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Comment by marcus_holmes | Hacker News Reader

The UK is very worried about Scottish Independence. Mr Murray is a very vocal supporter of that, and an active figurehead in the independence movement.

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.

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> that his support of Hamas

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...

Looks more to me like he's a human rights activist that has been targeted by the security state as Naom Chomsky et. al comments in the just posted article.

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.

>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.

> That you want to swiftly send him to jail tells me totalitarianism is becoming fashionable again.

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).

> he'll have a fair trial according to the law.

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.

> 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.

you did what now?

He said every act by Hamas is justified, a week after Hamas murdered 1400 people. As terrorism support goes, you can't be any clearer. He's not "human rights activist", at least human rights of murdered Israelis don't concern him a single little bit. He's pro-terrorist activist who is open and brazen at calling on terrorists to murder more civilians right after they murdered 1400 of them. He's not some innocent bystander. He specifically thrust himself into this on the side of terrorists.

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.

Man, the more I looked into this guy and his co., the more I learnt what a piece of work this guy is.

If he goes to pro Hamas rallies days after Hamas started war with Israel it's kinda hard not to make this conclusion.

I'm from the UK, and my instant reaction is that this is an evidence-free conspiracy-theory. If you have anything to back it up, other than vibes, feel free to say so.

Well, it's also possible they read his Tweet and looked at his background and said "this dangerous person really is going to conduct violent acts in this country, we have no choice but to thwart him by seizing all his electronic devices using the most powerful law in the land, even if it de-legitimizes our use of this law for more serious matters." But since that hypothesis is so obviously cartoonish, it's hard to blame folks who look for more rational explanations like "the government is harassing a political opponent" (whether they're right or wrong.)

> it's hard to blame folks who look for more rational explanations like "the government is harassing a political opponent" (whether they're right or wrong.)

No, it's not, because he's clearly being investigated for supporting Hamas' actions (which classified as a terrorist organization by the UK).

I don't know anything about this person other than what's on his Wikipedia. And what that says is: he's a 65-year old former diplomat and noted human rights activist with (as far as I can tell) zero history of violence or terrorist acts.

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.

You can’t be that naive, can you? It’s obviously not the Tweet they’re worried about. They think the Tweet is indication that he supports Hamas enough to aid or promote them secretly. “If this guy is this outspoken publicly for his support of Hamas, what must he be doing to support them behind closed doors? Does he donate to them? Organize for them?”

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.

No, I think that the tweet is an excuse that allows them to hassle him more, because he's a prominent supporter of Scottish Independence. I don't think this has anything to do with Hamas itself.

> They think the Tweet is indication that he supports Hamas enough to aid or promote them secretly. “If this guy is this outspoken publicly for his support of Hamas, what must he be doing to support them behind closed doors? Does he donate to them? Organize for them?”

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)

Probably if Mary-Sue from Idaho, a shop clerk tweets this it’s not exactly the same if a former diplomat with international connections and public influence does it?

You're grossly overselling his influence. He doesn't have the ear of the powerful or the mob. Even if he were to explicitly call his followers to take up arms - which is a long way past the quoted statement - I very much doubt any of them would.

your "instant reaction" is just as unhelpful as the proscribed "vibes"

> If you have anything to back it up, other than vibes, feel free to say so.

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 ;)

Pro Palestine doesn’t necessarily mean pro Hamas. It usually doesn’t, but of course some people (pro Israel usually) always manipulate/turn it that way. So please let us know where it shows he is pro Hamas vs pro Palestine (and actually against Hamas, which is what I would expect he is).

He explicitly stated his support for Hamas and Hezbollah in this tweet: https://twitter.com/CraigMurrayOrg/status/171333500612114051...

Ah indeed he did. Jikes, he gets his wish then.

Somehow every time somebody goes out to prove "it doesn't mean pro Hamas" it turns out it does. Maybe there's some pattern in it - like if a guy goes to pro Hamas rallies just days after Hamas brutally murdered 1400 people, there's a tiny bit of suspicion he might be pro Hamas?

> The UK is very worried about Scottish Independence. Mr Murray is a very vocal supporter of that, and an active figurehead in the independence movement. > >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.

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.

How does this look in practice? I’m not saying you’re wrong but your formulation suggests that some faceless people at the British Establishment Country Club put down their whiskeys, ordained that mr Murray be bullied and so it went.

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?

>but your formulation suggests that some faceless people at the British Establishment Country Club put down their whiskeys, ordained that mr Murray be bullied and so it went.

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 decades.

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.

> faceless people at the British Establishment Country Club

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.

> charged with contempt of court, for "jigsaw identification" of a witness in another case, that of Alex Salmond

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.

And there's evidence (as Mr Murray documents, which was obviously his "real" crime) that this was all a fit-up by the current SNP leadership to discredit Mr Salmond so that they would be free from criticism from him about the lack of movement on independence and the SNP pivot from independence to culture war issues.

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 am struck by the fact that you can be publicly disgraced while your accusers remain anonymous, and remain such (and I bet suffer no consequence) even after their accusations against you are proven false or irrelevant.

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.

It wasn't a coincidence, it was a carefully co-ordinated campaign (as Mr Murray documented).

Yes, but you can strip "UK" away from that. People habitually and casually abuse their power in almost any instance they have it. If this sounds outlandish to you, that's really nice and you probably shouldn't take that naivete away from yourself. It won't improve your life to know otherwise.

> some faceless people at the British Establishment Country Club put down their whiskeys, ordained that mr Murray be bullied and so it went.

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.

It's the same as any other large organisation. Someone at the top says "oi, so-and-so has been a real pain lately huh". Someone one level down says "is there anything we can do about so-and-so?". Someone the next level down says "well, let's start a file on so-and-so, see if he's up to anything, no harm in that". And then since UK antiterrorism law is terribly written (or brilliantly written, depending on your perspective) such that essentially everyone with even a vague interest in politics breaks it all the time, and the surveillance state means the proof will be a couple of keystrokes away, once you look for a reason to go after someone you find one.

Probably no-one sat down and designed the system to work like this. But it works well for everyone involved, so...

I wonder if something for just this scenario exists in the archives of the political comedy Yes [Prime] Minister. It feels like there should be.

See also Private Eye. Just because it's funny doesn't mean it's not true.

these days Murray is an embarassment to anyone he associates with

if anything the UK gov would want him freely associating with the SNP

not locked up where he's prevented from embarrassing them

He's pretty anti-SNP these days

Is it? Most members of the Conservative Party would be overjoyed at Scottish independence - it would give them a permanent majority (or at least, would have done had they not had their ridiculous dalliance with Liz Truss).

The Conservative Party have always been against the breakup of the United Kingdom. I'm not a member so I don't know why, but I suspect any/all of the following: loss of North Sea Oil rights, history, weird effect on the monarchy, reunified Ireland immediately afterwards, Scotland rejoining the EU leaving England and Wales as this weird little bit of non-EU island.

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.

Can you give an example of him supporting hammas?

I could not find any.

https://x.com/CraigMurrayOrg/status/1713335006121140511

What did it say? Tweet seemingly was removed.

Not sure how formatting will go, from desktop twitter:

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

Dang, he forgot to mention that one in the article…

Section 1 extends the offence of inviting support for a proscribed organisation in section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000 to cover expressions of support that are reckless as to whether they will encourage others to support the organisation;

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.

A bit dishonest from him, right? Given his background, he should know better and probably did.

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