Craig Murray, the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, was on BBC News 24 this evening speaking about the British marines captured by Iran, attached is a video clip of this, the very start is missing, but it illustrates the points he has been making in his blog about this dispute.
In the attached clip Craig Murray says:
Those red lines going out to sea have just been invented by the British Government.
They are not internationally recognised, they are not the subject of any international treaty.
So, the British Government, I'm perfectly prepared to believe, the coordinates of where it happened, but there's no way of telling if those are Iranian or Iraqi waters because they are disputed.
If you measure the precise coordinate it is actually closer to Iranian land than it is to Iraqi land, which is an interesting fact.
I really don't think it helps for us to be saying this was clearly Iraqi water when everyone knows this is subject to an international maritime dispute, it will just put the Iranian backs up further.
Previous articles on Indymedia about Craig Murray include the video and audio recording of a talk he gave in Sheffield in October 2006, Legality, Morality and the War on Terror.
Craig Murray's site is at www.craigmurray.co.uk.
Comments
Hide the following 7 comments
Groundhog Day
29.03.2007 06:47
Let's hope we can double the public outrage that we saw in the run up to the Iraq war. We'll need it!
Bill Murray
no chance bill
29.03.2007 08:59
audiotech
audiotech
Audiotech
29.03.2007 09:38
I think the fact that Britain's largest ever demo changed little on a superficial level, but I think it did the government serious damamge on the mainstream level. I admit nowhere near enough, but it was a good start.
It also gave birth to Military Families against War. We had Reg Keys shaming Blair on his own doorstep. We have had Pitstop Ploughares winning against the Irish government and other important victories in England regarding blockades.
It's slow progress, but it is progress.
On an anecdotal level, there may be a lot of apathy, but I have never in my life seen such general contempt for the government and its relationship with US right across all walks of life.
The disgust is there, but like you say the apathy is the big problem. We've got generations of people feeling unable to make any difference to fight against.
Bill Murray
New Labour: Time to Go Rally?
29.03.2007 10:42
The dead left should have organised a rally against Tony Blair ages ago, he is such a figure of popular hatred that thousands would have attended. However he is about to leave office, so how about an Anti-New Labour Rally/March/Action.
The reclaim the streets lot were by far the most effective at organising fluffy and funky demonstration - so how about Reclaim Parliament Square or The Hyde Park Free Festival or New Labour: Time to Go.
Of course it may also require mobilising daily mail readers and blue rinse tories from the shires, but what the hell - a free festival against Tony might just make them a little bit more tolerant and the old Bill are less keen on kicking the shit out of the middle classes.
Basil Brush
Basil Brush
29.03.2007 11:12
Yeah, the old tactics are fatally devisive. A free festival would scare the utter shit out of the Establishment. The only problem I can forsee is getting anyone bigger than Ms Dynamite and George Michael to stand on a stage and say "Fuck this shit. we need REAL change!"
Live8 was a sorry state of affairs.
Reclaiming PS is a bloody excellent idea. How about on the anniversary of the establishment of the House of Commons?
Bill Murray
the B. Liar.
29.03.2007 13:15
We have just seen Blair digging a bigger hole for himself, and doing his best to ensure that the Soldiers will be held in Iranian nuclear centers as human shields. If he had kept his big mouth shut the captured soldiers might all be free by now.
Is there any punishment suitable for such an Idiot in Office? His stupidity suggests he is an Iranian Mole!
Blair and Hain have contrived to get much credit for our friends in Northern reland talking to each other. The credit for that should go to the Provos who switched their bombing campaign from terrorist spectaculars killing people, to attacking the UK transport system by blowing motorway bridges. Within weeks of that switch, Prime Minister John Major announced that as soon as the people of Northern Ireland voted for Irish Unification they could have it. That virtually stopped the bombings. There might also have been a vote in Eire that had some effect. Nothing that B.Liar and his henchmen have done is creditworthy, they harvest what others sowed.
There are lessons there for the soggy leftists who demonstrate. When Blair ignored the demonstrating millions, there were only two Railwaymen who did anything realistic to stop the war. They were not backed up.
Ilyan
Tired
01.04.2007 03:10
Miss Dynamite is obviously fit...but she's just a lady Ali G.
Nothing changes anything.
More freedom please invisible powers.
Feed me baby.
Zanbero Baboomakka