That’s the stuff of movies and dictatorships, right? Do random UK civil servants really abuse the system to this extent for personal or political gain?
Whole departments are set up to work on internal "enemies of the state". Pressure from foreign governments (cough) also points to their undesirables. People above a certain station can trivially tell what is the establishment political winds, short and long term, and which are the "annoying" people that go against them. They also know that furthering the cause against them looks good to their superiors. They can and do build organizational "vendettas" and keep tabs, harass, prosecute them, for years, or even decade.
This goes all the way. Judges and prosecutors making decisions on such cases know who can help their career and what can hurt it, and so on. No explicit coordination needed, though there's a lot of that too - e.g. some established enterpreneur calling their favorite politician and asking them to "do something about that person", special interest groups created ad hoc, and so on. Check a comment by someone called Scott in TFA.
>That’s the stuff of movies and dictatorships, right?
Oh, sweet summer child.
That's roughly it.
The British Establishment (leaders of the main parties, intelligence officials, senior judges, senior police) wanted to make an example of him, because of his persistent exposure of their arbitary persecution of Assange. He was charged with contempt of court, for "jigsaw identification" of a witness in another case, that of Alex Salmond. That charge was prosecuted before a single judge, who was very much a member of "The Establishment", and he got 6 months in the slammer.
It's still not clear which remarks he made on his blog that contributed to jigsaw identification. Maybe it was a commenter on his blog that made the troublesome remark. But apparently other, more-mainstream journalists had been much more explicit, and most of the Scottish political class knew who the witness was from those sources, not from Craig's blog.
Basically, he was fitted-up for loudly espousing Scottish independence.
Worth mentioning a couple of details about that case.
Alex Salmond was the leader of the Scottish independentist party.
Arrested in 2019 with the accusation of 14 instances of sexual abuses from 8 anonymous women.
The subsequent trial cleared him of all charges.
Also, probably, the reason that the SNP leadership are now pushing for jury-less trials for sexual abuse cases.
If true, it's a staggeringly cynical abuse of the Me Too movement, feminism and the wave of popular support for sexual abuse victims.
I don't know the details, but when 8 separate individuals accuse you, all without cause, it's hard to believe it's a coincidence.
I don't mean to go off-topic, but the last few years have shown that this is how power and influence really works in our world. There is no other way to explain (for example) why no clients of Jeff Epstein's brothels have as yet been named and prosecuted. Conveniently, a few have identified themselves through their actions. But they are all free men still, with no signs of any pending comeuppance, or really even an investigation into their involvement.
Probably no-one sat down and designed the system to work like this. But it works well for everyone involved, so...
I could not find any.
Craig Murray - @CraigMurrayOrg To be entirely plain. I have always viscerally opposed war. I have dedicated my life to conflict resolution and reconciliation. But in the coming Gaza genocide, every act of armed resistance by Hamas and Hezbollah will have my support. If that is a crime, send me back to jail. 7:24 PM · Oct 14, 2023 · 167.9K Views
according to https://www.cps.gov.uk/crime-info/terrorism
So the question is whether "I will support Hammas" constitutes "inviting support". That's not clear-cut to me. Probably be able to get him on section 12 though, "reckless" is a movable feast.
Humanity shouldn't wait for another holocaust. These people should be investigated immediately.
> To be entirely plain.
> I have always viscerally opposed war. I have dedicated my life to conflict resolution and reconciliation.
> But in the coming Gaza genocide, every act of armed resistance by Hamas and Hezbollah will have my support.
> If that is a crime, send me back to jail.
https://twitter.com/CraigMurrayOrg/status/171333500612114051...
I think he's clearly very angry and upset about the violence inflicted upon Gaza population and it's difficult to keep heads clear and calm.
But let's not jump from "armed resistance" to "another holocaust".
> Humanity shouldn't wait for another holocaust.
Agreed. An international coalition must militarily intervene to repeal rules such as Military Order 158 (blocking construction of water infrastructure), rebuild important infrastructure (like the airport blown up by israel), restore critical life services like hospitals (which have been bombed 62 times), stop the murder of civilians, destroy checkpoints, walls, sniper nests and other infrastructure imprisoning the people who have lived here for millenia. The murder, displacement, apartheid, and genocide that has occurred for the past 70 years must be stopped before the terrorist ethnostate finally fills the last graves of those who did not flee their homes.
The people responsible for these atrocities -which stand alongside My Lai, the Rouge, Rwanda, the Kulaks, etc- must be held to an international trial, and should never see a life of freedom ever again. God forbid that the murder should escalate to the true eradication of the Gaza strip- if those millions were exterminated, there would truly be no event that could even be compared except for the Holocaust.
> blocking construction of water infrastructure
Does the UK have any water pipelines for France? Israelis are being generous with the Palestinians and when they stop because of terrorism they're accused of "holocaust" by people like you. Disgusting.
> rebuild important infrastructure (like the airport blown up by Israel)
It was destroyed because it was used to attack Israel. They have the right to defend themselves.
> restore critical life services like hospitals
Everybody knows that Hamas hides in hospitals. Even Wikipedia admits it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Shifa_Hospital .
The only solution for this is for Israel to annex Hamas. Abandoning it in 2005 was a mistake. Instead of becoming Singapore they became a haven for terrorism.
Murray is one of the most obnoxious, most vocal anti-Zionists on the planet. He has been doing it for-fucking-ever. You have no idea what you're talking about.
> Does the UK have any water pipelines for France?
Complete non-sequitur. I said Military Order 158: since 1967 (56 years) the Israeli military has used force to prevent Palestinians from building water supplies in their own country.
Israel does not provide water out of generosity. They do it so they can shoot anyone who tries to supply water. It's despicable to call this generosity.
> It was destroyed because it was used to attack Israel.
This is an outright lie. Israel closed the airport was during Intifada and for two years nobody was allowed to use it until it was finally bombed.
> Everybody knows that Hamas hides in hospitals.
There are soldiers in hospitals during any war, to prevent the hospitals from being taken over or destroyed, and because soldiers tend to be shot at. Even Russia does not do this to hospitals.
It's also illegal to kill combat medics. They are ACTUAL MEMBERS OF HAMAS; it's still wrong and illegal to kill them. Your mind is so warped that you just do not care.
> The only solution for this is for Israel to annex Hamas.
Israel has made it clear it will not end this peacefully, so yes they should give citizenship and equal rights to all Palestinians and end apartheid.
No, it's not, because he's clearly being investigated for supporting Hamas' actions (which classified as a terrorist organization by the UK).
If the government seriously thinks he's capable of following through on violent acts because he wrote a Tweet saying "I support Hamas", I suspect the government is badly mismanaging its anti-terrorism resources. If the government doesn't think he's going to follow up that Tweet with action and is "merely doing it because the law says they can", that's pretty much the definition of harassment.
Whether or not that’s enough to search him is another debate, but that’s what their thought process was when they decided to detain him.
If they think that then why just him and not the thousands of other people tweeting similar things?
The thought process is evidently "oh, it's that bloody git again, have we got anything we can pin him for this time?"; if you don't see that it's you who's being naive. (I'm agnostic about whether it's specifically about Scottish independence, the Assange case, or something else; one way or another he's a thorn in the side of the powerful, and that's why the book is being thrown at him)
Just read the history of his recent legal hassles, which are a farcical misuse of legislation intended for other purposes. He went to jail for (basically) pointing out all the flaws in the prosecution's case against Alex Salmond.
As the old joke goes; It's not paranoia if they actually are out to get you ;)
say what now? is there any proof he supports those terrorists? in which case, it's pretty clear why he was detained.
edit: found it: https://twitter.com/CraigMurrayOrg/status/171333500612114051...
yup, terrorism charges incoming. from the same guy that did this: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/may/11/former-ambas...
His own comments are about desperate measures when carpet bombed.
That you want to swiftly send him to jail tells me totalitarianism is becoming fashionable again.
Every single human being alive has the capacity to manifest the totalitarian-authoritarian personality. We are not immune to it as individuals - our only safety from this viral meme is social. It is only when we have a social order that provides more motivation to eschew the totalitarian-authoritarian personality, at an individual level, that we are actually free of it. The irony is, this personality also arises when an individuals' own personality is challenged by society.
where did i write that? he'll have a fair trial according to the law. he can then convince the judge he doesn't actually support a terrorist organisation (as it's illegal to do that in the UK).
Yes, according to the law, his trial will be fair. The law doesn't around admitting it isn't fair.
But what do you know, I looked under the robe and wig of the law, and would you believe it was just a person! An ugly, naked, shameless person at that.
In reality, there will be no fairness if smirking people like you get your way.
you did what now?
I am not sure I want to give the government the power to prosecute even such disgusting people, because I can't trust the government with such powers. But pretending like he is completely uninvolved and it's just random out of the blue thing when he specifically endorsed terrorists is bullshit.
I don't think there's any PM who wants to be the PM who allowed the UK to break up.
Luckily for them, as Mr Murray's blog details, the SNP is very comfortable being Westminster MPs and aren't that interested in actually doing anything about independence.
if anything the UK gov would want him freely associating with the SNP
not locked up where he's prevented from embarrassing them
Murray is also a crank and conspiracy theorist, who has been a vociferous supporter of Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian regime.
Saying this is about Scottish independence is hilarious.
I don't know, but I'm assuming that his support of Hamas is a nice pretext for the British Establishment to have another pop at him.
As we predicted when the UK proposed these monstrous laws: they are being abused to go after anyone who annoys the establishment. That's what they were always intended to do. The whole "terrorist" thing was a way of getting popular support for them, just like the popular fears of child abuse have been used to pass yet more police state surveillance laws.