Craig Murray's Blog, page 87

The End of the Affair

At the High Court today the following joint statement was agreed.

On 29 April 2016, Jake Wallis Simons and Craig Murray appeared together on Sky News to debate anti-Semitism in the United Kingdom. Following that debate, Dr Wallis Simons issued libel proceedings against Mr Murray. Dr Wallis Simons and Mr Murray have now settled these proceedings.

By this statement, Mr Murray accepts that Dr Wallis Simons is not a liar, and Dr Wallis Simons accepts that Mr Murray is not an anti-Semite. They are both pleased to have resolved this dispute amicably.

I am genuinely happy with this outcome, which would never have been remotely possible without the incredible 5,000 plus people who donated to my defence fund and enabled me to be represented by a top legal team. It continues to be my view that the libel laws are appalling – had I lost the case I was very definitely looking at a cost of £350,000 plus.

I am also very grateful to the band of readers of this blog who arrived to support me, and in the end saw very little. When invited to open the case the other side immediately asked for an adjournment to discuss a settlement. The hour of delay which followed was occupied on our side almost entirely by my agonising over whether it was morally acceptable for me to agree this statement and use the defence fund to pay my lawyers, or whether those who donated did so in the expectation I would fight the case whatever.

There were a number of supporters at hand who had donated, many of whom were personally previously unknown to me, and the opinions I could canvass were unanimously that this was a good result and a good use of their money.

Having agreed to settle in this way, I have arrived at this following decision. If anybody who donated feels they have been unduly sold out, please let me know through the contact button above and your donation will be refunded to you.

When we started the defence fund, our “realistic” projection was a total of £12,000. That we eventually raised over £100,000 is astonishing. Equally astonishing, but in a bad way, is that my own legal team’s cost almost amounts to that – I will publish full accounts in due course. After all is settled and refunds issued to those who wish, if anything is left over I propose to split it between Andy Wightman’s defence fund and Neil Clark’s case against Oliver Kamm. Again please do let me know if you object. It’s actually your money not mine.

I did not realise how this has been weighing me down, until the threat has been lifted today. I have never claimed to be entirely without fault, and I would ask you to refrain from any comment here which detracts from the amicable spirit of the joint statement. It is a time for celebration not recrimination, and please confine any rudeness to remarks about me.

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I Go to Stand My Trial

I leave Edinburgh this afternoon for London, to stand trial at the High Court for libel. To answer a question frequently asked, the reason I have accepted English jurisdiction is that the event was a Sky News broadcast, an English broadcaster. If it had been over my blog I would not have accepted jurisdiction as I do not accept the English claim to universal jurisdiction over internet content.

I do hope that this trial will help bring into further disrepute the immoral and draconian English libel laws. If I lose, the total costs and damages I would have to pay will potentially amount to some £350,000 – a ridiculously disproportionate result for the alleged civil offence. It would ruin me and blight the lives of my young family. Whether this can possibly be an appropriate reaction to something I said in response in a live debate, you might judge for yourselves by reading the court documents .

Thanks to the astonishing generosity of the readers of this blog, at least I am in a position to defend myself robustly. Over 5,000 readers of this blog have, with incredible generosity, contributed a total of £100,323 towards my defence to date. The libel laws are so oppressive because the sums of money involved are so astonishing. The entire massive English libel industry – courts, judges, barristers, solicitors – is taken together a major financial interest in itself, well represented in parliament. It is in all their collective financial interest that this system of oppression rolls on, which of course requires a good chance of people being found guilty to encourage more plaintiffs into the industry. I often feel this analysis from unconscious institutional self-interest is often neglected in favour of the equally valid and important argument that the libel laws are an essential tool of the wealthy and powerful to discourage free speech by the poor. Robert Maxwell, Alisher Usmanov and Jimmy Savile are three examples of people who kept their true nature hidden by constantly and aggressively threatening people with the disastrous consequences of an English libel suit.

As we enter the trial itself, I still need to appeal for more funds, despite all that so many of you have done for me so far. Here is that defence fund appeal one last time:

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I continue urgently to need contributions to my defence in the libel action against me by Jake Wallis Simons, Associate Editor of Daily Mail online. You can see the court documents outlining the case here. I am threatened with bankruptcy and the end of this blog (not to mention a terrible effect on my young family). Support is greatly appreciated. An astonishing 4,000 people have now contributed a total of over £75,000. But that is still only halfway towards the £140,000 target. I realise it is astonishing that so much money can be needed, but that is the pernicious effect of England’s draconian libel laws, as explained here.

On a practical point, a number of people have said they are not members of Paypal so could not donate. After clicking on “Donate”, just below and left of the “Log In” button is a small “continue” link which enables you to donate by card without logging in.

For those who prefer not to pay online, you can send a cheque made out to me to Craig Murray, 89/14 Holyrood Road, Edinburgh, EH8 8BA. As regular readers know, it is a matter of pride to me that I never hide my address.

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Finally the trial starts on Tuesday 7 November at the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand, High Court Queen’s Bench. It will last probably two and up to three days. It is open to the public. I would very much welcome anyone with the capacity to report any of what happens on social media. I am not aware of any restrictions on this, but will try to publish them here if I learn of any.

This is probably my last blogpost until after the trial, as I must concentrate now. By the time I come back online the Tories will have appointed their next Disgraced Former Defence Secretary in Waiting.

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Blowback and the Manhattan Terror Attack

The latest Manhattan Terror Attack appears to have been conducted by an Uzbek, Sayfullo Saipov, and a worrying proportion of such attacks worldwide are being carried out by Uzbeks, including the ramming attack in Stockholm and the Istanbul airport bombing.

When I was British Ambassador in Uzbekistan I very explicitly warned that the support NATO countries were giving the appallingly repressive Uzbek regime – military, financial and political support – would cause hatred of the West among Uzbeks. I felt so strongly about this I was prepared to give up my career for it, and in Murder in Samarkand (Dirty Diplomacy in the USA) I published a 440 page account of how our policy was fundamentally wrong. It gives me no pleasure whatsoever to be vindicated in this way.

Newsweek today gets it spectacularly wrong, publishing:

The presence of radical Uzbeks around the world may seem damning, but Uzbekistan has been a U.S. partner in the war on terror. The U.S. operated an airbase in the country from 2001 to 2005, and continued to use Uzbekistan as a strategic location to bring goods and military equipment into Afghanistan even after the base closed. Former Secretary of State John Kerry visited the country in 2015.

The point they miss is that it is because of the Uzbek regime’s mutual cooperation with the USA in the War on Terror, and the use of that pretext by the dictatorship, aided and abetted by the CIA, to ramp up repression, that Uzbek terrorism is occurring.

There are two other points worth noting:

1) The rigid suppression of all religious belief, as in Uzbekistan, is equally as likely to promote radical religious extremism as the inculcation of a single religion in noxious form, as in Saudi Arabia.

2) I complain specifically in Murder in Samarkand that the successful and systematic attempts by Germany to prevent EU criticism of Uzbek regime human rights abuse, were motivated by Gerhard Schroder’s personal interest in Gazprom. I suffered some derision for this at the time, but his behaviour has now become notorious.

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The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

Only the Tories could produce a sex dossier like this one, in tremendous High Tory prose. They talk of “impregnation” and “fornication”. This provides some backing for its authenticity.

It is difficult to understand the provenance of this “sex list” of Tory MPs. What was the standing of the junior Tory researchers who allegedly compiled it, and at whose behest? Assuming this copy is genuine, we know that at least some of it is accurate because individuals like Mark Garnier have admitted the detail of the allegation. But I publish it as a matter of intense public interest at the moment, and I publish it as evidence that this is what is alleged. This list is already extremely widely available online. I am not in any sense endorsing or promoting as true any of the specific individual allegations, which may be groundless nonsense. I understand that in some cases these allegations are strongly denied.

Except for the Liam Fox and Adam Werritty bit, we all know that is true.

What is genuinely alarming about this list is the clear picture that emerges overall that the pool of MPs’ researchers, who are often young and are in a subservient position in this context, are viewed as fair game for MPs’ sexual predation. The list of 40 Tory MPs (NB Not 36) includes 23 who are accused of inappropriate behaviour towards researchers, secretaries and others in a dependent position. This is disgusting exploitation and may be justly compared to the Weinstein affair.

But some of the other allegations do not strike me as of genuine public interest. Personal sexual preferences between consenting adults are not my business, and I detect a definite whiff of homophobia in some of these details. If somebody likes to be peed on by three men, what has that got to do with his ability or integrity as an MP? Similarly the concern about extra-marital affairs seems to come from a bygone age. If the several citings of Kwesi Kwerteng are true, the man has truly appalling taste. Women appear to be dubiously targeted for mere promiscuity.

Tories are sleazebags. Who knew?

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The Intellectual Dishonesty of the Guardian

In an instance typical of the morally abhorrent neoliberal propaganda rag that the Guardian has become, it reports that the latest respectable opinion poll puts support for Catalan Independence at 48.7% – while failing to report that the same poll puts opposition to Catalan Independence at 43.6%. By excluding the don’t knows and failing to admit it has done so, the Guardian quite deliberately leads readers to presume that the 48.7% support for Independence means there is a majority against. In fact the true figures are roughly Yes 53%, No 47%, excluding don’t knows.

I don’t know either Stephen Burgen or Jennifer Rankin, the authors of the Guardian article, but I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and imagine that there was a period in their lives when they did not intend to become disgusting, stinking, lying worms churning out misleading crap on behalf of the Establishment. But then again, I could be wrong. Maybe they just do anything for money.

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On Being a Rebel

The Francoist ultras of the Spanish government have gone the whole hog, and are charging Puigdemont and his colleagues with sedition and rebellion. And before anyone can interject with any nonsense about prosecutorial independence, let me assure you that in no country, ever, in the history of the world, has anybody been tried for sedition or rebellion without the explicit approval of the political rulers.

Puigdemont is in excellent company. Gandhi was jailed for ten years for sedition in 1922 for seeking Indian independence from Britain. He served two years in dreadful conditions in jail. As Gandhi stated in his defence speech, he certainly was guilty under the law, and proud of it. Here is an extract from Gandhi’s speech:

Affection cannot be manufactured or regulated by law. If one has no affection for a person or system, one should be free to give the fullest expression to his disaffection, so long as he does not contemplate, promote, or incite to violence. But the section under which mere promotion of disaffection is a crime. I have studied some of the cases tried under it; I know that some of the most loved of India’s patriots have been convicted under it. I consider it a privilege, therefore, to be charged under that section. I have endeavored to give in their briefest outline the reasons for my disaffection. I have no personal ill-will against any single administrator, much less can I have any disaffection towards the King’s person. But I hold it to be a virtue to be disaffected towards a Government which in its totality has done more harm to India than any previous system. India is less manly under the British rule than she ever was before. Holding such a belief, I consider it to be a sin to have affection for the system. And it has been a precious privilege for me to be able to write what I have in the various articles tendered in evidence against me.

In fact, I believe that I have rendered a service to India and England by showing in non-co-operation the way out of the unnatural state in which both are living. In my opinion, non-co-operation with evil is as much a duty as is co-operation with good. But in the past, non-co-operation has been deliberately expressed in violence to the evil-doer. I am endeavoring to show to my countrymen that violent non-co-operation only multiples evil, and that as evil can only be sustained by violence, withdrawal of support of evil requires complete abstention from violence.

Exactly as I predicted, the Spanish governments imposition of elections is a ruse that was never in good faith, with the Catalan leaders exiled (and two of them imprisoned) and the main pro-Independence parties, and the act of seeking Independence itself, banned. The continued endorsement of all this by Western states, Western politicians and corporate and state media has become so self-evidently hypocritical that the tactic is now simply to relegate Catalonia right down the news bulletins and pretend it is all over and nothing much is happening, just as they ignored the violence and fascism around Sunday’s Spanish nationalist march.

But you would have to be extremely foolish to believe this extreme state repression has killed off the Catalan cause. It will backfire spectacularly, in due course.

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‘Twas on the Good Ship Venus

Submarines don’t have much rigging, which somewhat spoils the chorus, but I am delighted to hear that sailors on board Britain’s nuclear deterrent are heavily into sex and drugs. As the North Korean diplomatic standoff shows, nuclear weapons are utterly useless even within the context of the one situation in which they are supposed to be of use. Nobody has yet argued that the solution to nuclear proliferation is to start an atomic war, so what are the things for? The notion that Putin has a secret desire to send tanks rolling up the streets of Dumfries is obvious nonsense.

However, if we are going to wreck our economy by squandering US$250 billion on a redundant weapons system, it is good that at least some people are getting some fun out of it. Mind you, for $250 billion the entire nation could get high and shag like crazy for a very long time, which would be more equitable than confining the merriment to a couple of dozen people sitting on some big bombs. Michael Fallon is one of the few people in the world who would like to see nuclear weapons actually used. He is reportedly distressed that post-coital ennui or drug induced lack of coordination might reduce operational efficiency and delay the apocalypse. I sometimes suspect Fallon must have taken far too many drugs when he was young. Certainly large parts of his brain appear to have been altered to something way beyond the normal.

It is not only Major Tom who noticed there is nothing much else you can do whilst sitting in a tin can. The problem of drug-taking submariners is actually over a hundred years old. We can be fairly confident they have been shagging that long too: the new development being that they now have the choice of shagging members of the opposite sex (though I am amused to see that in the current scandal the distinction between officers and other ranks was properly observed when it came to penis insertion).

I was talking yesterday with a Tory journalist who was exultantly predicting that the emerging MP’s sexual abuse scandal would be much worse for the opposition than the Tories – purely on the grounds that “Tory girls” would be much less disposed to “make a fuss” about sexual advances from the MP’s they work for. I find that depressing on a great many levels, but have a nagging feeling it might prove true.

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When Project Fear Shoots its Bolt

Zero companies have left Catalonia. The BBC, Sky News, France24 and Deutsche Welt have all told me repeatedly today that 1500 companies have left Catalonia. Goodness knows what the Spanish media is like – El Pais, soon to be renamed The Ecstatic Francoist, has put me off looking any further. But despite the media bombardment of fake news, actually no companies have left Catalonia at all. What have left Catalonia are not 1500 companies, but 1500 emails and forms giving a change of Head Office address. The companies and the jobs are still exactly where they were. In Catalonia.

Actually, it was very helpful for the Madrid government to initiate this process, because all those companies will need Spanish offices now their main premises are no longer in Spain but in Catalonia. They can now in addition register their Catalan premises with the Catalan state company register..

We saw Project Fear in spades in Scotland in 2014, but while they threatened that no business would remain in Scotland, they were not stupid enough to claim they had actually already left. Project Fear is a lot less effective when its bluff is called. The Spanish government has managed to call its own bluff, to shoot its bolt prematurely, and it turns out to be not a real threat at all. Now what does that remind me of?

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I continue urgently to need contributions to my defence in the libel action against me by Jake Wallis Simons, Associate Editor of Daily Mail online. You can see the court documents outlining the case here. I am threatened with bankruptcy and the end of this blog (not to mention a terrible effect on my young family). Support is greatly appreciated. An astonishing 4,000 people have now contributed a total of over £75,000. But that is still only halfway towards the £140,000 target. I realise it is astonishing that so much money can be needed, but that is the pernicious effect of England’s draconian libel laws, as explained here.

On a practical point, a number of people have said they are not members of Paypal so could not donate. After clicking on “Donate”, just below and left of the “Log In” button is a small “continue” link which enables you to donate by card without logging in.

For those who prefer not to pay online, you can send a cheque made out to me to Craig Murray, 89/14 Holyrood Road, Edinburgh, EH8 8BA. As regular readers know, it is a matter of pride to me that I never hide my address.

The post When Project Fear Shoots its Bolt appeared first on Craig Murray.

Europe Fails a Fundamental Democratic Test

A snap analysis of social media across Europe in the major languages, excluding Spaniards and Catalans, shows about 75% of posts are broadly sympathetic to Catalan Independence – or at least sympathetic to the Catalan right to self-determination – and about 25% support the Rajoy position. It is not possible directly to extrapolate from social media users to the entire population, but at the very least we can say that the unanimous attack on the Catalans from European governments and the unequivocal support for Rajoy plainly does not reflect the views of their people.

There is every reason to suppose that, despite the massive efforts of corporate and state media, European public opinion is sympathetic to Catalonia. As it is the corporate media and political parties, rather than the general public, who commission snap opinion polls, such polls only tell you what they wish you to know. Do not therefore expect to see the evidence of the gap between European governments and their people to be “proven” any time soon. But it is there.

Which is apposite, as the success of the Catalan independence movement is in part enabled by that general discontent of those governed which is becoming more and more evident across the democratic world. That is not only predictable, it is inevitable in a world where just eight people have as much wealth as 50% of the population of the entire globe.

There are 1,500 billionaires in the world, and their total wealth of 6 trillion dollars amounts to three times the GDP of the whole of Spain plus Catalonia, totalling 46.5 million people. The situation is getting worse at an incredible rate. The wealth of the billionaires increased almost 20% last year, as a great many individual Europeans got poorer in real terms.

Ordinary people create all the wealth from which they do not benefit, and the desire for fundamental change will continue to find expression in a variety of symptoms of severe public unrest. Some of these, like Catalan Independence, are good aims in themselves. Others, like the scapegoating across Europe of immigrants for the depressed living standards caused by the massive wealth gap, are most undesirable.

But what is becoming very plain indeed is that the political and media establishments are simply the tools of the super wealthy, to maintain the state enforced economic regulation of society which has enabled them to monopolise so much wealth. That is why the people of Europe have a very different view of what is happening in Catalonia to European political elites. We are all coming slowly to perceive that the political elites are a common enemy.

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I continue urgently to need contributions to my defence in the libel action against me by Jake Wallis Simons, Associate Editor of Daily Mail online. You can see the court documents outlining the case here. I am threatened with bankruptcy and the end of this blog (not to mention a terrible effect on my young family). Support is greatly appreciated. An astonishing 4,000 people have now contributed a total of over £75,000. But that is still only halfway towards the £140,000 target. I realise it is astonishing that so much money can be needed, but that is the pernicious effect of England’s draconian libel laws, as explained here.

On a practical point, a number of people have said they are not members of Paypal so could not donate. After clicking on “Donate”, just below and left of the “Log In” button is a small “continue” link which enables you to donate by card without logging in.

For those who prefer not to pay online, you can send a cheque made out to me to Craig Murray, 89/14 Holyrood Road, Edinburgh, EH8 8BA. As regular readers know, it is a matter of pride to me that I never hide my address.

The post Europe Fails a Fundamental Democratic Test appeared first on Craig Murray.

Misdirection and Catalonia

The Spanish Government’s refusal yesterday of the offer of a 20 December election in Catalonia vividly highlights that the thing they are most scared of is any kind of free and fair vote. They wish to take over all the Catalan institutions and media, and institute a judicial ban on pro-Independence campaigning, before they allow any election – that is why they prefer a six month delay. All of which yet again highlights the outrageous lie the western corporate and state media have been repeating and repeating for weeks, that only a minority in Catalonia support independence. At the last Catalan parliamentary election the explicitly pro-Independence parties gained 48% and explicitly anti-independence parties gained 39%, while the most recent recent poll, by GESOP, indicates that would not change in a new election.

Madrid prefers its elections rigged. Albert Rivera, leader of Rajoy’s coalition partners Ciudadanos, admitted it explicitly, saying that elections in Catalonia must only be held when the government can guarantee the result.

This is no surprise as Ciudadanos and Mr Rivera have only the most tenuous link to democracy. It is well known to everyone in senior diplomatic and intelligence circles of the major Western powers, that Ciudadanos originated as a highly successful astroturf operation, funded and organised by the German overseas security service, the BND. The rise of Podemos threatened the collapse of the Euro project, and Germany realised the loss of credibility of the established Spanish political parties would not enable them to counter Podemos. It was therefore decided to produce a “grassroots anti-establishment” movement, which in fact would help impose the harsh economic austerity on Spain the German interest in the Euro demanded.

When I served as Ambassador in Uzbekistan, Germany was undergoing profound foreign policy changes which finally set aside the extremely passive overseas stance Germany had adopted after World War II. This was absolutely a conscious process by the German Government. The airbase they opened at Termez in Uzbekistan, to operate into Afghanistan, was the first overseas military base Germany had opened anywhere since 1945, which they constantly told me. Side by side went a much more aggressive approach by the BND. Piggybacking on the Termez airbase, the BND created the “Islamic Jihad Union” as their first post World War II false flag operation, to provide political cover for their alliance with the Uzbek dictatorship. That precedent, re-establishing the BND role in active overseas operations, was followed by the creation of Ciudadanos, which is arguably one of the most successful intelligence operations of all time. So when you see Rivera calling for the election result in Catalonia to be “guaranteed”, that is Merkel speaking.

Franco died peacefully, still in power. 1975 is not that long ago. I was born in 1958, and by 1975 had already campaigned actively in two parliamentary elections and organised a couple of demonstrations against the American nuclear base at Mildenhall. There are plenty of prominent Spanish politicians older than me, so some of them must have a proud record of anti-dictator resistance pre-1975, right? Err, not so much.

There has never been any reckoning with the crimes of the dictator or the vast section of Spanish establishment that collaborated willingly with him. There is an unwillingness in the West to recognise the explicit Francoist DNA in Rajoy’s political party, which was founded by seven Franco ministers avowedly to continue the Franco legacy, and which Rajoy joined not long after Franco’s death, when to do so was an unabashed declaration of Francoist belief. Strangely enough, the best exposition of the current situation was given by Jake Wallis Simons on Sky News three days ago when he related what he himself had witnessed of the non-marginal prevalence of fascism in the Spanish nationalist demonstrations, and talked of the fascist salutes addressed to the Guardia Civil in their support, which the Guardia received as a compliment.

In their desire to prop up Spain and deny Catalonian rights, every single “liberal” western media outlet of note – the Guardian, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Economist, etc etc – has run an article on how Catalonian independence must be stopped or it will lead to a sweeping tide of secessionism for regions across Europe. These articles never consider that perhaps, if there really is a popular desire for smaller states, it might be good to respect it. They also vastly exaggerate the likelihood of some fringe movements making ground, and fail to distinguish between regions – which do not have the right of self determination under Article 2 of the UN Charter – and peoples, which do have that right.

But they are all an exercise in misdirection. Smaller states are not a great danger to anyone. The crushing of democracy in Catalonia, the fascist salutes on the streets and the unabashed return of Francoist doctrine, is the real danger. And it is a danger all across Europe. The far right is entering government in Austria. The AFD are returning Nazi doctrine to the German parliament. Anti-Semitic slogans are infecting Italian football support. In both Poland and Hungary, Eastern Europe’s own brand of nasty right wing authoritarianism is in power.

An independent Catalonia, or Scotland, or Wallonia, does not threaten Europe. The lack of respect for liberal democratic values threatens Europe. That threat is an extremely real one. It is epitomised by the fact that even extreme police violence against the Catalans and the suspension of their democracy draws nothing but approbation from European political establishments and the EU. These are dangerous times indeed.

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