Here begins a new series for this blog…

I’ve been writing to Craig Murray whilst he serves his prison sentence for contempt of court arising from his reporting of the Alex Salmond trial.

I don’t recall how I first came across Craig, and his first book Murder in Samarkand, but I’ve been a keen follower of his blog (and reader of his subsequent books). I can’t say I agree with him on everything (who does?), but he’s succeeded in opening my eyes to how the world (and particularly the British Establishment) really works.

His campaign team have been encouraging people to write to Craig to help the time pass, and so I’ve been doing that. But I was also a little bothered that it was taking writing time away from blogging, so I asked Craig if he’d be OK with me posting some of my letters, and he agreed.

I’m not going to post the first 4. In part because they were written before I’d asked Craig about blogging, and in part because they were just getting to know each other stuff.

There’s likely to be a lot more politics than my usual output, and a leaning towards Scottish politics, as that’s one of Craig’s main concerns.

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Letter #5 Delivered 12 Sep 21

Hi Craig,

It was nice to get such a swift reply to my last letter. I was just getting used to a weekly(ish) cadence, and thinking about sending something out of sequence, then boom, a reply inside a week.

It’s a shame that non of the books have reached you yet. The optimist in me hopes that they’re going through some protracted process to be added to the library. But I fear that they might just have been chucked out in line with Grayling’s spite. I’ll hold off sending anything else until you confirm that books are making it through.

I probably spent too much time on Twitter, but a couple of things passed through my time line this week that I feel would grab your interest:

Firstly this from Leah McElrath: “A global right-wing movement is underway to try to destroy democracies, accelerate social collapse, and cement authoritarian control of human populations and resources. It’s happening. The only remaining question is how to respond.” I’d be interested in your view on how to respond?

Leah has previously focussed much of her ire on Putin and Surkovism, but comments “Often I’ve focused on Putin’s role in some of this, but it’s a movement that transcends boundaries. The organizing principle seems to be raw power, not national identity.”

Scottish independence seemed to be the antidote to all this, at least locally, until the petty corruption of St Nicola and her cultists became clear to see.

Then there was a hilarious take down of some crackpot crypto bro idea of having cruise ships outside of territorial limits where they could be their whole libertarian selves without any state oversight. As a specialist on international maritime law it seemed like something you’d enjoy taking apart in a blog post. The whole thing is essentially Sealand on steroids, but with people who research things so superficially that Sealand won’t even have registered. So ultimately they seem to want to cosplay Waterworld.

At about the same time the FT published a ‘Inside the cult of crypto’, which did a decent job of dissecting the bros ponzi scheme along with the climate catastrophe and lawlessness it drives. I mined some bitcoin in 2013 to learn how things worked, which was enough to show me the den of scum and villainy that’s been allowed to grow too big.

Speaking of blog posts, I wonder if you’d object (or indeed have legal troubles) if I were to post some of these letters (and summaries of your replies) as a ‘Letters to Craig Murray’ series on my blog?

Yours,
Chris

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Highlights of Craig’s reply

Certainly you can publish if you wish.

I found that guilt at having such a pile of unanswered mail was stopping me from concentrating on the research materials I have here for my biography of Lord George Murray. I therefore worked hard to clear the backlog and keep up to date. The perverse effect of this is that people feel obliged to also write back immediately, so instead of writing once a week they struggle to write four times a week and so no research gets done anyway.

Books are beginning to trickle through the system.