Of This I Am Proud 321

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I am proud of the company I was in of fellow Sam Adams winners; but also because in the circumstances I think this was the best speech I have ever made. If you listen from 15 minutes, the enthusiastic and sustained interruption of applause I received from the Oxford Union for my attack on those demonstrating against Julian Assange is remarkable.

It particularly explodes the appalling lies of the Guardian’s shrill hate campaign against Julian Assange, which you will recall covered this event under the headline Julian Assange finds no allies and tough queries in Oxford University talk . It has taken the Oxford Union two months to post this video, and then unlike other newly posted videos it does not appear on the front page of their youtube site.

The students no longer have any autonomy in the the Oxford Union where speakers and videos have to be approved in advance by a solidly and uniformly right wing board of trustees which includes William Hague and Louise Mensch.

It is, however, even at this belated time, a great pleasure to be able again to state and to demonstrate what a vicious little liar Amelia Hill is.

After my point on the Assange demonstration, you could have heard a pin drop for the rest of my talk and I was unsure how the audience were reacting. Unfortunately the video cuts off the peroration, so you will have to take my word for it that the applause was very big and after resuming my seat I had to half stand and acknowledge again. But I had concluded by introducing Julian Assange, so that may have been for him not me – I would be just as pleased.

Let me post this one again so you have the pair of me on consecutive nights in very different moods.

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321 thoughts on “Of This I Am Proud”

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  • nevermind

    Just coming home from a bedroom tax demo in Norwich City centre, collected hundreds of signatures against it.
    And managed to get some real muck raked, rather than thrown at, as is the case with Mary.

    I have to say the fascination of ‘it’ with Mary is becoming more deprived/desperate by the minute, those young dancers can’t be up to much, or the bones are becoming too old.

  • Mary

    Well done Nevermind.

    The protests are building.

    Bedroom tax Manchester
    http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/thousands-angry-protesters-march-against-1768559

    and in 52 other places.

    16 March 2013
    Housing benefit change protests held
    Protests have taken place across the country, including Manchester.

    Thousands have been demonstrating in a series of cities against government plans to cut housing benefit for those considered to have too much space.

    Protests against the plan – labelled the “bedroom tax” by Labour – have been held in 52 towns and cities, including Manchester and London.

    Organisers said between 12,000 and 13,000 people turned out.

    /..

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21815636

    Will it be the ConDems’ equivalent of Maggie’s Poll Tax

    Bedroom tax backlash: Now even Iain Duncan Smith’s own aide tells of fears it will hit vulnerable

    16 Mar 2013 00:00

    Ministers Owen Paterson and Alistair Burt and deputy chief whip John Randall have also asked what help is available for those struggling.
    http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bedroom-tax-iain-duncan-smiths-1766764

    ~~~~

    Protest too against the selling off and cuts at the Whittington Hospital, North London

    Thousands of people protest in north London against proposed NHS hospital cuts
    http://www.london24.com/news/health/thousands_of_people_protest_in_north_london_against_proposed_nhs_hospital_cuts_1_1981664

  • John Goss

    Protest tomorrow, don’t forget, come rain or shine.

    Between 2-4 p.m.

    Outside the US embassy in London in support of Guantanamo internees who have been on and are on hunger-strike due to abuses of their rights (especially their religious rights). This is important. Guantanamo, as well as being a hellhole of torture, illegally occupies an area of Cuba formerly leased to the US. Dady Chery writes:

    “Cuba stopped accepting lease payments from the US for Guantanamo Bay in 1959 and has demanded again and again that the US leaves. There was originally a 99-year lease, but it expired in 2003. The US’ continued use of Guantanamo as a base is illegal and is meant as a provocation to Cuba.”

  • me in us

    Hello Craig, hello Clark, hello UK from Southern California USA.

    I like to help out by posting video transcripts when I can, and I’m sorry I missed this the first time Craig posted it because I was busy on something else and only saw it later. So, lack of transcript was not an American frown. I DO disagree with Craig, though. If I judged your national ideals as hijacked by the actions of your sick government, as you judge mine, y’all might look about as putrid, though poodlier. So, hugs, we’re all in this together. Also would note, my American heroes, warts and all, stood on the shoulders of yours, and I’ll let you do your own wart check.

    Enough ado, with my best wishes here’s a transcript of Craig’s American Dream speech:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zko4nlFLMX0

    Craig Murray | American Dream Debate | Oxford Union

    MOTION: THIS HOUSE STILL DREAMS THE AMERICAN DREAM

    Craig Murray gives his argument in opposition of dreaming the American dream.
    Filmed on Wednesday 24th January 2013

    CRAIG MURRAY: Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much indeed. I was speaking here last night, having a kind of Groundhog Day problem, but those of you who were here and saw me last night will remember that I said that I’d spoken in this hall on many an occasion, but last night was the first time I’d ever done so sober. And I promised you if you came back again tonight you would see me speak drunk, and I’m glad to say I’m a man of my word.

    [laughter, applause]

    I’ve got nothing in particular to say to you, so I thought I’d just be rude about the proposition.

    [laughter, reaction]

    I should say that the last speaker, I should make a declaration of interest, Ray [McGovern] has been a very good friend of mine for many years and I’ve stayed at his home in Washington. Until tonight I never knew that he had the worst Russian accent in the world! [laughter] And the worst German accent, and even for an Irishman the worst Irish accent [laughter, reaction], which is really quite extraordinary. I’m not going to be rude about the second speaker for the proposition because he was an intellectual and I have no idea what he said.

    [laughter, applause]

    However, the first speaker for the proposition, I did understand at times and I thought he made a very decent summation of what the American dream actually is where he said it’s the idea that every generation will have a standard of living better than the last generation, and the idea that anybody can become president. Well, when we saw George W. Bush, we all thought anybody can become president.

    [laughter, applause]

    At least if their father had also been president and their brother was able to fix the election in Florida, but, um – the trouble with that dream is of course not only is it true that power in the United States is really, as we heard, held by a very, very small and wealthy elite, it’s that the idea is fundamentally flawed, because the idea that every generation would have a standard of living better than the last is fundamentally an idea about consumption and about consumerism and about the idea that human happiness lies in owning a lot of stuff. Because the truth is that infinite economic growth is not possible in a world of finite resources, and the American dream of infinite consumption has led the world into climate change and approaching disaster, and the United States has been the home of climate change denial and of blocking attempts to tackle the problem on the international stage. And that’s the real truth of where the American dream leads us. The American dream leads us into the idea that what you need to do is consume as many of the world’s resources as fast as you can, and to take for yourself as large a personal portion of that consumption as you can, and that the more you consume the more successful you are, until you are so fat and bloated and stupid you end up watching Fox News while eating McDonald’s and generally being entirely unpleasant.

    [laughter, reaction]

    I should say, I should say that it is not necessary to oppose this motion to view the idea that Europeans or British people are any more intelligent. It is not necessary to dislike Americans. It is not necessary to dislike Americans; I only do it as a hobby.

    [laughter, reaction]

    But we have to look at where the American dream has led us, and it has led us into an idea of American exceptionalism. And the truth is, the American dream was only ever founded on the dream for a small number of people, and it always ignored subclasses. The most obvious point being that the American dream involved the near annihilation of the Native American Indians, and the shameful history of land grab, of lies, of massacre, of disease, of starvation that has been the lot of the Native American Indians, in the pursuit of the American dream for a different people, is very true. And I would also say this, because I think I haven’t been controversial enough, that it seems dreadful to me that a key plank of American foreign policy is to repeat what was done to the American Indians and help Israel to do it to the Palestinians in terms of expropriating their land, herding them into camps, and starving them. That is the truth of the American dream today.

    Um, I was once a British diplomat. I was a British ambassador. I saw how the American dream works out in terms of the so-called war on terror. I saw the extraordinary rendition program. I saw intelligence from the CIA got under torture. I used to be in Uzbekistan and I would see the long list of intelligence from the CIA which people had signed up to under torture in which they would confess and give lists of names of Al Qaeda members who under torture people would admit to being themselves members of Al Qaeda and say, “These people are members of Al Qaeda too.” And often the person being tortured had never met any of these people, had no idea who they were. they were simply signing lists to stop being tortured. Occasionally I knew people on the lists, because the Karimov regime, exactly like the Mubarak regime or like many, many other dictatorships of whom the CIA and the United States have cooperated, they wanted to demonize their own opposition by labeling everybody as Al Qaeda. I once saw a CIA list of Al Qaeda members which included a man I knew, a professor, and that gentleman I have had dinner in his home and he was a Jehovah’s Witness. There are not many Jehovah’s Witnesses in Al Qaeda.

    [laughter]

    I am willing to be that Al Qaeda don’t even try and recruit Jehovah’s Witnesses.

    [laughter]

    I’m quite sure that Jehovah’s Witnesses would try and recruit Al Qaeda if they go there –

    [laughter, applause]

    – they’d be knocking on the cave door saying, “Mr. Bin Laden asked me to bring round a copy of the Watchtower.”

    [laughter]

    The truth is that like so much of the narrative o the war on terror, it was an exaggeration of the threat, an exaggeration that pretends that America faces an existential threat from the rest of the world in order to justify the massive control of the military-industrial complex in the United States, and that too is what the American dream has become. The American so-called Dream consists of American exceptionalism. The American so-called Dream consists of not signing Kyoto. The American so-called Dream consists of refusing to join the International Criminal Court. The American so-called Dream consists of the fact that they can extradite people from the United Kingdom to face criminal charges in the United States where that person has no defense before the UK courts and they are extradited to the United States despite the fact they have never been there, let alone having committed a crime in the United States. Ladies and gentlemen, we do not support rampant corruption. We do not support rampant selfishness. We do not support the destruction of international law. And what George Bush did to the United Nations in illegally invading Iraq was just as devastating as what Hitler did to the League of Nations when he invaded Poland, and I ask you to oppose this motion. Thank you.

    [applause]

    Just one more thing, if I gave an American Dream speech I could close my speech this way:

    Ladies and gentlemen, we do not support rampant corruption. We do not support rampant selfishness. We do not support the destruction of international law. And what George Bush did to the United Nations in illegally invading Iraq was just as devastating as what Hitler did to the League of Nations when he invaded Poland, and I ask you to support this motion. Thank you.

    God save the people, God save the planet.

  • Anon

    Iain Dung-Can Smith watch

    http://diaryofabenefitscrounger.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/extraordinary-dwp-refuse-point-blank-to.html

    Extraordinary! DWP Refuse Point Blank to engage with Spartacus

    A few weeks ago, Michael Meacher MP (Labour) came to see me in hospital. I had emailed him following his remarkable Atos debate, (the first to see cross party condemnation of ESA or Employment Support Allowance) to point out how much of the failure was the fault of Atos, and how much was actually controlled by the DWP.

    He was astonished and riveted as we talked and suggested there and then we arrange a meeting with Iain Duncan smith. Mr Meacher asked myself, Kaliya Franklin and Tom Greatrex (@tomgreatrexmp) another Labour MP who has opposed Work Capability Assessments (WCAs) )

    The extraordinary account of what happens next should be seen by every last person in the country. The following from Michael Meacher’s blog……

    “DWP Ministers run frit of seeing delegation on Atos HealthcareMarch 15th, 2013

    This week something happened which is without precedent in my 40 years of Parliamentary experience. On an issue of acute public importance where there had already been a Parliamentary debate revealing a total cross-party consensus solidly opposed to government policy, a Departmental minister then refused to see a delegation to discuss the matter further and to consider necessary changes in procedure. This issue, the work capability assessments carried out by Atos Healthcare, has been a top-line matter on the political agenda for many months now. I had therefore written to Iain Duncan Smith on 31 January asking him to receive a delegation from some of the key campaigning and analytical groups (I had, regrettably, to restrict this to three). I heard nothing for more than 5 weeks and therefore put down a Parliamentary Question on the Commons Order Paper asking when he proposed to answer my letter. As a result I got an immediate reply from Mark Hoban, the junior minister dealing with Atos matters, saying “my current diary requirements mean I am unable to accept your invitation at this time”. That is simply civil service-speak for a flat No. But I have taken the matter further.

    I therefore waylaid Hoban in the lobbies after a vote and as soon as he saw me, he said immediately “I’m not seeing you”. I was taken aback at his aggressiveness and said “But you can’t possibly do this , this is a matter of the highest political importance and it’s your responsibility to talk to and listen to key disability organisations about this matter, however contentious it might be”. He simply replied blankly “I’m not seeing you”, and repeated it 3 0r 4 times. I kept on insisting ‘Why not?’ and finally he said “I’m not seeing Spartacus”. Again I was taken aback and asserted that in my view Spartacus had analysed hundreds of cases, prepared a very detailed and thoughtful analysis of the implications arising from these cases, and even if he disagreed strongly for whatever reasons it was his responsibility to meet them. To this he simply kept repeating “I’m not meeting Spartacus”.

    After thinking over this exchange later I decided to apply for an Adjournment debate, not on Atos as such, but on ‘Ministers’ refusal to accept a delegation on Atos Healthcare’. I also went to see the Speaker about what I consider to be the unprecedented and wholly unreasonable and unacceptable behaviour of DWP ministers, and he listened carefully. I am now very pleased to say that I have obtained an Adjournment debate next Thursday, 21st, at 5pm in the Commons chamber. I intend to use this opportunity to bring this whole matter to a head.”

    So whatever happens guys, it looks like we have a date. Next Thursday? 5pm? I’ll bring popcorn if you promise to tell the whole world before then.

  • BrianFujisan

    Me in Us @ 9 ; 26 pm. Thank you for the transcript of Craig’s American Dream speech: Brilliant Speech, my hearing is F*cked, and i can’t hear all that’s said on some you tube vids.

    Cheers for that, And Peace from Scotland

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!)

    John Goss wrote :

    “Guantanamo, as well as being a hellhole of torture, illegally occupies an area of Cuba formerly leased to the US.”.

    Wrong. The US exercises jurisdiction and control (but not sovereignty) over the Guantanamo base area by virtue of the 1903 treaty (granting a 99 year lease) and the 1934 treaty (granting a permanent- repeat permanent – lease).

    Hence it is incorrect to say that the US is illegally occupying it.

    **************

    La vita è bella, life is good!
    Any challenge under the Vienna convention on treaties is not possible because that convention does not apply to treaties concluded prior to itself.

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!)

    Splendid news from the government, which I am confident will greatly please the Eminences and other moaning minnies:

    1/ Govt. to close a £100 million National Insurance tax loophole

    2/. Govt likely to announce in the Budget a £1,5 billion childcare scheme to help with nursery costs.

    ************

    La vita è bella, life is good!

  • technicolour

    Habbakuk:but I notice you’re not denying that it’s a ‘hell hole of torture’ (I’m not condoning any of the insults directed at you)

    How do these new measures that are ‘likely’ compete with the actual news?

  • Courtenay Barnett

    Press on Murray.

    There are now sufficient numbers of persons of conscience around the world, who stand for something.

    As a force and with alternative voices,the Blairs and Bushes of this world can exposed and be relegated to the dust bin of history. It will not be easy. It will be extremely hard. But, if you want a better world, a decent world – something finally approximating to “civilization” – then there is indeed a stuggle ahead.

    Aluta continua!

  • Courtenay Barnett

    Sorry – as Bush had said -” it is dem or us” (maybe misquoted). So – is there really a global agenda that is designed and intended to be based on a process of global military control over the world’s resources?

    We lived in a fucked up world with idiots and greedy people in control.

    So sad!

  • me in us

    Here’s a transcript of the other video, the top one:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_yYHluFk7w

    Previous Winners | Sam Adams Awards | Oxford Union

    Filmed on Wednesday 23rd January 2013
    Published on Mar 13, 2013

    Ray McGovern introduces the previous winners of the esteemed Sam Adams Award for celebrated Whistleblowers.

    RAY McGOVERN: This next segment is going to be a little choppy, but we want to get a lot of views in and each person will have about 2½ minutes, so if you fall asleep you’re going to miss some really important things. First up is Annie Machon and Tom Drake. Annie of course is from MI6 and Tom Drake is from NSA, whose equivalent GCHQ was the place where Katharine Gun worked. Annie.

    ANNIE MACHON: I worked for MI5 in the 1990s as an intelligence officer, and along with my former partner, a man who became quite a notorious whistleblower, David Shayler, we ended up blowing the whistle on a whole catalog of crimes and incompetence carried out by the UK spy community which included illegal phone taps, files on government ministers, innocent people being put in prison, bombs that could and should have been prevented, and it culminated in an illegal assassination attempt against Colonel Gaddafi of Libya paid for by MI6 in 1996. Now we couldn’t live with this so we decided to blow the whistle, though there were very few avenues to go down to expose wrongdoing by the spies, and that resulted in us going literally on the run around Europe for a month. We had to live in hiding in a French farmhouse for a year, and we then spent another two years in exile living in Paris. I and many of our friends and journalists were arrested and convicted around us, and David himself went to prison not once but twice, first of all when the British government failed to extradite him from France, and secondly when he returned voluntarily to stand trial under the Official Secrets Act in the UK in 2002. And what I learned over that period was that the British spy community is the least accountable and most legally protected in any Western notional democracy. There is no meaningful oversight. There is something called the Intelligence and Security Committee in Parliament, but the only powers they have are to look at finance policy and administration of the spies. They can’t investigate crimes or incompetence, and they’re also the most legally protected, because we have the most draconian official secrecy act, Official Secrets Act, which means that if you work for the agencies and you want to report crime up to and including murder, you are the criminal, not the people who commit the crime inside the agencies. So it’s quite a steep learning curve. And it’s very difficult in this country to try and make a difference. You can go to the extreme and blow the whistle but you can pay a terrible price. It’s very difficult to do that. And also the media can be very easily controlled and spun. And that’s why also I take my hat off and salute the efforts of organizations like WikiLeaks that provide a high tech and protective conduit to potential intelligence whistleblowers. It is necessary in this world, and it’s never been more necessary in this world where you have a situation where our intelligence agencies are allegedly involved in torture, are certainly involved in kidnapping, extraordinary rendition, and certainly with things like the CIA kill lists. We have never had a greater need of whistleblowers and integrity in intelligence. And of course the most beautiful example of that is if you can do it from within the agencies, where you can exercise integrity from the inside and make a world-changing difference. So I would like to salute Dr. Tom Fingar for what he did with the National Intelligence Estimate, for just doing his job correctly. So thank you.

    [applause]

    http://youtu.be/W_yYHluFk7w?t=3m45s

    THOMAS DRAKE: I looked up “intelligence” in the Oxford English Dictionary. I preferred the archaic form, “intelligential,” of sound judgment and rationality, as in, quote, “The pure intelligential substances require, as doth your rational,” from John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Yet intelligence without integrity is like an umbrella full of holes, an emperor without clothes, or a tail wagging the dog. When intelligence is employed as an instrument of national power for the purpose of enemizing everything and everyone as an existentital threat to national security, then intelligence simply becomes a narrow filter for enabling the ends of policy and justifying the means that lead to pretextual conclusions and decisions having enormous intended and unintended strategic consequences both at home and abroad.

    Since 9/11 we are increasingly seeing intelligence establishments value secrecy as primacy over openness, and the mirage of knowing over the transparency of shared information. There are secrets worth keeping and threats worth pursuing, but most secrets are worth knowing in the public interest, without compromising sources and methods. Hiding too much intelligence behind the veil of secrecy often shields intelligence analysts and decision-makers from debate and criticism and enables errors of fact and judgment that too often go unchallenged in order to maintain the status quo world view.

    Secret intelligence also functions as a source of power for those who have access, giving the illusion of special knowledge and kept like coins of the realm, often hoarded rather than freely shared, leading to policy failures and misunderstandings of the world as the information is taken out of context and manipulated for institutional control and self-interest instead of the public interest and often played out and projected onto the world stage as self-perpetuating militarism, jingoism, and faux national emergencies justifying extrajudicial enabling act executive fiat law.

    Intelligence is also NOT an immunity shield to conveniently hide government criminal wrongdoing, incompetence, corruption, illegality and conduct that the powers that be wish to keep hidden from legitimate public interest, like the illegal U.S. secret warrantless surveillance program that willfully violated the Constitution, or the egregiously unlawful U.S. state-sponsored rendition, detention and interrogation torture program, or the many billions wasted in boondoggle national security programs, or the falsified and discredited intelligence used to justify the preemptive invasion of Iraq, all reflecting the very conduct of secret government that is clearly in the public interest to expose and disclose through the integrity of truth tellers and whistleblowers within official channlels and in the free press.

    As I experienced, speaking truth to power about government wrongdoing and secret illegal surveillance after 9/11 was turned into treason, including critical material intelligence discovered and shared with Congressional investigators that could have prevented 9/11, as well as the incalculable loss of intelligence because the very best of American ingenuity and innovation was never given a chance, and exercising my rights under the First Amendment of the Constitution becoming a criminal act in the eyes of the government and becoming marked as an enemy of state, facing many decades in prison.

    And yet truth is often a discomforting reality in an environment of deceit, coverup and lies, but it is still the truth, however inconvenient, and it is the truth that sets intelligence free. And so here we are to honor the integrity of intelligence as exemplified by Thomas Fingar and the courage he showed in standing firm with the objective facts, without skewing them to fit the desired intelligence preferred or the convenience of political pressures or the unilateral prerogatives of power for its own ends.

    Now we’ll hear from foreign service officers Ann Wright and Brady Kiesling.

    http://youtu.be/W_yYHluFk7w?t=8m17s

    ANN WRIGHT: As a diplomat in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, I helped reopen the U.S. embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan in December of 2001 and then went on to my last assignment which was in Mongolia as a deputy ambassador to Mongolia. And in March 2003 I became the third U.S. government official to resign in opposition to the war in Iraq. There were only three of us in the U.S. government that resigned over the Iraq war, but there were hundreds if not thousands or tens of thousands of people in our government that knew those weapons of mass destruction, that symbol, was not right. That was not a right thing for the United States to be doing, invading and occupying an oil-rich Arab Muslim country that had not attacked the United States and over which the international community had 10 years of quarantine, of sanctions and no-fly zones. So I resigned. After all those years in the government.

    But my little part of this is, what do you do after you resign? What do you do then? With all of your experience that you’ve had? Well, I get out and, kind of like the protestors that we had out there, well I protest a lot of things that the U.S. government continues to do. I’m protesting right now assassin drones. Assassin drones! The United States of America is assassinating people in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Yemen, in Somalia. The president of the United States has a kill list that every Tuesday he makes a decision on who’s going to live and die, particularly in Pakistan, by name assassinations. And just as I thought that Iraq war was wrong, I think that’s wrong for the president of the United States to be doing it right now. So I’m out there protesting a lot of policies of the United States, of the continuation of detainees in Guantanamo, what I consider to be, even though our Congress says it’s legal for the United States government to listen to my cell phone calls and look into my e-mails, I think it’s wrong. I think those drones are wrong.

    There’s a lot of stuff that I think we as citizens, and now that I am a citizen and not a government employee, I’m out there with I hope you all as you challenge your government when you think it’s doing wrong. I applaud so much Tom Fingar for the courage to stay within the system, to keep trying to get the system to right itself, but there is a reason that dissent is there and that we sometimes have to go outside the system to effect change in our own countries. Thank you.

    [applause]

    http://youtu.be/W_yYHluFk7w?t=11m15s

    JOHN BRADY KIESLING (misidentified in youtube info as Ray McGovern, unidentified by no screen title) (my hero): I’d like to thank the Union for inviting us. I am expecting confidently that most of the people in this room are members of the Union because they see a role for themselves in shaping the future of their country, and what I would like to say is that the privilege of serving your country is an amazing one. I spent 20 years as an American diplomat. My last job was as political counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Athens. I spent 20 years being a disciplined, careful, meticulous, reasonably, diplomat, not saying what I thought, listening to foreigners, finding out what they thought, reporting it to my government as best I could. In the fall of 2002 when it became clear the Iraq war was going to happen, and it was also clear to me from everything I knew about human nature after 20 years that that war would be a disaster, that the justification for it was not adequate to legitimize the war in the eyes of our allies, that we would not have the skills or the legitimacy to democratize that country, I decided to resign. A lot of that resignation, I regret to say, was handled very poorly, because I made the decision in a burst of anger, essentially in the spur of the moment.

    And what I would like you to do is think, invest 20 years serving your country, be the best expert your country has to offer in whatever your field it might be, be the person who can tell the politicians, “This is the national interest of our country at this moment, in this sphere,” and then when the politician says, “The national interest is less important than my personal political comfort,” that is when you have a role that your 20 years has earned you. And the job of dissent in practical terms is to raise the domestic political cost of betraying the national interest in pursuit of selfish domestic political interest, and the way you do that most effectively is by remembering that you are not alone, that your expertise has won you friends in the system, has won you respect in the system, you can reach out to others, you can gather information that is useful to make your case, that you build your case in the knowledge that you are kissing your career goodbye, but when you leave you do it with dignity, with integrity, with as much respect for your own country’s laws as your country’s government allows you to have, and then when you do it, even though you will probably not be able to avert something like the Iraq war, at least you will know that you’ve made the best decision you’ve ever made in your life and you are still proud of that. Thank you very much.

    [applause]

    http://youtu.be/W_yYHluFk7w?t=15m

    CRAIG MURRAY (misidentified as “Michael Craig” in screen title): Delightful to be back here again. Over the course of the last 30 or 35 years or so I’ve spoken in this chamber maybe about 20 times. This is the first time I’ve ever done it when it’s not been a debate, and it’s the first time I’ve ever done it sober.

    [laughter]

    If anybody wants to see me talking when I’m drunk, I am speaking in the debate tomorrow night, [laughter] so please do come back and see if you can tell the difference.

    It’s also genuinely a privilege to be here because of the tremendous list of amazing people who have spoken here in the past. I’m looking at the bust of William Gladstone there, of whom I’ll say something in a moment. Last night we had John Bolton speaking here. Tonight I came here through a demonstration against Julian Assange. Last night you had speaking here a war criminal who had a major part in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq and there wasn’t a single demonstrator outside against him. Some of you have got your values seriously messed up.

    [applause, whistles, cheers]

    I resigned from the British Foreign Office in which I was an ambassador because I came across the torture of people to get so-called intelligence and I came across extraordinary rendition. When I resigned, or was sacked, I don’t care which you say, [laughter] I was proud that I had done the right thing. I had lost my career, I’d lost everything I’d worked for my whole life, but I could sleep at night. I knew that the intelligence got from torture was untrue, because you don’t get the truth from torture. Forget these stupid films about Bin Laden, forget Twenty-Four, forget Hollywood. The vast majority of people tortured for intelligence are completely innocent. And the people doing the torture are the thugs of Mubarak or the thugs of Karimov or the thugs of whichever dictator is employing them, and they are not disinterested seekers of the truth. They are people wanting to create the narrative their master wants to hear, and unfortunately we had a period where in pursuit of war, the Western intelligence agencies were you knowingly accepting intelligence from torture in order to compound false narratives that pursued war. That is what we were up against.

    Why we need WikiLeaks and organizations like WikiLeaks, why we need whistleblowers, is you can no longer automatically trust government. I knew people personally, I worked with people, I knew people very, very well who were involved in the preparation of the dossier, the Dirty Dossier, on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. I actually happened to have had as a previous job being in charge of the FCO section monitoring Iraqi attempts at weapons procurement. I can tell you for certain that the majority of people involved in the preparation of that dossier knew it was not true and produced it under political pressure, and I can tell you I know of people who were in tears, I know of people who were near suicidal, I know the pressures they put on people, I know what they do to people. When I came out and blew the whistle on extraordinary rendition and torture, I was accused of sexual allegations. I was accused of blackmailing visa applicants into sex. Which is rape, in another word. I was not guilty. I was not guilty. It took me years to clear my name, and it was the most appalling thing that can happen to you. And anybody who believes governments do not go that kind of thing to whistleblowers is naïve.

    Let me tell you something more. The other reason we need organizations like WikiLeaks is that the space of debate has narrowed because the mainstream media no longer allows a wide area of debate. I said I would come back to Gladstone, whose bust is there. While he was Leader of the Opposition in the 1880 general election, the third Afghan war was in progress and Gladstone in his Midlothian Campaign made a speech in which he said, “Our troops have driven the wives and children of the Afghans into the snows of winter. If they resist, would you not do the same?” It is no longer politically conceivable that any leader of the opposition in the United Kingdom would say of people fighting against British troops, “If they resist, would you not do the same?” Can you imagine if any mainstream British politician said that those fighting British troops in Afghanistan might have some right on their side as we have invaded their country, can you imagine the way they would be drowned out by our ultranationalist and militarist media which we have nowadays? There is no longer space in our society for the kind of free debate that Gladstone used to enjoy. And that servile nationalist role played by the media is a reason why we need to fight back using alternative media.

    One thing people always recall about WikiLeaks is the helicopter footage of the Reuters journalists being killed by an American military unit. One aspect people forget is that the families of those journalists had been told for years by the Pentagon that the Pentagon had no information on what had happened. That lying to grieving parents in order to protect criminal behavior is an example, just one example, of the kind of cruelty of government behavior that makes whistleblowing necessary. WikiLeaks exposed reporting on the corruption, very good American diplomatic reporting, on the corruption in Tunisia which helped spark the Arab revolution. WikiLeaks revealed to the people of Yemen that their president had deliberately agreed with the Americans to put out that American bombing and drone raids were in fact terrorist suicide bombs. I could go on and on with so much information that WikiLeaks has given that has enriched the world, made the world a better place. If we could always trust government, we would not need WikiLeaks. But we can’t, and we do.

    Cheers

  • me in us

    In terms of video of speakers at the Sam Adams awards, Oxford Union’s event list of speakers includes:

    https://www.oxford-union.org/term_events/julian_assange2?SQ_CALENDAR_DATE=2013-01-23
    Thomas Fingar will be recognised for the role he played with the National Intelligence Estimate which helped prevent the Bush/Cheney administration from launching war against Iran in 2008

    Coleen Rowley retired from the FBI, having spent twenty-four years with the agency, after bravely revealing its mishandling of information relating to 9/11

    Annie Machon, a former MI5 officer, was forced to go into exile and hiding in Europe for many years after blowing the whistle on criminal activities in the organisation

    Ann Wright was one of only three US State Department officials to resign over the 2003 invasion of Iraq

    Also featured are Jesselyn Radack, Ray McGovern and Thomas Drake with a videolink appearance by Julian Assange

    Julian’s youtube went up right away in January (currently over 24,000 views), Fingar’s youtube went up in February, but there is none for Radack or Rowley, both American whistleblowers, Radack in regard to DOJ obstruction of justice in regard to John Walker Lindh and Rowley in regard to FBI mishandling of 9/11 info. Also no mention of Kiesling as a speaker. I know it’s taking them awhile, but I’m still hoping for Radack and Rowley video to be posted.

  • me in us

    Whoa, Craig, no mention of you!

    Also, did Ray McGovern give a speech himself or just introduce others?

  • Anon

    Clark,

    Just came across this from a recent “Nature”.

    http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v492/n7427/full/492031a.html

    Nuclear energy: Thorium fuel has risks

    Stephen F. Ashley,
    Geoffrey T. Parks,
    William J. Nuttall,
    Colin Boxall
    & Robin W. Grimes

    Published Online
    05 December 2012

    Simple chemical pathways open up proliferation possibilities for the proposed nuclear ‘wonder fuel’, warn Stephen F. Ashley and colleagues.

    Nothing I haven’t said here before but interesting to see it in “Nature”. You’ll need to nip down to the library to read it for free unfortunately.

  • Anon

    http://www.nnl.co.uk/media/27860/nnl__1314092891_thorium_cycle_position_paper.pdf

    Summary
    NNL believes that the thorium fuel cycle does not currently
    have a role to play in the UK context, other than its potential
    application for plutonium management in the medium to long
    term and depending on the indigenous thorium reserves, is
    likely to have only a limited role internationally for some years ahead. The technology is innovative, although technically immature and currently not of interest to the utilities,
    representing significant financial investment and risk without
    notable benefits. In many cases, the benefits of the thorium fuel cycle have been over-stated.

  • Clark

    Anon, 17 Mar, 2:39 am: yes, here’s the article:

    http://thoriumenergyengineering.com/Thorium%20Fuel%20Has%20Risks.pdf

    It says that U233 can be made from thorium via protactinium (as you said before); it’s not specific to Molten Salt Reactors. It’s a problem if states don’t submit to monitoring.

    But proliferation of plutonium is a similar problem and there are already hundreds of tonnes of it. MSRs may offer a way of using and destroying that plutonium and thus could reduce a proliferation risk.

  • Clark

    Anon, we know you hate nuclear technology in all its forms, and think that no one should ever look for ways to clean up the existing mess. Got anything to say about how secret intelligence agencies could be made accountable?

  • Mary

    Me In Us You’re brilliant. Thanks.

    ~~~
    I have just been listening to the World Service. A lady from Bangalore phoned in to challenge the use of the word ‘controversial’ to describe President Chavez in a broadcast following his death. A Bill Rees, said to be responsible for ‘overseeing news bulletins’ on the WS defended the use.

    She continued to make her strong point that it was both inappropriate and pejorative and asked if he would use the same word to describe Bush and Blair in the event of their demise. He said he would as he would have to agree with her that ‘the invasion of Iraq’ for which both were responsible was ‘controversial’. He went on to attempt to justify the use of the word because Chavez was not very well known to a worldwide audience as Bush and Blair.

    Indian Lady 1
    BBC World Service and Mr Rees 0

    Reporting the death of Hugo Chavez
    Duration: 10 minutes
    First broadcast:Saturday 16 March 2013
    This week on Over To You, a listener questions whether the World Service’s reporting of the death of Hugo Chavez was balanced – and discusses with a BBC newsroom editor, whether calling the Venezuelan President ‘controversial’ was justified.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p015hqmg

    Very difficult to find out anything about BBC World Service editorial staff. Would you say that Rees has a transatlantic accent?

  • Mary

    Clegg is a creep and an opportunist. He attempts to justify the ‘interventions’ in Libya and Mali and is obviously going to support Cameron in Syria. He starts by claiming the LD moral high ground on Iraq.

    He should learn to say less and to think more.

    Nick Clegg
    Sunday 17 March 2013

    If Iraq taught us anything, it’s this…
    Only when four vital tests have been met should we intervene in another state’s affairs, but we can always help other than with arms
    http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/if-iraq-taught-us-anything-its-this-8537496.html

  • Mary

    Similar propaganda against Chavez is going out on NZ state radio.

    http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1363488422.html

    [..]
    CHRIS LAIDLAW: We move now to Venezuela. Hugo Chávez, that ebullient, populist politician died just over a week ago. This rumbustious country has hit some real head winds when it comes to stability. We’re joined by Paul Buchanan, an academic and former CIA operative who spent many years living in South America, and knows the Venezuela situation very closely. Paul, Chávez called his regime “Bolívarian”. What did he mean by that?

    Paul Buchanan proceeds to give a quick outline of Bolívar and the ways that Chávez resembled him.

    LAIDLAW: But Simon Bolívar wasn’t the bombastic [snicker] character Chávez was, was he? [snicker]

    PAUL BUCHANAN: Hugo Chávez was a nationalist populist, similar in many ways to Juan Perón. He was very personality driven. And the trouble with this is the same as with every populist regime: it is inherently unstable. This movement will fragment and splinter over the next few years.

    etc etc

  • me in us

    @Mary, thank you! Not so brilliant, I thought of a better end (doh!) to my American Dream speech after I hit submit.

    God save the people, God save the planet. All you need is love.

    No bigger hero/s than John Lennon and the Beatles.

    Imagine no CIA.

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!)

    I don’t quite see why one of the above commenters (no names, no pack drill!) appears to object to the use of the words “controversial” or “populist” when used about the late President Hugo Chavez.

    There’s no doubt that he was a controversial figure, as can, by the way, be seen even from the various comments appearing on the relevant thread of this blog, not that he was a populist (as in fact are most politicians).

    ***********

    La vita è bella, life is good!

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!)

    @ Technicolour :

    “Habbakuk:but I notice you’re not denying that it’s a ‘hell hole of torture’ (I’m not condoning any of the insults directed at you)

    How do these new measures that are ‘likely’ compete with the actual news?”

    1/. You’re right of course, I just thought that I would correct the inaccurate way in which the legal status of the Guantanamo base was being described.

    2/. I don’t think it’s a question of “competing”; the measures I mentioned are simply part of the actual news and I thought that they were worth bringing to the attention of those – numerous on this blog – who refuse to give the govt. credit for anything. A question of balance, I suppose you could say.

  • Mary

    Of Rachel Corrie we are proud.

    IN MEMORIAM: Rachel Corrie 1979-2003 [with introduction by Michael Shaik to the film screening of “Rachel”]

    The Melbourne film screening of “Rachel” by Simone Bitton – shown for the first time in Australia on Friday – was a moving tribute to peace activist Rachel Corrie who was tragically killed by an Israeli bulldozer when she tried to stop the home of a Palestinian family from being demolished. Bitton’s sensitive presentation connected a hushed audience to Rachel through the letters and diaries she wrote to her mother from Gaza, never realising that her words would continue to resonate with so many other people around the world years after that fateful day.

    Australians for Palestine was very glad to support the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid initiative and offers to our readers the wonderful introduction to “Rachel” given by Michael Shaik who worked with her in the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and who was in Palestine when news of her death came through. That moment is still seared in his memory.

    ~~
    Introduction to “Rachel” by Michael Shaik

    “As I’m sure most of you know, this screening is being held to mark the 10th anniversary of the death of the American peace activist Rachel Corrie who was killed by an Israeli bulldozer in the Gaza Strip on the 16th of March 2003. Because 10 years is a long time, I want to take a moment to recall what the world was like back then.

    In March 2003 the United States and its allies were one and a half years into a Global War on Terror and were on the verge of invading Iraq. Israel and the Palestinians were two and a half years into the Second Intifada, which was seen by both the Israeli and American governments as a part of the War on Terror. And the mass media was full of stories about how the invasion of Iraq was not only essential to Western security but would bring freedom and democracy to the Middle East as well. There were, however, a great many people who did not buy into this narrative and who joined in the largest peace rallies in history to protest the war.

    /..

    http://www.australiansforpalestine.net/77616#more-77616

  • Mary

    …and a few travel tips for Barack Obama.

    Barack, A Few Travel Tips

    By Amer Zahr

    March 15, 2013 “Information Clearing House” – Mr. President, I hear you are traveling to Israel. As a concerned patriotic American citizen of Palestinian descent, I have some pointers for you.

    Now, I assume you’ll be flying into Tel Aviv. Usually, when non-Jews arrive there, especially if they are a little darker-skinned, they are asked to wait in a… let’s call it a “VIP Room.” Incidentally, the room is quite nice. There’s a water cooler, comfortable chairs, and a soda machine. It’s probably the only place in the world where you can be racially profiled and get an ice-cold Coca-Cola all at once.

    To avoid the room, I would mention that you are the President of the United States. It might help.

    /..
    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34310.htm

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