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.
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.
And depressingly, even that isn't true - states are plagued with the principal-agent problem[1], as is basically every organization.
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1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...
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.
They have not been for quite a while. They are the type of country where you go to jail over a meme.
https://www.womenarehuman.com/man-arrested-for-sharing-meme-...
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/uk-teens-who-mocked-ge...
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.
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.
The twitter post made it to national news because people actually listened to it and set fire to the building while people were inside.
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.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Jean_Charles_de_Men...
I'm sure they also gave him a stern talking-to
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).
[EDITED TO ADD] I updated to the proper dates, and linked his eulogy.
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.
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.
MI5/6 are never good guys.
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
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.
The continued loyalty of their other employees, a significant proportion of whom also enjoy using their MI5 role as a tool of coercion?
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.
By keeping him out of jail, Mi5 stood to gain more intelligence
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.
Original title of article is:
> How MI5 piled falsehood on falsehood in court in the case of a spy who abused women
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
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.
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.
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:
"as on board as other journalists"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.
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, ...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_median_ag...
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.
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.
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…
Goes strongly against the common narrative about "the mainstream media" and state media in particular (about them being complicit and useless).
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.
And they control it by exposing that the MI5 is covering woman abusing pedophiles ?
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.
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.
wizzwizz4•1d ago