craig

Propaganda

 in UK Policy by | View Comments

I have been worrying about the serious deterioration of civil liberties in the UK for five years now, but a small incident last night convinced me we are living in a country that must be classified as “Not free”. I was travelling to the theatre on the tube, and the large majority of passengers were shrouded by copies of either London Lite or the London Paper. Some thirty copies of each banner headline screamed shrilly its message of fear through the train: “Five Suicide Bombers on the Loose in London!” “Jet Terror Plot!” “Terror Jury Holiday Farce Resulted in Acquittals!”

The propaganda, which reflected uncritically the briefing the Security Services and Home Office have been manically pumping out since the non-existence of the “Bigger than 9/11” jet plot was confirmed, was so stark and so divorced from any connection to the truth, that I am convinced we are already in effect living in a totalitarian state where the government controls the population through fear with brutal efficiency and with absolutely no regard to the truth. The government had contrived to turn a major blow for its “War on Terror” scaremongering into a vehicle to ramp up that scaremongering.

The Lite told of there still being bombers around from the “Jet Terror Plot” and gave no indication whatsoever that the jury had decided the jet plot did not exist. Indeed it claimed shamelessly that the three terrorists convicted of conspiracy to murder had been planning to bring down planes – a direct lie.

The London Paper was still more worrying, because it put detail into the line the odious security service spokesman Frank “Goebbels” Gardner has been pumping out on the BBC: juries are unreliable. It said that the failure to convict in the trial was due to interruptions for a holiday for the jurors and because of an injury to a juror in a golf accident. The clear trend of the briefing coming from the government is towards the abolition of jury trials in terrorist cases: Diplock courts.

Meantime in London two men are on trial for “terrorism” because they attended a demonstration at the Uzbek Embassy against the hideous Uzbek regime, at which red paint was thrown at the Embassy to symbolise the blood of Karimov’s many thousands of victims. Such protest as paint-throwing should, I think, be illegal, but given events like the Andijan massacre of many hundreds of peaceful demonstrators, I have huge sympathy for those who undertake civil disobedience in the Uzbek case. It has nothing to do with terrorism, but under the notorious Section 58 of the Terrorism Act there is real danger of conviction and heavy sentences.

These are critical times: all good men and women must fight hard against the closing in of the system upon us.

.

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Nick Cohen Has Gone Mad

 in War in Iraq by | View Comments

Nick Cohen’s latest rant is a defence of La Palin, under the guise of advice to liberals on how to attack her more wisely. He gives the game away with the following defence of Blair:

If they had confined themselves to charging Tony Blair with failing to find the weapons of mass destruction he promised were in Iraq, and sending British troops into a quagmire, they might have forced him out. They were so consumed by loathing, however, they insisted that he had lied, which he clearly had not.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/07/uselections2008.republicans2008

Which planet is Cohen on? On 24 September 2002 Blair told the UK parliament this:

The dossier we publish gives the answer. The reason is because his chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programme is not an historic leftover from 1998. The inspectors aren’t needed to clean up the old remains. His WMD programme is active, detailed and growing. The policy of containment is not working. The WMD programme is not shut down. It is up and running…

Iraq has chemical and biological weapons, that Saddam has continued to produce them, that he has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes, including against his own Shia population; and that he is actively trying to acquire nuclear weapons capability.

http://www.biogs.com/blair/blair14.html

Which is beyond doubt the most infamous lie, or series of lies, in all political history. It fulfils all the criteria of a lie by being demonstrably untrue, and by the fact that Blair knew it to be untrue. Unlike Nick Cohen, who was in a pub somewhere, I was a senior British diplomat at the time the dossier was produced and a former head of the FCO section monitoring Iraqi sanctions enforcement. I know, and have counted as a friend, John Williams, the Head of FCO News Department who did the first draft and is now a man wracked with conscience. I was told at the time that our claims were “Bollocks” by Bill Patey, then head of the FCO department covering the Middle East and now our Ambassador in Saudi Arabia, I heard first hand and before the war started witness of the pressure and career threats that reduced members of the FCO Research Analysts to tears.

It is interesting that Cohen tries the same rhetorical trick with Blair that he does with Palin. He starts off by trying to sound sympathetic to liberals, that there is validity to “charging Tony Blair with failing to find the weapons of mass destruction he promised were in Iraq, and sending British troops into a quagmire.”

But in fact we know these are not Cohen’s views at all and he remains a major cheerleader for the Iraq war. He has written an entire book about how misguided the “Left” are for not understanding Iraq and the noble neo-con desire to export “democracy” by force. So if Cohen disguises his defence of Blair with a false cloak of sympathy for the arguments against him, how much notice should we take of his feeble anti-Palin points before he defends her? Is it not more probable that the laughable old dipsomaniac is simply lost in admiration of another fellow neo-con?

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Two Cheers For Nationalisation

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The Guardian’s Larry Elliott has written an excellent piece on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I particularly like this passage:

But if the big financial institutions cannot – unlike, say, a car company or an airline – be allowed to founder, they also cannot be allowed to conduct themselves in the same way as companies where there really is a risk of failure. Congress will undoubtedly demand tougher regulations for the activities of US banks in exchange for bailing them out, and rightly so. If ever there was a time to bring in controls on the ability of banks to create unlimited amounts of credit, to restrict the more toxic forms of derivatives, to rein in the activities of hedge funds, to insist that remuneration structures are not biased in favour of reckless speculation, and to use anti-trust law to break up the power of the big institutions then this, surely, is it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/09/freddiemacandfannie

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Non-Existent “Bigger than 9/11” Airline Plot

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I came in for much criticism at the time for being the first “respectable” commentator to call the fact that the “Bigger than 9/11 airline plot” was massive government hype, but my sources were very good. After a long trial a jury has now found that there was no credible evidence of plans to blow up airlines.

jurors rejected prosecution claims that Ali was responsible for an unprecedented airline bomb plot. They discarded evidence that Ali intended to target passenger jets flying from London to major North American cities with suicide attacks.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/sep/08/11

The jury did find that three of the accused were engaged in a plan to carry out domestic terrorist bombing, and there does appear some quite firm evidence to substantiate that. Doubtless the appeals process will work its way through. But this appears to be another example of a small pathetic group of failed would be terrorists who were never, at any stage, planning to take liquid explosives on to airliners.

That is the fundamental problem with the “War on Terror”, It is not that Islamic extremist terrorism does not exist. It does. Frankly given the many, many thousands of civilians we have killed in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon, it would be surprising if it did not exist. But it is massively hyped out of all reality by a government determined to use it to justify a massive increase in its powers over the citizenry.

I ask you to cast your minds back to just how very massive the hype was about the “airline liquid bomb plot” in summer of 2006. Scotland Yard called it “Bigger than 9/11”. In particular, remember the appalling anti-Muslim stories of plans to blow up planes using babies and baby bottles – as potent and horrifying a racist urban myth as has ever been developed.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2006/08/deadly_baby_bot.html

These were total rubbish.

Of the twenty one people arrested over this massive plot to blow up airlines, which the Metropolitan Police described as “Bigger than 9/11”, in the end three were convicted of conspiracy to murder and four of causing public nuisance. Not one of those dragged from their homes at 2.30 am on the direct personal instruction of John Reid was convicted.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2006/08/the_uk_terror_p.html

Accepting that 7/7 was Islamic terrorism (which I realise many people do not), about 60 people have been killed by Islamic terrorists in the UK. Any death is terrible, but that is about 2% of those who died in the Northern Ireland troubles. Even in the year of 7/7, less people were killed by Islamic terrorists than were drowned in their own baths. You have more chance of being struck by lightning than killed by a Islamic terrorist.

Yet this terrorist campaign was described by Tony Blair as “A fundamental threat to Western Civilisation” and by John Reid as “A threat on the scale of the Second World War”. The astonishing thing is that they created a climate in which the media accepted those assesments without a hint of the ridicule they deserved.

Terrorism has to be fought and prevented, but that is best done by meticulous, plodding police and intelligence work. It is also fundamental, but worth saying, that opposing rather than participating in oppression, bombing, torture and illegal invasion abroad would cut the ground from under terrorism. You do not fight terrorism by massively talking it up and terrifying your population into anti-Muslim attitudes, and initiating a spiral of repression that will just cause more terror.

On December 2006 I blogged:

I still do not rule out that there was a germ of a terror plot at the heart of this investigation. We can speculate about agents provocateurs and security service penetration, both British and Pakistani, but still there might have been genuine terrorists involved. But the incredible disruption to the travelling public, the War on Shampoo, and the “Bigger than 9/11” hype is unravelling.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2006/12/the_war_on_sham.html

If anyone can point to anything more prescient, I shall be dead impressed.

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A Day in the Life

 in Dundee Uni by | View Comments

Haven’t blogged much in the last week, so I thought I would take you through my day yesterday to show the kind of stuff I’m doing. It was a slightly busier day than usual, but really not much.

04.16 Helped Nadira start her day’s Ramadan observances

04.45 Got up and dressed properly

05.15 Left home in Shepherds Bush

07.00 Flew London City Airport to Edinburgh

09.30 Meeting of Scottish University Rectors at University of Edinburgh to discuss reaction to Scottish future funding paper. Key points we make:

– Overall funding for Scottish University sector inadequate compared to rest of Northern Europe

– Lack of opportunity for student input in the “Consultation” process

– No discussion of the key question of student support. Average debt for students leaving Scottish Universities now £13,500 even though most don’t have to pay tuition fees. Students whose parents can’t afford to support them tend to have higher levels of debt. With recession looming and job prospects looking bleaker, real danger of poorer people deciding not to go to University.

– “Additional” funding linked almost exclusively to research; danger that good teaching is neglected and under-rewarded.

We also agree –

We are against the government’s daft proposals to raise the age for purchasing alcohol from off licenses to 21

We will campaign for the democratic Scottish tradition of elected rectors as Chairman of University Court to be introduced in every Scottish University

10.30 Joint Press conference of the Rectors – first in five hundred years. This goes well. Times Higher Ed were there and others who hopefully will run features. The only paper that reported it as news was the Scotsman. They have slanted it as an attack on the SNP, but then they slant everything as an attack on the SNP.

http://news.scotsman.com/latestnews/Universities-funding-war-flares-again.4461953.jp

The only reference to anything I said was a joke in the diary

http://news.scotsman.com/politics/The-diary.4461884.jp

11.30 Post press conference meeting to discuss future strategy for Rector’s group

12.00 Walk to National Library of Scotland. Order up manuscripts relating to Alexander Burnes (whose biography I am writing)

12.50 Leave library. Phone calls from immigration lawyers and the Guardian about a defector from the Uzbek security services, Ikram Yakubov, who I am helping. Ikram has brought valuable information from a security analysis centre close to President Karimov. Much more on this to come, but here is some of his evidence:

– On a visit to an Uzbek security service detention centre he saw a CIA officer named Andrew actually present as alleged members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan were tortured

– Richard Conroy, British head of the UN in Uzbekistan, was assassinated on the orders of President Karimov when the passenger plane on which he was flying blew up near Tashkent airport

– The Tashkent bombs of 2004 were an operation by the Uzbek security services to discredit the opposition

– Karimov personally ordered the Andijan massacre. Lists of those killed were carefully compiled and amout to over 1500

– SOAS lecturer Shirin Akiner does work for the Uzbek government

Obviously I have great concern for Ikram’s safety. Normally such a defector should be of great interest to MI6, but of course this is all stuff the British government denies.

13.10 Quick lunch with senior friends from the Scottish Lib Dems and SNP, to quietly forward agreement on the replacement of Council Tax by a local income tax.

14.00 Back in National Library for delivery of manuscripts. Include two fascinating letters home to Montrose from London from the 15 year old Alexander preparing to sail to India as a Cadet. I have to make copies by hand in pencil.

Some extracts from Alex to his father, April 1st 1821

“Would that my birthday were come for from that day I hope never to be a burden to anyone. Fortunately my birthday happens on Wednesady which is account day so I will be entitled to pay the very day I am sixteen…

I am astonished by your silence for except for a few lines from (illegible) and a letter from you returning the certificates I have not received a scrap from father, mother or brother.

Mr Hume [Joseph Hume] has given me a state of James’ expenditure in London which I now transmit you as also the gross anount of our equipment.

Jame’s amounts to £84 & mine to £101 odd, but the reason of the disparity is my getting all my accoutrements such as sword, cap & so in London, which James has not. This is really a great sum…”

NLS Mss 3813 ff 114-5

A PS to his mother is poignant:

PS I hope you make them feed the hawk & crow & also take care of the tulips & other flowers I had.

NB William Ross had my Greek dictionary which you can get from him when he’s done with it but not till then for you know well the circumstances of his father.

NLS MSS 3813 ff 112-3

His mother was to see Alex only once more, briefly, ten years later, when he was one of the most famous men in the country, and then never again before his death in a futile invasion of Afghanistan which he had put his career on the line to try to stop.

17.30 Leave the Library for the airport. On the bus I make calls to organise some Freshers week student meetings (anti-war and Amnesty) in Scotland.

20.30 Arrive London City. DLR malfunctioning.

21.45 Go to Madame Jojos for evening at burlesque show. Some discussions of African development projects, but mostly just relax in a group that includes some breathtakingly beautiful women – including of course Nadira. Drink a large amount of Veuve Cliquot.

02.00 Home to bed.

The rather scarey thing about this day is that not one of the things mentioned earns me a penny. I also did not get round to the very urgent task of last minute changes to The Catholic Orangemen of Togo, changes wanted by my publishers to appease the FCO and Schillings (Tim Spicer’s lawyers). Hard to settle to this because I really don’t want to do it. But that is the priority for today, together with Ikram.

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Hypocrite Miliband And The Myth Of Western Moral Superiority

 in Rendition by | View Comments

David Miliband was making great show today of fulminating in Kiev against Russian disregard of international law. Yet simultaneously he is continuing the sorry British record of participation in war crimes and contravention of the UN Convention Against Torture, Article IV of which covers “complicity” in torture. Both of these are serious breaches of international law.

Binyam Mohamed is a British resident who was the victim of illegal rendition and hideous torture in several countries.

Miliband has declined to release further evidence about the case on grounds of national security, arguing that disclosure would harm Britain’s intelligence relationship with the US.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/27/guantanamo.humanrights

Mohamed faces a “Trial” by military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay. Judges, defence and prosecution lawyers are all members of the US military. Neither Mohamed not his defence lawyers will be allowed to see much of the evidence against him. This includes evidence of participation in his torture by British security services, and details of where he was being held and interrogated over two years (Uzbekistan? Afghanistan? Poland? Diego Garcia? – Miliband is keeping it secret). By the symmetry of evil, UK evidence is being witheld on grounds it could damage security cooperation with the US, while US evidence is being witheld on the grounds it could damage security cooperation with the UK. This farce is sickening.

It was, of course, the excuse that security cooperation with Saudi Arabia would be damaged that led to the dropping of the prosecution of the vile corrupt executives at BAE. The operations of the security services are, beyond any shade of argument, above the law both sides of the Atlantic.

When I threw over my diplomatic career to expose the hideous UK/CIA complicity with torture in Uzbekistan, I genuinely believed that my personal sacrifice would form part of a movement which would end this abomination being carried out in our names. In fact, the Bush/Blair acolytes have pushed further to the point that poor Binyan Mohamed faces a fate that would have been beyond the pen of Kafka.

Never mind, let’s divert the public by pointing at those evil Russians!

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The Right To Be Wrong

 in The Book by | View Comments

Harry’s Place is the natural home for ex-socialists who joined the neo-con assault on the developing world, and then sought to justify themselves by extreme vituperation against anyone who exhibited a greater degree of political consistency. But these rather sad people need a home, and it is quite wrong for the site to be taken down.

I am genuinely flummoxed as to why people who disagree with something don’t simply argue back, expecially on blogs which have undermined the need for access to a printing press. The fact that I am really nice and the denizens of Harry’s Place really horrible does not in the least make the attack on Harry’s Place any more justified than Alisher Usmanov’s or Tim Spicer’s attacks on me. Support freedom of speech and an open web! Bring back horrible Harry!

http://mreugenides.blogspot.com/

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UN Confirms US Kills Sixty Children Among Ninety Civilians in Afghanistan

 in Uzbekistan by | View Comments

Yet another act of hideous brutality. The US is maintaining its claim to have killed “Thirty militants”. The UN, which unlike the US has actually been to the place to investigate, is confirming that the victims were sixty civilians including ninety children. Yet another notch upwards on the spiral of hate. How can anyone believe this is a solution?

“Investigations by UNAMA (United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan) found convincing evidence, based on the testimony of eyewitnesses, and others, that some 90 civilians were killed, including 60 children, 15 women and 15 men,” U.N. Special Envoy to Afghanistan Kai Eide said in a statement.”

The U.S. military has launched an investigation into the incident, after saying it was unaware of any civilians killed in what it said was a single air strike in the Shindand district of western Afghanistan on Friday.

Jets had targeted a known Taliban commander and killed 30 militants, the U.S.-led coalition said.

UNAMA sent its human rights team to the Shindand area to investigate, meeting local officials, elders and villagers.

http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-35179320080826

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Russia/Georgia: Uncle Craig Answers Your Questions

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Are We Entering A New Cold War?

Possibly. Although thankfully less people are now dying in Georgia, in diplomatic terms the crisis is in fact worsening fast. The formal US signing of the agreement to station missiles in Poland was rapidly followed by recognition by the Russian parliament of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Those are both major inflammatory acts for the other side, and it is difficult to see how the current administrations in Russia and USA can pull back on either the missiles or the recognitions.

More significantly, Russia announced it was increasing its troop numbers in the port of Poti. This effectively kills the six point peace treaty Russia signed. Almost certainly, Russia will argue that its commitment to withdraw troops from Georgia does not include Abkhazia or South Ossetia as it now views them as not part of Georgia. But Poti is not in Abkhazia or South Ossetia, so there is no figleaf of justification for the Russian occupation there. This is straightforward military aggression against a sovereign state.

Won’t The Oligarchs Rein Back Putin To Protect Their Financial Interests?

There is no doubt that the Russian and Western economies are now much more interlinked than during the Cold War. Russian commodities production, particularly oil, gas and metals and wheat, are essential to Western economies. Germany’s dependence on Russian gas for forty per cent of its electricity has a visible effect on German foreign policy and is the most striking example of the diplomatic effect of this integration. On the other side, Russia’s economic resurgence is almost entirely commodity driven and it still produces very little by way of manufactured goods for its own population. Most of these are imported from the West. The international tension has contributed to a 20% plunge in Moscow stock markets this year, and dipped sharply on the Georgia invasion.

Is this enough to prevent a cold war? In many ways, this is a subset of the question, is globalisation the end to war?

The answer I fear is no.

Take the Iraq war. Direct costs alone to the US taxpayer have spiralled to over a trillion dollars, while massive US government debt to fund it, and subsequent acceleration in the decline of the dollar, has been a major contributory factor to the global credit crunch. Economically it has been disastrous for the US population.

But it has not been disastrous for the people who fund George Bush. Oil prices have soared because of the Iraq war, and powerful oil companies have made excess profits totalling hundreds of billions. Very obviously, profits of the big armaments companies have also leapt substantially. The military and security services have also benefited from a massive increase of resources. Big oil, big arms companies, the military and security services – those are a government-swaying conglomeration of private interests with loads of money to buy politicians. That is true in both the US and Russia. It is a peculiar paradox of human society that those who benefit from war, hot or cold, are always able to get their hands on the levers of power much more readily than the bulk of the population, who lose out badly from the misallocation of resources.

Symbolically, Russia signaled yesterday it is turning away from the open economic path with a very significant announcement that it is resiling from several commitments needed for WTO membership.

Wasn’t Russia Provoked Into This Conflict?

Yes. The Georgian attempt to reclaim South Ossetia by force was foolish, even if provoked by South Ossetian shelling. It also appears to have been pretty vicious. But Russian claims of genocide are absolute rubbish. I have witnessed first hand the work of Human Rights Watch in several different parts of the Former Soviet Union, and been very impressed by their methods. They put the South Ossetian dead in the low scores, not the thousands. Of course that is still several score too many. But the Russian response has been grossly disproportionate. There are two key points of international law here. Georgian action was limited to its own sovereign territory. Russia invaded another country and failed the important test of proportionality.

But We Invaded Iraq, right?

Yes we did, and that was illegal too. But just because President Bush says Russia is in the wrong, it does not necessarily follow that Russia is not in the wrong, just as if President Bush said “The time is 10am” it does not necessarily follow that it isn’t (though I’d check, unless someone gave him a nice easy digital watch).

Kosovo is a very precise parallel. Serbia invaded a secessionist area of its sovereign territory, and NATO responded by attacking Serbia – killing many more people than the Russians did in Georgia. NATO would argue that proven genocidal tendencies of the Serb army made it necessary, and that has some weight in assessing proportionality. Nonetheless the NATO response was disproportionate. Most of NATO of course went on to recognise Kosovo as independent, just as Russia has South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Again, NATO being wrong then does not make Russia right now.

But Aren’t South Ossetia and Abkhazia Entitled To Their Independence?

I would argue yes, they are, if it is plainly the will of their population. I would argue the same of Chechnya, Dagestan, Kosovo and Scotland. But there lies the rub – the application of the accepted international law principle of self-determination of peoples, as it applies to separatist entities within a sovereign state, is the hottest dispute in international law. There is no doubt that the precedent of the break-up of the Soviet Union and of Yugoslavia had moved the law in favour of the separatists, but how far? Agreed separations like the Czech and Slovak are no problem, but there is no fixed law for a region wishing to separate against the wishes of the state it is in. Quite simply it depends on having the political clout to get the UN to agree.

North Cyprus is a de facto state which never managed to pull this off, and seems a good parallel for the likely future of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Many “Western” states are deeply wary of acknowledging separatists for their own internal reasons – Canada and Spain being good examples.

The Chechen case is important, because it illustrates both Putin’s extreme ruthlessness, and the fact that Russia has no principle on its side. Russia supports or opposes the rights of separatists purely as they benefit Putin’s aims to expand Russian influence.

Isn’t It All About Oil and Gas?

To quite a degree, yes. European powers have been trying to obtain a Trans-Caucasian pipeline which would enable Central Asian gas to pass to Europe without going through Russia, which currently has a monopoly of Eastern supply. Russia has been pressurising Georgia to block such a pipeline.

Georgia is just one pawn in the New Great Game of securing the Caucasus and Central Asian hydrocarbons. It is a game Putin has been winning hands down for the past five years. He has evicted US influence from Uzbekistan and tied up Uzbek and Turkmen gas supply. Rigged elections got Azerbaijan sewn up under the leadership of the son of the former head of the KGB. Shell have been chucked out of Russia and BP are in the process of being chucked out. Georgia was a last remaining pro-western irritant. Western oil companies remain strong in Kazakhstan, where President Nazarbaev has carried out a brilliant balancing act between Russia and the West. Putin is now bound to ratchet up the pressure on him.

Do We Need a Strong NATO to Counteract Russia?

No. That is the stupid and unimaginative answer – hence espoused by David Miliband, our foreign secretary.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article4560698.ece

His proposal to accelerate Ukrainian and Georgian NATO membership is foolish beyond belief. It will guarantee a new Cold War and boost the Zhirinvosky nationalist tendency in an already scarey Russia. NATO is part of the cause of the problem, not part of the solution. I recall when the Soviet Bloc collapsed reading an internal FCO paper entitled “Finding a New Role for NATO”. The options of a fundamental redesign or abolition were not considered. It simply dwelt on positioning a massive and unwieldy alliance, built to face down Russia, to tackle peace-keeping, drug-smuggling and human-trafficking. Of course, most of that was a cover for the structures, and jobs for the boys, to continue and in fact it just continued to control a massive nuclear-led arsenal still pointed at a disarming Russia, while all the time creeping closer to Russia. We pile on top of that new missile systems and US bases in former Russian satellite states, and our infamous decision to upgrade Trident with a system that means the UK alone could destroy every Russian city. The we worry about why Russia got paranoid and aggressive.

NATO has had its time, and the disaster of Afghanistan and brutality of Kosovo are not pointers to a new future. You can sense the relief of fools like Miliband at the comfort of returning the institution to massive cold war posture. We need a new start with Russia, which involved designing a completely new security architecture in which Russia plays a full part.

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Politically Correct Tedium

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I have never pretended to political correctness, so I can happily abhor the sanctimonious politically correct bullshit that made the British contribution to the Olympic closing ceremony so appalling. The most dull dancing imaginable, completely unsuited in scale to the ceremony, and mismatching the Royal Ballet with (wait for it) a South London Hip-Hop ensemble and a dance group featuring able and disabled dancers. The quality produced was risible – it would not have graced a county fair, let alone the Olympics.

The PR bullshit said we were “honouring diversity”. No, we were honouring mediocrity, and then apparently honouring Hello magazine by introducing Leona Lewis and David Beckham. I think I should run in the 100 metres in 2012, thus honouring diversity by vastly increasing our representation of overweight and unhealthy middle-aged men.

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Russia/Georgia

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Unfortunately reaction to the Russia-Georgia conflict in the blogosphere has tended to be both ill-informed and over-simplified. The right have rushed to back Georgia and sections of the left to back Russia. There has, bluntly, been little worth reading.

If I can put on my professional diplomat’s hat (having with great reluctance taken off my producer’s hat, as the Fringe run of Nadira’s show closed yesterday) I would acknowledge that there are many diplomats who are achingly dull and conventional. But the best of them can bring knowledge of the region, languages, cultures and people to bear, and apply it to good effect. So, joining the old buffers’ club, I want warmly to recommend to you the thoughts of Ivor Roberts:

What is sauce for the Kosovo goose is sauce for the South Ossetian gander. In other words, if the West is prepared to champion Kosovo’s secession from Serbia and disregard internationally recognised borders without the endorsement of the United Nations Security Council, it cannot be surprised if Russia does the same.

http://www.barder.com/politics/international/kosovo/kosovo-georgia.php

and of Brian Barder

Of course recent Russian behaviour in Georgia has been disgraceful, brutal and disproportionate, and deserves to be condemned. But it’s as well to remember that even before the recent conflict Russia had military forces stationed legally in Georgia under an earlier agreement

http://www.barder.com/ephems/825

It is well worth reading both articles in full, including the comments. I should say that I don’t agree 100% with either of them, but this is thoughtful and stimulating stuff.

When Shevardnaze was deposed, he flew straight to Tashkent. His old friend Karimov hosted him, and Shevardnaze advised Karimov not to allow any liberal dissent. Following De Tocqueville’s maxim, Shevardnaze said his mistake was reforming- reform leads to revolution. Karimov took him seriously as detailed in Murder in Samarkand, and intensified his bloody crackdown.

Attacks on liberty don’t only happen abroad. It is an astonishing fact that, under new rules affecting FCO employees brought in by New Labour, in future comments like Ivor’s, Brian’s and mine will be illegal.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2008/08/mps_call_govern.html#comments

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Gay Drivers in Italy

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Some weeks late, just picked up on this incredible story. It is indeed from 2008, though that is hard to believe.

An Italian court has ordered the government to pay 100,000 euros (£79,919) to a man who had to retake his driving test because he was gay.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7503861.stm

Berlusconi land is a rather worrying place. Attacks on Roma are now very severe and frequent, with signs of official collusion, while recent distressing photos on the net (which I won’t post) showed the bodies of two young drowned immigrants lying for hours on a beach while people just continued to sunbathe and party around them. I am 25% Italian myself, but deeply puzzled.

Thought inspired from here.

http://einekleinenichtmusik.blogspot.com/

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More Popular Than Gordon Brown Shock

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Who isn’t? I hear you ask. Anyway, it’s in the Financial Times, so it must be true:

Gordon Brown enjoyed a respectful audience, but two days later Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, elicited passionate support.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1ef4e9e4-6fde-11dd-986f-0000779fd18c.html

My appearance at the Edinburgh Book Festival was sold out again this year – 570 rather expensive tickets – rather to the bemusement of the organisers, who every year scratch their heads wondering who is this rude interrupter of their genteel event, and why so many people want to see him.

I enjoyed taking the opportunity to point out that some of their headline speakers are war criminals:

The one-time diplomat, who was sacked after speaking out about human rights abuses, used his appearance at the Edinburgh Book Festival to accuse Gordon Brown and John Prescott of war crimes

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article4526007.ece

Incidentally, I don’t get a penny from the thousands of pounds generated in ticket sales, but I greatly enjoy the event. It was a delight having Ruth Wishart as the chairman; I have long had huge respect for her journalism.

I am frequently asked why I don’t speak at the Hay-on-Wye Festival, when authors whose books sell a great deal less than mine are feted. The answer is quite simple: the New Labour loving smurfs at the Guardian, and particularly editor Alan Rusbridger, brother-in-law to Tessa Jowell and David Mills, have vetoed me from the Guardian Hay-on-Wye Festival, to give its full title.

It appears that my publisher may not be prepared to publish key points in The Catholic Orangemen of Togo. The problem is fear of the cost of defending a threatened legal action by Tim Spicer, who has made many millions from taxpayers for running mercenary operations in Iraq and can afford the rich man’s suppression of free speech through libel law.

Any extracts the publisher will not publish will be posted on this website in approximately ten days. I do hope other bloggers will mirror or re-publish to help get the truth out there.

I hope to do a Q & A on Georgia in the next few days. But it gave great amusement to my family that the three international statesmen the Independent chose to comment were John McCain, Mikhail Gorbachev and Craig Murray. You have to see the actual paper, with out photos in a row, to get the full comic effect. Strange thing is, I sound much more sensible than the other two.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/kim-sengupta-first-war-now-anarchy-as-russian-militias-run-riot-894525.html

It is interesting to read through the comments after that article, particularly the number of Americans with extraordinarily ill-informed views on Iraq. Really scarey. Almost as bad as this:

“I am a Zionist,” stated Senator Biden.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAZmO80dLfE

Oh, the Paucity of Hope!

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Strange Fact

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I didn’t make a fuss when this blog steamed past its millionth visitor mark, and we are now around the 1.3 million visitors since a new statcounter was put on some 30 months ago. That is visits, not pageloads, but does include returning visitors (I think).

Rather peculiarly, in the last 24 hours the biggest source of visitors has been the BNP website. I presume they are saying something nasty about me, but don’t recommend you to look to check. On the other hand, after my Quixotic stand against Jack Straw in Blackburn at the last general election, I had to speak at the count immediately after the BNP candidate. The hordes of New Labour supporters in the count listened to the BNP candidate in comparative quiet, but erupted into roaring jeers to try to drown out my brief speech. A plastic beer glass was thrown at me. The BNP candidate turned to me in astonishment:

“My God”, he said, “They hate you more than me”.

It was true. That simple fact tells more truth about New Labour than I could do in long essays.

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New Labour Show Their True Blue True Colours

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The apparent favourite for the leadership of Scottish New Labour is a Blairite named Iain Gray. He has come out in his true blue true colours by suggesting that Scottish New Labour need to cooperate with the Scottish Conservatives in the Scottish Parliament.

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/scotland/Labour-could-team-up-with.4399354.jp

It says volumes for the despair of the numptie party that they think being associated with the Scottish Conservatives would actually increase their popularity in Scotland. But it also is but the simple confirmation of the truth of British politics today. In Scotland, New Labour and the Tories have teamed up against the SNP in local government in Dundee and elsewhere, determined to cling to the old order. Economically there is little difference between New Labour and Tory, while the Tory party is slightly more liberal in social and legal matters.

New Labour and Tory both support the illegal invasion of Iraq; they both support breaking the Non Proliferation Treaty by acquiring a massively destructive and ruinously expensive new nuclear missile system, thus further fuelling Russian paranioa and aggression; they both support making public services more expensive and allowing huge private profits from them through the Private Finance Initiative. I can think of no reason any New Labour supporter should not vote Tory, except for New Labour’s greater emphasis on attacking civil liberties.

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Massive State Propaganda at the Olympics

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I am an unabashed sports fan. I love watching the Olympics and get irrationally patriotic about it. Many of my friends find these traits irritating. But I have been really enjoying the last few days of British success.

Victoria Pendleton’s win in the sprint cycling was a great moment, but was completely marred by a classic propaganda moment by the monolithic state broadcaster. No, I don’t mean Chinese TV, I mean the BBC pumping New Labour as usual.

Victoria flashed across the line, and within two seconds the BBC cut to a shot of Tony Blair standing and applauding, holding him on screen for some time. It completely spoiled the moment for me – a sporting triumph marked by a war criminal. To complete the puff, the commentator praised Tony Blair’s “generous support for the British team”.

Bollocks – it was another example of a politician trying to gain kudos from national sporting achievement. And to describe Blair as “generous” is risible. Whenever you see Blair pop up anywhere, the first question to be asked is, who is paying for him? The great freeloader never pays for his own holidays, as has been frequently documented. On a previous visit to China, he received a US $500,000 payoff.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/nov/08/china.tonyblair

Bkair has been to Chima at least four times since then – visits which would seem to have but a tenuous connection with his official role as chief facilitator of illegal Israeli settlement in Palestine. Blair has been making himself useful to the Chinese, and obnoxious to human rights and environmental campaigners, by arguing that politics should be kept out of the Olympics.

http://tonyblairoffice.org/2008/08/olympics-should-be-about-sport.html

So who is funding Blair’s Olympics?

The Mail is asking the same question, and got this response:

Earlier today Mr Blair’s spokesman insisted the couple were on a ‘family holiday’ but refused to comment on whether they had paid for it from their own pockets. He would also not be drawn on whether the Blairs were in China as someone’s guest

.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1046294/Pictured-Tony-Blair-reveals-slimline-new-look-visit-Olympics.html

I think that we can take that as an admission that the revolting Blair is being paid off again. The question is, for what?

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New Labour Regrets End of Military Dictatorship in Pakistan

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General Musharraf was a smooth-talking dictator, but no more than that. He instituted military rule in an illegal coup and continued to govern in the interests of himself and a narrow elite, continually rolling back surviving vestiges of the rule of law in Pakistan. Under his rule Pakistan stagnated and the economic gap to neighbouring India grew so large as to be insurmountable for at least a generation. Dictatorship does not fight extremism, it promotes extremism in desperate and repressed opponents with no legitimate outlet for opposition.

It says volumes for where our far right New Labour government now stands on world affairs that they regret the political demise of this odious dictator. Here is David Miliband, the neo-con muppet who is New Labour’s hope for political revival:

“The Musharraf years yielded significant dividends… It is important to highlight President Musharraf’s commitment to tackle terrorism, to promote dialogue with India, especially over Kashmir, and to root out corruption,” he said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/18/pakistan

Yeah, right. Come to think of it, why don’t we have military dictators all over the developing world? Plainly Miliband holds that these dusky foreigners need the smack of firm government. Why Miliband believes that rooting out corruption is a good thing, while his own government pro-actively harbours and protects it in the BAE scandal, is beyond me.

Miliband is no more than a foolish, shallow little disgrace. Despite New Labour’s best efforts, this is still in many ways a lovely country. It is both astonishing and appalling that it should be represented by someone as insubstantive as Miliband.

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Another Dull Attack

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I have been very busy the last few days giving interviews about Georgia – largely because there seem to be few others who are against missile systems and NATO policy, without being Putin apologists.

Anyway, there is a rather lame but surprisingly extended attack on me in the Sunday Times over my comments on the Fringe. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article4547834.ece

This is a particularly poor piece of journalism as the newspaper failed to contact me for comment. There are also a number of extraordinary omissions or distortions. To clarify:-

– I have never accused the Fringe of failing to promote Nadira’s show. They got the Fringe office to comment on something I haven’t said. I did point out they had listed it in the wrong category. If the Sunday Times had asked them to comment on that, I imagine they would have agreed they had done so. Promotion in general has been very good.

– Nadira’s show has had super reviews. It has had in Edinburgh in total (that I can find) two five star, four four star and two three star reviews. The Sunday Times has chosen to quote only from the two three star reviews.

– My complaint was very plainly that one publication had reviewed the Show without actually seeing it. That is obvious from the blog entry below. It is completely out of order for the Sunday Times to omit what my complaint actually was.

– I am very happy with audiences. An average of fifty is brilliant for the Fringe at 1.30pm.

– I stand by my more general comments that there is an excess of bad comedy and loutishness at the Fringe nowadays. I am not against comedy. I love good comedy.

Here are some of those reviews. Unlike the Sunday Times I am giving you a representative sample of one 5, one 4 and one 3 star review.

http://www.broadwaybaby.com/fringe/reviews/thebritishambassadorsbellydancer

http://edinburgh.threeweeks.co.uk/review/4638

http://living.scotsman.com/music/Musical-review-The-British-Ambassador39s.4356893.jp

I suppose that I should be beyond being upset by a foolish piece of journalism like this. But the lack of professionalism of the Sunday Times, and their obvious malice, is very annoying.

The Murdoch press remain great cheerleaders for Alisher Usmanov. Stuart MacDonald appears to be trying to outdo his Dirty Digger stablemate Mark Franchetti in the worst journalistic standards stakes. But I think Franchetti is still ahead.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2007/10/mark_franchetti.html

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There Are No Good Guys, But We Must Be Most Wary of Russia

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Russia has no right at all to invade Georgian territory – which South Ossetia is. Russia’s actions are illegal. The US and UK, who launched an equally illegal and much more devastating invasion of Iraq, are ill-placed to be outraged. Georgia was acting lawfully but unwisely in attacking rebels in South Ossetia. But Putin is lying when he says Georgia was engaged in genocide, and Georgia’s attack was itself less devastating than Russian attacks on Chechnya – a precisely parallel situation. So Russia is also being hideously hypocritical.

But we cannot just say that all the major powers involved are behaving terribly. That is true but not enough. Lenin’s Tomb has an excellent analysis.

http://leninology.blogspot.com/2008/08/new-cold-war-escalates.html

But it is marred by the tendency of the left to think anyone opposed to Bush must be a good thing, and so give Putin the benefit of the doubt. Putin has plenty of blood on his hands also, and not only in Chechnya.

The truth is that life for ordinary people in the ex Soviet countries which have had “Orange Revolutions” like Ukraine and Georgia, is much, much better than in those which have not, like Belarus, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. That is so evident as to be undeniable to anyone who has actually been there.

Yet resurgent Russian nationalism is a major threat to Europe, and so Georgia must be supported as Russia tries to increase its hegemony over the former Soviet Union.

Russia’s attempt to leverage its Russian minorities into political power has been most obvious in Georgia and remains a major threat in the Ukraine. Given its own opposition to separatism for the many ethnic areas within Russia, this is not a question of principle. I posted on this last week.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2008/08/china_and_the_u.html

Most commentators have quite correctly picked up on the fact that this is in large part about control of oil and gas pipelines. Those who have seen me lecture know that I have been talking about Russian pressure on Georgia for the last four years. My professional eye on the diplomatic dances around the invasion shows me that, as I predicted, energy dependency has made Germany a Russian client state within the European Union.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2007/06/russian_journal.html

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2007/05/uzbekistan_and.html

Those in Poland and Scandinavia who have been campaigning against the Nordstream gas pipeline project are absolutely right. European dependence on Russian hydrocarbons is not only an environmental abomination but also a major security risk. A Russian pipeline through Poland would be designated a major strategic national security interest for Russia – and for Germany. I can see easily see it becoming a cause for future conflict.

An immediate ceasefire is required now and a de facto Russian annexation of South Ossetia must not be permitted, unless we eventually want a war for East Ukraine. Sadly, the West will learn the wrong long-term lesson. The answer is not to strengthen NATO. NATO is part of the cause of the problem, not the solution. By encircling and humiliating Russia, not least with new missile systems, NATO has creaated the climate in Russia so favourable to Putin.

The new NATO is the main symptom of the West’s chronic inability to create a new post cold war security structure. By clinging to and expanding NATO, we merely made the return of the Cold War inevitable – much to the benefit of the arms industry and military establishment. If our leaders had any imagination, they would realise that the answer is to wind down NATO and create new structures into which Russia should be drawn.

It is already a decade late for such thinking. With Bush and Brown at the helm and the military and arms industry in grater control than ever of policy in both the US and UK, it is currently impossible.

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