Dear President Ahtisaari,
I had the pleasure of meeting you on a number of occasions over the years, including when I was British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, and I recall your genuine concern for democracy and human rights in a region where they are sadly neglected.
Like a great many people in Scotland I was shocked that CMI is employing Jim Murphy. Of course, in a democracy there are always losers as well as winners in elections, and both are genuine and valid participants in public life. It is not the fact that CMI employs a politician who has been so recently, comprehensively and humiliatingly rejected by his national electorate that will do any damage to CMI. In a sense I think it does you credit.
What shocks many people here is that Mr Murphy is by any standards a dedicated warmonger. He was a major and important proponent of the invasion of Iraq, and is the strongest of supporters of the massive increase of Britain’s nuclear arsenal, in breach of the Non Proliferation Treaty.
Mr Murphy is a member of the Henry Jackson Society, which as you know is a body which exists to promote United States neo-conservative foreign policy in its most aggressive sense, and openly and actively supports and condones extraordinary rendition and the use of torture by the CIA. It has supported every single military action by the USA since its formation, and defends United States exceptionalism in international law, including US non-membership of the International Criminal Court.
Mr Murphy’s belief set is therefore fundamentally at odds with the stated aims of CMI. Indeed, his employment by you can only lead to the suspicion that CMI’s stated objectives are not its real objectives, and that like Mr Murphy and the Henry Jackson Society your overriding goal in the regions where you operate is to promote the interests of the United States.
As you are funded by charitable donations and by governments, I think some explanation of your employment of Mr Murphy is in order, particularly when you have employed him as a conflict resolution expert in the Caucasus and Central Asia when he has no relevant experience of conflict resolution at all, virtually none of the Caucasus, and absolutely none of Central Asia.
I was the Head of the UK Delegation that negotiated the Sierra Leone Peace Treaty, and certainly under no circumstances would I let Jim Murphy anywhere near that kind of negotiation.
With All Best Wishes,
Amb (rtd.) Craig Murray
@Node
Why are you desperately trying to change the subject?
@ Fred
Your comment at 1.14pm is almost identical to your comment at 11.22am. I’ve answered all your points and now you’ve circled back to the beginning.
You brought up the subject of hypocrisy. I thought discussing it might lead to a better understanding of your attitude towards the SNP. Unsurprisingly, you don’t want to. Well I don’t want to go round in circles.
Bye bye.
I see the Better Together/UKOK/Labour-Tory-Liberal/NF/BNP/Orange Order troll Fred, leads with the latest BBC talking point and distraction and not with the travesty of democracy that took place last night in the Westminster. One is least is foolhardy, perhaps bored enough to take his stinky bait. Who gives a fuck about Sunday opening hours, except a tiny minority of religious zealots. Last night saw over 600 non-Scottish MPs, with no right to participate in legislation in any area concerning Scotland, dragooned to turn Westminster into something I thought it couldn’t become, an even greater laughing-stock and disgrace than before, it is simply an embarassment.
Unionists today might mourn, the union gasped its last breath last night. Stakes were being driven into the corpse to make doubly sure. Scotland’s bodysnatcher pair, Ian Murray and David Mundell, as Burke and Hare have dug up the corpse, and await a lightning strike to re-vivify it, but the prognosis, given the severed head, is poor.
We are in uncharted territory, the UN, perhaps grudgingly the EU now need to be actively involved, as they are already as observers, the UK government are in clear deliberate and provocative breach of every Scot’s fundamental human rights and right to self-determination. There is not any more even the pretence of democracy, this is neo-colonialism. This is fascism, repression and naked hostility and contempt.
To the traitors and quislings, ‘Scottish’ Labour-shites and ‘Scottish’ Tories, who’ve aided and abetted this, there’s no need to tell you, I think you know, you are the lowest of the fucking low, do the rest of us a favour, make up for not having been drowned at birth and take yourselves and your regressive counter-evolutionary genes off the planet us real actual human beings inhabit. You’re unfit for any purpose.
The fightback has started. RUK won’t know what’s hit it, and it’s already too late.
England you are not part of any solution, not even a party to it, but are the problem. A tumour on the body politic. A nation long overdue and sorely in need of being taken down several pegs at once. On your fucking knees wretched deformed England, crawl on your bellies like the snake you really are, as you once demanded of the world and still demand of us. Hubris assures your subjection and destruction.
I have to ask Craig if you’ve ever seen anything like last night in the Westminster Sewage Works, anywhere in the world, comparable for its outrageous negation of every conceivable principle of democracy and decency. The worlds worst despot does not compare.
EU Directives do govern workers hours. Including Junior Doctors who are considering strike action in England because of changes to their Contracts.
” Who gives a fuck about Sunday opening hours, except a tiny minority of religious zealots.”
People who live in England and Wales who would like to be able to go to the Supermarket on a Sunday evening like people who live in Scotland can.
I quite agree. It was the nu-style nu-speak fascist version in action of the so called democracy.
Column 46 onwards.
Scotland Bill [Col. 46]
Programme motion (No. 2)—(David Mundell)—agreed to [Col. ]
As amended, considered [Col. ]
Read the Third time and passed [Col. ] https://hansard.digiminster.com/Commons/2015-11-09/debates/33ac78d8-f78d-411e-a44e-9a16dfc74dbf/CommonsChamber
A sort of quiz show based on Beat the Clock hosted by Messrs Mundell and Murray.
Even Hansard has been given the nu treatment. You have to click on a box to see who voted which way. Before it was instantly visible as were the MPs’ constituencies. All to disorientate the citizen voter.
How sweet. Today’s fascist proceedings on the green benches conclude with hedgehog conservation.
11:30am Oral questions
Business, Innovation and Skills, including Topical Questions
Ministerial statement – Mr David Lidington
Europe: Renegotiation
Ten Minute Rule Motion – Ian Austin
Government Departments (Decentralisation Target)
Legislation – Sajid Javid
Trade Union Bill – Report stage
Legislation – Sajid Javid
Trade Union Bill – 3rd reading
Adjournment – Oliver Colvile
Hedgehog conservation
~~~~~
I signed this TUC petition yesterday.
The government’s controversial trade union bill gets its third and final reading in the House of Commons tomorrow – Tuesday 10 November. This dangerous legislation threatens the basic right to strike for workers across the UK.
However, the vote might be closer than the government would like. We’re hearing from a number of Conservative MPs who are worried about the risks to important civil liberties or who feel parts of the bill are unfair and unnecessary. Some have even spoken out in public and said they’ll support amendments to cut out some of the worst parts of the bill.
With such a slender government majority, anything could happen. As our MPs are getting ready for this big vote, let’s send them a big signal that we don’t want them to take liberties with our right to strike.
We’ve got a new petition to Prime Minister David Cameron, calling on him to think again about this bad bill. It’s been growing really fast – 35,000 have signed already.
Can you help pile on the pressure even more? Sign and share our petition now and let’s make it something our MPs can’t ignore.
Sign the petition to protect the right to strike
https://campaign.goingtowork.org.uk/petitions/david-cameron-don-t-threaten-the-right-to-strike?source=tucemail
Thanks for all your help,
John and the Going To Work team
42,422 others have signed.
~~~~
Then they go off until Monday.
“I see the Better Together/UKOK/Labour-Tory-Liberal/NF/BNP/Orange Order troll Fred, leads with the latest BBC talking point and distraction and not with the travesty of democracy that took place last night in the Westminster. One is least is foolhardy, perhaps bored enough to take his stinky bait. Who gives a fuck about Sunday opening hours, except a tiny minority of religious zealots. Last night saw over 600 non-Scottish MPs, with no right to participate in legislation in any area concerning Scotland, dragooned to turn Westminster into something I thought it couldn’t become, an even greater laughing-stock and disgrace than before, it is simply an embarassment.”
_______________
Worst of all Tony M was only the SNP MP’s showed up along with a few stragglers from various other parties to debate possible amendments to the grossly inadequate bill.
Six hours were set aside to discuss the Scotland bill, but only when the bell was rung to hoarde them in to vote down amendments did the unionist MP’s make an entrance, probably from various restaurant’s and bars.
Scotland must break free from the ball and chain, known as Westminster.
Tony M, my apologies I forgot to add the picture, it speaks for itself.
Oh and Labour abstained on the vote allowing Holyrood to set the next independence referendum, this let the Tory out vote us, it remains a reserved matter, Westminster will have the final say.
https://mobile.twitter.com/RobertsonPaulC/status/663766206206361601
Scotland bill fails to devolve the hereditary revenues of the Crown, as promised in the Smith Commission, a major failing.
Now this tampered, and rewritten shambolic piece of paper passing itself off a bill, will now need to pass the worlds second largest unelected and therefore undemocratic chamber, known as the House if Lords.
More on tax avoidance.
Coutts & Co International bank, which until March was a subsidiary of the Royal Bank of Scotland.
The Coutts recent sell-off followed revelations that the bank was under investigation from German prosecutors for aiding and abetting tax evasion.
Recently British bankers Anthony Conti and Anthony Allen were convicted in a US court of rigging the Libor interest rate.
404 subsidiaries of RBS are registered in tax havens, and that this behaviour has continued unabated despite its ownership by the government.
The big money and tax evasion, of course, remains offshore. The Tax Justice Network’s Financial Secrecy Index for 2015 named the UK’s crown dependencies and oversea territories (Cayman to Bermuda to Jersey to the British Virgin Islands (BVI)) as the worst tax offenders in the world.
The Al Yamamah UK-Saudi arms deal for instance, involved a £6bn payment through Poseidon Trading in the BVI, just one part of a deal described as the most corrupt trade deal in history.
Unsurprisingly George Osborne’s company hasn’t paid UK corporation tax for 7 years.
http://www.thenational.scot/comment/michael-gray-the-uks-tax-avoidance-scandal-is-a-sorry-tale.9815
If Catalonia can do it, why can’t Scotland? Catalonia Lawmakers Approve Resolution for Secession Process From Spain.
Helmut Schmidt, who served as West German Chancellor from 1974 to 1982, has died aged 96.
Mr Schmidt, who was a Social Democrat, was an architect of the European Monetary System, which linked EU currencies and was a key step on the path to the euro.
He was credited with helping to consolidate the country’s post-war economic boom.
He is seen as one of the most popular German leaders since WWII.
Oh look, a new oilfield, so it won’t run out soon then, Fred will be pleased.
The discovery of a major new North Sea oilfield – which could produce more than 5,000 barrels of oil a day and which would be worth more than £150 million a year at current prices – has been confirmed by BP.
The new field – which lies some 150 miles due east of Montrose in the central North Sea – has been christened Vorlich by BP and Marconi by its exploration partner GDF Suez.
http://www.scottishenergynews.com/bp-confirms-discovery-of-new-150m-a-year-north-sea-oil-field/
Interesting fact from the Wikipedia entry on Helmut Schmidt, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmut_Schmidt#Life_after_politics:
Well, it turns out that the Ukrainian situation didn’t cause a world war, as Schmidt feared. But the danger persists over Syria.
Let us not forget that World War I was preceded by a decade of successive crises that threatened war.
“Oh look, a new oilfield, so it won’t run out soon then, Fred will be pleased.”
Great, more oil on the world market, just what we needed.
“If Catalonia can do it, why can’t Scotland?”
Because the majority of Scots decided they didn’t want to.
Polls in Scotland have been moving in the direction of support for independence. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-34277133 In Scotland, by far the strongest support for continued union was among the aged, whose ranks will inevitably be diminished over time.
Once the polls show a majority of Scots support independence (as will probably happen in the not too distant future), then why should not an SNP majority in Holyrood vote for independence, the way the Catalan parliament has just voted?
“Polls in Scotland have been moving in the direction of support for independence. ”
I’m sure they were the best polls money could buy.
However the only thing that counts is the referendum.
http://blog.whatscotlandthinks.org/2015/09/weekend-polls-fail-to-replicate-summer-surge-for-independence/
” Oh look, a new oilfield, so it won’t run out soon then, Fred will be pleased.
The discovery of a major new North Sea oilfield – which could produce more than 5,000 barrels of oil a day ”
North Sea production in 2014 was 1.42 million barrels per day equivalent (BDE), this was down by 16,000 BDE from 2013 and 30% of peak production in 1999.
The words “drop” and “ocean” come most readily to mind.
Besides more oil coming onto the market at the moment will just depress the price even further and make the North Sea even less economically viable, investment and jobs have already been cut and further cuts look inevitable.
” by far the strongest support for continued union was among the aged, whose ranks will inevitably be diminished over time. ”
Well no, the number of old people is set to rise in the near future, one day there’ll be a space for you in their ranks; and with age comes wisdom.
There was no referendum in Catalonia, only a local election.
It is the current cohort of the aged who disproportionately support continued union. Their numbers will diminish over time.
A minority of Scots were conned, frightened, cowed threatened into believing the promises of shysters and crooks conspiring and working in concert with a disreputable media, by which the referendum result was null and void, before the votes were ever cast. The conduct of the unionist parties, the UK government and the emetic BBC all stand out as intolerable, offensive and anti-democratic. Democracy is not practiced by doing what you want regardless and cudgeling the population to comply, to assent to being oppressed -it is determining the true will of the people at a given point in time and acting on those instructions. Scotland has politely and still indicates a strong and rapidly growing unquenchable desire for independence, for an end its shadow existence, its cultural, spiritual political and economic subjugation.
A more recent poll than the referendum was the May General Election. After the con-trick and lies of the pre-referendum ‘Vow’ were already history, 56 out of 59 total Scottish MPs were elected from the Scottish National Party, Scotland’s Party, leaving just one token MP from the other three unified anti-Scottish parties. The all-Scotland SNP Westminster contingent representing everyone, are not just a majority but are unanimous, have one aim and purpose, to deliver the independence all of Scotland demanded overwhelmingly, democratically when electing them in May 2015.
“A minority of Scots were conned, frightened, cowed threatened into believing the promises of shysters and crooks conspiring and working in concert with a disreputable media, by which the referendum result was null and void, before the votes were ever cast.”
Yes that SNP White Paper was a total load of bullshit wasn’t it. If they had told the truth about oil income going to negative I think there would have been a lot more voting against separation.
“” Who gives a fuck about Sunday opening hours, except a tiny minority of religious zealots.”
People who live in England and Wales who would like to be able to go to the Supermarket on a Sunday evening like people who live in Scotland can.”
___________________
Not only those people, Fred.
Also people who think that Sunday opening was a great mistake which should be reversed forthwith.
I am of that persuasion, of course.
“Once the polls show a majority of Scots support independence… then why should not an SNP majority in Holyrood vote for independence, the way the Catalan parliament has just voted?”
________________-
No reason at all, my Transatlantic Friend.
That seems so blindingly obvious that I wonder why you’re wasting Craig’s bandspace to make the point.
Do your masters require you to clock in every day even when they have nothing sensible they want you to say?
Kempe (re Scotlan’s ageing population – or not)
Don’t tangle with my Transatlantic Friend “Lysias” when it comes to figures and trends – surely you will recall that he once solemnly onofrmed us that he had done a course in statistics as part of one of his “higher degrees”?
LOL
informed us
More HoC voting; have the hon members twigged the fine print yet?