I was invited to be on the Murnaghan programme on Sky News this morning – which I always find a great deal more intelligent than the Andrew Marr alternative on the BBC. I declined because I did not want to get up and get a 7.30am train from Ramsgate on a Sunday morning. I had a meeting until 11.30pm last night planning a conference on human rights in Balochistan [I still tend to say Baluchistan], and I have a newly crowned tooth that seems not to want to settle down. But I am still worried by my own lack of energy, which is uncharacteristic. Is this old age?
I also have some serious work to do on my Burnes book, and next week I shall be staying in London to be in the British Library reading room for every second of its opening hours. So there may be a bit of a posting hiatus. I have in mind a short post on an important subject on which I suspect that 99% of my readership – including the regular dissident commenters – will strongly disagree with me.
This is a peculiarly introspective post, perhaps because my tooth is hurting, but I seem to have this curmudgeonly spirit which wishes to react to the huge popularity of this blog by posting something genuinely held but unpopular; a genuine view but one I don’t normally trumpet. The base thought seems to be “You wouldn’t like me if you really knew me”.
Similarly when I wrote Murder in Samarkand I was being hailed as a hero by quite a lot of people for my refusal to go along with the whole neo-con disaster of illegal wars, extraordinary rendition and severe attacks on civil liberties, sacrificing my fast track diplomatic career as a result. My reaction to putative hero worship was to publish in Murder in Samarkand not just the political facts, but an exposure of my own worst and most unpleasant behaviour in my private life.
I am in a very poor position to judge, but I believe the result rather by accident turned out artistically compelling, if you don’t want to read the book you can get a good idea of that by clicking on David Tennant in the top right of this blog and listening to him playing me in David Hare’s radio adaptation.
Anyway, that’s enough musing. You won’t like my next post, whenever it comes. Promise.
I have just posted on the previous thread that Fox was on. You would have bumped into him and a former White House adviser Pippa Malmgren.
Can’t think what you are going to say next!
Hope the tooth gets better. Dental pain is horrid.
Nothing to do with old age, remember you in Uni, always a night owl!
You are juggling lots of balls, and you have a young child – no wonder your are tired! It’s normal, you are not a machine, Craig. Even machines need down-time, and oiling.
I like the sound of the oiling!
Nothing you could possibly say about your own personal life would make one iota of difference to the astute descriptions of the current political climate that you have provided. They have resonated, not because anyone thinks you’re a ‘bloody nice chap’, but because they correlate with the only logical conclusion one can come to after extensive research and observations of ‘how things are’. If the point of view you provide was more prevalent, perhaps you would not be as vital to proceedings. That was a lot of ‘p’s and ‘v’s.
Unless you are causing harm or fear you could cause harm to someone, I dont really see the point in declaring your demons so wantonly, though it is your right, I dont understand it. Especially in the context of establishment media so eager to tar the name of anyone not towing the line..
peace
I thought you might 🙂
The base thought seems to be “You wouldn’t like me if you really knew me”.
Seems to me to be a common basic human instinct of independent ‘cussedness’, that separates the men from the manginas.
Nothing wrong in being a natural man Mr. Murray. Carry on.
It takes courage to air things others find uncomfortable.
Take good care of yourself.
“Look! Something dreadful is going to happen next, but you’ll have to wait till next week to find out!”
It’s a bit like the end of a Doctor Who episode, isn’t it? 🙂
Indeed it is Clark, but you will get the first preview, won’t you?..:)
Ah! The venerable old storyteller’s device: promise something juicy, but not yet.
‘Make ’em cry, make ’em laugh, make ’em wait’— Wilkie Collins
Perhaps while we’re waiting we could entertain each other by ‘fessing up on any uncharacteristically reactionary views we hold.
Personally, I think women should stay at home and look after the children. And I don’t believe in gay marriage. There, said it. Feel much better.
No! Not bunny killing!
ok, MJ. here goes.. i judge procreation to be inherently immoral (google ‘antinatalism’) and i dont believe in marriage full stop. there, feels much better. 🙂
MJ, you forgot the other one, men have pricks for brains…, can’t multi task or get up to pick vegetables in the mornings. To use Elizabeth Truss MP’s words. ‘British workers are idlers’.
http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/politics/norfolk_minister_writes_book_calling_uk_workers_idlers_1_1514600
As long as it isn’t your last post Craig.
Last post is for bugle players.
Craig,
Possibly, a bit; I’m about the same age and not as lively as I was. But it’s probably lots of little things; the constant effort of swimming against the tide of propaganda, watching the powerful gain yet more power and the rich getting even richer, and just things like the end of Summer and the nights drawing in.
Best wishes for your research, I hope you have a nice time in London.
put clove between your hurting teeth. I hope it gets better soon.
Clark, you sound like an Old Wifey on the rainy, late September Monday morning bus:
“Och aye, Jessie, the nights are drawin’ in!”
“Aaayye!”
Then Dr Who gets on:
“Single to the other side of the universe, please.”
That’s where we all go, the other side of the universe. Enjoy!
Media is pushing 50 shades of Grey.
The author was is on classic fm discussing it.
Sadly I missed the interview.
What I have learned that this books,books is angled on pediaphillia
The reader shoud be aware the danger.
Why are we so stupid.
Ah, I recognise that one from my own occasional peaks of negativity; it’s not true, of course. A friend of mine calls it “the devil on my shoulder”, presumably tasked with inserting messages to bring its wearer down. The upside is that one can become aware of this psychology, and start to reject it as unreasonable when it pops up.
Nevermind, now I’ll have to explain or other readers might misunderstand.
When Craig is writing a post but before he publishes it, moderators can see it as a draft, so if we’re lucky and log in at the right moment we get a sort of preview. Or perhaps I should call it a warning of what we’re about to have to deal with:
Actually, the recent decrease in pro-Israeli trolling suggests that Netanyahu’s government has lost much support. The Mavi Marmara threads were crazy, but it’s been much quieter since then.
The only difference between Marr and Murnaghan is that Murnaghan is better looking.
Can you find any mention of advisers, werritty, gould, israel in his previous ‘interview’ with Fox in June? No.http://skynews.skypressoffice.co.uk/newstranscripts/murnaghan-100612-interview-liam-fox-mp-former-defence-secretary
btw both Marr and Murnaghan have been caught on camera snogging in public with women who are not their wives. Marr outside a Soho club and Murnaghan on a Hyde Park bench!
Ben: quite interesting but maybe a bit too left-field to be truly reactionary. On the other hand antinatalism might have its origins in the idea of Original Sin. Depends on whether you recommend abstinence or contraception.
Afghanistan: Nato air strike ‘kills eight women in Laghman’
http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/thread/1347796503.html
Plus some ‘insurgents’, aka militants.
see Glenn Greenwald’s piece entitled
“Militants”: media propaganda
To avoid counting civilian deaths, Obama re-defined “militant” to mean “all military-age males in a strike zone”
http://www.salon.com/2012/05/29/militants_media_propaganda/
no need for abstinence, sexual intercourse =/= procreation. original sin? as i understand it antinatalism is more to do with the ‘imposition’ quality of creating a life in lieu of a ‘need’ for that consciousness to exist, and without it’s permission to do so (with all the potential suffering and risk that new life may encounter). There’s more to it but that’s a central thread. Regardless, you’re right it probably is a bit left field, but whatever it is Craig plans to expose about himself, as has been stated here, it would not invalidate the legitimacy of his political commentary so far. It holds up to scrutiny and that’s why this blog has become popular imo.
But I am still worried by my own lack of energy, which is uncharacteristic. Is this old age?
no it is the heavy metals in your body.
a combination of pollution from food,water and the air.
On October 2, 2001 Congressman Dennis Kucinich, Ohio introduced H. R. 2977 during the 1st Session of the 107th Congress of the United States. The “Space Preservation Act of 2001
In the bill Chemtrails are listed as an “exotic weapons system.
The bill also addresses such things as particle beams, electromagnetic radiation, plasma, or extremely low frequency (ELF) or ultra low frequency (ULF) energy radiation..
Craig,
With respect to the illegal Iraq war, wasn’t there something going with regard to the Dunblane massacre? My dates maybe wrong, but wasn’t there a link to a Pedophilia ring exposed, and wasn’t there similarly operation Ore going on at the time?
Is it not possible that the Americans had dirt on respect to these issues; that forced the UK to back the illegal invasion of Iraq?
TFS
Too complicated, I believe. I think Blair just saw money and power and how he could best access it. Simple as that.
On October 2, 2001 Congressman Dennis Kucinich, Ohio introduced H. R. 2977 during the 1st Session of the 107th Congress of the United States. The “Space Preservation Act of 2001
In the bill Chemtrails are listed as an “exotic weapons system”.
The bill also addresses such things as particle beams, electromagnetic radiation, plasma, or extremely low frequency (ELF) or ultra low frequency (ULF) energy radiation.
ask a simple question the more advanced are society gets or we are told it is getting.
does anyone really feal zesty and full of life.
government like it’s people talking about naked royals,sport,sport and pop idol.
why are we are water and are soils so full of heavy metals?
why is cancer everywhere?
kubrick was correct this scene is mad.
but some truth lies within.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr2bSL5VQgM
it was not the commies it is are own governments that want us docile.
President Lyndon Johnson’s Science Adviser, Dr. Gordon J.F. MacDonald wrote the 1968 book, Unless Peace Comes, A Scientific Forecast Of New Weapons.
MacDonald described how man-made changes in the electrical earth ionosphere can be used for mass behaviour control. He said that low frequency electromagnetic oscillations can attack the low frequency electromagnetic brain waves in human beings. He stated, “Perturbation of the environment (by geophysical warfare) can produce changes in behavioural patterns.”