Craig Murray's blog

The blog of a former UK diplomat of rare perspicacity and integrity, whose blog was "jolted back out of retirement" by the "horrifying" spectacle of Tony Blair speaking at Ariel Sharon’s Funeral

 http://www.craigmurray.org.uk
Started: March 2005
Founder: Craig Murray

Founder/Owner: Craig Murray
Constitutes: Independent media

Craig Murray's blog receives regular posts of thoughtful material by the former UK ambassador. For example, he pointed out evidence that the BBC had edited the soundtrack of Dr. Rola without informing viewers, something which the BBC later admitted after enquiry by Robert Stuart.

Going dark

On 31 July 2021, having been sentenced to eight months imprisonment for the "jigsaw identification" of complainers in the Alex Salmond case, Craig Murray wrote:

"This blog will be going dark for a few months. The Queen kindly paid for my dinners for over twenty years while I was a British diplomat and Ambassador, and now she is going to be paying for my dinners again. That is very kind, I thought she had forgotten me."

2018 Surge in popularity

Craig Murray's blog rose in popularity during the last 2 weeks of March 2018, when he was reporting about the Skripal affair. Alexa's data indicates that the site's global rank rose from about 200,000 to about 100,000. This was in spite of a denial of service attack which was launched in March 2018. By mid April, it was reached #73,626 in the world, and #3,131 in the UK.

Censorship

Craig's blog attracts sometimes hundreds of comments. Some of these he removes as "off topic", including any posts about 9/11, which has prompted Peter Presland to reflect on why.

 

Related Document

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Craig Murray and 9-11	article	30 January 2010	Peter	A reply to Craig Murray's article explaining his embargo on any further discussion of 9-11 in the comments section of his blog

 

Documents sourced from Craig Murray's blog

Title	Type	Subject(s)	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Bigger than 911	article	HMS Astute grounding	23 October 2010	Craig Murray	Some light relief at the expense of the MOD and its Trident nuclear missile carrying submarine fleet.
Document:A Moment in History	blog post	Labour Friends of Israel Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn Parliamentary Labour Party	26 June 2019	Craig Murray	It is ESSENTIAL that every Labour Party member reading this blog acts NOW to try to get rid of those dreadful Blairite MPs. If you do not act, the historic moment will be missed and the chance to move England and Wales away from neoliberalism may be permanently surrendered.
Document:A New Left Wing Party in the UK?	blog post	George Galloway Jeremy Corbyn Andrew Feinstein Israel/Lobby Peace and Justice Project Workers Party of Britain Collective Party Pamela Fitzpatrick	18 September 2024	Craig Murray	Initially any new party needs to be led by Jeremy to establish itself. George should be Deputy Leader. Neither man would wish to serve for an extended period. I would like to see Andrew Feinstein eventually lead, not least because he most definitely would not want to do it.
Document:All Pretence is Over in Persecution of Assange	blog post	Wikileaks James Arbuthnot Emma Arbuthnot Julian Assange/Imprisonment	14 February 2018	Craig Murray	“Lady” Arbuthnot has perhaps performed an unwitting public service by the brazen nature of her partiality, which exposes beyond refutation the charade of legal process behind the effort to arrest Assange, in reality over the publication of USA secrets.
Document:American Presidents	blog post	Joe Biden Donald Trump US/2020 Presidential election Kamala Harris	4 November 2020	Craig Murray	On the US election I showed my limitations with a tweet yesterday evening predicting Joe Biden would win fairly comfortably, and Trump would concede with good grace. I was wrong.
Document:An Unpopular Article	blog post	Boris Johnson Charlotte Edwardes Jennifer Arcuri	1 October 2019	Craig Murray	Throwing the kitchen sink of accusations against Boris Johnson obscures with chaff the allegations of real wrongdoing, like directing public funds and assistance to the company of a woman with whom he was in a sexual relationship. That should be investigated.
Document:Assange Bail Application Today	blog post	Nils Melzer Vanessa Baraitser Westminster Magistrates' Court COVID-19 International Bar Association Julian Assange/Imprisonment	25 March 2020	Craig Murray	If the authorities now refuse to allow him out on bail during the COVID-19 outbreak, I do not see how anybody can possibly argue there is any intention other than to cause his death.
Document:Assange Final Appeal Day 2 – Your Man in the Public Gallery	blog post	Wikileaks Julian Assange Chelsea Manning Michael Snow Vanessa Baraitser James Lewis Clair Dobbin Graham Phillips Jonathan Mark Swift Victoria Sharp Jeremy Johnson	29 February 2024	Craig Murray	Initially US authorities were keen to downplay the possible sentence, but have radically changed tack and now emphasise 30 to 40 years as the norm, which is in effect a rest of life sentence. That shift, together with the refusal so far to rule out the death penalty, gives a measure of the ruthlessness with which the CIA is pursuing the extradition of Julian Assange.
Document:Assange Final Appeal – Your Man in the Public Gallery	blog post	Wikileaks Julian Assange Chelsea Manning Michael Snow Vanessa Baraitser Graham Phillips Jonathan Mark Swift Victoria Sharp Jeremy Johnson	21 February 2024	Craig Murray	The indictment describes Wikileaks as a “non-state hostile intelligence agency”. That was plainly an accusation of espionage. This is self-evidently a politically motivated prosecution for a political offence.
Document:Assange Must Not Also Die in Jail	blog post	John Pilger Jeffrey Epstein Gina Haspel Julian Assange/Imprisonment	13 August 2019	Craig Murray	Many of the same people who are relieved by Jeffrey Epstein’s death would like to see Julian Assange dead too.
Document:Backing the Wrong Horseman	blog post	Israel Middle East Saudi Arabia US UK COVID-19		Craig Murray	The neo-con drive to dominate the Middle East, in alliance with Saudi Arabia and Israel, has caused an apocalyptic level of death and destruction, which I put (an extremely conservative figure) at 5 million dead. Now compare that to the worldwide death toll from coronavirus: 220,000. Let me say that again. Western aggressive wars to coronavirus: 5,000,000 versus 220,000.
Document:Beware the Cult of Cadwalladr	blog post	Christopher Steele Cambridge Analytica Carole Cadwalladr Integrity Initiative Arron Banks	22 January 2022	Craig Murray	The present libel trial between Arron Banks and Carole Cadwalladr is therefore a struggle between two deeply unpleasant people. Cadwalladr’s lies, in my view, are political and still come within the realm of free speech. I support her right to say it, just as I support my right to denounce and expose her as an utterly unprincipled and fraudulent tool of the security services.
Document:Beyond Words	blog post	Julian Assange Alex Salmond Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe Vanessa Baraitser COVID-19	8 April 2020	Craig Murray	Nobody cultivates her own anonymity more than Magistrate Vanessa Baraitser who has her existence carefully removed from the Internet almost entirely. Yet she seeks to destroy the peace and young lives of Julian Assange’s family.
Document:Biden Works to Prolong Ukraine War	blog post	Vladimir Putin Joe Biden Odessa Boris Johnson Henry Kissinger Recep Tayyip Erdogan Emmanuel Macron Lloyd Austin Volodymyr Zelensky 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine	7 June 2022	Craig Murray	"Ukraine is objecting to this plan (for Turkey to clear sea lanes of mines and to police the ships carrying grain) because it objects to the removal of the mines, which I should be clear were put down in the sea lanes by Ukraine to prevent amphibious attack on Odessa."
Document:Censorship and Freedom of Speech	blog post	Censorship Tony Blair Corruption	1 October 2008	Craig Murray
Document:Chelsea and Julian are in Jail. History Trembles.	blog post	Julian Assange Chelsea Manning Michael Snow	12 April 2019	Craig Murray	Julian Assange said nothing during the whole brief proceedings, other than to say “Not guilty” twice, and to ask a one sentence question about why the charges were changed midway through this sham “trial”. Yet Judge Michael Snow condemned Assange as “narcissistic”.
Document:Civil Liberty Vanishes	blog post	Julian Assange Liam Fox Matthew Gould Adam Werritty Palantir Technologies Priti Patel NHSX	6 May 2020	Craig Murray	"Serious questions have to be asked about why the UK government has developed its own unique app, universally criticised for its permanent central data collection and ability to identify individuals from their unique codes. That this is overseen by NHSX CEO Matthew Gould who held all those secret meetings with Liam Fox and Adam Werritty, including with Mossad, frankly stinks."
Document:Death Wish 2023	blog post	Chatham House Military-industrial-congressional complex Ukraine James Sherr 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine Hegemony	5 October 2023	Craig Murray	"The practical problem with James Sherr’s call for total war is that Ukraine really does not have the population numbers to sustain to victory a total war against Russia. It is just going to run out of people, as indeed the much trumpeted counteroffensive appears to have done."
Document:Epstein's Death Must Be the Start, not the End, of the Investigation	blog post	Alan Dershowitz Bill Clinton Jeffrey Epstein Andrew Windsor Ghislaine Maxwell Virginia Roberts Carl Beech	11 August 2019	Craig Murray	It is a great shame that in the UK, the Establishment has been able to characterise the falsifications of Carl Beech as discrediting the entire notion of historical child sexual abuse.
Document:Existence vs Expansion	blog post	Israel Israeli–Palestinian conflict Palestine International Court of Justice Keir Starmer UN/SC David Lammy Two-state solution Oslo Accords Occupied Palestinian Territory UNGA	21 July 2024	Craig Murray	The International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion is extremely lucid and decisive. The ball is now back in the court of the UN General Assembly, which requested the Opinion. The General Assembly now should move to suspend Israel’s membership of the United Nations. That is the next project on which I shall be working.
Document:FBI Fabrication Against Assange Falls Apart	blog post	Julian Assange Gareth Peirce Vanessa Baraitser Sigi Thordarson Mark Summers	29 June 2021	Craig Murray	The revelation that Sigi Thordarson’s allegations are fabricated – which everyone knew already, Vanessa Baraitser just pretended she didn’t – is just one more illegality that the Establishment will shimmy over in its continued persecution of Julian Assange.
Document:First Recorded Successful Novichok Synthesis was in 2016 – By Iran, in Cooperation with the OPCW	blog post	Iran Theresa May Russia Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Novichok Chemical Weapons Convention	17 March 2018	Craig Murray	Beginning in late 2016, Iranian scientists succeeded in synthesising a number of Novichoks in full cooperation with the OPCW. This makes a complete nonsense of Theresa May’s “of a type developed by Russia” line, used to Parliament and the UN Security Council.
Document:Has International Law Survived, or Has the Western Political Class Killed It?	blog post	Israel South Africa International Court of Justice Algeria UNRWA Ursula von der Leyen Isaac Herzog UN/SC Roberta Metsola Genocide Convention Philippe Lazzarini	28 January 2024	Craig Murray	Now think of this: the very next day after President Herzog made a genocidal statement, as determined by the International Court of Justice, he was met and offered “full support” by Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission and Roberta Metsola, President of the European Parliament
Document:Has Western Democracy Now Failed?	blog post	Keir Starmer Trickle-down economics Post-democratic society	19 July 2023	Craig Murray	We live in a post-democratic society. That is difficult to accept, but it is true.
Document:Has the Elite’s Slavish pro-Israel Agenda Finally Gone Too Far	Blog post	"Antisemitism" Israel/Defense Forces Jeremy Corbyn Hezbollah 2006 Lebanon War Sajid Javid Two-state solution	25 February 2019	Craig Murray	Israeli destruction of Palestinian olive trees in the occupied territories is almost as heinous as the continuing killing and imprisonment of Palestinian children. Every morning ask yourself this question: "How many children has the Israeli “Defence” Force killed since the MSM last reported one?"
Document:How To Spot A Twitter Troll	Wikispooks Page	MI6 GCHQ MI5 Integrity Initiative Troll 77th Brigade	2 July 2019	Craig Murray	Exposure is the simple way to nullify the vast state propaganda programmes on social media
Document:How to spot a Twitter troll	blog post	MI6 GCHQ MI5 Integrity Initiative Troll The 77th Brigade	2 July 2019	Craig Murray	Exposure is the simple way to nullify the vast state propaganda programmes on social media
Document:Huawei Hypocrisy	blog post	GCHQ National Security Agency Nick Clegg Theresa May Gavin Williamson Huawei	7 May 2019	Craig Murray	Former Deputy PM Nick Clegg said GCHQ's ability "to hack anything from handsets to whole networks … needs to be much better understood".
Document:I Am Obliged to Reconsider My Support for the European Union	Article	Spain European Union Mariano Rajoy Catalonia Carles Puigdemont	3 October 2017	Craig Murray	Today, and with a greater sadness than you can imagine, I withdraw my support for membership of the European Union
Document:I Go to Stand My Trial	Blog post	Mark Lewis Jake Wallis Simons	2 November 2017	Craig Murray	The Trial starts on Tuesday 7 November at the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand, High Court Queen’s Bench Division, and lasts for two or three days. By the time I come back online the Tories will have appointed their next Disgraced Former Defence Secretary in Waiting.
Document:I Stand in Blackburn	blog post	Craig Murray Alex Salmond George Galloway Jeremy Corbyn Blackburn Keir Starmer Andrew Feinstein Wes Streeting Alba Party Workers Party of Britain	16 April 2024	Craig Murray	I am going to need help – leafleting, canvassing, manning offices and the many myriad tasks of an election campaign. I am buoyed by the solid start we have in support across all communities in Blackburn. We are going to give Starmer a roasting, we are going to take on the zionist monopoly of power, and it is going to be great fun!
Document:Importing Jihadi Terror to the UK – Cui Bono	blog post	White Helmets 2017 Manchester bombing Salman Abedi	25 September 2018	Craig Murray	Importing the White Helmets into the UK is obviously nuts if your purpose is to minimise jihadi activity in the UK
Document:Index on Disgrace	Article	BBC The Guardian Foreign and Commonwealth Office The Times University of Dundee Save the Children Index on Censorship	22 April 2018	Craig Murray	"We thus have the extraordinary spectacle of a coordinated government and media onslaught on anybody who doubts their entirely fact free narratives. Public trust in the state and corporate media hits new lows, which is the happy part of this story."
Document:Interfering with Laura Kuenssberg	blog post	Boris Johnson Laura Kuenssberg Brexit Dominic Cummings Vox pop Echo chamber UK/General election/2019	25 November 2019	Craig Murray	It's no coincidence that it is precisely the old and the poorly educated that are the targets of Dominic Cummings’ "Brexit election” strategy. If it comes off, Laura Kuenssberg and her fellow hacks will have proven that the power of the mainstream media is as yet unbroken.
Document:Internalised Danger	blog post	"Climate change" Joe Biden Donald Trump Bernie Sanders US/2020 Presidential election Kamala Harris Green New Deal	6 November 2020	Craig Murray	America urgently needs a radical dose of social and economic reform as championed by Bernie Sanders. It needs the Green New Deal, and the world needs a real commitment in Washington to environmentalism.
Document:It’s Not Socialism. It’s Another Mega Wealth Transfer.	blog post	Boris Johnson Richard Branson COVID-19 Carphone Warehouse Cosalt David Ross Asset stripping	23 March 2020	Craig Murray	Amid the COVID-19 panic, it has hardly been noticed that Carphone Warehouse went bust, with 2,900 people losing their jobs. Its co-founder, David Ross, is of course the billionaire that Boris Johnson claimed paid for his luxury holiday to Mustique, whereas Ross claimed he only organised it.
Document:Lawyers For Israel Oppose Conscience	blog post	Lawfare UK Lawyers for Israel Palestine Action Elbit Systems UK Public Order Act	20 May 2023	Craig Murray	Convictions based on “intent” to do something you have not actually done, are generally dubious. The Shenstone defendants have been told by Judge Chambers they will get prison sentences. Expect these to be vicious.
Document:Let’s Move On From Boris	blog post	Tony Blair Richard Nixon Bill Clinton Boris Johnson Dominic Cummings	28 May 2020	Craig Murray	"Boris Johnson on the Dominic Cummings debacle: 'It is now time to move on… the country wants to move on.' If a politician tells you to 'move on' from a subject, it is a gigantic red flag that you should do precisely the opposite."
Document:Matthew Gould and the Plot to Attack Iran	webpage	Matthew Gould	14 November 2011	Craig Murray
Document:Media Freedom? Show me the MSM Journalist Opposing the Torture of Assange	blog post	Julian Assange Corporate media Rupert Murdoch David Aaronovitch Belmarsh Prison Extinction Rebellion Old Bailey	7 September 2020	Craig Murray	At a time when the government is mooting designating Extinction Rebellion as Serious Organised Crime, right wing bequiffed muppet Keir Starmer was piously condemning the group, stating: “The free press is the cornerstone of democracy and we must do all we can to protect it.”
Document:Metropolitan Police on 'Chepiga' and 'Mishkin'	blog post	Bellingcat Skripal Affair 2018 Amesbury poisonings Alexander Petrov Ruslan Boshirov	12 October 2018	Craig Murray	I remain of the view that the best way forward would be for Putin to negotiate conditions under which Boshirov and Petrov might voluntarily come to the UK for trial
Document:Mohammed Bin Salman: The Truth Behind The Reformist Facade	blog post	Donald Trump Mohammed bin Salman	8 March 2018	Craig Murray	Then something remarkable happened which the world mainstream media has almost entirely ignored. Despite Saudi sponsored adverts all over US media portraying named senior Qataris as terrorist sponsors, and despite strong Israeli pro-Saudi lobbying, Donald Trump suddenly called Mohammed bin Salman to heel.
Document:Momento Mori – Unpopular Thoughts on Corona Virus	blog post	COVID-19 Spanish flu Hong Kong flu COVID-19/Panic	7 March 2020	Craig Murray	Consider this: 100% of those who contract COVID-19 are going to die. 100% of those who do not contract COVID-19 are also going to die. The difference in average life expectancy between the two groups will prove to be only very marginal. That is because the large majority of those who die of COVID-19 will already be nearing the end of life or have other health problems.
Document:Muellergate and the Discreet Lies of the Bourgeoisie	Blog post	Wikileaks Julian Assange Robert Mueller William Binney Katharine Viner Cambridge Analytica Carole Cadwalladr Paul Manafort Sergei Skripal Luke Harding Integrity Initiative Russiagate Muellergate Ed Loomis Steele dossier	1 April 2019	Craig Murray	The capacity of the mainstream media repeatedly to promote the myth that Russia caused Clinton’s defeat, while never mentioning what the information was that had been so damaging to Hillary, should be alarming to anybody under the illusion that we have a working “free media”.
Document:Nato Expansion and Turkey	blog post	NATO Sweden Russia Greece Turkey Ukraine Finland Recep Tayyip Erdogan 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine	17 May 2022	Craig Murray	There is another, specifically Turkish interest in play here, which is very much a factor in Erdogan’s willingness to stand up to Biden over Swedish and Finnish NATO entry. This of course relates to the permanent tension between NATO members Turkey and Greece.
Document:Netanyahu Plays Chicken	blog post	Benjamin Netanyahu Hezbollah Hamas Keir Starmer Hassan Nasrallah Israel/Lobby Axis of Resistance 2024 Lebanon pager explosions Joe Biden/Presidency	21 September 2024	Craig Murray	Netanyahu’s strategy of assassinations and deadly stunts appears to be an attempt to goad Hezbollah out of their own territory into a suicidal advance into Israel. But Nasrullah is not falling for it. It is worth stressing that, contrary to the propaganda, in the last year Israel has hit Lebanon with five missiles for every one sent by Hezbollah.
Document:No Ceasefire in the Propaganda War	blog post	BBC Israeli–Palestinian conflict 2023 Gaza−Israel conflict	24 November 2023	Craig Murray	Since October 8 over 200 Palestinian children have been taken prisoner, none of whom had anything to do with the October 7 attacks. That rather puts the possible release of 33 children and six women today into perspective. But it is not a perspective the BBC would ever give you.
Document:Novichok, Navalny, Nordstream, Nonsense	blog post	Vladimir Putin Angela Merkel Atlantic Council Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Hamish de Bretton-Gordon Alexei Navalny Novichok Skripal Affair Integrity Initiative Ben Nimmo Digital Forensic Research Lab Nord Stream	3 September 2020	Craig Murray	The US and Saudi Arabia have every reason to instigate a split between Germany and Russia at this time. Navalny is certainly a victim of international politics. That he is a victim of Putin I tend to doubt.
Document:On the Pavement with Wikileaks	blog post	Wikileaks Julian Assange Chelsea Manning Kristinn Hrafnsson Lenín Moreno	7 April 2019	Craig Murray	Pretty well all of the Western media is going to want to focus on these false anti-Assange narratives, and they will be determined to give as little attention as possible to the fact he is a publisher facing trial for publishing leaked state documents which revealed state wrongdoing. It is a classic and fundamental issue of freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
Document:People Need to Reclaim the Internet	blog post	Julian Assange Internet/Censorship Hunter Biden Shadow banning Richard Stallman Burisma	19 October 2020	Craig Murray	The development of social media gatekeeping of internet traffic is one of the key socio-political issues of our time. We need the original founders of the Internet to get together with figures like Richard Stallman and – vitally – Julian Assange – to find a way we break free from this.
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