Judging Freedom - Amb. Craig Murray : Stop the Genocide!

Episode Date: June 27, 2024

Amb. Craig Murray : Stop the Genocide!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, June 27, 2024. Ambassador Craig Murray joins us now. Ambassador Murray, it's a pleasure, sir. Thank you very much for joining us and for taking your time to share your thoughts and ideas. I must tell our audience that Ambassador Murray is running for the House of Commons. Forgive me, I don't remember the name of the party, but it's on the party that is headed by the great George Galloway. And needless to say, we wish you well, Ambassador. Those of us who believe that truth should trump power have been rejoweet because the Department of Justice, so-called justice in America, has still got its pound of flesh by compelling him to plead guilty. As a former judge, I can tell you many people plead guilty to crimes that they didn't commit in order to stop

the prosecution or to save somebody else from prosecution. It's very, very common and judges understand that. But putting aside for a moment our joy at Julian's release, Ambassador, how significant is it for the documents and data that he did release that we know this stuff rather than that we don't know it. I think it's extremely important. I mean, it is not in dispute that the data that Julian released through WikiLeaks that he's been prosecuted, he's had to plead guilty for obtaining and releasing, included evidence of crimes, evidence of war crimes, evidence of other human rights violations, egregious human rights violations up to and including killing of journalists.

And it remains the case that nobody who committed any of those crimes has ever spent a day in jail. And the chap who revealed the crimes spent half of his adult life in jail as a result of revealing the crimes. That in no way can be seen as justice. But what Julian did changed the world forever i think it it was it opened the floodgates of internet freedom it did a huge amount towards uh kick-starting the alternative media towards giving people the understanding that the corporate media doesn't give you the full picture doesn't tell you the truth in fact that the world is a very different place than the world portrayed by the the corporate media and that that achievement in a kind of liberation of a public consciousness is i think very important and one thing i think we always ought to remember remember when we talk about freedom of speech it's not so much why it's important. It's not the freedom of the individual to speak out and tell troops. That's that I'll give opinions.

But of course, that's important. But it's the freedom of others to hear those opinions, to learn things. It's the freedom to know. Freedom of speech is the freedom for others to know what it is you are saying. And I like to come at it from that angle it's interesting you say that ambassador uh because i don't want to get too deep into the weeds but the supreme court of the united states in a very famous case known colloquially as the pentagon papers case it's actually united states of amer America versus the New York Times and the Washington

Post. This is Daniel Ellsberg back in the 70s, who stole 70,000 or 7,000 pages of documents showing that the government's generals were lying to LBJ about Lyndon Johnson about Vietnam and that LBJ was lying to the public. The Nixon administration got a court order prohibiting the publication of the documents. The Supreme Court did something it has rarely done in history because there's an intermediate appellate court between the trial court and the Supreme Court. Supreme Court reached right down to the trial court, bypassed the intermediate appellate court, took the case and ruled six to three that when a publisher acquires materials of interest to the public,

he may publish them free of civil liability and criminal prosecution, no matter how he got them. Here's my point. They also established in that case, just what you said, that in America, the First Amendment protects not only the right to speak freely, but the right to know what the government is doing. Because if the people don't know what the government is doing, whether it's killing or something else that the government wants to hide, it is not a democracy if it's not transparent. I don't know what the story is in Great Britain. I'll ask you about that in a few moments. The American government still tries to hide these things, and you're right. You probably watched these films. When I was at Fox News and had a show there, we ran some of the tapes that Julian revealed. It looks horrible when you see Apache helicopters slaughtering civilians. If you listen to the audio, your stomach churns, because A, you hear indifference, B, you hear mockery by the people who did this. And you're

right. No one was ever prosecuted. I don't know if President Bush gave those people immunity. We will probably or pardon them. You can't give them immunity. Only a judge can. We'll never know. But Bush was never prosecuted. Cheney was never prosecuted. And the people that perpetrated this were never prosecuted. How is this playing in England? Is Julian perceived as a hero or a goat? Are people grateful for what he revealed? Or I was on with Piers Morgan the other day with a female member of the parliament. I don't remember her name. She was rejoicing in the guilty plea and in her wish, he should have stayed in Belmarsh

for the rest of his life without a trial, without a trial. She should be careful what she wishes for because if the government can lock somebody up without a trial, as it did Julian, it could do it to anybody. Take it from there, please. I think this is another area where there's a huge gap between public opinion and the political class. And I think public opinion, there's no doubt that majority of public opinion in the UK is rejoicing at Julian's release.

That's not the, what I might call, establishment opinion, but it is public opinion. But that public opinion has changed and and turned and it's good good you mentioned daniel ellsberg earlier um i you know i i knew dan and had the honor to have been a guest in his home in california and um he was one of many people in the campaign for jul and so many great, great personal friends and campaigners. The campaign's been going on so long, we lost people along the way. You know, some people didn't make it to the end of it. Dan Ellsberg, John Pilger, Vivian Westwood, Gavin McFadden, a number of wonderful campaigners for liberty and freedom champions of liberty i would call them who

who were integral to the campaign but those people turned around public opinion and it was the turning around of public opinion that has resulted in this uh this release because uh my view is there are two reasons it happened now one is is I think the Justice Department realised they were quite likely to actually lose at the next extradition hearing. They painted themselves into a corner over assurances they hadn't really given. But secondly, I do think that Biden didn't need Julian arriving in Washington in chains during his election campaign. That would

be a very bad look indeed, a big attack on freedom of speech in the most graphic way by a Democratic president. I think the fact that public opinion had been turned is what enabled us to get Julian out. And I think this is a tremendous example of the fact that you can win. In a long, difficult campaign where everything seemed against us at the start, both all the sort of established politicians and pretty well all the corporate media, eventually we got that turned around. Let's talk about the issues in your campaign. How can we get the Israelis to stop the genocide in Gaza? I mean, you and George are just two voices, and it appears that the new prime minister will be Sarkir Starmer,

who's just as bellicose in this respect, correct me if my understanding is wrong, as the current prime minister. I mean, Keir Starmer has described himself as unequivocally Zionist and as a supporter of Israel, and he continually harps on about Israel's right to self-defense, he has refused to acknowledge that Israel has committed a single walker. And, you know, I've seen him on television where he's been shown a video of small children being

shot by snipers and left to die. And and he says well i you know as a lawyer i can't really say i'm just seeing the video i don't know what what other true facts of his instance humming and and and havering and and just avoiding the question uh he's um i i would say he's probably more pro-israel than the current conservative government and certainly he's refused to countenance the idea of stopping arms sales to israel for example um so yeah we have again like in the united states i think we have on so many key issues the two political parties aren't really two political parties if you have democracy there needs to be a choice and the way you vote needs to give you a choice of policy you vote one way something happens you vote the other way the other thing happens whereas our democracy

nothing different happens the only thing that changes is a different clown gets his fingers in the till to steal money that that's what democracy has come down to, unfortunately. I want to interrupt you for a moment because the situation is precisely the same in America. Those of us who bemoan this, as you do, you are more eloquent about it than we are, refer to this gaggle as the Uniparty in the American Congress. It's about 90% of them. Please continue. Yeah.

No, I think that's exactly right. And that runs throughout pretty well all the ramifications of foreign policy. We have increasing attacks on civil liberties. We have a new National Security Act which says that you may not hold a rambly a rally or assembly or demonstration if it inconveniences someone well any demonstration any public uh public exercise the right of freedom of speech is going to inconvenience somebody. If it doesn't, you're not doing it right. So it really gives unlimited powers to the state to shut down freedom of speech. And the lack of concern among the political class for the rights that our ancestors fought and died for, concerns me enormously.

For me, that's really a major issue in this election. As I think you know, I was myself subject to detention and questioning under the Terrorism Act, under which you're not entitled to remain silent, you're not entitled to a lawyer and you are not to answer any question in full is itself an offense uh with a maximum two years in prison but not answering the question um the nobody getting the mainstream media to concentrate on these astonishing violations of the hard-won freedoms that traditionally we enjoyed, as we slide towards being a very different kind of state,

is to me a major, major concern. Let's look at Ukraine for a few minutes, Mr. Ambassador. Are we in danger of the British government deploying troops on the ground in Ukraine, whether Prime Minister Sunak in the next week, I guess, or Sirkir when he becomes Prime Minister? I don't believe they will deploy troops on the ground in any active service role. I think they already have covered special forces on the ground assisting the Ukrainians, and they openly have people there who are said to be in training roles. I certainly don't think they'll put in combat troops.

I don't think they're quite that mad. But what is happening, which is extremely dangerous, is they are providing deliberately more and more long-range weapons to strike deep into the heart of Russia, and they are providing intelligence, targeting information, and technical help to the Ukrainians to help the Ukrainians attack targets. And those targets specifically seem to include Russia's air defenses and Russia's anti-ballistic missile defenses, and its early warning system. If you start deliberately to take apart Russia's ability to defend itself against nuclear attack, you are bringing us nowhere closer to provoking a nuclear war than we were at the time of the Cuba missile crisis, for example. This, to me, is utterly irresponsible behavior.

And the Ukraine war rumbles on and on. The UK has given so far 100 billion pounds, over 100 billion pounds yet, militarily, Ukraine is in a worse position than it was two years ago. And there's no way it can win this war without inflicting so much damage on Russia itself, on the heart of Russia, that it would be bound to provoke nuclear war. There's no way that you can actually win this war without provoking nuclear annihilation.

So, of course, we know a lot of it is about the money. There's huge corruption. Ukraine's one of the most corrupt countries in the world, possibly the most corrupt. And their kickbacks, their kickbacks from the arms trade, it's not necessarily about winning the war. It's about making money out of the war and prolonging the war. But at some stage, they're going to out of ukrainians willing to die for them last sunday um an american uh missile was uh exploded over a beach in sebastopol and out came little bomblets known colloquially as cluster bombs. These are

illegal under international law and in almost every country in the world, not Ukraine, not Russia, not China, not the U.S., and Russian civilians, including children, were killed. In the Russian mind, as you perceive it, is the United States at war with Russia? I think this is tipping over from being a proxy war to being an actual war. Once you start deliberately using – and cluster bombs are basically anti-civilian weapons. Yeah. They're designed to make that area uninhabitable by civilians. Once you start targeting the Russian population with missiles,

which are not just sold by America, they are given by America in order to attack Russian civilians, and they are serviced by Americans with American targeting and intelligence help and training help. Yes, it is. Russia is quite rightly to perceive this as an American attack on Russia. And I cannot understand. I just cannot understand what on earth the end game is. I cannot see how they think that there is a happy ending to this. Because you're not going to win the war. You're not going to win a conventional war. Ukraine cannot win a conventional war against Russia.

It's comparatively tiny, much place much smaller economy much smaller um armed forces even with uh cluster bombs and other such horrible munitions uh the only way to win it would be to use uh such forces and such massive munitions are going to provoke nuclear war. So the whole situation is flirting with the annihilation of the entire population, of the entire human race, for no gain, except for gain in kickbacks. How do you see this ending? Maybe it's an unfair question because we're in the middle of a presidential campaign here in the U.S. Who knows what Trump will do? He's the acknowledged winner now, but anything can happen. The president, Biden, is rising in the polls and narrowing the gap between

them. They're debating publicly tonight. But surely this can't go on much longer, as you say, no matter what military equipment the West provides. Where is France and where is Germany? For a while, President Macron was making noises like he wants to send troops. He stopped saying that. Chancellor Scholz is saying, no way are we sending troops. This is after a conversation of three or four of his generals was infamously taped and recorded, arguing that they should defy the chancellor. Where is mainstream Western Europe on this? Why do they want to pick a fight with Russia? Why don't they acknowledge that Ukraine can't win?

Extraordinary. In a sense, they are acknowledging that Ukraine can't win while considering sending their own troops. know but that plainly is uh an acknowledgement that ukrainian troops themselves are not going to win they do realize that at some at some level um but the idea that the alternative is to start the third world war because you know let's be absolutely clear about it if france or germany were to send troops to start fighting russia that would be the start of world war three it it would be but there's no other way to describe it and it would escalate and get worse very very quickly um you have you have a number ofism you have a media demonization of russia and a portrayal of russia as an existential threat to the west which russia is not um which has caused this monster of anti-russian sentiment

which the politicians are riding and they can't pull back by without losing popularity because they're going against the wave they created. And I think it's very important to say that it's been plain to me, and I was writing about this many years ago, 15 or so years ago I was writing about this, it's always been plain to me that Putin does have an agenda to absorb back into Russiaussia if necessary by conquest those parts of the former soviet union which are majority russian speaking but that's always been his goal it's always been quite

obviously his goal if you look at his uh actions in the Russian population who, for one reason or another, ended up outside of the Russian Federation in Soviet administrative units, which is what the Soviet Socialist Republics were. Now, that's really quite limited. And virtually all of the territory which would give you that goal has now been acquired. The only exception are parts of Kazakhstan that Putin's never shown any real interest in absorbing. But the idea that he wishes to do more than that, the idea that Russia is going to attack Western Europe is plainly a nonsense. Russia has never had any plans whatsoever to send Russian troops marching through London. Politicians have created this idea of this existential threat to the Western Putin, which simply doesn't exist.

Here is President Putin saying, look, we once had a peace agreement. I've said that a hundred times. Cut number six. An outcome of our talks in Istanbul. Why no one remembers that? I said that a hundred times. We had an agreement. The document was signed by the Ukrainian representative as well. It means that the agreements reached in Istanbul were acceptable for the Ukrainian side. So what happened on the ground, on the battlefield, that now allows them to make any additional demands that had nothing to do with the talks

in Istanbul. Even some in the Western media are now finally and reluctantly acknowledging that that agreement, which President Putin once described by holding his fingers up, showing an inch and a half thick, initialed by both sides, was an actual agreement until then Prime Minister of Great Britain, Boris Johnson, was dispatched by President Biden to talk President Zelensky out of it. And here we are, 500,000 Ukrainian young men dead or so disabled that they can't expect to have normal lives afterwards. Yes, I was there in Turkey.

I went there for those discussions, which were done by proximity talks rather than direct between the parties. And certainly the outline of an agreement and quite a lot of the detail of the agreement was decided upon and it was getting to the stage. When you negotiate these international agreements, you have negotiators on the ground to do the work, and then, of course, you have to go back to the senior leaders and ministers in both countries in order to get it finalised.

And I did that myself, for example, when I was a British diplomat. I negotiated the Sierra Leone-Liberian civil war peace agreement. So the technical experts, if you like, had reached a very promising agreement through proximity talks. And then it was deliberately torpedoed by the United States. There was a slightly theatrical appearance by Boris Johnson appearing in his role as United States sidekick, really. But it was actually really the United States rather than the United Kingdom which torpedoed it.

And essentially they said, look, they said to the Ukrainians, if you do make a deal with Russia, then the slush funds are going to dry up. Your access to tens and tens of millions of dollars personally for you and all your ministers is going to stop. And that was simply how they put a stop to that. thing is that I'm pretty certain that when half a million dead people later, when agreement is finally reached and the war finally stops, it's actually going to look very little different to that agreement that could have been finalized two years ago. Russia will probably come out of it slightly more advantageously because of the amount of ground it's given during the fighting. But it's gained during the fighting. My expectation is that actually Putin

will be prepared to give quite a bit of that up and go back to the agreement. We've really had two years where, I don't know how much, maybe getting on for, in total, probably half a trillion dollars has been spent and half a million people have died for no gain whatsoever to anybody,

except, as I say, the people who benefit from corrupt contracts. I did not know that you were there, and your personal observations, of course, are invaluable. Mr. Ambassador, we'll let you go. I know it looks like you're at your campaign headquarters now or at a campaign facility. You know we wish you well. My joy would be to have you and George Galloway on together celebrating your joint victory sometime after July 4th.

And, of course, you recall the significance of July 4th in America. That little piece of paper called the Declaration of Independence written by that fellow George III wanted to hang by the name of Thomas Jefferson. That would be marvelous. If we weren't, you'll have to live it a couple of days after July 4th for me to sober up, I'm afraid. Indeed, I would expect nothing but that. All the best to you, Mr. Ambassador. Thank you. Thank you. Wonderful human being and with profound insight. Our day still to come

at nine o'clock, Dr. All Times Eastern, as usual, Dr. Gilbert, Dr. O at 1.30, Robert Gage, who knew about 9-11 before it happened, at 2 o'clock, Phil Giraldi, at 3.15, Colonel Douglas McGregor, at 4 o'clock, Max Blumenthal, at 5 o'clock, Professor John Mearsheimer, Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.