Craig Murray

I've been reading Craig Murray's blog, reporting on the Assange extradition case for a while now; he's apparently been managing on at best four hours of sleep a night for the past four weeks, spending his nights writing out his notes into posts. I think he'd benefit, although for him too, accuracy is important (https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/).

Craig Murray has done a remarkable job independently attending and reporting on each day’s testimony. He is widely criticized for his other views and accused of being an Assange sympathizer by parties who believe Assange may be guilty. I personally don’t see any evidence for bias impacting his reporting, but just wanted to raise the issue because there is usually a deluge of sniping comments attacking Murray’s coverage the minute it is linked. This is probably the best available coverage of Assange’s hearing in the world at this point, which hopefully makes you feel pretty sick with anger towards The Guardian, The New York Times, etc., regardless of your views on the merit of Assange’s charges. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/

Worth noting that Murray was recently detained under terrorist legislation (no right to a lawyer, no right to silence), his devices seized and passwords demanded and given. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2023/10/incredibly-i-face-inve…

Craig Murray, friend of Julian Assange, was just released from a Scottish prison for the crime of jigsaw identification of some of the accusers in the trial of former First Minister, Alex Salmond despite the fact that many journalists from mainstream media had published information that allowed their readers to identify some of the accusers explicitly. So it's not just a problem of dictatorships in second or third world countries. But then again, maybe it is. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/

I haven't read the charges. I'm not even sure if they are public. They were also changed a few times. Based on what I read (might be biased) he's charged for helping Chelsea Manning getting the documents (hacking) and publishing the documents before they were fully redacted to remove names and things that could help identify people - to protect the safety of people involved (common practice). This is debatable because he worked hard to redact name (together with the big newspapers), but other people published the raw documents before him and in the end Wiki Leaks release raw documents as well. All this is pieced together based on Craig Murray's blog [1], which is often flagged here on HN. [1] https://www.craigmurray.org.uk

Through HN the link seems to be posted each day with the updates, but if you haven't had the chance to catch it, there are at least two sources for the daily: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/ https://twitter.com/kgosztola No major news outlet however, and not even Amnesty international which was not authorized to join.

Worth looking at this guy's CV. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/about-craig-murray/ He seems to be sound.

I've been following the reporting from the witness testimonies and some of them detailed that a lot of work has went into editing (and supressing some of) the documents that he supposedly released without censoring names of assets. I posted these links previously in the thread but Daniel Ellsberg talks a bit about how this was handled: https://shadowproof.com/2020/09/16/pentagon-papers-ellsberg-extraditio… https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/09/your-man-in-the-public…

I am only lurking on this but Craig Murray (ex British diplomat) has a good blog following the daily ongoings on this trial. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/category/uncategorized/ It seems to be incredibly murky and quite frankly, pretty disturbing...

Also worth mentioning that Craig Murray is facing legal issues of his own in relation to the trial of Alex Salmond in Scotland: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/09/craig-murray-defence-a… //edit// I posted this in case anyone wanted to chip in for his defence fund, not to attack his credibility.

Murray's report of the first day of the trial also worth reading: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/02/your-man-in-the-public…

Craig Murray has not been shy of calling out The Guardian in the past: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2014/08/rusbridger-handmaiden-… His opinion is fairly extreme, though if you read carefully and follow the links in that post you might conclude that some of his concerns are at least worth bearing in mind.

not only because of the left/right politics, but also because defending Assange as a "journalist" caused them grief. The definition of journalism is at stake: if someone who just posts to the internet is a journalist and can defend their actions as necessary for the operation of a free press, then that includes bloggers[0] and all sorts of riff-raff. Craig Murray's trial had a similar outcome: he's not a "proper" journalist because he doesn't work for a media/newspaper company. And the judge gave an opinion that bloggers should get tougher sentences than journalists[1]. It'll come back to bite the journos, and some of them know this and are saying it. But most are keen to carve out special exemptions for themselves from laws that the rest of us have to follow. [0] In journalism circles, "blogger" is an insult. Source: I used to run a newspaper. [1] https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2021/06/the-mind-of-lady-dorri…

>The crime he’s charged with is that he was willing to (and I think did?) assist in breaking into a computer system to get the docs. I think under the CFAA. They have communication records of this because the person he was talking to was working for the USG. The US government claims this, but it's not been proven. >At some point Russia was also using Wikileaks as a place to target the USG with some plausible deniability and Assange’s personal anti-US politics became a corrupting influence too. This is just more Russiagate nonsense: https://pics.me.me/russiagate-explained-wikileaks-posted-the-dnc-email… >To what extent were the sex related charges against him political or flared up by nation state meddling? There are no charges. There never were any charges. There was an investigation and that's as far as it went. >UPDATE GREAT NEWS: Swedish prosecutors are about to announce the dropping of the investigation into Julian Assange on sexual offence allegations. There never were any charges and the allegations were always nonsense, as detailed in the below article I wrote a month ago: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2017/05/no-rape-charges-julian…

Whatever your views on the particular case being blogged about below, it is widely regarded as being hugely important for the freedom of journalists and journalism. In fact I haven't heard the argument that it isn't, if there is one at all. I've also seen nothing to suggest that the below is some kind of bold fabrication. If you're not worried by it, you probably should be. Whenever you hear "They can't be trusted to analyse and come to the correct conclusion." Means _you_ can't and won't get the chance. Make up your own mind is difficult advice to follow when you're not allowed the information on which to do so. >Even my blog has never been so systematically subject to shadowbanning from Twitter and Facebook as now. Normally about 50% of my blog readers arrive from Twitter and 40% from Facebook. During the trial it has been 3% from Twitter and 9% from Facebook. That is a fall from 90% to 12%. In the February hearings Facebook and Twitter were between them sending me over 200,000 readers a day. Now they are between them sending me 3,000 readers a day. To be plain that is very much less than my normal daily traffic from them just in ordinary times. It is the insidious nature of this censorship that is especially sinister – people believe they have successfully shared my articles on Twitter and Facebook, while those corporations hide from them that in fact it went into nobody’s timeline. My own family have not been getting their notifications of my posts on either…

> I'm very disappointed by the lack of press for such a major extradition case! I completely agree with you here, which is why I'm so glad that the last few articles Murray did on this have been posted here and getting at least some attention. > What can we do other than sharing links to try and get the word out? Sharing the articles by Murray and others is, I think, the best way. Protesting is a: somewhat unhelpful, because that doesn't seem to get picked up by the media either, and also because the government will most likely object to large protests due to the covid situation. However, as Murray noted in other articles, news of the entire trial seems to get you shadowbanned from social media: > Even my blog has never been so systematically subject to shadowbanning from Twitter and Facebook as now. Normally about 50% of my blog readers arrive from Twitter and 40% from Facebook. During the trial it has been 3% from Twitter and 9% from Facebook. That is a fall from 90% to 12%. In the February hearings Facebook and Twitter were between them sending me over 200,000 readers a day. Now they are between them sending me 3,000 readers a day. To be plain that is very much less than my normal daily traffic from them just in ordinary times. It is the insidious nature of this censorship that is especially sinister – people believe they have successfully shared my articles on Twitter and Facebook, while those corporations hide from them that in fact it went into nobody’s timeline.…

This is a good question. Coverage of this trial has been hard to come by. Craig Murray is posting details to his blog but he's also not the most objective witness. Still, he wrote the following[0]: "Magistrate Baraitser then made a statement about access to the court by remote hearing, by which she meant online. She stated that a number of access details had been sent out by mistake by the court without her agreement. She had therefore revoked their access permissions." When I read this, I thought that only certain people had their remove access revoked, for instance Amnesty International. But then he goes on... "Baraitser went on to say that it was important that the hearing was public, but she should only agree remote access where it was 'in the interests of justice', and having considered it she had decided it was not. She explained this by stating that the public could normally observe from within the courtroom, where she could control their behaviour. But if they had remote access, she could not control their behaviour and this was not in the 'interests of justice'." That sounds to me like _everyone's_ remote access had been revoked. [0]: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/09/your-man-in-the-public…

The article about NSA "getting ISIS" mentioned: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24520757 Once there, see the posts by bashinator and _kbh_ for other sources. Back to the topic here, the "technical glitches" were present throughout the process, as reported day after day on: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/ E.g. "This hearing has frequently been interrupted by the strange incompetence of the Ministry of Justice in establishing simple videolinks." "It was not Professor Feldstein’s fault the day finished in confused anti-climax. The court was unable to make the video technology work. For ten broken minutes out of about forty Feldstein was briefly able to give evidence, and even this was completely unsatisfactory as he and Mark Summers were repeatedly speaking over each other on the link." Also playing with the times: "Daniel Ellsberg was to give evidence this afternoon. Edward Fitzgerald QC applied for his videolink evidence to be heard at 3.15pm [(in England)] which is 07.15am in California where Dan lives. Baraitser insisted it could not be put back beyond 2.30 pm, thus forcing an 89 year old man [Daniel Ellsberg] to give evidence at 6.30am [(his local time)]. Simply stunning." The use of internet was also intentionally restricted: The judge "explained this by stating that the public could normally observe from within the courtroom, where she could control their behaviour. But if they had remote access, she could not control their behaviour and this was not in…

Craig Murray's reaction is worth reading [1]. I realize he does not respond to the bail breach directly, but rather to what precipitated this chain of events. > If the Swedish allegations against Julian Assange were genuine and not simply a ruse to arrest him for extradition to the United States, where is the arrest warrant now from Sweden and what are the charges? > Only the more minor allegation has passed the statute of limitations deadline. The major allegation, equivalent to rape, is still well within limits. Sweden has had seven years to complete the investigation and prepare the case. It is over two years since they interviewed Julian Assange in the Ecuadorean Embassy. They have had years and years to collect all the evidence and prepare the charges. > So where, Swedish prosecutors, are your charges? Where is your arrest warrant? > Julian Assange has never been charged with anything in Sweden. He was merely “wanted for questioning”, a fact the MSM repeatedly failed to make clear. It is now undeniably plain that there was never the slightest intention of charging him with anything in Sweden. All those Blairite MPs who seek to dodge the glaring issue of freedom of the media to publish whistleblower material revealing government crimes, by hiding behind trumped-up sexual allegations, are left looking pretty stupid. > [...] [1] https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/04/so-where-is-the-swedis…

This is a very curious thing. I read the article, but I'm not exactly clear on why one is great and noble but the other is not. There's some undercurrent that I would paraphrase as 'limiting the harm' of the leaks by being selective, but that's premised on the idea that the public has no right to know and be informed of what its leaders are doing because diplomacy requires hypocrisy? Or something, at least. I mean, when we get down to this sort of romanticized leaker's code or whatever you what to characterize this as, it seems like truth isn't seen as important, only the leaker's goal and how leaks can be managed via the press. But I would submit that this is no longer functioning very well. I mean, does anyone even believe content-free leaks any more? If you have anonymous officials saying they know things based on circumstantial evidence they won't let you see, can you really believe them knowing it's more than likely part of this gentlemanly leaker's code to plant information in the media? I mean, just look at this for a recent example which discusses this vis a vis credibility quite extensively: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/12/cias-absence-convictio… The thing is, there's no reason to speculate here. We can infer how Podesta got hacked, based purely on public evidence. There's this nice DKIM-validated email, shortly before the leak ends: https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/34899 We know it hasn't been modified because it's signed…

and immediately following this article https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/06/cyber-attack-on-this-s… The site is under a strong denial of service attack from a bot trying to crash it by overloading with millions of pings from multiple locations. I presume the objective is to take down the revelation of the fake MI6 Snowden story, which had been read by tens of thousands already and is now really taking off. While the copyright in that article remains mine, I grant permission for it freely to be reproduced by anybody, anywhere. I shall be grateful for multiple copies to be posted around the web so it can’t be taken down. Some extremely brilliant people have put an awful lot of time and a bit of money on the defences of this blog, making it very hard to crash even by governments, through a cloud hosting system. (OK, you got me, I don’t understand how they do it). With any luck we won’t go down, but backups on that article very welcome. This article will be deleted in an hour or so to put the MI6 lies back at top of the blog.

I saw another example the other day of how things used to work. If you wrote to the UK government in the 1980s to ask (or complain) about their policy towards apartheid South Africa you received a personal reply addressing your points in the context of the government's policy [1]. Presumably, letters to other departments were handled similarly. I've corresponded with the civil service a few times recently and the service now is shite. [1]: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2024/10/who-are-the-terrorists…

That is, in fact, an argument brought up by Assange's lawyers in the recent appeal. I know I've seen this brought up elsewhere as well, here is from Craig Murray: 'The point of foreseeability had not been countered. There was no effort made to counter it. In 2010 it could not have been foreseen that publication would bring espionage charges against the publisher. It had never happened before. Encouraging a whistleblower to produce documents was definitely not unprecedented. That was an absurd claim. It was everyday journalistic activity, as witnesses had testified. No witnesses had been produced to say the opposite.' https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2024/02/assange-final-appeal-y…

I am surprised he got in to the trial given the requirements and rules he posted about earlier. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2024/02/state-secrecy-and-publ…

His own account of the letter (including photo of its contents), his detainment, and the relevant trip: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2023/10/incredibly-i-face-inve… He seems to say they had a focus on a pro-Palestine rally he attended in Iceland (while on a trip about Assange, but current events led to his attendance), and a Twitter post of his (that he had already deleted).

Fair play - HN has a significant number of UK | Canadian | Australian | European members who generally have a broader view of the political landscape .. but it is at core a US centric forum and frequently slips into a stereotypical Left V. Right hole. As an Australian I fall to the left of US politics, I largely agree with the bulk of Craig Murray's writing on UK Immigration under the Tories: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2022/11/rampant-deprofessional… ( went to hell under privatisation and cost cutting, current 'crisis' over exaggerated, etc. )

It'll be interesting to see whether they publish anything about the removal of links to Craig Murray's blog during the Assange extradition hearings in the UK. Murray has claimed[1] that traffic from Twitter and Facebook to his blog had dropped to 1.5%, and that posts including links to it could be seen as having been posted by the poster, but could be verified to be invisible to others. [1] https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/09/your-man-in-the-public…

In 1999. You can read a pro-independence argument on that here[1], as you can tell from this quote: > In 1999 Tony Blair, abetted by the Scottish traitor Donald Dewar, redrew the existing English/Scottish maritime boundary to annex 6,000 square miles of Scottish waters to England, including the Argyll field and six other major oilfields. The idea was specifically to disadvantage Scotland’s case for independence. Whether you think he makes his case or not, it's been a while and it didn't stop the first referendum. [1] https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2012/01/scotlandengland-mariti…

There are definitely some holes in the allegations. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2021/04/pure-ten-points-i-just…

A microcosm of how employees will be treated in the Charter City/ZEDE model can be seen with the recent P & O sackings in the UK https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2022/03/po-and-the-tory-road-t… Indeed DP world, who owns P & O, is in the running to run a free ports in the UK. I don't see how it what they have done is legal: sacking their employees then asking them to come back, to an agency they own for way less than the UK minimum wage, to a UK based company, but there is no appetite to enforce the law.