We hear much about Johnson coming to power as an iconoclastic figure willing to cut a swathe through the ranks of the Establishment and especially the Civil Service, aided by blue skies thinker Dominic Cummings.
In fact nothing could be further from the truth. There has never been a Prime Minister more entrenched in and deferential to the London Establishment than Boris Johnson.
It may seem strange that Johnson’s very first executive decision on coming in to 10 Downing Street was to cancel the long delayed judicial inquiry into UK involvement in torture and extraordinary rendition. On the face of it, there were political attractions for Johnson in pursuing the issue. The policy of complicity in torture had been established by Tony Blair and Jack Straw, with as ever the active collaboration of Alastair Campbell. A judicial inquiry would hold them to account, and given they are not only New Labour but a leading Remainer posse, you would think Johnson would have pushed forward with the chance to expose them. Plus he likes to pose as something of a social liberal himself. So why was Johnson’s urgent priority to cancel the torture inquiry?
The answer is that scores of very senior civil servants were deeply implicated in British collusion in extraordinary rendition. Those directly guilty of complicity in torture include Sir Richard Dearlove, Sir John Scarlett, Sir William Ehrman, Lord Peter Ricketts and Sir Stephen Wright. It was Johnson’s fellow old Etonian, Sir William Ehrman, who chaired the series of meetings in the FCO on the implementation of the policy of getting intelligence through torture.
I testified on this subject, with documentary evidence, before the Intelligence and Security Committee of the House of Commons in secret session. The Committee’s report commended me because without my evidence that series of meetings, which at Ehrmann’s instruction were held without minutes or record, would never have come to light.
130. This was not unique to the Agencies. Their sponsoring Departments appear to have adopted the same approach. We heard evidence from a former FCO official, Craig Murray, who suggested that “there was a deliberate policy of not committing the discussion on receipt of intelligence through torture to paper in the Foreign Office”.
In July 2004, when he was Ambassador to Tashkent, he raised concerns about the use of Uzbek intelligence derived from torture in a formal exchange of telegrams with the FCO. Mr Murray drew our attention to FCO documents from the same time, which we have seen, one of which referred to “meetings to look at conditions of receipt of intelligence as a general issue”. He told us that the meetings “specifically discuss[ed] the receipt of intelligence under torture from Uzbekistan” and “were absolutely key to the formation of policy on extraordinary rendition and intelligence”.
Mr Murray told us that, when he had given evidence to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee about this, they sought the documents from the FCO which replied that the “meetings were informal meetings and were not minuted ”. He went on to say:
“the idea that you have regular meetings convened at director level, convened by the Director of Security and Intelligence, where you are discussing the receipt of intelligence from torture, and you do not minute those meetings is an impossibility, unless an actual decision or instruction not to minute the meetings has been given.… Were it not for me and my bloody-mindedness, … you would never know those meetings had happened. Nobody would ever know those meetings had happened.”131. We note that we have not seen the minutes of these meetings either: this causes us great concern. Policy discussions on such an important issue should have been minuted. We support Mr Murray’s own conclusion that were it not for his actions these matters may never have come to light.
It was not concern for Blair and Straw that led Johnson to cancel the judge led inquiry. It was the knowledge that Establishment insiders like Dearlove, Ehrman and Ricketts would be forced to give public evidence of their wrongdoing and could be liable to criminal proceedings. The judicial inquiry was promised by Cameron but both Cameron and May blenched at the shockwaves it would send through the ranks of the mandarins who run the country. Johnson has now used the opportunity of his advent, when nobody was paying much attention to anything but Brexit, to try to bury the subject completely and protect the Establishment.
It is essential to the health of our society that the full and shameful truth of this disgraceful episode is told and the guilty are held to account. I hope that once this unconstitutional Johnson regime – which has no majority in the House of Commons for its major policy and was appointed by an abuse of monarchical authority – has fallen, the subject will be brought back both by a Corbyn government at Westminster and in Holyrood by the government of Independent Scotland.
I got sacked for opposing torture and extraordinary rendition. Of those that supported it and abetted it, Lord Peter Ricketts is now Strategic Adviser to Lockheed Martin, so reaping the cash from his role in promoting wars that killed millions of innocents. Sir Stephen Wright is Senior Adviser to Mitsui & Co. Sir John Scarlett is a senior executive for Rupert Murdoch. Sir Richard Dearlove is Chair of the Board of Trustees of the University of London and a member of the far right Henry Jackson Society, among other things.
The wages of sin appear not bad at all. As the only civil servant to have entered at the time a written protest against UK complicity in torture, I remain unemployable.
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What matters is that you’ve got clean hands; the contrast with these filth and your public position is priceless.
Take care Craig. Your service to the people has come at a huge cost to yourself and family. We love, respect and support you with what ever we can.
Not only clean hands, but a clear conscience.
Thank you for your integrity Craig – I know it doesn’t pay the bills but you do help people like me remove the lenses. The sickness of the establishment is exposed by your courage and although it makes me feel ill to read it without you I would never have known.
Yes I feel the same…I notice that the guardian does nor appear to have covered this story, and if the bbc did it must have been at 2.00 am on the world service so few people heard it.
And in a foreign language.
I second these first comments. Johnson and his predecessors in No 10 and their cohorts are moral pygmies compared to Craig.
Same here Sharp Ears
I Think that even most of us here on the Blog would not have known this – ” Johnson’s very first executive decision on coming in to 10 Downing Street ”
Many thanks Craig
To Imagine the difference Between the heartless shits at westmonster..and Craig
Westmonster – The worst in Zombie films – Compared to –
What Craig And team pull off at DTRH, ( and Eden ) festivals..where everywhere one looks, there are Happy teeny children running Wild, so many dressed in every colour under the sun, Music from Far Flung places..Like Japan ..That vision Right there is the Difference.. And why we should support Craig’s
Blog, and Human right work
Typo: ‘moral’ = IMmoral.
The a Tories now have a majority on one. Yes, only one, following the Brecon by election falling to the Lib Dems.
Other Tory members of parliament are thinking of deserting to the Liberal Democrat party.
Alyson, the Tories as I understand it do not have a majority of one. Are they not a minority aided by the DUP?
Indeed, that voting majority of one includes the DUP members. Also of interest are the Tory rebels who oppose a No-Deal bs-exit, and the Labor rebels who have been voting with May and the Tories in support of bs-exit. A vote to bring down the BoJoke government to prevent a no-deal crashout, and call new elections would involve all of these factors.
Fascinating that those complicit with torture all bear titles of Sir and even one Lord. I can’t think of any greater indictment of the English state and the English royalty.
Unemployable but able to sleep at night.
The torture gang are treated as men of high honour by the British political and media class. I bet their sleep is deep and contented.
Perhaps, however they may eventually discover, possibly much to their inconvenience, that there are higher agencies than the British political and media class.
Yes, until the day that their children were treated the way the UK state has treated human beings overseas. Surely they can be so callous as to see their own children as acceptable collateral damage?
Yes, until the day that their children were treated the way the UK state has treated human beings overseas. Surely they can not be so callous as to see their own children as acceptable collateral damage?
If we had truly independent journalism, this would have been perused so that the perpetrators would be held to account. But lo and behold the journalist are following the set agenda of the establishment and protecting it. And this is all in a country that claims to be the oldest democracy and that holds to the rule of law.
Sometimes it’s good to be unemployable! Without you, in your unemployable state, we would be in the dark being fed sh#t by the propaganda machine.
Celebrate and be honoured for the righteous joy of a clear conscience Craig. They know what they did and didn’t do and their souls will corrode. I’m not a believer in free will and am certain that the right thing asserts itself in many ways always.
Surprised Labour aren’t pressing this. There needs to be a full explanation of this outrageous decision, Emily Thornberry ‘ummed and ahhed’ then went silent. I suppose many Labour MPs see it in the context of the ongoing war against the left; anything that tarnishes New Labour must be avoided. Nothing from ‘Tom ‘gob almighty’ Watson and the usual ‘smear’ rent-a-gobs .
Corbyn himself hasn’t raised it at PMQs. I’ve taken flak for commenting here that he isn’t forceful enough, and seriously, on things like the vile, outrageous arms sales for the Saudi-led war on Yemen, you need a leader who can do blistering attacks that shame an opponent into action. Take George Galloway’s point-by-point rebuttal before that Senate sub-Committee hearing, which left some senators lost for words and distressed at the scolding they’d received from well-prepared Galloway.
Including the DUP, Johnson’s majority is one and could be a minority if pro-EU Tory MP Phillip Lee defects to the Lib Dems as he’s frequently talked about doing. David Davis, Dominic Grieve and others have all expressed deep revulsion at this decision. If it were put to a vote I reckon Jonson would have to capitulate. It’s now going to judicial review , as Davis pointed out. If our judiciary is independent it has surely to rule against the govt’s decision.
Thornberry is yet another member of LFoI. Do not expect her to make any stands.
Thornberry is as much an establishment figure as all those Craig has named. She is married to a high court judge and has the title Lady Nugee. Although she is happy to project herself as loyal to Corbyn’s project when it comes to action and effectiveness she always comes up hollow, and I speak from personal first hand experience.
She’s probably just going along with the Corbyn project, biding her time, until the opportunity arises when she can stand for the leadership and capture the support of the left, while appealing to the centrists and neoliberals who recognise her as one of their own.
Until she publicly goes full fatboyslim – i am giving her benefit of doubt.
You can take pride in being “unemployable” for the great service you have done the country, Craig.
Johnson, on the other hand, is a stooge who will do anything for money, power and probably many other things.
Unemployable? You sound almost as though you want them to employ you Craig.
Seems like a Catch-22. You won’t be employable until it changes, but it won’t change until it starts to employ people like yourself.
Another conundrum to solve!
Just one slight nitpick . Was it May’s parting decision or Johnson’s decision?
Because the govt has sat on this months and months, missing its own response deadline which iirc was set for late 2018. Reported Sir Mark Sedwill is hugely influential in such decisions and as some sort of Cabinet Secretary cum liaison for the intel services i.e., no ordinary civil servant, I presume he was heavily against a Judge-led inquiry into torture complicity?
Do you think they were just waiting it out? Kicking such decisions into the long grass, is after all, a tried a tested way of avoiding doing what you’ve promised eg.Leveson 2.
quite a good point -but I imagine it was a decision balked at by May and passed on to her successor. As a newcomer he was able to avoid any flak that might ensue.
It’s just that it was the then Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster David Lidington who made the announcement in the Commons – a Theresa May appointee, who quit shortly after Johnson won the leadership contest. My point being, the decision could’ve been made by May on the advice of Sedwill, this seems highly plausible as they won’t have wanted Johnson near the issue. Labour accused the govt of sneaking the decision out. Not that Johnson couldn’t reopen it, undoubtedly that’s the case, as it’s going to Judicial review.
To add.
You could be really cynical and take the view they saw this moment of max political confusion and press interest around the leadership election, as an opportune time to announce their decision.
Remember the New Labour special adviser Jo Moore who thought 2:55PM on September 11 while people were transfixed by their TVs, was the time to write a memo advising : “it is now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury.”
There are names in the text above, “Sir Richard Dearlove, Sir John Scarlett, Sir William Ehrman, Lord Peter Ricketts and Sir Stephen Wright”.
I’ve googled them and found that Lord Peter Ricketts is a member of the Parliament.
—
We had a conversation with commentor Kempe and he said
“…(*in Russia) to be able to stand you have to have at least 5,000 signatures…”
and then
“…I’m sure many of the regulars here would regard having to collect so many signatures as an obstruction to democracy…”
and further
“…In the UK you only need 10 signatures to stand for local council or to stand as an MP…”
I’m sorry for this long introduction, I’m just trying to understand how undemocratic Russia is.
—
So, how many signatures did Mr. Ricketts have to collect?
There are two houses of Parliament in the UK:
1. The House of Commons. They are the people who need the signatures you refer to.
https://www.parliament.uk/about/mps-and-lords/members/electing-mps/candidates/
2.The House of Lords. Membership is granted by appointment or else by heredity or official function.
Sir Peter Ricketts is a member of the House of Lords. He was nominated for a life peerage in the 2016 Prime Minister’s Resignation Honours and was created Baron Ricketts, of Shortlands in the County of Kent, on 17 October. (wikipedia).
Hopre that is okay.
I’m really curious, because those who voted for him, be it 10 or 5 000 voters, should understand their responsibility for his decisions.
“directly guilty of complicity in torture” is a significant accusation.
So, how many did support this candidate?
I was too slow in trying to word my after-thought correctly and the answer came before my comment 🙂
@Tatyana
The House of Lords is completely unelected.
Not that these questions would stop him being elected mind, the media in this country(including the BBC) is like Pravda for powerful, wealthy people. They’d rather concentrate on anything other than holding powerful, connected, people to account. Literally, we get stories emerging that would be headline news anywhere else in Europe that go near-unreported. Inconvenient facts aren’t reported – lying by omission. And Intelligence people seem to enjoy near complete impunity. The numbers of those investigated and prosecuted is on a par with Egypt.
Most people simply don’t know.
To find out what their interests of these creatures/psychopaths are, google their name +parliament. Up comes https://www.parliament.uk/biographies/lords/lord-ricketts/4587
In the right hand column, see Register of Interests. There is Lockheed Martin. RUSI. Engelsberg Foundation Trust. A French energy company and so on.
Then there are his cultural interests. ‘They’ always have a few those. Art. Music. Museums and so on. And of course there is always remembering the dead killed in our wars.
Wot? No Royal Ballet Milord?
https://www.parliament.uk/biographies/lords/lord-ricketts/4587
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Ricketts What evil.
The list of his fellow directors on the Normandy Memorial Trust Ltd includes mostly old warhorses but one Nicholas Witchell is on there.
https://companycheck.co.uk/company/10210480/THE-NORMANDY-MEMORIAL-TRUST-LIMITED/companies-house-data
Witchell intones for the state broadcaster on state occasions and the like. He fell out of favour with P Charles when he and the young princes were skiing. Sotto voce, P Charles referred to Witchell as “awful” and a man he could not “bear”. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1486853/Royal-gaffe-Prince-Charles-mutters-about-bloody-reporters.html
During the 1989 journalist strike, Witchell was one of the few newsreaders to turn up to work. He was branded a “scab”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Witchell
Signatures / None , Tatyana . He simply went to the right school ! That’s how a ‘democracy’ like the UK works !
According to you and to John2020, there is a way for a person to get into the British Parliament and to make decisions ‘in favour’ of the whole nation, with no support from the people.
OK, I understand it must be some traditional mechanism or sort of, well, I can understand ‘appointment due to official function’ …
But still there must be people responsible for this ‘appointment’, or for supporting this ‘heredity’.
In plain words – who put him into this position?
Tatyana
My great, great granparents and grandparents were multi millionaire immigrants from France. They were also Protestants, Methodists and highly principled.
Absolutlry no benefit to them their vast wealth because they were not prepared to serve the evil , racist colonialising imperialists who run this country. Johnson’s family has prostituted itself to the mad machinations of the British Imperialist establishment and also to the US Potus.
Now he’s PM. You have to be very very bad to get there. Nothing to do with wealth or public schools. That counts for nothing. raw badness will get you everywhere. Johnson sold off public property in London when he was Mayor. he has now crept further up the crap-hole of the zionist kleptocracy by dismissing the enquiry into British Government use of Torture.
Goose and Giyane
your comments add details to the overall situation, but still do not answer the question – who authorized Mr. Ricketts to make decisions for the whole country?
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in the case of an elected position, you can always request a document in the archive and see with your own eyes which of the citizens supported the candidate. We discussed here
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/07/tanker-seizures-and-the-threat-to-the-global-economy-from-resurgent-imperialism/comment-page-2/#comment-882204
many details are needed – name, date of birth, place of residence, property abroad, and then the data are checked whether such a citizen exists in the country and whether he was alive when he put his signature.
ah, found it in Wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_life_peerages_(2010%E2%80%93present)
Theresa May, date of creation October 17, 2016.
Peter Forbes Ricketts, Baron Ricketts of Shortlands in the County of Kent
Nice, so you chose a party, the party entitles a peson with the prime minister status, then this PM entitles another person with the life-long place in the Parliament and you call the whole thing ‘DEMOCRACY’ 🙂 🙂 🙂
Oh, I’m sorry 🙂 We’ve seen so much of those “most democrasyisiest democrats” in 90’s in Russia 🙂
You cannot be so naive, can you?
well, at least you don’t have to choose between only two parties, do you? there is no place for a simple binary choice in truly democratic states. they must have pluralism, oppositions, critisicsm, protests and all that
Tatyana
‘PM entitles another person with the life-long place in the Parliament and you call the whole thing ‘DEMOCRACY’
You are preaching to the choir on this one – i.e., presenting an argument or opinion to people who already agree with it.
Most here favour reforms to improve our democracy; improve transparency and accountability. Abolish the unelected HoL and bring in a proportionate voting system for the HoC , offer regional govt(federalism) all under a nice new shiny written constitution.
The roadblock however, is the Tory establishment and their overseas tax exile newspaper proprietor friends who lock the whole rotten system in place. They’re as hard to dislodge as it must be trying to get Putin to stand down.
Goose, please, to improve your what? What you have today, do you seriously believe it to be a democracy?
I’m really embarrassed, I know it sounds rude. Please exuse me, it is said not for a pupose to offend you.
You are a smart person, you must understand that this system of preferences does not reflect the support of the population, but only reflects the support of the elected. And you’ve got a very strange election/appointment mechanism. How can this be called a democracy?
How long have you been discussing these reforms? And what does your written Constitution say about this?
Tatyana
I’d say around 70% of the UK public simply aren’t clued-up about how the UK’s partly democratic system and unwritten constitution work. Most people just want to get on in life without thinking about things too deeply. Many of that 70% aren’t happy, but solutions require an understanding of the alternatives, then some abstract thinking is required to understand how if implemented, those alternatives would actually improve things.
Pink Floyd the English band summed it up when the line: ‘Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way’ from the song Time from the Dark Side of the Moon album.
And the press sure as hell aren’t going to explain things.
I wish there was more constructive engagement with how we do things democratically and constitutionally, how things could be improved by looking at best practice in places like Scandinavia; but alas, here, it’s a lot like America where reasoned discussion among sensible people, is being drowned out by the loudest, aggressive reactionary voices(think Fox News). We have a political right, who believe everything is perfect and to question anything is unpatriotic, they use smears and name calling to belittle opponents.
Members of the House of Lords are appointed by the Prime Minister.
Actually Millsy, Ricketts went to a grammar school. Now an academy, it was a state grammar school in Sutton Coldfield.
Tatyana, I am not sure quite how many candidates would secure 5000 signatures in the UK. Our constituencies are only 60-80,000 voters and 80% or more are pretty politically inactive.
You do have to pay a significant deposit in cash to have your name on rather ballot and this is only returned if you secure 5% of votes cast.
So in UK you are allowed to be an unpopular candidate because you pay for that privilege.
@Rhys Jaggar
it is interesting, what is the scale of this ‘deposit’. I try to make my opinion, if an average citizen is able to save the money needed, or he/she needs to appeal for a bank loan or go crowdfunding.
…I’m sure some of the regulars here would regard having to collect so much money as a facilitator to ‘dermocracy’…” 🙂
I’m a housewife, and I’m concerned that the prices of seasonal vegetables are low, so I can prepare them for the winter. Cucumbers, paprika, eggplants, tomatoes, etc. We can’t provide it in sufficient quantities, so, partially the government buys abroad or gives grants to the locals.
But if we talk about the appointed parliamentarians, lords/barons, … Do they even understand the needs of an ordinary citizen?
We’ve got a good popular saying on that different classes have different problems – “someone was upset because of the small pearls, and the other because of the large warts”.
“But if we talk about the appointed parliamentarians, lords/barons, … Do they even understand the needs of an ordinary citizen?”
No, of course they do not. And this is perhaps the main reason why this part of the UK parliamentary system is greatly disliked by many people.
I believe that until relatively recently the House of Lords was entirely hereditary – you had to have inherited a title from a relative, usually a parent, in order to sit in it. Blair’s labour government reformed it to remove most of the hereditary peers, but peers (as members of the House of Lords are known) are still appointed and not elected.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_of_the_House_of_Lords
Thank you for the link, John. I learned a new English idiom “they are talking the talk without walking the walk”. Very well describes this problem.
OMG, do you really have archbishops in your parliament? I thought you were a secular state.
Wiki says “…on 14 May 2014 when the House of Lords Reform Act 2014 gained Royal Assent”
Royal Assent???
Don’t tell me that the House of Lords, too, should participate in the discussion. It’s like asking an oligarch if he wants to give up power voluntarily. This is just ridiculous. But I suspect that you do exactly this 🙂
To answer your question about archbishops Tatyana, no the UK was not really a secular state at all, certainly not until more recently.
In countries such as the UK the church and the state developed together and were effectively one single unit. Perhaps it is different in countries such as Russia and France which had major revolutions.
There is a discussion of this subject here which you may find interesting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_church_and_state#United_Kingdom
“Wiki says “…on 14 May 2014 when the House of Lords Reform Act 2014 gained Royal Assent”
Royal Assent???”
It does not really mean anything Tatyana. The Queen has no real power, royal assent is considered a formality, she is obliged to give it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_assent
It’s £500 and has been for quite a while. This is not really a vast amount of money but it’s there to deter time wasters.
thank you, Kempe.
So, 10 signatures and the risk of losing 500 pounds? That’s little money and a small number of votes. Everyone can afford to try. Then, you probably have a lot of candidates from all over the country for your House of Commons? How do you manage to chose among them?
It’s called voting.
We have a neighbour country, ex-USSR, who claim they are democracy, and who are greatly supported by the UK and USA. That is what they had in May 2019:
1 seat constituency candidate should deposit approximately USD 1 600
a party putting forward the list of candidates in the national district has to bring USD 163 000
if a person wants to stand as a candidate for presidency, then he must deposit USD 97 800
Kempe, I know it’s called voting. I’m curious, how do you, ordinary citizens, make your decision? For example, you were given a list of 100 people, who paid 500 pounds and collected signatures of 10 citizens. How do you decide who of candidates is worthy and who is not worthy to enter the Parliament?
—
Imagine that I am an oligarch and can pay for all these 100 candidates to participate in the elections. Whoever you choose will still be my man. Imagine I can limit the airtime to zero for ‘strangers’ by paying more for my people’s.
Are you happy with your democracy? Ukraine is happy with their Zelensky, Mindich and Kolomoisky, they see nothing wrong with substituing people’s support with election deposit.
Tatyana, you pose some very interesting questions. As you say the money is not an issue, but you never get 100 people standing for election in a particular constituency despite the fact that there is no upper limit as to how many can stand. It just does not happen. Most candidates standing are in the main political parties: Conservative(Tory), Labour, Liberal Democrat, in England, in Scotland also the SNP and in Wales Piaid Cymru. There are a few others, but not many.
Most “seats” – as constituencies are known – are held by persons from one of the main political parties. In cities they are often held by a Labour MP and in the country by a Conservative (Tory) MP. Often past voting records will tell you who is likely to win, but sometimes seats are “marginal” and past voting records show that it is hard to say who might win.
It is often in these marginal seats that UK elections are won and lost.
Ten years ago Mr Murray gave the inside story of running for MP and how the system was stacked against him:- https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1202235/CRAIG-MURRAY-I-worst-election-candidate-history–result-losers.html
He ran as an independent candidate under the banner “Put an Honest Man into Parliament” but struggled to let the voters know he was standing at all. The TV, radio and newspapers focused on the big political party candidates and ignored him completely. So he made DVDs and posted them to every household. In the end he got less than 3% of the vote and the campaign cost him a fortune. This was for quite a recognisable person with a political backstory who had already been in the news, so imagine what it’s like for a typical “average joe”! There’s often a few ordinary folk standing in every constituency but they usually fall short of the 1% mark.
The winner is always some sell-out greasy-pole-climber with a colour rosette showing they’re already in with the clique and want to join their friends in the HoC, which is why the House is stuffed with cronies. That’s our democracy right there. 🙁
Thank you, Angela for your comment. The link doesn’t show me anything 🙁
It turns out that we also had the deposit system,1999-2009. Rich people could afford different types of actions in support of their candidates.
Our hooligan pop singer and composer Sergey Shnur, “Candidate”
https://youtu.be/Q1J5lUKnD4I
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as to me, I’m not politically active, I voted once in my life and it was the first Putin’s term. I don’t have TV channels connected, so if I come across a political campaigning it looks like flyers in my mailbox, announcements at city events, and one time a candidate came to our school for a parent-teacher meeting. He promised that the city will buy the building from the developer and organize a municipal kindergarten. Liar. I go by it every day, it is a private kindergarten with payment about 15 000 rubles a month, the owner is the relative of the developer, and the developer company belongs to the former mayor.
We do not trust the promises of candidates. Every russian knows the final words of another song by Shnur
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CLBANCVHTw
CM – “Those directly guilty of complicity in torture include Sir Richard Dearlove, ….”
Dearlove was involved in the rendition of Abdel Hakim Belhaj to Gaddafi’s torture chambers https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/09/rendition-islamists-mi6-torture-libya
Dearlove also intervened against Corbyn in the 2017 general election – https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/07/jeremy-corbyn-danger-nation-mi6-led-wouldnt-clear-security-vetting/
Steve Bell was (surprisingly) allowed to comment on Dearlove’s obsession with Corbyn – https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2018/feb/26/steve-bells-if-dickie-dearlove-has-his-spys-eye-on-corbyn
Not surprising perhaps that Johnson wants to look after Dearlove
Craig you are not only a Muslim but an imam, a teacher.
It is the job of the Muslims to bear witness to the cruel abuse of political power and to publicly condemn it and make jihad against it.
No Muslims, no Imams , no leaders of political Islam have ever taken a stand against the principle of torture.
That is because, like the scum who have crawked up the rectum of the British establishment to become its civic and private enterprise leaders, the Muslim imams and businessmen , consciously or unconsciously , are labouring up the same pilgrimage, and I don’t mean Hajj.
indeed, the leaders of political islam like the Sauds and Erdogan, and jihadist groups in Libya and Syria , all have worse reputations for violence and torture against Muslim civilians and those of other beliefs than the Western USUKIS torturers. they want to achiece personal wealth and power by servile obedience to their western masters.
As such their loyalty and therefore worship is to the criminal colonisers, while you loyalty and obedience through your own conscience is to god , who ordained justice in this world and commanded human beings to uphold it , even in detriment to their own interests.
When the leader of the British Muslim Collegiate says that one day they will fight the British people, they mean exactly that, that they will be invited by the British leaders to the House of Lords on equal terms as Lords and Bishops on the back of street slaughter in the cities between the urban communities.
By terrorising the communities of Afghanistan , Pakistan, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Syria, or Libya thse warlord criminals get the backing of Johnson, Cameron, Macron, Merkel and the Poti of America.
These are not Muslims. They serve only themselves at the expense of the innocent civilians. Their politics is the politics of selfishness , their faith, their belief in themselves , and their right to rise over the heads of the dispensible masses by invitation of the criminals in power.
So in my book you are a Muslim, and an example to all Muslims , by defending the innocents while the Muslim leaders, whether religious and secular, trudge up the slimy posterior of political power.
“Craig you are not only a Muslim but an imam, a teacher.”
Are all people who value the truth and justice simply Muslims, albeit Muslims that have not made a conscious effort to subscribe to a religious dogma? And if that person has a public voice are they then automatically a cleric of the religious dogma which they have not consciously subscribed too? Is Noam Chomsky a Muslim cleric?
Jaja…. utter crap from Giyane here. If you’re a good person, you are by definition a Mulsim, and of course visa-versa, as Giyane goes on to explain.
So no hideous act coming from a Muslim is actually coming from a Muslim, because no _real_ Muslim does anything bad.
Like the “No True Scotsman” fallacy, only updated for religious delusions.
Thank you so much
Craig for exposing the sleazy and dodgy goings on in Parliament that we are not usually privy too and often only conjecture at
What is the possibility that Boris Johnson answers to an earthly power he considers higher than the British monarchy or even the City of London? I seem to recall reading somewhere that as a teenager, he once worked on a kibbutz in Israel and that would have been an opportunity for Mossad to recruit him as a sleeper agent. Might help to explain BJ’s obsessions with re-running ancient history among other things.
Jen
He’s blonde. A blend of Dutch blonde maybe.
I know many people who have facial characteristics of one ethnicity and mindset of another. Obama was an example.
Also female politicians who robotically regurgitate Tory male codswollup
The Tories have pinned the blame for the 2007 crash on New Labour who were religiously following Margaret Thatcher on banking deregulation.
Wolves in sheep’s clothing is a speciality of political deception. Johnson is just polyfilla in the structural cracks of post industrial UK
We make nothing so our currency is worth nothing. Our infrastructure is owned by foreign companies who trusted Britain to have built it with engineers.
Do ethnicities have mindsets or is it nurture rather than genetics?
BoJo has Lithuanian Jewish ancestry on his mother’s side and a mix of German and Turkish-Circassian ancestry on his father’s side. If BoJo had absorbed any “mindsets” through his genes, they would be at extreme odds against each other.
I would have thought the kind of idiot racialist determinism expressed in Giyane’s comment was not typical of commenters visiting Craig Murray’s blog but it seems British-influenced education systems still have a lot to answer for.
Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and the hard-right Brexiteers are thoroughly dedicated to serving the interests of their little clique of capitalist goons. Their gods are money and power.
You, Jen, are a fool and a lazy thinker. By imagining that behind every nefarious deed stands a conniving Jew, people like you immensely help the Zionist effort to conflate Zionism with antisemitism in the public’s imagination.
You’ve just exposed yourself.
Correct Jen.
‘Johnson himself told radio listeners in London: “I am a passionate Zionist. I am a supporter of Israel. I believe in its existence. I’ve been on a kibbutz for heaven’s sake.” And in a debate on the Balfour Declaration he said of Israel: “It is a pluralist society, a society that protects the rights of those who live within it. It is a democracy. It is, in my view, a country to be saluted and celebrated.” Completely taken in.’
The para before that relates to Lord Polak being given the CBE for ‘political service’.
‘Patel’s meetings with Israelis were reportedly arranged and accompanied by Lord Polak, a former official of the Board of Deputies of British Jews in the 1980s who joined the Conservative Friends of Israel and served as its director for 26 years. He is still its honorary president. Polak was handed a CBE (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire), an order of chivalry no less,and elevated to the House of Lords in 2015 “for political service”. How whacky was that?’
Both ex https://ahtribune.com/world/europe/uk/3351-labour-party-a-political-home-for-zionists.html
PS ‘Polak was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for political service in the 2015 New Year Honours. He was created a life peer taking the title Baron Polak, of Hertsmere in the County of Hertfordshire on 2 October 2015.’ Wikipedia
Polak’s CBE was granted when Agent Cameron in a Coalition with Clegg. Clegg left it in May so the life peerage was a reward from Cameron. Clegg is now coining it in California with Mr Zuckerberg’s Facebook, having acquired a £7m house there. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/01/26/nick-clegg-swaps-putney-townhouse-7million-california-mansion/
His salary and bonuses also amount to £7m. Note that he was given a knighthood in the New Year ‘Honours’ in 2017 so that was a present for him from Theresa.
.
Much jesting and gesturing.
Tales told by an idiot,
full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Is it you, bj? How is your leg? I hope you’re ok. Have not seen you here for long 🙂
It does not appear that the British Establishment wants Brexit (otherwise we would be out already). If Boris Johnson is a “Deep-State Stooge”, then he is secretly planning to disappoint the Leave Movement.
So you can disagree on these points I have made – firstly that the BE has secretly wanted out. Secondly, that BJ isn’t a stooge, which will be a difficult argument to make as this is your entire post…
YMMV
If the British deep state i.e. those who receive orders , had obeyed those orders we would have left the EU already.
I see no evidence of any lights on in BJ. He has filled his cabinet with Zionists which I interpret as scapegoats for the casualties of the phoney war with Iran. A war which Johnson has no interest in.
He has appointed a Brexit advisor in Dominic Cummings who will attack EU protocol with allergenic vigour.
BJ appears to be a Tory version of Farage without the brains. The radicalism Craig complains about is borrowed from Thatcher i.e. 40 years out of date.
Dead things walked across the inertia of a twice borrowed mandate The entire vigour of our state was built on free movement and free trade. By shooting the albatross we have loaded ourselves with unbearable guilt.
And yes, the very right wing Tories don’t like it up em that isolationism doesn’t work.
‘our state was built on free movement’ – at what point do you STOP people from entering Britain? 1 million? 10 million? 1 billion? More??? Who pays for the infrastructure, especially when those entering earn and pay less tax than the cost of it.
Secondly, but MOST importantly, you have completely disregarded the RIGHTS of people born and bred in Britain to decide on who & how many people come into OUR country. So you axiomatically don’t believe in democracy.
Thirdly, you are ignorant of those who use immigrants to destroy a country and its culture.
At what point ?
Maybe at the point when the oppression of having foreigners in our midst exceeds the oppression done to foreigners by Britd in the past and even current oppression.
Long way to go yet mate
Long way to go…
And how far back in history do you go, and in ALL countries?
America now wants to break up the EU to prevent it turning to Russia all in one piece (since 2016). The BE who obey America are turning the ship around.
That is a totally correct observation. Brexit is an anti-EU strategy of the US and UK elites. If one understands the geopolitical and socioeconomic environment that let to WW1 one can see exactly the same strategy in play today; the Anglo-Saxon elites (both in the US and UK) feared an economic alignment between technically advanced Germany (which today also leads the 27 EU nations) and resource rich Russia. Except now it’s far worse because Russia is in turn aligned with economically and technologically advanced China. This represents the greatest threat in history to the centuries old Anglo-Saxon dominated global order.
Except the leaders of the UK and US – the political figureheads of big capital in both countries – wanted Britain to remain.
Theresa May scuppered the chance of getting a withdrawal deal by her constant refusal to engage with the other political parties, and then set the red-line to appease the extreme Tory element which guaranteed it would not pass parliament. It’s was/is an act of sophistry to portray her efforts as an attempt to frustrate Brexit or delay it; her efforts have led directly to Johnson and his fascist gang taking the country into disaster. She is more concerned about her ‘legacy’ than the disaster she engineered through (let’s be generous here) sheer incompetence and crass stupidity. Barak Obama was at the tail end of his second term when POTUS, so he didn’t have to worry too much about speaking his mind. History is replete with examples of leaders publicly saying one thing in public and doing the opposite in private.
Some claim it was the USA which pushed for the USE, when, in fact, it is a vatican project.
The first mention and use of the words ‘customs union’ in Europe emerged shortly after WW1. There is no doubt that the formation of the common market (a customs union), which is based on the treaty of Rome, was supported by the USA and many European institutions following WW2 as a means of stabilising Europe against the newly emerged Soviet ‘threat’. But the soviet ‘threat’ is gone and now they see their old geopolitical nightmare is back, so the interest of the US vis-a-vis the EU is now the complete opposite to it’s interest in postwar Europe. This is how expediency in geopolitics operates; what is supported one day is opposed the next when the political landscape changes.
What always amazes me about your postings is your ability to draw the various human strands of these issues together. A is connected to B then to C, D and all the others down a long line of players. You’re able to put a very personal face on to all these misdeeds, painting a picture that even in a very populous country like the UK, so much power is gained by who you know, not what you know, and once in the clique, your back will be protected, and your advancement and wealth secured, unless that is you’ve made yourself an enemy, as you know to your own cost. Thanks for this information. An unwavering ethical stance sometimes brings great costs. Assange, Snowdon, you, Vanunu- there’s a long list, and commonly, even when proved right, you are still forgotten, pushed aside, never existed, never happened. It’s a hard place to be, so I hope comments like this from myself and so many others do help a bit.
John, it definitely helps and thank you.
Craig
Maybe someone should write “The Chicken Factor”.
We must wonder what else has gone un-minuted in a country controlled by a class of psychotic vermin.
Sir Richard Dearlove has also been Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge, since retiring as head of MI6. No doubt he is part of the shady mafia that screen Cambridge undergraduates for recruitment as lifelong buyers of advancement upon condition of being reliably pro Establishment?
«the subject will be brought back both by a Corbyn government at Westminster»
My guess is that is precisely why there is such an extreme campaign against Corbyn: since he was not complicit or was compromised in any of the dirty businesses of the past few decades, I reckon that there must be a deep worry that if he became prime minister he would have access to all the files about those dirty businesses, and act according to the ostensible laws of the land.
Corbyn hasn’t got the forensic intelligence or stomach to fight these people. They are more scared of his advisors, the people around Corbyn, like Milne. That’s why there has been a huge effort underway to force their resignations.
So much is left to trust in the UK – a belief in the good judgement of those in positions of responsibility, there’s little by way of hard codified rules. Elites love having nothing codified in the form of a written constitution. They(falsely) claim having nothing written down allows the UK the space to adapt and evolve. In reality, it has just created a rogues playground where elites can act with disdain for rules and impunity; because there are no means of holding anyone to account short of some huge scandal involving a whistleblower like Craig. And even then, as we’ve seen here, that evidence can be dismissed and the whistleblower pays a huge personal price, as Craig did.
Sic ’em fang! Thank you very much Mr Murray for your sacrifice, i hope one day soon, it will be acknowledged.
Cameron also did the same bs with Leveson – although that good Judge at least managed to get a bunch of the.. pillars.. of state on public record under oath. I’ll never forget the puce coloured Dacre of the Daily Fail and many other establishment ..pillocks being dragged to his Public Inquiry – it is all on the record including full video! Days of fun, much better then any dumb box set opiate of the masses!
For these here who are cockahoop about the LD regaining a seat they HELD for 30 years before the Tories took it from them – we have been here before.- it is just as likely to revert again at a GE higher turnout.
The LD’s are Tories as are NuLabInc PLooPers. Most are parachuted in from Central offices!
No salvation lays from their direction unless the local ‘democratic partiy members’ pick a local non-establishment candidate – even then they are capable of colluding with their party leadership, in throwing all their principles under the bus – like Clegg and Cable and ‘Ming the merciless did,, with their newly elected MP’s in 2010, thus annihalating their presence at the 2015 election. Rinse and repeat ? The msm and the latest Leader have been charged to do just that!
The LibDems will NOT stop Brexit. Like they didn’t stop Austerity Murdoch or even student fees.
The LibDems will once again play a role in perpetuating a unelected government under our arcane theocratic monarchic parliamentry rule. They are already underway by being the repository of the ‘rebels’ from Labour and now the Tories – rebels who don’t believe enough in their cause to let their constituents decide if they will follow them!
Tatyana above keeps plugging away at wanting us to admit that we have NO direct democracy – she is right – the failure to hold a GE incase the Corbynites win is proof.
—–
The psychopaths are picked from a young age and hothoused to be the public ‘leaders and faces’ of the global Pathocracy – their reward being ‘a seat at the table’ and the ability to have their progeny be part of the elite.
Their list is long – they include Rhodes, Churchill, Blair, Johnson here in the UK, and The Bush’s and Clintons in the US. There are many such across the world. Countries which actively resist the Pathocracy are crushed. As are the various individuals who recognise and turn against THEM – which is the category CM falls in.
Ref Leveson. Remember the young man who entered the court by an unlocked back door and at the side of Leveson, shouted out ‘Blair is a war criminal’ and that he should be arrested as BLiar sat in the witness box. The young man, David Lawley Wakelin was bundled out. He made a film about Blair and the Iraq war.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/leveson-inquiry/9294967/Leveson-Inquiry-Tony-Blair-called-war-criminal-by-intruder-David-Lawley-Wakelin.html
He was arrested and charged. I attended his case at Haringey Magistrates’ Court. He was bound over to keep the peace (irony alert) and fined with costs. It was another farce. We had to move to a larger court as there was not enough room for us all in the first.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/man-who-called-for-blair-to-be-arrested-for-war-crimes-fined-100-8323995.html
PS The Leveson Inquiry cost £5.4m. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leveson_Inquiry
Ye shall know them by their fruits 🙂
I see our host as a peach.
At some point these people had a choice.It was no accident.They chose the path of evil and sold their souls for nothing much at all.They are sub-human garbage.
They will pay the price one day,make no mistake.
Thank you for your moral stance all these years Craig.
You have principles,morals and great bravery.
I salute you and wish you and your family nothing but the best.
Johnson’s enslavement to the Establishment is exposed by his ignoring the Tilbrook case. We have already left. May cocked up the extension. Johnson is home free. But no, he wants to dust off the withdrawal agreement and subject us to more obfuscation. Coward.
more Consolidated Guidance stories here :- http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/28628
ekklesia sometimes moves ‘nodes’ so searching by title, or simply “torture” can ensure continuity. Title here is “Government refuses inquiry into UK involvement in rendition and torture”
I know its distressing, but in practice, in a democracy, the government is and has to be above the law it makes, because that’s the price of democracy, because if a government fears the revenge of the people, there wont be a peaceful transfer of power when one side loses.
Therefore in practice the state will reward the sinners and punish the saints, until a new establishment emerges which rewards different people and the old guard/guilty are pensioned off rather than convicted of crimes, for the practical reason that the new establishment will also commit crimes, but probably for a different cause.
In that sense the establishment is a self-serving club, but with changing characters over time, until the revolution!
But in a dictatorship/club following a bloody revolution (or in a defeated nation in war) the guilty can be hung for their crimes when they are overthrown, but those sitting in judgement will be the victors who will have inflicted their own crimes to overthrow the state, hence why Nuremburg was always going to be a show trial and used as a legalistic means to impose a war guilt blood libel on Germany (as happened following WWI) to excuse the allies own crimes.