I missed this earlier. Will press my lug to the tranny later, with interest.

Dear Craig,

I just had to write to tell you how much I enjoyed David Hare’s adaptation of your book on Radio 4 today and that your struggle to tell the truth about this governments lies on the use of torture is a cause worth fighting for.

When we sink to the level of those who use these methods we degrade ourselves and are no better than them.

I’m off now to read the book.

Regards

Lee Roberts

Craig -

I live in the U.S. and tuned in to Radio 4 via the Web today solely because David Tennant was in the production. As a result, I and my 14-year-old daughter learned something we otherwise never would have. We both have a deep respect for your fight and thank you for sharing it.

It is a small (non Panda) bugger that we cannot get the BBC iPlayer repeats outside the UK, unless some cunning bugger posts it on YouTube.

Anybody please?

Ooops silly Panda,

I thought it was a TV presentation and thus unavailable out side the UK.

As a Radio 4 transmission I can listen.

Your reference to David Tennant’s looks fooled to expect a TV production.

BUGGER –

This is a proxy server that pretends you are in UK . Derek posted it here a few days ago .

http://defilter.co.uk/browse.php?u=Oi8vd3d3LmJiYy5jby51ay9pcGxheWVyL3JhZGlvL2JiY19yYWRpb19mb3Vy&b=0

You need to have Javascript enabled .

Will post and test now .

frog2

crosssed in post there, but the link works .

f2

Download via Bittorrent

http://btjunkie.org/torrent/Murder-in-Samarkand-by-David-Hare/4196b3cb7b8132d11ddf508d73e0ebad2bf49f2c542d

I listened with interest wondering if it was factual. I was in a car going to IKEA and did not know what I was listening to. It was very powerful and disturbing. A society that allows its preservation to be based on ‘torture’ is not fit for purpose. I feel that these issues need to be aired openly and often and thank you for doing so.

If anyone would like to download a copy of Murder in Samarkand to keep, may I humbly suggest Radio Downloader, http://www.nerdoftheherd.com/tools/radiodld/?

A useful web utility if ever there was one.

Craig, the play was wonderful. Thanks for not giving up.

Cheers

geomannie

Thanks Frog 2 but when I go through the proxy it tells me that I need to have Javascript enabled but it already is and I cannot get past this warning. This is only for TV because the radio progs work OK with Real Player.

Thanks again Frog2

Buggeration

Apologies Again.

I have recorded it, but I haven’t yet listened to it.

So what are you supposed to do if there is a car on the wrong side of the road heading towards you at 90 mph?

You slam your brakes on.

So I said to him, why didn’t you go into reverse as well?

The armed police unit, obviously had nowhere else important to go to – or they woudn’t have stopped.

They stopped, and said don’t worry, Lad, you can probably claim for the damages from the Police insurance here are the details.

So he came home, and he said…

Dad…

There has been a little incident…

I said

“Good job you were not riding a motorcycle, or you would have killed yourself 3 times over by now.”

So yet again, I have got a twisted heap of metal in my drive.

Maybe I will teach him flying instead

Tony

Thanks geomannie. I downloaded the Radio Downloader but it does not do what it says on the tin. It does not download.

According to the FAQs section it could be because I have a Firewall in operation or my server does. I use a proxy server in Switzerland and a VPN so this could be the problem

Double Bugger!

I too only listened because of David Tennant. So glad I did. I think Craig Murray should be awarded a medal, not relieved of his post. Oh if only we had more like him in Government.

I was getting sick of the ubiquitous David Tennant – but he has redeemed himself by playing his most heroic role yet.

Craig Murray has Brain, Heart & Balls in abundance. The play was great and could only have been improved by an additional scene of him headbutting Jack Straw.

I was amazed that the Guardian write-up in the TV & Radio guide today made no mention of the rather crucial fact that this is a true story. ‘David Tennant as an ambassador in Tashkent…’ If you didn’t know better you would assume it was just a piece of fiction about some suitably out-of-the-way place. Did the reviewer not know, or is it deliberate? It beggars belief you can write about this play without mentioning the name Craig Murray and saying who he is.

Bugger- iPlayer for radio works in the US (it’s only the tv ones that are blocked). I just tested it and I could get it without problem. So, if it’s not working for you then it’s something on your computer, not the BBC’s end of things.

I did get to listen to it ‘in real time’ and it was remarkable. I remember hearing bits and pieces of info about this because I tend to read UK news sources and more progressive US ones, but I’ll very likely buy the book to get more details because I clearly don’t know as much as I thought I did.

“I have to lead the rest of my life meeting people who will be disappointed because of their mental picture of me as David Tennant. ”

- And David Tennant is going to have to bear the burden for the rest of his life that he has an uncommon quick and incisive intelligence, just like Rabbie Burns, irrigated by whisky, the joy of the lassies and the life of ordinary folks (of Scotland and Uzbekistan).

The broadcast was a bit appropriate CM as the fascists got stuffed again today in the Scottish capital!

all the best

A brilliant radio adaptation of a truly heroic story. Well done BBC! Well done Craig!

Further to my comment on your post this morning, the link to Murder In Samarkand from the homepage is OK. ** It is broken if you click on it from a blog post – Craig please confirm and ask your web person to fix. **

Good play. I think David Hare had two separate themes. One was a simple and very powerful theme about good and evil. The other was a more complex and difficult theme – about how Craig tackled evil, and whether he had the right personality, tactics and intelligence to succeed.

Craig tackled evil head on, bull by the horns, Don Quixote style, with tremendous energy and courage. A more level-headed person would never have achieved so much, so quickly. A more level-headed person might, on the other hand, have survived within the system to fight another day.

We need special people like Craig. We also need more “reasonable” people – like Hare for example – who can think longer term and think about how political change can be made effective.

“People say I’m a hero. Why am I a hero? What sort of a world are we creating, where to be against torture makes you a hero?”

Great stuff.

Hare has done a great job distilling the essence of the story. But may I encourage everyone who may have come to this story through the radio play to read the book also. It’s a great read and you get so much more than is possible to squeeze even into a generous 90 mins radio play.

For example, I think the scene about the old lady & the orchard got across the essence of the thuggery of the regime discovered by the forays out of Tashkent by Range Rover, but there is so much more in the book – both the disturbing and the exciting.

Similarly “Sir Egbert Dill” (great naming!) and the poisonous line managers were well conveyed in essence but cannot begin to compare with the book’s portrayal of what people will do to defend their place in the system.

Finally. I know it’s difficult to get everything in into 90 mins, but I would have liked to have had a scene portraying Craig’s investigation of the bomb at the market in Tashkent, showing how the regime placed & exploded the bomb itself in order to justify a fresh wave of false arrests and persecution.

I’ll second Strategist – read the book. Apart from all the political implications, it’s a lot of fun & a great read.

And David Allen’s “A more level-headed person would never have achieved so much, so quickly. A more level-headed person might, on the other hand, have survived within the system to fight another day.”

Like Tony Blair thinking he could mitigate Bush, and then Short thinking she could mitigate Blair … and … and … little fleas have smaller fleas, and so ad infinitum ?

Mr. Murray I don’t get it.

You say that ‘Ally’ intelligence gets ‘clogged up’ with this garbage. Isn’t this a very generous view of what we institutionally call ‘intelligence’?

Surely this kind of crap is for black propaganda. People boiled for a Murdoch headline.

I’ve heard about the Office of Special Plans in the US, within the Pentagon. The message is clear enough – if it was propaganda before, it will be a damn sight moreso from now on.

Do you think the coalition military on the ground are similarly thrown by this garbage while enacting it?

But I forgot to say – I discovered your website only recently and have found your coverage of Chilcot quite brilliant.

‘Unhappy the land that needs heroes’.

Cheers friend

Radio was great. Hats off to all. Would love to interview at some point. Any plans for a U.S. visit? I am an American journalist, google any time for visit blog.

best, and thanks 4, Harre and Tennant

If you’re really stuck you can download from here:

http://photopol.com/craig/murder_in_samarkand.mp3

She said life is to precious – you shouldn’t do that.

I said I am just going outside for a smoke.

I gave her complete control of the music.

She said life is to precious – you shouldn’t do that.

I said look I have only smoked half a cigarette

She said life is to precious – you shouldn’t do that.

And then she told me about her Son who had died at the age of 10.

Tony

Congratulations Craig, an excellent production of your work and appears to have helped raise your profile within the US judging by some of the comments here.

I spent sometime Tweeting about it’s schedule prior to broadcast, to the point where I was being reported for spam LOL, though when I tried to record it when it was broadcast, my partner accidentally turned the mpg recorder off partway through!!!

So I recorded it again late last night. Just need to clean it up abit and I will upload it and place a link to it here if that’s OK?

Again, congratulations to you, your family, and to the production team and cast.

so you are not Dr Who then?

If Craig is Dr Who, does that make Dick Cheney Davros ?

Fantastic show. Though I wept at the end because a) the buggers have won, are winning, are multi-millionaires or impregnably part of the establishment b) the big money men didn’t want to make a big money film of it c) Jerusalem postponed indefinitely. However hats off to you for being ordinarily human (as you say) in a venal & criminally corrupt world

I remember hearing you on the Today programme some years ago and being horrified at your treatment by the F.O. Thanks for letting us hear ‘Murder in Samarkhand’ on the radio yesterday – a timely reminder of this appalling government’s attitude before the election. Must get your books.

I hope you are ok.

Here’s a mirror

http://rapidshare.com/files/353721394/Murder_in_Samarkand.mp3.html

Craig, is the play a fair picture of the real story and characters, by and large?

Arresting stuff. Fills me with foreboding though: you know, the hopeless-seeming task of trying to defend anything that’s good and decent against the massed, perennial forces of darkness.

Not that I believe that. Just the first instinctual response, before reflex stiffening of the spine sets in.

Seems you don’t spare to accuse your own weaknesses, if the play script is a fair adaptation of the book. That’s good.

Anyway, thanks for it all, excellent stuff, congratulation on your nerve and determination, despite all the admitted warts, and power to your arm. And watch out constantly for the Kelly-men!

You’re going to have to adopt a more audible Scots accent now.

I enjoyed the play on R4, much more interesting than the usual fare they put in that spot, probably because of its’ topical nature and it was depicting real events. I will find time now to read the book.

I had assumed that only those esteemed brains from the University of Oxbridge got into the higher posts of the FCO or indeed any part of the senior civil service. To let someone in from a Scottish University must have been part of some equal opportunities programme brought in by the ruling Scottish Junta in Downing Street. It seems that one rose up and bit them on the backside. I wonder if that policy will now be reviewed and only the nice effete middle class English types will be the norm once more.

Watching some of the Chilcot broadcasts and being less than impresed by the poor standard of individuals recruitied into senior Government, I can say I am in no surprise as to the mess the country presently finds itself and presumably has no way of correcting with these self-serving fawning incumbents.

Now on youtube…

or at least, David Tennant’s rendition of “HMS Pinafore”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4e77qysDSA

I live in Europe and access BBC iPlayer and other UK TV via the internet with VPN Television (Strong VPN). http://www.vpntelevision.com

The subscription cost $55 for a year and has been worth every penny!

Hoep this helps!

Brass,

Helsinki, Finland

Hi Craig,

here’s a history of Sting’s manager, Miles Copeland, scion of a well know CIA family

http://www.milescopeland.biz/blog/?page_id=5

His various companies were Copeland International Arts (CIA),Frontier Booking International (FBI), etc

Of course it’s not the first time the powers that be (TM) have used popular music as a poltical tool see here

http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr93.html

(birth of the hippes to destroy the anti-war movement)

or indeed the offshore pirates of the 60′s see here

http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/free/lobster58/lobster58.pdf

Coincidentally in the above issue of lobster you get two mentions. Mr. Ramsey plows his own furrow, but two mentions, that’s like Lady Gaga winning three Brits awards!!!!

Thouroughly enjoyable. Covered the juicy bits quite well !

Just heard the play. This was a wonderfully moving and thought-provoking piece of drama. It stopped me in my tracks. To employ a Glaswegian iteration (even though you’re from Dundee): It was ‘pure deid brilliant’!

I cannot commend you enough, Craig, for what you did, and for what you do. It is not easy to jack-in a career you love and, at immense personal cost in all senses, to go against your own government, for whom you’ve worked all your life, for a principle, for humanity, for the essence of all that’s good about the British people.

On a faintly ridiculous note, one slightly freaky thing was my impression (I may have been wrong) that the ‘Jack Straw’ actor (Simon Chandler), I suspect still in-role, read out the credits at the end. I know that actors tend casually to pick one of themselves to do the credits in radio-plays, usually at the end of the last day’s recording, so it often depends simply on who’s around at the end. But was the choice of this ‘voice’ deliberate, I wonder… ?

Hare’s play was excellent – and how appropriate for the BBC to air it while the Chilcot Enquiry is sitting. It helps to place the excuses of Straw and Blair in context. Long may you prosper.

Hi Craig,

Loved the play and loving the book even more. I rang BBC Radio Scotland on the morning of the broadcast as they were doing a piece on the recent controversy surrounding torture of British rendition prisoners.I suggested they contact you for a comment as you had had first hand experience. I also thought they might flag up the play.

Needless to say they completely ignored me.

Never mind we will keep up the pressure so long as guys like you are around.

Hope to meet again soon.

Another copy of the mp3 here:

http://soundcloud.com/user9069612/a

Can you believe this story?

I had to share this with everyone.

(NewsCore)

A WOMAN’S breast implants have saved her life after she was caught in the line of fire and shot at point-blank range with a semi-automatic assault rifle.

The Sun reports Lydia Carranza’s silicone implants took the force of the blow and prevented bullet fragments from reaching her vital organs.

The dental receptionist was at work in Beverly Hills, Calif., when a gunman burst in and opened fire.

He first shot dead his wife before turning the gun on Carranza, who was sitting a few feet away.

Surgeon Dr. Ashkan Ghavami said: “She’s just one lucky woman.

“The bullet fragments were millimeters from her heart and her vital organs. Had she not had the implant, she might not be alive today.”

Carranza’s implants took her from a B to a D-cup.

Alleged gunman Jaime Paredes was charged with murder.

Not sure where to post this but I wanted to ask if anyone has heard of National Clicks?

Can someone help me find it?

Overheard some co-workers talking about it all week but didn’t have time to ask so I thought I would post it here to see if someone could help me out.

Seems to be getting alot of buzz right now.

Thanks