(With thanks again to the excellent Ken Silverstein),
Gulnara Karimova is offering all expenses paid luxury junkets to Tashkent, plus a thousand dollars cash in the pocket, to US bloggers willing to blog about Uzbekistan without mentioning torture, massacre, dictatorship, slavery or environmental destruction.
http://harpers.org/archive/2009/11/hbc-90006092
As Obama has entered into a renewed military cooperation with Karimov, with military transit agreements already in place and an airbase agreement pending, it is interesting to note the Washington consultants organising this for Gulnara. It is a firm called Atlas International
Partners. The firm has three Principals. Here is an extract from the biography of each. What do their backgrounds have in common?:
Mr. Belk also assembled critical national security briefings in support of the President of the United States, the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and served as a biological weapons expert for the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) in Iraq in 1998. Mr. Belk’s government service also included a tour in the White House as a special assistant for the Office of the Counsel to the President
Mr. Chichester has been a member of the U.S. Army Chief of Staff’s Eisenhower National Security Series Working Group and the Council on Foreign Relations?”where he co-chaired the Washington Term Member Advisory Committee. He is currently a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies
Ryung Suh received a BS in Chemistry from the United States Military Academy and completed his medical and graduate studies at Georgetown University. He holds faculty research and teaching appointments at Georgetown University School of Medicine, the School of Nursing and Health Studies, and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and serves as Senior Fellow at NORC at the University of Chicago.
http://www.atlaspartners.us/team/principals/peter-i-belk
Interesting too that Atlas feel quite abe to write:
I understand that Ms. Karimova is reviewing the proposal personally and will get back to us within the next 24 hours, which would be necessary to get your visa processed on Friday. Our feeling is that she is likely to give us a green light, so I am assembling a team of bloggers now
.
Without any apparent diffidence that their client is still subject to an outstanding New Jersey arrest warrant, which presumably is enforceable throughout the States as it has prevented her from travelling there for years. Are there not any laws about rendering assistance to fugitives from justice?
We wait to see which US bloggers start to write about the wonders of the Karimov regime. I presume that some of the pro-Obama blogs will feel this is a duty they can undertake in support of the administration’s’ new pro-Karimov position.
Whilst in no way do I underestimate the horrors inflicted by the Government of Uzbekistan, a good case could be made for musicians and artists from all over the World to Boycott the UK…
Whilst the UK, no longer sends young Children up Chimneys, the UK Government has been and still is involved in the most aweful human atrocities…
Whilst The Uzbekistan Government Boils People alive, most of the people they Boil Alive are Uzbekistan Nationals. Sure they work under contract to the US and UK Governments to torture people of other Nationalities, but the majority of the people the Uzbek Government commit the most appalling human atrocities against are Uzbeks…
The UK Government meanwhile has a far worse record. They are quite obviously racist. They much prefer to commit atrocities against human beings who live in other countries – like Afghanistan and Iraq…
The numbers of people that the UK Government is directly responsible for committing the most obscene atrocities are far higher than anything the Uzbek Government has so far achieved..
Number Of Iraqis Slaughtered In US/UK War And Occupation Of Iraq “1,339,771”…Now of course not all these are down to the UK alone, as the US is even more enthusiastic with regards to killing and mutilation…
But this number, is just the number of dead in Afghanistan. A far greater number of people are still alive, missing arms and legs and various other parts of their bodies.
We have done that…We are probably getting close to that achieved by Nazi Germany…
And yet hardly anyone in the UK even complains about the activities of our Government…
So I think Musicians and Artists from across the World should Boycott The UK. They should refuse to play here – until we change our most appalling Government, and stop torturing and killing completely innocent people.
Tony
Tony,
I don’t agre. I think contact between people on an artistic level is a good thing. But when it is an event specifically to glorify the regime – like Sting’s was, or like this blogger junket is meant to be – that is a different thing.
So I would certainly not want to see musicians playing at things designed to glorify the British government, for reasons you describe. But cutting off contacts between peoples, no.
Well the Pentagon did say under Clinton that they wanted “full spectrum dominance” and that that included dominance in “information warfare”. The press and TV stations are mostly so willing to adopt the administration line that i don’t know why they need bloggers though.
A Washington Post editorial recently said the Obama administration forcing President Zelaya of Honduras to share power with the people who organised a military coup against him (complete with 1980s style torture, killings and mass jailings without charge or trial)was a victory for democracy in which the Obama admin had “outmanouvred Hugo Chavez” and his “populist authoritarian model” for Latin America.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/30/AR2009103003360.html
Strangely being elected in elections which international observers said were free and fair, changing your constitution by referendum followed by a vote by parliament and giving the poor enough of an income to eat a normal amount is “authoritarian”, while having people shot, tortured and jailed by the army to kick out a President who raised the minimum wage in a country where most people earn under $2 a day is apparently a step towards democracy.
Duncan –
I may be getting big-headed, but my salks and interviews on my recent visit to the US received a simply huge amount of coverage in the US blogosphere. I am not saying there has been amount about Uzbekistan on the US blogosphere compared to how much there is bout Jennifer Aniston, but probably 90% of what there is refers to me and the facts about the regime.
I can imagine any paid PR consultancy would have been monitoring my visit in Washington and suggesting a blogging counter-offensive.
One thing I’ve wondered about is how Stalin in the 1930s managed to convince Paul Robeson, a very intelligent man by all accounts, that he was in a workers’ paradise. Presumably Stalin used the same methods on the Webbs. I assume that the present Uzbek government has similar things in mind.
Craig Murray invites The Battlefield Band to Uzbekistan, and slags off Sting for turning up a few years later..
So is it positive or negative for the people of Uzbekistan for a Musican To Turn Up and Sing “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free” To All The Arseholes in Control?
From The Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute Concert, held on June 11th 1988 in Wembley Stadium, London –
youtube.com/watch?v=C0h2ZIoE7dA
Tony
Craig – I don’t doubt it and i’m glad to hear it.
You’re probably right – having other bloggers contradicting the ones providing the actual facts may help them muddy things up in the hope that some more easily influenced people may believe that “the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle” (as the lazier of the BBC correspondents like to say), even when it lies mostly on one side.
I hope it doesn’t though and i don’t doubt you’ll counter their propaganda as effectively as you always do.
Dear Mr. Murray,
I couldn’t find a “contact me” form on your blog. I was wondering if there is a way of contacting you. Really need your advice on one issue.
Thank you,
Anon
Anon, Craig’s email address is on the bottom of the “Invite Craig to Speak” link, at the top of the page.
What a prospect, soon we will be having company here from Gulnara’s blogging goons.
I hope that Atlas has made sure that bloggers receive personal protection within Uzbekistan, from the forces of evil and to keep them isolated in splendour no doubt.
What if any of the bloggers, writhing with moral pain after being turned by some horrendous incident, turns sour and starts reporting on what they saw, or take up the case of poor Mr. Conroy? Or have a second blogging identity?
If such a person would also have some superior IT abilities, Gulnara’s move could backfire something rotten.
Atlas must know that we will out each and everyone of them, but the above should ideally be the goal. Like good old spionage these bloggers, once their identity is known, s/could be turned in a devastating blow to US mongering/diplomacy, dare I use this word in today’s world, leaving Giulnara with no cloth on at all.
I wonder how that would look.
“We have done that…We are probably getting close to that achieved by Nazi Germany…
And yet hardly anyone in the UK even complains about the activities of our Government…”
@Tony, I was heartened to see these comments of yours. According to some figures the mortality rates in Iraq and Afghanistan already take us well over the 6 million mark which is so often used to describe the holocaust of the Nazis.
According to Dr Gideon Polya of Melbourne, mortalities in Iraq and Afghanistan since Gulf War I, through the Clinton and Bush era were over 8 million: “We can thus assess the human cost of the Bush I and Bush II Asian Wars at 0.06 + 0.31 + 0.2 + 1.7 + 3.2 + 2.0 + 0.5 million = 7.97 million = 8 million.” (See 8 Million Deaths & Media Holocaust Denial, http://mwcnews.net/content/view/17139/42)
So, according to the figures we are worse than the Nazis now. But that’s where cognitive dissonance chimes in. It’s inconceivable that the so-called liberal democracies could have become that … isn’t it?
“Bush I and Bush II”
Greengorilla
Jeb Bush in the White House next time round?.