Craig Murray's Blog, page 111

The CIA’s Absence of Conviction

I have watched incredulous as the CIA’s blatant lie has grown and grown as a media story – blatant because the CIA has made no attempt whatsoever to substantiate it. There is no Russian involvement in the leaks of emails showing Clinton’s corruption. Yes this rubbish has been the lead today in the Washington Post in the US and the Guardian here, and was the lead item on the BBC main news. I suspect it is leading the American broadcasts also.

A little simple logic demolishes the CIA’s claims. The CIA claim they “know the individuals” involved. Yet under Obama the USA has been absolutely ruthless in its persecution of whistleblowers, and its pursuit of foreign hackers through extradition. We are supposed to believe that in the most vital instance imaginable, an attempt by a foreign power to destabilise a US election, even though the CIA knows who the individuals are, nobody is going to be arrested or extradited, or (if in Russia) made subject to yet more banking and other restrictions against Russian individuals? Plainly it stinks. The anonymous source claims of “We know who it was, it was the Russians” are beneath contempt.

As Julian Assange has made crystal clear, the leaks did not come from the Russians. As I have explained countless times, they are not hacks, they are insider leaks – there is a major difference between the two. And it should be said again and again, that if Hillary Clinton had not connived with the DNC to fix the primary schedule to disadvantage Bernie, if she had not received advance notice of live debate questions to use against Bernie, if she had not accepted massive donations to the Clinton foundation and family members in return for foreign policy influence, if she had not failed to distance herself from some very weird and troubling people, then none of this would have happened.

The continued ability of the mainstream media to claim the leaks lost Clinton the election because of “Russia”, while still never acknowledging the truths the leaks reveal, is Kafkaesque.

I had a call from a Guardian journalist this afternoon. The astonishing result was that for three hours, an article was accessible through the Guardian front page which actually included the truth among the CIA hype:

The Kremlin has rejected the hacking accusations, while the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has previously said the DNC leaks were not linked to Russia. A second senior official cited by the Washington Post conceded that intelligence agencies did not have specific proof that the Kremlin was “directing” the hackers, who were said to be one step removed from the Russian government.

Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, who is a close associate of Assange, called the CIA claims “bullshit”, adding: “They are absolutely making it up.”

“I know who leaked them,” Murray said. “I’ve met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it’s an insider. It’s a leak, not a hack; the two are different things.

“If what the CIA are saying is true, and the CIA’s statement refers to people who are known to be linked to the Russian state, they would have arrested someone if it was someone inside the United States.

“America has not been shy about arresting whistleblowers and it’s not been shy about extraditing hackers. They plainly have no knowledge whatsoever.”

But only three hours. While the article was not taken down, the home page links to it vanished and it was replaced by a ludicrous one repeating the mad CIA allegations against Russia and now claiming – incredibly – that the CIA believe the FBI is deliberately blocking the information on Russian collusion. Presumably this totally nutty theory, that Putin is somehow now controlling the FBI, is meant to answer my obvious objection that, if the CIA know who it is, why haven’t they arrested somebody. That bit of course would be the job of the FBI, who those desperate to annul the election now wish us to believe are the KGB.

It is terrible that the prime conduit for this paranoid nonsense is a once great newspaper, the Washington Post, which far from investigating executive power, now is a sounding board for totally evidence free anonymous source briefing of utter bullshit from the executive.

In the UK, one single article sums up the total abnegation of all journalistic standards. The truly execrable Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian writes “Few credible sources doubt that Russia was behind the hacking of internal Democratic party emails, whose release by Julian Assange was timed to cause maximum pain to Hillary Clinton and pleasure for Trump.” Does he produce any evidence at all for this assertion? No, none whatsoever. What does a journalist mean by a “credible source”? Well, any journalist worth their salt in considering the credibility of a source will first consider access. Do they credibly have access to the information they claim to have?

Now both Julian Assange and I have stated definitively the leak does not come from Russia. Do we credibly have access? Yes, very obviously. Very, very few people can be said to definitely have access to the source of the leak. The people saying it is not Russia are those who do have access. After access, you consider truthfulness. Do Julian Assange and I have a reputation for truthfulness? Well in 10 years not one of the tens of thousands of documents WikiLeaks has released has had its authenticity successfully challenged. As for me, I have a reputation for inconvenient truth telling.

Contrast this to the “credible sources” Freedland relies on. What access do they have to the whistleblower? Zero. They have not the faintest idea who the whistleblower is. Otherwise they would have arrested them. What reputation do they have for truthfulness? It’s the Clinton gang and the US government, for goodness sake.

In fact, the sources any serious journalist would view as “credible” give the opposite answer to the one Freedland wants. But in what passes for Freedland’s mind, “credible” is 100% synonymous with “establishment”. When he says “credible sources” he means “establishment sources”. That is the truth of the “fake news” meme. You are not to read anything unless it is officially approved by the elite and their disgusting, crawling whores of stenographers like Freedland.

The worst thing about all this is that it is aimed at promoting further conflict with Russia. This puts everyone in danger for the sake of more profits for the arms and security industries – including of course bigger budgets for the CIA. As thankfully the four year agony of Aleppo comes swiftly to a close today, the Saudi and US armed and trained ISIS forces counter by moving to retake Palmyra. This games kills people, on a massive scale, and goes on and on.

**********************************************************************************

Signed First Editions of Sikunder Burnes are now available direct from this blog! You can leave a message naming the dedication you want. Sold at cover price of £25 including p&p for UK delivery or £29 for overseas delivery. Ideal Christmas presents!!

Delivery


UK Delivery £25.00 GBPEurope Delivery £29.00 GBPOther International £34.00 GBP


Signing Instructions

Liked this article? Please share using the links below. Then View Latest Posts

The post The CIA’s Absence of Conviction appeared first on Craig Murray.

BBC Bias

I am delighted that “London Calling”, the documentary on BBC bias during the referendum campaign, has now been released on YouTube. I very much enjoyed my own little contribution to it. May I just take time here to note again what a contemptible little lickspittle Gavin Esler of the BBC really is?

There is a fundraiser for DVDs and flyers to get this over to the wider public in Scotland. You can find it here.

For the avoidance of doubt, I am just the good-looking one in the film, I am not one of the producers. We are however still doing the very effective communal screenings and discussions, and I have dates in January for Perth and Berwickshire already booked. It is not that the documentary tells you much that you did not already know, it is the film’s relentless building up of the evidence and the indignation that is ultimately very moving.

****************************************************************************************************

Signed First Editions of Sikunder Burnes are now available direct from this blog! You can leave a message naming the dedication you want. Sold at cover price of £25 including p&p for UK delivery or £29 for overseas delivery. Ideal Christmas presents!!

Delivery


UK Delivery £25.00 GBPEurope Delivery £29.00 GBPOther International £34.00 GBP


Signing Instructions

Liked this article? Please share using the links below. Then View Latest Posts

The post BBC Bias appeared first on Craig Murray.

Nana Akuffo Addo Elected President of Ghana

With 185 out of 275 constituency results in, I am calling the election for President Elect Nana Akuffo Addo. There is a surprisingly uniform swing to Nana across every region of the country, and he cannot lose from this position.

This is the swing to Nana region by region, based on my constituency by constituency analysis of the results. There is a swing to the NPP in every single region.

Swing to Nana Akuffo Addo

Ashanti Region 6.1%

Brong Ahafo 6.3%

Central 7.6%

Eastern 5.1%

Greater Accra 4.2%

Northern 4.7%

Upper East 5.6%

Upper West 6.2%

Volta 3.2%

Western 9.2%

Ultimately I predict Nana Akuffo Addo will get a strong mandate with 53.1% of the vote once counting has finished.

I believe this result is a popular reaction against levels of corruption in Ghana that had become terrifying. I am very happy indeed that Ghana has yet again shown it is a mature democracy, and for the third time this millennium the ruling party has been democratically replaced by the opposition.

The post Nana Akuffo Addo Elected President of Ghana appeared first on Craig Murray.

Twitter and Facebook Censorship and Mainstream Media Denial

I had never heard of ghost banning until I was ghost banned by twitter. That of course is the idea – they censor you without realising you are censored. People no longer get notifications when I post, and the tweet only turns up in the twitter line of followers who happen to be logged in at the time my tweet goes out. Those logging in later will no longer see tweets I issued while they were away. Most of my tweets no longer show up on twitter searches, and further restrictions are applied when people retweet my tweets.

Since ghost banning, traffic to this website from twitter has fallen 90%.

As twitter do not inform you that you have been ghost banned, it is hard to know exactly what prompted it, but I believe it immediately followed this tweet.

For anyone who gets their news through the mainstream media, the spirit cooking scandal referred to performance art by Marina Abramovic, to an intimate domestic display of which Clinton campaign chairman and paid Saudi lobbyist John Podesta was invited. The performance draws upon occult references and imagery – as an “artist” her inspiration appears to be early Hammer horror films. It involves painting with blood, milk and semen, presumably from animals. To add a frisson, Ms Abramovic has claimed it is art when performed in a gallery, but real when performed in a private home.

Personally, I view it as rubbish as art, and the sort of thing idiots with too much money pay for. I think the occult references give a frisson to the idle rich, like students playing with a Ouija board. Personally I believe that kind of thing is better avoided, but each to his own. What the Podesta emails undoubtedly show is that the rich are not like us. Just as David Cameron sticking his todger in the mouth of a dead pig was an upper class bonding ritual and not actual bestiality, I don’t actually think the Podestas are Satanists. Just weird.

But what is beyond doubt is that the #spiritcooking sensation on social media had a real effect on the US election, and in an election where the margins were so very close potentially an extremely important one. Tens of millions of people saw the images on social media. It galvanised evangelical Christians to vote for Trump and, perhaps much more crucially, it contributed materially to a massive depression of the African American vote for Hillary as millions of African American Christians, disgusted by seeing apparent endorsement of Abramovic’s voodoo and satanic references by the Clinton camp, sat at home and did not turn out to vote. That 2 million black Americans who voted for Obama did not vote for Hillary was not because they are racist – it was because they disliked Hillary for a number of reasons, and spirit cooking was a factor, especially as the famed Democratic machine is heavily reliant upon African American churches for the ground war. I should love to see the influence of the spirit cooking scandal measured, but given that the mainstream media who commission the polls are desperate to deny the effect of WikiLeaks on the election, they are not likely to measure it.

Instead what we have is the “post-truth” narrative. This holds that something is only true if the mainstream media says that it is. It is an easy trick to conflate a dozen ludicrous untrue stories released on social media, and then leap from there to saying everything on social media not endorsed by mainstream media is untrue. It is but a further step to argue that therefore social media must be censored. This is where we came in, with Twitter already doing this to me. Mark Zuckerberg has indicated that Facebook will take further action to prevent dissemination of “untrue” political information. Of course, they already do this, and again I am afraid to say in particular they do this to me. All my blog posts are posted to Facebook as well as twitter. Did you know when you share my post on Facebook, Facebook limits the number of your friends who can see it? In my case the limit is set to ensure that the percentage of incoming traffic to my site that comes through Facebook, is always precisely 5%. To do that, of course, they have to know precisely how much traffic is coming in to this site. Worrying, isn’t it? Before Facebook set the limitation -around the same time as twitter – the amount of incoming traffic from Facebook was around 30% of my traffic.

As with any grossly illiberal cause it is the Guardian which has led the charge for internet censorship in the UK. One hilarious recent Guardian article listed media bias towards Clinton as an example of a post-truth claim. The article did not mention the fact that senior CNN commentator Donna Brazile had been sacked by CNN after WikiLeaks revealed she had been feeding debate questions to Hillary Clinton in advance, nor Wikileaks’ numerous releases of emails detailing partisan collusion with the media to promote Hillary. It did not mention the deliberate and planned timing of primary elections and debates to disadvantage Sanders. In fact, it did nt mention any of the inconvenient facts WikiLeaks had revealed. In that, it was absolutely typical mainstream media.

Mainstream media is not post-truth. It never had any connection to the truth.

To complete the chain of dishonesty, the trope of Russian interference in the election is getting a new airing. In a painfully obvious charade, Obama is being “pushed” by his own party to reveal security service information on “Russian interference” in the US election. The focus is particularly on the allegation that the Russian state hacked the Podesta and DNC emails and gave them to WikiLeaks.

The problem is there is no such evidence. There can’t be because both the DNC and Podesta emails were leaked by Washington insiders, to my certain knowledge. I repeat that, to my certain knowledge. Hillary’s pathetic election claim that the security services had information it was the Russians, depended on a statement that the leak was “consistent with Russian methods and objectives”. Look at that statement very carefully. It says “we have no evidence whatsoever, but the President has asked us to blame the Russians”. As I say, I know it wasn’t the Russians. The only “evidence” ever shown to me by those blaming the Russians is that an alleged hacker calling himself “Guccifer” sometimes uses Cyrillic. Which may or may not be true, but as “Guccifer” was neither the source of, nor a conduit for, the leaks it is utterly irrelevant.

Fear not. The truth is out there. People are trying to make it more difficult for you to find, but they will not succeed. In my own humble case, while visits from Facebook and Twitter are radically down, overall numbers are up. The internet somehow always finds a way to work around.

Update: You couldn’t make it up!

You couldn’t make it up!

****************************************************************************************************

Signed First Editions of Sikunder Burnes are now available direct from this blog! You can leave a message naming the dedication you want. Sold at cover price of £25 including p&p for UK delivery or £29 for overseas delivery. Ideal Christmas presents!!

Delivery


UK Delivery £25.00 GBPEurope Delivery £29.00 GBPOther International £34.00 GBP


Signing Instructions

Liked this article? Please share using the links below. Then View Latest Posts

The post Twitter and Facebook Censorship and Mainstream Media Denial appeared first on Craig Murray.

Ken Clarke

I am a long term fan of Ken Clarke, who walked today with the SNP and Caroline Lucas through the lobby to oppose the racist motivated disaster that is Brexit. Personally I dislike referenda in the extreme, those of us who genuinely are of the common clay know better than to romantically ennoble our peers. I strongly suggest you spend a couple of hours talking with ordinary punters on Ramsgate High Street before you decide they should determine the detail of high policy. I am decidedly with Edmund Burke on this issue.

The same goes for Scottish Independence. The majority of countries in the entire world achieved independence in my lifetime, and the vast majority of those without a referendum. At least seven member states of the EU obtained their current form and boundaries in the last three decades, without referenda.

If the elected representatives of the Scottish people – the MPs, MSP’s or both – were to come together as a national assembly and declare independence, that would precisely meet the process by which the large majority of countries in the world, including many EU members, achieved independence. The actual confirmation of that independence is by recognition at the UN, and nothing to do with internal process. The UN does not prescribe a referendum, which is very much the exception not the rule.

To return to Ken Clarke. A few years ago I debated against him at the Cambridge Union. After the post-debate reception, I returned with Malcolm Rifkind and Ken Clarke by the last train to London. Clarke came from first class to standard to find me and insisted I join them. He had a most expensive looking substantial pigskin briefcase. He opened it to produce, encased in foam moulding like a professional camera case, a bottle of perfectly chilled champagne and four flutes. A great man.

*******************************************************************************************************

Signed First Editions are now available direct from this blog! You can leave a message naming the dedication you want. Sold at cover price of £25 including p&p for UK delivery, £29 for European delivery or £34 everywhere else. Ideal Christmas presents!!

Delivery


UK Delivery £25.00 GBPEurope Delivery £29.00 GBPOther International £34.00 GBP


Signing Instructions

The post Ken Clarke appeared first on Craig Murray.

Back Up and Running

Many thanks to all the staff, medical and otherwise, at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary who hauled my carcase out of the ambulance and restored it to an appearance of intelligent life over the last five days. A timely reminder that we never know when disaster will strike, and need to make progress all the time. I am now thinking how to intensify my campaigning for Scottish Independence.

Profound apologies to those who submitted orders for signed copies of Sikunder Burnes and have not received them yet. By a happy coincidence I am restored home and this same day the new print run has arrived at the warehouse, so I will get on to it right away. Hopefully the book will now get into the shops well before Christmas. Very few have actually ever appeared in a shop, largely because to date almost all stocks have been hoovered up by online suppliers. Promotion has also been patchy, particularly in England, and I am very grateful to the efforts of blog readers in that respect on my behalf with bookshops. Continuing feedback is still very welcome.

******************************************************************************************************

Signed First Editions are now available direct from this blog! You can leave a message naming the dedication you want. Sold at cover price of £25 including p&p for UK delivery, £29 for European delivery or £34 everywhere else. Ideal Christmas presents!!

Delivery


UK Delivery £25.00 GBPEurope Delivery £29.00 GBPOther International £34.00 GBP


Signing Instructions

The post Back Up and Running appeared first on Craig Murray.

The Pits

Being stuck in hospital watching the BBC relentlessly push the UKIP anti-immigration agenda is not the best of Sunday mornings. Especially when paying ten pounds for the privilege on the morally disgusting Patientline system.

The post The Pits appeared first on Craig Murray.

Absence of Comment

JI have spent the last couple of days as the guest of Edinburgh Royal Infirmary which is annoying as much I wanted to write about.

Was meant to be tonight at premiere at Ecuadorean Embassy of new John Pilger doc which event hopefully will put minds at rest over Julian.

Apologies recent orders of signed copies of Sikunder Burnes delivery will be delayed a bit till I get out.

The post Absence of Comment appeared first on Craig Murray.

Debauchery in the Court of a Psychopath

The National newspaper has used that snappy headline over an excerpt from Sikunder Burnes they publish today. It is from the Chapter “Peshawar Perverted” and here is a brief extract of the extract.

These unpublishable moral delinquencies included paedophilia. Several British officers noted the children around Avitabile. Lieutenant William Barr was entertained to a nautch in 1839: “Amongst the number were a few children, varying from seven to ten years of age, who … are gradually being initiated into the mysteries of a craft most derogatory in its nature, as carried on in the East … Behind the governor stood two of his servants, a pair of diminutive Afghan boys … one of whom … would have made a remarkably pretty girl; he, however, looked quite out of place in attendance upon a masculine individual like Avitabile, and would have been better suited for the occupation of a lady’s page.”

SURGEON-GENERAL Atkinson noted of Avitabile the same year: “He lives in good style, and is distinguished for his hospitality, which has been amply experienced and acknowledged by the British officers… On every occasion, his table has been crowded with guests, and, according to oriental custom, the sumptuous entertainments always concluded with a grand nautch, his figurante-company of Cashmeer women consisting of about thirty, singers and dancers from the age of twelve to twenty-five.”

By 1840, Avitabile was entertaining so many British officers that he obtained a monthly allowance of Rs1000 towards the expense. Here we have one of those rare glimpses behind the curtain that reveals the truth about the “nautches” which were such a frequent feature of the lives of British officials: “At the same time the Government of India, who had heard of the disgraceful orgies which attended some of the entertainments, directed that none but the most senior officers were to be entertained by him, and gave the political officer an allowance of 500Rs a month, on behalf of the younger ones.”

So the senior officers got the disgraceful orgies, and the junior officers got dinner with Mackeson.

The National reproduce a large version of the most common sketch of “Alexander Burnes” to illustrate the book extract, despite the fact the book goes to some lengths to show it is not actually a sketch of Alexander Burnes. But you can’t expect picture editors to read books, I suppose. The print edition of the National also contains a sub-heading below this picture in what looks like Latin but isn’t. I have no idea why.

For a broader perspective on the book, there is an excellent account here of some of the themes I highlighted at a talk on Saturday.

As far as I can gather Sikunder Burnes has currently sold out absolutely everywhere except for a few copies left at Amazon, which bought up most of the stock. There were 19 other suppliers available through Amazon alone, but every single one has sold out. It is being urgently reprinted – for the second time – and the publisher assures me will be back in the shops before Christmas. Reminds me of Cabbage Patch Dolls!

**********************************************************************************************************************

Signed First Editions of Sikunder Burnes are now available direct from this blog! You can leave a message naming the dedication you want. Sold at cover price of £25 including p&p for UK delivery or £29 for overseas delivery. Ideal Christmas presents!!

Delivery


UK Delivery £25.00 GBPEurope Delivery £29.00 GBPOther International £34.00 GBP


Signing Instructions

Liked this article? Please share using the links below. Then View Latest Posts

The post Debauchery in the Court of a Psychopath appeared first on Craig Murray.

Doubting Thomases

I have been quite amused to receive some – well actually rather a lot of – rather aggressive tweets and other social media messages from people who believe Julian Assange is dead, and are therefore outraged I had supper with him on Friday. This seems to me the ultimate in concern trolling – to pretend to adore someone so much that you are angry and upset to find the object of your adoration has not been killed or kidnapped. There are youtube videos alleging that Julian is dead which together have attracted millions of viewers. It is a peculiar kind of cargo-cult.

We now have the situation where people who had never heard of Julian a year ago are demanding that he must be visited not by long-term associates, like John Pilger and myself, but by a “trusted person”, by which these new devotees mean someone Julian has never seen before, probably working for Rupert Murdoch. Best of all are the demands for photos with a sock on the head or a newspaper. To pander to these silly demands would be a never-ending task, and merely spark a new round of craziness – “that sock on his head is photo-shopped”, “that was a double at the window”. It is not a game in which I have any interest. Undoubtedly some of it is stirred up by security services anxious to muddy the water about the authenticity of Wikileaks’ work. But most of it is from decent and genuine but misguided people.

I have been visiting Julian since before Jane from Idaho heard of him, and the purpose of visiting him is not to provide comfort to Jane from Idaho. If my word does that, fine. If she does not want to take my word, also fine. But if people could at least research who John Pilger, Yanis Varoufakis and myself are before deciding we are a CIA plot, that would be helpful. Stopping the aggressive and insulting tweets would be nice too.

———————————————-

New Book: Sikunder Burnes: Master of the Great Game – by Craig Murray
Liked this article? Please share using the links below. Then View Latest Posts

The post Doubting Thomases appeared first on Craig Murray.