It is ten years since I ended my FCO career by going on the Today programme and blowing the whistle on CIA/MI6 complicity in torture. It was on my 46th birthday, and I was in my second year as an Ambassador and my seventh as a top Whitehall civil servant, a member of the Senior Civil Service.
Looking back now, what is most striking are the blatant lies by the FCO that they were not obtaining intelligence from torture. As the BBC reported:
In one he claimed MI6 had used information passed on to it by the CIA but originally obtained in Uzbek torture cells – something strongly denied by the Foreign Office.
I do not think there is a single person in public life or social media nowadays who would not accept that the FCO were simply lying. Jack Straw was blatantly to lie about it to parliament. But ten years ago the public and media knew much less than they know now. Nobody outside secret circles had ever heard the words extraordinary rendition. It was a year later – May 2005 – before the New York Times revealed the CIA was sending people to Uzbekistan to be tortured, precisely as I had stated.
It sounds incredible, but in October 2004 many people believed it was Craig Murray who was a liar, not Jack Straw. Again I do not think there is a single individual today who does not understand that Jack Straw was lying through his teeth. But back in 2004 life was hard for me.
After going on the Today programme I went on the run, in fear for my life. I am not paranoid, remember David Kelly. I first stayed with my old friend Andy Myles in Edinburgh, then I think Chief Executive of the Scottish Liberal Democrats. He was phoned the next morning by the FCO. When he denied knowledge of my whereabouts, they not only said they knew I was staying with him, they said which bedroom I was sleeping in. Ten years ago today I was hiding in Aviemore in the house of my old friend Dominic.
That was the start of a decade as a dissident where I have devoted my life to exposing, and trying to counter, the evil of the neo-conservative policy pursued by our political class at the behest of the corporations who fund them. I have suffered a huge loss in money, status and most of the other normal aspirations. But what I have gained is invaluable. I have respect and love, while Blair and Straw will forever be despised.
Washington Is Defaming Putin
Paul Craig Roberts
On October 24 at the Valdai International Discussion Club meeting in Sochi, Russia’s President Putin correctly and justifiably denounced Washington for destabilizing the world in order to serve its own narrow and selfish interest and the interests of the private interest groups that control Washington at the expense of the rest of the world. It is about time a world leader denounced the thuggish neocon regime in Washington. Putin described Washington’s double standards with the Roman phrase: “What is allowed for God [the US] is not allowed for cattle [the rest of the world].”
Curiously, the Russian media has not, at this time of writing, produced an English translation of Putin’s full remarks. Perhaps the Russian media do not realize the importance of Putin’s words. Too much of the Russian media is owned by foreign interests who use the access to Russian readers to attack and discredit the Russian government. It is amazing that the Russian government allows Washington’s propaganda within its own ranks. Perhaps Moscow accepts Washington’s propaganda among Russians in order to protect the broadcasts in the US of RIA Novosti, RT and Voice of Russia. But the balance is uneven. The Russian broadcasts in the West report otherwise unreported news; they do not defame America.
I did not see any reporting of Putin’s address in the US print and TV media. Clearly in the US there is an absence of public discussion of US foreign policy and foreign reaction to it. A country in which propaganda and silence rule out awareness and public discussion is not a democracy regardless of what it calls itself.
/..
Washington Is Defaming Putin
http://wakeupfromyourslumber.com/washington-is-defaming-putin/
On October 24 at the Valdai International Discussion Club meeting in Sochi, Russia’s President Putin correctly and justifiably denounced Washington for destabilizing the world in order to serve its own narrow and selfish interest and the interests of the private interest groups that control Washington at the expense of the rest of the world. It is about time a world leader denounced the thuggish neocon regime in Washington. Putin described Washington’s double standards with the Roman phrase: “What is allowed for God [the US] is not allowed for cattle [the rest of the world].”
Curiously, the Russian media has not, at this time of writing, produced an English translation of Putin’s full remarks. Perhaps the Russian media do not realize the importance of Putin’s words. Too much of the Russian media is owned by foreign interests who use the access to Russian readers to attack and discredit the Russian government. It is amazing that the Russian government allows Washington’s propaganda within its own ranks. Perhaps Moscow accepts Washington’s propaganda among Russians in order to protect the broadcasts in the US of RIA Novosti, RT and Voice of Russia. But the balance is uneven. The Russian broadcasts in the West report otherwise unreported news; they do not defame America.
I did not see any reporting of Putin’s address in the US print and TV media. Clearly in the US there is an absence of public discussion of US foreign policy and foreign reaction to it. A country in which propaganda and silence rule out awareness and public discussion is not a democracy regardless of what it calls itself.
@RD: They were already an Autonomous Republic before 1994! What would greater autonomy from that be, other than Independence? Anyway, they voted “Yes” in large numbers, and Kiev said the vote was illegal. Sound familiar?
@Mary: There’s a full translation on the Saker’s site. Huge number of comments already.
US set to become UK’s bestest, bestest, friend:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/defence-and-security-blog/2014/oct/20/nuclear-weapons-uk-us
Can the people stop it? Apparently, this one is even going to bypass Parliament.
Fluoxetine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluoxetine
Are anti depressants like Prozac in our water damaging the environment and wildlife?
Dr Kathryn Arnold, University of York – an animal behaviourist – reports her findings
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04mb2r7 2hrs 24mins in
http://www.york.ac.uk/environment/our-staff/kathryn-arnold/
Thanks Peacewisher. Don’t know how I duplicated that link!?? Oh well. Perhaps R2D2 will spot it.
Norman Pollack too.
October 27, 2014
Putin’s Valdai Address
One-Sided Cold War
by NORMAN POLLACK
America’s shrill, expanding demonization of Putin, Obama now equating Russia and Ebola as paired dangers in the modern world, follows from its ideological-structural matrix of decline as the unilateral military-economic leader of the international order. Decaying societies don’t fare well in global history, especially when the inner rot of the political culture erodes the foundations of reason, moral principles, and humaneness, precisely where America now finds itself. The inner rot is not merely capitalism per se, although that gets it off to a good start because in practice characterized by petrifaction in the face of challenge and dissenting opinion, but capitalism as it presently exists in America, where the fear of social transformation (i.e., anything which jeopardizes the power of ruling groups, questions Authority, or otherwise destabilizes class relations) has yielded systemic militarization to keep capitalism on pace and secure. And even the militarization of capitalism, generally adequate to normalizing conditions of fascism, emergent or full-blown, in America has a particularity distinguishing the society from all others: its fusion of Exceptionalism and counterrevolution (each needed to sustain the other) dressed up in the language of liberal or humanitarian intervention in world affairs.
/..
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/10/27/one-sided-cold-war/
~~~
PS Russell Brand talks about his book on Radio 4 Start the Week
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04mb2r9
Russell Brand’s calling for revolution now, to overthrow the system that he says supports extreme inequality. David Babbs, executive director of 38 Degrees, wants popular campaigns to bring about change and strengthen democracy. Juliet Barker re-examines the Great Revolt of 1381 and finds not a peasants’ revolt but one by a new middle class in the shires, dissatisfied with a London elite. Philosopher Susan Neiman looks at how we are expected to abandon the adventures of youth if we are to grow up and asks, is there a new way to imagine what it means to be mature?
Peacewisher, RD lives in a world where he has to pass on the most ludicrous shit, like that Forbes article in which speculations are presented as facts. Forbes is for the rich. It makes things up to help the bankers. It is full off that proverbial brown substance. here is another example.
https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2966-wizards-of-bullshit-how-forbes-turned-65-million-into-20-billion
Anyway, it was always hoist by (with) his own petard when I went to school all those years ago, and clearly the fabricator has been.
Have a good day.
@Mary: I’ve just heard Labour’s education policy, and how they are still buying into private interests. It has indeed become a Liblabcon. Unless Ed comes out with something remotely socialist sounding this is going to be even worse than the 2010 undemocratic (i.e. not representative) election.
Probably, in seats it’ll be something like Lab 300 Con 300 Lib 20 Green 5 UKIP 10 SNP 15 with a few others (don’t know if total has changed, think it may be less). If so, I expect lib & UKIP to team up with con to continue the current charade.
@John: How is it that intelligent people can believe such shit?
RD; “if someone uses the occasion of a terrorist attack to attack the victims rather than the perpetrators”
Have a read of this & see if you can work out why you are as stupid as you really appear to be;
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40032.htm
Actually I’ll even highlight the relevant part, because yes you & your type really are that stupid;
“The issue here is not justification (very few people would view attacks on soldiers in a shopping mall parking lot to be justified). The issue is causation.”
@Peacewisher, it’s beyond me mate. ESLO’s not at work and that has worried me, not for myself. It’s half-term here in Birmingham. God forbid that RD is a teacher. What chance the next generation then?
That’s it John attack the messenger when you cannot address the argument – the Forbes piece was widely reported and oh it was posted on the Putin’s Human Rights Council website – if you can be bothered with little things like the truth you can get all the corroboration that you want.
Talking of ludicrous shit it doesn’t get more ludicrous your racist Zionist world order rants I’m afraid.
Grow up Macky, stop trolling and provide something of substance.
I see that German yobs are following the “good” example shown by the Ukrainian yobs who dominate Svoboda, Right Sector, etc:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/26/football-fans-neo-nazis-riot-cologne
When will Angela Merkel get it that embracing the current Ukraine will end up destabilising Europe? I guess never, because the US neo-cons have set their sights on EU membership for the Ukraine, and “she must obey”… Presumably, most Germans won’t like that. When is the next German election, I wonder?
@RD: I bet Forbes are really mad that the Brazilian people have ignored them and all their oligarch supporting associates, and voted against the “chosen” candidate. Answering my own question, a majority of voting Brazilians DON’T believe that shit.
RD; “Grow up Macky, stop trolling and provide something of substance”
Like I said too stupid even to realise he lacks any self-awareness; thanks for yet more conclusive proof (not that it was ever needed) that you are damned by your own stupidity to be forever a troll who thinks he can debate; stop wasting people time with your malicious & pathetic nonsense, you have been given countless opportunities & yet always fail to deliver, so go back to Harry’s Place where you really belong.
Agent Cameron was accosted by a man when he left a premises in Leeds after giving a speech on HS2/3. Security looked poor. Man arrested and then rearrested. Gideon was with Cameron. Perhaps the man just wanted to shake Cameron by neck!
Mary.
I wish you a good recover.
Thanks for the Start T Week link
Russel Brand landed yet another patronizing host (are they all like that in the BBC..oh no don’t answer that)…. be moderate vote for the ‘least worst party’ and then there were his 2 side kick female guests. First, there was Niemans bogus example of the fallout from voting for non-mainstream party (US eg.). Then the author ‘it might not be that good right now but hey it’s better than it was in the dark ages’….be thankful for small mercies!! AGAIN. Neiman came across as the one with a ‘Phd in stuffty-upty making’ in my opinion.
“the US neo-cons have set their sights on EU membership for the Ukraine”
The Ukraine would appear to have some way to go before it qualifies for EU membership. Countries wishing to join must first demonstrate that they have “stable institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities”. Perhaps Russian-speaking minorities are excluded but I don’t think so.
http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/policy/conditions-membership/index_en.htm
“Russell Brand’s calling for revolution now”
I recall some troll excoriating him for his ‘anarchism’ with the trollish concomitant of misunderstanding, as though roads would lay fallow with pot-holes and no one to fix. Capitalism’s failure to regulate the Sluts is a win/win, however.
“Ben E. Geserit Muad’Dib Further Confounding Gender Speculators”
__________________
The “Geserit” sounds like a firm of lavatory bowl and flushing manufacturers.
And you do talk a lot of sh*t, don’t you.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
What did you do first thing this morning in sunny California – smoke one, use your product or rush for the internet? 🙂
Macky
You are trading on dnagerous ground when you call people stupid. Did not the excellent Dreoilin once identify you as “not the sharpest blade in the drawer”?
Nor should you talk of other blogs (eg, Harry’s Place) so frequently. What are you doing back on here after having left in a huff many months ago? Have you forgiven Craig for his views on Ukraine/Russia, or are you just out to make trouble again?
Chris Gunness, a decent and honourable man, counters Zionist lies on Fox News, where else?
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/video-unrwas-chris-gunness-demolishes-anti-palestinian-activist-fox
Remember Chris breaking down during the onslaught? Heartbreaking.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/31/un-spokesman-chris-gunness-cries-gaza
His background. Interesting. Born in Trinidad.
http://www.guardian.co.tt/lifestyle/2014-09-30/trini-speaking-palestine
“Until about two hundred years ago, “democracy,” rule by the demos, the people as distinct from social or economic elites, was widely regarded in much the way that “anarchy” now is.
The prevailing view was that while it could be enlightening to reflect upon democracy as a theoretical possibility, no reasonable person would actually endorse it as a political ideal.
This understanding dates back to the beginnings of Western philosophy; the reasoning behind it is already evident in Aristotle’s Politics. For most of the past two and a half millennia, Aristotle’s position – not the details, but the general idea — seldom encountered serious dissent.
For both the ancients and the moderns, the prevailing view was that, except in very small communities, democracy cannot work; that effective governance is possible only when the few rule the many. Monarchies and various forms of aristocratic governance pass the test; democracy does not.
But times change. As the modern — capitalist — era took shape, the demos, once an inchoate agglomeration of no political consequence, became a lively and potent presence on the political scene. Rulers could no longer ignore its interests, except at their own peril.
And so, they and those who think for them changed their view one hundred eighty degrees. The case against democracy was no longer that it couldn’t work, but that it would likely work too well.
The fear was that an empowered demos, without property or privileges, would put the property and privileges of social and economic elites in jeopardy. What the ruling classes feared most, for just this reason, were free and fair elections.”
http://www.therealnews.com/t2/component/content/article/379-andrew-levine/2200-democracy-in-america-where-hucksters-rule
YouKnowMyName
“Evidence of more than a thousand Nazis (real SS/war-criminal/Sieg-Hielers) working for US intelligence against, well, Russia.
According to which ‘conspiracy website’?
Yes, this appeared on page A1 of the New York print edition of Monday’s New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/27/us/in-cold-war-us-spy-agencies-used-1000-nazis.html
With the US resorting, allegedly, to continue using rabid Nazis in their relentless war to annoy Russia, they are simply keeping in-touch with their C.I.A. historic roots?
______________________
All true.
Of course you forget to mention that Soviet Russia and its stooge, the laughingly-named “German Democratic Republic”, also used thousands of former Nazis. With the Russians it was mainly scientists, with the East Germans specialising in using those ex-Nazis to built up their own secret police and “People’s Army”.
Thought I’d mention that just for balance.
You like balance, don’t you?
Good catch mary.
“Kahane Chai was originally founded as Kach by the late Brooklyn-born Rabbi Meir Kahane who advocated for the expulsion of all Palestinians from their homeland to make room for Jewish settlers.”
I believe Netanyahoo was an acolyte of Maher Kahane, the hate-filled Zionista.
So the British invaders, Oops I mean’t army has pulled out of Afghanistan, at last, lets see it took 13 years cost more than ££7 billion pounds, and claimed the lives of 453 British sevicemen and women, and what did they achieve? zero nil nada.
It was all supposed to be in the name of democracy and freedom from those pesky terrorists, the Taliban, who were created by western forces, from their predecessors, the Mujahdeen, who in turn were backed by the west to fight of the then Soviet Union.
It however turned out to be more than just a bug hunt, as Afghanistan, is or was rich, in oil and rare earth elements, and countless poppy fields which when processed, into narcotics contributed a tidy sum to the deficit of which ever country could controlled them.
Of course a willing puppet president needed to be installed to keep things running reasonably smooth, and Mr Karzai, was the man for the job.
“Last year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who frequently complains of alleged Palestinian incitement and glorification of “terrorists,” appointed Moshe Feiglin of his Likud party to be a deputy speaker of the Israeli parliament. A few weeks earlier, the ultra-rightist who advocates paying Palestinians to leave Israel and the occupied territories and was once considered on the fringes of the party, told an interviewer: “I can definitely say that the slogan ‘Kahane tzadak – Kahane was right’ has proven itself many times.”
Netanyahu’s foreign minister and leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, Avigdor Lieberman, was briefly a member of Kach decades ago and still espouses views that echo Kahane’s. Following the death last fall of the racist spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who declared that non-Jews “were born only to serve us… only to serve the People of Israel,” and ruled that Jewish doctors shouldn’t treat non-Jews on the Sabbath, even if the situation is life threatening, Netanyahu lauded him as “one of the great Torah sages of our generation.” President Shimon Peres called Yosef “my teacher, my rabbi, my friend.”
http://itk.thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/199475-kahanes-legacy
A high speed rail link has been given the all clear to go ahead, between Manchester and Leeds, the infrastructure upgrade will cost £50 Billion pounds,it will no doubt run way over budget, and fall well below desired standards. Oh and we all know where the cash is coming from for this Goliath of a project, that’s right North Sea oil/gas revenue.
Funny how a new North sea oil field was discovered recently, when Osborne, Cameron and Alistair Darling swore blind it was in serious decline….Hmm..strange that one.