Some truly crazy things in that article too. For example,
> X states he will kill her, leaves the room, and returns holding a machete ... The video cuts out amid her screams ... X was arrested, charged with assaulting Beth and appeared in court. However, while he was at court, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) dropped the case.
How can there be a _video_ of a machete attack and the case is dropped?
> items of hers that had also been seized by counter terror officers were returned to a member of her family by a man who did not identify himself. The relative assumed the man was an associate of X. ... We have established the visitor was an MI5 officer. Material seized by a police investigation, under a police warrant, had been given to MI5.
Just read that last sentence!
I'm not a UK national, but tend to believe in them -- including MI5 -- being the 'good guys'. We need good guys in today's world, desperately. This kind of article is hard to read.
There are no such things as ‘good guys’ especially for states.
States only believe in their own interests and the narrative always go towards the powerful and the one which won.
That’s the fatal flaw in international "justice" and has been from the start. Where were the people who allowed the nuclear bombing of civilians during the Nuremberg trials? Why was nothing said about the western nation entering the war so late despite what they knew? Because that’s not justice, merely retribution.
Then, you have to considered the role played by secret institutions in democratic countries. Do they serve the citizenship, the national interests (what does that even mean?), the people in power, themselves first and foremost? From history, I wouldn’t trust them very much, even less as a foreigner.
Be wary of any institution or person holding power. Check and balance are deeply needed and we should be horrified every times they are being limited or abused.
If the UK is still serious about being a liberal democracy, this should have sever consequences. I’m sadly fairly sure it won’t.
Why was nothing said about the western nation entering the war so late despite what they knew?
What do you mean by that? The war had started by attacking the Western nations and the allies. The second front had opened when Germany attacked its former ally nearly 2 years later.
Just like in the USA however there are laws about inciting violence and riots and people have been prosecuted for that.
The bs you're referring to is likely about the guy that went to jail for tweeting that a hotel of migrants should be burned down...during a race riot near the hotel.
Fires were set and people, including those calling for it, were prosecuted.
So he went to jail for a Twitter post? In what world can posting something cause you to be imprisoned for 15 months. The only crazier thing is people defending such horrendous laws.
> "A trio of Snapchat pranksters aged between 18 and 19 are now having to be protected by police after enraging people with their sick reenactment of the death of George Floyd"
It's called protective custody. It's for their own safety.
The first one was arrested for questioning because he refused to talk to the police when they first attempted to communicate. He was subsequently released - he never went to jail.
It didn't happen. They're referring to people who incited arson and murder while there was an ongoing race riot (which started on false pretenses to begin with).
No stance on your conclusion but your arguments are... poor. "Why was nothing said about the western nation entering the war so late despite what they knew? Isn't the obvious answer that. Because that’s not justice, merely retribution." No, it's because you're presenting a false dichotomy? It would've obviously come with huge risks, costs, and more deaths. It's not like there was a big red "Deliver Justice" button they could've pressed to deliver justice anywhere anytime for free, and they somehow refused to press it. The world had already been through World War I, and you can imagine they neither wanted to get closer to another one, nor did people want to risk their own deaths or suicide. You can hate the west all you want for not entering the war earlier or whatever else, but at least maybe do it with something a little stronger than a strawman?
The officer in charge, Cressida Dick, was given a slap on the wrist. She was later appointed head of Scotland Yard, where she was a signal failure. The Mayor of London, fed up with her equivocations on malfeasance, corruption and abuses in her force, pushed her out, and was criticized for this by the chief Inspector of constabulary. After all, she was a good old girl from the right family who went to the right school and the Establishment protects its own.
There has never been any occurrence of accountability for criminality, malfeasance or gross negligence in the UK for at least 100 years (Aberfan Disaster, Hillsborough, Bloody Sunday, Grenfell, Iraq, Afghanistan, the list goes on).
Im not sure it's even that simple. Ive worked for many companies that havent worked in their own self interest. Large organizations captured by small, self interested or ideologically extreme groups often dont.
What the state of Israel is doing, for example, is not in its own interest and the untrammeled support given by the west to what it does is definitely not in our self interest.
My father was in the CIA (one of the earliest). He was an idealist who joined out of patriotism, and couldn't reconcile himself with what they were becoming. He ended up resigning. I really feel that it broke him.
I think the very earliest had decent folks. I believe it was more like the second-gen CIA (1950s and 60s). He joined in '52 (after graduating Harvard with an LLB, and working for a short time at a law firm), and resigned in '67.
[EDITED TO ADD] I updated to the proper dates, and linked his eulogy.
Your dad was probably representative of many people at intelligence agencies. There's no amount of apparent evil that bureaucracy isn't sufficient to explain.
There are a couple Miles Copeland books on my reading list. They might be of interest to you. He was a big CIA guy (and also father of famous drummer Stewart Copeland)
That's understandable. I just read a Miles Copeland interview from 1986 in which he complains about the CIA apparently assassinating fewer foreign leaders and being too truthful to congress.
The OSS leading into the early CIA is exactly who I was talking about.
They lead stay-behind operations in the recently liberated Italy(Operation Gladio) that funded Italian Mafia activities to act as strike breakers, assassinate union leaders.
They funded right-wing terrorist militias, ran false-flag operations, and started their early psychological warfare programs.
Your father resigned a couple years after the conclusion of the Indonesian Coup in which the CIA installed a right-wing military dictatorship, replacing a democratically elected government, that rounded up and murdered 1 Million communists while imprisoning a few million more for years. This event created a blueprint called the Jakarta Method which was used across the globe.
They considered this guy to be a valuable asset and so "raison d'etat" prevailed.
This also highlights that whatever the official line on police and justice independence fed to the public phone calls and meetings that "never happened", well actually do.
It is crazy how secret services in a lot of "democratic" countries now have a green pass to violate the national law for their own interests without real consequence.
It reminds me of the secret service in a Nordic country (maybe Denmark?) that shared national secret info with the US without any right to do so, without approval of the national assembly.
Also, what should be the scariest thing in the report:
“now”? At what point has there been good accountability of secret services? Given what we know of their history it has arguably been even worse before.
Perhaps some smaller countries have had secret services with an apparently clean record (would be hard to know for sure) at some point. But that could be more a matter of luck with who was in charge and hired at that point.
It is new, for both secret services and politics, there use to be a principe of honor and respectability. Once exposed to bad behaviors, people where quitting by themselves or heads being chopped because of the public shame.
Now the people involved will keep their position till the end, doing whatever needed and whatever the cost to not move despite being convicted or close to it.
To me, this is new in the last decades.
Look at Nixon with the Watergate, nowadays, same with Trump, the guys will just say "and so what?" And things will continue like if it was nothing.
Not sure why it would be, short of taking a cheap shot at people. Most people alive right now were born in the past 50 years [0], and won't be intimately familiar with history in so much detail, including me. It's niche knowledge, let's be honest. And people being conspiratorial and speculating on these is not the same as knowing about it with examples.
"it's worse now" would imply a positive belief about how things were better back in the halcyon days and things are worse now. Otherwise they would not have said it. Not knowing something isn't the same as knowing something that is not.
> It is crazy how secret services (...) now have a green pass
Step-function.
> think this is new
Step-function.
You're the only person describing a gradient ("it's worse now").
> Not knowing something isn't the same as knowing something that is not.
This is what I'm saying. That this kind of thing having been speculated on by a lot of people the GP above then believed doesn't mean those folks had actual information backing all of that up.
I didn't mean to imply any gradients, I was referring to the perception that things have changed in a negative way. I think we are in agreement anyway.
That's a clear failure of culture and leadership in their investigation, how they can't see that defending bad actors in their organization only sheds a shadow on their entire organization is beyond me.
The accused agent, has brought shame and dishonor on their group, he effectively betrayed the organization with his actions, the fact his colleagues chose to break the law to support him is beyond the pale. This is just a symptom of the old boys club that normalizes deviancy, covering up slip ups and inevitably to shit like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Five
But why would they care about there being a shadow on their organisation? They are immune to prosecution, will be funded no matter what, and if some politician, judge, or media organisation gets in their way they can simply neutralise them.
Are they really, that sounds improbable but I will believe you for the purposes of this discussion.
> will be funded no matter what, and if some politician, judge, or media organisation gets in their way they can simply neutralise them.
They are MI5, they are pretty much glorified police. Their funding is not guaranteed, their existence is not guaranteed, they could be replaced as an organization as whole, or piecemeal.
See what's happening to the FBI, this could happen to them. All it would take would be sufficient political momentum or a teflon politician.
As worrying as this story is, I find it interesting and consoling that the BBC, which is a state owned media, didn't hesitate and even strongly pushed to investigate and publish a story of abuse at another government agency. They weren't pressured to drop it, but kept going.
Goes strongly against the common narrative about "the mainstream media" and state media in particular (about them being complicit and useless).
Also, I can't help but feel depressed thinking about countries with less sophisticated justice systems. The absolute power an individual (they can be low rank!) gives me the shudders.
Somewhat surprisingly, the current title does not seem to be editorializing or otherwise changing the thrust of the article; I don’t mind it staying as is
At the time I posted, the title was truncated and did not include the direct object or object of the preposition, so it was title gore. It has since been edited by OP or by mods, so the issue is resolved in my view. I don't dispute that the title as you may have seen it is fine, now.
What could MI5 possibly stand to gain from hiding a person who is described as "a violent misogynist abuser with paedophilic tendencies who had used his MI5 role as a tool of coercion"?
Is it only because it would "look bad on MI5" if people like that worked there? Seems like such a trivial thing to immediately take a stand against and get rid of as soon as you notice it, rather than trying to hide
> What could MI5 possibly stand to gain from hiding a person who is described as "a violent misogynist abuser with paedophilic tendencies who had used his MI5 role as a tool of coercion"?
The continued loyalty of their other employees, a significant proportion of whom also enjoy using their MI5 role as a tool of coercion?
The most “sane” explanation is that revealing his identity would compromise ongoing operations.
Something like someone who did know him as his secret identity would see his face, hear his association with MI5 and go “Wow Dude! Turns out ‘Niegel from Birmingham’ wasn’t really ‘Niegel’ at all! Didn’t he introduce us to Tommy as his old childhood friend? Maybe we shouldn’t trust Tommy anymore either. In fact why don’t we dangle Tommy from his ankles until he confesses?” So revealing that this miscreant is MI5 could put the life of other agents in danger too.
Or alternatively it can be about protecting some method. Like this terrible person introduced a bunch of criminals to a “secure chat” application, and you don’t want them to think it is not as secure as they think. (Obviously the names and particulars are wild guesses with no basis in reality.)
Not saying it is a great argument, but that is how these kind of agencies think sometimes.
The combination of being ready to forgive "good people", and ready to consider the enemies of "good people" your enemies too, can be horrifying – and yet, it feels incredibly righteous in the moment. (Related story: a lay preacher was a stalker, and the Bishop of Leicester helped retaliate against the victim. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce3velqy9rzo)
Or perhaps that person knows too much, so it is better to swipe it under the rug. They will probably eventually attempt to disassociate themselves from him, through any means necessary.
> What could MI5 possibly stand to gain from hiding a person who is described as "a violent misogynist abuser with paedophilic tendencies who had used his MI5 role as a tool of coercion"?
Because people like that are useful to get inside organisations full of other evil people and prevent those organisations doing even worse things.
probably the same thing that happened in the church or other organisations. bad people are able to convince others to do small things to help them, then once it surfaces what they are doing they are able to convince their enablers that their fates are tied together. from that point they are able to coerce their enablers into making bigger violations to protect them and and it becomes increasingly difficult to defect against them.
The MI5, like every other secret service, wants their members to feel part of a brotherhood and to never ever divulge any secret to anyone outside the group. They also want their agents to be utterly loyal to their superiors, and to trust them that any despicable thing they may be asked to do is done in service of some greater good, or that at least it serves their own interests.
All of these things together make it so that the immediate reaction to any apparent wrongdoing is to close ranks, tell nothing to outsiders like the police or prosecutors until some boss decides otherwise. And that boss will of course weigh any such decision against the risk that any minute secret might be revealed in an investigation, that any agent might lose a tiny bit of confidence, etc - and likely will brush it off and apply some paltry administrative penalty then move on.
What can I say, super instructive about what to expect when you start making inquiries about a state apparatus with lots of power. It also shows the need to make meticulous notes about everything and hold the state to telling the truth (as much as you can).
From what I can recall there has been similar things happening in Germany where police informers used the money gotten from informing on their (extreme right-wing) group to finance the group agenda. This is far from new. Secret services should be abolished in the name of democracy.
There was also the cases where at least one British undercover police officer infiltrated environmental organisations, and in the process fathered children under their assumed identity.
For anyone not familiar with the British State, it, along with its lieutenants such as the bbc, continually check the temperature of the nation. As it’s important that the docile middle classes who rarely interact with the justice system or question the media, remain naive. Along with those sold on the British Image around the world.
These legal cases are just theatre with professional actors.
‘Justice being seen to be done’
Trust in the bbc has been nosediving, and up pops this case of the BBC holding the state to account… and the judges giving appearance of impartiality…
This appears to be the related story about the agent: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-61508520
Some truly crazy things in that article too. For example,
> X states he will kill her, leaves the room, and returns holding a machete ... The video cuts out amid her screams ... X was arrested, charged with assaulting Beth and appeared in court. However, while he was at court, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) dropped the case.
How can there be a _video_ of a machete attack and the case is dropped?
> items of hers that had also been seized by counter terror officers were returned to a member of her family by a man who did not identify himself. The relative assumed the man was an associate of X. ... We have established the visitor was an MI5 officer. Material seized by a police investigation, under a police warrant, had been given to MI5.
Just read that last sentence!
I'm not a UK national, but tend to believe in them -- including MI5 -- being the 'good guys'. We need good guys in today's world, desperately. This kind of article is hard to read.
There are no such things as ‘good guys’ especially for states.
States only believe in their own interests and the narrative always go towards the powerful and the one which won.
That’s the fatal flaw in international "justice" and has been from the start. Where were the people who allowed the nuclear bombing of civilians during the Nuremberg trials? Why was nothing said about the western nation entering the war so late despite what they knew? Because that’s not justice, merely retribution.
Then, you have to considered the role played by secret institutions in democratic countries. Do they serve the citizenship, the national interests (what does that even mean?), the people in power, themselves first and foremost? From history, I wouldn’t trust them very much, even less as a foreigner.
Be wary of any institution or person holding power. Check and balance are deeply needed and we should be horrified every times they are being limited or abused.
If the UK is still serious about being a liberal democracy, this should have sever consequences. I’m sadly fairly sure it won’t.
> States only believe in their own interests and the narrative always go towards the powerful and the one which won.
And depressingly, even that isn't true - states are plagued with the principal-agent problem[1], as is basically every organization.
---
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...
Why was nothing said about the western nation entering the war so late despite what they knew?
What do you mean by that? The war had started by attacking the Western nations and the allies. The second front had opened when Germany attacked its former ally nearly 2 years later.
I suspect this is referring to the United States of America.
> If the UK is still serious about being a liberal democracy
They have not been for quite a while. They are the type of country where you go to jail over a meme.
Nobody goes to jail for a meme.
Just like in the USA however there are laws about inciting violence and riots and people have been prosecuted for that.
The bs you're referring to is likely about the guy that went to jail for tweeting that a hotel of migrants should be burned down...during a race riot near the hotel.
Fires were set and people, including those calling for it, were prosecuted.
So he went to jail for a Twitter post? In what world can posting something cause you to be imprisoned for 15 months. The only crazier thing is people defending such horrendous laws.
You do know incitement is illegal in the USA too? Twitter or not, its illegal to ask others to burn people to death....
The twitter post made it to national news because people actually listened to it and set fire to the building while people were inside.
One person isn't responsible for other people's actions, no matter what they say. Britain is a draconian society ruled by fear.
So ordering a henchman to kill a rival shouldn't be a crime?
It's interesting how the freedom of expression argument is always, but really always, used to defend violence and hatred.
...By that logic so is the USA as incitement isn't protected by the first amendment.
Wasn't there the pug that did a nazi salute? Sure, the result wasn't jail, but the effects on free expression are devastating.
As a European I am quite jealous of the freedoms the US population has.
Currently Europe is the continent of the easily frightened and mentally slow people and with the current course it will only get worse in that regard.
A government procecuting such crimes also leaves the impression that they have lost control on certain issues at least.
> and people have been prosecuted for that.
some of them, yes, most of them, no.
Who went to jail over a meme?
Here are two examples:
https://www.womenarehuman.com/man-arrested-for-sharing-meme-...
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/uk-teens-who-mocked-ge...
> "A trio of Snapchat pranksters aged between 18 and 19 are now having to be protected by police after enraging people with their sick reenactment of the death of George Floyd"
It's called protective custody. It's for their own safety.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-62352502
The first one was arrested for questioning because he refused to talk to the police when they first attempted to communicate. He was subsequently released - he never went to jail.
It didn't happen. They're referring to people who incited arson and murder while there was an ongoing race riot (which started on false pretenses to begin with).
No stance on your conclusion but your arguments are... poor. "Why was nothing said about the western nation entering the war so late despite what they knew? Isn't the obvious answer that. Because that’s not justice, merely retribution." No, it's because you're presenting a false dichotomy? It would've obviously come with huge risks, costs, and more deaths. It's not like there was a big red "Deliver Justice" button they could've pressed to deliver justice anywhere anytime for free, and they somehow refused to press it. The world had already been through World War I, and you can imagine they neither wanted to get closer to another one, nor did people want to risk their own deaths or suicide. You can hate the west all you want for not entering the war earlier or whatever else, but at least maybe do it with something a little stronger than a strawman?
Remember when UK police shot a random foreigner on the tube in the head and no one was prosecuted?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Jean_Charles_de_Men...
The commissioner was found guilty...
The officer in charge, Cressida Dick, was given a slap on the wrist. She was later appointed head of Scotland Yard, where she was a signal failure. The Mayor of London, fed up with her equivocations on malfeasance, corruption and abuses in her force, pushed her out, and was criticized for this by the chief Inspector of constabulary. After all, she was a good old girl from the right family who went to the right school and the Establishment protects its own.
There has never been any occurrence of accountability for criminality, malfeasance or gross negligence in the UK for at least 100 years (Aberfan Disaster, Hillsborough, Bloody Sunday, Grenfell, Iraq, Afghanistan, the list goes on).
> The commissioner was found guilty, and his office was fined.
I'm sure they also gave him a stern talking-to
Im not sure it's even that simple. Ive worked for many companies that havent worked in their own self interest. Large organizations captured by small, self interested or ideologically extreme groups often dont.
What the state of Israel is doing, for example, is not in its own interest and the untrammeled support given by the west to what it does is definitely not in our self interest.
My father was in the CIA (one of the earliest). He was an idealist who joined out of patriotism, and couldn't reconcile himself with what they were becoming. He ended up resigning. I really feel that it broke him.
The early CIA were basically monsters in men's clothing. Just one dark, twisted scheme after another with no humanity in sight.
I think the very earliest had decent folks. I believe it was more like the second-gen CIA (1950s and 60s). He joined in '52 (after graduating Harvard with an LLB, and working for a short time at a law firm), and resigned in '67.
[EDITED TO ADD] I updated to the proper dates, and linked his eulogy.
https://cmarshall.com/miscellaneous/MikeMarshall.htm
Your dad was probably representative of many people at intelligence agencies. There's no amount of apparent evil that bureaucracy isn't sufficient to explain.
Well, he was a field agent. His job was to run assets in-country (Valerie Plame had a similar role).
He worked in West Africa, where Russian proxies were trying to foster communist insurgencies.
He was a very, very decent person; maybe too decent. The straw that broke the camel's back, was the Shah of Iran.
There are a couple Miles Copeland books on my reading list. They might be of interest to you. He was a big CIA guy (and also father of famous drummer Stewart Copeland)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_Copeland_Jr.
I suspect my father was not a fan.
That's understandable. I just read a Miles Copeland interview from 1986 in which he complains about the CIA apparently assassinating fewer foreign leaders and being too truthful to congress.
The OSS leading into the early CIA is exactly who I was talking about.
They lead stay-behind operations in the recently liberated Italy(Operation Gladio) that funded Italian Mafia activities to act as strike breakers, assassinate union leaders.
They funded right-wing terrorist militias, ran false-flag operations, and started their early psychological warfare programs.
Your father resigned a couple years after the conclusion of the Indonesian Coup in which the CIA installed a right-wing military dictatorship, replacing a democratically elected government, that rounded up and murdered 1 Million communists while imprisoning a few million more for years. This event created a blueprint called the Jakarta Method which was used across the globe.
The movie The Act of Killing is about this time in Indonesia. Really a tough watch, but I recommend that movie for everybody... once.
Also, I think The Year of Living Dangerously.
> I'm not a UK national, but tend to believe in them -- including MI5 -- being the 'good guys'.
MI5/6 are never good guys.
Nothing surprising here.
They considered this guy to be a valuable asset and so "raison d'etat" prevailed.
This also highlights that whatever the official line on police and justice independence fed to the public phone calls and meetings that "never happened", well actually do.
[dead]
With all due respect, there is not a single bigger evildoer over the last 300 years than the UK, they do not deserve any trust.
Hitler?
It is crazy how secret services in a lot of "democratic" countries now have a green pass to violate the national law for their own interests without real consequence.
It reminds me of the secret service in a Nordic country (maybe Denmark?) that shared national secret info with the US without any right to do so, without approval of the national assembly.
Also, what should be the scariest thing in the report:
“now”? At what point has there been good accountability of secret services? Given what we know of their history it has arguably been even worse before.
Perhaps some smaller countries have had secret services with an apparently clean record (would be hard to know for sure) at some point. But that could be more a matter of luck with who was in charge and hired at that point.
It is new, for both secret services and politics, there use to be a principe of honor and respectability. Once exposed to bad behaviors, people where quitting by themselves or heads being chopped because of the public shame.
Now the people involved will keep their position till the end, doing whatever needed and whatever the cost to not move despite being convicted or close to it.
To me, this is new in the last decades.
Look at Nixon with the Watergate, nowadays, same with Trump, the guys will just say "and so what?" And things will continue like if it was nothing.
Same in UK, same in France, ...
It's crazy to me that some people think this is new.
Not sure why it would be, short of taking a cheap shot at people. Most people alive right now were born in the past 50 years [0], and won't be intimately familiar with history in so much detail, including me. It's niche knowledge, let's be honest. And people being conspiratorial and speculating on these is not the same as knowing about it with examples.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_median_ag...
"it's worse now" would imply a positive belief about how things were better back in the halcyon days and things are worse now. Otherwise they would not have said it. Not knowing something isn't the same as knowing something that is not.
Not sure I follow?
These were the things that were said:
> It is crazy how secret services (...) now have a green pass
Step-function.
> think this is new
Step-function.
You're the only person describing a gradient ("it's worse now").
> Not knowing something isn't the same as knowing something that is not.
This is what I'm saying. That this kind of thing having been speculated on by a lot of people the GP above then believed doesn't mean those folks had actual information backing all of that up.
I didn't mean to imply any gradients, I was referring to the perception that things have changed in a negative way. I think we are in agreement anyway.
That's a clear failure of culture and leadership in their investigation, how they can't see that defending bad actors in their organization only sheds a shadow on their entire organization is beyond me.
The accused agent, has brought shame and dishonor on their group, he effectively betrayed the organization with his actions, the fact his colleagues chose to break the law to support him is beyond the pale. This is just a symptom of the old boys club that normalizes deviancy, covering up slip ups and inevitably to shit like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Five
But why would they care about there being a shadow on their organisation? They are immune to prosecution, will be funded no matter what, and if some politician, judge, or media organisation gets in their way they can simply neutralise them.
> They are immune to prosecution,
Are they really, that sounds improbable but I will believe you for the purposes of this discussion.
> will be funded no matter what, and if some politician, judge, or media organisation gets in their way they can simply neutralise them.
They are MI5, they are pretty much glorified police. Their funding is not guaranteed, their existence is not guaranteed, they could be replaced as an organization as whole, or piecemeal.
See what's happening to the FBI, this could happen to them. All it would take would be sufficient political momentum or a teflon politician.
A politician on whom nothing sticks.
> But why would they care about there being a shadow on their organisation?
That which need not exist ought not cast a shadow, no? Drawing attention to themselves or their work is an own goal.
> Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
As worrying as this story is, I find it interesting and consoling that the BBC, which is a state owned media, didn't hesitate and even strongly pushed to investigate and publish a story of abuse at another government agency. They weren't pressured to drop it, but kept going.
Goes strongly against the common narrative about "the mainstream media" and state media in particular (about them being complicit and useless).
My friend that is how they work.
The BBC is not only a domestic tool, but a global tool for controlling the image of the British state and perceived lack of corruption.
When people start to question their behaviour, up pops this kinda counter. The judges are part of the same system.
> The BBC is not only a domestic tool, but a global tool for controlling the image of the British state and perceived lack of corruption
And they control it by exposing that the MI5 is covering woman abusing pedophiles ?
Yes.
These are the ancestors of the people who flooded China with Opium, and killed more people in India then Hitler did in his time.
Did you not see the lengths they went to over complying over the Chagos Islands? To be 'seen' as a lawful country.
Reminds me of Black Bag (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Bag).
Also, I can't help but feel depressed thinking about countries with less sophisticated justice systems. The absolute power an individual (they can be low rank!) gives me the shudders.
Title needs edit.
Original title of article is:
> How MI5 piled falsehood on falsehood in court in the case of a spy who abused women
Somewhat surprisingly, the current title does not seem to be editorializing or otherwise changing the thrust of the article; I don’t mind it staying as is
At the time I posted, the title was truncated and did not include the direct object or object of the preposition, so it was title gore. It has since been edited by OP or by mods, so the issue is resolved in my view. I don't dispute that the title as you may have seen it is fine, now.
What could MI5 possibly stand to gain from hiding a person who is described as "a violent misogynist abuser with paedophilic tendencies who had used his MI5 role as a tool of coercion"?
Is it only because it would "look bad on MI5" if people like that worked there? Seems like such a trivial thing to immediately take a stand against and get rid of as soon as you notice it, rather than trying to hide
> What could MI5 possibly stand to gain from hiding a person who is described as "a violent misogynist abuser with paedophilic tendencies who had used his MI5 role as a tool of coercion"?
The continued loyalty of their other employees, a significant proportion of whom also enjoy using their MI5 role as a tool of coercion?
The most “sane” explanation is that revealing his identity would compromise ongoing operations.
Something like someone who did know him as his secret identity would see his face, hear his association with MI5 and go “Wow Dude! Turns out ‘Niegel from Birmingham’ wasn’t really ‘Niegel’ at all! Didn’t he introduce us to Tommy as his old childhood friend? Maybe we shouldn’t trust Tommy anymore either. In fact why don’t we dangle Tommy from his ankles until he confesses?” So revealing that this miscreant is MI5 could put the life of other agents in danger too.
Or alternatively it can be about protecting some method. Like this terrible person introduced a bunch of criminals to a “secure chat” application, and you don’t want them to think it is not as secure as they think. (Obviously the names and particulars are wild guesses with no basis in reality.)
Not saying it is a great argument, but that is how these kind of agencies think sometimes.
The combination of being ready to forgive "good people", and ready to consider the enemies of "good people" your enemies too, can be horrifying – and yet, it feels incredibly righteous in the moment. (Related story: a lay preacher was a stalker, and the Bishop of Leicester helped retaliate against the victim. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce3velqy9rzo)
Or perhaps that person knows too much, so it is better to swipe it under the rug. They will probably eventually attempt to disassociate themselves from him, through any means necessary.
This seems like a bad strategy then. It brings more attention. Disappearing HIM seems the best strategy.
Yes, your last sentence is exactly what I was thinking of. They will probably end up doing that, one way or another.
> What could MI5 possibly stand to gain from hiding a person who is described as "a violent misogynist abuser with paedophilic tendencies who had used his MI5 role as a tool of coercion"?
Because people like that are useful to get inside organisations full of other evil people and prevent those organisations doing even worse things.
I hate it, but that is the logic.
Is it really that difficult to pretend to be a right-wing extremist?
I mean, could you? Convincingly? For the duration of a mission?
I've long thought I could be a convincing extreme right influence, but I definitely couldn't do it IRL in front of nazi thugs
'If you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life.'
"Agent X, we need you to go undercover..."
"I am ready, Sir!"
"... in some violent, right-wing militia..."
"Oh, I'm way ahead on this assignment!"
probably the same thing that happened in the church or other organisations. bad people are able to convince others to do small things to help them, then once it surfaces what they are doing they are able to convince their enablers that their fates are tied together. from that point they are able to coerce their enablers into making bigger violations to protect them and and it becomes increasingly difficult to defect against them.
The MI5, like every other secret service, wants their members to feel part of a brotherhood and to never ever divulge any secret to anyone outside the group. They also want their agents to be utterly loyal to their superiors, and to trust them that any despicable thing they may be asked to do is done in service of some greater good, or that at least it serves their own interests.
All of these things together make it so that the immediate reaction to any apparent wrongdoing is to close ranks, tell nothing to outsiders like the police or prosecutors until some boss decides otherwise. And that boss will of course weigh any such decision against the risk that any minute secret might be revealed in an investigation, that any agent might lose a tiny bit of confidence, etc - and likely will brush it off and apply some paltry administrative penalty then move on.
He didn’t work there. He was a Neo-Nazi and member of Neo-Nazi organisations, divulging secrets.
By keeping him out of jail, Mi5 stood to gain more intelligence
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What can I say, super instructive about what to expect when you start making inquiries about a state apparatus with lots of power. It also shows the need to make meticulous notes about everything and hold the state to telling the truth (as much as you can).
From what I can recall there has been similar things happening in Germany where police informers used the money gotten from informing on their (extreme right-wing) group to finance the group agenda. This is far from new. Secret services should be abolished in the name of democracy.
There was also the cases where at least one British undercover police officer infiltrated environmental organisations, and in the process fathered children under their assumed identity.
The title's too long. Suggested: MI5 lied in court in case of spy who abused women.
For anyone not familiar with the British State, it, along with its lieutenants such as the bbc, continually check the temperature of the nation. As it’s important that the docile middle classes who rarely interact with the justice system or question the media, remain naive. Along with those sold on the British Image around the world.
These legal cases are just theatre with professional actors.
‘Justice being seen to be done’
Trust in the bbc has been nosediving, and up pops this case of the BBC holding the state to account… and the judges giving appearance of impartiality…
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Which Invasion?
Likely some anti-immigrant nonsense.
LOL, imagine?
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