Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 49 Location: Land Of The Scots
Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 6:39 pm Post subject: 'Crim' Craig Murray: How Condemning Torture Killed My Career
Tony Blair to blame for 700,000 rotting Iraqi corpses
Interesting article from Craig Watson......
As Britain's outspoken Ambassador to the Central Asian Republic of Uzbekistan, Craig Murray helped expose vicious human rights abuses by the US-funded regime of Islam Karimov. He is now a prominent critic of Western policy in the region. Here are two excerpts from his blog.
March 26, 2007, Lying About The Dead
An extraordinary story appeared once this morning on BBC News 24, and then was buried.
The BBC World Service has obtained a document. It is an official appraisal by British government scientists across government departments, commissioned by 10 Downing Street, of the study published by the Lancet that estimated 655,000 dead in Iraq.
The appraisal says that the methodology is correct and that the study "follows best practice".
Astonishingly, the official DFID verdict was that 655,000 dead is "If anything, an underestimate".
Yet the Government poured scorn on the Lancet study, despite having commissioned a report from their own scientists that said it was good.
Who can doubt that if the government scientists had rubbished the study, the number ten spin machine would have publicised that like crazy?
Doubtless the Official Secrets Act will be wheeled out to try and sit on the government scientists' report, which the BBC already seems to have reburied, showing its typical craven attitude towards the Blair government.
Personally, I did not know how much credence to give the study published in the Lancet, not being technically equipped to evaluate it.
We can now be confident that the death toll in Iraq was over 600,000 a year ago, and probably over 700,000 now.
There is much talk of Blair's legacy. In fact he has two major legacies. 700,000 rotting corpses, and the culture of lies that sought to suppress the truth about it.
December 15, 2006 The War on Shampoo
Google "Rashid Rauf - mastermind". On the first page of results you will find CBS, the BBC, the Times, Guardian and Mail all describing Rauf last summer, on security service or police briefing, as the "Mastermind" behind the "Liquid terror bomb plot".
So the fact that a Pakistani court has found there is no evidence of terrorism against him cannot be lightly dismissed by the cheerleaders of the plot story.
Rashid Rauf still faces other charges, including forgery, and what is touted as possession of explosives, although what he actually possessed was hydrogen peroxide, which is not explosive.
As hydrogen peroxide is readily obtainable without limitation from any chemist or hardware store in the UK, why you would source it in Pakistan to blow up jets in Britain was never very convincing. The Pakistani court perhaps felt so too.
Rashid Rauf has much to answer. He is still wanted in the UK over the murder of his uncle some years ago - a crime which, like the alleged forgery, had no apparent terrorist link.
None of which adds to the credibility of the evidence he allegedly gave the Pakistani intelligence services about the liquid bomb plot in the UK.
A second and simultaneous development is even more compelling evidence that this massive scare was, as I said at the time, "More propaganda than plot".
Thames Valley police have given up after five months scouring the woods near High Wycombe where the bomb materials were allegedly hidden.
They told the Home Office on 12 December that they would only continue if the government were prepared to meet the costs; they wished to get back to devoting their resources to real crimes, like armed robbery and burglary.
Remember this was a plot described by the authorities as "Mass murder on an unimaginable scale" and "Bigger than 9/11". There have been instances in the UK of hundreds of police officers deployed for years to find an individual murderer.
If the police really believed they were dealing with an effort at "Mass murder on an unimaginable scale", would they be calling off the search after five months? No.
Which brings us to the lies that have been told - one of which concerns this search. An anonymous police source tipped off the media early on that they had discovered a "Suitcase" containing "bomb-making materials".
This has recently been described to me by a security service source as "A lot of rubbish from someone's garage dumped in the woods".
You could indeed cannibalise bits of old wire, clocks and car parts to form part of a bomb - perhaps you could enclose it in the old suitcase.
But have they found stuff that is exclusively concerned with causing explosions, like detonators, explosives or those famous liquid chemicals? No, they haven't found any.
Wycombe Woods, like the sands of Iraq, have failed to yield up the advertised WMD.
The other "evidence" that the police announced they had found consisted of wills (with the implication they were made by suicide bombers) and a map of Afghanistan.
It turns out that the wills were made in the early 90s by volunteers going off to fight the Serbs in Bosnia - they had been left with the now deceased uncle of one of those arrested.
The map of Afghanistan had been copied out by an eleven year old boy. All of which is well known to the UK media, but none of which has been reported for fear of prejudicing the trial.
I am at a complete loss to understand why it does not prejudice the trial for police to announce in a blaze of worldwide front page publicity that they have found bomb-making materials, wills and maps. Only if you contradict the police is that prejudicial. Can anyone explain why?
While the arrest of 26 people in connection with the plot was also massively publicised, the gradual release of many of them has again gone virtually unreported. For example on 31 October a judge released two brothers from Chingford commenting that the police had produced no credible evidence against them.
Charges against others have been downgraded, so that those now accused of plotting to commit explosions are less than the ten planes the police claimed they planned to blow up in suicide attacks.
Five British newspapers had to pay damages to a Birmingham man they accused, on security service briefing, of being part of the plot. Only the Guardian had the grace to publish the fact and print a retraction.
A final fact to ponder. Despite naming him as the "mastermind" behind somethng "bigger than 9/11", the British government made no attempt to extradite Rashid Rauf on charges of terrorism.
That is not difficult to do - the Pakistani authorities have handed over scores of terrorist suspects to the US, many into the extraordinary rendition process, and on average the procedure is astonishingly quick - less than a week and they are out of the country.
But the British security services, who placed so much weight on intelligence from Rashid Rauf, were extraordinarily coy about getting him here where his evidence could be properly scrutinised by a British court.
However MI5 were greatly embarassed by Birmingham police, who insisted on pointing out that Rauf was wanted in the UK over the alleged murder of his uncle in Birmingham.
Now he was in custody in Pakistan, shouldn't we extradite him? So eventually an extradition request over that murder was formally submitted - but not pursued with real energy or effort. There remains no sign that we will see Rauf in the UK.
I still do not rule out that there was a germ of a terror plot at the heart of this investigation. We can speculate about agents provocateurs and security service penetration, both British and Pakistani, but still there might have been genuine terrorists involved.
But the incredible disruption to the travelling public, the War on Shampoo, and the "Bigger than 9/11" hype is unravelling.
Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2007 4:19 pm Post subject: 'How I know Blair faked Iran map'
'How I know Blair faked Iran map'
'Like most senior Royal Navy officers, Commodore Nick Lambert has great reserves of professional expertise and common sense. The Coalition task force commander was aboard HMS Cornwall when 15 Royal Navy personnel serving on the frigate were seized at gunpoint by Iranian forces on March 23. The Navy states the 14 men and one woman were on a routine patrol in rigid inflatables off Iraqi shores - Iran insists they were in its waters illegally.'
A few hours after the 15 were seized, Cdre Lambert said: 'There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that they were in Iraqi territorial waters. Equally, the Iranians may well claim that they were in their territorial waters. The extent and definition of territorial waters in this part of the world is very complicated.'
And his predecessor in command of the task force, Commodore Peter Lockwood of the Royal Australian Navy, said last October: 'No maritime border has been agreed upon by the countries.'
Both officers told the truth. It is the burial of this truth by No 10 spin doctors, and Tony Blair's remark that he is 'utterly certain' the incident took place within Iraqi territorial limits, that has escalated this from an incident to a crisis. Blair is being fatuous.
How can you be certain which side of a boundary you are when that boundary has never been drawn?
An article by Craig Murray, (the former British Ambassador to the Central Asian Republic of Uzbekistan) which he describes as "perhaps the most important thing I have published"
Quote:
July 27, 2007
Afghanistan
This blog has been silent for a week because I have been looking at environmental and fair trade projects around Ghana. It does mean that I was not here to say "I told you so", now it is admitted Blair's Iran maritime boundary map was a fake. But in my absence I was delighted that the Mail on Sunday published my article about an even bigger deception, the war in Afghanistan:
DYING TO PROTECT THE DRUGS BARONS
This week the 64th British soldier to die in Afghanistan, Corporal Mike Gilyeat, was buried. All the right things were said about this brave soldier, just as, on current trends, they will be said about one or more of his colleagues who follow him next week.
The alarming escalation of the casualty rate among British soldiers in Afghanistan – up to ten per cent – led to discussion this week on whether it could be fairly compared to casualty rates in the Second World War.
But the key question is this: what are our servicemen dying for? There are glib answers to that: bringing democracy and development to Afghanistan, supporting the government of President Hamid Karzai in its attempt to establish order in the country, fighting the Taliban and preventing the further spread of radical Islam into Pakistan.
But do these answers stand up to close analysis?
There has been too easy an acceptance of the lazy notion that the war in Afghanistan is the 'good' war, while the war in Iraq is the 'bad' war, the blunder. The origins of this view are not irrational. There was a logic to attacking Afghanistan after 9/11.
Afghanistan was indeed the headquarters of Osama Bin Laden and his organisation, who had been installed and financed there by the CIA to fight the Soviets from 1979 until 1989. By comparison, the attack on Iraq – which was an enemy of Al Qaeda and no threat to us – was plainly irrational in terms of the official justification.
So the attack on Afghanistan has enjoyed a much greater sense of public legitimacy. But the operation to remove Bin Laden was one thing. Six years of occupation are clearly another.
Few seem to turn a hair at the officially expressed view that our occupation of Afghanistan may last for decades.
Lib Dem leader Menzies Campbell has declared, fatuously, that the Afghan war is 'winnable'.
Afghanistan was not militarily winnable by the British Empire at the height of its supremacy. It was not winnable by Darius or Alexander, by Shah, Tsar or Great Moghul. It could not be subdued by 240,000 Soviet troops. But what, precisely, are we trying to win?
In six years, the occupation has wrought one massive transformation in Afghanistan, a development so huge that it has increased Afghan GDP by 66 per cent and constitutes 40 per cent of the entire economy. That is a startling achievement, by any standards. Yet we are not trumpeting it. Why not?
The answer is this. The achievement is the highest harvests of opium the world has ever seen.
The Taliban had reduced the opium crop to precisely nil. I would not advocate their methods for doing this, which involved lopping bits, often vital bits, off people. The Taliban were a bunch of mad and deeply unpleasant religious fanatics. But one of the things they were vehemently against was opium.
That is an inconvenient truth that our spin has managed to obscure. Nobody has denied the sincerity of the Taliban's crazy religious zeal, and they were as unlikely to sell you heroin as a bottle of Johnnie Walker.
They stamped out the opium trade, and impoverished and drove out the drug warlords whose warring and rapacity had ruined what was left of the country after the Soviet war.
That is about the only good thing you can say about the Taliban; there are plenty of very bad things to say about them. But their suppression of the opium trade and the drug barons is undeniable fact.
Now we are occupying the country, that has changed. According to the United Nations, 2006 was the biggest opium harvest in history, smashing the previous record by 60 per cent. This year will be even bigger.
Our economic achievement in Afghanistan goes well beyond the simple production of raw opium. In fact Afghanistan no longer exports much raw opium at all. It has succeeded in what our international aid efforts urge every developing country to do. Afghanistan has gone into manufacturing and 'value-added' operations.
It now exports not opium, but heroin. Opium is converted into heroin on an industrial scale, not in kitchens but in factories. Millions of gallons of the chemicals needed for this process are shipped into Afghanistan by tanker. The tankers and bulk opium lorries on the way to the factories share the roads, improved by American aid, with Nato troops.
How can this have happened, and on this scale? The answer is simple. The four largest players in the heroin business are all senior members of the Afghan government – the government that our soldiers are fighting and dying to protect.
When we attacked Afghanistan, America bombed from the air while the CIA paid, armed and equipped the dispirited warlord drug barons – especially those grouped in the Northern Alliance – to do the ground occupation. We bombed the Taliban and their allies into submission, while the warlords moved in to claim the spoils. Then we made them ministers.
President Karzai is a good man. He has never had an opponent killed, which may not sound like much but is highly unusual in this region and possibly unique in an Afghan leader. But nobody really believes he is running the country. He asked America to stop its recent bombing campaign in the south because it was leading to an increase in support for the Taliban. The United States simply ignored him. Above all, he has no control at all over the warlords among his ministers and governors, each of whom runs his own kingdom and whose primary concern is self-enrichment through heroin.
My knowledge of all this comes from my time as British Ambassador in neighbouring Uzbekistan from 2002 until 2004. I stood at the Friendship Bridge at Termez in 2003 and watched the Jeeps with blacked-out windows bringing the heroin through from Afghanistan, en route to Europe.
I watched the tankers of chemicals roaring into Afghanistan.
Yet I could not persuade my country to do anything about it. Alexander Litvinenko – the former agent of the KGB, now the FSB, who died in London last November after being poisoned with polonium 210 – had suffered the same frustration over the same topic.
There are a number of theories as to why Litvinenko had to flee Russia. The most popular blames his support for the theory that FSB agents planted bombs in Russian apartment blocks to stir up anti-Chechen feeling.
But the truth is that his discoveries about the heroin trade were what put his life in danger. Litvinenko was working for the KGB in St Petersburg in 2001 and 2002. He became concerned at the vast amounts of heroin coming from Afghanistan, in particular from the fiefdom of the (now) Head of the Afghan armed forces, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, in north and east Afghanistan.
Dostum is an Uzbek, and the heroin passes over the Friendship Bridge from Afghanistan to Uzbekistan, where it is taken over by President Islam Karimov's people. It is then shipped up the railway line, in bales of cotton, to St Petersburg and Riga.
The heroin Jeeps run from General Dostum to President Karimov. The UK, United States and Germany have all invested large sums in donating the most sophisticated detection and screening equipment to the Uzbek customs centre at Termez to stop the heroin coming through.
But the convoys of Jeeps running between Dostum and Karimov are simply waved around the side of the facility.
Litvinenko uncovered the St Petersburg end and was stunned by the involvement of the city authorities, local police and security services at the most senior levels. He reported in detail to President Vladimir Putin. Putin is, of course, from St Petersburg, and the people Litvinenko named were among Putin's closest political allies. That is why Litvinenko, having miscalculated badly, had to flee Russia.
I had as little luck as Litvinenko in trying to get official action against this heroin trade. At the St Petersburg end he found those involved had the top protection. In Afghanistan, General Dostum is vital to Karzai's coalition, and to the West's pretence of a stable, democratic government.
Opium is produced all over Afghanistan, but especially in the north and north-east – Dostum's territory. Again, our Government's spin doctors have tried hard to obscure this fact and make out that the bulk of the heroin is produced in the tiny areas of the south under Taliban control. But these are the most desolate, infertile rocky areas. It is a physical impossibility to produce the bulk of the vast opium harvest there.
That General Dostum is head of the Afghan armed forces and Deputy Minister of Defence is in itself a symbol of the bankruptcy of our policy. Dostum is known for tying opponents to tank tracks and running them over. He crammed prisoners into metal containers in the searing sun, causing scores to die of heat and thirst.
Since we brought 'democracy' to Afghanistan, Dostum ordered an MP who annoyed him to be pinned down while he attacked him. The sad thing is that Dostum is probably not the worst of those comprising the Karzai government, or the biggest drug smuggler among them.
Our Afghan policy is still victim to Tony Blair's simplistic world view and his childish division of all conflicts into 'good guys' and 'bad guys'. The truth is that there are seldom any good guys among those vying for power in a country such as Afghanistan. To characterise the Karzai government as good guys is sheer nonsense.
Why then do we continue to send our soldiers to die in Afghanistan? Our presence in Afghanistan and Iraq is the greatest recruiting sergeant for Islamic militants. As the great diplomat, soldier and adventurer Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Alexander Burnes pointed out before his death in the First Afghan War in 1841, there is no point in a military campaign in Afghanistan as every time you beat them, you just swell their numbers. Our only real achievement to date is falling street prices for heroin in London.
Remember this article next time you hear a politician calling for more troops to go into Afghanistan. And when you hear of another brave British life wasted there, remember you can add to the casualty figures all the young lives ruined, made miserable or ended by heroin in the UK.
I think this is perhaps the most important thing I have published. It is also worth noting that the Mail was the only mainstream paper which would carry at the time my article exposing the fake maritime boundaries map. The Guardian and Independent refused to stand against the "patriotic" flood of lying propaganda. The Mail has since been totally vindicated. I think they deserve full credit for continuing to take challenging material which contradicts the official story.
I was watching PMQs a few months ago when the, then PM asserted that the military operation in Afghanistan had resulted in lower levels of their drugs reaching our streets.
Is it simplistic or wrong to view the ruling elite as the head of the serpent that is the global drug trade ? _________________ The Medium is the Massage - Marshall McLuhan.
David J. WarnerPosted Sep 19th 2007 12:15PM by David J. Warner
Now let's look in on the saga of the Russian steel magnate trying to buy a Premier League club and the former ambassador claiming he's a gangster.
While Alisher Umanov's Red and White Holdings Ltd. is busy increasing its stake in Arsenal, Craig Murray continues to make noise in the media and on his blog. Murray was approached last week by Paul Kelso, journalist for The Guardian, for this piece on Usmanov and his time in Soviet prison. Within hours of the story being published, Murray went straight to his blog and lambasted Kelso for publishing an "arse-licking, unquestioning repetition of the claims of Usmanov's lawyers."
Murray also claims he didn't choose to take down his original blog post on Usmanov's checkered past; his ISP removed the story at the behest of Schillings, the law firm that represents Usmanov. When Kelso asked Murray about that original post, Murray replied:
I withdraw nothing. I want Usmanov to sue me. ... I know enough about him, and enough potential witnesses, to give him a torrid time in a UK court beyond even the ability of Schillings to cover up. Usmanov knows that, and Schillings are obviously bluffing.
Now here's the kick in the arse. In his correspondence with Kelso, Murray included this tidbit about his book, Murder at Samarkand:
Although they are writing that my book is "libellous", it has been out for over a year now, sold over 25,000 copies already, and they have done nothing but spout *. As you may know, my book is being made into a film next year by Michael Winterbottom and Paramount ...
Why, no, Mr. Murray, I didn't know that, and I'm afraid that calls a few things into question. Does Murray really have enough dirt on Usmanov to block his bid for Arsenal? Or is he just trying to promote his book and its movie adaptation? It's entirely possible that the answer to both questions is yes, but it doesn't really cast Murray's lawsuit-baiting tactics in the best light. Someone should remind him of that.
Click to find out more about Murder in Samarkand and other books that may be of interest
Just Foreign Policy Iraqi Death Estimator
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September 19, 2007
Mordechai Vanunu
As the mad brinkmanship proceeds in the Middle East, it is worth bearing a few things in mind.
1) There is only one country in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons, and it is a highly aggressive racist state that visits untold misery on its neighbours and illegally occupies their land. It is called Israel.
2) Making a nuclear weapon takes a lot of time and material. Both Syria and Iran are many years away, even if they are trying to produce a nuclear bomb - which they probably are. Given Israel's nuclear bomb, and given what the US did to Iraq, I can quite understand their desire to go nuclear for protection. Bombing them just makes this worse.
3) A nuclear free Middle East, including Israel, and a withdrawal of all US military forces from Iraq, is the path to peace and agreement. Everything else is a build up to a big war - which is what some people want, of course.
4) Bombing someone else's country is plain illegal outside of formal war. Even then, there are limits on what is legitimate.
5) My fellow University Rector, Glasgow's Mordechai Vanunu, is still effectively imprisoned for telling us about Israel's nuclear weapons programme. He should be released immediately.
Posted by craig on 12:08 AM 19/09/07 under War and Iran? | Comments (5)
September 18, 2007
A Sovereign Iraq?
Whether the "Government" of Iraq has any authority in its own country will be tested by the ability to make their banning of Blackwater stick. Most governments might be expected to object to having scores of thousands of foreign mercenaries roaming around their land, threatening the populace and occasionally massacring them.
Over 80% of the money spent by the US on "reconstruction" in Iraq has gone under the heading of "security", mostly to companies like Blackwater and Aegis, their UK counterpart. The US is now trying to put on pressure by suspending all aid projects until Blackwater is reinstated. As their efforts this last four years have undeniably left Iraqis much worse off than before, they should be told where to get off.
If anyone doesn't understand how these mercenary companies operate, they should view the infamous "Aegis Trophy Video", originally put up on Aegis website by their employees as a macabre souvenir. In fact everyone should watch this - and remember this is not a movie, those are real human beings murdered for fun.
http://www.flurl.com/uploaded/Bareknucklepoliticscom_EXCLUSIVE_10122.h tml
The comment by the ex mercenary under the video is also worth taking in.
I feel terribly sorry for the soldiers who have ended up in this futile war. But for mercenaries I have no time at all. They kill people for money. If they are killed themselves, my sympathy is still there, but strained. One story which went peculiarly quiet was the five mercenaries, four British, from "Garda World" who were kidnapped at end May along with the consultant they were protecting. The kidnap involved over a hundred properly accredited Iraqi security personnel with the right uniforms, documents and weapons. What happened to the mercenaries, and to their client? Why did the whole story get a miniscule percentage of the publicity given routinely to Brit hostages?
The Garda World mercenaries had a peculiar relationship with the MI6 informant and neo-con alcoholic, the Rev Canon Andrew White, quite the strangest creature to come out of the generally admirable Church of England for many years. He left Baghdad shortly after this kidnap. Any connection?
Posted by craig on 11:32 PM 18/09/07 under War in Iraq | Comments (4)
Agencies accuse UK government of reclassifying cluster bomb in order to beat the weapon's ban
From Amnesty International
The UK, the world's third largest user of lethal cluster bombs over the last ten years, has renamed one of its two remaining cluster munitions in an effort to beat an expected worldwide ban next year said humanitarian organisations Oxfam, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Landmine Action today.
The move would mean that the Hydra CRV-7 rocket system, which can deliver 171 'M73' bomblets from a helicopter-mounted rocket pod, would remain part of British arsenals.
As recently as 23 November 2006, the government listed the CRV-7 as a cluster munition. But on 16 July this year, just months after it said it would back a worldwide cluster bomb ban, the Government said the CRV-7 was no longer a cluster bomb.
Simon Conway, Director of Landmine Action said:
'Ten years after it championed a treaty banning landmines the UK has a chance to do the same with cluster bombs - but instead it is spinning a cluster bomb con.
'This is a deeply cynical move. The UK Government needs to announce an immediate end to the use of these indiscriminate killers.'
US forces used the rocket-delivered M73 'bomblets' in Iraq in 2003. Human Rights Watch reported contamination of unexploded M73 bomblets left behind after the strikes...
Posted by andrew on 6:17 PM 18/09/07 under War in Iraq | Comments (0)
The Choice
Meantime Murder in Samarkand appears almost totally off the shelves. I needed some copies at the weekend, and went to Waterstones in Malet St, Trafalgar Sq, Piccadilly Circus and Notting Hill Gate, to Daunts, Hatchards, Foyles, to Blackwells and Borders in Charing Cross Road and to Books Etc in Shepherds Bush. Between all of these I culled just four copies, with most shops having none. None have any copies today.
Amazon.co.uk also have the paperback no longer in stock but on 6 day delivery.
Yet there were plenty of copies everywhere of Tamerlaine's Children by Robert Rand and Ghost Plane by Stephen Grey. These are very good books by friends of mine on broadly the same subject as mine, but have sold less than a quarter the number and are tens of thousands lower in the Amazon sales rankings.
I have continually been frustrated by this. Murder has sold remarkably well given its invisibility. But it really is hard to understand what is happening - and why.
Posted by craig on 1:20 PM 18/09/07 under Interviews | Comments (6)
September 17, 2007
Bush setting America up for war with Iran
From the Sunday Telegraph
Senior American intelligence and defence officials believe that President George W Bush and his inner circle are taking steps to place America on the path to war with Iran, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.
Pentagon planners have developed a list of up to 2,000 bombing targets in Iran, amid growing fears among serving officers that diplomatic efforts to slow Iran's nuclear weapons programme are doomed to fail.
Pentagon and CIA officers say they believe that the White House has begun a carefully calibrated programme of escalation that could lead to a military showdown with Iran.
Now it has emerged that Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, who has been pushing for a diplomatic solution, is prepared to settle her differences with Vice-President Dick Cheney and sanction military action...
...Recent developments over Iraq appear to fit with the pattern of escalation predicted by Pentagon officials.
Gen David Petraeus, Mr Bush's senior Iraq commander, denounced the Iranian "proxy war" in Iraq last week as he built support in Washington for the US military surge in Baghdad.
The full article can be read here
Posted by andrew on 11:25 AM 17/09/07 under War and Iran? | Comments (12)
I'm surprised Craig is still alive, let alone still blogging. A very brave and just man clearly demonstrating just what 'the truth & justice movement' is up against.
Time for us all to get a real handle on psychopathy and the depths it will sink to in maintaining its grip on all us 'lesser mortals'?
There is a desperate need for people to wise up. The power of free speech on the net is being rapidly eroded - often by people who don't really have a clue that they are being manipulated.
On a minor related subject, I have been notified that the site 'truthaction.org' is 'cleaning house' - that is, anyone who doesn't fall for their divisive and smothering take on 'reality' is being banned out of hand. The latest being a rather outspoken (good for him/her!) poster going by the nym 'aldo-p2'. I suppose with a nym like that, it would ring alarm bells for anyone conversant with the Gladio operation, from the 'wrong' side.
I've mentioned Sealand.com here recently. It really is high time those of us committed to bringing justice to the corporate criminals in our midst did a little more to protect our sources of information and communications. This game will end in death for many of us - time to treat this issue accordingly?
Note that Craig's site still exists but is 'timing out' right now - yeah, right!
Soon to happen here, if you moderators don't get your act together and realise how divisive issues (irrelevant at this stage, IMO) are tearing you apart (Space beams or thermate are NOT the central issue; the CFR's PNAC IS)...?
If Truth and Justice are what you are really all about, these 'mechanism' arguments should be put into perspective as entirely secondary to the main thrust.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2007 2:33 pm Post subject:
Craig's site http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/ has gone completely now and the post at the top of this thread appears to be the last known version of his front page.
As regards this site and the s**t state of ths forum's management. I agree with you 100% Thermate. I arranged with Ian Neal, James Robinson and Simon Aaronowitz for the site transfer to happen at the weekend but it didn't go ahead!
No explanation I can see here anywhere. This simply ain't good enough!
Thermate911 wrote:
Note that Craig's site still exists but is 'timing out' right now - yeah, right!
Soon to happen here, if you moderators don't get your act together and realise how divisive issues (irrelevant at this stage, IMO) are tearing you apart (Space beams or thermate are NOT the central issue; the CFR's PNAC IS)...?
Apparently it might all be sorted shortly as there have been unexpected delays - does that sound familiar to any users of this forum????
List of supporters - Below if the official list of blogs and bloggers that support this fight for free speech. Many thanks to Justin McKeating for hosting and managing the original.
http://b-heads.blogspot.com/2007/09/list-of-supporters.html
Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 6060 Location: East London
Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2007 9:27 pm Post subject:
I have met Craig many times, the first time when I was one of the volunteers who went to Blackburn to leaflet and talk to potential voters in his 2005 election, when he stood against Jack Straw.
One of the ways we can assist this very brave man is by reading his excellent book, and publicising it within our respective spheres. And remember, with Craig's book and all the good 9/11 or related books, it's useful to request them through your local libraries. If they don't have it, they'll borrow or purchase it, which is obviously of benefit in getting the info out.
I know this is pretty obvious, but it does no harm to suggest it in case someone is put off by the cost.
The London group hope to get him as a speaker at one of our monthly YMCA meetings; he suggested he had a related issue with False Flag ops in Uzbekistan. Though he's not on board 9/11 yet, IMO he's not far away! _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2007 10:39 am Post subject:
some news on cyber bullies and a particularly interesting section on a shill exposed as being paid by Usmanov, the Russian oligarch at the centre of the Craig Murray blog censorship.
Having been a member of the Senior Civil Service for six years, I can assure you of two things:
a) The logging and tracking system for MPs' - let alone shadow cabinet members' - letters arriving into No 10 is very tight. It is not possible David Davis' letter was lost and unrecorded. Nor do I see any reason to doubt that Mr Davis sent it.
b) There are some very right wing people in the security services. It is essential for our democracy that they are not allowed to interfere with our lawmakers.
Jack Straw has gone for the usual government whitewash ploy of choosing a safe conservative judge to mount a long inquiry. In fact, if Straw had any interest in the truth he could find out in a couple of hours if Sadiq Khan MP was bugged, particularly as the individual who allegedly did the bugging has come forward. It looks like this may well lead back to the appalling Sir Ian Blair yet again.
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,,2252618,00.html
But one thing that nobody seems to be commenting on is the position of poor Babar Ahmad, whose wife and father I have had the privilege to meet. Ahmad has been in jail for many years, without a single shred of evidence against him being produced to any judge, ever. It is unclear what exactly he is supposed to have done. It relates apparently to websites supporting the Taliban and Chechen separatists, though supporting in what sense has never been spelt out.
Babar Ahmad denies any connection to any such websites anyway, and I repeat again that no evidence of any kind has ever been produced, nor do the police have any. That is why they have been bugging him for years. The bugging has produced no result either.
Ahmad is being held under the appalling 2002 extradition agreement with the US, which places the UK in the position of a vassal state. Provided the forms are filled in properly, the UK has to extradite its nationals to the US without any evidence being produced by the US that there is even a prima facie case to answer. Astonishingly, our lackey government signed up to this with no reciprocity - we have to extradite our citizens to the US, but the US will not extradite its citizens here without a hearing of evidence by a US court. This is one of the more startling proofs of the abandonment of UK autonomy by Blair that morphed the "Special relationship" into one of master and servant.
The other interesting angle being ignored is, of course, that the results of bugging could not have been used in court here either. Commentators are generally puzzled by the government's refusal to make bugging material admissible as evidence in court, and tend to take the view that this is a last vestige of liberalism.
In fact this is the opposite. Bugging material is in fact used in court, sanitised as "intelligence", and given in tiny out of context clips to judges in camera to justify continued detention without trial or control orders. It is also used at the Special Immigration Appeals Tribunal, a de facto terrorism court. Brian Barder's account of his resignation from that little known body is interesting.
http://www.barder.com/ephems/348
The defence and the "suspect" are not shown the "intelligence" or even given any hint what they are supposed to have done.
So the government's objection to the use of bugging material in court is that it would, 99 times out of 100, help the defence. Rather than giving one or two apparently damning sentences out of context as "intelligence", they would have to make full disclosure of all the transcripts to defence lawyers. As in the case of Babar Ahmad, the fact that years of covert surveillance revealed no bomb or terrorist plots, (which I know for sure) and may have revealed anti-terrorist views (which is speculation), would help the defence.
The same is true, incidentally, of the so-called liquid bomb plotters, some of whom were also bugged for over a year, revealing no plot to bomb up airplanes. Not helpful to have all that in court if you are trying to hype the terrorist threat.
This is not speculation. Remember I was on the inside of this "War on Terror". I know.
Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2008 3:02 pm Post subject: CIA complicit in Uzbekistan torture
CIA complicit in Uzbekistan torture
News Updates from Citizens For Legitimate Government
14 Sep 2008
http://www.legitgov.org/
http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.2446134.0.inte lligence_officer_claims_cia_was_complicit_in_torture_in_uzbekistan.php Sorry Link seems to be broken!! http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=645303 78&blogID=432855240&Mytoken=182C60B5-DAFE-4F97-B5E51A9B735EF4921607776 39
Intelligence officer claims CIA was complicit in torture in Uzbekistan --Officer also claims British UN official was killed by order of Uzbek president Karimov By Neil Mackay 14 Sep 2008 The CIA sent its agents into Uzbekistan torture chambers to observe the abuse of alleged Islamic terrorists, according to a dissident member of the Uzbek security services who is now seeking political asylum in the UK after fleeing Tashkent. Ikrom Yakubov, a former major in the National Security Service (SNB), accused the CIA of involvement in torture sessions in the central Asian republic in an exclusive interview with the Sunday Herald, during which he made a series of startling claims. These include claims that Britain's Richard Conroy, the UN's co-ordinator in Uzbekistan, was assassinated on the orders of Islam Karimov, the president of Uzbekistan... Karimov's regime routinely framed innocent Muslims on charges of involvement in Islamist terror and invented bogus terror threats to maintain his grip on the country, and the CIA used a secret detention facility in Uzbekistan where suspects in the "war on terror" were taken from around the world to be tortured by SNB interrogators.
Evidence of Karimov's Crimes - and CIA Participation By Ambassador Craig Murray 14 Sep 2008 Ikram Yakubov, the Uzbek security service defector, has given his first UK media interview to the first class journalist Neil Mackay of the Sunday Herald. Ikram's testimony is very important, particularly that he personally witnessed a CIA officer present at the torture of Islamic suspects. Remember, the official position of the UK government remains that I was making it all up. They still officially deny the CIA was involved in torture in Uzbekistan, or that we knew about extraordinary rendition... It is also worth remembering that the Tashkent bombings - which as Ambassador I investigated in detail and reported that the Uzbek government story was fake - were used by British ministers in parliament in justification of their anti-terror legislation.
Please forward this update to anyone you think might be interested. Those who'd like to be added to the Newsletter list can sign up: http://www.legitgov.org/.
Please write to: signup@legitgov.org for inquiries.
March 13, 2009
Trying Again to Stop Torture: My Formal Statement for the Joint Committee on Human Rights
WITNESS STATEMENT TO THE PARLIAMENTARY JOINT COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS
My name is Craig Murray. I was British Ambassador in Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004.
I had joined the Diplomatic Service in 1984 and became a member of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Senior Management Structure in 1998. I had held a variety of posts including Deputy High Commissioner, Accra (1998 to 2001) and First Secretary Political and Economic, Warsaw (1994 to 1997).
I had also been head of the FCO section of the Embargo Surveillance Sector leading up to and during the first Gulf War, monitoring and interdicting Iraqi attempts at weapons procurement. In consequence I had obtained security clearances even higher than those routinely given to all executive members of the Diplomatic Service. I had extensive experience throughout my career of dealing with intelligence material and the intelligence services.
It was made plain to me in briefing in London before initial departure for Tashkent that Uzbekistan was a key ally in the War on Terror and to be treated as such. It was particularly important to the USA who valued its security cooperation and its provision of a major US airbase at Karshi-Khanabad.
As Ambassador in Uzbekistan I regularly received intelligence material released by MI6. This material was given to MI6 by the CIA, mostly originating from their Tashkent station. It was normally issued to me telegraphically by MI6 at the same time it was issued to UK ministers and officials in London.
From the start of my time as Ambassador, I was also receiving a continual stream of information about widespread torture of suspected political or religious dissidents in Tashkent. This was taking place on a phenomenal scale. In early 2003 a report by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, in the preparation of which my Embassy much assisted, described torture in Uzbekistan as “routine and systemic”.
The horror and staggering extent of torture in Uzbekistan is well documented and I have been informed by the Chair is not in the purview of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. But what follows goes directly to the question of UK non-compliance with the UN Convention Against Torture.
In gathering evidence from victims of torture, we built a consistent picture of the narrative which the torturers were seeking to validate from confessions under torture. They sought confessions which linked domestic opposition to President Karimov with Al-Qaida and Osama Bin Laden; they sought to exaggerate the strength of the terrorist threat in Central Asia. People arrested on all sorts of pretexts – (I recall one involved in a dispute over ownership of a garage plot) suddenly found themselves tortured into confessing to membership of both the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and Al-Qaida. They were also made to confess to attending Al-Qaida training camps in Tajikistan and Afghanistan. In an echo of Stalin’s security services from which the Uzbek SNB had an unbroken institutional descent, they were given long lists of names of people they had to confess were also in IMU and Al-Qaida.
It became obvious to me after just a few weeks that the CIA material from Uzbekistan was giving precisely the same narrative being extracted by the Uzbek torturers – and that the CIA “intelligence” was giving information far from the truth.
I was immediately concerned that British ministers and officials were being unknowingly exposed to material derived from torture, and therefore were acting illegally.
I asked my Deputy, Karen Moran, to call on a senior member of the US Embassy and tell him I was concerned that the CIA intelligence was probably derived from torture by the Uzbek security services. Karen Moran reported back to me that the US Embassy had replied that it probably did come from torture, but in the War on Terror they did not view that as a problem.
In October or November of 2002 I sent the FCO a telegram classified Top Secret and addressed specifically for the attention of the Secretary of State. I argued that to receive this material from torture was:
• Illegal – Plainly it was a breach of UNCAT
• Immoral – To support such despicable practices undermined our claims to civilisation
• Impractical – The material was designed to paint a false picture
I received no reply, so in January or February of 2003 I sent a further telegram repeating the same points.
I was summoned back to a meeting which was held in the FCO on 7 or 8 March 2003. Present were Linda Duffield, Director Wider Europe; Matthew Kydd, Head Permanent Under Secretary’s Department; Sir Michael Wood, Legal Adviser.
At the start of the meeting Linda Duffield told me that Sir Michael Jay, Permanent Under Secretary, wished me to know that my telegrams were unwise and that these sensitive questions were best not discussed on paper.
In the meeting, Sir Michael Wood told me that it was not illegal for us to obtain intelligence from torture, provided someone else did the torture. He added “I make no comment on the moral aspect” and appeared to me to be signalling disapproval.
Matthew Kydd told me that the Security Services considered the material from the CIA in Tashkent useful. He also argued that, as the final intelligence report issued by the security services excludes the name of the detainee interrogated, it is not possible to prove that torture was involved in any particular piece of intelligence.
Linda Duffield told me that Jack Straw had discussed this question with Sir Richard Dearlove and the policy was that, in the War on Terror, we should not question such intelligence. The UK/US intelligence sharing agreement stipulated that all intelligence must be shared.
Influential figures in the US believed this was an unfair agreement as we received much more from the US than they did from us. It was not in our interest to abandon the universality principle and refuse categories of CIA material.
It was agreed that Sir Michael Wood’s view that it was not illegal to receive intelligence from torture would be put in writing. I attach a copy of his letter of 13 March 2003.
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/documents/Wood.pdf
This meeting was minuted. I have seen the minute, which is classified Top Secret. On the top copy is a manuscript note giving Jack Straw’s views. It is entirely plain from this note that this torture policy was under his personal direction.
I returned to Tashkent. In May 2003, during a visit to Tashkent by my line manager, Simon Butt, he told me I was viewed in London as “unpatriotic”. This hurt me enormously as I had served my country with great enthusiasm for 19 years. Every traceable generation of my family had served in the British military. I felt it was my country which had abandoned the principles I had believed I was working for.
In August 2003 the FCO attempted to frame me on eighteen false charges of gross misconduct and demanded my resignation. I refused and after a sickening fight was acquitted and returned to Tashkent in January 2004.
While in London in approximately May 2004 for a medical check-up I was informed by Jon Benjamin, Head of Human Rights Policy Department FCO, that there had just been a senior level interdepartmental FCO meeting on receiving intelligence from torture and he had been surprised I was not invited. The policy that we would accept this intelligence had been re-affirmed.
On return to Tashkent I sent on 22 July 2004 yet a further telegram arguing we should not obtain intelligence from torture. I kept an electronic copy and this is attached.
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/documents/Telegram.pdf
I specifically argued (paras 16 to 1 that we were in breach of Article 4 of UNCAT which concerns complicity with torture. I also referred to the US transport of detainees to Uzbekistan (para 1. I referred to the London interdepartmental meeting (paras 8 to 9).
I received a brief and extraordinary reply to the effect that there had been no such meeting in the last two weeks. I knew it had been before then and had not referred to a date in my telegram.
This telegram, which was sparked by my anger at the lies in our public position on torture after Abu Ghraib became public, resulted in my dismissal as ambassador when it was leaked to the Financial Times (not by me).
Conclusions
1. All CIA intelligence is received by the UK. MI6 has seen the fruits of every CIA waterboarding session and rendition torture. Very many will have been passed on to ministers and senior officials.
2. Ministers decided the principle of the universality of the UK/US intelligence sharing agreement was more important than any aversion to torture. We could not refuse this material from the CIA without compromising the basic agreement.
3. Ministers did know they were receiving intelligence from torture. There was a definite, internally promulgated and legally cleared policy to receive intelligence from torture, directed in person by Jack Straw.
4. The format of intelligence reports contains a deliberate double blind; by excluding the name of the detainee from the final report, Ministers can state they have never knowingly seen intelligence from torture.
5. The government’s public lines that we do not condone, endorse, encourage or instigate torture, even that we condemn it and work against it, do not answer the key question:
“Are we prepared on a regular basis to receive intelligence from torture?”
That question is capable of a one word answer. The true answer is yes. The government refuses to give a straight answer.
Signed
Craig J Murray
13 March 2009
Comments
They are not really even pretending to be listening. Someone just sent me this response to their email to the joint committee:
Your message
To: Joint Committee On Human Rights
Cc: craig murray
Subject: Torture evidence on 10 March
Sent: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 14:47:36 -0000
was deleted without being read on Fri, 13 Mar 2009 10:46:42 -0000
Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2009 3:25 pm Post subject: Re: UK ambassador (former) Murray on torture
Craig Murray wrote:
I returned to Tashkent. In May 2003, during a visit to Tashkent by my line manager, Simon Butt, he told me I was viewed in London as “unpatriotic”.
This hurt me enormously as I had served my country with great enthusiasm for 19 years. Every traceable generation of my family had served in the British military.
I felt it was my country which had abandoned the principles I had believed I was working for.
'Never underestimate the power of denial'.
John Maynard Keynes wrote:
I work for a Government I despise for ends I think criminal.
Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Posts: 296 Location: Halifax, West Yorkshire
Posted: Sat Jul 18, 2009 12:06 pm Post subject: Lawyers fail to stop Anti-Torture candidate Craig Murray
Lawyers fail to stop Anti-Torture candidate Craig Murray
Quote:
Former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray, who blew the whistle on UK complicity in torture and is now standing as an independent candidate in the Norwich North by-election, is reporting various attempts to block him in his election campaign. He eventually won the right for distribution of an election communication in the form of a DVD, in which he describes some of the torture practices. He also states that it was known that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and that we should only ever send people to die in self-defence.
DVD and internet campaign... (don't expect much MSM support!)
Quote:
July 19, 2009
Threatening The Powerful
About 20,000 of our 80,000 DVDs have now been delivered, with startling results. People have started phoning up for posters, and coming out of their homes to shake our hands as we go past.
I have knocked on hundreds of doors personally, possibly thousands, in the last three weeks. I can report that I have detected absolutely no public enthusiasm for the Conservative Party. The media's presumption that this is a shoo-in for Chloe Smith seems based on nothing. In fact, many more people have told me that they are voting UKIP, than have said they are voting for any other party. The large majority say they will either not vote, or will vote for an independent.
The media's determination to hype the Greens is even weirder. At its most frenetic, the Green campaign has been invisible verging on lacklustre. They seem to think it will help them to be shrilly rude about me, while Rupert their candidate wears ties and tries to look official.
The BBC is doing everything possible to constrainn debate, and in particular to give no time to arguments against banking bailouts or aganst the Afghan War, and to corral political opinion back into the safe custody of the major political parties. Even though our campaign is the only interesting thing in Norwich, and even the Sunday Express reports today that I am "Head and shoulders above" the other candidates in debate, the BBC is excluding me from their live televised "Candidates' Hustings" on Monday at 22.15.
They are also excluding UKIP. While I disagree with them fundamentally, they also plainly have a right to be heard. The BBC is trying to define the field of politicial debate and choice.
Guidance from the Electoral Commission clearly states that, where there is a candidates' hustings from which any candidate is excluded, the candidates who take part must divide the cost of the hustings between them and declare it against their election expenses limit.
A BBC broadcast candidates' debate, where the candidates' speak for election and answer questions to voters, plainly is not BBC news and editorial content, but a hustings. That hustings reaches the voters through a broadcast, and the cost of the event is both the cost of organisation and the cost of broadcast to the voters. So the entire cost of the BBC broadcast must be divided between the candidates and declared against their election limit.
I am sure the Tories and Lib Dems at least are already over their election limit (to be disguised by false accounting on the cost of centrally printed leaflets). Each has already delivered a dozen different leaflets per voter, several of them in fake newspaper or magazine format. If the BBC hustings cost is divided between those candidates invited to take part - Con, NuLab, Lib Dem and Grren - they wil be tipped well over the limit.
I regret having to take a legalistic approach, but the BBC's determination to exclude me from the election has to be countered.
Meantime, just as the momentum is really switching our way, we need both people here to help leaflet and canvass, and we need donations to cover the remaining materials and expenses of the campaign. Please, please come. or if you can't please give something to help the work of those who are here.
Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Posts: 296 Location: Halifax, West Yorkshire
Posted: Mon Jul 20, 2009 1:41 pm Post subject:
From the Sunday Express:
Quote:
At a hustings organised by Age Concern last Thursday, fewer than 20 turned up.
Of those who did, the thumbs up went not to Tory Ms Smith, but to Norfolk-born Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, who is standing as an independent anti-sleaze candidate.
To many, he stood head and shoulders above the others, answering questions thoughtfully instead of trotting out party-approved mantras.
But despite spending £35,000 delivering a promotional DVD, he has struggled to attract media attention.
He has not even invited to tomorrow’s BBC hustings event, which has room only for the three main parties and the Greens.
“It’s a travesty of democracy,” he said. “This is an election caused by a breakdown in the system and a lack of faith in MPs and the more people hear me, the more impressed they are.”
Here's the full article:
Quote:
WHAT, NO BROWN?
Story Image
UNINSPIRING: Chris Ostrowski
Sunday July 19,2009
By Ted Jeory
LABOUR are so embarrassed by Gordon Brown that not one picture of him appears in campaign leaflets for next week’s Norwich North by-election.
So concerned are Labour chiefs he is an electoral liability, the airbrushed Prime Minister has also failed to make any appearances on the campaign trail.
David Cameron and Nick Clegg, meanwhile, have each visited the city four times, as Tories and Lib Dems threaten to overturn a 5,500 majority and push Labour into third place.
Even the Green party is becoming a threat.
The by-election was called after the resignation of Dr Ian Gibson, who quit in disgust last month at being reprimanded by Labour bosses for suggesting he had misused his second home allowances.
It was the final act of revenge for the perennial rebel, with the Tories’ 27-year-old Chloe Smith expected to trounce Labour’s uninspiring Chris Ostrowski and become the country’s first post-sleaze MP on Thursday.
[Box: ‘Campaign marred by dirty tricks’]
However, a by-election in the home of Colman’s mustard that was meant to be a fresh start for politics is starting to leave a nasty taste in the mouth.
If politics cannot change in genteel Norwich, there is no hope anywhere, one cabbie quipped last week.
There is a joke among Sunday league footballers that Capital Canaries, the club for Norwich City’s London-based fans, are so nice that they refuse to tackle their opponents.
Alan Partridge notwithstanding, it is a reputation well earned, for the city that spawned Nelson, Delia Smith and Sale of the Century, is one of Britain’s most civilised destinations. However, squabbling politicians are souring things.
The Lib Dems have been accused of dirty tricks after branding the Green candidate, philosophy lecturer Rupert Read, an “extremist” and a “nutter” for saying Britain had the July 7 terror attacks “coming to us”.
While the improbably named Lib Dem candidate, April Pond, has been irritated after revelations she lives in a house with a large moat. Unsurprisingly, voters have been turned off.
At a hustings organised by Age Concern last Thursday, fewer than 20 turned up.
Of those who did, the thumbs up went not to Tory Ms Smith, but to Norfolk-born Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, who is standing as an independent anti-sleaze candidate.
To many, he stood head and shoulders above the others, answering questions thoughtfully instead of trotting out party-approved mantras.
But despite spending £35,000 delivering a promotional DVD, he has struggled to attract media attention.
He has not even invited to tomorrow’s BBC hustings event, which has room only for the three main parties and the Greens.
“It’s a travesty of democracy,” he said. “This is an election caused by a breakdown in the system and a lack of faith in MPs and the more people hear me, the more impressed they are.”
The cynicism of mainstream politicians was summed up last Thursday by Jan Edwards, a maternity unit manager at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital.
As she showed Nick Clegg around her ward, she told the Sunday Express: “I’m not sure you can trust any of them. They make lots of promises, but never keep them.”
Labour said Gordon Brown had “no plans” to visit Norwich North.
A spokesman added that despite his appearance on the Glenrothes campaign trail last year, it was the “convention” that prime ministers do not campaign in by-elections.
Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 9:58 pm Post subject: Craig Murray - How condemning torture killed my career
Editor’s Note: In this modern age – and especially since George W. Bush declared the “war on terror” eight years ago – the price for truth-telling has been high, especially for individuals whose consciences led them to protest the torture of alleged terrorists.
One of the most remarkable cases is that of Craig Murray, a 20-year veteran of the British Foreign Service whose career was destroyed after he was posted to Uzbekistan in August 2002 and began to complain about Western complicity in torture committed by the country’s totalitarian regime, which was valued for its brutal interrogation methods and its vast supplies of natural gas.
Murray soon faced misconduct charges that were leaked to London’s tabloid press before he was replaced as ambassador in October 2004, marking the end of what had been a promising career. Murray later spoke publicly about how the Bush administration and Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government collaborated with Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov and his torturers. [See, for instance, Murray's statement to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Torture.]
But Murray kept quiet about his personal ordeal as the victim of the smear campaign that followed his impassioned protests to the Foreign Office about torture. Finally, on Oct. 22 at a small conference in Washington, Murray addressed the personal pain and his sense of betrayal over his treatment at the hands of former colleagues.
While Murray’s account is a personal one, it echoes the experiences of many honest government officials and even mainstream journalists who have revealed inconvenient truths about wrongdoing by powerful Establishment figures and paid a high price.
Below is a partial transcript of Murray’s remarks:
I was just having dinner in a restaurant that was only a block from the White House. It must have been a good dinner because it cost me $120. Actually it was a good dinner. …
I’ve never, ever spoken in public about the pain of being a whistleblower. Partly because of the British stiff-upper lip thing and partly as well because if you wish to try eventually to get on and reestablish yourself then it doesn’t do to show weakness. …
I was sitting in this place on my own and feeling rather lonely. And there were a whole bunch of people in dark suits coming from government offices, in many cases in groups, and there they were with the men’s suits sleek and the ladies, the whole office, power-politics thing going on, having after-dinner champagne in the posh bar.
And I was remembering how many times I’d been the center of such groups and of how successful my life used to be. I was a British ambassador at the age of 42. The average age for such a post is 57.
I was successful in worldly terms. And I think I almost never sat alone at such a place. Normally if I had been alone in such a place, I would have ended up probably in the company of a beautiful young lady of some kind.
I tell you that partly because this whole question of personal morality is a complicated one. I would never, ever, no one would have ever pointed at me as someone likely to become or to be a person of conscience. And yet eventually I found myself on the outside and treated in a way that challenged my whole view of the world.
Mission to Tashkent
Let me start to tell you something about how that happened. I was a British ambassador in Uzbekistan and I was told before I went that Uzbekistan was an important ally in the war on terror, had given the United States a very important airbase which was a forward mounting post for Afghanistan, and was a bulwark against Islamic extremism in Central Asia.
When I got there I found it was a dreadful regime, absolutely totalitarian. And there’s a difference between dictatorship of which there are many and a totalitarian dictatorship which unless you’ve actually been in one is hard to comprehend.
There’s absolutely no free media whatsoever. News on every single channel, the news programs start with 12 items about what the president did today. And that’s it. That is the news. There are no other news channels and international news channels are blocked.
There are about 12,000 political prisoners. Any sign of religious enthusiasm for any religion will get you put into jail. The majority of people are predominantly Muslim. But if you are to carry out the rituals of the Muslim religion, particularly if you were to pray five times a day, you’d be in jail very quickly. Young men are put in jail for growing beards.
It’s not the only religion which is outlawed. The jails are actually quite full of Baptists. Being Baptist is illegal in Uzbekistan. I’m sure that Methodists and Quakers would be illegal, too, It’s just that they haven’t got any so they haven’t gotten around to making them illegal.
And it’s really not a joke. If you are put into prison in Uzbekistan the chances of coming out again alive are less than even. And most of the prisons are still the old Soviet gulags in the most literal sense. They are physically the same places. The biggest one being the Jaslyk gulag in the deserts of the Kizyl Kum.
I had only been there for a week or two when I went to a show trial of an al-Qaeda terrorist they had caught. It was a big event put on partly for the benefit of the American embassy to demonstrate the strength of the U.S.-Uzbek alliance against terrorism.
When I got there, to call the trial unconvincing would be an underestimate. There was one moment when this old man [who] had given evidence that his nephew was a member of al-Qaeda and had personally met Osama bin Laden. And like everybody else in that court he was absolutely terrified.
But suddenly as he was giving his evidence, he seemed from somewhere to find an inner strength. He was a very old man but he stood taller and said in a stronger voice, he said, “This is not true. This is not true. They tortured my children in front of me until I signed this. I had never heard of al-Qaeda or Osama bin Laden.”
He was then hustled out of the court and we never did find out what had happened to him. He was almost certainly killed. But as it happens I was within touching distance of him when he said that and I can’t explain it. It’s not entirely rational. But you could just feel it was true. You could tell he was speaking the truth when he said that.
And that made me start to call into doubt the whole question of the narrative about al-Qaeda in Uzbekistan and the alliance in the war on terror.
Boiled to Death
Something which took that doubt over the top happened about a week later. The West -- because Uzbekistan was our great ally in the war on terror – had shown no interest in the human rights situation at all. In fact, the opposite, going out of its way to support the dictatorship.
So the fact that I seemed to be interested and seemed to be sympathetic came as something of a shock and people [in Uzbekistan] started to come to me.
One of the people who came to me was an old lady, a widow in her 60s whose son had been killed in Jaslyk prison and she brought me photos of the corpse of her son. It had been given back to her in a sealed casket and she’d been ordered not to open the casket but to bury it the next morning, which actually Muslims would do anyway. They always bury a body immediately.
But she disobeyed the instructions not to open the casket. She was a very old lady but very determined. She got the casket open and the body out onto the table and took detailed photos of the body before resealing the casket and burying it. These photos she now brought to me.
I sent them on to the chief pathologist at the University of Glasgow, who actually now by coincidence is the chief pathologist for the United Kingdom. There were a number of photos and he did a detailed report on the body. He said from the photographs the man’s fingernails had been pulled out while he was still alive. Then he had been boiled alive. That was the cause of death, immersion in boiling liquid.
Certainly it wasn’t the only occasion when we came across evidence of people being boiled alive. That was the most extreme form of torture, I suppose, but immersion in boiling liquid of a limb was quite common.
Mutilation of the genitals was common. Suffocation was common, usually by putting a gas mask on people and blocking the air vents until they suffocated. Rape was common, rape with objects, rape with bottles, anal rape, homosexual rape, heterosexual rape, and mutilation of children in front of their parents.
It began with that and became a kind of personal mission for me, I suppose, to do what I could to try to stop this. I spent a great deal of time with my staff gathering evidence on it.
Being a very capricious government, occasionally a victim [of the Uzbek regime] would be released and we’d be able to see them and get medical evidence. More often you’d get letters smuggled out of the gulags and detention centers, evidence from relatives who managed to visit prisoners.
We built up an overwhelming dossier of evidence, and I complained to London about the conduct of our ally in rather strong terms including the photos of the boy being boiled alive.
‘Over-Focused on Human Rights’
I received a reply from the British Foreign Office. It said, this is a direct quote, “Dear Ambassador, we are concerned that you are perhaps over-focused on human rights to the detriment of commercial interests.”
I was taken aback. I found that extraordinary. But things had gotten much worse because while we were gathering the information about torture, we were also learning what people were forced to confess to under torture.
People aren’t tortured for no reason. They’re tortured in order to extract some information or to get them to admit to things, and normally the reason you torture people is to get them to admit to things that aren’t actually true. They were having to confess to membership in al-Qaeda, to being at training camps in Afghanistan, personally meeting Osama bin Laden.
At the same time, we were receiving CIA intelligence. MI-6 and the CIA share all their intelligence. So I was getting all the CIA intelligence on Uzbekistan and it was saying that detainees had confessed to membership in al-Qaeda and being in training camps in Afghanistan and to meeting Osama bin Laden.
One way and another I was piecing together the fact that the CIA material came from the Uzbek torture sessions.
I didn’t want to make a fool of myself so I sent my deputy, a lady called Karen Moran, to see the CIA head of station and say to him, “My ambassador is worried your intelligence might be coming from torture. Is there anything he’s missing?”
She reported back to me that the CIA head of station said, “Yes, it probably is coming from torture, but we don’t see that as a problem in the context of the war on terror.”
In addition to which I learned that CIA were actually flying people to Uzbekistan in order to be tortured. I should be quite clear that I knew for certain and reported back to London that people were being handed over by the CIA to the Uzbek intelligence services and were being subjected to the most horrible tortures.
I didn’t realize that they weren’t Uzbek. I presumed simply that these were Uzbek people who had been captured elsewhere and were being sent in.
I now know from things I’ve learned subsequently, including the facts that the Council of Europe parliamentary inquiry into extraordinary rendition found that 90 percent of all the flights that called at the secret prison in Poland run by the CIA as a torture center for extraordinary rendition, 90 percent of those flights next went straight on to Tashkent [the capital of Uzbekistan].
There was an overwhelming body of evidence that actually people from all over the world were being taken by the CIA to Uzbekistan specifically in order to be tortured. I didn’t know that. I thought it was only Uzbeks, but nonetheless, I was complaining internally as hard as I could.
Retaliation
The result of which was that even when I was only complaining internally, I was subjected to the most dreadful pattern of things which I still find it hard to believe happened.
I was suddenly accused of issuing visas in return for sex, stealing money from the post account, of being an alcoholic, of driving an embassy vehicle down a flight of stairs, which is extraordinary because I can’t drive. I’ve never driven in my life. I don’t have a driving license. My eyesight is terrible. …
But I was accused of all these unbelievable accusations, which were leaked to the tabloid media, and I spent a whole year of tabloid stories about sex-mad ambassador, blah-blah-blah. And I hadn’t even gone public. What I had done was write a couple of memos saying that this collusion with torture is illegal under a number of international conventions including the UN Convention Against Torture.
I couldn’t believe [what was happening], I’d been a very successful foreign service officer for over 20 years. The British Foreign Service is small. Actual diplomats, as opposed to [support] staff, are only about 2,000 people,
I worked there for over 20 years. I knew most of them by name. All the people involved in smearing me, trying to taint me on false charges, were people I thought were my friends. It’s really hard when people you think are your friends [lie about you].
I’m writing memos saying it’s illegal to torture people, children are being tortured in front of their parents. And they’re writing memos back saying it depends on the definition of complicity under Article Four of the UN Convention.
I’m thinking what’s happening to their moral sense, and I never, ever considered myself a good person, at all. Yet I couldn’t see where they were coming from and I still don’t; I still don’t understand it to this day.
And then these people – and I’m absolutely certain quite knowingly – tried to negate what they saw as these unpatriotic things. I was told I was viewed now as unpatriotic, by trying to land me with false allegations.
I went through a five-month fight and formal charges. I was found eventually not guilty on all charges, but my reputation was ruined forever because the tabloid media all carried the allegations against me in 25-point headlines and the fact I was acquitted in two sentences on page 19. It’s extraordinary.
Lessons Learned
The thing that came out of it most strongly for me is how in a bureaucratic structure, if the government can convince people that there is a serious threat to the nation, ordinary people who are not bad people will go along with things that they know are bad, like torture, like trying to stain an innocent man.
And it’s circular, because the extraordinary thing about it was that the whole point of the intelligence being obtained under torture was to actually exaggerate the terrorist threats and to exaggerate the strength of al-Qaeda.
That was the whole point of why people were being tortured, to confess that they were members of al-Qaeda when they weren’t members of al-Qaeda and to denounce long lists of names of people as members of al-Qaeda who weren’t members of al-Qaeda.
I always tell my favorite example which is they gave me a long list of names of people whom people were forced to denounce and I often saw names of people I knew.
One day, I got this list from the CIA of names of a couple dozen al-Qaeda members and I knew one really quite well, an old dissident professor, a very distinguished man who was actually a Jehovah’s Witness, and there aren’t many Jehovah’s Witnesses in al-Qaeda. I’d even bet that al-Qaeda don’t even try to recruit Jehovah’s Witnesses. I’m quite sure that Jehovah’s Witnesses would try to recruit al-Qaeda.
So much of this intelligence was nonsense. It was untrue and it was designed to paint a false picture. The purpose of the false picture was to make people feel afraid. What was it really about. …
I want to mention this book, which is the greatest book that I’ve ever written. It’s called Murder in Samarkand and recounts in detail what I have just told you together with the documentary evidence behind it.
But the most interesting bit of the entire book comes before the page numbers start, which is a facsimile of a letter from Enron, from Kenneth Lay, chairman of Enron, to the honorable George W. Bush, governor of the state of Texas. It was written on April 3, 1997, sometime before Bush became president.
It reads, I’ll just read you two or three sentences, “Dear George, you will be meeting with Ambassador Sadyq Safaev, Uzbekistan’s Ambassador to the United States on April 8th. … Enron has established an office in Tashkent and we are negotiating a $2 billion joint venture with Neftegas of Uzbekistan … to develop Uzbekistan’s natural gas and transport it to markets in Europe … This project can bring significant economic opportunities to Texas.”
Not everyone in Texas, of course. George Bush and Ken Lay, in particular.
That’s actually what it was about. All this stuff about al-Qaeda that they were inventing, extreme Islamists in Central Asia that they were inventing.
I have hundreds and hundreds of Uzbek friends now. Every single one of them drinks vodka. It is not a good place for al-Qaeda. They were inventing the threat in order to cover up the fact that their real motive was Enron’s gas contract and that was the plain and honest truth of the matter.
Just as almost everything you see about Afghanistan is a cover for the fact that the actual motive is the pipeline they wish to build over Afghanistan to bring out Uzbek and Turkmen natural gas which together is valued at up to $10 trillion, which they want to bring over Afghanistan and down to the Arabian Sea to make it available for export.
And we are living in a world where people, a small number of people, with incredible political clout and huge amounts of money, are prepared to see millions die for their personal economic gain and where, even worse, most people in bureaucracies are prepared to go along with it for their own much smaller economic gain, all within this psychological mirage which is so much of the war on terror.
It’s hard to stand against it. I do think things are a little more sane now than they were a year or two ago. I do think there’s a greater understanding, but you’ll never hear what I just told you in the mainstream media. It’s impossible to get it there.
[For an early Consortiumnews.com article about President Bush’s Uzbek alliance, see “The More Things Change.”]
Lifting Uzbekistan arms embargo ‘unconscionable’
Thursday, October 29, 2009
* Activists say EU lifted sanctions to win Tashkent’s support for military operations in Afghanistan
ALMATY: Activists expressed horror on Wednesday over the lifting of an EU arms embargo on Uzbekistan, saying Tashkent had been rewarded despite making virtually no progress on its dismal rights record.
The decision was “an unconscionable abdication of responsibility toward Uzbek victims of abuse”, Human Rights Watch (HRW), Reporters Without Borders and the International Crisis Group said in a joint statement.
EU foreign ministers on Tuesday voted to lift the four-year-old arms embargo, put in place after Tashkent refused a demand for an international probe into the reported killing of unarmed civilians during a 2005 uprising.
Afghan operations: Rights groups accused the bloc of pandering to the Central Asian state in order to obtain its cooperation in supporting military operations in neighbouring Afghanistan.
The European Union “has effectively abandoned the cause of human rights in Uzbekistan”, said Holly Cartner, Europe and Central Asia director at HRW.
“The EU keeps reiterating its demands for human rights but then never actually holds Uzbekistan to those standards, making these demands ring hollow.”
Uzbekistan, an isolated state bordering increasingly-unstable Afghanistan, has been ruled with an iron fist for two decades by 71-year-old former Uzbek Communist Party boss Islam Karimov.
Under Karimov, Uzbekistan has been accused of employing torture against political prisoners and cracking down on religious freedoms among the country’s majority-Muslim population.
The government denies using torture, but defends its tough policing measures as necessary to combat militant groups. In 2005, EU and US criticism over the Uzbek government’s handling of an armed uprising in the city of Andijan led to a rift that saw Tashkent expel a US airbase that helped support operations in Afghanistan.
Uzbek authorities say that 187 people were killed in Andijan, all due to the actions of insurgents, while international rights groups say hundreds of mainly unarmed protesters were killed. Prominent Russian rights organisation Memorial said that Uzbekistan was being rewarded for its behaviour, despite having stonewalled attempts to investigate the incident.
“Uzbek authorities have not only ignored demands for an independent investigation of the Andijan tragedy, during which the actions of government forces led to the deaths of hundreds of civilians,” the group said. It “also continues mass repressions inside the country. Thousands of Uzbek Muslims are exposed to torture and are in prisons on forged political charges”. afp
Joined: 30 Nov 2006 Posts: 575 Location: the eyevolution
Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 6:18 pm Post subject: Former UK ambassador on CIA torture
Former UK ambassador: CIA sent people to be ‘raped with broken bottles’
By Daniel Tencer
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 -- 3:31 pm
Craig Murray Former UK ambassador: CIA sent people to be raped with broken bottlesThe CIA relied on intelligence based on torture in prisons in Uzbekistan, a place where widespread torture practices include raping suspects with broken bottles and boiling them alive, says a former British ambassador to the central Asian country.
Craig Murray, the rector of the University of Dundee in Scotland and until 2004 the UK's ambassador to Uzbekistan, said the CIA not only relied on confessions gleaned through extreme torture, it sent terror war suspects to Uzbekistan as part of its extraordinary rendition program.
"I'm talking of people being raped with broken bottles," he said at a lecture late last month that was re-broadcast by the Real News Network. "I'm talking of people having their children tortured in front of them until they sign a confession. I'm talking of people being boiled alive. And the intelligence from these torture sessions was being received by the CIA, and was being passed on."
Human rights groups have long been raising the alarm about the legal system in Uzbekistan. In 2007, Human Rights Watch declared that torture is "endemic" to the country's justice system.
Murray said he only realized after his stint as ambassador that the CIA was sending people to be tortured in Uzbekistan, country he describes as a "totalitarian" state that has never moved on from its communist era, when it was a part of the Soviet Union.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Tue Nov 23, 2010 10:25 pm Post subject: Craig Murray on Bush's 'Decision Points' book
Now there's a turn up for the books. The Guardian are guarding the fascists.
Craig Murray's comment has been censored today.
Don't you just love the Nazi apologist Guardian these days.
Police used cones to establish a cordon around Mr Campbell as fire engines carrying psychiatric cutting equipment struggled to reach him through the gridlock.
Taxi driver Roy Hobbs said: "I didn't see any fire engines when I was stuck on Fleet Street. But even if they did exist, it would have taken them much longer than 45 minutes to get there."
And motorist Joanna Kramer insisted: "I don't think they could have done anything anyway. He was wedged really, really far inside this huge, twisted pile of demented bs."
Pedestrian Martin Bishop, who was forced to make his way home along Birdcage Walk, added: "The emergency services had arrived by the time I was walking past. I think I saw a psychiatrist standing over the wreckage, shaking his head and telling a fireman to cover it with a sheet of tarpaulin."
Eyewitness Tom Logan, a lawyer from Finsbury Park, said: "It was like it was in slow motion. All these words came tumbling out of the middle of his face and just went crashing headlong into this huge truck full of truth and sanity that was coming the other way.
"I hope no one was killed apart from 4000 troops and 100,000 Iraqi civilians."
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Sun Jan 16, 2011 10:18 pm Post subject:
Craig Murray's blog appears to have been removed from the internet again.
This man is a potential future leader of this country.
Some UK based Nazi like force wants to silence him.
This appears to be his final and as usual excellent post
Quote:
January 6, 2011
The Laws of Physics Disproven
The passing of wood through glass is a remarkable feat. There are those who believe that royalty can perform miracles - there is a well developed cult around the vain and vicious Charles I, for example. It now appears that the presence of the future Charles III also has the ability to suspend the laws of physics.
The police have now issued extensive CCTV footage of the attack on the vehicle of Charles and Camilla on the fringes of the anti-tuition fee demonstrations, and the media have been replete with more nonsense about Camilla being poked with a stick. Yet of all the CCTV footage and numerous photographs, there is no evidence at all of this attack and all the images show the car windows to be closed - as they would be. One gets cracked but not holed.
There is in fact no evidence at all of any intent to harm the persons of the expensive royal layabouts, as opposed to discomfiting them and damaging their vehicle. It is fascinating that the media continually repeats the "Camilla attacked with a stick" line when it is so blatantly untrue. There appears to be a closing of ranks by the whole Establishment to perpetuate the myth - both the Home Office and St James Palace have deliberately fostered the myth by refusing to confirm or deny.
Personally I would not touch Camilla with a bargepole. I dislike violence at demonstrations. Demonstrations, good, riots, bad is my basic mantra. Attacks on people in a civil demonstration are always wrong, including attacks on the police unless in self defence. I did not join in the outrage at the prosecutions of violent demonstrators after the big Lebanon demonstration in London, because I personally witnessed the group hurling dangerous missiles at police who were neither attacking, threatening nor kettling them. That is absolutely unacceptable.
But a policy as appalling as the withdrawal of state funding from university teaching, carried out by Nick Clegg by one of the most blatant political breaches of fatih with the public in history, , is bound to provoke huge anger. The government reaps what it sows. Demonstrators should not set out to hurt people. But all the evidence shows they had no intention of hurting Charles and Camilla.
I have personally worked closely with the royal family's close protection officers in organising two state visits abroad, and plainly they too could see there was no intent to injure - that is why weapons were not drawn. They deserve commendation rather than the nonsense spouted out by Sky News, who seem to think they should have gunned down the odd student.
All of which serves to take the focus off vicious police attacks on students and the use of kettling to detain people who were seeking peacefully to express their views. Kettling people in extreme cold and with no access to toilet facilities raises questions on illegal detention which genuine liberals in government would wish to address. What is it? Is it a form of arrest? What is the status of the fenced pens into which people are herded? Should they not be formalised as places of police detention, and individuals booked in and given access to lawyers? If that is not possible, this detention - which can be for many hours - is not lawful.
The Obama administration had two years ago stopped all US funds to human rights defenders and civil society groups in Egypt, stipulating that all aid must go through the Mubarak regime
President Karimov of Uzbekistan killed more peaceful demonstrators in a single day in May 2005 than Colonel Gadaffi has done in the Libyan uprising so far. Yet Karimov in the fast three months had a visit from Hillary Clinton, a new military supply agreement with the United States and new partnership agreement with NATO, an official visit to the EU in Brussels, and new tarriff preferences for slave picked Uzbek cotton entering the EU. Most people in Uzbekistan have not a clue the arab revolutions are happening, such is state control of meida and internet and blocking of airwaves
In 1991, when the allies embarked on the First Gulf War to retake Kuwait from Iraq, John Major and George Bush sr declared that, rather than simply put the absolute Kuwaiti monarchy back on its throne (which it had unheroically run away from), the price of western soldiers being asked to risk their lives was the democratisation of Kuwait. That was immediately forgotten after the war. Ordinary British, US and other taxpayers paid out billions to put one of the richest families in the world back in sole charge of massive oil reserves. The Kuwaiti royal family still has a total monopoly of executive power, with a talking shop parliament and very limited electorate.
I could go on. If you want to go to the absolute font of western hypocrisy, take this from David Cameron:
It is not for me, or for governments outside the region, to pontificate about how each country meets the aspirations of its people. It is not for us to tell you how to do it, or precisely what shape your future should take. There is no single formula for success, and there are many ways to ensure greater, popular participation in Government
This was spoken in Dubai as Cameron travelled the region with a gang of millionaire arms dealers trying to flog weapons to any Emir wanting to buy. In other words, we feel free to insist on democracy in Libya. If we don’t do so in Saudi Arabia, it is not because we are hypocrites, it is because there is no single formula. Democracy would be quite wrong for Uzbekistan and Bahrain, and until two months ago it was quite wrong for Egypt too. It might hurt our allies. But it is absolutely essential yesterday in Libya and Zimbabwe.
Words scarcely suffice to condemn this cant. In Bahrain the majority are struggling for more freedom from their minority rulers, to a deafening silence from the West. In Yemen, a gross dictator hangs on with every kind of US support. In Egypt, the US policy of propping up Mubarak, then their replacement policy of a managed transition to Suleyman, have failed one by one and now we have a military dictatorship which is every day abducting and torturing pro-democracy campaigners. Over fifty Tahrir Square demonstrators have been sentenced to at least three years jail each by military tribunals in the last week, to total western silence. The US aim of securing an entrenched pro-Israeli government continues to be pushed forward by every available means.
That odious charlatan Niall Ferguson, producer for the right wing US market of popular history devoid of original research , informs us that democracy is not something arabs can do. For him to cite the invasion of Iraq, which he supported, as evidence that you cannot succeed with democracy in Arab countries, is sickening on so many levels. That democracy might be better implanted without killing hundreds of thousands of intended recipients, like so much else, does not occur to him.
Ferguson’s ludicrous assertion – inaccurate even for a generalisation – about lack of property rights in the Islamic world making democracy impossible there, needs to be challenged.
Firstly, it is by no means clear that democracy can only exist in a society with entrenched property rights. Ghana, for example, is widely viewed as the model African democracy, yet it is virtually impossible to own land there other than leasehold from the “stool”, or local chieftaincy. The vast majority of Ghanaians are not property owning in the Ferguson sense, but democracy and human rights function very well, thank you.
Secondly, there is a wide variety of property models throughout the Islamic world, and Islam has little or nothing to do with why the model is so different in Turkey, Morocco, Uzbekistan and Pakistan.
The notions that arabs and/or muslims are incapable of democracy is of course the staple of neo-conservative thinking. For there to be a “Clash of civilisations”, Islamic civilisation must be portrayed as incompatible with all modernity, as retrograde, autocratic and violent. Again, that is far from the truth.
That Islam and democracy are incompatible (and Turkey therefore presumably a mirage) has been the excuse for the Western backing of Mubarak, Karimov and endless other “hard men”. We really back them because they serve western interests over oil and gas, over Israel, or over Afghanistan. But we pretend that we back them because the only alternative to them is radical Islam.
That false dichotomy was given a seeming substance by our complicity with the torturers of Egypt, Uzbekistan, Tunisia and Morocco. The regime torturers happily made dissidents twisting in unimaginable agony admit that they wanted an al-Qaida state. The regime passed this on to the CIA and MI6, and they and western political leaders happily swallowed this claptrap because it united their interests with those of their client regime in a grubby circle of lying self-justification. I hope that puts Murder in Samarkand in context for you.
As for Gadaffi, we should not make the mistake of presuming he is not bad, because he is hypocritically denounced by those who support other dictators as bad or worse. Gadaffi is bad, and he is barking mad (you can read of my personal experience of him in The Catholic Orangemen of Togo). I hope that the Libyan people manage to oust him and bring democracy, though I fear this curiously low level civil war could drag on for a long while.
But the West should stay out. That the powers which are still trying, in the interests of Israel, to limit the democratic reform in Egypt, which still occupy Afghanistan, and are still propping up their puppet Gulf autocracies, should interfere with air or ground intervention, would be deeply unhelpful and the consequences are unreckonable. I can see an argument for shipping food and medical supplies to Benghazi and Tobruk, but that is the limit of western interference which might be helpful.
The Arab people have shown they are more than capable of seizing their own destiny. This must be for the Libyan people and other Arab states to sort out. For years, Western commentators spoke of “the Arab street” as a coherent public opinion, but as though it were natural that such opinion was at complete odds with the views of autocratic leaders, and the arab voice had no potential for translation to action. That has changed and the Arab voice must reverberate loudly enough to shake down more autocratic leaders – Gadaffi included.
The undeniable fact of the existence of the articulate young protestors of Tunisia, Tahrir Square, Bahrain, Muscat and elsewhere should have killed forever the figleaf behind which Western viciousness sought to skulk, that there are only two Arab political options: dictatorship or theocracy. In fact the Arab peoples are teeming with possibility and vast untapped human potential, waiting to form dynamically into new political and social organisation. We should leave them alone, stop arming their repressors and give them that chance.
TonyGosling wrote:
Craig Murray on CIA False Flag terminator Raymond Davis
Raymond Davis Does Not Have Diplomatic Immunity
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2011/02/raymond_davis_d.html
Take this as definitive - from a former Ambassador.
There are five circumstances in which Raymond Davis, the American killer caught in Pakistan, might have diplomatic immunity. They are these.
1) He was notified in writing to the government of Pakistan as a member of diplomatic staff of a US diplomatic mission in Pakistan, and the government of Pakistan had accepted him as such in writing.
2) He was part of an official delegation engaged in diplomatic negotiations notified to the government of Pakistan and accepted by them.
3) He was a member of staff of an international organisation recognised by Pakistan and was resident in Pakistan as a member of diplomatic staff working for that organisation, or was in Pakistan undertaking work for that organisation with the knowledge and approval of the Pakistani authorities.
4) He was an accredited diplomat elsewhere and was in direct tranist through Pakistan to his diplomatic posting.
5) He was an accredited courier carrying US diplomatic dispatches in transit through Pakistan.
2) to 5) plainly do not apply. The Obama administration is going for 1). My information, from senior Pakistani ex-military sources that I trust, is firmly that the necessary diplomatic exchange of notes does not exist that would make Davis an accredited US diplomat in Pakistan, but that the State Department is putting huge pressure on the government of Pakistan to overlook that fact. This passes a commonsense test - if the documents did exist. La Clinton would have waved them at us by now.
A brilliant article here by Glenn Greenwald:
This week in winning hearts and minds http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/02/21/heartsand minds/index.html
By Glenn Greenwald
In terms of understanding how the U.S. is perceived in the Muslim world -- and why some people might become sufficiently enraged to give up their own lives to attack us -- consider the following..........
URGENT ALERT: Support Karl Watkins’ Private Prosecution of Babar Ahmad and Talha Ahsan
FREE BABAR AHMAD
11 September 2012
Time is running out. This could be the very last opportunity you have to help Babar Ahmad.
On 6 September 2012, the BBC reported that a British businessman Karl Watkins had instructed solicitors to commence a private prosecution against Babar Ahmad and Talha Ahsan.
Mr Watkins has stated that he has taken this action because of the public interest in trying British citizens, accused of crimes committed in the UK, in British courts. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) led by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) has until now refused to prosecute either man.
Anyone can bring a private prosecution if they can prove that it is in the public interest to do so. The DPP has the power to intervene to take on the case or to stop it. It all depends on whether prosecution can be shown to be in the public interest or not. He is likely to make this decision this week.
Over 149,000 members of the British public signed an e-petition last year calling for Babar Ahmad to be tried in the UK. It is essential that we once again demonstrate that this is a matter of deep public concern – there is public interest in domestic prosecutions for British citizens accused of conduct that took place in the UK.
To this end, we urge all supporters to
(i) write to the DPP asking him to take on the private prosecution
(ii) request your MP to make similar representations to the DPP
Personalised letters always carry more weight but templates are below for your convenience.
Kindly send a copy of your correspondence and any replies received to dpp@freebabarahmad.com
Dear Mr Starmer
Re: Karl Watkins’ Prosecution of Babar Ahmad & Talha Ahsan
I am one of the 149,441 members of the British public who signed the e-petition last year to put Babar Ahmad on trial in the UK. I have read a report on BBC that a businessman Karl Watkins has now initiated a private prosecution of Mr Ahmad and another British citizen, Syed Talha Ahsan. Mr Watkins has said that he is bringing these proceedings because of the failure of the CPS to take appropriate action.
The BBC reported that Mr Watkins had secured admissions from Mr Ahmad and Mr Ahsan of their involvement with the websites that form the basis of the allegations against them, and that these had been sent to you in addition to all of the other evidence against them.
It is neither correct nor just that two British citizens have been imprisoned without trial for over 14 years between them, irrespective of the nature of the crimes they are accused of. Given the enormous public interest in securing British justice for British citizens where the conduct took place in the UK, and the new evidence provided to you by Mr Watkins, I request that you take on his private prosecution.
In 2005, Judge Timothy Workman said he found Mr Ahmad’s case “troubling” because he is “a British Citizen who is alleged to have committed offences which if the evidence were available, could have been prosecuted in this country.”
I urge you to act in the interests of justice and the public interest and put these men on trial.
I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Yours sincerely,
[INSERT NAME]
[INSERT FULL ADDESS AND POSTCODE]
Write to your MP
Kindly send a copy of your correspondence and any replies received to dpp@freebabarahmad.com
3. Select the hyperlink under “Your Member of Parliament”.
4. Enter your full name, address and email.
5. Copy and paste our template letter below. You can personalise your letter whilst keeping the main points.
6. Preview and send your message.
7. Ensure you check your email to confirm your message, or it will not be sent to your MP.
8. If you experience any technical difficulties whilst sending your message please visit www.theyworkforyou.com to obtain your MP’s contact details, by entering your postcode and following the link to their personal website.
Kindly send a copy of your correspondence and any replies received to mps@freebabarahmad.com
Dear [INSERT MP NAME]
Re: Karl Watkins’ Prosecution of Babar Ahmad & Talha Ahsan
I am a constituent of yours and one of the 149,441 members of the British public who signed the e-petition last year to put Babar Ahmad on trial in the UK.
I read on BBC that a private prosecution of Mr Ahmad and another British citizen, Syed Talha Ahsan, has been initiated by a businessman, Karl Watkins. Mr Watkins has said that he is bringing these proceedings because of the failure of the CPS to take appropriate action. The BBC reported that Mr Watkins’ has secured admissions from Mr Ahmad and Mr Ahsan of their involvement with the websites that form the basis of the allegations against them, and sent it to the DPP in addition to other evidence against them.
It is neither correct nor just that two British citizens have been imprisoned without trial for over 14 years between them. Rather, they should be tried in a British court of law. Both justice and the British public demand it. There is public interest in domestic prosecutions for British citizens accused of conduct that took place in the UK.
I request that you, as my MP, write to the DPP and ask him to take on and continue Mr Watkins’ prosecution of these two men.
Please send me a copy of any correspondence you send to or receive from the DPP.
I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Yours sincerely,
[INSERT NAME]
[INSERT FULL ADDESS AND POSTCODE]
_________________ 'Come and see the violence inherent in the system.
Help, help, I'm being repressed!'
“The more you tighten your grip, the more Star Systems will slip through your fingers.”
I am a guest speaker tomorrow at the NUJ Conference in Newcastle, on the subject of blogging. Never one to appease an audience, I shall give them it straight on my opinions of the collusion between mainstream media and power, and thus those who work within it. I expect to hear a lot about how bloggers are irresponsible, do not check sources etc.
I shall be drawing on some of the content of this talk:
I post this again because nowadays this website has far more readers than when I first posted it, and because it encapsulates my thoughts rather well.
I shall tell the NUJ that the mainstream media remains very constrained in what they publish. The Jimmy Saville affair broke on the internet in a big way a year ago, and yet the mainstream media is only now catching up and still not making key links, like to Haut de la Garenne.
I receive, constantly, emails from people wishing me to take up various cases on my blog and furnishing information. 95% of the time I do not publish because I am not able to investigate fully (there is just one of me) and I do not know the source: the exclusives on this blog come mostly from my access to well-placed sources I have known for years through my past diplomatic career, and trust.
A notable proportion of the cases brought to me by those I do not know involve alleged paedophile rings. I was sent information about Haut de la Garenne for years, which named a string of senior people alleged to take advantage of organised paedophilia in the care home. Among the judges, politicians and aristocracy, there was indeed the name of Jimmy Saville. I have to admit it was not just that I could not prove any of it, I was actively sceptical about what seemed a random list of names of the famous. We now know for certain that Saville visited the place several times. The whole Haut De La Garenne investigation always seemed to obscure more than it revealed; I do hope it is mow re-opened, and taken away from the local Jersey police.
Another case which caused me great concern was that of Hollie Greig, where the jailing of Robert Green seemed to me vicious and unjustified. But I had earlier refused a request on behalf of the Greig family to involve myself in the case because the allegations made seemed to me incapable of proof without investigative powers and resources of the kind the police have. That the police do not properly deploy those resources where allegations involve the powerful appears to me too often to be too likely. Where the accusation is that the judicial establishment is involved in a paedophile ring, for the same judicial establishment to start jailing campaigners is extraordinary.
But the Alisher Usmanov and Adam Werritty cases will be the main thrust of my talk to the NUJ. In the first, the mainstream media still to this day persist in covering up the criminal past of the convicted blackmailer and Putin cohort who purchased 10% of Facebook and 35% of Arsenal Football Club.
The Werritty case is much more sinister because it goes to the media collusion in burying evidence of the influence of Israel on British politics. The public were told that Werritty was at a small number of meetings where he should not have been. The mainstream media refused to discuss why he was at those meetings or what his participation was actually about leaving the public to infer he was merely Fox’s lover or in some way they were making money.
Even when I was able to produce undeniable evidence that Fox and Werritty held eight meetings with Matthew Gould, now and during six of those meetings British Ambassador to Israel (and Private Secretary to the Foreign Secretary for the first two meetings) the mainstream media refused point blank to publish it. Mossad were present for at least two of those eight meetings. Gus O’Donnell’s report, whcih led to Fox’s resignation, had revealed only two of these eight meetings. This should have been a massive story. The media buried it (with the sole and belated exception of the Independent on Sunday).
No media were prepared to put any investigative resources into what Gould, Werritty and Mossad were doing. I had an impeccable senior source who told me that they were discussing preparing the political ground for an attack on Iran. You would think that, given the Werritty affair caused Fox to resign, that was worth investigating. The media completely blanked it. To this day the fact that Werritty and Fox met Gould eight times has been reported nowhere but one column in the Independent on Sunday.
Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 6060 Location: East London
Posted: Sat Nov 10, 2012 11:42 pm Post subject:
I haven't got time at the moment to check this video out, but I am pretty confident it is the one where Craig says a Diplomat friend in New York told him that the US had struck a deal with the Organisation of African States; the OAS wanted the US to back Saudi Arabian intervention in Bahrein if it was needede; the US agreed if the OAS would call for a 'No-Fly Zone' over Libya in the UN (obviously, it was a win-win situation for the US, who had it's own interest in the Bahrein Royal Clique being supported, but wanted the OAS to forward their agenda for overthrowing the Quaddafi Regime, an extremely Nationalistic and benevolent Dictatorship, with huge benefits for man7y of it's citizens (and a serious threat, with it's switch to the Gold Dinar, to the Yankee Dollar). _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
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