Yesterday was an odd day.

After weeks of rain and chilly weather, yesterday was a mini-heatwave, all by itself. I was walking around in short sleeves and was way too hot. Without any apparent awareness of the irony, yesterday was also the day that the city decided to put up its Christmas tree.

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I finished reading George R.R. Martin's A Feast for Crows yesterday, and enjoyed it very much. I may post a review, if I find time. I understand the book isn't yet out in some parts of the world. :p

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Britain and the USA have been increasingly relying on information obtained by torture in other countries in the "war on terror". The CIA's policy of "extraordinary rendition" involves sending suspects to countries known to carry out torture, so that our hands can be kept "clean".

Here is Craig Murray, the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, writing in The Independent yesterday on what torture means:

It means the woman who was raped with a broken bottle in both vagina and anus, and who died after ten days of agony. It means the old man suspended by wrist shackles from the ceiling while his children were beaten to a pulp before his eyes. It means the man whose fingernails were pulled before his face was beaten and he was immersed to his armpits in boiling liquid.

It means the 18-year-old whose knees and elbows were smashed, his hand immersed in boiling liquid until the skin came away and the flesh started to peel from the bone, before the back of his skull was stove in.

These are all real cases from the Uzbek security services which we viewed as a friendly liaison, and from which we obtained regular intelligence, in the Uzbek case via the CIA.

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History tells us that under torture people would choke out an admission that they had joined their neighbours in flying on broomsticks with cats.

The full article is here.