The Respectability of Torture
St Mary’s University College, Thurs 1st August, 7.30pm
Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, was a whistleblower who was removed from his ambassadorial post by Tony Blair for exposing the Tashkent regime‟s use of rape and systematic torture, including the boiling to death of political opponents. He has also spoken out against Central Asia‟s appalling dictatorships, regimes which are allies of the West, involved in torture and rendition, and was accused of threatening MI6‟s relationship with the CIA. Now a human rights activist, author and broadcaster, he outlines the dynamics of torture and the hypocrisy of incriminated Western governments.
My first public appearance for a while will be in Belfast on 1 August where I shall be giving a talk. Long term readers of this blog will recall that, while my focus is largely on international affairs, the domestic political achievements I most hope to see are a united Ireland and an independent Scotland.
Craig Murray, Scottish ambassador to Israel…..It has a certain ring to it.
Wow. You want to dissolve my country and have it merged with the rest if Ireland? Why not an independent Northern Ireland?
And ambassador to Israel?
In my eyes you’ve already lost credibility. No regard for those who don’t wish to be part of a united ireland.
Don’t forget to mention Alan Dershowitz and his idea for legal torture warrants, Craig.
Chris, pretty much any cause going that will dismantle the British state is a cause worth fighting for around here.
@Chris – oh, get over yourself. Good luck Craig, have a gud un.
Screw a United Ireland, I am a Civil Servant and I dread to think what my pay would drop down to with the state of their economy.
Not really a good choice being ruled by the crooks in England or by the crooks down South. At least with the English I am better off and likely be less violence in my streets.
Our country is a long way off being ready for it and it will just start a new civil war off.
Chris, Woobus.
Knee-jerk support for any anti-establishment cause.
I’d very much like to see the UK become independent of the US. There is only one thing worse than being a serf to the masters of your own country, and that is seeing the masters of your own country servants to a foreign power. It is I think the ‘doubly dying’ Sir Walter Scott talked about in “The Lay of the Last Minstrel”
“Breathes there a man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said:
This is my own, my native land . . .”
John Goss +1.
Think that’s the priority. Even the excrescences (the UK ones) might care to consider it. Scotland: if they want it, in a fair and open referendum, what democrat can deny them? Ireland: not sure it wouldn’t be more troublesome to all than the present arrangement. Though economically more sensible, perhaps.
Anyway, Craig, break a leg!
Kempe: Knee-jerk growl at any pro-establishment cause.
Anti! I meant anti!
Make your mind up Komodo.
John Goss + 2
And independence for Oz from US influence.
Like a hundred of people held at gunpoint by a gangster who only has six rounds, nobody wants to act unilaterally out of fear that the penalties will be too great.
All the best Craig.
http://www.feilebelfast.com/about-us/
An interesting list http://www.feilebelfast.com/category/discussions/
Will you be able to post a video of the talk in Belfast ?
Please !
When statists talk in normative terms, that’s how you know that they’re trying to mitigate crimes. The US government’s moral handwringing over the peremptory norm of freedom from torture is exactly the same as Ted Bundy giving a soul-searching pre-execution interview. It’s all wheeling and dealing for clemency.
http://www.zcommunications.org/torture-and-international-human-rights-by-francis-boyle
We’ll live to see Obama pleading at the Hague.
http://rt.com/usa/manning-not-guilty-aiding-enemy-805/
Yeah, good luck with that.
NI has quite a degree of autonomy at the moment, and it’s probably fair enough to say that cultural union is currently much more in vogue than political union.
Remember too that there will aways be those from lands near and afar who will seek to magnify any political dissent to their own purposes. It’s still there in NI at the moment and there’s a very similar version ongoing in England with EDL, UAF and Islamist protests etc.
Wow..Thank Goodness for that Mark.
Perhaps they finally began to see just how many people support Bradley.
Have a good trip to Ireland Craig
When Scotland goes independent, maybe Wales can join up with Scotland rather than England? If only to escape Tory Westminster.
John Goss
But is the U.K. a servant of the U.S. or are they both servants of another foreign power?
July 30, 2013
Acquitted of “Aiding the Enemy,” found guilty of several other counts under Espionage Act
The Meaning of the Manning Verdict
by KATE EPSTEIN
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/07/30/the-meaning-of-the-manning-verdict/
I, like the other 14m who have seen it, will never forget this video of the Apache killings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0
Sorry Craig,
I admire your stance on torture etc. an awful lot. You waved goodbye to a decent career for a principle and I was brought up to respect that sort of thing and would do so even if I wasn’t in tune with the reasons for it. But I’m afraid your sentiments with regard to domestic British politics just look like parochial separatism to me. This archipelago is very small and we’re going to have to rub along together one way or another. We don’t have a choice. Our only choice is in how we live together. Rightly or wrongly, I just think that the governmental institutions we develop and adopt should reflect that immutable reality. We could dissolve into an array of city states if we were stupid enough – and I dare say some are – but what good would that do? And I write as one who is constantly appalled by the policies – foreign and domestic – coming out of Westminster and wish I could get rid of them. But I’ll take a whole lot of convincing that separatism is the answer.
Thank you, Flaming June, for those links. I suggest that all UK users of this website send the links to their MP and ask for her/his reaction. I will be doing so for my MP, Tessa Jowell. Let’s collate the responses.
“St Mary’s University College, Thurs 1st August, 7.30pm”
I might go up, Craig. If I can go to Cork to see Shlomo Sand … And I’ve only ever seen you speak on video. And, I wouldn’t mind a day in Belfast anyway!
Best of luck with it.
Why not a united Scotland and Northern Ireland? Geographically, ethnically and historically the links are much closer than with England in both cases.
I do not think the Catholics in Northern Ireland would ever accept union with Scotland. It would look like gerrymandering to assure a large Protestant majority and a small Catholic minority in the new state.
I think it’s possible that all the populations involved would be willing to accept a union of a united Ireland plus Scotland.
Good luck Craig. And don’t forget, as well as Eire doing what the >majority< of its citizens want, whether they happen to live in the liberated part or the foreign-occupied part, and as well as Scotland getting free of the damned ukstate, there's us in Cymru as well, needing liberation from seven hundred years of Engish-raj imperialism; and even — whisper it — the little nation of Kernow, which the English raj insolently call an English county.
Let's all be free. And that includes the poor bloody rank-and-file English. They need liberation too, as urgently as the rest of us, from the ukstate and the English raj and their grovelling-vassal status to the USAmerican empire.
@Roger. 10 42pm
“Why not a united Scotland and Northern Ireland?”
Scotland for the Scoti sounds like the slogan to campaign with.
But maybe not. Let’s deal with building a peacefully united Ireland and and independent Scotland first.
I’ll be content if we can each restore our sovereignty while celebrating our shared heritage.
“Why not a united Scotland and Northern Ireland? Geographically, ethnically and historically the links are much closer than with England in both cases.”
Geographically Scotland and England are part of the same island separated by nothing but an imaginary line which moves from time to time.
Ethnically Scotland and England are pretty much the same.
Historically rich Scottish land owners persecuted the Irish in the Plantation of Ulster.