For anybody who doubts the reactionary single voice the UK media has become, it should be obvious from what you see on the surface, eg the unanimity of attack on Corbyn, the SNP or Assange. But if that doesn’t help, look below the surface.
Ex-Hedge Fund manager, now Murdoch leader writer Oliver Kamm published a disgusting and blatant lie and smear about me. Very quickly, Nick Cohen, Hadley Freeman and Marina Hyde of the Guardian and Stephen Daisley of ITV were popping up sending him personal tweets to congratulate him on it.
Usually it is best to ignore the lies of far right Murdoch employee Oliver Kamm, but there is one lie about me which he has been spreading so assiduously I feel I have to counter it. In Prospect Magazine Kamm states that:
“Craig Murray, a former diplomat who’s imaginatively reinvented himself as a “human rights campaigner,” claims that the charges against Assange are founded on political correctness.”
This is absolutely untrue. I have said no such thing. What I actually said in an interview with Kamm was “Due to a mistaken kind of political correctness the British media refuses to publish all the details of the case.” You can hear it here.
There is a massive difference between saying that the media refuses to publish the facts due to political correctness, and saying that rape itself is a matter of political correctness. I abhor the latter view. As Nadira has asked me to remind you, my partner is herself a rape victim.
In this interview with LBC Oliver Kamm went on to insult and lambast me and say that I claimed that the rape charges were founded on political correctness. I tried to point out that I said no such thing, but LBC had cut me off. LBC later put up the version you hear on that link in which Kamm’s remarks are given in full and my own are edited. But it is very plain indeed that I did not say what Kamm goes on to accuse me of saying.
Kamm then tweeted that I had stated that rape is political correctness. Though this was plainly untrue to anybody who listened to the LBC link which he attached, he started to receive congratulatory messages from his friends on twitter. To anybody who has yet to catch on that the mainstream media functions in collusion, it should come as no surprise to learn that this Murdoch employee received personal tweets attacking me from Nick Cohen, Hadley Freeman and Marina Hyde, all of the Guardian, and from Stephen Daisley of STV.
Rape is an appalling crime. Any sex without consent constitutes rape.
But I do not hold that the truth or falsity of an allegation of rape may not be subject to scrutiny. Anybody who does hold that is handing unchecked power to the state to eliminate opponents. I do think it is deplorable that the British media has not published the detail of the case. Then people could learn this.
Kamm’s reactionary friends can congratulate him all they like. What he is doing is spreading a deliberate lie about me. But it may just lead to a few more people researching what is really happening in the Assange case, and that would be karma.
UPDATE
I contacted Prospect magazine and they have now changed the Kamm article to state what I actually said. It is still of course surrounded by Kamm’s ultra right wing mendacious interpretations, but at least it no longer says that I said something which I did not say. For the rest, Mr Kamm is entitled to spew the vile nonsense he is so well paid for by Murdoch, and his mates at the Guardian love him for.
Ba’al Zevul – what a pompous ass! A rich post coming from someone who hides behind “Habbabreak” ever since he got his butt kicked repeatedly a few years back… 🙂
“Why are the British press so abjectly in the thrall of the reigning system?”
Equally puzzling is the question of why the Left in Britain are so abjectly in thrall of the capitalist media.
They really ought to know better. It isn’t as if the newspapers were not always right wing, particularly on economic and social questions.
The left’s expectations from The Guardian are really puzzling. I read the paper for decades. In the Cold War it faithfully parroted the establishment propaganda line and was fiercely opposed to the strong left Bevanite currents in the Labour Party. Indeed it was always the mouthpiece of the rightwing, pro NATO, Gaitskellites in Labour Party matters. It gave enormous support to the SDP split which torpedoed the Labour party and effectively kept Thatcher in power until, The Guardian’s own Thatcher, Blair had purged the Party and changed it from a flawed working class formation into a clone of the infamous US Democratic party.
The left needs to grow up: if it wants proper newspaper coverage it is going to have to establish its own (that is something that Ernest Bevin understood). There is no reason why the papers that employ such dull and uninspiring hacks as Nick Cohen, Aaronovitch and the above mentioned Kamm should outdraw a left wing publication.
In fact the likelihood is that any Daily defending the NHS in a sincere and committed way, opposing unfair taxes and attacking imperialist adventures (not to mention the humiliation of being governed by people whose expressed ambition it is to crawl into Washington’s anal cavity) and pressing for social justice, based upon the principles of shelter for all, a provision to sufficient to live comfortably and a planned social economy; that any such ‘paper’ would be a very viable proposition.
I have every sympathy with Craig’s anger at being treated with such insolence by venal scribblers but such is the fate of honest people facing a media in decline, desperate to find a Sugar Daddy ready not only to keep the ladies in the style to which they have grown accustomed but to console them now that the world understands that they are, not fools, not misguided innocents but harlots.
Christ, even Stanley Baldwin knew that!
Studies show Kamm’s characteristic mobbing reflex tends to come of a few too many butt-fuckings at the hands of posher boys:
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/jun/09/boarding-schools-bad-leaders-politicians-bullies-bumblers
A killjoy tug like Craig strikes at Kamm’s last-ditch psychic revetments when he exposes torture, which has a revealing homoerotic flavor in the UK. Craig’s support for Assange, who made fools of Britain’s pedo class, clearly drove Kamm over the edge.
Dear Chris, South Wales couldn’t have been worse than Blackburn and Straws storm troopers. Craig, myself, Ian Orr and many here have experienced Blackburn during election time and its tribal,
multi ethnic, with at least 5 different Muslim and Hindu Asian voters, who settled there from Bangladesh, Punjab, Gujarat, and various other parts of Pakistan.
Craig stood as an Independent there and I worked as election agent and campaigns manager for the first ever woman Muslim candidate called Bushra Irfan, the most hellish and bent election I had ever experienced, so we know what can happen under long standing Labour MP’s, welcome to the club.
No Russia is not part of the club, it has never been asked to join because it is not supposed to be in the club, what a daft position to take or state.
Its only western leaning economies, you see, the plan is to divide the world in two. China, Russia, Iran North Korea and various other eastern and middle eastern/Latin American countries are to be cut off from the TTIP club, sadly NZ has realised the evil plan too late, they’re buttered up by Mr. Key.
Nobody is to descend against the annihilation of democracy, least of all the voters. Cameron is already singing his highest tones, siren like selling us off, a clarion call for the Kristall nacht dispossession of public assets and services, a massacre of public finances via court cases for this that and the other. We will have to have their GM cakes and eat them, no worries they’ll be bargains, they also break every food regulation we ever had, a tsunami of GM food stuffs and we could not refuse, indeed the companies could sue if not being given the same space than organic foods. So no worries it will be really good for us, hummmhaa, but it will not be a democracy anymore.
No doubt the 206 Lords and MP’s with vested interest in the privatisation of the NHS will rub their hands in glee at TTIP, not one of them thought it wrong to vote on the subject. 80% of these are Conservatives. many will earn themselves golden noses when they sell their ‘assets’ to some multinational Profit/Health Gollum.
Oh, Leon, don’t, that hurts ever so much! Mummy! Mummy!
08/02/16 9:17pm
I am curious to know how you know that Oliver Kamm attended a boarding school.
Kind regards,
John
John, as the article notes, the subaltern classes can assimilate if they accept acculturation. British society provides multiple venues for cross-class interaction, exploitation, and kompromat. Kamm’s breeding, in Bourdieu’s terms, is light on economic capital, heavier on cultural capital. That’s a significant disadvantage in the end-stage British kleptocracy of today. His avidity reflects his insecure social status.
I’ve been publishing as widely as I can, for some years now, the same monotonously-simple mantra: “Comical Ollie Kamm is a professional liar and smear artist, working in that capacity for the Murdoch crime famiglia in one of their propaganda outfits, laughingly called a ‘news’ paper.”
I invite him repeatedly to sue my for libel, with the warning that I (a physically frail bloke in his mid-seventies) shall be delighted to conduct my own defence, like the dread McLibel Two, and for the same reason: that I couldn’t afford a fancy brief, or even a plain one; and that it – my defence – can be described in its entirety by saying that my statement about Kamm is not libellous, because it is demonstrably true.
If Ollie is ever stupid enough, or defiant of his owners enough, actually to take up my offer to sue, I shall then have great glee in simply presenting a long catalogue of his professional work as a paid liar and smear artist (as long as my stamina and the judge’s patience will hold up), with the invitation to the court to consider in detail how his output is always almost wholly divorced from any objective truth, demonstrably, and always shot through with what can only be understood as malevolent intent, of which the Murdoch famiglia makes use for their dirty realpolitikal purposes in the world. Taking him apart with a scalpel and a meat-cleaver, in other words, for as long as the court will stand it.
Even if Kamm were ever stupid enough to take up this challenge, I imagine that the Murdoch famiglia’s local business minders, advised by the famiglia’s retained briefs, would warn him that such a horrendous debacle would be the end of his hacking career for Murdoch. But it never has to come to that, because another of Comical Ollie’s charming qualities is his obvious cowardice. From time to time I contact him personally by email, point out the latest of his emissions which cause me to repeat that he is a professional liar and smear artist, point out the refutations to his latest – which are always ridiculously easy to marshall – and again beg him (just for the delight that a McLibel solo show would afford me, at my time of life!) to sue me for libelling/defaming him.
After a few email exchanges, in which Ollie emits yet more of his ridiculously easy-to-bat-away bollocks, he always ends up by requesting that I stop contacting him. Seems he’s as much the courageous armchair special-forces warrior as David Aaronovitch. Daren’t even defend his own hallucinatory reputation as a ‘journalist’ who should be taken seriously. Incidentally, I have the whole of my email correspondence with Comical Ollie archived, natch.
BTW, I deal with the troll Habbabkuk’s inputs here by skipping over them without ever reading them. Easy to do with a bit of practice. A necessary practical skill for all who go net-surfing. Craig’s blog, together with the really substantial commenters, is too useful a place to be wasting time wading through the shit inputs of tolerated trolls.
And BTW2, Craig: In response to your exasperated cry of ‘Where’s Mary when you need her!’ she’s doing her sterling stuff over on The Lifeboat News message board, to which most of we of the MediaLens Message Board rabble have now decamped, the Editors at MediaLens having closed their board because of crushing work overload. Mary, you may remember, was harried off this – Craig’s – comments location by constant vicious attacks from the hasbarollocksers; also not adequately moderated the feck off by the greatly-tolerant Craig and his webmaster volunteer(s).
And BTW3: Bevin has it dead right about why the USuk lamestream-media corpohack stenos-to-power are slagging so hysterically at the moment: because even they – clueless, tunnel-visioned, permanently-sheltered, delusion-bubble-dwelling mediocrities though most of them are – are beginning to suss that their gods, the amoral realpolitiking power-psychos of USuk, and particularly the US imperial gics*, are actually getting their arses kicked terminally, as their empire crumbles before the rise of the global successor bloc – the BRICS/SCO states and their steadily-lengthening tally of friends and followers. And yes, sorry Craig, that does indeedy include Russia, the Putiniki, and the four-fifths (and upwards) of Russians who approve their president; you really need to get your private glitch straightened out about them. It detracts from your otherwise impressive excellence as a knowledgeable, intelligent, principled and handily-connected commentator.
—————
* GICs: Gangsters-In-Charge, aka the Beltway Bozos, plus the US deep-state operators, plus the chieftains of the US corporate/MIC oligarchy – including the fruit-salad bespattered Pentagoons. More heavily reality-shielded mediocrities, for the most part; like the lamestream USuk mediawhores who adulate them with tongues ever ready, and who are now in such hilarious consternation as they realise that their heroes’ global-domination racket (they wish!) is going down permanently.
Oh, Leon, Don’t, Stop! Don’t, Stop!
08/02/16 10:43pm
“John, as the article notes, the subaltern classes can assimilate if they accept acculturation.”
Please could you cut and paste the part of the article which leads you to conclude this? I’m afraid I can’t see it.
Does that mean that Kamm attended a boarding school, or not, or do you not know?
Many thanks, John
“Mary, you may remember, was harried off this – Craig’s – comments location by constant vicious attacks from the hasbarollocksers”
We are not supposed to be discussing Mary; she requested that we not do so. But this statement, however much people might want it to be true, is not true, and it should not be permitted to become part of this forum’s history. Mary left this forum voluntarily, because the moderators deleted certain of her posts and she felt that they were being deleted unfairly. It had nothing to do with any attacks on her by any poster.
It is true, that she gave as her reason for not returning, that she did not want to return to an atmosphere of toxicity that surrounded the postings that she made. I think that is more or less what she said.
Kind regards,
John
Apologies. My last post was a response to Rhisiart Gwilym 08/02/16 10:44pm. J
Mary won’t be back. It’s survival instincts we can all cultivate.
@JSD, it’s effectively amounts to the exact same thing; the Zionists trolls succeeded in getting the Moderators to do their dirty work for them; because of them constantly raising hell with non-stop accusations of anti-semitism in their efforts to stop & distract criticism of Israeli crimes, the Mods foolishly reacted by adopting the ludicrous policy of pre-moderating any comment that contained the word “Jew” or “Jewish”.
His avidity reflects his insecure social status.
Not sure what this means in relation to Craig’s current prime antagonost, comrade Kamm. I used to follow Kamm’s blog for amusement before it went behind the Murdoch paywall and don’t much bother with his screeds these days, but I can’t see how his political contortions in some way derive from his ‘social status’. From what he’s revealed about himself his backgound is bookish, bien pensant middle-middle class- his mother is a professional translator, and a sister of BBC journo Martin Bell. (Re the latter I understand he took leave of absence from his hedge fund to assist uncle Martin in his successful election campaign in May 1997).
Njegos, Macky, John Goss, John Spencer-Davies, and all the other stellar contributors to Craig’s Blog, which in effect, is well-nigh everyone,save for ‘Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)’, the hasbara-indoctrinated, opprobrious occam’s razor ordered, online gadfly, who continues to persist in polluting and poisoning,in his pompously predicated prose, the more progressive and purposeful raison d’etre and cri de cœur, which distinguishes Craig’s Blog, as one of the few resources and reservoirs of resplendent reason and sage sanity, in assiduously articulating the kernels of truth, concerning increasingly, injustices, largely ignored, concealed, obfuscated, sanitized, and generally denied the hoi polloi, in our less than ethical Establishment’s stranglehold on the main opinion-formers in the orthodox Media, I don’t think Craig need worry to unduly about ‘Kamm’s’continuing calumnious castigations, as his execrable pedagogy and pedigree, was exquisite;y eviscerated for all to see, courtesy of ‘Mjegos’s’ timely submission of clip of same, at The Oxford Union, and which I now attach, the transcript, and full video clip, for further enjoyment. John Goss is absolutely correct in his assumption, that, despite the UK ‘formerly’ boasting ‘some morals, vis-a-vis the ‘independence’ and integrity of it’s Justiciary, the same can no longer be claimed, with even a soupçon of confidence, as we have all witnessed, these past couple of decades in particular, with appallingly abject and aberrant disposals and judgements, which to purloin the counsel of none other than Dr Jim Swire, in his opinion of it’s incestuously indentured institutions,North of The Border, ‘is lying in the gutter’, and with no latter-day Oscar Wilde, eta al, to furnish a more fragrant and fin de siècle figure of speech, by way of elegant and expedient exculpation. So it is left to the Craig Murray’s, amongst a few notable others, to convey and communicate that which lesser gifted individuals recoil from broaching, lest they suffer some adverse redress from those ‘Dark Forces’ intriguingly insinuated by individuals of ‘ilk’… 🙂 In conclusion, Craig, don’t dignify the boot lickspittle, inspid, if irritating intimations, of the Oliver Kamms’ of this ignominious and ill-disposed imbroglio of ire-filled ingrates, by seeking any formal litigious redress. They’re not worth it, Craig, and no matter the rectitude of your argument and complaint, or the abilities and prowess of any Counsel leading same, ‘they’ will NOT find in your favour, alas, and will make no apologies for same. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usdGgR8cI1Y http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/headtohead/2015/03/transcript-norman-finkelstein-150331112143453.html
(Corrected typos darft) Njegos, Macky, John Goss, John Spencer-Davies, and all the other stellar contributors to Craig’s Blog, which in effect, is well-nigh everyone,save for ‘Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)’, the hasbara-indoctrinated, opprobrious occam’s razor ordered, online gadfly, who continues to persist in polluting and poisoning,in his pompously predicated prose, the more progressive and purposeful raison d’etre and cri de cœur, which distinguishes Craig’s Blog, as one of the few resources and reservoirs of resplendent reason and sage sanity, in assiduously articulating the kernels of truth, concerning increasingly, injustices, largely ignored, concealed, obfuscated, sanitized, and generally denied the hoi polloi, in our less than ethical Establishment’s stranglehold on the main opinion-formers in the orthodox Media, I don’t think Craig need worry too unduly about ‘Kamm’s’continuing calumnious castigations, as his execrable pedagogy and pedigree, was exquisitely eviscerated for all to see, courtesy of ‘Mjegos’s’ timely submission of clip of same, at The Oxford Union, and which I now attach, the transcript, and full video clip, for further enjoyment. John Goss is absolutely correct in his assumption, that, despite the UK ‘formerly’ boasting ‘some morals, vis-a-vis the ‘independence’ and integrity of it’s Justiciary, the same can no longer be claimed, with even a soupçon of confidence, as we have all witnessed, these past couple of decades in particular, with appallingly abject and aberrant disposals and judgements, which to purloin the counsel of none other than Dr Jim Swire, in his opinion of it’s incestuously indentured institutions,North of The Border, ‘is lying in the gutter’, and with no latter-day Oscar Wilde, et al, to furnish a more fragrant and fin de siècle figure of speech, by way of elegant and expedient exculpation. So it is left to the Craig Murray’s, amongst a few notable others, to convey and communicate that which lesser gifted individuals recoil from broaching, lest they suffer some adverse redress from those ‘Dark Forces’ intriguingly insinuated by individuals of ‘ilk’… 🙂 In conclusion, Craig, don’t dignify the boot lickspittle, inspid, if irritating intimations, of the Oliver Kamms’ of this ignominious and ill-disposed imbroglio of ire-filled ingrates, by seeking any formal litigious redress. They’re not worth it, Craig, and no matter the rectitude of your argument and complaint, or the abilities and prowess of any Counsel leading same, ‘they’ will NOT find in your favour, alas, and will make no apologies for same. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usdGgR8cI1Y http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/headtohead/2015/03/transcript-norman-finkelstein-150331112143453.html
Somebody paid very close attention to Assange’s words on the Ecuadoran balcony the other day;
http://original.antiwar.com/thomas-knapp/2016/02/07/when-in-rome-criminal-consequences-for-assanges-tormentors/
@Jermynstreetjim, at the risk of getting censored yet again, Craig’s annoyance with the trollish behaviour of Kamm, who is just an Murdoch funded Troll, exposes the muddled moderating direction he imposes here, where blatant trolls are not only tolerated but actually encouraged; rather like his schizophrenic & hypocritical boast that this is a Free Speech Blog ! 😀
The never-ending crimes & inhumanity of the Occupiers;
http://www.thenational.ae/world/middle-east/palestinian-villagers-brace-for-more-demolitions-after-israeli-bulldozers-leave-100-homeless
Funny how those that seem to complain the loudest about refugees from the ME coming to Europe, also tend to be the most vocal supporters of the perpetrators whose criminal actions results in refugees being made to flee their homelands in the first place.
JSD – Kamm seems to have attended Wyggeston Grammar School, which later became Countesthorpe Community College, in Leicestershire, before hitting the dreaming spires for a PPE degree (what else?). It wasn’t a boarding school, but had (a) pretensions and (b) lots of famous alumni, including David and Richard Attenborough.
So nul points to “Oh Leon, Etc”.
Another FACT being overlooked here, which I believe the upright JSD too has made before, is that Mary could not only give as good as she got, but often was the mischievous instigator.
In the end she could not accept a blow to her ego caused by comments deleted for being off-topic. She thought and behaved, due to her loyalty to Craig, that she had a special space here and therefore immune from deletions.
She’s much better off where she is now as she can initiate new threads without having to constantly interject. Whatever happens, happens for the best.
PS Passerby was no other than Fedup’s daytime sock puppet.
Back to Assange:
http://www.thelocal.se/20160209/swedish-prosecutor-wont-drop-assange-probe
http://www.smh.com.au/national/disregard-for-un-ruling-on-assanges-detention-a-blow-to-human-rights-20160207-gmnlsp.html
Is Ny now motivated to ensure that she brings charges?
Even before that, will Assange agree, at this stage, and after the UN ruling, to be interviewed at all, until his liberty is restored? Is he entitled to receive the full case file before being questioned?
So, the stalemate seems to be as total as before, for now.
Can Assange petition the ECtHR? Anyone?
And further:
” The Continuing Saga of Julian Assange
The Swedish prosecutor’s office says it is working on a renewed request to interview the Wikileaks founder at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.”
:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/02/sweden-assange/461931/
https://www.aklagare.se/nyheter-press/for-media/the-assange-matter/
To talk about someone when they do not want to be talked about, more than once, is aggravation. But to talk about someone as being the ‘mischievous instigator’, when they can’t fight back, is seriously stirring it.
Please note reader that the person will not come back to answer these lamentable accusations above. The person making these claims has been caught many times speaking of others behind their backs, and like a child, is unable to stop.
Aclyone:
I greatly enjoyed Mary’s posts, even if they were sometimes off topic. Where is she now?
Njegos @ The Lifeboat News, here:
http://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/
almighty all seeing eye and ever lasting know it all, you are privy to heck of lot of information, that even I know not of!!! But hey villager/acl/…. you are here to cause a shit storm and do your bit for that shitty strip of land in a effort for making virtual alya!
FAO Passerby if you are reading this which I very much doubt, keep up the good work, and remember to get the oil changed in time in the Cummins engine, the hours ought to be up by now.
Fedup
“But hey villager/acl/…. you are here to cause a shit storm and do your bit for that shitty strip of land in a effort for making virtual alya!”
_______________________
“shitty strip of land” – is that not hate speech?
Sloopy moderating that erases the crux of a debate about why a person left this Blog, except for one nasty smearimg comment.
“Fedup
“But hey villager/acl/…. you are here to cause a shit storm and do your bit for that shitty strip of land in a effort for making virtual alya!””
_______________________
You may inadvertently have put your finger on one of the reasons Israel still maintains a presence (miltary and otherwise) in Judea and Samaria (aka the West Bank).
It was often said around the time of the 1967 war that Israel at its narrowest point was only about 25 miles wide (this is your idea of a “strip of land”), which made effective land defence difficult.
With Judea and Samaria under, inter alia, Israeli military control, the “strip of land” has become rather less of a strip.