Thursday, December 15, 2005

CBI and TWAT*

CBI and TWAT*

From the guardian-
The CBI is holding talks today with the home secretary, Charles Clarke, to press the government to stop the United States using an anti-terrorism treaty to extradite British executives for trial in America.
So the CBI suddenly gives a shi about the fate of people extradited unfairly to America under post 9/11 only when it concerns wealthy execs. Never mind that people like Babar Ahmed can be sent to Gitmo on very dodgy grounds (allegedly supporting a terrorist group, even though at the time they were not designated as such). Also Sir Digby Jones’s comments kinds sum up the nicely class/race distinctions

"This is totally unacceptable," Sir Digby said. "It might be acceptable for the bloke who wraps semtex around his body but not for a 62-year-old executive with prostate cancer. The process of justice is being abused. America is being an ignorant bully. This is just wrong".

Jones is clearly an utter wanker, if it were indeed terrorism suspects who had "wrapped Semtex around themselves" then they’d get tried in Britain, indeed if there was any evidence of actual wrongdoing then the UK would be arresting them like a shot. His sympathy for the white collar criminal also smacks of crocodile tears, how many lives were ruined by Enron? How many people have died because their pensions were raided by greedy executives? It’s not exactly bin laden levels but white collar criminals do create very real victims whose lives are fucked while executives get an extra holiday home and very fat pension.
The fact that America can just extradite who they want from Britain is one thing, but the fact we can’t do it to them is quite another-

America's decision not to make the agreement reciprocal followed pressure from the powerful Irish-American lobby, which feared that Britain might try to extradite republican sympathisers.

Hypocrisy overload there. The fact that the UK would be wanting to extradite actual terrorist who are responsible for the deaths of British citizens and to prevent possible further acts of terror is utterly ignored. They have the gall to be completely two faced, to go tell us to fuck ourselves because we are chasing the wrong kinds of terrorist. The War on Terror is obviously not actually a war on terror, just terror committed by people who don’t have a large influential lobby in the US.




*The War Against Terror