever the preamble says does not in any way override the requirement for the UK government to agree each and every prisoner transfer. It’s just a nice little gloss which enables those who are not aware of what Treaties do and don’t do–and which bits count–to present politically convenient versions of events. Unfortunately, the infatuation of the marxist mainstream of these days with “discourse”, which has replaced the equally fatuous base/superstructure/class analysis approach to legal documents has led to the situation in which all these debates go in in the press, parliament and academe which ignore quite decisive and irrefutable evidence.
As Mao T
| 24 August 2009, 12:15 pm |
Shuggy/Judy,
Claims are made about possible skulduggery in the London and/or Washington power structures.
But due to the decline of the authority and cohesiveness of such big states, i think this would be hard to maintain and conceal.
The Democratic administraion is unlikely to persist with a cover-up that it was not party to. There are too many independent-minded people in its ranks. The FBI (however much some may wish to inhabit a J.Edgar Hoover era world) is not a lapdog for fallible politicians or other security agencies. Important parts of the US media are plural and vigilant.
The hammy way the SNP has gone about this convinces me that MacAskill & co don’t mind appearing knaves on the world stage when they have the chance to win over a lot of Scots to their cause (even if they lose plenty along the way from conservative-minded Scotland who are waking up to the kind of tiger whose back they have climbed onto).
The need to defend the integrity of Scottish jurisprudence is just hi-fallutin nonesense. I suspect there is real indignation in the Scottish justice system about dumb moves in government which have placed that system in a very poor light.
Of course the Britsih governemnt has left the SNP hanging in the wind by its silence. There are shabby aspects to their recent behaviour. But Brown & co are not in control of the information flow – ther are simply too many dissidents around these days in the Foreign office and elsewhere.
The main issue is seeing that justice is done without committing mis-steps that increase the likelihood of more audacious terrorist acts.
I can’t remember who it was recently who argued that the British government was content to collude with terrorists in light of its role in N. Ireland over the last decade. But i don’t think anyone in the NI government (not even Martin mcGuinness) has been responsible for major acts of terrorism.
I could just about live with al-Megrahi having been release to see out his last days in scotland, perhaps in the house the Libyans bought for him in Glasgow. The feelings of the bereaved would not have been as trampled upon. Retreat in the face of terrorism would have appeared less obvious.
The SNP has shown a lack of transparency in its dealings with the US authorities and this explains the sense of outrage (which i don’t think is synthetic); between the Labour and SNP governments, there is similarly a lack of transparency.
I chose to focus on the domestic Scottish dimension (and the country’s ties with the US)both right now and over the longer-term which elsewhere has not received the attention that I think it deserves.
| 24 August 2009, 12:16 pm |
As I was about to quip before my computer played up, as Mao Tse Tung might have put it, some of these paper Treaty tigers have decisive legal teeth.
| 24 August 2009, 12:23 pm |
Tom Gallaher–there is no cover-up here. Just the usual “economical with the truth” approach. In fact, not only is the truth out there, but it’s actually sitting there on the Foreign and Colonial Office web site for anyone with an internet connection to read.
Presenting and spinning political and legal facts in a particular way is not a cover-up. It’s called politics.
| 24 August 2009, 12:41 pm |
“When all else fails, Larker (sic), read the ****** Treaty.” – Judy.
When argument fails the weak minded turn to abuse. This is more like bluster.
Where in the Treaty or treatries is there any grounds for statements you have made about Brown or Blair?
Did this treaty thereby render Gordon Brown ‘devious’ of itself? That I think is not a consequence of an international treaty but bile and ill will.
To entertain your particular ‘conspiracy theory’ we have to stun ourselves. “Devious” Gordon Brown hatches a deal, the implementation of which relies on the willing or unwilling co-operation of Alec Salmond, David Milliband, Kenny MacAskill and several others including Saif al-Islam, Colonel Gadaffi’s son and Lord Peter Mandleson. All these people have somehow to be ‘in on it’. To ‘devious’ Gordon Brown the fact that many or any of these people could not agree on any topic much beforehand is no obstacle. In the world of conspiracy theories evidence of the contrariness of actual life rarely is. All of this is, of course, meticulously planned – ‘they’ get somethings right then – months and years in advance. Comes the day everything works like clockwork and Alex Salmond, never my first vote for Scotland’s leading dupe, plays his part for his old friend ‘Devious’ Gordon Brown and sunnily walks into a trap.
So a story is patched together using glue based on the usual ingredients – bile, resentment, paranoia – into an ever more complex and misleading shape; not so much a web of self deceit as a maze out of which the creator struggles to find daylight.
| 24 August 2009, 12:43 pm |
I’m sure that, were ALL the facts known about the Calley affair, it would only get worse, and we’re all the better for not knowing. However, there was one mitigating circumstance that, whilst in no way excuses what he did or reduces it from the level of murder, still separates it from what this man did, according to his conviction. Calley was in a war zone acting against an enemy in a declared action, wearing the uniform of his country, waging war on willing participants (even if they were coerced, they were not innocent victims like the passengers on that plane). The torture I’d personally approve of Calley would be barbaric, were I to let my emotions control, and that would, in and of itself, be barbaric. It is no less barbaric, then, to allow these compassions to rule the day now. If he was innocent, let him be proven innocent and released, but until then, he was found guilty, sentenced not to life in prison, as the term is, but to death in prison, and to change that without evidence or a trial is just as much a travesty to the victims, and to a lesser extent, victims everywhere because of future repercussions, as it was a travesty to convict someone who was, in all likelihood, NOT innocent, or at least, not completely innocent. To say that we made nice with Qaddafy is a nismomer. We negotiated with a head of state, something you’re forced to do in the neighborhood of the world, since the only OTHER option is to invade and depose, and you lefties sure seemed to think THAT was a bad idea, so get off your hypocritical high horse.
And in case anyone can’t see it, the constant breakup of countries into smaller ones makes them easier to take over, and that’s why these guys are trying to push internationism along with their multiculturalism, secede from your higher power, join the world order…quite a siren song when you can make hundreds, if not thousands, of new kings.
| 24 August 2009, 1:18 pm |
Larkers, read the Bower’s biography of Brown. It displays in great detail his track record and ways of working. it is easy to triangulate with other authoritative evidence.
The letter of Ivan Lewis was not an invention.
The Treaty was not an invention. Its provisions are a legal reality. So is the provincial legal status of Scotland. There are numerous pieces of evidence in reputable news reports and in the statements (and the refusals to say certain things) of both UK and Scottish administrations.
Gaddafi’s son has made statements which he then retracted, which confirm that there were negotations consistent with my analysis of the events. It’s always interesting when naive or garrulous politicians make embarrassing statements which they’re then forced to retract.
Sure, make up your own mind on the basis of the evidence as you care to read it. But I think you’re more impressed by the froth and the spin than inclined to take seriously the force of the very unambiguous Treaty provision. As well as the track record of Gordon Brown.
| 24 August 2009, 1:32 pm |
me here, The SNP is a big business party with its heartland in the North East of Scotland. It has oil coming out of every pore.
If anyone still doubts the need for clean coal technology and for nuclear power, then the answer is now “Lockerbie”.
Oh, well, we should at least get a public inquiry now. And when MSPs reconvene today, then there will be, as there always are, far more of them not from the SNP than from it. So if they wanted Kenny McAskill’s scalp, then they could certainly have it. And if his, then how not Alex Salmond’s?
| 24 August 2009, 1:53 pm |
“As a general rule, convicted mass murderers die in prison, and I’m not sure why having a terminal illness should be an exception. ”
Unless of course the mass murderer is an American and those he murdered were yellow “gooks”. Then he gets 3 months house arrest and goes back to the American dream.
| 24 August 2009, 2:43 pm |
I’m sorry, I don’t recall any such case in Scotland. Perhaps you’d like to elucidate on your fucking stupid point.
| 24 August 2009, 2:57 pm |
Geejay, please don’t call the Vietnamese “gooks”. Inverted commas don’t excuse your racist arse.
| 24 August 2009, 3:04 pm |
I didn’t know you were – but anyway, have you any substantive points to make, rather than this empty and ungrounded moralising?
My emphasis. A little bit of self-awareness wouldn’t go amiss, Shuggy. You may be more literate than Will, but since the DSTW closed you appear to be channelling all his malevolence and sociopathy.
I have made my position on this clear. I have not seen you express a single principled position. It has all been, from behind a leering clown man, a gloat at Harry’s Place and New Labour. A mass-murderer is released, and your first thought is to pursue a blog-spat.
Like Macaskill and Salmond and Riddoch and Holloway, you have failed in your status as a human being.
| 24 August 2009, 3:08 pm |
@ Tom Gallagher,
I could care less if Alex is happy with my opinion of him. Not do I have any illusions about the many dittoheaded numpties involved in the SNP heirarchy. But it was their naive numptyness and narcisism that made them perfect patsies for London, as Matthew Campbell of the Sunday Times sets out.
As for your contention that “The Democratic administration is unlikely to persist with a cover-up that it was not party to”, I assume you’ve not been following the outrage in the U.S. over Obama’s continued defense and extension of Bush’s executive privilege claim to state secrecy over torture, rendition, habeas corpus denial, warrantless wiretapping etc.
| 24 August 2009, 4:46 pm |
So the fact that the guy who killed a bunch of Vietnamese got away means that the guy who killed a bunch of people on a Pan Am jet should also get away.
That’s the lunatic’s standard for justice — eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth!
The victims, of course, never figure into this. They had nobody to represent their interests. The Scottish government placed its access to cheap oil and cheap political points over the ultimate interests of justice for the murdered, and thus, has cheapened the reputation of the Scottish justice system to a significant degree. The loudest anger over the circumstances come from the families of those whose spouses, children, parents and friends died on the flight — they don’t buy the notion that “it was 2 decades ago, get over it.” And they’re certainly not willing to abandon criticism of the Scottish government’s decision because of “other cases involving Americans.”
| 24 August 2009, 4:55 pm |
>>the outrage in the U.S. over Obama’s continued defense and extension of Bush’s executive privilege claim to state secrecy over torture, rendition, habeas corpus denial, warrantless wiretapping <<
Yep. The latest scandal is efforts by the President’s office to stop 12 prosecutions of CIA personnel (and contractors) who initiated illegal torture… the president wants to “put this behind the country and move forward” by allowing the guilty to walk free.
Change We Can Believe In!
| 24 August 2009, 5:23 pm |
Scottish ties to America:
How about all the Scots deported to the US during the Colonial period as indentured servants and convicts instead being hung as sheep stealers or after the 1745 Rebellion as traitors? I have two friends whose families originally got sent here after the 45 as the alternate to being hung.
Note: We have plenty of folks with Scottish or Ulster (Scots-Irish) background here in the Washington DC area. Majority of the white settlers in the Colonial period came from Scotland. We have communities with Scottish names like Annandale that are now DC suberbs. The Scottish games each year are a big event in the area.
Today’s debate in the Scottish Parliment will hopefully make clear how Scots feel about this Outrage. If the SNP govt continues in power, I believe there will be a large American boycott (a good Irish term) of Scotland.
| 24 August 2009, 5:48 pm |
Christ, Christine Graeme is threating to accuse an American Syrian – code named Abu Elias – of being the man responsible.
Where’s a Mossad hitsquad when we need one?
| 24 August 2009, 6:30 pm |
Here is the latest: MacAskill whines that Libya broke its promise by giving the freed convicted mass murderer a hero’s welcome.
Read the whole mess at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/08/24/world/main5262082.shtml?tag=cbsContent;cbsCarousel
| 24 August 2009, 6:42 pm |
David All, the Scots Diaspora is a live issue in the course of this, Scotland’s self-debasing year-long riot of fake tartan and knobbly sticks, officially termed “The Homecoming”. It has been pitched to her diaspora in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, but, controversially, not the West Indies, which are full of people with Scots names.
And yes, those names are indicative of Scots descent. Like African-Americans, Afro-Caribbeans are very visibly lighter-skinned than people from the West Africa whence their slave ancestors were transported. Both in America and in the West Indies, very light-skinned slaves were given good jobs in the big house, rather than being made to work the fields. Think about it.
Yes, it is wrong to ignore those Diaspora Scots in the Caribbean (and the duskier Diaspora Scot-Irish, of whom more anon, in the United States). But there is a rather more glaring omission. There are five million people born in Scotland and living in England (i.e., as many as the total population of Scotland), and a million people born in England and living in Scotland (i.e., one fifth of the total population of Scotland is English-born). Who in Scotland has neither relatives nor in-laws in England? Yet this “Homecoming” has been, and is being, sold not at all in England, where at least half the Scots Diaspora must live.
And is anything been done in Northern Ireland, one wonders? Certainly, there is much reaching out to the Scots-Irish in America. But what of the Scots-Irish in Scots-Ireland? Nor let it be forgotten that the Scots were no great fans of the American Revolution. They much preferred the land to the north that remained loyal.
The Scots-Irish were revolutionaries pretty much to a man (they were no solid Unionists in Ireland in those days, either). But those whose families, and indeed persons, had gone directly to America from Scotland were frequently Loyalists. An early draft of the Declaration of Independence included among its charges against George III “sending against us Scotch and other foreign mercenaries”. And in vain did the rebellious Legislature of North Carolina publish a manifesto in Gaelic, which nevertheless continued to be spoken there for more than a century after the Revolution.
Alec, once he’s dead, can we now expect an extradition from Syria? Everyone knows who really did it.
| 24 August 2009, 7:24 pm |
David, the frog accepted a ride across the river on the scorpion’s back…
| 24 August 2009, 7:37 pm |
Other David, Graeme should consider the acronym STFU.
| 24 August 2009, 7:54 pm |
I have made my position on this clear.
You have? I missed this…
It has all been, from behind a leering clown man, a gloat at Harry’s Place and New Labour.
If you think my position on this is motivated by my attitude to either HP or New Labour, you exaggerate the importance of both, to say the least. This is partly because my attitude to this pre-dates both HP and New Labour. It’s a self-absorbed little world you live in, isn’t it?
I have not seen you express a single principled position.
I don’t believe in the utilitarian punishment so I don’t believe that someone who is clearly a symbolic prisoner – even in the official narrative – should remain in jail until he dies.
Furthermore, regardless of which theory of punishment one adheres to, it’s generally considered important that one inflicts retribution on the actual perpetrator. I think any fair minded reader would understand by now that I don’t think this is what has happened in this case. Now this is simply a distilled version of what I’ve said already; if you are still unable to detect any principle at work then I now have no hesitation in dismissing you as an imbecile and as such unworthy of any further comment.
Like Macaskill and Salmond and Riddoch and Holloway, you have failed in your status as a human being.
Nothing less than failing as a human being? I wouldn’t accuse you of this myself – I just think you’re a prick.
| 24 August 2009, 8:35 pm |
Yes, you have missed it, Shuggy. Go back over this and the previous thread.
Of course al-Megrahi was one cog in the wheel, but he was still convicted of culpable involvement. Your position is a corollary of the revenge you accuse others of – by implication, you are not objecting to the drawing of one tooth. You’re miffed that someone else’s eye ain’t being gouged.
As I said, pondering the colour of your belly button fluff and passing it off as profound cogitations.
| 24 August 2009, 8:43 pm |
Also, if you don’t wish to be accused of pursuing a petty campaign against HP and New Labour, try not to couch your comments in terms of what you think of ‘em. It’s an evidence-based world I live in.
| 24 August 2009, 9:00 pm |
Nick (ex South Africa) @ 24 August 2009, 7:43 am
“any Scottish company the bulk whose turnover came from exports to the US”
That would be the Whisky trade, then.
| 24 August 2009, 9:15 pm |
Judy @ 24 August 2009, 1:18 pm
“the provincial legal status of Scotland.”
I recommend a reading of the Treaty of Union, particularly Article XIX, which preserves the senior Scottish Courts. Space and time prevent me quoting.
| 24 August 2009, 10:01 pm |
David All
24 August 2009, 6:30 pm
Here is the latest: MacAskill whines that Libya broke its promise by giving the freed convicted mass murderer a hero’s welcome.
——————-
There isn’t really much of an excuse for them being taken by surprise. They should have known that this was in the offing. And it probably isn’t over yet. Gaddafi obviously reckons he is holding all the cards. He has certainly laid on the embarassment at every opportunity.
| 24 August 2009, 10:46 pm |
The Fish-head has just said, on Newsnight, that al-Megrahi’s welcome “wasnae oor fault”. Seriously.
| 24 August 2009, 11:07 pm |
David Lindsay: Yes, it is interesting in contacting the Scottish Diaspora, the Scottish govt. has forgotten the black & brown Scots of the Carribean and the US, Mon!
One of the black members of my Church is named McIntyre and comes from Trinidad. Wonder if she would be interested in returning “home” to Scotland.
The Scots-Irish were very important in the American Revolution, particularly in Pennslyvania, the most populus colony and New Jersey, where they made up the bulk of the revolutionaries with some help from the German-Americans. To a large extent, the Revolution in Pennslyvania and New Jersey was the Presbyterian Church in Arms. Both Congregationalists and Presbyterian, the two largest Protestant denominations in the rebellious colonies, Clergy and Lay people alike were very strong for Independence with radical slogans like “No king except King Jesus” and “Resistance to Tyrannery to Obdeience to God”. The last Royalist Governor of Massachusetts in his memoirs was full of complaints of how the Rebellion was stirred up by “the black regiment” (being plain dressed in mostly black clothes) of Congregationalist and Presbyterian ministers. Numerous times these ministers would tell the local militia when they were mustered for battle to go and smite the invading British just as the ancient Israelities had done the Philistines.
Monty: Agreed. There is no getting around that by this disgraceful act, all those who stand against Terrorism have suffered, as Churchill said about the sell-out of Czechslovakia at Munich, “a total and unimitigated defeat”. Indeed we can look forward to more demands by the Islamists for further restrictions on anything they find offensive. This is the bitter cup from which all of western Europe can look forward to drinking if they continue on their present course of Appeasement.
| 24 August 2009, 11:22 pm |
“The Treaty was not an invention. Its provisions are a legal reality. So is the provincial legal status of Scotland.” – Judy.
In one sentence you destroy your own credibilty.
“Gaddafi’s son has made statements which he then retracted, which confirm that there were negotations consistent with my analysis of the events.” – Judy.
I have heard this man speak but have not been able to follow him since I do not speak Arabic. Translation can be a issue here and I think some of the interpretations placed by Saif al-Islam, Colonel Gadaffi’s son on his meetings with others in the U.K. government are best regarded as speculative, if not imaginative, a fact which now appears widely accepted except by yourself.
“But I think you’re more impressed by the froth and the spin than inclined to take seriously the force of the very unambiguous Treaty provision. As well as the track record of Gordon Brown.” – Judy.
I am not so impressed by “froth and spin” which is exactly why I take issue with your analysis. Your key point revolves on whether this affair can be laid at the feet of Gordon Brown – you have no other. To achieve this you have invented a plausible but in reality flimsey argument based upon an arch reading of a treaty and by this support as a certainty your claim that the return of Mr al Megrahi to Libya was plotted over time by Brown aided and abetted by his stooges in Scotland – to you a place with “provincial legal status” somewhere up north.
I could go on but I feel the time has come to declare.
One happy note on which to end is I have just seen and heard the replusive Mr John Bolton fuming on “Newsnight” (BBC 2 television) and ending by bawling down the satellite link that Mr al Megrahi should have been tried in the U.S.A. and executed. (Why, one wonders, bother with a trial?). “We should never have given him up to the Scottish authorities” were his angry last words. So, something for which to be grateful.
| 24 August 2009, 11:42 pm |
You see the thing is neither McAskill, Alex Salmond or the Scottish Executive, now self styled by the SNP, Government has any power to release Megrahi contrary to the wishes of either the British Executive or Parliament in Westminster.
McAskill has a discretionary power to release a prisoner in Scotland on compassionate grounds.
He may have released Megrahi, but he could not have as it was a matter of national security and international relations which are not functions or powers to have been devolved in the Scotland Act;
despite its rather extraordinary release of most prerogative powers to the Scottish Executive ( in a farcically and very British undemocratic move)
However the Scotland Act is clear on which matters ministers or the Executive at Hollyrood have no power over;
—————————————————-
Scotland Act 1998 (c. 46)
Section 30.
SCHEDULE 5RESERVED MATTERS
PART IGENERAL RESERVATIONS
The Constitution
1The following aspects of the constitution are reserved matters, that is—
(a)the Crown, including succession to the Crown and a regency,
(b)the Union of the Kingdoms of Scotland and England,
(c)the Parliament of the United Kingdom,
(d)the continued existence of the High Court of Justiciary as a criminal court of first instance and of appeal,
(e)the continued existence of the Court of Session as a civil court of first instance and of appeal.
2(1)Paragraph 1 does not reserve—
(a)Her Majesty’s prerogative and other executive functions,
(b)functions exercisable by any person acting on behalf of the Crown, or
(c)any office in the Scottish Administration.
……………………………………………………….
Foreign affairs etc.
7(1)International relations, including relations with territories outside the United Kingdom,
the European Communities (and their institutions) and other international organisations,
regulation of international trade, and international development assistance and co-operation are reserved matters.
(2)Sub-paragraph (1) does not reserve—
(a)observing and implementing international obligations, obligations under the Human Rights Convention and obligations under Community law,
(b)assisting Ministers of the Crown in relation to any matter to which that sub-paragraph applies.
——————————-
9(1)The following are reserved matters—
(a)the defence of the realm,
(b)the naval, military or air forces of the Crown, including reserve forces,
(c)visiting forces,
(d)international headquarters and defence organisations,
(e)trading with the enemy and enemy property.
(2)Sub-paragraph (1) does not reserve—
(a)the exercise of civil defence functions by any person otherwise than as a member of any force or organisation referred to in sub-paragraph (1)(b) to (d) or any other force or organisation reserved by virtue of sub-paragraph (1)(a),
(
Treason
10Treason (including constructive treason), treason felony and misprision of treason are reserved matters.
PART IISPECIFIC RESERVATIONS
Preliminary
1The matters to which any of the Sections in this Part apply are reserved matters for the purposes of this Act.
2A Section applies to any matter described or referred to in it when read with any illustrations, exceptions or interpretation provisions in that Section.
3Any illustrations, exceptions or interpretation provisions in a Section relate only to that Section (so that an entry under the heading “exceptions” does not affect any other Section).
Reservations
• B8. National security, interception of communications, official secrets and terrorism[Section B8.]
National security.
The interception of communications; but not the subject-matter of Part III of the Police Act 1997 (authorisation to interfere with property etc.) or surveillance not involving interference with property.
The subject-matter of—
(a)
the Official Secrets Acts 1911 and 1920, and
(b)
the Official Secrets Act 1989, except so far as relating to any information, document or other article protected against disclosure by section 4(2) (crime) and not by any other provision of sections 1 to 4.
Special powers, and other special provisions, for dealing with terrorism.
• B10. Emergency powers[Section B10.]
Emergency powers.
• B11. Extradition[Section B11.]
””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””’
It rather looks like the SNP have deftly been passed a heavy ball which they have promptly kicked through their own goal with all the reckless abandon of teenagers having a house wrecking party when their parents are on vacation.
Now its clean up time
| 25 August 2009, 12:06 am |
“It rather looks like the SNP have deftly been passed a heavy ball which they have promptly kicked through their own goal with all the reckless abandon of teenagers having a house wrecking party when their parents are on vacation.” – mettaculture.
Looks but I think does not prove. Once again (but with greater grace) someone has arrived with what is a de facto conspiracy theory to explain the release of Mr al Megrahi. You can read. Do you think any at Hollyrood can not?
If someone does unbidden a service for which we wish (but cannot bring ourselves to request) is that not serendipity?
Better still, if an ‘inconvenient’ prisoner develops a terminal condition – and there was an utterly callous discussion tonight on “Newsnight” about Mr al Megrahi’s health and life chances – and so can be returned home, all well and good might runa certain line of argument. But setting such a circumstance in train without discovery would require a skill only found in fiction and not always convincing there.
I have yet to read here anyone suggesting that Mr al Megrahi’s condition was the result of an attempt against his life by the ‘authorities’, but I am patient. One such theory will be along soon.
“If they wanted Brown to carry the can they should have handed it to him. If there was a legal technicality they could have exploited to do that, they failed to do so. On the contrary, they embraced the responsibility. Therefore they can take the consequences.” – Der Whigphilosophie der Geschichte 11.49 a.m. 24.08.09
Despite the non de plume, simple, elegant and precise.
| 25 August 2009, 12:46 am |
mettaculture @ 24 August 2009, 11:42 pm
“neither McAskill, Alex Salmond or the Scottish Executive, now self styled by the SNP, Government has any power to release Megrahi contrary to the wishes of either the British Executive or Parliament in Westminster.”
Your’re wrong. Criminal law and Courts in Scotland are ENTIRELY separate from the rest of the UK and always have been.
Once again I refer to Article XIX of the Treaty of Union. It lists some of the same Courts you have quoted in the Scotland Act 1998.
| 25 August 2009, 6:39 pm |
Alan Ji
Of course that is what the SNP will claim but Scotland is not a Seperate country it is constitutionally a devolved entity whithin the Sovereign nation the UK.
It does not have sovereign powers over foreign relations or national security or the security services.
Megrahi is not a British national being released to return home in Sotland (or anywhere else in the UK).
He is a man convicted of international crimes of terrorism and is being released to return to what is arguably a hostile power.
Its really not hard to see that this falls squarely within the non devolved reserved powers of the sovereign state.
I don’t think you read the Scotland Act 1988 I excerpted from.
Of course this kind of conflict, and I hate to say ‘I told you so’, was inevitable and perfectly predictable as a result of the way Scottish devolution occurred.
Indeed the powers of the Scottish Executive/now government have steadily been enhanced by secondary legislation by the national UK executive without any referendum or plebiscite to grant a mandate for this.
It has always been obvious that a SNP administration would exploit this fudge and engineer a confrontation, that tecnhically could have been overuled by Westminster but in practice could not without reaping a further nationalist dividend for the SNP by posing the English as overuling Scottish wishes.
The only way to have avoided this would have been for the proposed Supreme Court to also function as a constitutional court to rule on the conflicts of laws that would occur between Westminster and the devolved regions.
Of course such a constitutional court may well have given an open transparent and legal ruling on this Megrahi affaire and that always spoils a machiavellian politicians dinner.
| 25 August 2009, 9:49 pm |
I see the usual obsessed oddballs are spouting the usual cliches.
Alec, you have a stupid hat.
Mettaculture, you write too much, and it’s mostly nonsense.
| 26 August 2009, 8:50 am |
mettaculture @ 25 August 2009, 6:39 pm
In pre-devolution days the Judicial responsibility stopped with the Scottish Courts and Ministerial responsibility with the Secretary of State for Scotland (a UK Cabinet Minister). The Secretary of State for Scotland was in exactly the same place as McAskill, with a duty to take an entirely personal decision.
I hold no brief for the
Small-mind and
Narrow-minded
People
and find it difficult to free my mind of the common English prejudice that Scots are sensible.
| 26 August 2009, 1:22 pm |
“It does not have sovereign powers over foreign relations or national security or the security services.” – mettaculture 6.39 p.m. 25.08.09.
None of which applies to this circumstance, that of convicted person having their sentence commuted by the relevant Jurisdiction, the Scottish Courts.
No doubt Salmond’s close ties to radical Muslims encouraged his compassion…every vote counts.
Sup with the Devil, just make sure you have a long spoon.