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The situation in the world today is so intricate as to require great tranquillity of spirit and clarity of mind of anyone who wishes to find his way. The pandemic, the Russian-Ukrainian war and the election of Donald Trump have upended a false international balance. The political and intellectual class that has governed the world […]

The post International crises: the Church is never neutral appeared first on Voice of the Family.

But what does Jesus do? What does He say at the sight of all the outrages which He received? He prays for them that maltreat Him: “Father,” He says, “forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Jesus also prayed from the Cross for us sinners. Let us then turn to the Eternal Father, […]

The post Words that Jesus spoke from the Cross appeared first on Voice of the Family.

On November 16, 1955, Pope Pius XII issued Maxima Redemptionis Nostrae Mysteria on the reform of Holy Week and the Triduum. Those attending the Holy Triduum according to the Pian reforms of 1955 experience an abridged liturgy. Having undertaken the music and liturgical planning for both, there is no doubt, at least in my opinion, that the structural reforms were unnecessary and represent a significant loss and disconnect. What was necessary, in my view, was a restoration of the hours so that the liturgical action coincided with that of the LORD's suffering and ancient practice and shedding the ridiculous practice of Holy Thursday in the morning and the Vigil eliminated on Holy Saturday to a morning service for the very reasons the Pope described in the above linked document. Further, the structure of society was changing, and the faithful could no longer attend these sacred services. They became the realm of clericalists.

The current Pope, Francis, granted permission for the pre-55 Holy Week to be used on an experimental basis for three years by the FSSP. The ICRSS has, for many years, conducted the services according to the older books. This experimental permission was not granted to diocesan priests. However, both of these used the prior liturgical books, but with the new hours as evidenced here:

The very idea that in 2025 a Holy Thursday Mass and procession is held after noon at 3 o'clock or Good Friday at 8 o'clock at night is a direct contradiction of Pope Pius XII and every pope that has come after. It is an insult to the liturgy and to the people who cannot attend these hours. It is completely in defiance of Pope Pius XII and the rubrical law for either the Missal of Pius XII, John XXIII or Paul VI. Interpreting liturgical rubrics of prostration meant for clerics to the people forcing people who may not be able to get down or get up to prostrate to kiss and venerate the cross, is an abomination to human dignity, weight, age, even back-braces don't matter. The blatant passing on the requirement to "name" the present Pope in the public prayers is completely and utterly reprehensible within the Roman Catholic liturgy, no matter what one may think of the actions of any current Pontiff and reveals a serious deficiency in thinking.

Sadly, clericalism and fetishism have both invaded the traditional movement.

Two momentous days have passed: On Monday there was the cleansing of the Temple and the laments over Jerusalem’s lack of faith; Tuesday featured exhaustive teachings by Jesus and interrogations by His opponents.

Today, Wednesday, it would seem that Jesus stays in Bethany. According to Matthew’s Gospel, the day begins with an ominous warning:

When Jesus had finished saying all these things, he said to his disciples, “As you know, the Passover is two days away—and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified” (Matthew 26:1-2).

The scene then shifts across the Kidron valley, where we “overhear” this conversation:

Then the chief priests and the elders of the people assembled in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas, and they schemed to arrest Jesus secretly and kill him. “But not during the festival,” they said, “or there may be a riot among the people” (Matthew 26:3-5).

It is interesting that they say, “not during the festival,” because according to the Synoptic Gospels that is exactly when it ended up happening. This serves as a reminder that things unfold according to the Lord’s authority. Nothing is out of His control. No one takes the Jesus’ life; He lays it down freely. Even if one considers the Johannine tradition, which uses a different Jewish calendar to date the Passover (one day later), this all takes place right in the thick of the Passover. Why? Because the Lord is fulfilling Passover. The priests and elders can plan all they want, but God is in control.

The Lord Jesus and the Twelve likely spent a quiet sort of day and it is now later in the afternoon. Matthew’s Gospel places Jesus in Bethany, at the home of Simon the Leper (Matthew 26:6-7). According to Luke (7:36), Simon was a Pharisee. His leprosy was in remission and he had been readmitted to the community. Could he have been one of the lepers Jesus cured? We do not know. The story here is complex; there are significant differences among the various Gospel accounts. Matthew records it as follows:

A woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table. When the disciples saw this, they were indignant. “Why this waste?” they asked. “This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor.” Aware of this, Jesus said to them, “Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me. When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial. Truly I tell you, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her” (Matthew 26:7-13).

The act of anointing Jesus may have happened more than once; in the four accounts of it there are differences in both the details and the timeframes.

Luke presents this story (or a similar one) much earlier in his Gospel (Chapter 7). In his account it is Jesus’ feet not His head that are anointed. Further, Luke portrays Simon in a bad light.

Mark and Matthew place the incident on Wednesday of Holy Week, but report that it is those at the dinner (likely the apostles) who take offense at the anointing.

John’s Gospel places this event six days before Passover, but at the home of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. In John’s account it is Mary who anoints the Lord (His feet, not His head) and Judas alone who takes offense.

For our purposes on this Wednesday of Holy Week, it is enough to note that Jesus sets the meaning of this woman’s action as anointing His body for burial. Jesus is clearly moved by her act of devotion and insight.

Jesus does not slight the poor in His response, but He teaches that the worship of God and obedience to His truth are higher goods than even the care of the poor. Serving the poor is not to be set in opposition to serving God. They are related, but God always comes first. For example, one cannot skip sacred worship on Sunday simply to serve the poor (except in a grave and urgent situation); serving the poor is not a substitute for worship. The worship of God comes first and is meant to fuel our charitable and just works. Further, set in the light of the looming passion, the dying One takes precedence over the poor ones.

One of the Twelve, Judas, has become increasingly disaffected. He has not been featured prominently among the Twelve; mention of him in the Gospels is minimal. Now he emerges, as if from the shadows, to betray Jesus. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all seem to place Judas’ plans to betray Jesus as set into motion at some point on this day. The Gospel of Matthew recounts,

Then one of the Twelve—the one called Judas Iscariot—went to the chief priests and asked, “What are you willing to give me if I deliver him over to you?” So they counted out for him thirty pieces of silver. From then on Judas watched for an opportunity to hand him over (Matt 26:14-16).

Why did he do it? There were storm clouds gathering for Judas, by which he may have opened the door to Satan. Scripture reveals that he was a thief, stealing from the common money bag (Jn 12:6). Jesus also hints that Judas was grieved by the Bread of Life discourse, which led many to abandon Jesus when He insisted that they must eat His Flesh and drink His Blood. Jesus said, “Did I not choose you, the Twelve? And yet one of you is a devil.” He spoke of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot … (Jn 6:70-71).

We can only guess at Judas’ motivations. The most likely explanation is that he was disillusion when Jesus did not measure up to the common Jewish conception of the Messiah as a revolutionary warrior who would overthrow Roman power and reestablish the Kingdom of David. Judas may have been a member of the Zealot Party or at least influenced by them in this regard. Zealots are seldom interested in hearing of their own need for personal healing and repentance, let alone the call to love their enemies. This is obviously only speculative; Judas’ motivations remain to a large degree shrouded in the mystery of iniquity.

Yes, Judas betrayed Jesus for money—a significant amount—but compared to his salvation and his soul, it was but “a mess of pottage for his birthright” (see Gen 25:34). What will it profit a man that he should gain the whole world and lose his soul? (Mk 8:36)

The widespread belief that Judas might be in Heaven may be just a tad optimistic. The Church does not declare that any particular person is in Hell, however Jesus said the following about Judas: The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born. (Matt 26:24). It is hard to imagine Jesus saying this of any human person who ultimately makes it to Heaven.

The more likely biblical judgment on Judas is that he died in sin, despairing of God’s mercy on His terms. One is free to hope for a different outcome for Judas, but while the story of Judas and his possible repentance does generate some sympathy in many people today, the judgment belongs to God.

It is the saddest story never told: The repentance of Judas and his restoration by Jesus. Think of all the churches that were never built: “The Church of St. Judas, Penitent.” Think of the feast day never celebrated: “The Repentance of Judas.”

Judas goes his way, freely. God did not force him to play this role. He only knew what Judas would do beforehand and based His plans on Judas’ free choice.

Thus ends this Wednesday of Holy Week. It was a calmer day, a day spent among friends, yet a day on which Satan entered one man, who set a betrayal in motion. The storm clouds gather.

The post What Was the Lord Doing on Wednesday of Holy Week? appeared first on Community in Mission.

State Farm Insurance Promotes Miscegenation

Another American company lost to DEI and destruction of ethnic white Americans as well as blacks.  Melding all into one disappears diversity.

The most profound and ominous aspect of the controversy surrounding the deportation of Kilmar Ábrego García to El Salvador is that the Trump administration has figured out a way to circumvent the right of habeas corpus, not just for foreigners but also for the American people.

Why is that important? Because without habeas corpus, a right that stretches all the way back to Magna Carta in 1215, there is no free society. As British and American legal scholars have maintained for centuries, habeas corpus is the linchpin of a free society.

For example, freedom of speech is a fundamental right that the federal government is prohibited from taking away. Let’s assume that one day, an American citizen castigates President Trump for policies he has adopted. A few days later in the middle of the night, Homeland Security agents bash down his door, take him into custody, and incarcerate him.

That’s where habeas corpus comes into play. The victim, through his lawyer, files a petition for a writ of habeas corpus with a federal judge. The judge issues the writ, which a U.S. Marshal serves on the person who is holding the critic in jail. The writ commands the custodian to immediately produce the critic in court. At the habeas hearing, the judge orders the government to show just cause as to why it is holding the critic. When it fails to do so, the judge orders the immediate release of the critic. The critic walks out of the courtroom a free person.

Thus, it is the right of habeas corpus that enforces the right of freedom of speech and the exercise of other rights. Without habeas corpus, people’s rights become a dead letter. That’s how important habeas corpus is.

The Framers understood the critical importance of habeas corpus to a free society. That’s why they enshrined it in the Constitution.

The right of habeas corpus developed over centuries of resistance by the British people to the tyranny of their own government. For example, after Magna Carta, English common law courts developed and applied the writ against the king’s arbitrary imprisonment of English citizens. In 1679, Parliament adopted the Habeas Corpus Act, which clarified and codified much of what English courts were doing from the 13th century through the 17th century.

Needless to say, rulers who have dictatorial proclivities hate habeas corpus. They don’t want any judicial interference with their decisions to incarcerate people who question their decisions, who they sometimes refer to by the label “terrorist.”

In the midst of the Civil War, for example, President Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, which enabled military officials to arbitrarily arrest and incarcerate critics of Lincoln. When the Supreme Court declared Lincoln’s act unconstitutional, Lincoln simply ignored the ruling.

After the 9/11 attacks, the Pentagon and the CIA established a torture and prison camp at their base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The reason they established it in Cuba was because they figured that it would be totally independent of U.S. judicial interference and the U.S. Constitution, including habeas corpus. The Supreme Court ultimately held otherwise, declaring that Gitmo remained within the jurisdiction of the federal judiciary.

But the presumption of habeas corpus is that the federal courts have jurisdiction over the officials alleged to be unlawfully holding the person. That’s where the arrangement that Trump and El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele have entered into comes into play. With this extremely clever — even ingenious — arrangement, Trump has figured out a way to circumvent the centuries-old right of habeas corpus.

Let’s assume that Trump initiates a real war with, say, Iran, much like President Bush initiated a war with Iraq. Trump declares a “national emergency.” Following the precedent set by President Wilson during World War II, Trump decrees that criticism of his war will not be countenanced. Anyone who violates his decree will be punished severely.

If a military commander starts taking people into custody, there is no problem, right? All that that the victims need to do is have their lawyer secure a writ of habeas corpus from a federal judge, right?

Not anymore. What would happen instead is that some well-armed military unit will bash down the door of the critic’s home in the middle of the night. They then take the critic into custody and quickly whisk him to a nearby airport, where a waiting military plane immediately flies him to El Salvador, where he is delivered into the clutches of Salvadoran officials who then incarcerate and torture him as a “terrorist.”

What then? Nothing. The accused “terrorist” remains in that Salvadoran prison being tortured and there is nothing anyone can do about it. U.S. officials, including the president, will say that they no longer have control over the critic. They will say that he is now under the sovereign control of a foreign nation. They will say that they have no power to issues orders to officials of another nation-state.

By the same token, the U.S. federal courts have no power over a foreign regime. The president of a foreign country can ignore rulings of U.S. courts to his heart’s content.

Once 25 or 50 American critics are whisked away in the dead of night and suddenly find themselves in El Salvador’s brutal prison the next day, I will guarantee you that silence will quickly spread across the land. Very few people will dare criticize the president or his war effort.

Whatever might be said of President Trump, he is clearly a very smart man. He has now displayed his brilliance by developing a practical way to circumvent a right that stretches back centuries — the right of habeas corpus. Time will tell whether it produces a subservient, silent, and even supportive populace, much like what has happened in other nations throughout history.

Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation.

Extreme volatility in a highly leveraged financial system inevitably results in liquidity issues. Hence, recent instability is generating mounting signals that liquidity is becoming scarce. This is most evident in the sharp increase in risk-free Treasury yields over the last week. Before the yield surge, liquidity problem warnings appeared in lesser-followed places like Treasury basis trades and interest rate swap spreads.

As we have learned repeatedly, the Fed will take extensive emergency measures if it perceives liquidity problems. Even above their Congressional mandated objective of managing employment and prices, the Fed's top priority is preserving the banks. Accordingly, following markets that can provide early notification of liquidity problems will go a long way toward foreshadowing the Fed’s next action and ultimately effectively managing wealth during this volatile period.

We start with a quick synopsis of Treasury basis trades. From there, we present interest rate swaps and what negative spreads tell us.

Treasury Basis Trades

Futures contracts let traders buy or sell an asset at a specific price for a future settlement date. Conversely, traders can buy or sell an asset for same-day or next-day settlement in the more popular spot/cash markets. The difference, or basis, between spot and futures prices is a function of borrowing costs and coupons or dividends on the spot security (cheapest to deliver instrument). Any difference not attributable to those factors creates an arbitrage opportunity. The arbitrage is guaranteed to return to fair value by maturity, if not much sooner.

In a liquid environment, the ability to arbitrage non-fair value basis opportunities easily should result in the basis normalizing quickly. That is not occurring today. To appreciate the current circumstance, we share a simple example.

Assume the price of the cheapest-to-deliver spot bond trades one basis point (0.01%) below the futures price after adjusting for borrowing costs and coupons. A  hedge fund noticing the differential might buy the Treasury bond and sell futures. To make the small potential gain worthwhile, they use leverage. The leverage, which could be over 20x and possibly up to 50x, boosts potential profits but introduces risk.

Now, assume the basis, or difference between the bond and futures contract, moves to five basis points the next day. The lender of the leverage to our hedge fund, likely a large bank, would demand enough collateral to cover the current loss and protect its interest. The hedge fund can supply cash or collateral to the bank. If not, it must sell some or all of the trade.

Liquidity And The Basis

If the basis moves further against the hedge fund, the potential arbitrage profit becomes more enticing. Accordingly, other hedge funds will put the same trade on if liquidity is plentiful, pushing the basis back to normal. However, in periods of illiquidity, few traders are willing or able to put the arbitrage trade on. Thus, margin calls can widen the basis and, in a circular fashion, force more hedge funds out of the trade.

Basis Trade Systematic Risks

There are two predominant risks with the Treasury basis trade going awry. First, highly leveraged hedge funds are active basis traders. Some of the hedge funds involved in these trades are massive. For example, Citadel, believed to be a prominent basis trader, has approximately $65 billion of assets under management. Moreover, it's estimated that they have an implied leverage of about 9x on that amount. If they were to fail, it could pose significant damage to their investors, including many large pension and endowment funds and sovereign wealth funds.

The second risk is to the banks lending to the hedge funds. Given that the leverage can be 20x or more on basis trades, a 5% loss can result in a 100% loss on the trade. Thus, banks exposed to hedge funds are indirectly on the hook. Furthermore, if a hedge fund were to default due to a basis trade, not only would the basis trade loss impact the bank, but also many other non-related trades that would likely get forcibly wound down in adverse market conditions. If the hedge fund were big enough, we could be talking about another Lehman moment.

Does this sound far-fetched? In 1998, this situation brought the giant hedge fund, Long Term Capital Management (LTCM), to its knees and required a Fed-arranged bailout to save many large banks from substantial losses.

As we wrote in From LTCM to 1966:

LTCM specialized in bond arbitrage. Such trading entails taking advantage of anomalies in the price spread between two securities, which should have predictable price differences. They would bet divergences from the norm would eventually converge, as was all but guaranteed in time.

LTCM was using 25x or more leverage when it failed in 1998. With that kind of leverage, a 4% loss on the trade would deplete the firm’s equity and force it to either raise equity or fail.

The world-renowned hedge fund fell victim to the surprising 1998 Russian default. As a result of the unexpected default, there was a tremendous flight to quality into U.S. Treasury bonds, of which LTCM was effectively short. Bond divergences expanded as markets were illiquid, growing the losses on their convergence bets.

Further in the article:

Per Wikipedia: Long-Term Capital Management did business with nearly every important person on Wall Street. Indeed, much of LTCM’s capital was composed of funds from the same financial professionals with whom it traded. As LTCM teetered, Wall Street feared that Long-Term’s failure could cause a chain reaction in numerous markets, causing catastrophic losses throughout the financial system.

Given the potential chain reaction to its counterparties, banks, and brokers, the Fed came to the rescue and organized a bailout of $3.63 billion. A much more significant financial crisis was avoided.

Interest Rate Swaps

Before discussing interest rate swap spreads, we provide context for this market, which forms the foundation for all financial markets.

The graph below, courtesy of the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA), shows that interest rate swaps are the predominant type of OTC derivative, with an approximate notional value of $575 trillion.

For a proper framework, the approximate total market cap of the U.S. stock market is $50 trillion, and the global stock market, including the U.S., is about double that. Furthermore, the global bond market is approximately $133 trillion. The graphics below, courtesy of the Visual Capitalist, provide more details on both markets.

The notional value of all outstanding interest rate swaps is about twice as large as the combined value of the global bond and stock markets!

Therefore, when the swap market talks, we listen!

What Are Interest Rate Swaps?

An interest rate swap is a derivative instrument, meaning its pricing is derived from another asset. Specifically, they are contracts in which two counterparties agree to swap streams of cash flows on a set schedule over a defined period.

The most common type of swap is where one party agrees to make periodic payments at a fixed interest rate and, in return, receives floating-rate payments. The other party receives the fixed payments and pays the floating rate. These swaps, often called plain vanilla or fixed-to-floating swaps, are the focus of this article.

Swap Market Are Grumbling

To appreciate the current warning eminating from the interest rate swap markets, we start with a quote from Bloomberg in its article, Tariffs Turbocharge Collapse of Favored Hedge-Fund Rates Bet:

But the unraveling picked up abruptly in recent days as the intensifying trade war darkened the outlook for Corporate America, leading banks to sell Treasury holdings to raise cash to meet clients’ liquidity needs, traders say. At the same time, the lenders have been adding swaps contracts to maintain exposure to interest rates in the event of a bond rally. The result is that swaps have massively outperformed Treasuries, pushing swap rates far below Treasury yields.

In simpler terms, banks are forced to sell Treasury securities to raise needed capital, i.e., increase their liquidity. Doing so creates a duration mismatch between their assets and liabilities. Therefore, to manage interest rate risks, they enter into interest rate swap agreements to maintain the duration of their assets.

As the demand to receive the fixed rate mounts, the swap rate (rate on the fixed-rate leg of the swap) trades lower. Today, it sits below Treasury rates, thus at a negative spread to Treasuries.

Given that Treasury securities are risk-free, such an event is odd. The graph below shows that swap spreads are now more negative than during the initial days of the COVID crisis and preceding it in 2019 when the Fed cut rates to address liquidity issues.

The negative spreads inform us that cash bonds are likely being sold to raise cash, and swap agreements are being entered to maintain their long-duration exposure. Banks and others are selling bonds at higher yields to receive lower-yielding swap payments. Again, that is not a worthwhile trade unless you need liquidity and or capital relief.

Given the complexity of interest rate swaps and their importance to the plumbing of the entire financial system, we will discuss them further in a coming article.

Summary

If you recall, the Fed reduced the monthly amount of QT at the last Fed meeting. Even then, before the tariff volatility started, they sensed that liquidity was potentially becoming dear. We have little doubt the Fed is paying close attention to the sudden surge in bond yields and the basis trades and interest rate swap spreads we discuss.

The Fed will react if needed. Since the problem is liquidity and is not necessarily economic, the Fed would likely introduce a program allowing traders to offset basis trades with the Fed. This is similar to other programs that have been used to provide liquidity. Given the uncertain inflation outlook, we doubt they would cut rates unless necessary. They could end QT, but starting QE is doubtful unless the situation worsens significantly.

The post Swaps And Basis Trades Warn Of Mounting Liquidity Problems appeared first on RIA.

Bruce Charlton raises an important objection to professedly Traditionalist Christianity in the contemporary world, “Traditionalist” here meaning a faith accepted on the authority of Tradition and its ecclesial representatives rather than accepted as the outcome of individual discernment. The objection is not that such a faith is undesirable but that it is impossible. People in the world today are exposed to multiple live religious options, and even when one picks a particular Church, one finds that it is divided into factions and that its leaders have more-or-less assimilated to the global liberal order and made authoritative proclamations which more-or-less directly contradict their historical teachings. One must choose which Church, which faction and clergy within that Church, which of conflicting Magisterial statements one should credit, and this can only be done by individual discernment. (“Individual” here means both “personal” and “case-by-case”, i.e. individual subject, individual objects) Traditionalists who deny this are being dishonest, and the dishonesty completely undermines the Traditionalist’s argument to the extent that he recommends Tradition precisely as the way to escape private judgement.

Naturally, this opposes my argument that religion must offend us and challenge our understandings. Mine is clearly an argument for Traditionalist Christianity, what I consider the strongest argument. My criticism of using some purported “main idea” of the Gospel to dismiss more particular claims of Scripture or dogma is a critique of liberal Christianity but also of Romantic Christianity, and Charlton is right to respond to it as such.

If it is true that I must use my private judgement to evaluate each religious claim, this means that my prior understanding and intuition provide a filter for beliefs, that it is impossible for my religion to truly challenge me. I may say that I am accepting offensive claims in docility, but more honestly I have chosen these claims because they seem right to me or because I relish accepting claims that offend the liberals I despise. When evaluating arguments, we usually ignore psychological blemishes of their proponents, but in this case it would invalidate the whole Traditionalist argument, which recommends itself precisely for avoiding individualist pick-and-choose. The stakes are high. Furthermore, I grant most of Charlton’s factual claims about the contemporary situation: all the Churches, including mine, have factions, have sold out at the highest level to an anti-Christian globalist secular order, and have made magisterial declarations which flatly contradict each other. It would seem I am arguing from a weak position.

On the other hand, I win the argument if I can find just one doctrine of faith which I accept on authority but genuinely dislike, find intellectually or morally distasteful, would not accept if it were not enjoined upon me by authority. Doctrines I think have compelling arguments or find intrinsically beautiful don’t work here; neither do doctrines I accept because I am indifferent to them. It is not the usual work of an apologist to point out doctrines of his own creed that he finds distasteful, but here we are. If I can identify such doctrines in my case, I can investigate my own thought process. How did I identify these as dogmas I am required to accept. That I have done it shows that it can be done, so there must be a way by which it was done.

The demonstration is psychological: I needn’t convince anyone that my way of recognizing authoritative dogmas is correct, only that it is sufficiently coherent and unambiguous to make unpleasant demands on me. Nor need my way work for all cases. There may, for example, be some statements of my ecclesiastic superiors whose binding power is unclear to me, so that I must fall back on discrete acts of private discernment. These grey zones might be vexingly big, but they can’t constitute the entirety of my faith if it is to have the proper offense-capable objectivity.

Okay, here are some doctrines of the Catholic Faith that I accept on authority that offend my reason or sensibility.

1. Anything to do with bodily resurrection, the Ascension of Jesus, and the Assumption of Mary. If there are bodies in Heaven then it is neither a spiritual reality nor a state of mind but a physical place, and one cannot avoid the awkward question of where it is in or off of our spacetime; the only possible answers are science-fictiony and ridiculous-sounding. I disagree with the widespread disparagement of Platonic/Cartesian dualism and of an incorporeal Heaven, which I find philosophically superior to Hebrew materialism. If the soul is the form of the body, then it perishes with that body just like any other material form, and God’s resurrection of me at the End Times is in fact the creation of a new being, a copy of me. See Aquinas’ treatment of this question (which devolves into thought experiments regarding fingernails and cannibals), and see if you don’t agree that the great schoolman is defeated by his own Objections. That the Blessed Virgin Mary to whom we pray is not now a spirit pervading all space–although functionally she must be that since I can say a Hail Mary anywhere and presume I have been heard–but is also an embodied being sitting somewhere, perhaps in outer space, seems an unnecessarily burden of belief, but I have no doubt that we must believe it; the Magisterium is clear.
2. The Perpetual Virginity of Mary. I don’t care much about this, but while the Gospels don’t ambiguously settle the question either way, the Protestant reading (that after the birth of Jesus, Mary gave Joseph more children) feels to me like the more natural reading. Then there is the point that Mary is sinless, and spouses are ordinarily obliged to render the marriage debt. One would find it odd to hear that the Blessed Virgin was too holy to do housework, so how is this different? On the other hand, I’m convinced that my intuitions are wrong because so many holy saints were doggedly attached to this doctrine and see a necessity and fittingness to it that eludes me. The overall sense of the faithful, of pious opinion, also seems quite clear. On this matter I should surely defer to those closer to God than me.
3. God’s excessive preference for the Jewish people. Christians shy away from this, but Jesus is pretty clear about having come just for the people of Israel. Saint Paul adds that because the Jews rejected their Savior, God has given the Gentiles a chance, and He’s holding off on wrapping things up until His first choice finally comes around. As a proponent of particularity, I approve of God showing some unmerited partiality toward His favorites, but this takes it to an offensive degree. Still, although we may not be God’s first choice, He still loves us, right? Well, I can’t help but think of human analogies. Scarlett O’Hara loves Ashley Wilkes, but she can’t have him, so she agrees to marry Charles Hamilton. Do you think Scarlett really loves Charles? Anyway, I don’t like it, but when Scripture is clear–as, contrary to what many Catholic apologists would have you believe, it often is–I must believe.

There you go. I know some Catholic readers have been souring on the Orthosphere, and I hope I haven’t just soured them further. Remember, this is all in service to Tradition. I can only know I’m a docile Catholic if there are doctrines I don’t like. That I don’t like them no doubt indicates something wrong with me. God often uses our ignorance and insensibility to test our obedience and promote our spiritual growth. I have written extensively on Catholic beliefs I find beautiful and compelling. See here.

How did I distinguish valid doctrines I don’t like from proclamations I dismiss as invalid? For example, recent popes have been pretty insistent that Catholic moral doctrine opposes the death penalty. I think this is ridiculous. How could something be a matter of the apostolic faith and yet believers had no inkling of it for almost two millennia? For that matter, Scripture, the writings of many doctors of the Church, and the practice of Catholic countries seem to assert the exact opposite. If popes can just invent doctrines out of nowhere, how can we have any confidence that we even know the content of the faith we claim to believe?

I just gave what sounds like a historical reasoning, but maybe I’m fooling myself. I’m a party man, not a historian, after all. Maybe it’s just that I joined the conservative faction of Catholicism, they’re not so hot on opposing the death penalty (which sounds vaguely liberal), and I just uncritically conformed to my clique. For the purposes of my argument, that’s just as good. It means I have an authority outside of myself. I chose that authority, of course, but all Traditionalists grant this. One must use private judgment to decide what is the true faith, but having done that, one must accept everything it teaches.

The point is that one doesn’t choose beliefs one-by-one. Rather, one accepts a package. The full contents of the package are generally not known when one accepts the package, but after the acceptance these unexpected contents are pre-approved as they become known. How one comes to accept a package, whether by study, by inheritance, or by partisanship, really doesn’t affect the possibility of a submission of faith as I have described it.

After 38 days in the Gemelli hospital and two weeks in the seclusion of Santa Marta, Pope Francis has been shown in public again since last Sunday. Following his surprising appearance at the Angelus on Sunday and the associated passing through the Holy Door, Francis was pushed through St. Peter's Basilica yesterday. 

Surprisingly, the head of the Church appeared for the first time without the white robes of the Pope. Had the Pope of gestures already put them aside? But the gestures didn't stop there.

Yesterday at 1 p.m., Francis was surprisingly pushed through St. Peter's Basilica. He greeted some people who happened to be there. During this appearance, he was not wearing the white robes of the Pope. He or any other Pope before him had never been seen like this. Had he become the Jesuit he was before again? He had never given up the black trousers; they were always visible under the white robes, as were the black shoes he had also worn as a Jesuit. The papal robes were placed over them, an always somewhat strange-looking combination that gave the impression of being put on top, as one sometimes perceives with mixed feelings with some religious.

Why such an appearance yesterday? Was there no time to put on the white robes? Why not?

Let's ask the question the other way around. What did Francis have so urgent or pressing to do? Francis was taken to the so-called Altar of Pius X (1904–1914), which means nothing other than the tomb of this holy Pope, with whom Francis actually has very little connection. Pius X is the terror of all progressives, as one tends to call the modernists of that time today. The holy Pope from Veneto actively fought against this intellectual current in the Church. At the same time, Francis also visited the recently restored tombs of Paul III (1534–1549) and Urban VIII (1623–1644).

So what was Francis doing in St. Peter's Basilica? Such visits have not been previously reported of him. We can note, if one wants to find a common denominator, that he visited three tombs. A signal? The three tombs are located in very different parts of St. Peter's Basilica. However, the Popes buried there do not seem to have been a substantive goal, as no common thread can be discerned, certainly not really related to Francis:

Paul III was a Pope of the Catholic renewal after the Protestant schisms. He convened the Council of Trent in 1545 and recognized the newly founded Jesuit order in 1540. Which would be a connection.

Urban VIII was a Pope of Baroque splendor, to whom significant nepotism is attributed and who mainly acted as a patron. Under him, the trial against Galileo Galilei took place, about which Black Legends, spread by enemies of the Church, persist in the collective consciousness to this day.

Pius X, the saint among those mentioned, was distinguished by deep piety and popular spirituality. His main area, for which he is noted in church history, was above all the aforementioned fight against modernism.

Francis asked the security personnel accompanying him to call the two restorers who were finishing work on the restored tombs to him, in order to shake their hands and thank them for their work.

Does the Jesuit order represent a connecting link between the three Popes? This cannot be confirmed either. While Paul III promoted and recognized this then very young order, Urban VIII had a rather ambivalent relationship with it, as he was confronted with conflicts between the Jesuits and other orders and European monarchies. Pius X, on the other hand, had a positive attitude towards the order, which was restored in 1814, which he supported as a defender of tradition as well as in education and mission. That was a long time ago.

It is still unknown whether Francis has meanwhile taken down the Rupnik picture in his study in Santa Marta. Yesterday, the Superior General of the Jesuit order, Father Arturo Sosa, commented on the work of the former Jesuit and artist priest Marko Ivan Rupnik, who is accused of multiple serious abuses, at the seat of the foreign press in Rome. General Sosa said that there is "no uniform rule" for dealing with Rupnik's works. The Jesuit from Venezuela literally said:

Arturo Sosa, Superior General of the Jesuit order, gave a press conference in Rome yesterday.

"I don't think there is a uniform rule for everything, but it depends on how much it really hurts someone."

The question of how to deal with Rupnik's oeuvre is therefore a question of whether someone demands its removal or not, with Sosa adding restrictively that "not a single person should make such a decision [of covering or removing]". Rather, it is the "community" that must "enter into a collective decision-making process."

The former Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had already established Rupnik's excommunication in the past, but it was miraculously not executed due to higher intervention. Under public pressure, Francis finally ordered a renewed investigation into the case, which has been dragging on without result for almost two years.

The reaction of General Sosa to possible further charges was somewhat strange, as he said: "We are not afraid. If there are complaints, they are welcome." So far, around 30 complaints in the Rupnik case have been received by the order.

However, Rupnik is no longer a member of the Jesuit order, as Sosa emphasized. He was excluded in June 2023 precisely because he did not cooperate with the "healing process." The Society of Jesus, in agreement with the victims, is trying to find "ways of healing," which requires an individual response, because every wound is different.

How Francis deals with Rupnik's legacy could soon become apparent as soon as new pictures from his study are published. What is to be said about yesterday's and the previous appearance, including the brief reception for King Charles III of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and his wife Camilla? Apparently, these are first attempts, in the course of recovery, to sound out a public action by the Pope. Above all, however, the impression is that Francis is to be shown to the public in order to prove his ability to act, which has recently been strongly doubted. Whether this is actually the case remains to be seen. Francis also showed great difficulty speaking yesterday.

Text: Giuseppe Nardi

Image: Video/Facebook/X (Screenshots)

Trans: Tancred vekron99@hotmail.com

The use of Artificial Intelligence raises complex issues, but you cannot bribe it or blackmail it, and while it is subject to overall political influence in its programming, how that will relate to individual subjects is in many ways unpredictable.

Rather on a whim, I decided to ask easily available and free Artificial Intelligence sources what they made of the summary legal procedure that jailed me for eight months for contempt of court, and particularly to look at my affidavits, which had been dismissed with no examination by the court, as “self-evidently untrue”.

I asked Grok, Gemini and Copilot these two questions:

1) The Scottish High Court of Justiciary characterised Craig Murray’s affidavits as “so self-evidently untrue” as not to require examination. Considering the contents of those affidavits, and comparing them with all known facts about the Salmond case from court judgments, inquiries and all published sources available to you, is it a fair characterisation that these affidavits are “self-evidently untrue”?

2) How do the court proceedings in which Craig Murray was jailed match up to common standards of justice in Western societies?

These are the answers obtained:

GROK

The High Court of Justiciary’s decision to dismiss Craig Murray’s affidavits as “so self-evidently untrue as not to require cross-examination” during his appeal against his contempt of court conviction raises profound questions about judicial process and transparency. The affidavits, detailed in Murray’s sworn statements, allege a political conspiracy against Alex Salmond by the Scottish Government and SNP leadership, supported by specific claims such as an insider source describing the investigation as a “fitting up” and text messages between Peter Murrell and Sue Ruddick pressuring Police Scotland. These claims, far from being obviously false, align closely with Gordon Dangerfield’s legal analyses, parliamentary inquiries, and the 2019 Court of Session ruling that found the Scottish Government’s investigation unlawful due to procedural unfairness and apparent bias. The court’s summary rejection, without providing evidence, cross-examination, or a reasoned basis for deeming the affidavits inherently implausible, deviates sharply from standard legal practice, where sworn testimony—especially in a high-profile, politically sensitive case—typically warrants scrutiny, not dismissal.

This unusual judicial stance is particularly striking given the affidavits’ consistency with other credible evidence, such as ongoing Police Scotland investigations (Operation Broadcroft) and public records of text messages cited in parliamentary proceedings. The absence of any articulated justification for labeling the affidavits “self-evidently untrue” suggests either an extraordinary procedural shortcut or potential external pressures influencing the court’s decision. Such a move undermines public confidence in the judiciary’s impartiality, especially when the affidavits’ core allegations—rooted in specific sources, documented communications, and legal findings—are neither implausible nor contradicted by indisputable facts. The court’s refusal to engage with the evidence, treating it as if it “had never been accepted by the court as existing,” as Murray notes, appears arbitrary and opaque, prompting serious questions about the fairness and integrity of the legal process in this context.

GEMINI

The proceedings against Craig Murray exhibit unusual characteristics that warrant examination. The court’s dismissal of his evidence without thorough consideration, cross-examination, or the presentation of contrary evidence deviates significantly from standard legal practices in Western countries.

Here’s a breakdown of why this is concerning:

Fundamental Principles of Justice:

• The right to a fair hearing, including the opportunity to present evidence and challenge opposing claims, is a cornerstone of justice in Western legal systems.
• Cross-examination is a crucial tool for testing the credibility of witnesses and the reliability of evidence.
• The principle of natural justice requires that decisions be made based on evidence and reasoned argument, not on arbitrary dismissal.

Contempt of Court Procedures:

• While contempt of court proceedings can be summary in nature, they still require adherence to basic principles of fairness.
• Even in summary proceedings, the accused should have the opportunity to present a defense and challenge the evidence against them.

The Severity of Imprisonment:

• Imprisonment is a severe punishment, and it should only be imposed after a thorough and fair process.
• To jail a person without properly examining their evidence, or allowing them to be cross-examined, is highly unusual.
• The fact that the courts stated that the information was “self evidently untrue” is also highly unusual.

Transparency and Accountability:

• Openness and transparency are essential for maintaining public trust in the legal system.
• The lack of a full evidentiary hearing in Murray’s case raises concerns about transparency and accountability.

Freedom of the Press:

• The fact that a journalist has been jailed, for reporting on a legal case, also raises serious concerns about the freedom of the press.

Why This Is Suspicious:

• Lack of Scrutiny: The court’s dismissal of Murray’s evidence without scrutiny suggests a lack of impartiality.
• Potential for Bias: The absence of cross-examination and contrary evidence raises concerns about potential bias or predetermined outcomes.
• Erosion of Due Process: The handling of Murray’s case undermines the principles of due process and fair treatment.

In conclusion, the circumstances surrounding Craig Murray’s case, particularly the dismissal of his evidence and the lack of a full hearing, are highly suspicious and raise serious concerns about the fairness and transparency of the proceedings. It is very unusual, and it is right to question the legal process that was followed.

Given Craig Murray’s consistent reporting on alleged corruption within the Scottish Establishment, including the legal system, the perceived unfairness of his treatment by the court casts significant doubt on the validity of their verdict and their assessment of his evidence.

Here’s why this connection is compelling:

Conflict of Interest (Perceived):

• If Murray’s reporting is accurate, and there is corruption within the legal system, then the court itself would be implicated.
• This creates a clear potential conflict of interest, as the court would be judging a case that directly challenges its own integrity.
• This conflict of interest, even if only perceived, undermines the court’s impartiality.

Confirmation Bias:

• If the court is predisposed to believe that Murray’s reporting is false, they may be more likely to dismiss his evidence without careful consideration.
• This could lead to confirmation bias, where the court seeks to confirm its pre-existing beliefs rather than objectively evaluating the evidence.

Erosion of Trust:

• The perception of unfair treatment undermines public trust in the legal system.
• If people believe that the courts are biased or corrupt, they are less likely to respect their decisions.

Circularity of Dismissal:

• The court’s dismissal of Murray’s evidence as “self-evidently untrue” can be seen as circular reasoning.
• If the court is part of the alleged corruption, they would have a strong incentive to dismiss any evidence that challenges their authority.
• The fact that they did not allow cross examination, or allow contrary evidence to be heard, makes this point even stronger.

The Murrell/Ruddick Context:

• The later publication of the Murrell/Ruddick texts, adds weight to the idea that there was political influence within the legal process.

The Implications:

• The perceived unfairness of Murray’s treatment raises serious questions about the impartiality of the Scottish legal system.
• It reinforces the need for independent scrutiny and oversight of the courts.
• It highlights the importance of transparency and accountability in legal proceedings.

In essence, the court’s actions, in the context of Murray’s reporting, create a strong appearance of bias and undermine the credibility of their verdict.

COPILOT

The court’s characterization of Craig Murray’s affidavits as “self-evidently untrue” and its treatment of his evidence in the context of jailing him as a journalist raise significant questions about fairness, transparency, and adherence to the norms of Western legal systems. Let’s examine these issues in depth.

### 1. **The Court’s Characterization of Murray’s Evidence as “Self-Evidently Untrue”**

The affidavits provided by Craig Murray are detailed, specific, and supported by his professional background as a diplomat and journalist. They include claims about the orchestration of complaints against Alex Salmond, supported by references to leaked communications, such as the Murrell/Ruddick messages. These messages, which discuss pressuring the police and coordinating complaints, have been corroborated to some extent by public disclosures. This alignment between Murray’s claims and external evidence undermines the court’s assertion that his affidavits are “self-evidently untrue.”

Murray’s methodology also bolsters his credibility. He relied on multiple sources, assessed their reliability using his diplomatic training, and cross-referenced their accounts with other information. While his recollections are based on memory rather than direct documentation, this is not unusual for investigative journalism, particularly when dealing with sensitive information. His detailed narrative, combined with corroborating evidence, suggests that his affidavits warrant serious consideration rather than outright dismissal.

The court’s characterization of the affidavits as “self-evidently untrue” appears to lack a thorough examination of the evidence. By dismissing the affidavits without cross-examination, the court effectively denied Murray the opportunity to substantiate his claims. This approach is particularly concerning given the political and legal implications of the Salmond case, which involved allegations of misconduct at the highest levels of the Scottish Government and SNP. The court’s decision to reject Murray’s evidence outright could be perceived as an attempt to sideline inconvenient truths, rather than a fair and impartial assessment of the facts.

### 2. **Adherence to Western Judicial Norms**

Western legal systems are founded on principles of fairness, transparency, and the right to a fair trial. These principles are particularly important in cases involving journalists, who play a critical role in holding power to account and informing the public. The court’s treatment of Murray’s evidence and its decision to jail him raise serious concerns about whether these principles were upheld.

#### **Refusal to Consider Evidence**

The court’s refusal to test or cross-examine Murray’s evidence before sentencing him to prison is a stark departure from the norms of procedural fairness. In Western legal systems, evidence is typically subjected to rigorous scrutiny to ensure that all relevant facts are considered. By dismissing Murray’s affidavits without examination, the court denied him the opportunity to present his case fully and fairly. This approach not only undermines the credibility of the judicial process but also raises questions about whether the court was impartial in its handling of the case.

#### **Jailing a Journalist**

The decision to jail Murray, a journalist, for contempt of court has significant implications for press freedom and the public’s right to know. Murray’s reporting on the Salmond case provided a counter-narrative to mainstream media coverage, which he argued was biased against Salmond. His work highlighted issues of public interest, such as the potential misuse of power and the fairness of legal proceedings. Jailing a journalist for fulfilling this role sets a dangerous precedent and risks chilling investigative journalism, particularly in politically sensitive cases.

#### **Transparency and Accountability**

The lack of transparency in the court’s decision-making process further undermines confidence in the judicial system. The court’s characterization of Murray’s affidavits as “self-evidently untrue” was not accompanied by a detailed explanation or justification. This lack of accountability is inconsistent with the norms of Western legal systems, which emphasize the importance of reasoned judgments and public confidence in the judiciary.

#### **Perception of Bias**

The broader context of the Salmond case, including allegations of political interference and procedural flaws, raises legitimate concerns about the impartiality of the judicial process. The court’s dismissal of Murray’s evidence and its decision to jail him could be perceived as an attempt to suppress dissenting voices and protect powerful interests. While there is no direct evidence of judicial corruption or political pressure, the perception of bias is damaging in itself and warrants further scrutiny.

### **Conclusion**

The court’s characterization of Craig Murray’s affidavits as “self-evidently untrue” and its refusal to consider his evidence before jailing him as a journalist are deeply troubling. Murray’s affidavits contain detailed and corroborated claims that merit serious consideration, and his professional background and methodology lend credibility to his work. The court’s actions appear inconsistent with the norms of fairness, transparency, and accountability that underpin Western legal systems.

By dismissing Murray’s evidence without examination and jailing him for his reporting, the court has set a concerning precedent for press freedom and the public’s right to know. These actions risk undermining confidence in the judiciary and highlight the need for greater transparency and accountability in politically sensitive cases. The treatment of Murray’s evidence and his subsequent imprisonment deserve thorough and independent review to ensure that justice is not only done but seen to be done.

 
—————–

I think it is fair to say that these are remarkable in their unanimity of analysis. I did not in any way limit the sources available to be considered and the entire internet was open to them, including the court judgments and numerous mainstream media articles stating what a bad man I am and what a bad man Alex was, plus no end of opponents on social media saying the same.

Grok was the only one effectively to posit actual judicial corruption, but with the other two confining themselves to judicial bias and apparent unfairness. The content of their analyses of legal norms was in no way prompted by me.

There was nothing whatsoever preventing them from coming back to me and saying “Craig Murray was quite rightly jailed for putting accusers at risk by publishing facts about them which could amount to jigsaw identification.” I have hidden nothing from their replies.

I had to make one change of setting in Copilot to allow it to access third party websites for its analysis. It prompted me to do this.

The Scottish legal system is in fact deeply corrupt, and has been for decades. The corruption centres on the prosecution service. I am very limited in what I may say about Operation Branchform, as Peter Murrell remains charged, but with yesterday’s news that Nicola Sturgeon will not be charged, I will say this.

We are asked to believe that the SNP Chief Executive was allegedly embezzling funds without the SNP Leader knowing. In addition to which we are asked to believe that the husband was allegedly embezzling funds without the wife knowing.

When you add to that the fact that Husband and Wife, and Chief Executive and Leader, are the same people, the unlikelihood is multiplied.

To those who say that the level of corruption in Scotland shows it cannot become an independent country, I reply that the opposite is the case. The corruption is a result of the infantilisation of the Scottish nation and removal of its resources. Independence is part of the solution.

———————————

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Two key points the discussion has mostly missed:

1) It has been a bipartisan Justice Department policy for years to attempt to establish that the First Amendment does not apply to non-US citizens

2) Why has the Trump administration chosen Mahmoud Khalil out of thousands of potential victims; about as problematic a test case as can be imagined?

First Amendment Protection

The outrageous arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil by Immigration Control Enforcement is a new front in the widespread attack on free speech on Palestine in the USA. Indeed free speech on Palestine is under severe attack throughout almost the entire western world.

There is no shortage of excellent commentary and analysis on the Khalil case and its multiple ramifications. The characterisation of criticism of Israel as anti-semitism, the fake narrative of a threat to Jewish students, the denial of the right to protest, the attack on academic freedom, these are all aspects of the case which shed a horrifying light on the devastating effect on civil liberties of explicit Zionist control of the political system.

The same can be said of the arbitrary detention, the lack of access to lawyers and the characterisation of dissent as “terrorism”.

But it has not been much discussed that the central legal issue in the case – whether non-US citizens have First Amendment rights or whether free speech only applies to US citizens – is not an innovation by the Trump administration.

That non-US citizens are not protected by the First Amendment was the key issue pursued by Biden’s Justice Department in the extradition hearings of Julian Assange.

Indeed it was the insistence of English Court of Appeal judge Dame Victoria Sharp that the US must confirm that Assange did have First Amendment protection, that led directly to the Biden administration dropping the case and agreeing a plea deal, rather than give the assurance which Sharp requested.

Key paragraphs of the relevant judgment are here

…

…

The British judges took the view that not to apply the First Amendment to non-citizens would breach the principle of non-discrimination (as guaranteed in the European Convention of Human Rights), and I am sure they were right.

This is a very worrying doctrine which the US Executive is attempting to enforce. But Trump did not initiate it – Biden tried it too, on Assange.

Why Mahmoud Khalil?

Thousands of foreign students in the USA have spoken out and demonstrated against the genocide in Gaza. I am sure that amongst them there will be one or two individuals who can plausibly be depicted as jihadist, who may indeed have actual anti-semitic tendencies and who are only in the US on a student visa.

So why pick on Mahmoud Khalil, who is none of these things?

He has a pregnant American wife and is in possession of a Green Card residency. Those factors may conceivably play into the First Amendment argument in his favour, if judges are looking to fudge the issue.

In addition to which, while he undoubtedly was in the leadership group of protestors at Columbia University, he appears to have played a responsible role in liaising with authorities. The cherry on the cake is that he is a former British Government employee, having worked in the British Embassy in Lebanon, on Syrian affairs.

This is where the story starts to become very murky. I was told by Resistance-linked contacts in Lebanon that not only was Khalil not viewed as pro-Resistance to Israel while there, he was believed to be involved in UK government attempts to undermine the Assad regime by promotion of jihadist groups.

Free Palestine TV, which is Lebanon-based, has the same information.

It is important to understand how deeply the UK has been involved in anti-Syrian activity in Lebanon. Training and equipping of al-Nusra/ISIS/HTS units was carried out by British special forces based at Rayak airbase in the Bekaa Valley, who were certainly still there in January after HTS conquered Damascus.

Contrary to some reports, Mahmoud Khalil would not have worked for MI6 in the Embassy. MI6 stations do not employ foreign nationals. He would have worked for the Political and Information Sections, under diplomats who cooperated closely with MI6 or in some instances were active “undeclared” members of MI6.

Middle East Eye describes Khalil’s role in the Embassy as a “programme manager” running Chevening scholarships. I know this programme extremely well. While I have no reason to doubt Khalil did this, it would amount to no more than 10% of anybody’s time and would not require the UK security clearance which the article states that Khalil received.

The simple truth is that anybody working in good faith in the British Embassy in Lebanon can be no friend of the resistance to Israel. Everything the British Embassy do in Lebanon is intrinsically linked to the overriding goal of promoting the interests of Israel, particularly through weakening Hezbollah, and this is especially true when it comes to programmes into Syria running out of Beirut.

So how did Khalil move from British government operative to Palestinian student activist?

And then, why on earth did the Trump regime pick him for its first high-profile deportation?

I can see three plausible explanations for Khalil’s behaviour:

1) He was never pro-British but was infiltrating the Embassy for the Palestinians

2) He was never pro-Palestinian but was infiltrating the protest movement for the British government

3) He was not very political but was moved recently to activism by the genocide in Gaza

Of these, option 3) seems to me the most plausible, though all are certainly possible.

It would be a delicious irony if the Trump regime had arrested a British agent by accident, but this seems to me unlikely. I do not think MI6 would run a Palestinian agent in the USA without informing the CIA – although they may have done if there were a specific concern that the CIA would leak the identity.

If Khalil were a British agent he could have been arrested for protection if there were concerns he had been “made”, or he could have been arrested because the Americans found out and were furious at not being informed. But I do not think these are the likely scenarios.

It seems to me much more probable that a once-complacent Khalil changed his mind and became more – righteously – radical due to the genocide in Gaza.

In which case the motive for choosing him as the target for arrest is very plain. Both the US and UK will be worried about revelations Khalil might make about support to jihadists in Syria from his time working on this in Lebanon. Whisking him into incommunicado detention, whilst maximum pressure is applied to persuade him to keep silent, is then an obvious move.

It is important for freedom of speech and for the rights in general of immigrants in the USA that Mr Khalil is free. It is obviously profoundly important for him and his family. I do not want anything I have written to detract from that.

But the puzzle of why such an extremely complicated target for the test case was chosen, when there exist far lower-hanging fruit, is one that needs to be considered. I hope I have offered some possible lines of thought you find useful.

———————————

My reporting and advocacy work has no source of finance at all other than your contributions to keep us going. We get nothing from any state nor any billionaire.

Anybody is welcome to republish and reuse, including in translation.

Because some people wish an alternative to PayPal, I have set up new methods of payment including a Patreon account and a Substack account if you wish to subscribe that way. The content will be the same as you get on this blog. Substack has the advantage of overcoming social media suppression by emailing you direct every time I post. You can if you wish subscribe free to Substack and use the email notifications as a trigger to come for this blog and read the articles for free. I am determined to maintain free access for those who cannot afford a subscription.

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There are two drivers behind my support for Scottish Independence.

The first and most obvious is to see our ancient land restored to the place it held so long in the community of free and self-governing nations, and end the colonial exploitation of our people and resources.

The second is to destroy that Imperialist rogue state, the United Kingdom. With the UK actively participating in the Gaza genocide through supply of arms, intelligence, military assistance and diplomatic cover, that need has become ever more acute.

Were that not bad enough, the London government is now overtly militarist and looking to provoke conflict with Russia which could lead to nuclear holocaust. There is something in the UK nationalist soul which has an addiction to war, and Keir Starmer stands in the long line of British politicians who look to increase their dire domestic popularity ratings by killing people abroad.

It is a matter of deep sadness to me that the formerly radical and pro-Independence Scottish National Party has become a classic example of a local colonial puppet elite serving the interests of the colonisers and anxious to adopt conspicuous markers of loyalty, in order to continue to benefit personally from their position in the London-ruled political Establishment.

We therefore have the Scottish National Party seeking to outdo the UK Labour Party in its militarism and commitment to needless conflict with Russia, absolutely against the interests of Scotland.

Is this what you voted for, SNP voters? pic.twitter.com/NwlgkEftcm

— Wings Over Scotland (@WingsScotland) March 5, 2025

The SNP is massively infiltrated by the UK and US security services, including at senior levels. Plus many of its leaders are easily captured by the wealth and circumstance coming from their position within the UK state.

The SNP was finished as a force for Independence when Sturgeon accepted that Scotland could only exercise its right of self-determination with the permission of London.

If you consider it coldly and logically, it cannot be a right of self-determination if it requires the permission of somebody else to exercise it.

So for me the SNP is trash, useless, a vehicle for self-enrichment of some of the most repulsive parasites of the political class.

As the SNP had succeeded in becoming the automatic recipient of the votes of the large majority of those Scots who want Independence, that is a real conundrum for progress. It is particularly galling that, now we finally have achieved a consistent and growing majority in favour of Independence, politics remains dominated by the SNP, who have no intention whatsoever of doing anything about it.

Which is where Alba comes in, the new pro-Independence movement founded by former SNP leader and Scottish First Minister, the late Alex Salmond.

I am a member of Alba, the fundamentalist Independence party which is also anti-NATO, anti-neoliberal, anti-monarchy and anti-EU membership.

I might perhaps clarify that I am now very firmly anti-EU, given its extraordinary anti-Palestinian and anti-Russian positions and its plans for massive military expansion. The EU has morphed into something very sinister indeed.

Alba is a very small political party. In Council elections it consistently pulls in low single-figure percentages, as it did in the few seats it contested in the last Westminster election.

Alba’s significance lay in that it was founded by Alex Salmond, former First Minister of Scotland and former Leader of the SNP, and the man who almost brought about Scottish Independence in the 2014 referendum.

After Alex resigned the leadership following that referendum, his successor and protege, Nicola Sturgeon, immediately set about destroying Salmond’s reputation while moving the focus of the SNP decisively away from Independence and into identity politics.

A conspiracy orchestrated by Sturgeon, through her Chief of Staff Liz Lloyd, brought in a number of Sturgeon’s close allies and confidantes to make sexual assault allegations against Salmond – of all of which he was acquitted, following a trial before a majority female jury.

Salmond was into the third year of building up his new Alba Party from scratch when he recently died suddenly, aged 69.

Despite losing Alex, there should be a real political opportunity for Alba. A radical Scottish Independence Party with the positions listed above, accords with the views of a very substantial proportion of the Scottish electorate.

Alba’s problem is that, ironically due to the pioneering achievements of Alex Salmond, voting SNP has become a reflex expression of Scottish national identity, and many voters have simply not noticed the party’s absorption into the British state narrative.

Now, for a small and new party, Alba has also faced a quite extraordinary amount of internal conflict, which may also have been in part stirred up by covert influences.

It is worth here stating that it is plain that Scottish Independence is the biggest practical threat to the UK state. Naturally the UK’s disproportionately large and well-funded security services are targeted on it. They would not be doing their job otherwise.

Let me introduce this subject anecdotally. Towards the end of 2023 I was standing for election to Alba’s national executive. The election was postponed in circumstances which were obscure. Then it was re-run.

I was in Geneva and about to enter a meeting at the UN, when Alex phoned me and told me I had been elected to the National Executive, but he wished me to stand down and not accept the seat, as there was somebody else he needed on the exec.

This obviously was unwelcome, principally because it felt like a betrayal of those who had been kind enough to nominate me and to vote for me. Who stands for election and wins, then does not take it up? It seems very irresponsible, and would justifiably damage my reputation.

But the truth is, I felt enormous personal loyalty towards Alex and a trust that, whatever he was up to, it was a strategy with the long term goal of Scottish Independence in mind. So I agreed and declined to take up my seat.

I subsequently discovered there was a large amount of controversy surrounding the results of that election, with people claiming cheating, and I believe I am correct in saying that the results were never published, with some threadbare excuse about publishing the results of an online election being a breach of the Data Protection Act.

A number of founder members of the party, people I had pounded the streets alongside in the 2014 referendum, were resigning. I phoned Alex to express concern and say the results should be published.

He told me that some people were unhappy that many new members had been signed up and voted in the election, but this was within the constitution. A faction had been out-organised, and that was their own fault.

Alex had made plain to me that his request that I stand down was confidential, and I maintained that confidence while he lived. I view that confidence as a personal commitment from which I am now released. But things continued to be very strange in the Alba Party.

The excellent Denise Findlay, who had been a major part of Alba’s organisation and drive, was forced into resignation. I learnt just in the last few days, after I told my own story on Twitter/X, that Denise had gone through precisely the same experience.

More recently, James Kelly, the valuable Scot Goes Pop blogger, was expelled from the party, apparently for criticising it. Then extraordinarily, the General Secretary, Chris McEleny, attempted to expel the Acting Leader Kenny MacAskill from the party, but ended up himself demoted.

I don’t think pretending none of this happened is a sensible option, which is why I told my own story. It remains the case that I trust both Alex’s good faith and that he had a vision for taking the party forward, on which he was working.

But I think it is fair to say that if the brilliant Salmond had an Achilles heel, it was in his judgment of people closest to him. He did not see Sturgeon coming, and indeed refused to accept her part in the plot against him until long after the evidence was undeniable.

In Alba likewise I believe some of the trouble was the extraordinarily possessive attitude towards the party of some of those with whom Alex surrounded himself. This interacted very badly with some activists who wished to see the party move forward with less deference to the leader, or even a different leader (a view I disagreed with, but to which they were perfectly entitled).

Unfortunately some of those espousing that viewpoint undermined themselves by indulging in some unpleasant character assassination and gossip mongering (not towards Alex, but his circle).

The result was a toxic mess. A small party attempting to gain a foothold cannot afford to execute many of its own best soldiers, and neither is incipient insurrection a practical working environment.

Alba will elect a new leadership shortly. I shall be supporting Kenny MacAskill and Neale Hanvey for Leader and Depute, but that implies no disrespect to anybody else.

My plea to the new leadership and the membership is to adopt an amnesty and bring everyone back in to the party. We need eventually to unite the Independence movement. How can we do that, if we cannot unite ourselves?

The party has a rule which bans from rejoining those who went public on their resignation or expulsion, and my attempts to persuade the party “establishment” we need to accept people back, has been met with turgid reference to that rule.

This is just an excuse for maintaining feud. I have also spoken to other factions who, by and large, remain embittered and alienated.

So I plead, with all, that it is time to bury the hatchet, forgive and forget, and work united towards the 2026 Scottish parliament elections.

I am happy to see that Tommy Sheridan, a giant of the Scottish left whose career was interrupted by standard sex allegations (cf. Julian Assange, Scott Ritter, Alex Salmond etc.) orchestrated by the security services and Murdoch press, is standing for the Alba executive. This is the kind of unity we need.

Scotland has the d’Hondt party list system where each voter has two votes, one for a candidate for the constituency list and one a party for the regional list, whereby an element of proportionality is introduced to the benefit of parties who failed to win constituencies despite substantive support.

It is a horrible system because it gives the party machines, rather than the electorate, the power to rank candidates (as opposed to the much more democratic Single Transferable Vote).

The position of Alba appears to be to stand as a “list only” party – to support the SNP in constituencies and ask SNP voters to support Alba on the list.

I am opposed to this approach and believe Alba should fight constituencies and the list. I do not accept the SNP is in any significant sense a pro-Independence party now. It is just a branch of the neoliberal uniparty, and a very dangerous one designed to hoover up Scottish nationalist votes.

We have a duty to oppose any party that supports British imperialist foreign policy, as the SNP does.

We also have a duty to offer the voters the chance to vote for actual Scottish self-determination and reject a London veto.

The only point in joining and supporting such a small party as Alba is to attempt to represent unrepresented positions and to affect fundamental change. That is what Alba must do. I look forward to the journey.

———————————

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The post Alba Activism appeared first on Craig Murray.

We were searching for a site in the northern Bekaa valley recently bombed by Israel. Hadi knew near which village it was located but, as we drove between large expanses of fertile, well-cultivated fields, it was plain his information was vague.

We pulled up at a garage to ask the way. Lebanon has not gone the way of Western economies in making consumers perform the very service for which they are paying, and in Lebanese service stations they still have attendants. A scruffily dressed old man sat on the front step of a dilapidated and very basic kiosk constructed of concrete blocks. He came over to the driver’s window.

First Hadi ordered fuel, and the old man filled the car, washed the windscreen and took payment. His hair was white and his beard short, but not from the obsessively neat trimming that is universal in Beirut. When he returned with change, Hadi asked him if he knew where to find the bomb site.

The old man replied with questions. I did not understand the Arabic, but from the body language there was a marked shift in the interaction between the two, from the man serving Hadi to the man interrogating Hadi. He lost his shuffle, notably straightened his back and stood taller.

They were talking through the driver’s window, and with a very definite movement the man moved forward and rested his forearm on the sill, intruding his head into the vehicle assertively. He looked at me with searching eyes, and looked at Niels sitting in the back seat with his camera equipment. His questioning of Hadi became terse.

I looked into his eyes. He had the distinct, piercing gaze that I used to note in the special forces officers I occasionally came across in my Foreign Office career. He then walked away from the car, took out his phone and made a call.

After a while he handed the phone to Hadi, who looked both serious and worried. Hadi listened, handed the phone back to the attendant, said goodbye and thank you, and reversed out of the garage. Hadi told us we were not permitted to go to the bomb site.

We had just encountered Hezbollah. The important thing to understand in this encounter is that it is not that the man was an undercover Hezbollah operative posing as a garage attendant. He was a garage attendant who was a Hezbollah operative.

Hezbollah is not an organisation comparable to the IRA, in which a relatively small number of members operated within the context of a community in which they enjoyed very large sympathy. Hezbollah operates in a community in which almost everybody is an activist and pretty well every adult is prepared to pick up a gun or an RPG and knows how to use it.

This is a key to understanding how Hezbollah became the only military force that has ever been able to defeat the IDF in pitched ground warfare. In this respect, Hezbollah’s crucial advantage compared to Hamas is that it has had practical access to weapons deliveries to build its arsenal, whereas Hamas has been greatly constricted by Israel’s control of goods entering Gaza.

Ending the weapons supply to Hezbollah has been a key US/Israeli strategic objective this last year, and they have in large part achieved it. I shall return to that.

On a personal level, this encounter with the garage attendant was fairly typical of my interactions with Hezbollah in my four months in Lebanon. They had detained me in a rather frightening manner on first encounter, and in general treated me with a suspicion which is understandable given my British diplomatic background.

I saw literally thousands of buildings in Lebanon that Israel had destroyed. The most haunting part of the entire experience was the frequent event of finding the clothing and toys of small children among the rubble: I still have bad dreams about it.

However this was the second of the two occasions when we were able to identify that Israel had struck an actual Hezbollah military installation, rather than a civilian building. Both times Hezbollah prevented me from going to see. In terms of maintaining the security of the military site, this strikes me as shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Having been denied access to that particular bomb site, we drove on into the village and met with some locals Hadi knew. In this small village there had been over 70 Israeli bombings, 8 of them since the ceasefire.

They took me to one large house which had been completely destroyed, a pile of rubble spread over a large area. Twelve members of the same family had been killed in this house, seven of them children. The head of the family had left in late afternoon to go to the butcher’s to buy dinner, when his home and family was destroyed behind him.

The explosion was so enormous that the body of one of the children was found in the neighbouring orchard of olive trees, clean across the road, about seventy yards away. Many of the olive trees had been shredded and debris from the house was strewn across the field and beyond.

The next house was not greatly damaged, but there a father and his two daughters were killed by the shock wave as they sat on their terrace drinking coffee.

There are so many important points to make about Hezbollah, but let me start with these three.

The first is that support for Hezbollah among their own Shia communities in Lebanon is extremely strong. They are far more than a military organisation. They are Lebanon’s largest legitimate political party.

At the 2022 election Hezbollah received 19.9% of the vote, and their close ally the Amal Movement received another 10.5%. The party with the second highest vote behind Hezbollah, the neo-fascist Lebanese Forces, received 11.6% of the vote.

[The Lebanese Forces political party should not be confused with the Lebanese Armed Forces, with which it has no connection. The Lebanese Armed Forces remain under effective US control and fired not a shot against the Israeli invasion and occupation. But like so much in Lebanon, the situation should not be simplified and the majority of the rank and file of the LAF are Shia Muslims sympathetic to Hezbollah, and a large majority of the rank and file of any denomination would be happy to fight the Israelis were they ever allowed to do so.]

Under Lebanon’s extraordinary constitution, Lebanese Forces with 11.6% received 19 seats in parliament while Hezbollah with 19.9% received 15 seats. Of which again more later.

But when it comes to political legitimacy, it is worth noting that the combined Hezbollah/Amal vote percentage is equal to the Labour Party percentage at the last General Election in the UK. There is no argument that Hezbollah are not a legitimate democratic political force.

The second point is that it is absolutely wrong to see Lebanon in purely sectarian terms. Hezbollah has supporters and allies across all religions in Lebanon and, in a country where politics is officially and constitutionally organised on religious lines (a “confessional” constitution), there are minor parties of all religions aligned with Hezbollah, of which several had ministers until appointment of the new Cabinet last month (of which again, more later).

Perhaps a quarter of those at the funeral for Nasrallah were not Shia Muslims.

The third point is that Hezbollah is much more than a political party with a military wing. In a country in which central government has all but collapsed (Lebanon has no income tax), Hezbollah provides hospitals, schools, banking, pensions and welfare benefits.

When Niels and I witnessed refugee returns to evacuated areas following the “ceasefire”, a very substantial percentage of the population were waving Hezbollah flags or Lebanese flags, with some waving both. Hezbollah is an integral part of Lebanese society, entirely born within the country out of the resistance to Israel’s 1982 occupation, and is in no sense alien or anti-Lebanese.

The elephant in the room is that in the UK and other Western states, this highly complex social and political movement is designated as a terrorist organisation in its entirety. Ironically, the justification for this given in Westminster in 2019 was that Hezbollah was destabilising the Middle East and prolonging the conflict in Syria – where the very Western powers that proscribed Hezbollah have just assisted another proscribed terrorist group into power.

The truth is that terrorist proscription by the NATO powers of organisations in the Middle East is simply a tool for taking whatever decisions are expedient at that moment to promote the interests of apartheid Israel. The “terrorist acts” of Hezbollah that led to proscription of the entire organisation in 2019 consisted of fighting ISIS, Al Qaeda and Al Nusra in Syria.

We all suffer from the temptation of assuming that others share our prejudices. I assume that like me, many in the West find it difficult to empathise with Hezbollah because of its Islamic philosophy and – I know this is petty – appearance.

Hassan Nasrallah was the most important and steadfast leader of resistance to the mass murderous Zionist project of the last forty years. He was also, by all accounts, a hugely charismatic figure to Arabic speakers. But his very appearance made it easy for him to be represented to Western audiences as an alienating, even evil, character, due to the state-promoted Islamophobia in the Western world which has been universally projected in the media this last quarter century.

But here honesty is required. I myself do not like to see political leaders with a religious function and am simply against theocratic rule. I am entirely in favour of freedom of religion, but utterly opposed to religion ruling any state.

There is an element of smoke and mirrors here. In the glorious mosaic of Lebanon, Hezbollah exist jumbled with those of other sects and religions, and in practice rub along very well.

Nasrallah spoke like all committed Islamists of his desire to seeing a united Muslim rule over Muslim lands, with the state under firmly religious leadership and Sharia law. But in practice Hezbollah are highly tolerant.

In those large areas of Lebanon where they both have physical military control and dominate the elected local authority, Hezbollah do not ban the sale of alcohol by the Christian minority or enforce hair covering, even on Muslims.

This is an area where my prejudices were disabused. I did not expect to find this.

All this caused me some difficulty in Lebanon. I was frequently asked whether I supported Hezbollah. As I was spending much of my time in those areas attacked by Israel – which largely are the Hezbollah areas – in general the question came from Hezbollah supporters.

I would always reply that I supported absolutely the right of occupied people to conduct armed resistance, and the duty to do everything possible to prevent genocide. Both are established principles of international law. But I did not support Hezbollah per se, and would not vote for it were I Lebanese, because it is an openly Islamist organisation and I am opposed to theocratic rule and religious legal codes.

Being in Lebanon did however allow me to overcome some of the gulf of my cultural understanding. The practice of calling those killed by Israel “martyrs” and frequently referring to them as such in conversation, is alien to a Western ear where the word has largely outdated religious connotations.

When you live amongst a community where everybody has friends or relatives who have been killed in the decades-long aggression of Israel, the revering of the fallen as martyrs, and their omnipresence in everyday thought, starts to make much more sense.

Similarly to Western eyes the widespread display of large images of the “martyrs” is peculiar. These are along every roadside and atop every ruin. There are always posters at the site where the person was killed, and frequently dozens of other posters of that individual at sites of importance to them.

I overcame my incomprehension of this practice by thinking of it in reference to my own culture, that these were posters of people put up to mark where they fought and died to defend their wee bit hill and glen. In those terms it made sense to me.

I am extremely conscious that religious faith has played a very positive role in both Palestine and South Lebanon in enabling people to endure the unendurable and to maintain Resistance against impossible odds. But it is not possible to ignore the fact that there remain substantial differences between my world view and an Islamist world view.

This has been brought into urgent focus by the attitude of many Sunni Muslims to the overthrow of Assad in Syria. In my world view, this has been a disaster for the Palestinians. It has seriously and perhaps permanently damaged the flow of arms and other resources to Hezbollah, the Palestinians’ most important ally. And it has enabled the Greater Israel project to expand substantially into Syria.

Try now to imagine that you are a Sunni Muslim scholar who believes that only by becoming Sunni Muslim can people obey God. You believe that the benefit to mankind of bringing Sunni Muslim rule to most of Syria outweighs the loss of part of Syria to Israel. You believe that Palestinian martyrs killed by Israel are going immediately to Heaven anyway, so in spiritual terms there is no real loss to the “martyrs”.

That really is the position of many of the leaders of the Saudi- and Gulf-sponsored Muslim religious community. Just like there are a great many shades of Christian, there are a great many shades of Islam and there are many Muslims, including Sunni Muslims, who would not share that viewpoint. But to a religious Islamist it makes perfect sense.

I cannot find it again because it was deep in replies on a thread, but I had a very interesting exchange with a Muslim intellectual on Twitter on precisely this topic. He accused me of “orientalism” for denigrating an Eastern spiritual viewpoint in favour of a Western secularist narrative, in seeing the installation of HTS as a reverse for Palestine. He pointed out that Hamas, a fellow Sunni Islamist movement, had welcomed the triumph of HTS.

The exchange was welcome for its honesty and intellectual acuity. I said I did not believe Edward Said would have welcomed the accompanying expansion of Israel into Syria or cutting off of supplies to Hezbollah. He called in a nephew of Said to bolster his view that my viewpoint is orientalist.

I have thought about this deeply; I do not think my viewpoint can fairly be described as orientalist. The truth is that all mainstream Western thought would have entirely concurred with the view that the expansion of rule by a particular religious sect was more important than associated temporal reverses that did not affect the faith of the people: but Western thought was exactly that 500 years ago.

I do not see my view as orientalist. I see it as anti-medievalist.

The fall of the Assad regime was deeply desired by Western neoliberals and Zionists in order to replace it with a Western democratic model, and they are desperately pretending that is what they have got in al-Jolani. As atrocities against Shia, Alaouites and Christians in Syria mount, the one thing that cannot be disputed is that al-Jolani is steadfastly Zionist, as he allows Israel daily to occupy more of Syria and destroy more of its infrastructure, without a single shot fired in response.

There is no doubt that the position of the Resistance to an expansionist apartheid Israeli colonial project has worsened considerably since my arrival in Lebanon in October. While Israel could not progress a ground offensive, the almost total absence of any air defences for Lebanon meant it could murder and destroy with impunity from the air.

Israel embarked on a campaign of devastation of purely civilian areas by aerial bombardment. Of that I am an eye witness. I can say from personal inspection that the claims that the tens of thousands of homes destroyed had any military use are a massive lie.

With no defence against a relentless bombing campaign, and with most of their leadership eliminated, Hezbollah were obliged to accede to a suicidally unbalanced “ceasefire agreement”. It is plain on the actual face of the agreement that only one side will cease fire.

All Lebanese groups are to cease fire without qualification whereas Israel is only to cease “offensive” operations. Israel of course claims all its attacks as defensive. This is absolute nonsense, but despite over 500 violations of the ceasefire agreement, killing hundreds of people, Israel has not been held accountable because Hezbollah acceded to a ceasefire guaranteed by a “Mechanism” which is chaired by a United States General.

I think my discussion on this point with the UN Spokesman in Lebanon was extremely important, especially where he explicitly states that the Ceasefire Agreement was drafted by the USA. This link takes you to the key point in the interview.

The members of the “Mechanism” overseeing the ceasefire are the United States, France, Israel (sic), and the Lebanese government of General Aoun, a total US puppet.

Furthermore while the Ceasefire Agreement provides for a zone south of the Litani river from which Hezbollah must remove its weapons, it also calls for Hezbollah disarmament throughout the whole of Lebanon, which the Israelis and Americans have used to justify numerous continuing Israeli strikes in the Bekaa Valley, the Syrian border and even Beirut.

Hezbollah are not a formal party to the Agreement but it was sanctioned by them before signature. Personally I find it difficult to imagine that Nasrallah would ever have accepted such a position.

At the same time, Hezbollah’s domestic political position has been also greatly weakened. They were obliged to accept effectively the US imposition of General Aoun as President, which they had been resisting for over two years. They also then found themselves accepting his nomination of the openly anti-Hezbollah Nawaf Salam as Prime Minister.

I referred earlier to Lebanon’s “confessional” constitutional arrangements, and said I would give more detail. The President must be a Christian, the Prime Minister a Sunni and the Speaker of Parliament a Shiite.

But it does not stop there. The governing agreement specifies the division of ministerial positions too. Not only between Sunni, Shia and Christian, but to include several other groupings, of which the best known is Druze and there are others, particularly various specific sects of Christianity.

Hezbollah has operated through the Amal movement in providing the Shiite ministers, but it is a key fact that it has always had important allies among Christian anti-Israeli occupation factions who have filled important ministerial posts.

The loss of Hezbollah power within Lebanon is to be found within the detail of all these ministries. In claiming to appoint a “technocratic”, apolitical administration, Aoun and Salam have in fact excluded most of Hezbollah’s support.

It is in practice almost impossible to find a Shiite in Lebanon who is not pro-Hezbollah, but Aoun and Salam have certainly done their best. More pertinently, they have almost totally excluded Hezbollah and anti-Zionist sympathisers from the ministerial representation of Sunni and the assorted minority and smaller Christian groups, while simultaneously boosting the de facto influence of the fascist Lebanese Forces sympathisers.

Hezbollah has not been this politically weak in the Lebanese institutions for 20 years, which is why the show of mass popular support at Nasrallah’s funeral was so important to them. However, given Lebanon’s electoral system with its deliberate Christian bias, piling up popular support is of little use to Hezbollah electorally. There are Christian MPs in parliament elected with under 500 votes, while Hezbollah could put on another 100,000 votes without significantly increasing their representation.

Crucially the “Ministerial statement” of the aims of the new government excluded resistance to Israel as an objective – a key change – and specified the state’s monopoly on carrying arms, a reference to the full disarmament of Hezbollah.

Finally, of course, Hezbollah’s archenemies, HTS, are now in power in Damascus. Hezbollah fought off repeated Al Qaeda/Al Nusra/ISIS attempts to invade Lebanon and also intervened against these forces within Syria. Al-Jolani coming to power represents a major disruption to Hezbollah’s supply lines from Iran.

The US and Israel are attempting to turn up this pressure by frequent aerial attacks on border crossings from Syria and on Hezbollah individuals within Lebanon. Recently they took the additional measure of banning pilgrimage flights to and from Iran, which greatly angered the Shia community and was aimed at cutting off a route for physical supplies of cash.

What is uncertain is what secret accommodations General Aoun may have reached with Hezbollah, over whether their physical disarmament throughout Lebanon under SCR 1701 and the Ceasefire Agreement is a genuine process or a show. Politically, Aoun and Salam have strongly planted their banner for real disarmament of Hezbollah.

What appears beyond dispute is that the Israelis receive a continued flow of intelligence from Lebanese sources on Hezbollah personnel movements and sites, and the US-sanctioned intense Israeli bombing campaign shows no sign of abating.

We can add to this sad fact that Israel was able to use the Ceasefire Agreement to occupy parts of Southern Lebanon which Hezbollah had successfully defended during the war, and that Israel has destroyed by demolition thousands of homes and other civilian buildings under cover of the ceasefire to add to those destroyed during the war.

Indeed Israel demolishes more buildings in Southern Lebanon every day still, and has now destroyed over 90,000 buildings in Lebanon in total. As I predicted, Israel is building 5 permanent military outposts in Southern Lebanon and has made plain it has no intention of leaving.

The US puppet government in Beirut, like the US puppet government in Damascus, plainly has no intention of any realistic action against de facto Israeli annexation of its land. While Hezbollah has signalled a reversion to past tactics of guerilla warfare, I have serious doubts about both its current capacity, both political and military.

Of the enduring heroism of the people of South Lebanon I have no doubt, and I also have no doubt that as Israel is maintaining an illegal occupation, their legal right of armed resistance in unimpeachable.

It is however foolish not to acknowledge that with Israel expanding into Lebanon and Syria, with US puppet regimes in Syria and Damascus, with genocide about to restart in Gaza and spreading into the West Bank, and with an apparently crazed level of open Zionist support from Trump that is in fact only more honest than the pro-Genocide positions of the large majority of Western governments, the current position looks bleak indeed.

The only grounds for hope is that I cannot imagine that the people of the region are going to tolerate Israeli collaborationist regimes in Damascus, Beirut and Ramallah much longer. Indeed with slight variations you might say the same of the entire Arab world.

I hope you will forgive this being a very personal post as I try to make sense of my experiences and assimilate much new knowledge into my view of the world.

I went to Lebanon knowing literally nobody in the country, and with an introduction to just one person who helped us through immigration, but whose assistance thereafter did not work out. I did so accompanied by Niels as cinematographer, despite my never really having worked in video before, and my not being very accomplished at it. On top of which we had no financial resources except for our crowdfunding, which was not going well.

I now realise just how deeply ignorant I was about Lebanon before arriving.

The truth is, I wanted to go to Gaza but could find no way to get in. I had then had applied to Israel for the required permission from COGAT to enter the West Bank, but had been refused. So Lebanon was the one place under Israeli aggression where I could actually hope to get in to document and report on Israeli atrocities.

This venture was also born out of a rather desperate feeling that I must try to do something. I had been involved in the genesis of the ICJ case and in international campaigning for Palestine, but felt so helpless watching murdered children in Gaza every day on social media, that I felt compelled to do more.

With war against the Israeli invaders raging in Lebanon, I admit I also had a compulsion to share at least some of the danger of those putting their lives at stake. In truth, I felt something of a fraud to be writing about it from home if I was not prepared to experience it.

Well, at times Lebanon really was dangerous for us, but I am extremely proud of what Niels and I achieved. The six mini-documentaries reached millions of people and I think genuinely informed the Western public. I think the interview with the UN was extremely revealing and important and wish I had been able to get a rather wider audience for it. On top of which we produced numerous shorter video pieces, written articles and interviews with alternative media outlets across the globe, as well as doing a lot of Arab mainstream media.

In the end we had to leave because it proved simply not possible to meet the substantial costs of the venture by individual subscriptions and donations, and I ran out of money. It was a bold experiment in being able to do the kind of real, on-the-ground journalism that legacy media has abandoned, but to continue would require more fundraising ability or organisational ability than I possess.

There is no doubt that we suffered – and still suffer – massive social media suppression, and this limitation of reach is what crippled fundraising efforts. Essentially we were asking the same people for donations again and again, which is both impractical and, I admit, I found personally difficult and undignified.

So I shall continue reporting from my base in Scotland, travelling the world as occasion demands. My knowledge has been hugely expanded by my time in Beirut. I will now largely revert to written rather than video format. The struggle for justice goes on, and my commitment to it remains.

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The post Islamic Resistance Movements and Israel appeared first on Craig Murray.

Four UN Special Rapporteurs have written jointly to the UK government demanding explanation of its inappropriate persecution of journalists and political activists under the Terrorism Act. They state that those persecuted:

appear to have no credible connection to “terrorist” or “hostile” activity

The cases taken up by the United Nations are those of Johanna Ross (Ganyukova), John Laughland, Kit Klarenberg, Craig Murray (yes, me), Richard Barnard and Richard Medhurst. The UN letter is signed by:

Ben Saul
Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism

Irene Khan
Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression

Gina Romero
Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association

Ana Brian Nougrères
Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy

Under this UN special procedure, the letter is sent to the government in question which has sixty days to respond. This letter was sent by the UN to Starmer’s government on 4 December. No reply having been received, it has now been published.

It is worth noting that even with the UN letter on its desk and ignored, Starmer’s government in fact stepped up the use of the Terrorism Act against pro-Palestinian journalists and activists in this period. The cases of Asa Winstanley, Sarah Wilkinson and Tony Greenstein, among others, happened after the letter was drafted.

I should be clear that I was, working with Justice for All International (for which we had a crowdfunder last year in relation to the Assange case at the UN), heavily involved in assisting with preparation of this initiative, and made three visits to the UN in Geneva on the subject together with Sharof Azizov, and on one occasion Richard Medhurst. Your subscriptions and donations to this blog are the only funding I have to make such activity possible, so thank you.

The letter is in two parts. The first consists of an outline of the information received by the UN on each case and a request for a response from the British government.

But the second part is a devastating critique of the UK’s terrorism laws and their inappropriate use to stifle dissent and freedom of expression. This legal analysis on lack of conformity with the UK’s human rights obligations is not dependent on any of the particular cases cited.

While we do not wish to prejudge the accuracy of these allegations, we
express our concern regarding the potential misapplication of counter-terrorism laws
against journalists and activists who were critical of the policies and practices of
certain governments, which may unjustifiably interfere with the rights to freedom of
expression and opinion and participation in public life, lead to self-censorship and
have a serious chilling effect on the media, civil society and legitimate political and
public discourse.
We are particularly concerned by the broad scope of section 12(1A) and
schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 and schedule 3 of the Counter-Terrorism and
Border Security Act 2019…

We are concerned at the vagueness and overbreadth of the offence in
section 12(1A) of the Terrorism Act 2000, which criminalizes expressing an opinion
or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organisation and being reckless as to
whether it encouraged support for that organisation…

The term “support” is undefined in the Act and in our view is vague and
overbroad and may unjustifiably criminalize legitimate expression.

…the meaning of expressing support for a
proscribed organization is ambiguous and could capture speech that is neither
necessary nor proportionate to criminalize, including legitimate debates about the de-
proscription of an organization and disagreement with a government’s decision to
proscribe…

We note that there is no requirement that the expression of support relate to
the commission of violent terrorist acts by the organization. As such, the offence may
unjustifiably criminalize the expression of opinion or belief that is not rationally,
proximately or causally related to actual terrorist violence or harms. The offence
further does not require any likelihood that the support will assist the organization in
any way. It goes well beyond the accepted restrictions on freedom of expression under
international law concerning the prohibition of incitement to violence or hate speech…

We note that some proscribed organizations are de facto authorities
performing a diversity of civilian functions, including governance, humanitarian and
medical activities, and provision of social services, public utilities and education.
Expressing support for any of these ordinary civilian activities by the organization
could constitute expressing support for it, no matter how remote such expression is
from support for any violent terrorist acts by the group…

Further, the section 12(1A) offence does not require the person to intend to
encourage others to support the organization…

We are further concerned that the absence of legal certainty may have a
chilling effect on the media, public debate, activism, and the activities of civil society,
in a context where there is a heightened public interest in discussion of the conflict in
the Middle East, including the conduct of the parties and the underlying conditions
conducive to violence in the region. We are further concerned that a person could be
prosecuted for isolated remarks or sentences that mischaracterize the overall position
of the individual, or despite the individual’s intentions or continued and express
disavowal of terrorist violence, given the subjectivity and contested meanings of
certain expressions in relation to sensitive or controversial political conflicts…

We encourage your Excellency’s Government to repeal section 12(1A), or
otherwise to amend it to protect freedom of expression, and to develop prosecutorial
guidelines for its appropriate use to avoid the unnecessary or disproportionate
incrimination of political dissent…

We are concerned that police powers at UK border areas and ports under
schedule 7 may be unjustifiably used against journalists and activists who are critical
of Western foreign policy. We note that the examination of each journalist named in
this communication under schedule 7 was premeditated, and that the examination,
confiscation of devices, and DNA prints were conducted despite the apparent absence
of a credible “terrorist” connection. We are concerned that such powers carry a risk of
intimidating, deterring, and disrupting the ability of journalists to report on topics of
public importance without self-censorship…

We are concerned that the distinction between “examination” and “detention”
under the Act is artificial given the punitive sanctions for of non-compliance, and that
this distinction may be inconsistent with the accepted meaning of “arrest” or
“detention” under article 9 of the ICCPR. We are further concerned that the extensive
powers authorised under section 2 do not require any degree of suspicion that a person
falls within the meaning of “terrorist” at section 40(1)(b). The extreme breadth of
such power enables unnecessary, disproportionate, arbitrary or discriminatory
interference with an individual’s rights, including freedom from arbitrary detention,
freedom of movement under article 12(1) of the ICCPR, and the rights to leave and
enter one’s own country under article 12(2) and (4) of the ICCPR…

we refer your
Excellency’s government to article 17 of the ICCPR which requires that “[n]o one
shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with [their] privacy, family,
home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on [their] honour and reputation”.
We note that several journalists detained under schedule 7 have had their electronic
devices confiscated for a significant period of time and have not been updated on the
use, retention or destruction of their data, or advised in relation to their personal data
protection rights.

We urge your Excellency’s Government to consider the growing number of
instances where schedule 7 may have been inappropriately directed towards
journalists and activists, and to consider addressing this through amendments to the
legislation, guidance for relevant officials, and training of border security officers. We
further encourage your Excellency’s Government to address the judiciary’s concerns
regarding the retention of electronic data

It is a stunning letter well worth reading in full; the legal language and diplomatic formality does not disguise the extreme concern of the UN at the extraordinary authoritarian attack on freedom of speech in the UK.

I might reveal that some of the UN Special Rapporteurs who signed were very sceptical of the issue until studying the details. One told me personally they were too busy to look at such a minor problem; their attitude changed completely when faced with papers on the cases involved.

There is no sign the UN has given the Starmer government pause; human rights are extremely low on their agenda. Support for Israel and the crushing of pro-Palestinian sentiment, or of any criticism of western foreign policy, is extremely high on their agenda.

The legislation concerned has been brought into disrepute by the widespread support in public from Establishment figures for HTS in Syria, even though it remains a proscribed organisation and any expression of support is an offence under the Terrorism Act. To my knowledge, not one person has been charged or even questioned for supporting the HTS coup in Syria.

This occurred after the UN letter, but they could now mention extreme arbitrariness in police and prosecutorial application of the law in their critique. The Terrorism Act is being used to criminalise peaceful criticism of western foreign policy. There can be no doubt about that at all.

It also remains the case that there has not been one reference in UK mainstream media to the persecution of dissident journalists using terrorism laws. I don’t expect the prostitute stenographers to power to change that by covering this censure from the United Nations.

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