On Being a Dissenting Voice in 2018 863


UPDATE

The site is just back up at 16.42 on 21 March having managed to slip like the Tardis into another dimension and thus dodge the massive DOS attack we are under. over 50,000 separate IP addresses simultaneously throwing up millions of hits. The attack has not actually stopped and does seem to have a human intelligence changing terms and directing it, which could make for an interesting afternoon. Once our excellent techs get a minute from fighting it, we will post the cloudfare graphs as evidence.

I just thought I might give you a little taste of what it means to your personal life to express dissent from the government line in the UK in 2018. Let me start with this combined effort from the UK’s most popular website, Guido Fawkes, which fanatically supports the government, and the Blairite crew at “The Guardian”.

The red ink is original.

Now it is true that, when I was sacked as Ambassador by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for blowing the whistle on extraordinary rendition and the Blair government’s misuse of intelligence from torture, I went into a terrible depression and voluntarily spent ten days or so in St Thomas Hospital (not a mental illness facility) for treatment. I have never tried to keep this secret, indeed it is a major part of my memoir “Murder in Samarkand”. It is also true, as I have always acknowledged, that I have had other less serious depressive episodes treated at home and been diagnosed as bipolar since I was 20.

That we stigmatise anybody who has ever had a mental illness, write them off and view their views, on anything, as invalid, is an attitude I had hoped we had moved past last century. Indeed, if this hatchet job was done on anybody writing within the Overton window, then the Guardian would be dedicating editorials to condemning it. We have in fact moved to the old Soviet position, where disagreement with the official line equals mental illness. I quite confess this sort of thing does in fact hurt me – if you cut me, do I not bleed?

The use of the term “conspiracy theorist” has been used to denigrate my views, ever since Jack Straw as Foreign Secretary lied to Parliament denying that the UK ever obtained intelligence from torture and denying the existence of the extraordinary rendition programme, which I was supposed to have fantasised. Anyone interested in this history can watch this series of videos of my evidence to a Parliamentary Committee on the subject. It explains why I start nowadays from a position of being so hated by the British state and its acolytes, and also of course enables you to judge for yourself whether I should be ignored as insane.

Ever since then, the state and corporate media have described me as a “conspiracy theorist”. Even though there is now acceptance that extraordinary rendition did happen and presumably they, somewhere inside, know I was telling the truth. I find people are taken aback to discover, for example, that I broadly accept that there was no US government involvement in 9/11 (other than minimising the Saudi role) and 9/11 discussion is banned on this blog – [warning it still is].

I cannot in fact conceive of a more outlandish conspiracy theory than that the Russian government secretly manufactured and stockpiled novichoks, hidden from the OPCW, and secretly trained assassins, only to blow the whole operation on a retired spy they let out of jail ages ago. Yet nobody calls Boris Johnson a “conspiracy theorist” for positing that.

But the abuse is not confined to what people publish about me. I receive some extremely unpleasant emails of which this is an example:

I do hope Mr Temis can get money back on his anger management sessions. But there has been rather a lot of this, including some by old fashioned mail. which I find myself prodding suspiciously before opening :-).

There is of course an open effort to extend the term “anti-semitic” to embrace any criticism of Israel. It is also particularly used by Blairites to attack anybody taking any position seen as supportive of Jeremy Corbyn. I am not in the least anti-semitic. Jewish people have made a disproportionate, indeed magnificent, contribution to the world in the fields of science, music, literature, commerce and others. That does not alter the fact that Israel is a rogue state when it comes to chemical weapons, the subject currently under discussion. It refuses to ratify the Chemical Weapons Convention and destroy its chemical weapons stocks, and refuses to join the OPCW.

Plainly someone attacked the Skripals. In stating that it is not the case that Russia was the only state who could have done it, I have included Israel amongst other possibilities. Israel might wish to frame Russia for the deed, as Russian actions in Syria have severely conflicted with Israeli ambitions in Syria and Lebanon. But I have never said it was, or was most likely to be, Israel – it could be the CIA framing Russia, it could be a non-state actor entirely (which I am inclined to think most likely – this could come from those close to a victim of Skripal’s treachery, though I still think the Orbis intelligence connection has been overlooked).

Some of the most vitriolic abuse has come from state and corporate media journalists. Falsely categorising me as an insane racist allows them to ignore any challenge to the establishment line on Salisbury and absolves them, in their own minds, from any dereliction of duty in not questioning it.

In a chilling example of the way they move to crush dissent, here a prominent Blairite corporate media journalist, James Bloodworth, attempts to ensure that consideration of other possibilities than the government line is not carried even in the private domain. He harasses and bullies an individual attempting to force him to accept Mr Bloodworth’s version of what I had said, rather than what I had actually said. When Mr Law (who as a lecturer in philosophy presumably has an attachment to intellectual honesty) refuses, Bloodworth sanctions him by pulling out of his literary festival.


It is very difficult to understand what is happening in the UK today, but when the BBC on its flagship news programme holds a discussion of the Salisbury attack under a huge photo-shopped picture of the leader of the opposition in a Russian hat standing outside the Kremlin, it is plain a fundamental shift has happened in society. The Salisbury attack has perhaps taught us something massively more important than any of the stuff about chemical weapons, and that is that Britain is further along the road to becoming an authoritarian state than we had realised.


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863 thoughts on “On Being a Dissenting Voice in 2018

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  • Chrestomathy

    Craig, you are a bright light in a dark and confused world. Please keep up the good work.

  • Peter wright

    Thanks for the film link , I look now at how stupid I am never to have searched Craig murray in you tube thanks Craig

  • nevermind

    News has become entertainment, the now natural progression of media outlets after infotainment was a little too slowbrow. Ecstatic headlines, cutting comments and false hoods are being sold in the name of news, their skilful use of words, not the truth or facts, are moulding the consciousness of the public.

    The fact is that the Sun still sells paper inked up to look like it is a believable fact, always underpinned by the boobs on page 3, still, some sort of recipe to the move hands and turn pages.

    It is important that people believe the Government line, the edifice must not come down, however much it crumples into nothingness. Imperial evidence is shunned for the pursuit of long term power and public opinion has to be moulded and manipulated.

    As Cambridge Analyticals blatant interference with peoples minds and personal data shows, its desirable by politicians and business to undermine, stall and marginalise the opposition and I wonder whether the BBC has used their services at all, to undermine JC’s political astuteness with its voters via imaging and by taking his words out of context, or whether the FoI have paid for a campaign of verbal backstabbing.

    Should we highlight/talk a little about what Russian money has done to the City of London Corp., some of it derived from criminal sources, the housing market, football clubs, offshore accounts and for Tory coffers?

    I leave it here with the words of Jimmy Wales, this from 2012

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/9671471/Finsbury-edited-Alisher-Usmanovs-Wikipedia-page.html

    ” Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales told the newspaper: “It is a disappointment that PR firms or lobbyists think that this is what they have to do when we’re here, we’re free, we’re open. We have a community very keen to correct errors.”

    The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) worked with Wikimedia UK, the company behind the online encyclopedia, to develop a set of guidelines for PR professionals for making edits to pages relating to clients.

    Jane Wilson, CIPR’s chief executive, said: “Wikipedia’s rules on conflict of interest editing are clear. Public relations professionals should not directly edit Wikipedia for a client or employer, and should instead suggest amendments for consideration by Wikipedia’s community of editors – a point which today has been clarified by Jimmy Wales, and also recognised by the team at Finsbury.

  • Tony Robinson

    Craig, when shit like this happens, it’s very important to surround yourself by friends and loved ones. I don’t know your personal situation but I trust you have an excellent network around you. Secondly, it’s very important to hold onto your internal truth. They will try to destroy you for opposing their position because they perceive that they have too much to lose. Every time you feel yourself being taken to negative places inside, look for your internal centre of gravity and hold on to it. And elevate the way you see these people. They are victims as much as the rest of us, try to see them as the scared human beings they are and act with compassion. I can see in your reply to the guy above that you are doing this and I thought your reply was great even though you could easily have just deleted the mail. In any case, I can see from the positive response you are getting to your work that we are thousands who support you. And you have all the moral support from all of us at Pressenza. Keep on going. Best regards, Tony co-director http://www.pressenza.com

    • Rose

      I’d like to endorse Tony’s comment Craig: your measured response to that horrible e-mail does you a great deal of credit. A lesser man would not have dealt with it like that. The sort of fearful people who lash out like Mr.Tremis are dealing with their insecurities in the only way they know and grown-ups need to treat them like the frightened toddlers they are.
      To echo so many others here – I am so sorry you have been hurt but thank you for all you do and know that you are loved and appreciated.

  • marvellousMRchops

    BBC Radio 5 Live – news just now – featured the football pundit Ian Wright talking about being nervous of attending the forthcoming World Cup – due to the dangerous situation at the moment.
    Drip…..drip…drip…..

  • Brian c

    Expect them to try and consign you to the same “crank”, “usual suspect” category as Corbyn, Chomsky, Hedges, Pilger, etc. It is the only way neoliberals and neocons are able to ignore in good conscience calls for truth, logic and peace. But it’s never stopped those other guys and I doubt very much it will stop you.

    • Alexander Zucrow

      “It is the only way neoliberals and neocons are able to ignore in good conscience calls for truth, logic and peace.”

      I think the problem for your average newspaper reader is that this process has been gradual. People who were excitedly reading The Guardian’s heroic coverage of wikileaks never imagined that less than ten years later the same newspaper would turn against Assange and Snowden and blacklist many of the greatest thinkers and journalists of our time. The mainstream left and the issues it traditionally championed has effectively been usurped by a pro-war, pro-censorship, anti-Russian lobby group. One of the side-effects is evident in the comments section of the Guardian – it leaves the traditional anti-war Left with nowhere to go except right.

      I for one never thought I’d see the day that the likes of John Pilger, Noam Chomsky, Assange and (recently) Slavoj Zizek were blacklisted from the (left-wing) MSM and confined to RT.And instead of setting alarm bells ringing among serious journalists, they have instead joined the chorus of “Alt-Right” accusations.

      Reading this blog helps me realize that I’m not going mad. Thanks, Craig.

      • Brian c

        Indeed, it’s one of the most remarkable phenomena of the past decade how liberal media like the Guardian, NYT, WaPo and their readers have moved from hailing wikileaks to having unquestioning faith in the CIA and, in the past week, Boris Johnson.

        • PetrGrozny

          Can anyone explain this? I thought the Guardian was owned bt a trust which gave it some independence.

        • PetrGrozny

          the post from Guido Fawkes is awful, but how do we know what Fawkes says about the Guardian is reliable. If it is it reflects only on some journalists at the Guardian, not on the editor. I share concerns about the way the Guardian is going and do not understand why as it is owned by a trust which is supposed to guarantee its independence.

          I had no idea about Mossad’s past assassination attempt on a Palestinian leader, nor that Israel hadn’t ratfied the chemical weapons treaty and am glad that I’ve become aware of these facts through this blog. thank you Craig.

          • Alexander Zucrow

            “If it is it reflects only on some journalists at the Guardian, not on the editor. I share concerns about the way the Guardian is going and do not understand why as it is owned by a trust which is supposed to guarantee its independence.”

            I think a large number of people are concerned about the direction of the Guardian, and as a reader of that paper for 30 years, I am quite fascinated by the phenomenon.
            Firstly I think that Katherine Viner is directly responsible because she has brought a Huffpost/Comsopolitan style of lightweight, trivial, politically-correct identity politics activism to the paper that is both cowardly and destructive. She has shut down reader comments on all subjects except fashion and cooking, and has doggedly tried to alienate her core readership.
            The Guardian-approved #Metoo fad paved the way for a mob justice mentality too: for many readers it was a seamless segue from Harvey Weinstein to Vladimir Putin (though I have to say I personally find both pretty vile characters). The supporters have no need of judicial process because guilt has been reduced to a matter of faith – and the ones who question the narrative or demand proof are alt-right nazis, racists and misogynists.

  • chris sayudo

    Gaurdian showing its true colours where are Paul Mason and Owen Jones and whens there next mental health awareness campaign, bigots !

    • Disinterested Bystander

      The Guardian didn’t like Mason’s criticisms of Progress, the party-within-a-party which seeks to undermine the Labour leadership, so they got shot of him during January’s cull of journalists when the paper downsized to a tabloid (with tabloid values).

  • fred

    “It is very difficult to understand what is happening in the UK today, but when the BBC on its flagship news programme holds a discussion of the Salisbury attack under a huge photo-shopped picture of the leader of the opposition in a Russian hat standing outside the Kremlin, it is plain a fundamental shift has happened in society.”

    Except the picture wasn’t photoshopped. If you google “Jeremy Corbyn hat” you will see there are no end of photographs of Jeremy Corbyn wearing that exact same hat.

    https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=jeremy+corbyn+hat&client=firefox-b&dcr=0&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjkotes6vrZAhXHI8AKHQxQBtoQ_AUICigB&biw=1024&bih=644#imgrc=_

    If you don’t like being called a conspiracy theorist you should stop spreading conspiracy theories.

    • marvellousMRchops

      From the photos I have seen the hat in question has been contrast shifted to make it more of a silhouette which when seen in conjunction with the Newsnight backdrop appears to be a ‘Russian’ hat – job done.

      No conspiracy theory here just manipulation. If you know anything about photoshop – it’s not just cut and paste……….

      • Steph

        Agree entirely. Against that backdrop, and with reduced contrast, it looks exactly like a russian soldiers hat, an ushanka I think they are called. Of course that might have been an accident, they might just as easily have pictured Corbyn without a hat at all….. but they didn’t did they.

        • John Hawkins

          As a professional designer and user of Photoshop, I can say definitely that it’s Photoshopped. It’s been darkened and retouched so the peak doesn’t show and so it looks more like a Russian hat which doesn’t have a peak. Not in question for anyone who actually uses Photoshop or any image manipulation software.

    • Alexander Zucrow

      “Except the picture wasn’t photoshopped.”

      The Corbyn portrait was superimposed onto an image of the Kremlin in Soviet propaganda poster style (is there a photoshop plugin for that?). The inference is pretty obvious, and its demeaning for a serious broadcaster like the BBC to use it as a backdrop.

      I love the BBC, by the way, but they should be banned from reporting the news – or better still, the mechanisms that supposed to ensure political impartiality at the BBC should be policed by an independent body.

      • fred

        It was the back drop they used on that story, they showed Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson against the same backdrop.

        The photograph hadn’t been photoshopped to make Corbyn look more Russian, he has often worn that hat.

    • Laguerre

      The hat has indeed been photoshopped. It is higher and more rounded on the top, to match a Bolshevik cap (not Lenin’s, which is more like Corbyn’s real cap).

  • P Sued-O'Nymne

    From the available evidence, the loss of Señor Bloodworth is Mr Law’s festival’s gain? Where can one buy tickets?

  • Lachlinn

    Craig you are getting to them and their pitiful jibes show how desperate they are to silence any voice of rational dissent yours in particular. You are a voice of reason in this world and I much appreciate your work please continue to prick their pomposity .

    • Agent Green

      Agree. You are hitting the truth and it is this that they fear.

      The same goes for RT – they attack it because it frequently tells the truth in areas that the mainstream won’t touch.

  • Barry Lamb

    Craig thank you so much for your inspiration and common sense in this politically insane world.
    I have been pasting your articles on our off topic – political section of our football website. 90% of the responders are in favour of yours and others point of view ( there’s far more depth and intelligent response than perhaps a football site conjures in the imagination).
    Thanks again

  • Cedders

    I join the other commenters here in saying to you, Mr Murray, that I admire the way you think, the way you write and the way you respond to your critics. I am sure there are many, many more people like me. With regard to your critics, the saying “empty vessels make the most noise” seems to be apposite.

  • Trowbridge H. Ford

    I would suggest that you avoid doing things repeatedly, like going to the same restaurant or on the same walk
    predictably.

    • Trowbridge H. Ford

      And never forget your suspicions even when you do something on the spur of the moment.

      Never forget when I finally got the message that Uncle Sam was trying to kill me at a restaurant I regularly attended in Caldas da Rainha, consequently deciding to avoid eating out, though in Sweden, I twice was persuaded to eat out on the spur of the moment, only for the spooks to try again at the drop of the hat. Luckily, I took appropriate countermeasures.

  • Richard Sykes

    Weak leadership is swift to judge in all the wrong places, sniffing the air for the public mood and jumping accordingly. It is, in truth, not leadership, but followership. It’s the pack mentality. And if you decline to join the pack, you’re liable to be amongst the hunted.

    Incidentally, Guido Fawkes’ reference to your mental health – the implication that you are thereby an unreliable witness – is probably unlawful as an expression of disability discrimination under the 2010 Equality Act.

  • Republicofscotland

    As long as you keep informing and pushing an alternative view of state and global machinations, you’ll be seen as a unhinged conspiracy theorist. The state media will in most cases fall into line, as they are aligned with the other estates.

    However, social media has given us and you a very powerful voice to fight back with. Everyone doubts themselves and has periods of feeling low from time to time, it is of course only natural.

    In saying that, you just have to see the record number of readers, reading your blog now, to realise that the majority of ordinary folk, know or suspect that something terrible is amiss in Britain today with regards to Westminster governance.

    Keep your chin up and carry on, we rely on your insider wisdom.

  • Agent Green

    Much more serious, I’m afraid. The target this time is the largest country in the world, can’t be bullied and is more than capable of defending itself. It also has China as a strategic ally.

  • alan bolger

    hi,
    i too picked up no the guardian denunciation of your mental state Craig,a most disturbing read.I have also seen your commons select committee appearance,and i have just ordered Murder in Samarkand.
    I tend to call a spade a spade.The Uk does not have the testicular fortitude nor the moral fiber to stand up to these state actors that see to use us as insignificant pawns in their game.You as an ambassador where clearly discarded
    May i say,i think you are a remarkable man that has showed and continues to show great courage in the face of quite overwhelming odds.
    Alas politics always ends up bad in the end as somebody once said,therefore it follows that the best place to effect any sort of change is through the power of media, Jefferson was right: better newspapers without government than the other way round.
    Keep grinding them down Sir

  • Cedders

    I work as an analyst. I make known my findings by verbal presentations and written reports. In addition to normal and decent people, I regularly face people who use unfair, unreasonable and unpleasant methods of countering my findings. Some time ago, I decided in the interests of sanity and self-preservation to use pre-emptive counter measures against the bad guys. Mr Murray, I am sure that you could figure such things out for yourself, but I would be pleased to share my thoughts if you wish, either privately or publicly.

  • Peter Oblach

    As a fellow Bi-Polar ( I don’t want to say ‘sufferer’ ) person I am shocked by the Guido reference to your condition. It’s as if so many Mental Health awareness campaigns had never happened.
    My message is an old-fashioned one : Don’t let the bastards get you down.
    The level to which they get pissed-off is in direct co-relation to how accurate your claims are.

  • N_

    You have to wonder how well Israeli interests are actually faring at the moment.

    Former president of France Nicolas Sarkozy, identified by whistleblowing ex-Mossad officer Victor Ostrovsky as a former Mossad “sayan”, is in custody this morning.

    Cambridge Analytica, which has nobbled elections in several countries, supplied Ukrainian “girls” across international borders to influential figures, and while undertaking its filthy work has worked closely with Israeli companies, seems to be in rather a spot of bother.

    Priti Patel, whose relations with Israel behind the backs of the British Foreign Office, had she had with them with Russia or Iran would undoubtedly have led to her being called a traitor, has at least fallen from the cabinet, even if she is not yet in Holloway Prison where she belongs.

    Meanwhile the Tory poshboy elite, their politicians and their newspapers (Russian-owned or otherwise), are spitting like psychopaths.

    We should not carefully that denunciations of evil Russia have come combined with calls for a clampdown on “trolling”, or to use a more accurate word, dissent – and in particular, anti-war dissent.

  • Dr. Brian Everill

    Dear Mr. Murray,
    Thank you for your insightful observations and comments. I always read with interest what you write, and can assure you that you are a lot more believable and trustworthy than the great majority of the mainstream media. It is difficult for people who have never been in a situation where what they believe, and know, happens to be at odds with the generally accepted zeitgeist to understand exactly how much pressure you must be under, but I believe the situation that you find yourself in to be a difficult one to say the least? I believe that there can be no more of a noble enterprise than to aim to be true to oneself? As, Camus wrote, “No one who lives in the sunlight makes a failure of his life.” and, “The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.”

    • Cedders

      It’s not being at odds with the zeitgeist that is the problem, it is that those in power make the rules. In my (painful) experience, accountability was not much more than an abstract idea until I saw those in power making up the rules as they went and using everything available to them to persecute dissenting voices, knowing that they would not be held to account for their deeds and words.

      • Dr. Brian Everill

        Is it not then the case, that the zeitgeist is just that, a zeitgeist ‘where those in power make the rules.’, since the ideas and beliefs of the present moment, but also of the past, are where those in power, by having that power, make their own rules? I am not criticizing here, I believe I am trying to empathize and understand, ‘trying’ being the operative word? Myself, I have had little faith in the establishment’s desire for social justice for as long as I have had any understanding as to what I thought was its’ mission? Maybe, that has afforded me the saving grace of avoiding the ‘disappointment’ of expecting anything other than what they are providing, a ‘disappointment’ that you so obviously feel? As far as I can tell, the establishment has always persecuted ‘dissenting voices, knowing that they would not be held to account for their deeds and words’, so why should anything be different now than before? Maybe, it is my background which has furnished me with what could be seen as a cynical weltanschauung, but personally I would not be expecting anything other than what they are offering you in their endeavor to maintain their position of influence and power? They will not give up their advantage lightly, as I’m sure you are now well aware, and morality and integrity mean little to such creatures?

  • Republicofscotland

    The FCO at odds with itself on which statement it put out.

    “At the weekend, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said: “We actually have evidence within the last 10 years that Russia has not only been investigating the delivery of nerve agents for the purpose of assassination, but has also been creating and stockpiling novichok.”

    “Yesterday the OPCW stated: “There is no record of the novichok group of nerve agents having been declared by a state party to the Chemical Weapons Convention.”

    And.

    “A European source speaking on condition of anonymity told the National: “It seems that the UK is making a big play of Russia’s ‘undeclared’ nerve agents, but if there was evidence of that why did the UK not complain to the OPCW and hand over the evidence?”

    It’s worth a read.

    http://www.thenational.scot/news/16097963.mixed-messages-from-foreign-office-over-russias-chemical-weapons/?ref=mrb&lp=13

  • Brian Davey

    Here’s a bit more on madness because 30 years ago I was crazy myself and worked in the voluntary sector of the mental health services. At that time I thought a lot about psychiatry and politics and how to analyse the kind of situation that we are seeing here. (I think I should say, to forestall abuse, that I have not had a psychiatric consultation for a quarter of a century nor taken psychiatric medication in that time – and in the 1990s I lectured on interpretations of mental health issues in international and UK conferences and published on these issues in journals like Clinical Psychology Forum and the Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy. My analysis of madness is not the usual one. I believe it has implications for society as a whole. I have published in clinical psychology journals – and lectured on my ideas at academic level conferences. http://www.bgmi.us/web/bdavey/MadnessAnalysed.htm )

    With the whole Brexit thing I think this is a Tainteresqe moment for the government – the complexity of Brexit has overwhelmed the government and they sense they are losing control. Joseph Tainter’s argument, in this book “Collapse of Complex Societies” is that societies become more complex over time and that complexity eventually gets so great that in a crisis it is impossible to do anything. There is paralysis because there are too many dilemmas and conundrums for which there are no pain free solutions. At that point there is some kind of collapse.

    My analysis is that when a person becomes insane this has some similarities and parallels to how a government in a Tainter style “complexity overwhelm” crisis might act more erratically and autocratically.

    But why do individuals go insane? In my view this often occurs if and when a person finds him or herself in a stressing situation for which they have no explanation, which is out of the ordinary for them to such an extent that the person has no idea how to respond. Chaos in a larger group will display some of the same features when the group is completely out of its depth and unable to master the complexity of what it is facing and/or what it is trying to achieve.

    What happens to a person in this state. The key thing is to recognise that the person lacks understanding of the situation they are in and lacks understanding of what to do. This is akin to being an infant and indeed the person may revert to an infantile mind state (regression) as well trying to think using metaphors and analogies (magical thinking). Of course these “thoughts” about what are happening are powerfully infused with emotions – with lots of fear and anger and unpredictability. Anyone watching the drama of an individual in this state from the outside assumes the person has gone mad and that is why they are sowing chaos all around them – but it is equally if not more the other way round. (i.e. not madness -> chaos but chaos-> madness). The inability to make sense and respond coherently and rationally is because of a chaotic state of affairs never previously experienced before and this leads to mental contents that are paranoid, impulsive, blaming, erratic, full of fantasy…above all a complete inability to cope.

    Or, in the case of a government – incoherent, divided, chaotic decision making chiefly characterised by lots of previously over confident characters who dont recognise their own hubris and falling out with each other. Trotsky described the Russian government before the revolution thus – “Behind the imposing facade, panic and confusion reigned”. (I make no claims for Trotsky other than this is a good description). Of course, a government in that situation will grab for anything to unify people – like a foreign enemy.

    Those whom the Gods wish to destroy they first send mad – expresses the situation quite well I think.

    • N_

      I despise Trotskyist politics, but I thought of his “Clemençeau thesis” today. Jacob Rees-Mogg practically has his own party within a party. It’s far more organised than the supporter networks that, say, Gordon Brown and Ken Livingstone once had. It’s unprecedented, at least for a very long time. I don’t buy the complexity stuff, but I do agree that something is breaking down. I reckon it could soon be a case of “come the hour, come the man”, because it’s increasingly clear that the governing gang are a bunch of incompetent bullshitters. Even Downing Street-linked Channel Four (to use the terminology the Brit media throw at Russia) seems to be some kind of a problem.

      Take yesterday’s “deal” with the EU, for example – for the time being people believe that “don’t throw Britain out completely until 2020, oh please please, and we’ll pay you not to” is some kind of “deal”. How long can this go on? Academics at Imperial College have even literally worked out how far the traffic will back up the roads network from Dover if border checks take on average 2 minutes longer. Their answer was 29 miles if I recall correctly. Famine and war loom. If the “Beast from the East” doesn’t get you, the “Satan” missiles will. Passover/Easter could be a big moment.

  • N_

    Listen Craig, the fact that Guido Fawkes and other Tories, and Zionist keyboard “heroes” too, full of Nazi-style racial hatred, are coming out in their true colours as the vicious inhuman c***s that they are, means the m-fers are on the run. You keep your chin up, mate.

    As the Socialist Patients’ Collective of the University of Heidelberg wrote in 1972: whoever claims they want to “observe the bare facts dispassionately” is either an “idiot” or a “dangerous criminal”.

  • Frank Parker

    Thanks for all your work on this and other things, Craig, doing what journalists should be doing (which is why you are taking flak as journalists should) As for the disgraceful mental health slurs, ignore. Plenty of people within the Establishment have suffered from depression and other conditions (Alistair Campbell, for example) and are lauded for talking about it.

    When the dust has settled you will go down as one of the heroes of this whole sordid affair.

  • mark golding

    The ‘conspiracy theory’ barrier has protected those journalists and scholars who are convinced this Salisbury chemical attack and others is, forbidden terri-tory, a realm of reality that is polluted and dangerous. This barrier has protected their worldview at the cost of keeping them, and the public whose interests they are supposed to serve, uniformed.

    Intellectuals keen to protect the UK government from criticism have tried to stigmatize “conspiracy theorists” and make their organisations objects of government infiltration and spying.

    The anthrax attacks of 2001 have a certain resonance with the recent ‘Novichok’ attack. My own military sources suggest a blueprint called ‘Operation Dark Winter’ was the harbinger for certain ‘dark elements’ in the British/US establishment to act out and emanate.

    http://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/events/2001_dark-winter/about.html
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMd4z19IJU0

  • John Spannyard Indaworks

    To paraphrase a well known line from Macbeth, “methinks they doth protest ethnic too much”. I was quite taken aback last week at the response to my posting your piece on Free Speech on Israel. It was met by one commentator with what I can only describe as over-excited vitriol with the use of the words “bollocks” “conspiracy” and from memory (because subsequently FSOI took my post down – so much for “free speech on Israel”) “deranged”. On relating my experience again on Jackie Walker’s thread – the following from the same individual ensued;
    https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10155651015229912&id=547534911
    Now, I don’t know about you but when I see an hysterically overblown reaction like that to a not unreasonable conjecture given all the historical and political circumstances, I smell a rat!!!

  • Robin le mare

    Thank you Craig Murray.
    Those in and with power design ‘strategies’. When those without power comment on malign effects of them, it is the powerful who then describe the non-powerful as ‘conspiracy theorists’. Where are boundaries between conspiracy and strategy?
    The Project for New American Century – rarely cited and, according to Clare Short, never required reading for discussion at Cabinet – a ‘strategy’ or a ‘conspiracy’? Same thing, I reckon; especially as PNAC disbanded itself as a ‘think tank’ because it had “achieved its objective”. How many ‘think tanks’ run out of ‘thoughts’? How many achieve their objective within such a short time?

    • Cedders

      There are dissidents and there are conspiracy theorists. Dissidents are people who hold differing views but who can provide evidence and rational support for those views.Conspiracy theorists are people who provide theories to explain observations, which theories are typically extremely implausible and predicated on the idea that bad things were caused by malign design by those in power rather than simple misfortune. What I find to be most pernicious is the lazy and hostile way in which people in and with power conflate the two for their own selfish purposes.

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