All Law is Gone: Naked Power Remains - Craig Murray, Former Ambassador, Human Rights Activist

[Catherina]

All Law is Gone: Naked Power Remains

Craig Murray
Former Ambassador, Human Rights Activist

All Law is Gone: Naked Power Remains

by craig on July 3, 2013 8:39 am in Uncategorized

The forcing down of the Bolivian President’s jet was a clear breach of the Vienna Convention by Spain and Portugal, which closed their airspace to this Head of State while on a diplomatic mission. It has never been thought necessary to write down in a Treaty that Heads of State enjoy diplomatic immunity while engaged in diplomacy, as their representatives only enjoy diplomatic immunity as cyphers for their Head of State. But it is a hitherto unchallenged precept of customary international law, indeed arguably the oldest provision of international law.

To the US and its allies, international law is no longer of any consequence. I can see no evidence that anyone in an official position has even noted the illegality of repeated Israeli air and missile strikes against Syria. Snowden, Manning and Assange all exposed illegality on a massive scale, and no action whatsoever has been taken against any of the criminals they exposed. Instead they are being hounded out of all meaningful life and ability to function in society.

I have repeatedly posted, and have been saying in public speeches for ten years, that under the UK/US intelligence sharing agreements the NSA spies on UK citizens and GCHQ spies on US citizens and they swap the information. As they use a shared technological infrastructure, the division is simply a fiction to get round the law in each country restricting those agencies from spying on their own citizens.

...

The Guardian published the truth on 29 June:

At least six European Union countries in addition to Britain have been colluding with the US over the mass harvesting of personal communications data, according to a former contractor to America’s National Security Agency, who said the public should not be “kept in the dark”. This article has been taken down pending an investigation.

Wayne Madsen, a former US navy lieutenant who first worked for the NSA in 1985 and over the next 12 years held several sensitive positions within the agency, names Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain and Italy as having secret deals with the US.

Madsen said the countries had “formal second and third party status” under signal intelligence (sigint) agreements that compels them to hand over data, including mobile phone and internet information to the NSA if requested.

Under international intelligence agreements, confirmed by declassified documents, nations are categorised by the US according to their trust level. The US is first party while the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand enjoy second party relationships. Germany and France have third party relationships.

...

I can give, and I would give on oath, an eye witness guarantee that from my direct personal experience of twenty years as a British diplomat the deleted information from Wayne Madsen was true.

http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2013/07/all-law-is-gone-naked-power-remains/

Craig Murray has often been glowingly cited, consistently so, on DU. Is he under the bus now too? http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Craig+Murray%22&sitesearch=democraticunderground.com

[mick063]

1. Bin Laden won.

Really, his strategic brilliance is of historic proportion.

With a couple of jets and a handful of martyrs, he prompted the self destruction of the most powerful representative democracy in history.

I despise the man beyond measure, but I have to say.....

Sheer genius

[Sherman A1]

2. Precisely

However, I believe much of this was in place prior to his actions on that day. Certainly the program(s) was ramped up and the technology improved considerably since that time, but I don't think it just started in 2001.

[mick063]

6. The program may have been in place

But bin Laden facilitated public acceptance.

Before 9/11 the uproar would have been deafening.

The terrorist fear campaign is propaganda driven of course. Your chances of dying from a spouse's gunshot are statistically much greater than dying from a terrorist attack.

Certainly a sensationalized fear campaign by those that could not be fiscally weaned from the profitable cold war.

[Downwinder]

4. I could rest much easier if I thought he was the architect of all this.

[chimpymustgo]

28. EXACTLY!! We are in the Matrix, I am afraid.

[DeSwiss]

5. Believe me, he wasn't that smart.

He had a lot of help. Remember we hired him for one job and he saw opportunities he hadn't seen before, until after we trained him and showed him what we really were.

- And he sure as hell didn't fly any planes into Building 7.....

Nice try tho.....

[zeemike]

10. Yep they did it right before our eyes

and told us we did not see what we saw.
And anyone that said they saw it was ridiculed as a CTer...and it worked.
Even here you will catch some shit for saying it.
The emperor has no close.

[BehindTheCurtain76]

9. They All Won

Just waiting for the ostriches to waste everyone's time with Snowden and Greenwald smears...so hilariously sickening to see DUers attack Glenn because this got outed on Obama's watch...it doesn't matter who the figurehead is...the trajectory remains the same and it aint pretty. Glenn is a gay, civil rights, human rights activist lawyer turned journalist to focus on actually changing all the things we hated under Bush. To see people here compare him to FOX news and the fetid Eric Bolling simply because he is out there talking to whoever will listen is misguided. I have to wonder if it's sock-puppet online punditry when even Dennis Kucinich is demonized as a turn-coat traitor just because he is the alternative viewpoint on FOX...everyone here knows full well the Roman phrase "divide and conquer" yet do they not see that is what's happening before our very eyes? It's a scam perpetrated on us by the 1% because they don't have enough muscle on their own to keep the people down so they prefer to engineer society to fight each other and maintain enough stability and balance to plunder the earth. They have a lot of money and that means they can manipulate public opinion and not just on TV anymore...on the internet too. I just can't believe how many people are targeting the messenger, Snowden, instead of focusing on the real problem which is dossiers on every single person down to the last keystroke replete with % ratings to label your predictability to be a terrorist or radical...which could mean big trouble during a crisis. Blogged about revolting against Bush and his fascist ways back in 2006? Well that is in your file tied to your IP address and the same goes for crazy conservatives and what they blogged about Obama since 2008...for whatever reason...it could be terrorist profiling or worse it could be "dissenter" profiling. The people in power themselves must be even more scared than us lowly "dissenters" because all this collected info would be much more targeted at them for leverage or blackmail purposes to further an agenda...similar to the military industrial complex agenda but with a more Homeland Security bent. This is very serious in my opinion and is way beyond partisanship...I personally look at it as a continuation of Bush, and his family are the ones who started all this...or at least managed it for some very shadowy investors.

[zeemike]

13. Yep and welcome to DU.

[countmyvote4real]

16. Kick

[Jackpine Radical]

17. Impressive "early-career" post.

Yes.

Drop in for one.

[chimpymustgo]

29. Excellent post. Welcome to DU. Remember to use paragraphs!

[DeSwiss]

32. YES!

- That's the only word your post needs.

[Eddie Haskell]

15. Sarcasm?

Or jest.

[1-Old-Man]

27. Mick, if were were the most powerful representative democracy in history he couldn't have done it

We were fooled in to our destruction by our own "leaders", we can not blame it on Bin Laden, it was ours and us who failed.

[lunasun]

30. it's not what is done to you = it is your reaction to it

but but but but.....
Flame on villagers.......

[RILib]

34. Things were bad before Bin Laden

They just got worse - NSA, Post Office, that crap wsa going on longer than that.

[jwirr]

37. Unfortunately I think you are right. The enemy from within.

[DeSwiss]

3. They're just taking down the ol' scenery......

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.” ~Frank Zappa

- K&R

[cantbeserious]

7. Roger That - We Are All But Props To The Oligarchs - Human Cattle

eom

[Junkdrawer]

14. Yep. The International Rollout of the Panopticon...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022994688

[East Coast Pirate]

8. The talking point is that the U.S. had nothing to do with it.

A few European countries decided not to refuel the plane for no good reason.

[Junkdrawer]

11. My guess:

The deep, multinational state wants WW III before the Chinese/Russian alliance becomes Top Dog.

Some elements of the surface state are resisting.

The Mother of All Political Battles is occurring right now.

[Laelth]

40. Very interesting theory. n/t

-Laelth

[xchrom]

12. du rec.

[Waiting For Everyman]

18. K&R

[struggle4progress]

19. Uzbekistan was no doubt a shizzy diplomatic post; he seems smart enough;

and I expect his allegations about CIA torture were on the whole true

Sadly, that doesn't affect my suspicion that Mr Murray may simply be an unprincipled and unreliable opportunist who finally decided it would be convenient to raise a stink about Uzbekistan in an attempt to insulate himself from the consequences of his own behavior

The British Ambassador, The Uzbek Stripper And The Dictator Who Boils Men Alive
... He was forced to resign, he thinks, because he stumbled upon the American "extraordinary rendition" program, whereby terror suspects are flown for questioning to countries where they can, say, boil people. But it did not help that also, he was sort of a drunk who left his wife for an Uzbek heroin addict's daugher who stripped at a North Korean club and was dating a 19-year-old American soldier when first she laid eyes on him ...
http://jezebel.com/351847/the-british-ambassador-the-uzbek-stripper-and-the-dictator-who-boils-men-alive

The Envoy & His Navel Liaison
By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, February 1, 2008
... British Ambassador Craig Murray found her when she was 21, dancing for tips in a sleazy club in Tashkent, the capital. He tucked $20 into her embroidered panties, walked away from his wife and two children and brought his belly dancer to London to start a new life together. Their liaison, now recounted nightly in her autobiographical London stage play, ultimately cost him his career -- that, and the small matter of accusing Uzbek President Islam Karimov of running a torture state, and accusing Britain and the United States of using intelligence that Karimov's men tortured out of suspects in the name of the "war on terror" ...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/31/AR2008013103501.html

[sibelian]

20. Well, my oh my. Craig Murray too, huh?

My goodness me. So many of these dreadfully unprincipled people saying so many terrible, terrible things.

Isn't it just the most amazing coincidence that all of their stories are undermined by deep, twisty personality flaws? Perhaps having deep twisty personality flaws predisposes one to saying bad things about America.

Is Craig a narcissist?

[struggle4progress]

38. Perhaps you need to work on your reading comprehension

[malaise]

21. Craig Murray is correct

People are finding out slowly what was done in their names under Bush and Cheney.
The question is how to undo it all.

[chimpymustgo]

31. And STOP doing it!

[KoKo]

22. Recommend!

[Junkdrawer]

24. If you want to see the tell-tale signs of Imperial Collapse...

This is it.

China has the bigger checkbook...

We have the bigger military/surveillance state...

This will NOT be fun.

[polly7]

23. K&R. nt.

[Recursion]

25. Err... the plane landed after mechanical problems, no? (nt)

[starroute]

33. No -- nobody is even claiming that

There is controversy about exactly what did happen, but mechanical problems have never been mentioned.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/edward-snowden-saga-bolivia-accuses-europe-of-kidnapping-bolivian-president-in-forcing-evo-morales-plane-to-land-in-vienna-8682610.html

Bolivia claimed that France, Portugal, Spain and Italy blocked the plane from flying over their territories, forcing the unscheduled stopover in Vienna. There was no evidence that Mr Snowden, wanted by Washington for espionage after divulging classified details of US phone and Internet surveillance, had left the transit area of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport.

French officials denied on Wednesday that France refused to let the Bolivian president's plane cross over its airspace amid suspicions that Mr Snowden was aboard. Spain, too, said the plane was free to cross its territory.

[cali]

26. k&r- not just for the truth, something that is highly subjective

but for facts.

thanks Catherina

[Octafish]

35. "I'm not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker."

Kick.

[starroute]

36. General point well taken -- but I still don't trust Wayne Madsen

Madsen has been right at times, but he's been wrong more often than right, especially when he claims inside sources. And Murray has at times appeared to buy into speculative theories that could not be confirmed.

Those reservations aside, though, it's absolutely true that the US no longer has any respect for international norms. The GOP has discovered in domestic politics that there are advantages to be gained by doing things so outrageous or even unconstitutional that your opponents never see them coming. And I'm afraid that the country as a whole is following the same path.

[truedelphi]

41. We might share the same "intuitive" and beyond reaction to Madsen.

For a while one of his biggest pieces talked abut how the Bush family handled every Nasty Deed from Iran Contra all the way back to the Kennedy assassination. And what irked me was the way he had it all tied into one and only one bank account.

Like any nefarious crime family - over the decades, the Bush family would have more than one bank account.

[idwiyo]

39. K&R