I am becoming quite fond of my little corner of Schiphol airport. I have put up my Christmas cards and a few bits of tinsel. I now have a boarding card for the 0800 to Manchester. This is the sixth boarding card I have had. It is very hard to understand why, time after time, they don’t know a flight is cancelled until some time after it was due to leave and all the passengers have queued at the gate for hours.
Of course, Manchester is a lot further from Ramsgate than Schiphol is, so even if the flight atually goes, this represents rather dubious progress.
Happy New Year everybody.
Remarkably, KLM delivered my lost luggage, including my laptop, at 9.30 pm on New Year’s Eve. At that time a pretty lively party was already in full swing,much improved by the presence of a great many beautiful young women, mostly from Latvia. I am not sure why; my life as ever consists of a bewildering succession of chance encounters with really nice people. I am in the fortunate position of being able to say that Nadira was the most lovely of all, without indulging in dutiful hyperbole.
It was an extremely happy Christmas. Having my mum, both my brothers and all my three chidren together was as great as it was rare.
We have been through the laptop in lost luggage discussion before. The problem is that my shoulders dislocate at the drop of a hat, and I travel without hand luggage to avoid an accident.
2011 is going to be a very important year for me. particularly the first quarter. A number of crucial events are going either to set me up financially for the rest of my life, or result in real distress and failure. At present I have reason to be very optimistic. I am also very absorbed in my life of Alexander Burnes, which I hope will help establish a serious academic reputation.
The Portuguese edition of Murder in Samarkand has sold unexpectedly well in Brazil. The translation of the Turkish edition has just been finished.
I hope to do a Wikileaks retrospective in the next couple of days. Just a quick thought on the case of the poor young gardener in Bristol. Of the Jill Dando case, long before Barry Bulsara’s succesful appeal I blogged that this appeared to be a miscarriage of justice in which the police had fitted up the local weirdo.
Despite not being enamoured of landlords in general, I fear the same dynamic is at work in Bristol, albeit Chris Jefferies is much more intellectually capable than Bulsara. My instinct is that the police have picked up on Jefferies for being camper than a boy scout jamboree and archer than Trajan.
Jefferies’ release on bail has me worried that there was nothing against him other than the “He’s a weird one, guv” instinct of some not very bright cop. The case needs to be closely watched as history shows that the powers of the police to make the evidence fit the suspect are considerable.
alan campbell: wrote “you and whose army!”
Damn, did my gran advise you to write that? No – just you and me, if you’re in the mood to start calling contributors here wusses etc. – I don’t need any army. Just my lifetime devotion to martial arts. Bring a stick, and we’ll have some fun. Come along, we’ll meet up and mix up… alternatively, don’t ever pretend you’re a tougher guy than anyone else here, ever again.
Mark U said:
AB
“The Taliban did NOT refuse to hand over Bin Laden.”
Wrong. They refused to hand him over UNLESS the US provided evidence of guilt (the Taliban to be the judge of what constitutes evidence), which is a different matter.
You say “They were doing no more than insisting on due process.”
But The United States is not a member of the International Criminal Court and therefore is not bound by any consideration of due process in international relations.
To be more specific, as Patrick Buchanan explains the reality, if there were a major terrorist attack in the US suspected of originating in Iran, Tehran would be turned to glass. The Taliban can consider themselves fortunate that Kabul was not turned to green glass after 9/11. Unless, that is, they knew that 9/11 was an inside job — and they would likely have known, since one or other of the major foreign intelligence services would likely have told them so (If it were so, I hasten to add, to save Larry an outburst, which any such assertion seems to induce.).
So, fantasizing about due process in such circumstances is dangerous nonsense.
“I sincerely hope that you can refrain from repeating that particular lie yet again.”
So it wasn’t lie, OK.
“Wikileaks themselves are NOT claiming that Bin Laden is alive and living in Pakistan…”
And neither did I.
I said: “According to information supplied by the sainted Julian Assange, Osama bin Laden is alive and well living in Pakistan and directing the war against the US in Afghanistan.”
I’m sorry if you found that slightly ambiguous. It was clear in my own mind that by “information supplied” I was referring to one of the diplomatic cables stolen/liberated’whatever by Bradley Manning.
Hope your are quite comfortable now about what I said.
(Moderated: off-topic)
tony_opmoc: just fuck off, you worthless, useless drunk
And Boris Says We Can’t Do That – and I Look at Him In The Eyes…
And Say We Have Got To Do It….
Boris Says – Yes That Is Easy
We Can Easily Present LONDON As The Best Most Welcoming City In The World…
I Said Yeh – But Everyone Knows Now – and We Can’t Hide It…
I Said I am Not Into Execution at The The Tower Of London or any Gruesome Effects…
We Will Put The Best Olympics On Ever in 2012
Whilst
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is In Jail Awaiting His Trial For
War Crimes Against Humanity
Tony
Jon said:
“I’ve not smeared your reputation at all…”
Well, OK, I accept your statement of intention, though that is not how I interpreted some of your comments. On the contrary, it seemed you were rather suavely inserting the stiletto.
As I have explained, Dr. Saadi’s repeated question presupposes a reasonable basis for raising it, and I deny that any such basis exists, and therefore, I maintain that to repeatedly ask it must be solely for the purpose of smearing me. But if everyone wishes to drop it, then, I’m not going to pursue it.
“I was rather hoping he [who me?] would respond to my answers to his questions too, given I spent a fair bit of time on them.”
Yes, I see that you had taken some trouble to respond. But when it seemed everyone was calling me “not honest” (Clark), or a government hack (Ruth. What is that anyhow? Some kind of conveyance?) or trying to make out, as you seemed to be doing, that I am a right wing nutter, when in fact I may be somewhat to your left, I had other things to think about. Further, someone else I believe tackled some if not all of your points, and while I don’t know if I agree with what they said, your contribution was not ignored.
More generally, I made the point that the Frankfurt school agenda was very much along the lines of the Fascist program which presupposed that it is the function of the state to mould the nation. The Nazis, although often called fascist, in fact had a different theoretical program based on the supposition that the State is the embodiment of the nation, i.e., it is shaped by the nation, not the other way around.
So in principle, at least, Nazism and Fascism are very different. In practise, however, they were rather like any other totalitarian regime, although neither the Italian Fascists nor the German Nazis were anything like as lethal for their own people, if you’re talking total body count, as the Russian and Chinese Commies, who accepted without question the Fascist notion that it was the role of the state to shape the nation, i.e., through propaganda delivered via all channels, re-education through hard labor or extermination of refractory elements (as Clark might perhaps deem me to be).
So when you say “But referring to us as fascists, Alfred? Not fair at all” I’m sorry I don’t altogether agree (although obviously noone’s going to fall for a fat fool like Mussolini again. But the Blairite fascist incarnation was highly effective). I readily acknowledge that you don’t seem like the sort of person who’d put a bullet in my brain just because we disagreed on a matter of policy, but you do seem quite comfortable with the paternalistic state telling us how to live and what to believe.
You say, “I should have been interested to know why teaching children that, say, homophobia is wrong is ‘indoctrination'”. that’s simple. It is indoctrination just as much as teaching children that homosexuality, fornication, whatever is right “if it feels good.” A liberal — of the 19th century variety, anyhow, would say such matters are for families to decide in accordance with their own religious on irreligious moral code.
You ask “how [I] would deal with welfare dependency.”
I have explained that elsewhere, but no one remembers what I said about anything. They just misremember what I said about immigration, the BNP and a few other charged subjects.
But briefly, I’d eliminate the minimum wage and institute a reverse income tax. As it is, we tell people who are not cost-competitive at five quid an hour (or whatever the minimum wage is) with 50-cent-an-hour Asian labor that they unemployable. And we tell employers they are breaking the law to offer a market wage below the statutory minimum. So unemployment is entirely an artifact of stupid or evil laws.
Under the arrangement I propose, there will be a residue of people who for physical or psychological reasons are unable to find work even at one cent an hour, but they would be rather few and far between. We could care for them generously and assist them to find meaning in life in ways other than through employment.
I’d say more, but I have to deal with another matter.
Earlier I said that I believed that Dr. Saadi was attempting to intimidate me by revealing, quite irrelevantly, personal information about me on this blog. He has never denied the charge and since he has aggressively insinuated that I am a right-wing fascist nutter, I think it reasonable to accept the correctness of my original assumption.
Slightly more chilling, I have received a number of emails from Clark Killick, who has publicly branded me as “not honest” but without evidence.
The latest from Clark reads as follows with my comments in parenthesis:
“Hello Alfred.
I think you are a paid disrupter. [Not so. I am just a person who assumed, incorrectly so you imply, that Craig Murray’s liberalism included a belief in free speech and that his non-censorship of comments posted on this blog was a manifestation of that belief. Am I wrong?]
I think you’re deliberately damaging Craig Murray’s blog [damaging? in what way?],
and I think the state is paying you to do so [Well everyone is entitled to their beliefs. Which state, by the way? I’ll send ’em an invoice. But sadly, on that one, like many others, you are wrong — not that you’ll believe me!].
A second possibility is that you really believe the conspiracy theories that you constantly push [conspiracy theories that I constantly push? Like human activity is probably changing the climate? I thought that was mainstream? But I understand that it’s a lot easier to make general accusations of “conspiracy theorist,” “racist,” etc. than to gather up any evidence to support what you say.]
and you feel that you have some sort of duty to shut down Craig’s, that you see Craig as what Apostate et al would call “controlled opposition” [I don’t see how I could regard Craig as opposition. He seem to me to express a mishmash of good, bad and outright crazy ideas. Despite his avowed liberalism, his view of the monarchy, for example, seem extremely illiberal. The constitutional monarchy has, as the great Liberal intellectual Thomas Babington Macaulay made clear in his five volume “History of England since the Accession of James II” proved to be a bulwark against totalitarianism and a safeguard of the British parliamentary system. Some people seem to think that because I fail to ridicule Prince Charles — in public anyway — I must be a fawning idolator of monarchy. Far from it. But the monarchy has a function and long may it continue to fulfill that function.
More generally, I don’t see Craig Murray’s opinions as in any way sacred. On technical points he writes extremely well. At his best, he is a good read on perhaps any subject. At his worst, he is not by a good measure nearly as good as at his best. I see his comments sound or otherwise as a basis for potentially useful discussion.]
This is what I think, and either way I think you are wrong [Well that’s how we all think. We all think that we are right and everyone who disagrees is wrong. But saying so, doesn’t really add much weight to one’s argument!].
Craig is a truly humane person, who actually works to achieve the things he believes are right [So I believed when I challenged the criticism levelled at him by two ex-ambassadors for his stance on the use of intelligence from torture. But that doesn’t make his stance on Julian Assange correct. There’s no particular reason to assume that Craig would know for sure what drives Julian Assange. Of course if he were to give us his sources on that, we might become convinced — but only if the sources were convincing.]
He is worth much more than you and me put together [You could well be right, but it’s tactful, in such matters, to speak only for oneself].
Please stop degrading Craig Murray’s site. [If Craig Murrays site is degraded by open and honest discussion then I would be happy to see it consigned to the recycle bin. But I don’t see it your way. The problem that I see is a near fanatical determination by several people to uphold what is assumed to be Craig Murray’s point of view against all question, which leads to harassment and defamation of dissenters. If Craig Murray is a Liberal, as I believe, he would not wish for such treatment of the candid expression of opposing opinions. It might even be thought that there are some people here riding on Craig’s coattails in order to push their own agendas. But in any case, it is no doubt true that argument rarely changes anyone’s opinion. So I’ll give you all a break. For good if you like.]
“Damn, did my gran advise you to write that? No – just you and me, if you’re in the mood to start calling contributors here wusses etc. – I don’t need any army. Just my lifetime devotion to martial arts. Bring a stick, and we’ll have some fun. Come along, we’ll meet up and mix up… alternatively, don’t ever pretend you’re a tougher guy than anyone else here, ever again.”
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha….Grow up glenda!
Jon, you’re right. What I have been suggesting for some time now on this thread, Alfred’s seeming lack of intellectual courage on this point about the BNP is really at the epicentre of his political stance in general and certainly in terms of his output on this site.
I ask him one logical question which a ten year-old could answer and he throws up 5, 10 questions for me. I answer those, and repeat my question, he simply throws up more. This is akin to the technique of the politicians we have all come to despise: “Just answer the question!”, we yell.
I have actually dealt many times with all of the questions Alfred raises in obfuscation and as an attempt to run away from answering my pertinent and relevant question.
As everyone has acknowledged, many times, Alfred Burdett has much to say that is interesting and he is without question, very intelligent and when he wishes to be, he can be personable.
Yet politically, his ontological edifice is rather like a magnificent, crenellated chateau, with pennants and tapestries, lutenists and fine ladies in tall, pointed hats. The castle gleams white and pure.
At the far right-hand corner, if one looks hard enough, one can see a small door. That door is marked, ‘Far Right British Nationalism’. When you push open that door, the entire structure collapses around you and you discover that all along it was simply a pack of cards.
And so, I will stop routinely posing my simple question to Alfred. But I cannot guarantee that it will not re-appear should I detect any tendency to promote Far Right British Nationalism by him. on this site.
http://www.d PINGS: 0
In other words, my question remains unanswered and hangs in the air like a fine mist. Until it has been answered (and it may never be), I’m sorry to say that everything Alfred writes here will be perceived through the fine mist of this unanswered question.
The revolving ‘news’ bulletins repeatedly referred to ‘evidence’ taken from the landlord’s flat. Hello! A PC is just a PC, not evidence. A carpet is just that, a carpet. There might be evidence on the PC or on the carpet. Just sloppy reporting. Mostly, the so-called news simply rehashed a non-story. They had to arrest the landlord in order to question him. There is more evidence of Blair’s war crimes than this guy, yet Blair is still free and making money.
Welcome back, Craig. Glad you got home and may 2011 be a happy, healthy and prosperous one for you and your family.
Already two days into New Year we’re getting a sense that the PC Thought Police: sue hayle, Jon et al are just itching to moderate out free expression and independent research on this blog as soon as they get the go-ahead from Ubersturmfuhrer Murray!
We already have quite enough entrenched untouchable taboos here without adding to the list.
Holocaust fundamentalism is rigorously enforced and we have to pretend there is no such phenomenon as
Jewish ethno-supremacism whatever!
Astute researchers like Hannah Arendt and more recently, Kevin Macdonald, have argued persuasively that totalitarian movements like Nazism were reactive to conspiracy theories re-Jewish ethno-supremacism centred on banking cartels, and freemasonry which were widely held among the general population public between the two world wars.
Unless you are willing to engage with such conspiracy theories which probably date from as far back as Antiquity and the first money economies and which are now all over the internet you are shoring up widespread resentment among a general population which is looking for answers and now increasingly connecting the dots.
It may surprise you to learn that the more people are dispossessed in the current fiancial melt-down the hungrier they will become for answers. These people are NOT going to be herded like sheep into the narrow pen built for us by the elite-sponsored corporate/gatekeeper media.
All too often blogs that start out as anti-Zionist end up being moderated into towing the line on the aforementioned deeply contentious issues and thereby become just another arm of the corporate media.By handing the Zionists two bludgeoning psy-war weapons on a plate: Holocaust fundamentalism and the “anti-semite” smear-you will still end up on the same losing side as they already have here on the internet.
Not a few of us will say good bloody riddance when you disappear and the plethora of vibrant truly independent blogs continue to go from strength to strength!
To demonstrate good faith, I will attempt to respond to Alfred’s latest round of questions directed at me, in the manner he stipulates, i.e. briefly, where possible with ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers (in capitals, for clarity):
(1) “If Al Qaeda was responsible for 9/11, and if on 9/11 Al Qaeda was run by Osama bin Laden, and if Osama bin Laden was then a guest of the Afghanistan Government, and if as was the case, the Afghanistan Government refused to hand Osama bin Laden over to American justice, on what possible grounds can the US and its allies, including Britain, be condemned for their war against the Afghanistan Taliban?”
NOTE: Posturing about what you’d do in Afghanistan if you were God is irrelevant. Just state, briefly, what grounds, if any?
ANSWER: THEY CAN BE CONDEMNED ON BOTH MORAL AND PRAGMATIC GROUNDS. IF THE USA HAD BEEN INVADED FOR EVERY TIME IT HAD SPONSORED AN ACT OF MASS TERROR, THERE WOULD BE NO USA TODAY. THE RESPONSE TO KILLING CIVILIANS IS NOT TO KILL YET MORE CIVILIANS. FURTHERMORE, AS I EXPLAINED EARLIER, THE INVASION AND OCCUPATION OF AFGHANISTAN HAS BEEN A FAILURE IN TERMS OF ITS ORIGINAL STATED OFFICIAL GOALS. IT HAS BEEN COUNTERPRODUCTIVE – EXCEPT OF COURSE FOR THE MILITARY-CORPORATE COMPLEX.
(2) “According to Wikileaks, Osama bin Laden’s is alive and well and and living in Pakistan from where he is directing military operations against the US in Afghanistan. So are not US military operations in Pakistan, however tragic the consequences, (a) entirely justifiable, or are we to conclude that (b) Julian Assange is an unwitting dupe or (c) conscious agent of US disinformation?”
Answer (a), (b) or (c), or state briefly any other inference that is logically consistent with the conclusions.
ANSWER: I DON’T THINK ONE CAN CONCLUDE C) FROM THE INFORMATION AVAILABLE. B) REMAINS A POSSIBILITY. THE ANSWER TO A) IS ‘NO’, FOR THE REASON OUTLINED IN MY RESPONSE TO QUESTION 1) AND ALSO AS EXPLICATED EARLIER IN THIS THREAD, I.E. KILLING CIVILIANS WON’T HELP DEFEAT ISLAMISM – QUITE THE OPPOSITE – AND THE ACTUAL MILITARY MISSION HAS FAILED IN RELATION TO ITS STATED AIMS.
(3) Of the following BNP policies, to which are you opposed?
(a) immediate withdrawal from the war in Afghanistan
ANSWER: I AGREE WITH A).
(b) withdrawal from the EU
ANSWER: THIS IS COMPLEX. I DON’T THINK OUR CURRENT GLOBAL ECONOMIC SYSTEM IS VIABLE. EU TARIFFS ARE OFTEN PUNITIVE FOR AFRICA, ETC. THE EU IS PART OF THAT SYSTEM. HOWEVER, IT MAY BE THAT AS A TRADING BLOC, EUROPE REQUIRES TO BE ABLE TO OPERATE AS A UNIFIED ECONOMIC FORCE. I AGREE WITH THE MORE PROGRESSIVE ASPECTS OF THE EU WHICH LARGELY HAVE COME FROM ITS PARLIAMENT. THE COMMISSION – THE REAL POWER – IS NOT DEMOCRATIC THOUGH. I THINK THIS ALL NEEDS TO CHANGE. SO FRANKLY, I’M NOT SURE ABOUT THIS ONE. I’M OPEN TO ARGUMENT.
(c) devolution of power to the lowest practical level of government
ANSWER: I AGREE WITH C).
(d) protection of British industry from competition from Asian sweat shops.
ANSWER: I AGREE WITH D).
So, I have been clear in my responses. Most people who hold leftist views would probably answer the same way.
Yet my question still hangs in the air, unanswered.
tungsten, freeborn, whatever: Why would you expect a measured response to your ‘rational’ posts when most of what you render is unreasoned insult? You spit at us all, and yet on the occasion when you decide to respond sensibly, you expect us to follow suit? You were banned from here and you continue to adopt the same tactics. You will get nothing more.
MarkU: quite right about the Taleban. AB/Alfred/Lucretius is obviously more than a little forgetful as this has all been pointed out & backed up before, by you and others. His offer to leave the board alone is disingenuous, by the way – he simply comes back under another name. It is hard to think of what is actually happening in Afghanistan and compare it to his smooth, apparently reasonable tones which try & justify it.
glenn, think we’ve established that alan campbell is ‘not tough’ 🙂
The police are useless, lazy, incompetent and pointlessly thuggish because they’re rarely held to account by a media which has a symbiotic relationship with them.
Who can forget the arrogance of these incompetent clowns in the Colin Stagg case.
“We’re not looking for anyone else”.
Happy New Year Craig! Best wishes to you, your family and all the decent regular contributors to this blog.
Craig Murray is a sex fascist.
He objectivises the Eastern European women in this posting. He does not mention any attribute except physical appearance. His notion of beauty is an oppressive stereotype.
Craig Murray is pro-rape as shown by his defence of Julian Assange.
Added to this he makes homphobic jokes about Chris Jefferies. He shows no interest in the actual victim – because she is a woman.
This website is fascist and should be closed down.
We have made big progress in compiling a dossier on Murray’s appalling record as a sexual predator on women. We aim to have it published by Liberal Conspiracy, along with an expose of Assange’s other celebrity supporters including the “saintly” Jon Pilger and Ken Loach.
piss off ‘justice for women’
New Year, same old shitheads
Surely “justice for women” must be a piss-take?
You wish. We are your worst nightmare. You and your pathetic bigot wikiblokepshere crew
As for “published by liberal conspiracy”, I really don’t think Sunny is going to want to publish details of my love life. Anyway it would take up too much server capacity (evil sexist chuckle).
“It was an extremely happy Christmas. Having my mum, both my brothers and all my three chidren together was as great as it was rare.”
That’s so lovely Craig – just the way a Christmas should be and it’s really good that you got home after all that snow! Hope 2011 is lucky and yields more of those precious moments.
@technicolour at January 1, 2011 8:21 PM
There’s an even simpler alternative to cuts.
http://www.glasgowmediagroup.org/
@glenn
“Maybe Frazer is a teacher? They’re fond of lazy generalisation too.”
Isn’t that a lazy generalisation?
Furthermore, all the “personal details” about Dr Alfred Burdett to which he alludes have been “revealed” by Dr Alfred Burdett on this website.
I know nothing more about him than what he himself has told us on this blog. How could I? He has used his reputed academic and scientific standing in Canada and internationally to attempt to justify his views on, for example, “genocide in Leicester”, “mitochondria”, etc. He has drawn on this concept of professional scientific validity to try and insinuate the idea (his basic reason for being on this blog, it seems, since everything he says seems ultimately to devolve to this propagandistic model) that the core ideation of the BNP might be acceptable to oppositional groupings and individuals.
And so I think that it is a valid critique of those views to cast Alfred’s own self-proclaimed ‘CV’ back at him.
Basically, his views on this specific subject appear nothing more than a re-hash of C19th imperial missionary ‘Anglicism’ and early C20th eugenics theory. This all harks back, of course, to debates b/w elite groupings within British Imperialism, an imperialism of which Dr Alfred Burdett is an enthusiastic exponent.
Currently, as in eastern Europe, the political parties in the UK about which we hear most largely span from Rightwing corporatist (Labour, LibDem, Cons) to Xenophobic Extreme Right (BNP, UKIP). Fortunately, the extreme Racist Right has never had the traction in the UK which it has acquired in Continental Europe.
As many of us have explained on numerous occasions, the BNP is an opportunistic party which, in the vacuum produced by the movement of the Labour Party to the Right (their selling-out of the British people), entirely cynically and in the context of the bankruptcy of their own core (racist, xenophobic) platform, has adopted certain policies of the Left in an attempt to attract votes in Labour constituencies. If cracking the small end of the egg would get them votes, even if Leon Trotsky, J.S. Mill and the Dalai Lama also advocated the same, the BNP would adopt it. They are essentially political prostitutes.
Thankfully, very few people associate withdrawl from imperial war, investment in and protection of UK industry, the NHS, etc. primarily with the BNP, so Alfred’s key (apparent) argument holds absolutely no water. I think this argument, which he seem to repeat ad nauseam, is just a not-so-subtle way of advancing his Far Right views.
Alfred’s main bone of contention with the BNP appears not to be with their central policies, which are racialist and xenophobic in nature and with which he appears to agree, but that they are a) ineffective as a political vehicle for those policies and b) likely to be (in his view) a hard state front designed to discredit those same racialist, xenophobic (oh, and suddenly also anti-imperial war!) views. I think that Alfred Burdett would like to see an Extreme Rightwing party in the UK which had mass popular support.
I would much prefer that he were honest and open about his views. His failure to answer my simple question is emblematic either of gross intellectual failure amounting almost to political delusion, or of simple cowardice.
I’m sorry to have to bang on about this, but I do think it is important that xenophobic and racialist ideas be countered whenever and wherever they emerge.
And I’m sorry, but phrases “genocide in Leicester” and the silly accusations of “racist Anglophobia” (silly, anyway, directed at someone like me who still on a profound level views themselves as Yorkshire English, and who used to support Leeds United in their Don Revie heyday!) really can come from nowhere but such ideas.