I owe an apology to all those who are kind enough to subscribe to my blog. I was determined that I would not let my impending trial affect my output, but have been unable to see that through. It is partly because preparation does take up much more time than I had imagined. But it is mostly because I find it hard to put my mind to anything else and really concentrate.
I do not want to give you the impression that I am very worried, or depressed. I am rather angry; a deep, seething anger that keeps breaking into my thoughts. I am rather worried about this. I can with fairness claim to have devoted much of my life to fighting against injustice. I was prepared to sacrifice an extremely prestigious and lucrative career to take a stand against UK complicity in torture, driven largely by empathy for the victims. I have assisted with numerous individual human rights cases and particularly asylum claims, including representing people, without fee, before immigration courts. But I am nonetheless alarmed by how much more viscerally angry I am when the injustice is against myself than when it is against another. I am aware that is very unattractive. This fury at being personally mistreated is disproportionate and quite wrong, and ought not to stop me working. I feel guilty about it.
Among the results is a very annoying writers’ block. I have been intending this last five days to write an article on Barack Obama’s failure while President to tackle institutional racism and societal inequalities in the USA, and relate that to the remarkable fact he paid much less attention to aid to Africa than George W Bush. I enjoy writing most when I am running counter to the prevailing narrative and pointing to inconvenient fact. But the lines of logic refuse to flow, the fascinating asides do not pop up, and then I remember something else I must tell my lawyers.
Please do not worry. I am not sad, and my anger does not manifest itself by being horrible to others; on the contrary, for once I seem to be particularly considerate to my family and appreciative of how fortunate I am. The purpose of this post is to apologise to you, and thank you for your patience. It is not a signal of giving up – I do not intend to wait until after the trial before getting back to normal. Please bear with me.
Be gentle with yourself, you have done much to send light into dark places. Keep your chin up mate.
Take your time.
Work on the things that are of importance to you.
We will be here for you when this is over.
Craig we are here ,we neither expect nor need your attention right now but what we do need is for you to concentrate on you and your immediate situation and for you to give as much to your own fight as you have to all the other injustices you have fought on behalf of others. be angry ,be very angry ‘cos we are too. Look after yourself???????????????
Understandable considering what they have manufactured in your and your friends names scandalous take care !!
If you can channel your anger at injustice it can be very productive.
Mr. Murray, I suppose most of us, common visitors to your blog, we are not aware of how the mechanism of the government system actually works.
I suggest you keep explaining what are the reasons for this or that action of you and your legal team.
And also I suggest, you keep your detailed explanations of this or that actions you’d like to see from us, the visitors.
It’s not that me personally need a guide for action (well, to some extent, I do need).
It’s just that me personally don’t know the best way to demonstrate my support to you and, in essence, my support to the values you’re defending.
Dear Sir, From the USA with respect I have followed your work in recent years since you abandoned your career in regime circles. This of course permitted you to do many things involving truth-telling. As you know better than myself the regime you served hates defectors and hounds them with special vigour.
Were I on your legal team, and were your trial taking place in the USA my counsel would be it is impossible for you to avoid conviction so the use of your trial lies in uncovering the regime’s abandonment of judicial impartiality. Certainly what they do to Mr Assange shows the whole world this in glaring highlight.
Seems to me you Brits still don’t quite realize all the ramifications of Bojo’s determination to quit the EU and kiss up to the Trumpreich instead. Chris Herz.
Chris Herz
When justice becomes a game, in which the court is blagging, and the sentence is out of all proportion for a non-violent crime, its impossible not to suspect thst it is being scripted as a drama by cynical political gangsters like a soap opera.
As for Bojo, he only decided to back Leave after he saw how out of her depth Mrs May was getting. This is cheap opportunism , drunk on power, in Brexit and Scotland. The people responsible are pretty shallow braines scum.
Best wishes Craig. Be sure to have your lawyers identify and game play all identifiable scenarios and strategies of the opposition.
Opposition? The Scottish Fiscal Service as the opposition? Never would I believed that I would have thought in such terms of our Justice system.The treatment of Julian Assange in England, yeah not unexpected, but here in Scotland – Sheridan, Salmond, Jackson, Hirst,yourself?
Nicola Sturgeon could better spend her time addressing just what is going on with justice harassment here in Scotland than her daily Covid presentation that could well be handled by Jean Freeman.
Everyone commenting here is correct, there is no need for an apology, above all do not feel pressured to produce new content. Focus on the things that are essential to you.
Of course the contempt case is foremost in your mind, your anger is understandable, the injustice of the case against you is blatantly obvious to the meanest intelligence. The blinkered authorities march on like Napoleon’s army entering Moscow, expecting victory, they will find how empty the results of the farce they’ve created will be.
I wish you every good fortune.
Craig, if you became ill, you would not so excuse yourself. You have become infected by a dis-ease of the state. When that passes, you will be yourself again. In either case, take care of yourself and get well.
Courage Craig. Keep at it.
there is no need for an apology Craig. We all understand that this corrupt persecution of yourself is bound to have an effect on you.
I am outraged at it all.
You have a great abundance of courage.. channel the anger, and stay focused
all the best in support to you and your family, stay safe.
P.s I’m sure the Blog can look after it’self.. with your family of commenters here
What you are experiencing is perfectly normal. Anyone who has been through the trauma of a court case can relate to this. It messes completely with your head. Prentice and Co know this. And this is exactly why they do it. Be careful who or what you direct the anger towards though. On a positive note it will give your an insight into what everyone who is put through the same experience suffers. You have to live it to know it.
Just take it easy, Mr. Murray, the case against you is the thing to concentrate on, everything else is secondary, that and your health. It must be hard to fight the system, they have almost unlimited resources, you have to struggle. You should comfort yourself with the thought that truth always wins even if it takes time.
Good luck on the 10th.
Craig. You’re a good man. What you’re experiencing is very understandable. Most of us would not be as strong as you are.
You could keep a kinda diary of the case as it progresses.
This should serve to better focus your mind upon the case at hand.
And, you’ll have plenty of copy for future publication.
Perhaps, a book.
Yes please put your time and energies into giving them the fight of their lives.
Innocent until proven guilty, Craig. Keep that in mind at all times. Anger is to be expected along with various other emotions which will come in stages. They know that and that’s part of their psy-ops games, grinding people down.
Don’t worry about writing anything here, everyone who reads this blog knows what’s going on, so there’s no pressure to even write anything. People understand.
Just don’t tempt fate by saying something like ‘I shall fight them using the trusty shield of justice and the sword of truth!’
Because look what happened to the last guy who said that!
(Just trying to give you a laugh!)
“But woe to that nation whose literature is disturbed by the intervention of power. Because that is not just a violation against ‘freedom of print’, it is the closing down of the heart of the nation, a slashing to pieces of its memory….”
“We shall be told: what can literature possibly do against the ruthless onslaught of open violence? But let us not forget that violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is necessarily interwoven with falsehood. Between them lies the most intimate, the deepest of natural bonds. Violence finds its only refuge in falsehood, falsehood its only support in violence. Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his METHOD must inexorably choose falsehood as his PRINCIPLE. At its birth violence acts openly and even with pride. But no sooner does it become strong, firmly established, than it senses the rarefaction of the air around it and it cannot continue to exist without descending into a fog of lies, clothing them in sweet talk. It does not always, not necessarily, openly throttle the throat, more often it demands from its subjects only an oath of allegiance to falsehood, only complicity in falsehood.
“And the simple step of a simple courageous man is not to partake in falsehood, not to support false actions! Let the latter enter the world, let it even reign in the world – but not with MY help. But writers and artists can achieve more: they can CONQUER FALSEHOOD! In the struggle with falsehood art always did win and it always does win! Openly, irrefutably for everyone! Falsehood can hold out against much in this world, but not against art. And no sooner will falsehood be dispersed than the nakedness of violence will be revealed in all its ugliness – and violence, decrepit, will fall.
“That is why, my friends, I believe that we are able to help the world in its white-hot hour. Not by making the excuse of possessing no weapons, and not by giving ourselves over to a frivolous life – but by going to war!
“Proverbs about truth are well-loved in Russian. They give steady and sometimes striking expression to the not inconsiderable harsh national experience:
ОДНО СЛОВО ПРАВДЫ ВЕСЬ МИР ПЕРЕТЯНЕТ
ONE WORD OF TRUTH SHALL OUTWEIGH THE WHOLE WORLD.
“And it is here, on an imaginary fantasy, a breach of the principle of the conservation of mass and energy, that I base both my own activity and my appeal to the writers of the whole world.”
(Alexandr Solzhenitsyn: Nobel Lecture in Literature 1970, closing words)
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1970/solzhenitsyn/lecture/
Craig: we absolutely do understand and there truly is no need to apologise although we do appreciate you doing so and the good intent in doing so. Stand firm. You’re one of the good guys and we’re with you here.
I owe you an apology for not being readily able to contribute to your defence fund although I’m with you in spirit.
Kia ora.
No apology needed, Craig.
Open Letter signed. Virtual hearing applied for and email acknowledgement for same received. I hope to be there with you.
Stay strong.
All best,
M.
I am absolutely delighted to read such an impressively long series of comments supporting Mr Murray’s admirable honesty, bravery, and commitment to publishing the truth. The almost complete absence of trolling in this thread suggests to me that the Integrity Initiative (& co.) are all locked into an ongoing Zoom conference trying to figure out how to get out of the hole they have dug, and how to blame somebody else for digging it. A kind of collective wank, in which nobody will ever get a hard on. That is all they amount to, in any civilised place, and it’s how we should all regard them.
The prosecutors must be reveling in their desired outcome.
But ..Compartmentalize, compartmentalize.
That’s what people used to say about … Clinton. “How can he manage to compartmentalize”? During Lewinsky. But when one’s work is a respite from the hyenas, its not always hard.
You can’t dam a river Craig. Your creativity is an irresistible force. It hasn’t disappeared, it is just temporarily filling the reservoir. Know this. As I do.
Good luck, Shyaku
Hi Craig. Relax, take your time. You owe me no apology. You are an inspiration. I am furious that you are being put through this. I will be with you all the way through and after this. Solidarity and best wishes.
How can anyone, even you, not be affected by this process.
The people driving this know it, they may even consider it the main point of the exercise and an actual conviction just a nice-to-have (if this is true it will probably become apparent during the trial).
Just accept that you are having a normal human response and ride it out, don’t bottle it up, have an outlet.
If you allow it to affect your relationships or your health then they have won.
Good luck
A certain individual who has now acquired power in the SNP Government as Minister for Justice is flexing his or her ego by proving that they can do whatever they like in the role Nicola Sturgeon has given them.
Thry can fit up themain man, Alex Salmond , and they can fit up a leading whistleblower. This is just an ego trip by Humza Yousaf to show the world he can now pull rank on the Queens Counsel Mr Wolffe.
I hope his ego is satisfied now and whatever historical teenage rage he has in his heart against the British Raj , are alleviated by this attack on justicee , truth and friendship. We call it Qiyanat in Arabic, or betrayal in English. Whatever its called, it’s very childish behaviour.
Humza Yousaf was one of the alphabet sisters and I claim my five pounds!
Giyane – this sounds a bit racist. Agreed that Humza Yousaf is a thoroughly contemptible individual – look at his (lack of serious) reply to Stuart Campbell on `Wings over Scotland’ where he threatens Stuart Campbell with jail if S.C. quotes the Garavelli piece that can arguably identify one of the alphabet sisters.
What is happening here is unprecedented – in the past politicians were corrupt but they tried to hide it; Humza Yousaf is of a completely different order – he is a thoroughly nasty piece of work, he is hell-bent on turning the Scottish judiciary into a total joke, manipulating it to `get at’ people whom he doesn’t like very much (or, at least, being a very willing helper for his superiors who are trying to do this) in a way that hasn’t been seen before. In the past if politicians did things like this, they would at least have some sort of `cover story’ (even if it wasn’t a very good one). He has dispensed with this. He is a thoroughly amoral, evil piece of work.
But to try and suggest that this has something to do with his cultural or racial background is entirely out of order; attributing his intrinsic evil in any part to his race, background or creed is racism pure and simple.
Home James and don’t spare the horses!
James
Neither Salmond nor Craig have been racist against him, so why is he being racist against them?
My postillion’s left ear has been struck by lightning.
Look, we have lived together for over 300 years. We know their buttons, and they know ours. Now, at the top of his tree is not the place to be pushing Craig’s buttons.
Or, he might find someone pushing his ones. Brotherly love , peace and respect all round. Xxx
Giyane – apologies – I’ve been thinking about it and perhaps I spoke too soon. His cultural background may be influencing him, but in a way different from what you suggest.
Humza Yousaf could have a deep ingrained understanding that it is very important to do the will of the memsahib. In this case the memsahib is Nicola Sturgeon – and Humza Yousaf knows his place.
You are in a difficult place and no reasonable person could expect you to apologise for focussing on your trauchle with the law . Your cause is just , your voice is strong , perseverance will see you in a better place . Furth , fortune but forego the fetters.
Take all the time you need my thoughts are with you and i have been worrying about your health with the injustice your facing at the moment, you are a strong character, and an intelligent man do some breathing exercises to aid against your anger may god be with you and against them
You wouldn’t be human if the proceeding against you didn’t have an effect on you mr Murray.
But you are human, you have morals, you care about things, you have a burning resistance to injustice and so it’s inevitable that many of your thoughts will focus onto the case. Not surprising therefore that you may have your column thought ps a little distracted. And distracting your column is exactly what this prosecution is all about.
So we shall maybe miss a few articles as you prepare for your case. But it’s better to miss a few articles and win your case, which I’m sure you will. That will give you something to write about, will be one in the eye for those who oppose democracy and fairness.
Salmond was acquitted despite a coordinated state campaign against him. You I believe will be acquitted too. So keep the pecker up Mr M. And if I may say so, thank you for your commitment to justice and fairness. And, if I may say so too, take heart that this commitment is recognised absolutely by the the very very many who read your column both here and abroad.
The anger is understandable. With this charge some of the aims have already been achieved. You have to spend time defending yourself and expend energies that could otherwise be directed at useful criticism of the system. Such selective charges, not applicable to others whom the system approves of, who have done an equivalent act, is in itself deplorable. But what is encouraging is that obviously the authorities take this blog seriously enough to try to silence its owner. The detailed analysis of the articles concerned and even the quotes from certain contributors suggest that this is the case.