fcomurray2

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(You need to click on fcomurray1, and then on the lower smallcase fcomurray1 that will appear again, and then repeat the process with fcomurray2. Hopefully I might find a more elegant way later.)

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has, for the first time, admitted I was cleared on all 19 charges they laid against me, except for the Kafkaesque charge of talking about the charges against me in order to prepare a defence.

However the letter from Lord Howell claims – falsely, as far as I am aware – “that the disciplinary allegations taken by the FCO in Craig Murray’s case related first to complaints made about him by members of his staff”. In the course of a four month investigation under suspension, I was only ever shown a single complaint about me by members of my staff. This consisted of a signed statement by a small group of staff in the visa saction, to the effect that on a named morning I had told them I had a hangover.

This statement was not the source of the allegation, but rather obtained after the allegation that I was an alcoholic had been made by the FCO. Every single member of my staff was called in and asked if they had ever seen me drunk. That statement, that I once said that I had a hangover, was the sole result of this fishing expedition. I was never shown any staff statement on any other allegation, including the astounding allegation of sex for visas, and as these were all dropped for lack of evidence I presume there were no such statements. Lord Howell is telling an untruth, though I fully expect as a result of being lied to by his civil servants.

On the other disciplinary count – that of unauthorised disclosure to the media – relates to my appearance on the Today programme etc AFTER I had told the FCO I was leaving the service, so is hardly germane. Jack Straw added that line to parliament in order to say I had not resolved all charges against me. Straw had fudged this to appear still to refer to the sexual charges.

Of course, what Lord Howell fails completely to mention is, that these eighteen disciplinary charges miraculously appeared from nowhere immediately after I became the only UK civil servant to enter a written objection to our complicity in torture in the War on Terror.

What sickens me most about this in Lord Howell’s letter is the FCO’s claim to have cleared itself in its own investigation of having made the allegations against me “maliciously or in bad faith”.

Do they really expect anybody to believe that you can make eighteen serious allegations against somebody, every one of which turns out to be untrue, in good faith?

I am very grateful indeed to Nigel Jones for his persistence in winning at least this much acknowledgement of my innocence from the FCO, after eight years in which they have systematically blackened my name. I am sorry that Lord Howell can’t tell Nigel Jones from Digby Jones!

Bahrain is putting 47 doctors and nurses on trial for treating wounded and dying protestors. Again there is total silence from the UK and US governments at this sickening human rights abuse by our “ally” in the Gulf. There is no discussion of sanctions against Bahrain or Saudi Arabia. There no longer seems to be even the slightest attempt to disguise the double standards. Human rights are merely an excuse to attack those who oppose UK and US interests, meaning corporate wealth; those who promote those interests can rape, kill and pillage whosoever they please.

The comments by the jury make this sound more like murder than manslaughter:

The jury decided Pc Harwood acted illegally, recklessly and dangerously, and used “excessive and unreasonable” force in striking Mr Tomlinson.
Jurors added that the newspaper seller, who was not taking part in the protests, posed no threat.

Unfortunately the jury cannot compel a prosecution, so my bet is that the killer, PC Simon Harwood, will get off scot free. But at least a British jury has shown its historic independence of authority has survived – an independence which was denied it in the case of the murder of Jean Charles De Menezes by the utterly disgraceful Sir Michael Wright, grovelling tool of the authoritarian state.

Talking of which, it seems to me that Dr Freddy Patel needs to be sacked and struck off for the disgraceful lie that Tomlinson died of a heart attack. The last thing this country needs is bent pathologists tailoring their evidence to suit the police.

I think this is simply brilliant.

Predictably, the death of Osama Bin Laden has brought the return of “war on terror” impunity to the crazed British security services. An extraordinarily sinister body, the “Civil Nuclear Constabulary”, has arrested five Asians for possibly taking photographs of the Sellafield nuclear power station – of which there are thousands of photographs online and which is visible on Google Earth.

Because of course, if you were a fiendish mastermind wishing to have intelligence on Sellafield, you would covertly and surreptitiously take photos using five young Asian men in a group in Cumbria in broad daylight.

Racist harassment by the state is firmly back on the agenda.

To my generation, Henry Cooper was a real working class hero whose unaffected manner belied his status as a great master of his craft. Possessing incredible courage and skill, he was prevented from becoming world champion only by prominent eyebrow ridges that made his skin cut easily there. Sensibilities change with the years, and I now dislike boxing. But nobody could doubt Henry Cooper’s nobility of spirit, or the genuine warmth and respect between him and Muhammad Ali.

There is a scene in the movie Royal Flash, where the camera is in the place of an opponent boxing Cooper. Anybody who doubts the real skill of the sport should watch that scene. The lightning speed of the moving head, the bewildering feints. Not all the Rocky movies together demonstrated the reality of the sport a fraction as well as that brief scene of Cooper.

I listened to Cooper’s final defeat against Joe Bugner on the radio with my grandfather in his back parlour. The decision was highly unpopular and probably dubious – there was talk of low punches. But Cooper bowed out with grace, and represents a time of innocence when a great champion would go on to invest his little earnings in a grocery shop. Bugner, who had the physique of a Greek God, was to disappoint in the rest of his career by not punching his weight. I seem to recall my grandfather told me that this was because he had once killed a man in the ring; which should be enough to end this thread of boxing romanticism.

They called Cooper “Our Enery” and he did feel like just one of us in a way that sporting superstars somehow don’t any more. His death seems a break with a better past.

Osama Bin Laden had perpetrated many acts of violence. Blowback does not only affect states; Osama Bin Laden was killed by his former allies, those who used to support and arm him. Celebrations of someone’s death are always distatsteful, but Osama Bin Laden dealt in violent death and died a violent death. Of course, he who lives by the sword is a two-edged observation; it applies to Americans too, and I am afraid there will sadly be further violence in the short term.

There are questions to be asked about why Osama Bin Laden was killed rather than captured, when he would evidently be such a valuable intelligence asset. There are aspects of the official story which do not add up. I have seen the photo of his body on France 24, and plainly he was killed by a head shot; if you have to shoot someone you are trying to capture, you do not go for the head. Secondly we are told that he could not be captured because there was a fierce firefight of resistance at the house; but that no Americans were injured. So not that fierce, then. Aside from Osama Bin Laden, only two men and one woman were killed – so again, hardly a great pitched battle. The building was then torched, destrying the forensic evidence.

If Bin Laden did not kill himself, or get one of his own men to shoot him, it remains open to question why he was taken out with a headshot in a situation where resistance had been so ineffective that no American had been hurt.

It is yet another commentary on the state of Pakistan that Bin Laden was living in a large house in Abbottabad – which is by no means a backwater. It is also a major garrison town and the headquarters for military and intellligence operations in the Afghan frontier areas. (By chance, James Abbott, its founder, is one of the Great Game players I am currently studying). I simply do not believe that Bin Laden could live for years in a million dollar home in Abbottabad without significant parts of the Pakistani military and intelligence community knowing he was there.

One of my cunning plans for making a living was to open sex shops in the arrivals areas of airports. Since air travel became such a horrible experience, I figured that people must be chary of taking with them in their baggage the battery operated items that they find essential to their personal happiness, for fear of having them waved about by security men. Therefore the chance to equip themselves suitably on arrival might be welcome.

I was surprised to find that the Germans have got their already. In the departures lounge at Munich airport, and most importantly after you have passed through the last security search, is a Beate Uhse sex shop. And more than that, in the window they had a display of solar powered vibrators. How wonderful! You can have an orgasm and save the planet all at the same time. Good vibrations indeed.

It is worth reminding ourselves that the stated aim of SCR 1973 is negotiations, not the wiping out of one side in Libya. Killing children by bombing a residential house in a residential suburb is not remotely defensible; for Cameron to claim that killing children is “protecting civilians” is awful – those children were civilians, whoever may have been their grandfather.

I could accept that SCR 1973 could be stretched to include knocking out air defences as pre-emptive action against a challenge to the no-fly zone. That it stretches to widespread attacks on the “command and control” facilities of one side of a civil war, is plainly nonsense. The resolution calls for negotiations between the two sides; it cannot therefore be construed to mean that the only way to protect civilians is the utter destruction of one side. Then the “command and control” excuse was used to attack civilian telephone networks, then TV networks, then civilian electricity supplies. Now it is used to justify the murder of children in a family home.

I am frankly astonished that more concern is not coming from the Liberal Democrat side of the coalition about this mission gallop.

Read this from Sunny. It’s just like being back in Uzbekistan. How far away are we from arrests for blogging about this kind of stuff?

I have been watching the BBC coverage of the Royal Wedding build-up. Try to put aside all of the hype, and look carefully at the actual crowds. They are not actually that deep, there is no sense of crush – people are standing with a reasonable amount of space when they go in for their crowd interviews – and there is plenty of space on the pavements to pass behind those people ranked behind the barriers. The crowds are much, much smaller than they were for Charles and Diana’s wedding (I was in London that day). Despite an obvious BBC policy of interviewing lots of token black guests, the crowds are also overwhelmingly white and, judged by the crowd member interviews to date, composed of embarassing simpletons.

Like many of my readers, I was on the demonstration against the Operation Cast Lead Israeli attack on Gaza, which went from Hyde Park along Bayswater, down Kensington Church Road and along Knightsbridge. It was crushed, twenty abreast, and the tail was still leaving long after the head had arrived at destination. That was a longer route than this royal procession. It undoubtedly had more people than this event, and the Metropolitan Police put the number at 40,000.

If today’s event was an anti-war demonstration, the Police would tell us it was 30,000. As it is a royal occasion, I have no doubt they will claim 3,000,000.

The nuclear industry managed to get an “expert”, whose livelihood depended one way or another on nuclear power, onto every mainstream media broadcast about the Fukushima disaster, to persuade us that an incident ranked by the IAEA as on the same level as Chernobyl, was actually nothing to worry about.

Subsequently they have managed to persuade the media that the whole thing has simply gone away. How many of you, for example, knew that the highest levels of radioactivity so far at Fukushima were measured two days ago?

The highest radiation readings since March 11 [date of the tsunami] were recorded at the Fukushima plant by robots this week. Two robots sent into the reactor No. 1 building on April 26 took readings as high as 1,120 millisierverts an hour, according to Tepco, or more than four times the annual dose permitted to nuclear workers at the stricken plant.

The monarchy makes no sense even on its own logic. It is impossible that the putative William V is the most entitled direct descendant of William the Conqueror (who bumped off the one and only actually English King of all England, Harrold Godwinson). Just to mention a single example of scores, it appears that Edward IV’s father, Richard of York, was at no time in the same country as his mother during the possible conception period. And yes, the current lineage’s claim to succession would fall on that point.

Even if you accept that for the Tudors to kill off the Yorkists was a reasonable grounds of entitlement, or for the Stuarts to be excluded on grounds of religion is not a problem, the many infidelities over the centuries make the mystic idea of a bloodline absolute bollocks.

I came professionally into contact with widespread DNA testing through passport and visa applications. Throughout all cultures around the world, with remarkable consistency this kind of testing shows that around 15% of children do not belong to their apparent father, often genuinely to their surprise. While in visas and passports that figure may be a bit distorted by attempted fraud, that is balanced by the fact that mothers who are particularly worried they will get such a result have an obvious incentive not to get into that kind of test. My time as university rector enabled me to have some social conversations with senior medical professionals who indicated to me that medical tests performed for non parental identity reasons, have always frequently given results that show the apparent father is not the father surprisingly often. Such information is obviously not disclosed, rightly. DNA testing has only clarified this picture.

In truth, nobody can be certain without a test who their father is. Sorry, but it is true. You can be confident, but not certain.

William’s mother was a notorious slapper. William does look quite a lot like his official grandfather Phil the Greek, so he may be OK a couple of generations. But the royal line? Bullshit.

In Ghana they have matrilineal systems, which shows a much more sophisticated cultural understanding than the British.

I am an avid sports fan; I don’t blog about it much, but you may be surprised to hear I watched almost every ball of the Ashes series live, for example, mostly on my TV in Ghana. This weekend I was gripped by whether Westwood or Donald would make World No 1. And my heart is singing at the prospect of Norwich City’s return to the top flight, not to mention stuffing Ipswich at Portman Road.

I am not a Manchester United supporter. I fully qualify to be, as I have absolutely no connection to Manchester, but I am not. But I must note the wonderful performance by the incredible, ageless Ryan Giggs last night against Schalke. Not flashy, but his intelligence both on and off the ball simply overwhelmed the German team. His one howling miss was just an accent to his performance. Everyone who loves football should cherish these late autumnal moments of his career.

I have just witnessed the most remarkable operation in orchestration of propaganda in the UK in my lifetime. As I posted yesterday, the leaked Guantanamo files revealed a remarkable amount – that most detainees were completely innocent, that many were plainly fitted up by informants for cash, that people will say anything under torture, that ludicrous assertions were made by the US military, eg the possession of a watch was a clear indicator of bomb-making, and above all that nothing whatsoever could be proved against the vast majority of those held.

Today, with a quite amazing unanimity the mainstream British broadcast media have decided that none of the above analyses exist and the only thing worth reporting in the files is the assertion that 35 suspects received terror training in the UK. Both the BBC and Sky News were leading their broadcasts with the assertion of this highly dubious fact: here it is in Rupert Murdoch’s super soaraway Sun.

Given that the much more obvious lesson from the files is that this kind of information is untrue and from torture, informants, ridiculous deductions and prejudice, it really is an extraordinary thing that the entire British mainstream media today decided on this absolutely uniform presentation of the information. Nor has any of the outlets gone on to point out that not a single one of these 35 has actually been convicted of anything, and that many of them, like Moazzam Begg and the Tipton Three are demosntrably innocent, and that the British government is going to be paying quite a few of them compensation.

In fact the British media has today decided to report in precisely the same terms the least plausible imaginable interpretation of the large amount of material released. The only possible explanation is that somebody has issued a central guidance as to how the catalogue of shame which is the Guantanamo files should be twisted instead to support the narrative of the War on Terror.

Of all the bad things I have lived through, to me this is the most chilling Orwellian development I have experienced in my country; it feels like a crucial tipping point in our movement away from meaningful democracy.

There are a few times when the mainstream media does an excellent job, and it still has the ability to reach vastly more people than the blogosphere. Today’s work by the Guardian on the Guantanamo files is absolutely brilliant, and fully reveals the inhuman absurdity of the torture and suffering of hundreds of innocent people based on ludicrous “evidence”.

I particularly recommend the interview with Clive Staffod Smith. The whole is yet another example of the great work of David Leigh, whose brilliant reporting on BAE was perhaps the best investigative reporting in Britain for a generation.

But that is the conundrum of the Guardian. The British government under New Labour were actively complicit in the whole extraordinary rendition and torture system of which Guantanamo was a part. That in itself was but an adjunct of a policy of illegal war. The Blair years were years of illegal war of aggression, of torture, of extraordinary rendition and of destruction of civil liberties at home. And it was the Guardian which was the most reliable media cheerleader for Blair and New Labour as they carried out that dreadful agenda.

Two-faced doesn’t describe it. The Guardian’s compartmentalised indignation at civil liberties abuse is written on blood-smeared pages.

Here are two letters written by the 15 year old Alexander Burnes shortly before he sailed for India, one to his mother and one to his father. They are a biographer’s dream in terms of the information and an incredible amount can be extrapolated from them, about the family, their milieu and the times. But they are also very poignant indeed.

They have never been transcribed or published and I dug them from the archives and transcribed them myself. My publisher will be furious at my giving away research before publication, but I think it is important to get this sort of material online and available to researchers.

The first letter, to Burnes’ mother, contains the text of another letter in the middle, which is slightly confusing.

National Library of Scotland
MS 3813 f112-3

Mrs Burnes
James Burnes Esq
Writer
Montrose

London March 1821

My Dear Mother,

According to a promise given in my last letter I will sit down to write you. I have spent a week in Chingford in Uncle David’s small cot; instead of being only ten miles from London you would rather suppose a hundred, for after we had left the coach at Walthamstow we did not meet a huma soul until we arrived at Uncle David’s house, in the parish of Chingford there is neither schoolmaster, doctor, lawyer, banker, taylor or any other business except farmers and vintners – uncle David performs the office of Mr Rintoul and Aunt Glegg, that of Mr Beattiie, their children’s progress is really astonishing for I heard little Fanny who is only three years old repeat “Pity the sorrows of a poor old man” along with the Lord’s prayer and creeds.

My nature would not allow me to stop in the house, for I explored all the surrounding neighbourhood in which I found a hunting seat of Queen Elizabeth’s near Epping Forest, now inhabited by the forester “O the futility of human affairs”. Another extraordinary thing was Walthamstow Abbey built by Harrold II, the King immediately preceding William I, but except one wing it is so modernised that a person would scarcely believe its antiquity.

My detention and that of James for two months would perhaps astonish you, and more so on account of my sudden departure, but the advice which we have received, and the advantages which will accrue from my attending Dr Gilchrist, I have no doubt will satisfy you.

James introduced me to Dr Gilchrist on Friday, and I am to commence attending his classes on Tuesday first. He informs me that his pupils instead of going back and forth to one another’s house have taken a room in The Strand where they meet on the days which he does not lecture and study the language by themselves, to this society he is to introduce me, and by so doing, in this country I may acquire the principles of the language and in India how to speak it.

James and I dined at Mr Hume’s on Sunday last. What had induced you all to think I had a rough passage up I know not, for there was never a more pleasant passage performed and I would be perfectly satisfied with such weather in our passages out, but that cannot be expected because the fate of poor Paterson’s vessel off the Cape shews what weather we have to expect – the wreck of the Emma is truly distressing and one would really imagine that distress is never far from that family – it will vex his father much.

There is one fortunate thing which I had almost forgot to mention and that is that a vessel is set to sail for Bombay about the middle of May, commanded as Dr Gilchrist told us by a friend of his – and Mr and Mrs Gilchrist will be able to get James appointed surgeon, and as the passage money is moderate, we should perhaps be able to save all now living in London.

On Saturday we received through Mr Hume a letter from Lord Gillies, enclosing one to Governor Elphinstone I here send you a copy of his Lordship’s letter

Edin Mar 21 1821

My Dear Sir,

I have the pleasure of sending you enclosed a letter of introduction in favour of you and your brother from Admiral Fleming to his brother Mr Elphinstone, the Governor of Bombay:- I sincerely hope this letter will be of service to you and your brother have my best wishes for your welfare and prosperity.

I applied to Admiral Fleming in consequence of a letter from your father, asking me whether I had any friends at Bombay to recommend you to them. I have no friends there and have not the honour of knowing Gov. Elphinstone but his brother the Admiral is a friend of mine. This letter I trust will be useful.

Believe me yours very truly,

Ad. Gillies
To James Burnes
Assistant Surgeon in the service of the East India Company

So if we do not get forward it will not be for want of recommendatory letters, but to them I shall trust as little as possible. We will do without Jimmie Leighton’s letter of introduction, tho by the bye his letter would have been the means of introducing us to the officers, but by being introduced to the governor will perhaps suffice, in hopes of soon hearing from you

Believe me
Your Truly Affectionate Son
Alex Burnes

PS I hope you make them feed the hawk and crow and also take care of the tulips and other flowers I had
NB William Ross has my Greek dictionary which you can get from him when he’s done with it but not till then for you know well the circumstances of his father.

London April 1st 1821

My Dear Father,

This being your birthday I take up my pen to express James’s wishes and mine for your health and happiness – and as the four of your sons are now separated from you, your health was not here and I suppose not at home omitted – would that my birthday had come for from that day I hope bever to be a burden to anyone.

Fortunately my birthday happens on Wednesday which is account day so I will be entitled to pay the very day I am sixteen. Remember Burns when my birthday comes
“That request permit me here
When yearly ye assemble
One sound I ask it with a tear
To him the son that’s favoured”

I am astonished by your silence for except a few lines from [Shannon?] and a letter from you returning the certificates, I have not received a scrap from father, mother or brother.

Mr Hume has given me a state of James’ expenditure in London which I now transmit you as also the gross amount of our equipment.

James amounts to £84 and mine to £101 odd, but the reason for the disparity is my getting all my accoutrements such as sword, cap and so in London, which James had not. This is really a great sum, but the amount which you intended to send up for James alone makes me suppose you will think this moderate. I cannot yet tell you exactly how much it will cost to land us in India as there may yet be some things required here, but by the statement you sent there appear to be in the hands of Mr Hume about £145 so our equipment will amount to £40 more. £200 will equip us both, after which the expense of our living in London since I arrived (for James paid Mr Scroggie about a week ago all demands) and the passage money (which we do not yet know but will be informed of it as soon as James sees the captain of the Sarah) must be paid – these demands (alth’o comparatively speaking moderate) will perhaps startle you. Should ever the fickle goddess Fortune shine upon me it will also afford me much pleasure to repay you all my expenses.

From a book, called The Cadet’s Guide to India which was presented to me by Mr Shand, it appears that a cadet (which I do not hope to be for long) can live comfortably and yet save £120 per annum, but my desire in going to India never was a lust after money, but to lead a comfortable and happy life in a delightful country from which I hope to return after some years with a competency.

It would give me very much pleasure if it were in your power to assist Mr Christian in getting a situation of the same kind he is now trying for if he is unsuccesful at getting the school at [illegible], for he is a very clever, deserving young man, and I am sure will give satisfaction to whatever situation he is appointed.

On Tuesday I went for the first time to Dr Gilchrist, and from the little insight I have already got into the language it doesn’t appear so difficult as I was at first led to imagine – the only European language it has any analogy to is the Scottish [phrase illegible]

On account of the great distance Mr Scroggie’s is from Dr Gilchrist’s classroom, Dr Gilchrist and Mr Hume have both recommended me to remove to No. 8 Buckingham St, Strand, where Dr Gilchrist’s pupils meet daily and where I am boarded for 25s per week so that all letters you send me thro’ Mr Hume can be directed as above. Are you to send the Montrose newspaper while I am in London or only when I go to India? I should like it in both places. Mr Hume says when you send them to India they should go in parcels.

Expecting soon to hear from you,
Believe me,
Your Truly Affectionate Son,

Alex Burnes
I will write my mother soon.
Write how Robert likes his situation. I wrote to Adam, but have as yet received no answer.

Amid all the pointless media tat about the wedding, those who wish to know can find who is supplying everything, from crush barriers to place cards. But the most interesting bit of tittle tattle has been held back. Who has been doing William’s hair weave? He had a perfectly bald spot about four inches across on the crown of his head six months ago, and it has now vanished. Presumably they didn’t want the shine from his pate to compete with the brilliance of Kate’s diamonds in the high shots in the abbey.

All this glamour is of course nonsense – William will be sixty, bald and probably divorced before he becomes King. Or hopefully doesn’t. Sic transit gloria mundi.