Craig Murray

Brits Taken in Disputed Waters: The lines are not clear

Former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray discusses the 15 British sailors and marines being held in Iran, describes the lack of boundaries in the Persian Gulf (particularly in the Shatt al Arab waterway), the details of the Law of the Sea treaty in regards to such things, discrepancies in the British and Iranian claims of the ships’ positions in this incidence, the belligerence of Tony Blair’s regime and the success of the UK government’s propaganda campaign domestically.

MP3 here. (17:01)

In 1984 Craig Murray joined the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. As a member of the Diplomatic Service his responsibilities included the following:

1986-9 Second Secretary, Commercial, British High Commission, Lagos
Responsible for promoting British exports to, and business interests in, Nigeria.

1989-92 Head of Maritime Section, FCO, London
Responsible for negotiation of the UK and Dependent Territory continental shelf and fisheries boundaries, for implementation of the Channel Tunnel treaty and for negotiations on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. From August 1990 to August 1991 he was also head of the FCO Section of the Embargo Surveillance Centre, responsible for intelligence analysis on Iraqi attempts at evading sanctions, particularly in the field of weapons procurement, and with providing information to UK military forces and to other governments to effect physical enforcement of the embargo.

1992-4 Head of Cyprus Section, FCO London
Responsible for UN negotiations on the Cyprus dispute, relations with the government of Cyprus and for the mandate and requirements of the British contingent of the UN force in Cyprus,

1994-7 First Secretary (Political and Economic), British Embassy, Warsaw
Head of the Political and Economic sections of our Embassy in Poland. Responsible for relations with Poland, and assisting Poland’s post-communist transition process with reference to preparation for EU membership.

1997-8 Deputy Head, Africa Department (Equatorial), Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Responsible for British political and commercial relationships with West Africa, including development issues.

1998-2002 Deputy High Commissioner, British High Commission, West Africa Branch
Responsible for British economic, political, commercial and aid relationships with Ghana and Togo. In Autumn 1998 Craig Murray was the UK Representative at the Sierra Leone Peace talks held in Togo, Liberia and Sierra Leone, including direct negotiation with the RUF terrorist leadership.

2002-2004 British Ambassador, Uzbekistan
Responsible for our relationship with Uzbekistan. He found Western support for the dictatorial Karimov regime unconscionable, as detailed in the rest of this website.

At the 2005 UK General Election, Craig Murray takes on Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in Blackburn as an Independent candidate, winning 2,082 votes.

Will Grigg

Delaware Local Fights for Freedom, is Executed by Cops: Govt. murder and cover-up in the case of Sgt. Derek J. Hale

William Norman Grigg, founder and editor of The Right Source discusses the murder of former Marine Sgt. Derek J. Hale by local Delaware cops, how they and their buddies in the Virginia State Police covered it up, the difference between living in a militarized fascist state and a limited constitutional republic and hopes for a new political realignment centered around opposition to empire and leviathan.

MP3 here. (30 :54)

William Norman Grigg writes the Pro Libertate blog and is the founder and editor of The Right Source.

Philip Giraldi

War With Iran?: Better hope not

Former CIA agent Philip Giraldi discusses the possibility of war with Iran, the 15 British captives recent media reports of preparations being made, the possible use of nuclear weapons, the danger to U.S. forces in Iraq if “we” do attack, the lack of evidence for an Iranian nuclear weapons program, America’s support for Iran in Iraq, AIPAC and the American War Party and the status of “al Qaeda in Iraq.”

MP3 here. (24:18)

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is a partner in Cannistraro Associates, is a contributing editor at the American Conservative magazine and writes “Smoke and Mirrors” for Antiwar.com.

Ask the Experts

Gene Callahan reads up on the Iranian threat:

[T]he next inspiration to bang my head on my keyboard came from an article entitled, “Paper Tigers in West Let Fanatical Regime Roar.” Note: This was not on the op-ed page! No, to the [NY Daily] News, this is news. The story leads off claiming: “Iran keeps getting away with outrageous bullying behavior because the West has no stomach for confronting the fanatical Islamic Republic.”

Then it throws in the qualifier, “That’s how experts on Iran see the standoff.” See, it’s not the reporter’s bias; it’s what the experts are saying. Every last one of the two “experts” quoted in the article says this, in fact.

The first Iran “expert” is “Thomas McInerney, a retired Air Force general and staunch conservative.” Well, if retiring from the Air Force and being a staunch conservative doesn’t make you an expert on Iran, what would?

McInerney, according to the News, “said letting the mullahs get away with pro-terrorism foreign policy amounts to appeasement of a regime potentially worse than the Nazis, should they succeed in making nuclear weapons….” No, they’re not actually worse than the Nazis right now, but they could be, ya know, so… better bomb ’em just in case.

The article continues: “Critics point to Iran’s drive to build nuclear weapons.” So they do, but let’s not mention the lack of any real evidence that that’s what they’re doing, OK? “The UN imposed sanctions last weekend, but Iran turned around and seized 15 British sailors this week. ‘We’re going to appease these guys and lose 200 million people,’ McInerney predicted ominously.” Well, General McInerney, that’s a lot of people to lose. You ought to keep better track of them.

The qualifications of the next “expert”? He is “a more liberal observer.” I don’t know why the News didn’t also seek out “a more dull-witted observer,” and, perhaps, “a more statuesque observer,” in order to achieve a complete survey of expert opinion. In any case, Lawrence “more liberal” Haas says, “Iran is preparing for a much bigger war with us. We have a naive belief that we’ll negotiate our way out of this.” Iran is preparing for a much bigger war than what? Than the covert war the US has been waging against Iran for some time?

The clincher on the case is: “Haas said he fears that many experts have concluded Tehran can’t be stopped from getting nuclear arms and ‘it doesn’t matter because we can contain Iran like we contained the Soviets.’” And obviously, that will never work, because, while the USSR had hundreds of nuclear warheads that they could deliver to US cities, in a decade or so Iran might have one or two it could shoot a few hundred miles. So take that, clown ship of naïve appeasers! […]

People I’m Sick Of (Part V) — Bill Maher

Is Bill Maher never going to go away? That he ought to was proved definitively the other day during his interview with Rep. Ron Paul, who recently announced his candidacy for the GOP presidential nomination. Senor Maher claims to be a “libertarian” — but doesn ‘t seem to realize that this is not (necessarily) synonymous with being a sleaze-bag. (Maher, you’ll probably not want to remember, starred in the role of Bill Clinton’s penis). The smarmy look on his face as he tried to snark Paul with questions designed to trip up the congressman was a cross between Smeagol and one of those gargoyles that leer from the parapets of medieval churches. Paul creamed him, and won over the audience — much to Mayer’s visible annoyance.

I had my own duel with the fake “libertarian” Maher, which you can read about here. Suffice to say that Maher represents the “liberalism” of the Hollywood crowd: facile, content-less, and, in this particular case, downright malevolent. This is a guy who said of the Kosovo war, “I’m for this war because it’s the liberal thing to do,” agreeing with his guest Bill Kristol that we ought to “crush Serb skulls.” Oh, but that was one of Clinton’s “liberal” wars, and therefore fine with Maher.

I doubt I’m all that alone in being thoroughly sick of the posturing “comic,” whose unique blend of condescension and cant is now fermented beyond the bounds of good taste. It is especially embarrassing to see one of my formerly favorite television newscasters, Keith Olbermann, treat Maher as if he were the oracle at Delphi — with Maher sneering openly at him the whole interview. If Olbermann, who I’ve defend in the past, is intent on turning his program into a left-liberal copy of Fox News – with Olbermann as the Bizarro World Bill O’Reilly — then that almost merits yet another entry in the “People I’m Sick Of” sweepstakes. (Shouldn’t we have a contest, at year’s end, to see who people are the most sick of?)

[For more of the “People I’m Sick Of” series, go here for Part I (Arianna Huffington, of course), here for Part II (Camille Paglia), here for Part III (Andrew Sullivan), and here for Part IV (David Sirota: yeah, he’s a nobody, but they can be just as annoying as celebrities precisely because of their nobody-ness.]

Mutiny in the Gulf?

Tony Blair rails against the shameless parading of the 15 captured Brits with his usual vigor, but what really takes the air out of his rhetoric is the alacrity with which the detainees have turned against their own government.

It’s been less than a full week since they were taken into custody, and already the woman, Faye Turney, has written three letters, two of them overtly critical of the British government and its foreign policy. Both Ms. Turney and Nathan Summers have gone on television, admitted to being in Iranian waters when apprehended, and apologized profusely to the Iranian people. They don’t appear to have been coerced, although, of course, their very presence in Iran is hardly voluntary: no doubt they’ll be judged victims of the “Stockholm syndrome” upon their return.

Blair avers that the Iranians “aren’t fooling anyone” with this exhibition of prisoners, and their clearly staged “confessions,” and yet one has to wonder why these frontline sailors turned so quickly. It’s embarrassing. No signs of torture, no glassy-eyed stare, no Morse code eyebrow movements signifying extreme distress, all perfectly calm and even natural:

“I ask the representatives of the House of Commons, after the government have promised that this type of incident would not happen again, why have they let this occur, and why has the government not been questioned over this? Isn’t it time for us to start withdrawing our forces from Iraq and let them determine their own future?”

That doesn’t sound at all like the stilted propaganda spiels coerced out of prisoners during, say, the Vietnam war. It sounds like an ordinary disgusted British citizen who blames her own government, rather than her captors, for her present predicament. “Why has the government not been questioned over this?” — indeed. In yet another letter recently released, Ms. Turney declared: “I’m writing to you as a British serviceperson who has been sent to Iraq, sacrificed due to the intervening policies of the Bush and Blair government.” The accusatory nationalist undertone, implying not too subtly that Blair is Bush’s poodle, is unmistakable and, under the circumstances, astonishing. Next we hear of Ms. Turney, she’ll be running for Parliament alongside George Galloway on the “Respect” ticket, and booked solid for a speaking tour of America.

I don’t mean to be disdainful of either of these two, whose predicament I can only imagine, but I think their behavior says something about the tenuous hold the official ideology has over our own centurions. One has to assume that the views of this bunch are, while expressed under duress, at least to some extent, a) sincere — how else to explain Ms. Turney’s eloquence? — and, b) fairly representative. If so, one has to wonder how long before their loyalty to the War Party is exhausted. The “coalition” hasn’t even attacked Iran yet, and already the troops are rebelling. Can we look forward to a full-scale mutiny if and when it comes to war?