Here at last is a good working version of my Straight Talk Interview with Occupy News Network. It shows what I might have said on Newsnight had Gavin Esler and Joan Smith been concerned to hear what I had to say, rather than stop me from saying it.
With many thanks to Occupy News Network, and to Michael for overcoming the video problems.
Nice to see you getting your points across uninterrupted Craig.
Loved the speech outside the Ecuadorian Embassy.You must have had a drink of Irn Bru beforehand, cos there was quite a bit of steel and power in your voice.It’s good to see you getting louder.Your message cannot be repeated often enough.
As you mentioned this has been a well thought thru plan. Never realised that the rape laws were so strict,nor that they could be used in tandem with laws in other countries to deny a person any rights or chance of proving themselves not guilty.
The Swedes have been given a script and they are following it to the letter in true Swedish fashion.
Fascism [the State as your god], fears innocence; even Stalin saw the virtue of a show trial.
Secret trials [as practiced in UK family courts] are therefore more fascist than even the Soviet era.
A difference between law and justice, and by extension, fascism and democracy, is that the people are allowed to engage in the process of deciding right from wrong. Secret courts and trials are a means of prescribing ethics by law, as distinct from contesting openly in the framework of ‘equality of arms’ the two opposing parties of the accused and the accuser; hence secret trials are the symptom of a fascist State that has abandoned democracy.
TRUTHPASTE ™
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Sure. Maybe not whiter-than-white. But cuts political rot & decay —better than anything else on the market!
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2891833/truthpaste.jpg
Hi Craig
What you are doing is hugely important, and needs to be supported. So many people in this land oppose the abuse, and standing up and calling abuse abuse, and lies lies, is of fundamental importance – no wonder they don’t want you to speak out.
I’m writing this now because a group of us have presented a detailed overview of what’s wrong, and set up a discussion portal to bring together different groups to discuss more coherently focused political and legal action. I sent a message to that effect last weekend but you were doune a rabbit hole and it will have been missed, so I thought I’d post the details here, because I’m sure you will be interested.
The project is presented in the website http://www.jandesociety.com , and there’s a plan of campaign to prosecute abusers, a project to build a database of grievances to cost up the rebuilding of Britain, a proposed ethical manifesto discussion document, as well as a detailed discussion of a development of our human rights declarations – which clearly as things stand don’t do the required job.
The Leader principle or Führerprinzip and the Group principle are identified as at the heart of so much that’s going wrong in Britain and the rest of the world. The section ‘Loyalty and obedience’ discusses Bradley Manning and other whistleblowers, and the understanding that under the leader principle and group principle goodness is loyalty, wrongdoing disloyalty, and punishment is severe for betraying the leader and the group. The discussion counters this with the approach that ethical considerations cut across these two principles, such that we must support good members of ‘them’ and prosecute abusive members of ‘us’, since it is abuse that we oppose, not ‘them’, and it is decency that we support, not ‘us’.
This is then brought over into the hierarchical structure of the leader principle itself, where laws are orders, the leader is above the law, and society is structured in a ranking order of dominators and dominated. This hierarchical approach is rejected, and it is asserted that all are equal, such that if a prime minister, foreign secretary, general, brigadier, rich banker, prince, commits a crime then the lowest ranked police officer has the authority to arrest and prosecute them, and in the society we wish to create actually does so, because we have rule of law, and law is the practical enforcement of the principles of civilisation, not the state enforcement of obedience to the leader.
This is then developed in the section ‘prosecuting the powerful’, in which the discussion point that we need to actually take all this to the courts is raised. We do have rule of law, not Führerprinzip, but you wouldn’t know it, and people need to stand up and assert it.
There is a section on Britain and the world in which Blair and Straw, the war on terror, Cameron’s arms sales trip during the Arab Spring, racist immigration abuse, and much else, are all strongly opposed, and countered with an ethical stand. Your exposing of Straw’s culpability in Karimov torture is referenced briefly (and Murder in Samarkand listed as a source), and all this is opposed with a plan for debrainwashing, the removal of blind group support and leader obedience, and the creation of a policy towards the ‘other’ that reflects the principles of decency and equality that we assert for all of us.
There’s much more as well, but this isn’t the place for a long presentation. I’m making this long post because I’m sure that you and readers of this blog will find the discussion interesting. For those that do, there are discussion forums and addresses to send ideas and contributions. Seeing that there’s a need for focused development of political opposition, we’ve put in a lot of work towards a suggested way forward, so please have a look at it and let us know what you think! You’ve said yourself on this blog that there’s no effective political opposition to the current corrupt set. We’re looking to develop one.
Keep up your very important work – there are a lot of people on the same side!
Cheers,
Alistair
[email protected]
http://www.jandesociety.com
Swedish prosecutors have travelled abroad to interview suspects in the past. Why can’t they travel to London to interview Julian Assange?
Apparently, the answer is because of “circumstances”. The Swedish director of prosecutions said it wouldn’t be “appropriate”. In other words, she won’t say.
Really that should have been the end of their extradition request. Case dismissed.
Remember that Assange hasn’t even been charged. It’s not enough to say “we charge people at a later stage in Sweden”. If he hasn’t been charged, that means no Swedish court or prosecutor has even said “we want him to be tried for the following offences”. Either they say that, or they don’t say that. No English judge should have any time for them promising they’ll say later, once he’s in their hands.
The Swedish authorities really are taking the piss – and so are the British judiciary, taking this ridiculous extradition request seriously.
Anna Ardin isn’t even in Sweden. Having worked for her CIA employers in the United States and Sweden, she’s now moved to Palestine to do work for the CIA there.
Let’s hope the Palestinians know she is CIA.
She’s going to fly back to Sweden to repeat her lies about Assange in court, is she?
I suppose she will if Karl Rove tells her lawyer, Claes Borgstrom, who’s also CIA, it’s necessary.
“Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt has however insisted that his country would not extradite a suspect to a country where they would face the death penalty.”
Oh really? Carl Bildt was exposed by Wikileaks as CIA himself – their asset since the 1970s – and Sweden has helped the CIA by deporting people to be tortured in Egypt.
So torture is OK, then?
Bildt is the one who should be in court – the international court in the Hague.
He should also be up in court in Sweden. Sweden no longer pretends to be ‘neutral’, but it does pretend to be ‘non-aligned’ – a meaningless term when applied to a country that has helped the US in Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Libya. With ‘neutrals’ like that, does the US need any ‘colonies’ or ‘allies’?
Thank-you Craig, not only for a courageous interview, for the inspiration.
Without bravado you have conveyed the gift of incentive to advance the reach of my own and others UK Collapse group that hopes, or strives, to reasonably consolidate our friends here and elsewhere who realise that a step change must occur after the cataclysm, grief and hardship together with the overwhelming enlightenment I believe will occur near year-end.
Thanks for the interview. Hope you enjoyed the pint pulling.
Please do mention that the BBC mentioned Anna Ardin on the 10th. February 2011. Despite it being in Spanish, Essler’s puffed up turkey performance last Tuesday, his double act must get all the accolade it deserves, just as the BBC’s Cuban news.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/mundo/cartas_desde_cuba/2011/02/no_es_para_menos.html
“Rape is the one crime where you are never allowed to challenge the evidence of the accusers” What total and absolute garbage – just go and look at what is said in actual court cases before you make such ridiculous assertions.
This overwhelming desire to appear reasonable, studied, polite and filled with decorum, is verklempt in politics. These days you must extend your bona fides with prose that incites. Fuck reason and perspicacity.
Match the rhetoric of the opposition with verve. You can’t wait for the right opportunity to get the message out. You can’t always expect a friendly atmosphere to safely and fairly disseminate your outlook and perceptions.
Grow some bowling-sized balls.
N_ ‘Anna Ardin isn’t even in Sweden. Having worked for her CIA employers in the United States and Sweden, she’s now moved to Palestine to do work for the CIA there.
Let’s hope the Palestinians know she is CIA.
She’s going to fly back to Sweden to repeat her lies about Assange in court, is she?’
That is very interesting N_. Have you possibly got a link?
PS@ Is Resident Dissident the same as CE on here or similar?
Excellent Craig- keep up the good work!
Murray you actually identified “AA” – how dare you?
@ Ben Franklin,
” Match the rhetoric of the opposition with verve. You can’t wait for the right opportunity to get the message out. You can’t always expect a friendly atmosphere to safely and fairly disseminate your outlook and perceptions.”
He is a diplomat.
Understanding the Rape Statistics (8min video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RliMu2JxVr0
I always learn so much from Craig Murray
Dissident – Murray is wrong on this point:-
““Rape is the one crime where you are never allowed to challenge the evidence of the accusers”
But – taking the interview as a whole, he made a tremendous amout of sense.
@ Larry,
The case is that the 2 women had consensual sex and Anna Ardin afterwards was bragging about the company she had with Assange. Likely, that a “raped” woman is going to be making sororal expressions and warm approval for having had the association with Assange?
The other lady was coaxed into making a statement and was distraught when the complaint escalated.
The first review of the evidence saw a prosecutor throw the case out.
There are more details – but put this limited amount of information together, then the best description of the complaints is “stitch up job”.
Excellent stuff Craig.
Measured and very well articulated.
@Alistair/jandsociety.com – great work – a great site that looks at the bigger picture.What is your mission statement?
@Mary In Nov 2010, Anna Ardin reported on her blog that her new home was in the West Bank village of Yanoun. But I was far too hasty to conclude that she was still there! Apologies! She is still doing her blog, and seems to be in Gotland, the largest island in Sweden, about 60 miles off the mainland, where she is involved in politics (Social Democracy), religion (Methodism), the media (she was or is the political editor at Gotlands Tidningar), and a think tank called Sektor 3. Sektor3 organised a discussion about welfare with ‘Nonprofit Arena’ and ‘PwC’, presumably the global accountancy firm Price Waterhouse Coopers. I don’t know how much ‘civil society’ stuff PwC fund, but they have a presence in something like 100 countries and have been accused of “negligence or misconduct” in connection with $900 million that went missing from Kabul Bank.
Whoops, I didn’t realize there was a second thread. I just posted a comment in the last thread asking Jon if it was okay to post in comments the transcript I did of the interview for you to use as you wish, perhaps send it on to ONN. It’s long, of course. (Hello from California!)
Hi @Me In Us, thanks for the offer, much appreciated. I suggest you use an external pasteboard – such as pastie.org with “Plain text” mode – and then post the link here. Just paste in the transcription and submit it, it’s that easy.
If I heard Craig correctly when talking about Scott Ritter, he mistakenly stated that it was a female officer who entrapped him, but actually it was this guy;
http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100114/NEWS/1140319
I came across this interesting post under a article on the case;
“I have known Scott for 24 years and have worked with him in both US and international settings. I spoke as a character witness at the trial, also spoke at his sentencing, and know what information was presented to the jury. It’s important to note that a lot of important background information was NOT permitted to be introduced at trial, as a result of pre-trial decisions by the judge. That missing info (in my opinion, anyway) was and is critical for context, and had it been presented to them, the jurors may have interpreted the events of both 2001 and 2009 in a different light. It will be interesting to see how the appellate judge rules on some of these issues.
Scott is a flawed human being, as are we all, and he has some serious psychological demons for which (until he was imprisoned, anyway) he was receiving treatment. His issues have a high “ick” factor that hits the moral and psychological hot buttons of a high percentage of the US population.
But what bothers me about many of the comments I’ve seen on this article, as well as the one in NYT Magazine, is that so many people seem to be projecting their anger onto Scott for things for which they THINK Scott was accused and/or convicted, versus those for which he was ACTUALLY accused and convicted. They are two very different things.
Unless there is information to the contrary that is not publicly available:
– No one (not in the 2001 case; not in the 2009 case) has even ACCUSED Scott (much less convicted him) of ever having had contact, or even of having ATTEMPTED to have contact, with an actual underage person. All persons with whom contact or attempted contact was alleged were over 18.
– Scott’s explanation regarding the 2001 events is that he had been interacting with and meeting adult women so that they could watch him masturbate. He says he knew he had a problem and decided to force action to be taken by interacting with persons he knew to be undercover police officers and agreeing to meet with them. He claims he never had contact with, or attempted to have contact with, any underage persons. You can believe or disbelieve Scott’s explanation, but remember that at the time these events occurred, in 2001, his explanations were convincing enough to police officials, prosecutors, and a local NY judge that no charges were filed and the records were sealed.
– Scott’s explanation of the 2009 event is that he was in an adult chat room specifically dedicated to sexual role playing, that as a condition of entry to the chat room all persons in it have to be adults/have to certify they are adults, and that he therefore believed the person with whom he was interact was “herself” (himself) an adult engaged in “her” own fantasy. Again, you can believe or disbelieve Scott’s explanation (and on the basis of the evidence they were permitted to see, the PA jury clearly did not believe him), but IF in fact the other individual had simply been another adult pretending to be a 15-year old girl as part of fantasy/role playing, no “crime” would have occurred. It was only a crime because the person on the other end of the internet connection was a middle-aged male police officer who pretended to be an adult woman to be able to log into the adult chat room, and subsequently then pretended to be a 15-year old during the interaction with Scott.
– Scott’s “multiple felony convictions” were all as a result of this single act of masturbation on camera over the internet in 2009. The prosecutor was able to charge him under several counts for this single act; all his convictions (on these multiple counts) were for this single act — nothing else.
– That Scott is a “sexually violent predator” is the subjective judgment of a State of PA evaluator who had never met him. No one has ever even alleged that Scott has ever displayed any violence or that he shows a propensity to violence. However, the wording of PA’s “Megan’s Law” enables the judge to subjectively choose to so designate Scott, despite the fact that another psychologist with much better professional credentials who has worked personally in a clinical setting with Scott has made the opposite finding.
– A key piece of evidence that was not permitted to be shared with the jury was the fact that a forensic examination of every computer in Scott’s home produced records of hundreds of sexually-related chats over a period of many years, but that NOT ONE of them was with a person who claimed to be underage. Nor did the forensic examination show any evidence (images, etc.) of child pornography. These facts and the associated conclusions of the forensic examiner were considered so damaging to the prosecutor’s case that the prosecutor fought long and hard (and, ultimately, successfully) to keep the forensic examination’s results from being entered into evidence or otherwise shown to the jury.
So with the above in mind… you might reasonably conclude that Scott is a slimeball whom you’d not want to be around your kids, regardless of the fact that he has not been accused or convicted of ever having even attempted to make contact with a minor. Or you might think (as I do) that he is a genuine American hero who convincingly spoke the truth on Iraq, but whose personal demons have unfortunately undermined his credibility as a messenger, and have done terrible damage to himself and his family.
But does he really deserve to be serving a 5 1/2 year prison term and be designated as a sexually violent predator for life, for having incredibly poor judgment regarding what he films himself doing to himself over the internet?
Not in my opinion. You are all, of course, entitled to your own opinions, and they will undoubtedly differ in many cases from mine. But they should be based on what really happened — not on inferences of what might have happened, or what might have been going on in his head, when no prosecutor has ever even alleged these things to have occurred.
Comment by John Sartorius — February 26th, 2012 @ 11:30 am”
Hi Jon, I’ve never done it before, do you have to have an account? Crap. Can I just post it here in comments and you transfer it please? That should be plain text. I could break it up into question segments. Thanks.
“He is a diplomat.” Yes. Uzbekistan, right? I recognize the temperament. Sometimes, you have to take off the gloves. He is in the private sector, now, and that is not a polite avocation. Time to kick some ass.
@Me In Us, no account needed. Just paste it in one blob, click Paste and then copy the URL here. But, if you want to paste here and I’ll transfer it for you, no problem 🙂
Thanks, Jon, I really would rather do it here. I am truly low to no tech. Here’s the blob, I don’t know what the interviewer’s name was.
[Mod/Jon: this text was posted as an article so I’ve removed it from here. Thanks very much for transcribing!]
@Jon, I think I’m right in crediting you with the new multi-page format for the comments here, much appreciated; There is one additional feature, that may or may not be considered worthwhile, and that is having the ironically retro option to “view all as one page”, and the reason being that on on very long threads, spanning many pages, its not always easy to find something again, but very easy if using “ctrl & f”, even on page with thousands of comments; it’s a feature that would have saved me lots of time on the old Salon Blog of Glenn Greenwald, as his comments sometimes exceeded twenty or more pages, which hasn’t happen here yet, but here’s hoping !
The excellent collaboration from commentators here to ‘fix’ the ONN interview video prompted me to present ‘creative alternatives’ part of a worthwhile Facebook based project that will work on creating a more sustainable future and will focus on things you can do now.
http://creativealternatives.info/
‘When nothing else is left… ‘
Information: there’s no such thing as ‘British Law’. There’s English Law, and Scots Law, and god willing never the twain shall meet. And you a member of the SNP too – shame!
More seriously, you say that Hague was pressured by the US. Can you guess what form this pressure would have taken? I know nothing at all of these matters, but I can’t imagine someone phoning me from America and saying ‘you have to do such-and-such’. Backed by what threats? I’m married to an American and quite happy to tell her to Foxtrot Oscar when it suits me and I haven’t been nuked yet. Well, much.