Dear President Ahtisaari,
I had the pleasure of meeting you on a number of occasions over the years, including when I was British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, and I recall your genuine concern for democracy and human rights in a region where they are sadly neglected.
Like a great many people in Scotland I was shocked that CMI is employing Jim Murphy. Of course, in a democracy there are always losers as well as winners in elections, and both are genuine and valid participants in public life. It is not the fact that CMI employs a politician who has been so recently, comprehensively and humiliatingly rejected by his national electorate that will do any damage to CMI. In a sense I think it does you credit.
What shocks many people here is that Mr Murphy is by any standards a dedicated warmonger. He was a major and important proponent of the invasion of Iraq, and is the strongest of supporters of the massive increase of Britain’s nuclear arsenal, in breach of the Non Proliferation Treaty.
Mr Murphy is a member of the Henry Jackson Society, which as you know is a body which exists to promote United States neo-conservative foreign policy in its most aggressive sense, and openly and actively supports and condones extraordinary rendition and the use of torture by the CIA. It has supported every single military action by the USA since its formation, and defends United States exceptionalism in international law, including US non-membership of the International Criminal Court.
Mr Murphy’s belief set is therefore fundamentally at odds with the stated aims of CMI. Indeed, his employment by you can only lead to the suspicion that CMI’s stated objectives are not its real objectives, and that like Mr Murphy and the Henry Jackson Society your overriding goal in the regions where you operate is to promote the interests of the United States.
As you are funded by charitable donations and by governments, I think some explanation of your employment of Mr Murphy is in order, particularly when you have employed him as a conflict resolution expert in the Caucasus and Central Asia when he has no relevant experience of conflict resolution at all, virtually none of the Caucasus, and absolutely none of Central Asia.
I was the Head of the UK Delegation that negotiated the Sierra Leone Peace Treaty, and certainly under no circumstances would I let Jim Murphy anywhere near that kind of negotiation.
With All Best Wishes,
Amb (rtd.) Craig Murray
“Solidarity with the French People!”
—————–
I was hoping one of you establishment lickspittles would spew that sentence out.
Why? Well whenever anyone takes Palestine’s side over Israel’s in solidarity, establishment dross filled squeaks like you climb on their high horses about it.
Hypocritical b#stard.
Solidarity with all who support democratic values and wish to stand up to mindless terrorism – wherever they may be. We are the many our opponents are the few!
“Solidarity with all who support democratic values and wish to stand up to mindless terrorism”
All those who oppose pedophilia and breast cancer please ‘like’ and ‘share’ on FB.
Methodologies may follow much later.
Habbabkuk
And also a shyster, as your intervention of the OED definition of “egregious” revealed.
I’m not sure what that means, but if ‘intervention’ is a typo for ‘invention’ then I can assure you I copy & pasted it directly from the Shorter OED, 2007 edition.
Anon1
Show me the post where I ‘decided from the outset this was a ‘false-flag’’
or where I claimed to have a ‘‘gut feeling’ that the French government just slaughtered hundreds of its own people.’
You can’t, because what you have just posted is pure invention.
PARIS ATTACKS – Classic Hegelian Dialectic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gPOJ7AmttQ#t=126
“Show me the post where I ‘decided from the outset this was a ‘false-flag’’”
No one said you did – we just know from past experience where you are most likely to end up. The techniques for how conspiracy theories are developed are well documented – you are currently at Stage 1 or 2 in the case of Paris. Perhaps you might wish to tell us when in the past your open mind has come out for the “establishment narrative” and stood up to the drivel put out by your friends here?
“Solidarity with all who support democratic values and wish to stand up to mindless terrorism – wherever they may be. We are the many our opponents are the few!”
————–
What! Are you reading that shit straight off your board at Hermitage, because it sure does sound like it.
Democratic values you show me democratic values in Syria,Iraq or Libya, we’ve blown them to bits, and left those countries in civil war, I don’t know what planet your on Mr but it sure isn’t earth.
Open your eyes and see all the refugees fleeing for their lives, from countries we brought so called democracy too.
You wouldn’t know a democratic value if it jumped up and bit you on the arse.
Res Dis
Yes, Anon1 says precisely that at 6.59.
Your first post, KLOWN:
“Has there been talk of ‘boots on the ground’ in Syria yet? If that is the outcome then it would be entirely rational to keep an open mind about who is behind this. As so often, the terrorists are conveniently generating the moral outrage needed by our leaders to do what they wanted to do all along.”
Sounds pretty clear to me. You believe the French security services carried out these attacks so that the government can pursue a particular policy. “Convenient” means you believe it was engineered. For someone posing as an objective and impartial observer, you’ve taken only one line of enquiry, and it’s the same line you take every time an atrocity like this happens – that it’s all a false-flag/conspiracy. You’re just getting a bit coy about it this time. Perhaps you are starting to find your own detachment from reality embarrassing.
Res Dis to KLOWN:
“We just know from past experience where you are most likely to end up”
It would be easier if he just listed all the instances of terrorist attacks which he does not believe we’re false flags, though I think you have to actually type something in order to post.
Were*
Paris the city that was under the onslaught of the Nazi suddenly has been reduced to the status of New York never witnessing anything other than a few fireworks on some holidays or other!
Hollande goes on record; “terrorists must have had inside help” you bet your lard arse Monsieur, your vaunted secret service was looking the other way and afterwards planting passports and as it will soon transpire manuals in Arabic of how to fire Kalashnikov and make home made pipe bombs!
Cameron here prepares the nation; “we must prepare ourselves for fatalities”! In a fashion after Bomber Harris sending waves of bombers over Germany! So far not many Brits have been found to have been involved*, so will Cameron send a few to be shot to make his grandstanding look more appropriate?
* Mandatory disclaimer at these times of suppression, suspicion, and irrationality; Thankfully and with god helping
David Betrayus…
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/31/petraeus-use-al-qaeda-fighters-to-beat-isis.html
This was just in August, fcc.
Why don’t old soldiers just fade away?
Thanks for that link. Blowback hey, for all the crimes committed on the African continent?
If the French knew of the attacks, why did they let it happen, this is very like previous scenario’s.
A little interlude
Since the City of London has a new sheriff, it might be appropriate to add a few words about Ms Baldwin MP.
Robert Bosworth Davis does it rather well.
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=35658017&postID=7203021652203948663&bpli=1
” Democratic values you show me democratic values in Syria,Iraq or Libya ”
..and the 2015 Nobel Prize for Missing the Point goes to…
” Open your eyes and see all the refugees fleeing for their lives ”
Where are they trying to flee to? Countries which are democracies.
Wasn’t it a lovely touch when civic buildings and monuments all round the world were lit up in sombre red-white-and-black, to honour the memory of the 130 wedding guests slaughtered in Taiz by the US-Saudi terrorist alliance.
It’s really impressive that the world’s governments are continuing this pattern of solidarity with innocents victims or terrorism, with the showy dazzle of red-white-and-blue last night, for the 130 Paris dead, not forgetting for a minute the gaudy red-white-and-green the previous night, for the 48 Beirut dead.
With the Yemeni civilian toll now at around 3000, you marvel how they can continue to find so many tourist icons to keep illuminating, leaving aside all the light bulbs.
KOWN
That should have been “intervention on”.
You were trying to be cute about the meaning of “egregious” by telling us that the first definition given by the OED was a positive one (whereas I had been using it negatively).
BTW, this is Fowler on “egregious” (2nd edition, revised by Gowers, OUP 1968):
“The etymological sense is simply eminent or of exceptional degree (e grege, out of the flock, as Horace calls Regulus egregius exsul). The use of the word has been narrowed in English till it is applied only to nouns expressing contempt, and especially to a few of these, such as ass, coxcomb, liar, imposter, flooy, blunder, waste. ……….
Reversion to the original sense…… is mere pedantry.
Did I hear mention of a false flag?
http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/11/another-paris-false-flag-attack/
“Realizing its vulnerability, it is entirely possible that the French Establishment made a decision to protect its hold on power with a false flag attack that would allow the Establishment to close France’s borders and, thereby, deprive Marine Le Pen of her main political issue.
Some people are so naive and stupid as to think that no government would kill its own citizens. But governments do so all the time. There are an endless number of false flag attacks, such as Operation Gladio. Operation Gladio was a CIA/Italian intelligence operation that relentlessly bombed innocent Italians, such as those waiting in a train station, murdering hundreds, and then blaming the violence on the European communist parties in the post-WW II era in order to block the communists from electoral gains.
I am getting jealous of my fellow Prophet Putin, judging from the level of the sayanim kochaphony in the MSM, the Good Lord must be definitely holding him in higher stead, all dem devils after his ass. Only the Son of Man had a bigger hebrew mob baying for his blood.
An open minded fried of KOWN’s I presume:
http://www.theonion.com/article/open-minded-man-would-be-willing-to-look-past-jenn-36560
I’m sure there was a character in Dickens who expressed how open/fair minded they were in a similar manner – perhaps someone can help me remember who it was?
Says it all does it not? These tossers are relishing the occasion!!!!
Habba
I think they are missing Mr Goss who usually starts the ball rolling from somewhere near Diego Garcia.
Surprise! Netanyahoo stands shoulder-to-shoulder with France.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/11/14/paris-attacks-reaction-israel-condems-violence-stands-shoulder-to-shoulder-with/
Condemning violence is Israel’s raison d’etre. Arm the Syrian Rebels !!!!!!
Ben
When you start to take your lead from Paul Craig Roberts you really should give up!
Regarding all these recent symphonies of light, it’s understandable that they would make an exception for metrojet, in the certainty that Fuehrer Putin can only masterminded the magnetic-pulse plan himself and no doubt secured the agreement of the 224, for the greater good
Should I cry out Bingo now we have had links from Michael Chockfullofduffsky, Gilad Atzmon, and Paul Craig Roberts all blaming terrorism on the West – or do I have to wait for links to Noam Chumpsky and John Pukeup as well?
I think the following link demonstrates admirably the stages some here go through while waiting for a new conspiracy theory to develop.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/91re7n6p9vL._SL1500_.jpg
I sometimes wonder whether all these diversionary conspiracy theories – every time there is a terrorist outrage in Europe – might not one day fall under close examination and their authors and propagators be considered to be aiding and abetting or, alternatively, justifying and even glorifying acts of terrorism?
I should think that at a determined prosecution would, at the very least, make such accomplices (seen objectively or subjectively)break out into a considerable sweat.
“Accountability” – at your local cinema soon (perhaps).
“I sometimes wonder whether all these diversionary conspiracy theories – every time there is a terrorist outrage in Europe – might not one day fall under close examination and their authors and propagators be considered to be aiding and abetting or, alternatively, justifying and even glorifying acts of terrorism?”
Sorry Habba but that is a step too far – the old democratic weapons of exposure and ridicule are the best.