tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1073021351804532798.post9091324845546301952..comments2024-03-15T06:02:30.623+00:00Comments on The Lockerbie Case: Pick your villain, pick your story, then bend your lawsRobert Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03606456028430261555noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1073021351804532798.post-31866821858655891632015-08-05T14:10:22.467+01:002015-08-05T14:10:22.467+01:00It was in fact Ian Bell's confident and persis...It was in fact Ian Bell's confident and persistent assertion that Megrahi was innocent that first got me interested in exploring the detail of the Lockerbie evidence. Then I discovered Paul Foot, then a lot more, and so it began.Rolfehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17849975010197698907noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1073021351804532798.post-5406071352914225972015-08-05T11:20:44.344+01:002015-08-05T11:20:44.344+01:00I admire and thoroughly enjoy Bell’s writing even ...I admire and thoroughly enjoy Bell’s writing even allowing for not always finding myself in total agreement with all his points.<br /><br />As I do with this article. He is, of course, absolutely correct about the depth and breadth of the deceit engineered by successive politicians (and justice officials) over the bombing of Pan Am 103 and the manner with which the sole conviction of a Libyan man was achieved. Successive politicians and officials in both London and Edinburgh have persisted in this deceit from across the whole political spectrum with a handful of exceptions. It appears not only were the ‘trusting’ Libyans deceived in numerous ways over the course of the previous two decades, but the trusting British public were also mislead, and continue to be so by those holding office at Westminster and Holyrood. Perhaps, today however, we might now hesitate to say those Libyans are quite as trusting as perhaps then? <br /><br />However, I think Bell gives more credibility to the publicly presented dispute and conflict between Holyrood and Westminster in relation to Megrahi’s repatriation than, perhaps, was the reality, but only in private. The justice system can, as has been proven over many decades, sustain itself even when embroiled in the most improper and deplorable miscarriages of justice. Notably, many of the worst examples of such shameful judgements in the justice system involved other major atrocities committed during the 1970’s. But these are by no means the exception when the state seeks to uphold perceptions created. Politicians too, individually and collectively in the West can often sustain the most sordid, and in any other real world, perhaps criminal deceptions, while those naïvely trustful ones now find themselves subject to the legally (despite the recent death sentences passed considered illegitimate) authorized killing by the State.<br /><br />In respect of the Lockerbie case, a country, a whole people, a justice system, and the truth were sacrificed in order that the status quo between Edinburgh and London (indeed Washington) was preserved and maintained. Not the status quo around the symbolic political union between the two nations, but the status quo inherent at a far deeper level than the superficial, as I say symbolic, distinctions made in public. The UK and the West’s foreign policy, and the historical perceptions created whether with regards to Libya, Iraq or Iran, are as strategic in their political motivations as they are the very essence of our notions of the noble empire and its ‘democracy’. The Wests foreign policy ideology that our liberal-democracy is something to be not only trusted, but violently exported and imposed on the uncivilised and belligerent world. Subsequent duplicity exhibited by Holyrood and the Crown office officials would seem to support such notions that a far deeper understanding and binding underpins the relationship between Edinburgh and London than simply what our trusted politicians or parliaments might otherwise publicly suggest. <br />Eddiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17525753216455565588noreply@blogger.com