“Is Mark Mardell lying or just a very bad, ill informed journalist?
‘I find it interesting that I can’t recall any allegation that the allies used, or discussed using torture during World War II, although there must have been occasions when it might have saved lives or even the liberty of states. If you know differently please let me know.’
Mark Mardell 2011
It has always intrigued me that when Britain really stood in peril of foreign conquest, when the blitz was killing more people than died on 9/11 night after night, it seems torture was not used. Perhaps they simply never captured a Nazi senior enough to be worth putting to the question. What is the tipping point ?’
You might find it difficult to believe he had not heard of ‘The Cage’ especially as it was a story run by the BBC’s print version, The Guardian, in 2005….
Here describing conditions in a post war torture camp run by the British in Germany….
‘a place where prisoners were systematically beaten and exposed to extreme cold, where some were starved to death and, allegedly, tortured with instruments that his fellow countrymen had recovered from a Gestapo prison in Hamburg. Even today, the Foreign Office is refusing to release photographs taken of some of the “living skeletons” on their release. Initially, most of the detainees were Nazi party members or former members of the SS, rounded up in an attempt to thwart any Nazi insurgency.’
Mardell could of course just be echoing his idol Obama:
‘Is Barack Obama reading blogs, particularly the site of one of his campaign’s most committed supporters, Andrew Sullivan? At his press conference on Wednesday evening, the president defended his decision to end the use of torture on detainees, by citing an article he had recently read, in which it was noted that during World War II, Winston Churchill refused to use such tactics on the spies captured by the British. “I was struck by an article that I was reading the other day talking about the fact that the British during World War II, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees,” said Obama. “And Churchill said, ‘We don’t torture,’ when the entire British — all of the British people were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat.”
someone should point him to works that describe the Malayan insurgency. We excel at torture. Me, I don’t care as long as the people I pay to protect me, do their job.
Unfortunately, those same people have let a fifth column into our country and we can’t do anything about it because they have written laws that prevent us from expelling them, or neutralising them while they are amongst us.
John good post !this idiot seems to fail to grasp in war I will protect me and mine any way I can and I hope the forces do the same , but this twerp thinks that is equivalent to the use of torture for internal political and social oppression lardy we don’t live in Argentina and the US aint Iran so get off the moral high horse berk!!
Is Lardy Mardy doubling up his BBC Pay ? I’d never seen a picture of our porky crusader for truth before, but this is sometime ‘Gardeners’ World’ contributor Christine Walkden :
Here he is again:
And here he is again ! This time memorably winning the 1986 World Snooker Championship:
Seriously, he’s like bloody Orlando or something.
A bit OT, but I suppose it could feature nder anti_Americanism and the open thread seems to have gone below the horizon – the BBC featured Mohsin Hamid’s ‘Reluctant fundamentalist’ as their book at bedtime on radio 4 last week and Naughtie had the author in for his book club programme today.
It’s been hyped to the skies by literary critics, short listed for the Man Booker prize and won several awards. As,however, someone who takes a more cynical approach to anything emanating from a Pakistani cultural background, I find the novel stinks like old fish – riddled with either the dishonesty of self kidding, deception and even, under the guise of literary ambiguity, pulling the old Muslim stunt of saying things that mean one thing to believers and something else to infidels.
Raymond Ibrahim pointed out that al queda communiques meant for western consumption focussed on western backing of Arab autocrats, humiliating interference in the affairs of Muslim countries, imperialist exploitation, killing of innocent believers etc – when they addressed Muslims, they justified themselves in purely religious terms. Hasid heavily downplays the religious aspect of Muslim antipathy towards the west.
Clearly the views of the main character are not necessarily those of the author but you can see why the book would appeal to Beeboids enough for them to make a thing of it in the weeks leading up to the anniversary of 9/11 with quotes like:
“I stared as one – and then the other – of the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center collapsed. And then I smiled. Yes, despicable as it may sound, my initial reaction was to be remarkably pleased… I was caught up in the symbolism of it all, the fact that someone had so visibly brought America to her knees.”
and later:
“Yes, my musings were bleak indeed. I reflected that I had always resented the manner in which America conducted itself in the world; your country’s constant interference in the affairs of others was insufferable. Vietnam, Korea, the straits of Taiwan, the Middle East, and now Afghanistan: in each of the major conflicts that ringed my mother continent of Asia, America played a central role.”
There is an incisive criticism of the book at:
Click to access d9Khawaja.pdf
Another point made by the protagonist in Hamid’s offering that would appeal o the BBC:
“Changez comes to the point where, as a result of the war on terror, he realises “the lives of those of us who lived in lands in which such killers [terrorists] also lived had no meaning except as collateral damage” “
I watched the news earlier on, and for the first 10 minutes it was all about how the CIA and MI5 had been in cahoots with Gadiffi over Islamic terrorists. I don’t know how, but Abu Bowen who has been absent from the scene for a number of weeks (remember that bBC article about if David Cameron should be on call all the time?) turns up inside an Libyan prison in which to point the finger of blame (Think family guy Evil monkey) about how the British Government is guilty of dealing with Gadiffi. Yes the bBC editor who at the start of the fighting had no problem interviewing Gadiffi, the same person who had tea with Assad of Syria and that dickhead from Hezb-allah not only berates the present government about how M15 dealt with Libya but fails to mention that the vast majority of those allegations transpired under the previous Labour government.
Strange how the bBC has no problem defending Islamic terrorists, be it carpenters in London, Hamas in Gaza, Hezb-allah in Lebanon, or even the Taliban in Afghasntan. To the bBC these terrorists are beyond approach and Abu Bowen is more than happy to try and whitewash the involvement of his beloved ‘Labour’ party by pointing at the present administration. But for a so called plastic Muslim Abu Bowen doesn’t seem to know the age old Islamic adage. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
Mardell is ideologically blind, his knowledge of just about everything limited by his personal biases. So he’s the perfect choice to make editorial comments on behalf of the BBC. He is not a journalist, and his posts are editorials, not informative.
And it’s not the President who reads Sullivan, but His handlers and speech writers. They put those words in His mouth. But I’m used to the President being ignorant of history.