Ray McGovern and the Sam Adams party have presented the Sam Adams award to Edward Snowden.  I am delighted.  This from Ray’s account of the event:

In brief remarks from his visitors, Snowden was reassured — first and foremost — that he need no longer be worried that nothing significant would happen as a result of his decision to risk his future by revealing documentary proof that the U.S. government was playing fast and loose with the Constitutional rights of Americans.

Even amid the government shutdown, Establishment Washington and the normally docile “mainstream media” have not been able to deflect attention from the intrusive eavesdropping that makes a mockery of the Fourth Amendment. Even Congress is showing signs of awaking from its torpor.

In the somnolent Senate, a few hardy souls have gone so far as to express displeasure at having been lied to by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and NSA Director Keith Alexander — Clapper having formally apologized for telling the Senate Intelligence Committee eavesdropping-related things that were, in his words, “clearly erroneous” and Alexander having told now-discredited whoppers about the effectiveness of NSA’s intrusive and unconstitutional methods in combating terrorism.

Coleen Rowley, the first winner of the Sam Adams Award (2002), cited some little-known history to remind Snowden that he is in good company as a whistleblower — and not only because of previous Sam Adams honorees. She noted that in 1773, Benjamin Franklin leaked confidential information by releasing letters written by then-Lt. Governor of Massachusetts Thomas Hutchinson to Thomas Whatley, an assistant to the British Prime Minister.

The letters suggested that it was impossible for the colonists to enjoy the same rights as subjects living in England and that “an abridgement of what are called English liberties” might be necessary. The content of the letters was so damaging to the British government that Benjamin Franklin was dismissed as colonial Postmaster General and had to endure an hour-long censure from British Solicitor General Alexander Wedderburn.

There has been a determined attempt by government to justify the need to intercept everybody’s communications, all the time.  We have, yet again, had MI5 claim there are many thousand violent Islamic terrorists running around the UK, (yet somehow not managing to kill anybody).  The cry of “paedophiles” is raised, as always.  I can imagine them suggesting the entire population be shot dead, and justifying it as making sure they get the paedophiles.  The tabloids would go with that.

There still had not been a single credible claim by the mainstream media that any named individual has died, despite that contingency being trotted out all the time as the reason Snowden and Manning should not have revealed state crimes and abuse of power.  I am hopeful that, with the internet still largely free to the dissemination of information, out next massive whistleblower is only weeks away.

I was just reading the Guardian’s piece about the rediscovery of episodes of Dr Who, The Web of Fear.

It took me back so strongly that it felt quite uncanny.  I have strong memories of watching this on TV with my sister Celia, when I must only have been eight years old.  I remember the dark mouths of the tube tunnels, and the yeti – who for the most part got glimpsed briefly – coming out of them with strange lights for eyes.  I remember the deadly fungus that made soldiers sort of flash in oscillating light then fall down dead – there was a kind of clumpy stuff, but in my memory there was a kind of horizontal layered cobwebby stuff across the tube tunnels too.  I don’t imagine I will actually watch these recovered episodes, but it would be interesting to know how much of that memory is accurate.

I remember the detail of the carpet and the furniture in our home.  A bit like Proust’s madeleines, this little recovered memory brings back so much.  Television was a shared experience then – Mark and Martin and Clive would all have watched the same thing, and we could discuss and play it together.  I was fortunate to have an extremely happy childhood.  It is strange how it makes me so terribly sad to recall it.

Weirdly enough – I have had a strange life – the article also gave me a vivid flashback to the first time I entered Jos, where the tapes were discovered.

With grateful thanks to ANode – and to the others who submitted designs.

I repeat, that the producers of The Ambassadors, Big Tal, contacted me about acquiring the rights to Murder in Samarkand and hled a meeting with me in their office to discuss it at length.  They did not get the rights.  The concept of The Ambassadors, the series Big Talk subsequently produced, is very plainly based on Murder in Samarkand.  Big Talk are copyright thieves.

That is without the issue of making a state-sponsored satire with FCO approval and participation designed to justify and make light of our disgraceful collusion with the vicious Karimov regime.

This is the last correspondence I had from my solicitor on the subject – it would cost me £10,000 just to apply to see the scripts:

(a)    Application for pre-action disclosure

This is the next step highlighted in our letter of 6 March 2013.  This is an application to the court to order Big Talk to disclose certain information to you, namely, the treatment and the scripts.  This information would then enable us to understand if their show will infringe your book (or defame you).

Costs

The likely costs of proceeding with the application will depend somewhat on how the other side approach it, but at a minimum we will need to prepare a witness statement setting out the evidence to support your application, pay the court fee to issue the application, correspond with the other side and prepare for documents for the application and to appear at court to represent you.   Estimated costs for this application are likely to be in the region of £10,000 (plus VAT).

I don’t have money.  There is no access to justice for ordinary people against companies in this country.  So the copyright thieves of Big Talk can now sue me.  I would welcome any solidarity postings of the above image from other bloggers and media!

The Independent has an article about the new FCO sponsored Mitchell and Webb “comedy”, which was made with FCO co-operation and is openly an attempt to bolster its image – and to make light of, and acceptable, the disgraceful British alliance with the dictator of Uzbekistan.  The argument that this series is based on – and is an attempt to counter the effect of – Murder in Samarkand – is overwhelming.

Not least because the producers of  Ambassadors, Big Talk, attempted to buy the rights to Murder in Samarkand.  They invited me to, and I attended, a meeting in their offices and they had several copies of Murder in Samarkand in their office.  They also had access to the original unpublished (and much longer) manuscript of the book, under its original title Should Not Be Known.   For them to pretend their “Tazbekistan” comedy is unrelated does not just make them lying bastards, it is ludicrous.

I did get solicitors to write both to Big Talk and to the BBC, but unfortunately the lawyers wanted money amounting to tens of thousands to apply for a copyright injunction, and I just don’t have it.

The Independent article takes the opportunity to recycle ten year old slurs against me by the FCO, without mentioning that they were disproven.

I wonder if one of my talented commenters could design an online “poster” for Murder in Samarkand, showing the book, Mitchell and Webb or the Ambassadors logo, and the slogan “Murder in Samarkand – Now a Major TV Series”.  Then we can get it everywhere we can on the web, and the bastards can try and sue me!  That would turn the tables nicely.

The other extraordinary thing in the Independent article is the contention that New Labour had an ethical foreign policy, as though the tabloid humiliation and marginalisation of Robin Cook- and the dodgy dossier and invasion of Iraq –  had never happened.

My last post on the BBC footage of Syrian casualties – and the different versions of what the doctor said – has brought me a deluge of emails, not least from the Guardian who have been in touch with the BBC and, if the Guardian can get over its phobia at ever mentioning me at all, will doubtless produce a “Craig Murray is a Conspiracy Theorist” piece.  It would be unethical for me to reveal what the BBC said ahead of the Guardian, but I might point out that in a large amount of verbiage they completely failed to address or admit the point that they showed two different versions of what the doctor said.

Close inspection of the two different versions, by numerous commenters and for which I am grateful, reveals that there were actually two or more takes of this scene.  The easiest tell is the arm position of the man in the fluorescent jacket next to the doctor.

Actually, that is much worse than if it were overdubbing.  What this means is, that what is portrayed as a live action piece with casualties being rushed in, was actually a rehearsed piece of which several takes were done.  Rehearsed because, with the exception of the words napalm and chemical weapons, the words are precisely the same, which is not easy spontaneously especially under that kind of stress.

This raises some even weirder questions.  In a hospital where dozens of  desperately wounded casualties are at that moment being rushed in for life-saving treatment, this British doctor not only has time to talk to the BBC, but to do several takes? Is that not extremely strange?  Furthermore, nobody else in the courtyard is wearing a face mask.  If the doctor has time to do several takes with the BBC, why on earth has she not slipped off her mask to talk?  Is it for theatrical effect, to give the impression of someone just rushed from the theatre, as opposed to someone doing several takes for the BBC?

The BBC report says specifically the doctors were “overwhelmed”.  In which case how on earth could the BBC even ask them to do several takes of an interview in the middle of the crisis?  And why would they agree?

Irrefutable evidence of a stunning bit of fakery by the BBC:

In this version the medic being interviewed says about the 2 minute mark:

“..It’s just absolute chaos and carnage here, erm we’ve had a massive influx of
what looks like serious burns, er seems like it must be some sort of chemical
weapon, I’m not really sure..”

In this version she says – it is at about 2 mins 20 seconds in this edit:

“..It’s just absolute chaos and carnage here, erm we’ve had a massive influx of
what looks like serious burns, er seems like it must be some sort of, I’m not
really sure, maybe napalm, something similar to that..”

The disturbing thing is the footage of the doctor talking is precisely the same each time.  It is edited so as to give the impression the medic is talking in real time in her natural voice – there are none of the accepted devices used to indicate a voiceover translation.  But it must be true that in at least one, and possibly both, the clips she is not talking in real time in her own voice.  It is very hard to judge as her mouth and lips are fully covered throughout.  Perhaps neither of the above is what she actually said.

Terrible things are happening all the time in Syria’s civil war, between Assad’s disparate forces and still more disparate opposition forces, and innocent people are suffering.  There are dreadful crimes against civilians on all sides.  I have no desire at all to downplay or mitigate that.  But once you realise the indisputable fact of the fake interview the BBC has put out, some of the images in this video begin to be less than convincing on close inspection too.