War on Terror? War IS Terror!

The Evil Empire, Drugs and Racism

The Anglo-American Empire's 'War on Drugs' is as credible as its 'War on Terror'. Both are a fake of the kind George Orwell warned us about. Once the pretend 'Red Menace' vanished into thin air with the demise of the Soviet Union, the Anglo-American axis was left with no bogeyman with which to frighten and bully its populations into doing as they were told, never mind a huge loss of their civil liberties on both sides of the Atlantic.

The carefully-fabricated 911 was the moment when that spurious 'War on Terror' was launched, the moment when both Bush II and his English sidekick, Tony Blair, steered their ships-of-state into the depths of totalitarianism, war criminality and government-sponsored evil. Just as the 'War on Terror' permitted the Anglo-American axis to perpetrate evil in the form of genocide, the 'War on Drugs' permits its secret services to profit hugely from the black market on drugs. Now we hear that "85% of all drugs produced in Afghanistan are shipped out by US aircraft." Why doesn't this surprise us?

After what the Axis has been responsible for in its respective pasts (including the British-sponsored opium trade in the nineteenth century) it should not surprise us that the behaviour of our rulers has really not changed. All that has changed is the spin and packaging required to convince us proles that we really do live in democracies where governments operate in our interests rather than their own.

The 'War on Terror' was quite cleverly devised, where the enemy was identified as both non-white and an historic enemy of the Christian west, Islam. So not only could the proles identify an historic non-white enemy but exercise a deep-seated racism that anyone who is not white is, by definition, not only inferior but shifty and dangerous. The whole thing was devised on shock and awe with the collapse of the Twin Towers and the emotional hype of Islamic 'terrorism' that followed and which continues to this day.

This writer has consistently argued that the much-vaunted 'special relationship' between Britain and the US is only a special relationship insofar as the interests of Anglo-American capital are concerned and where British governments continue to hang onto Uncle Sam's coat-tails for the military power it allows them to associate with.

Without it, Britain would stand exposed as a post-imperial nation, disunited and in demise. And the price required of us all by our ruling elite to continue the pretence is paid daily in the blood of our young men and women who are sent out to die fighting the Axis' military adventures and others who pay the price in becoming victims of the Empire's drugs black-market.

“War on terror” as a cover for US terrorism

It's ironic. It's hypocritical. It's a fraud. The "war on terrorism" branded by America is a propaganda cover for the worst terrorists in the world.

What was the invasion and occupation of Iraq but an act of terrorism? Everyone now knows that the faux war was born of a fraud ... If America wants to stop terrorism, it needs to stop terrorizing the world.

more...

USUK made use of Uzbek torture
Former British ambassador, Craig Murray, says UK and USA sent prisoners to Uzbekistan to be tortured

Here Craig Murray describes the US ally, Uzbekistan, as a totalitarian dictatorship left over from the former Brezhnev, Soviet regime which holds over ten thousand political prisoners. "They still operate the old, Soviet gulags."

"Torture in Uzbekistan isn't unusual. It happens to several thousands of people every year ... The intelligence from these torture sessions was being received by the CIA and passed onto MI6 because MI6 and the CIA share all their intelligence."

"When people were being tortured they were being told to confess to membership of Al Qaeda. They were being told to confess to have been in training camps in Afghanistan and told to confess to have met Osama Bin Laden in person. And the CIA intelligence constantly echoed these themes. They spoke of Uzbeks having been in Al Qaeda, in training camps and meeting Osama Bin Laden. In fact we were now in 2002-2003 when we didn't know where Osama Bin Laden was and the way he managed to see thousands of Uzbeks every year it would have been easier to track him down I felt!"

"It wasn't hard to put two and two together and work out the fact that every political prisoner I knew of in Uzbekistan was tortured and the fact that we knew of what they were being forced to confess under this torture and the CIA material came up with the same, rather dodgy narrative. It wasn't hard to put two and two together and realise that the intelligence material was coming from torture."

"Before I did anything I wanted to make sure I was on safe ground so I asked my deputy to go to the American Embassy and say to them, 'My ambassador is worried because he thinks your intelligence is coming from torture.' She came back and reported to me the reply from the CIA head in the station at Tashkent [which] was, 'Yes, of course it's coming from torture, We don't see that as a problem in the context of the war on terror.'"

"I did see that as a problem, particularly when I discovered that the CIA were bringing in people, flying in people to Uzbekistan and handing them over to the Uzbek security services ... I falsely presumed that these people they were bringing in and handing over to the security services were Uzbeks who had been captured elsewhere and brought back to Uzbekistan. I did not realise that they were of many other nationalities being handed over to be tortured."

"But they were being tortured, I knew, [but] that Uzbekistan was a destination for the extraordinary rendition system from all over the world I really didn't quite realise at the time. We now know, following for example the Council of Europe's investigation that 90% of the aeroplanes that stopped at the famous secret prison in Poland had Tashkent as their next destination."

"I complained back to London. I said we're getting this evidence from torture. It's illegal, it's immoral and it's unreliable. It's vastly exaggerating the strength of Al Qaeda in Central Asia ... I got called back to London and I expected there to have a sensible talk about the merits and demerits of intelligence and how much evidence I had that it was obtained under torture. I was absolutely stunned, genuinely stunned --it changed my whole world-view in an instant-- to be told that London knew that it was coming from torture, that it wasn't illegal because our legal advisers thought that under the United Nations' convention against torture it is not illegal to obtain or use intelligence gained from torture as long as we didn't do the torture ourselves."

Murray's first-hand evidence clearly illustrates how Blair and the British government were complicit in Bush's brutal, fake war on terror.



Craig Murray's Blog

Uzbek Terror and the USUK

Ex-ambassador Craig Murray exposes the horrific tortures taking place in Uzbekistan and the reasons why the USUK are secretly complicit in them.

"Anyone interested in hydrocarbon resources needs to be in Uzbekistan," he observes. He highlights two incidents of torture after which he began to realize that greatly exaggerated CIA intelligence reports were resulting from them. He reports that the CIA were flying in people to be tortured.

"I knew the CIA people who were doing it," he claims.

"When Bush came into power the relationship between the US and Uzbekistan became very cosy" Now Obama is planning to warm up the relationship and to beef up the Uzbek dictator, Karimov.

"To find out that respect for international law and human rights had gone out of the window and that people I knew and worked with were prepared to justify torture and that people knew we were using torture to beef up the terrorist scare ... when something like that hits you it really does plunge you into questioning everything you ever believed in."

Al Qaeda doesn't exist admits the BBC but it keeps repeating the Big Lie

The following video is a clip from a BBC documentary in which the existence of an organisation called Al Qaeda is proven to be false. The documentary was made years ago and has been shown on the BBC several times. But its newscasters keep repeating the Big Lie about Al Qaeda.

How could this be? Simple. It is the implementation of the Goebbels Big Lie technique, ie. if you keep repeating a Big Lie enough times people will just accept it. A few might question the Big Lie and even refute it. But the vast majority will simply accept it unquestioningly.

The entire fake 'War on Terror', including the official conspiracy theory about 911, is based upon the Big Lie.

Pakistani 'terror plot suspects' to be deported rather than charged

In what looks increasingly like a politically-motivated, phoney anti-terror raid, Operation Pathway underscores the callous, racist nature of both Gordon Brown's Nu Labor rule and a politicized police force which oversees its reign of terror.

Lives are wrecked and Muslims terrorised for political gain. A Medialens commentator rightly observes:

How casually the British establishment will destroy the lives of these innocent young people (studies terminated, families harassed, deported to Pakistan where a warm welcome from the ISI awaits etc) all because they were selected, more or less at random I would imagine, for bit parts in the latest police state PR exercise.

It's disgusting. And depressing that none of the individual human beings involved in this sorry episode (on the side of the authorites) appear have courage and/or conscience in sufficient measure to do something about it - eg. REFUSING TO OBEY IMMORAL ORDERS.

Stop the March of the Police State! Act Now!

My regular readers will know that for several years, since this blog was first created after the events of 77 in July 2005, I have been warning of the erosion of liberties and the creation of police states on both sides of the Atlantic.

The fact that this is happening as a transatlantic phenomenon is no accident. Bush's fascists first performed a coup on the US electorate by stealing the presidential election in 2000. We know now that by rights the Democratic candidate, Al Gore, was the rightful winner. But there was no challenge. Bush and his band of rogues were allowed to take over the White House. And it happened again in 2004 with 'faulty' electronic voting machines! Again, the criminals were allowed to get away with it. What now in 2008?

It was clear to many of us that the events of 911 were indeed a conspiracy involving some very powerful forces in north America and elsewhere. The purpose was to so traumatize the public that there would be no struggle when a premeditated, systematic erosion of constitutional and civil liberties followed --not only in the USA but in the UK as well as in other English-speaking countries. The wholly spurious 'War on Terror' was the ideological weapon used with which to bludgeon the opposition into submission.

On the international level we were told to prepare ourselves for 'Endless War' the description used by the Bush/Blair/Brown neocons for ongoing imperialist aggression by the US/UK/Israel in what might otherwise be called Resource Wars --wars staged in order that the West might secure strategic resources such as Oil, Gas, Water and other Mineral Resources needed to keep its system turning over.

The police states created through the fake 'War on Terror' are but one side of the coin. On the other is the prospect of Endless War. Taken together, we see the nightmare prospect of an Orwellian apocalypse. It started in earnest with the mass-murders of 911 and 77. It continues with the inexorable march of the police state. Many eyes are opening to what is going on. Many more need still to be opened. Please help that process by passing this link and text to as many people as possible. There isn't a moment to lose.

Rory Winter, CHIMES OF FREEDOM.

NUJ Film shows Police obstruction of Journalists
NUJ, 9 September 2008

The National Union of Journalists has released a short film highlighting some of the problems faced by journalists covering public demonstrations.

The video was released the day after the TUC in Brighton condemned the erosion of civil liberties and media freedoms in Britain. TUC unions unanimously backed a motion, proposed by the National Union of Journalists, which called for a rethink of government policies that put journalists at risk of imprisonment just for doing their job.

Speaking after the TUC vote, NUJ General Secretary Jeremy Dear said: “Journalism is facing grave threats in an age of intolerance. Whilst on the streets dissent is being criminalized, independent journalism is being increasingly caught in the civil liberties clampdown.”

The nine-minute video, called Press Freedom: Collateral Damage, includes examples of the police obstructing journalists in their work.


Release of the film follows numerous complaints from media workers who have experiences of the police going beyond their powers in attempting to restrict the ability of journalists to do their work. The NUJ’s motion to the TUC was part of a wider campaign for a greater recognition of press freedom by the UK government.

The motion also highlights cases of journalists, such as Robin Ackroyd and Shiv Malik, who have faced the threat of jail because of legal demands to reveal confidential source information.

In his speech to Congress, Jeremy Dear drew attention to the case of Sally Murrer, who is facing criminal prosecution for receiving information from a police source, and highlighted the problems faced by journalists attempting to cover the recent Climate Camp in Kent.

Jeremy said: “The terrorising of journalists isn’t just done by shadowy men in balaclavas, but also by governments and organisations who use the apparatus of the law or state authorities to suppress and distort the information they do not want the public to know and to terrorise the journalists involved through injunctions, threats to imprisonment and financial ruin.

“The use of the Terrorism Act and SOCPA increasingly criminalize not just those who protest but those deemed to be giving the oxygen of publicity to such dissent. Journalists’ material and their sources are increasingly targeted by those who wish to pull a cloak of secrecy over their actions.”

The speech concluded: “This isn’t over-zealous policing this is a co-ordinated and systematic abuse of media freedom – and we must expose it, challenge it and act against those who undermine the rights of photographers, journalists and media workers.

“And we must do so because if whistleblowers and sources fear speaking out, if photographers and journalists cannot probe the dark corners of business, politics or human rights, the ability of the media – already under threat from concentration of ownership and cost-cutting – to hold power to account, to expose wrongdoing, to provide the information on which citizens can make informed decisions about their lives will be seriously compromised.

“The Terrorism Act and SOCPA are not sophisticated security policies – they are the blunt instruments of an intolerant government.

“As if in some Orwellian nightmare the Ministry of Freedom tells us that the price we must pay for peace and liberty at home is not just a war in Iraq – not just the billions spent on war – but, in the wake of the London bombings, is the fingerprinting of council workers and the covert surveillance of M&S workers. It is ID cards and 42-day detention. It is curbs on the right to protest, the civil contingencies act and it is the extension of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, a snoopers’ charter giving access to personal texts, emails and internet use.

“The price is too high. Less liberty does not imply greater security. It never has.

“Our movement has been at the forefront of the great struggles for human and civil rights over the past century. In this age of intolerance new struggles must be waged and we must lead that fight.”

Propaganda
Craig Murray's blog
September 10, 2008

I have been worrying about the serious deterioration of civil liberties in the UK for five years now, but a small incident last night convinced me we are living in a country that must be classified as "Not free". I was travelling to the theatre on the tube, and the large majority of passengers were shrouded by copies of either London Lite or the London Paper. Some thirty copies of each banner headline screamed shrilly its message of fear through the train: "Five Suicide Bombers on the Loose in London!" "Jet Terror Plot!" "Terror Jury Holiday Farce Resulted in Acquittals!"

The propaganda, which reflected uncritically the briefing the Security Services and Home Office have been manically pumping out since the non-existence of the "Bigger than 9/11" jet plot was confirmed, was so stark and so divorced from any connection to the truth, that I am convinced we are already in effect living in a totalitarian state where the government controls the population through fear with brutal efficiency and with absolutely no regard to the truth. The government had contrived to turn a major blow for its "War on Terror" scaremongering into a vehicle to ramp up that scaremongering.

The Lite told of there still being bombers around from the "Jet Terror Plot" and gave no indication whatsoever that the jury had decided the jet plot did not exist. Indeed it claimed shamelessly that the three terrorists convicted of conspiracy to murder had been planning to bring down planes - a direct lie.

The London Paper was still more worrying, because it put detail into the line the odious security service spokesman Frank "Goebbels" Gardner has been pumping out on the BBC: juries are unreliable. It said that the failure to convict in the trial was due to interruptions for a holiday for the jurors and because of an injury to a juror in a golf accident. The clear trend of the briefing coming from the government is towards the abolition of jury trials in terrorist cases: Diplock courts.

Meantime in London two men are on trial for "terrorism" because they attended a demonstration at the Uzbek Embassy against the hideous Uzbek regime, at which red paint was thrown at the Embassy to symbolise the blood of Karimov's many thousands of victims. Such protest as paint-throwing should, I think, be illegal, but given events like the Andijan massacre of many hundreds of peaceful demonstrators, I have huge sympathy for those who undertake civil disobedience in the Uzbek case. It has nothing to do with terrorism, but under the notorious Section 58 of the Terrorism Act there is real danger of conviction and heavy sentences.

These are critical times: all good men and women must fight hard against the closing in of the system upon us.

Britz: a Commentary

I've just finished watching the second part of Britz on Channel Four. I very rarely watch Channel Four these days due to the unceasing torrent of so-called docudramas on 'terrorism'. Of the little I have watched it was very clear to me that it was all psy ops stuff, propaganda based on the already-established principal of being guilty before having been proved to be so.

Since Tony Blair, taking his orders from the criminal Bush junta, gave the green light to the British mainstream media (MSM) to adopt sly, racist innuendo against Muslims and to demonise them, it is very clear to me that not only is Britain still very much a racist country but that that racism has now come out in the open with a nod and a wink from the Blair/Brown governments.

I watched this movie with interest because it seemed to me to be a brave attempt by predominantly white folk to show to a predominantly white audience just what it is that drives certain individuals in the British Muslim community in different directions, one to join the British establishment's secret services and the other to become a suicide bomber.

Yes, of course the plot presented us with caricatures of reality but that was deliberate and intended to make a point: in this case about a cultural group with immigrant roots that finds itself divided in a western society which, with its own agenda, is now persecuting that group and its British-born children.

And yes, that persecution all results from the need of US and British capital to dominate the planet's Oil and Gas resources leading to a US foreign policy based on all-out aggression and imperialism. A foreign policy which the then Premier of the USA's Number One Vassal State, Britain, adopted in its entirety with no questions asked.

The movie ends with a video recording of the dead suicide bomber warning the British that until they cease to support quisling governments supporting aggressive US foreign policy the bombing will go on.

The bombing will go on as long as the West's bombing goes on. This is a war. An asymmetrical war, but a war nonetheless.

The makers of the movie point to the 7/7 bombers as having had a similar intention. The problem there, in my opinion, is that the 7/7 plot was never proven. To this day it has remained an allegation against a group of Muslims by a British government that is characterised, if anything, by the lies it told its people about why Britain joined Bush's war crime against Iraq.

As an ex-colonial I learnt as a young child never to trust the British (government). No British colonial, whether white or of colour, trusted Whitehall. So treating British governments with suspicion comes as easily to me as it might to the Irish. For that and other reasons I never believed the official conspiracy story about 911 nor 7/7. And the fact that to this day there has been no investigation about 7/7, independent or otherwise, must remain the greatest indicator of the British government's complicity in that event.

Britz hammered out the reality of how Control Orders are being used against British Muslims in a manner reminiscent of White Apartheid South Africa. Even the Irish, who for 800 years were the victims of British imperialism, were never subjected to such oppression. An oppression which was solely the result of one man, Tony Blair, whose very credentials for having joined the Labour Party must themselves remain in doubt and as a thing of suspicion.

For it is a fact that Blair was recruited by MI5 when he was at Oxford University and his track record indicates that his political mission was not only to destroy the foundations of Labour Party social democracy but to tie Britain in a death-pact of "shared values" with US capitalism. The fabricated 'War on Terrorism' which was a straight import from the Bush cabal was part of that death-pact. As for Brown, the foundations of a British police state having been laid for him, all he has to do is to build upon it and to keep steering the ship of state on that course.

It is in that light that Britz should be seen, where Muslims finding themselves at the sharp edge of 21st century British imperialism, are very much the 'canary in the cage', the first societal group in mainland Britain to experience the new fascism of the British state.

The rest won't be long coming because, having used their fake 'War on Terrorism' in order to destroy our freedom, having used the inherent racism of whites to scapegoat a sector of British society of colour, these pretend 'anti-terrorist' laws will be used, sickeningly predictably, against all those, white or of colour, who disagree with government policy.

Indeed, I would go so far as to suggest that this article will be unpublishable within the next five years.

Britz was a warning to the people of Britain what will happen if they continue to turn their heads away from reality. For, in the name of their fabricated 'war on terror' the real agenda of both US and British capital is to turn their societies into internal police states and external aggressors conducting a war against the rest of humanity on a permanent footing.

British Injustice System
from SACC Website


Today [23 Oct 2007] I witnessed a serious crime. It was committed in broad daylight in front of fifty or so witnesses in the High Court in Edinburgh, Scotland. The perpetrator of this crime was the British State which, through a judge, Lord Carloway, sentenced Mohammed Atif Siddique, a young Muslim male, aged 21 years, to 8 years imprisonment. He was sentenced under the provisions of British anti-terror laws for the heinous act of browsing various Islamist websites and expressing his sympathies with Al Qaeda, the Iraqi Resistance, and the Palestinian Intifada to a few of his fellow students at the university at which he was studying.

Now Read on

Growing Western Totalitarianism: Australia's Shameful PM



Link

Of course, Australia is not alone in having been given the cue to totalitarianize its society in the interests of the New World Odour.

The draconian detention laws described in Australia are really not much different to those in Britain where toad-like judges, politicised by the Blair/Brown duo, bang-up brown-skinned Brits for thought crimes on the slightest excuse.

Prisoners of Mother England, indeed. We're all pommies now!

Carloway
Scottish student receives eight years for terror offences
By Rich Bowden, M&C Staff Writer Oct 23, 2007

(M&C) - A Scottish Muslim student has been jailed for eight years for providing instructions on bomb-making over the internet and possessing terror-related materials.

Mohammed Atif Siddique, 21, was sentenced by Judge Lord Carloway who said, "You told fellow college students that you intended to become a terrorist and one of your targets would be central Glasgow."

Siddique was detained with his uncle last year as he was about to travel to Pakistan. He denied he was a terrorist saying he had just obtained the material as research to try to find out "why young Muslim men like him act the way they do".

Siddique also shows videos of suicide bombings and beheadings to classmates at Glasgow Metropolitan College.

However he received support from the civil rights organisation Scotland Against Criminalising Communities who said in a statement the trial was a "travesty of justice" and added, "Even under our Kafka-esque laws it makes no sense to call this young man a terrorist, and it is to be hoped that the argument will be taken successfully to the appeal court."

Siddique is believed to be Scotland's first home-grown Islamic terrorist.

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Rory says:

"Home-grown terrorist," my ass.

This guy has been given 8 years for thought-crimes and because he is a brown-skinned Muslim of Pakistani or Bangladeshi descent.

Several white Brits, including the BNP bomb-makers, have been let off lightly for much worse offences.

This disgraceful abuse of the law by an intolerant member of Britain's ruling classes, Lord Carloway, a leftover of Victorian England, exposes British law to be racist and selective in its victims.

Fascist Britain is here for all to see.

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Press Release from Scotland Against Criminalising Communities (SACC)
5.30pm Tuesday 23 Oct 2007

For immediate release

Sentencing of Mohammed Atif Siddique

At Edinburgh High Court today, Lord Carloway sentenced Mohammed Atif Siddique - convicted last month of "terrorism" offences - to a total of 8 years in jail. The sentence is to run from the time Mr Siddique was first taken into custody.

And in a surprise development, the judge criticised Mr Siddique's solicitor, Aamer Anwar, over a statement he released on the day of Mr Siddique's conviction. The judge is considering whether to initiate contempt proceedings against Aamer Anwar. Such a move would be unprecedented and would be sure to send shock waves through the legal profession.

Speaking alongside Aamer Aamer outside the court, Mr Asif Siddique (Atif Siddique's uncle) said that he rejected the judge's criticisms and had confidence in Aamer Anwar.Aamer Anwar said that Mohammed Atif Siddique will be making an appeal.

SACC is disappointed at the length of the sentence imposed on Mr Siddique. The activities for which he was convicted were no more than "thought crimes" and have harmed no one. Like may people, we had hoped that this would be reflected in a much lighter sentence.

In passing sentence, the judge said that the new offences created by the terrorism acts were "there to protect the public" and had been "designed by Parliament to stop or reduce the risk of terrorist outrages" before a terrorist plot reaches the stage where a common-law offence has been committed.

SACC has been concerned over Mr Siddique's case ever since the massive police raid on the Siddique family home in April last year. We don't believe that anyone should have to face criminal charges over the sort of activities that Mr Siddique was convicted for.

Speaking before the sentence was announced, Professor David Miller of Strathclyde University - an expert on terrorism, spin and propaganda - said:

"Even the BBC has classed this case as potentially a case of 'thought crime' There is an establishment witchhunt against any form of dissent on British foreign policy. It is important that democrats stand up for freedom of speech"

Referring to comments that Mr Siddique had been guilty of youthful folly, Massoud Shadjareh, Chair of Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), said earler this week:

"The stupidity of neither youth nor age and its reflection in reading material, particularly on-line should not be criminalised. The majority of us may reject certain sentiments but we must beware of utilising the tools of state and particularly the criminal justice system to deal with ideas we find unpalatable. This sets a dangerous precedent."

Richard Haley, Secretary of SACC, commented:

"Anyone who wants to know what is really going on in Iraq has to pick their way through the reports of independent journalists, anecdotes from people with family in Iraq and varied and sometimes problematic web postings from political groups and fighters in Iraq. There is no other way, since the mainstream media largely duck the real issues of the occupation. The Siddique case means that anyone doing this will have to live in fear of prosecution. Especially if they become upset by what they find, and especially if they are Muslim."

John McManus, of the Miscarriages Organisation (MOJO), Scotland, is also worried by the case. He says:

"Comparisons of the Irish situation in the 70s to the attack on the Muslim community today can't be avoided. What is even more worrying under this climate of fear, are the new laws that have been passed, where you can be convicted not for something you did, but for something you might do. By going down this road it allows those in authority to cherry pick who they deem a threat. Today it's the Muslim community, who knows who it will be tomorrow.

SACC is seriously concerned at the criticism directed at Mr Siddique's lawyer, Aamer Anwar, for issuing a statement that appeared to question the fairness of the trial. Speaking on behalf of Aamer Anwar, Donald Findlay QC said that the statement was in fact from Mohammed Atif Siddique and had been issue on his express instructions.

In SACC's view the statement issued by Aamer Anwar is no more than the plain truth.

Richard Haley said

"I, like many others who have followed the case, believe that the evidence relating to Mohammed Atif Siddique's possession of computer files and related materials shows only that he was guilty of doing what millions of young people do every day, looking for answers on the internet. The jury, unfortunately, took a different view. But it needs to be shouted from the rooftops that the view that Mohammed Atif Siddique took of the trial, as set out in the statement from his lawyer, is a reasonable one and raises issues of immense importance for our society."

The possibility that Aamer Anwar may have to face contempt proceedings is deeply worrying.

He has earned a reputation as perhaps the most visible and effective lawyer in Scotland for cases with a political flavour, especially when they touch on racism, civil liberties and the wars in the Middle East. He has represented asylum-seekers, victims of racist violence and "suspected terrorists." He helped protestors negotiate a way to the G8 Summit at Gleneagles, and he defended demonstrators arrested during police attempts to shut down the G8 protests.

Anyone who wants a better world - trade unionist, anti-war activist or anti-racism campaigner - knows that one day they might have to confront the security state across a courtroom, and that they will need a courageous lawyer. We should be very worried indeed if the effect of this case is that lawyers become too frightened to do this kind of work properly.

SACC, 22 Oct 2007

Notes for editors

Professor David Miller can be contacted for comment on 07786927551
IHRC can be contacted for comment on 02089044222
John McManus can be contacted for comment on 07977047794
Richard Haley can be contacted on 07936432519 or email richard@sacc.org.uk