A good article by Sonia Zilberman in yesterday’s Guardian cif about the Karimov regime’s destruction of Uzbekistan’s cultural base.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/15/uzbekistan-cultural-legacy-threatened
This is greatly detailed in Murder in Samarkand. She rather understates the case, not mentioning for example the banning of books (actually in practice all books are banned – that is the default position. A small number are on an allowed list). She also doesn’t mention the murder of the country’s leading theatre director, Mark Weill.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2007/09/murder_in_tashk.html
But what she does say is perfectly true, and needs airing. It is rather saddening that there are very few comments, and these are dominated by mainly US pro-Karimov supporters, putting forward the entirely false argument that the only alternative to Karimov’s dictatorship is a Taliban governmnent. They also claim Karimov is not totalitarian. If he is not, then the word cannot be applied to any government anywhere.
I don’t want to panic anyone about what is currently going on, but around 50% of the food consumed in the UK doesn’t come by Ship – it comes by air…
Even the fucking cheap Roses.
The amount of fresh food moved to the UK by air is a lot…
We are lucky this is happenning in the Spring rather than the Autumn…
World food reserves are at an historical low despite the bullshit…
Get digging if you want to survive…
Buy those seeds and get them germinating
Forget about the flowers unless they are edible.
We could be in deep shit in less than 2 weeks
Tony
I thought ‘Bukharian’s comment(Guardian) was rather good and then I realised it was ‘anno’ who wrote the original.
Theocracy thoughts –
well, imperfect men cannot perfectly enforce the perfect laws of God. However some powerful men think they can reign in the name of God and do as God tells them to do – like smashing Iraq…
Contingency Planning and Disaster Recovery is one of the things I was trained in and responsible for.
It involves thinking about what could possibly go wrong and producing plans and implementing them to cover anything you can think of.
What we have now, may not be a serious problem. Air Traffic may resume in a few days…but it is possible that it won’t for a considerable period…
We urgently need to redeploy our shipping to for example instead of shipping liquified natural gas – to shipping food…
I honestly do not know if our |Government is even capable of thinking about such things – let alone deploying them…
So it has got to be down to private Companies that normally shift stuff like oil and gas to ship food.
We can live without imported energy for the next 6 months – because it hopefully will get warmer…
We will be totally fucked if suddenly we lose 50% of our food supply.
Is anyone even thinking about this?
Tony
I have repeatedly voiced my horror of theocracy of the blog.
My concern for Muslims is that they should be allowed to practice their religion in peace and should not be persecuted or subject to invasion, repression or the many evils of Islamophobia. It does not mean that I support the idea of Islamic governments – I do not, at all. Nor Christian, Jewish, Hindu etc governments. States should be secular. I have never had any other view.
My hobbies are drinking alcohol and consorting with bad women. Uzbeks seem to have similar hobbies. You are entitled to view that as an aberration. I view it as a sign of a well balanced society. Don’t project your own desires onto either me or the Uzbek people!
Like others, I find you an engaging and enjoyable contributor here.
Mmm. I bet that last post isn’t by anno 🙂 But anno, I don’t think anyone is sacrificing anything by supporting a decent person currently trying to get into our parliament.
217 Members of Parliament, of all parties, voted against the Iraq war.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2862325.stm
We need to re-energise those thinkers, and add more. Someone’s going to be in charge of the law, and they had better be good, I do agree.
Tony, yes. I think there’s nothing practical I can do apart from read the Daily Mash while we wait and see.
That post was by Craig, not me. BTW please delete my address anyway.
Projection. Definition, putting things you don’t like about yourself onto someone else. I heard from a regular visitor to Uzbekistan, a Muslim, that there was a general thirst for Islam in Uzbekistan, but it was incredibly dangerous to do more than just pray Friday prayers. So I wasn’t projecting in this case.
No reply to my statement that the UK has a religion, which denies guilt because it has been washed away by redemptive sacrifice. It enables people to do stuff and not feel bad about it, either individually or collectively. Obviously no-one would stop doing something if they didn’t think it was harmful or plain wrong.
Craig although you have always expressed your horror at theocracy, I have always thought of this in the way that I thought of my father, who could only tolerate 20 minutes of theocratic point of view before declaring silence.
Indeed the silence about the slaughtering and displacement of millions of Muslims is what is weird.
‘You have asked enough questions, Don’t give yourself airs. Be off before I kick you downstairs.’ It’s your blog, Craig, and your life, this one and the next.
But for myself I will never forget my father’s last words which were: ‘I have wasted my whole life.’ Please waste yours, with party compromise which you have always stated you hate, and refusal to listen to God’s grace in sending His messengers to guide our life.
That post was by Craig, not me. BTW please delete my address anyway.
Projection. Definition, putting things you don’t like about yourself onto someone else. I heard from a regular visitor to Uzbekistan, a Muslim, that there was a general thirst for Islam in Uzbekistan, but it was incredibly dangerous to do more than just pray Friday prayers. So I wasn’t projecting in this case.
No reply to my statement that the UK has a religion, which denies guilt because it has been washed away by redemptive sacrifice. It enables people to do stuff and not feel bad about it, either individually or collectively. Obviously no-one would stop doing something if they didn’t think it was harmful or plain wrong.
Craig although you have always expressed your horror at theocracy, I have always thought of this in the way that I thought of my father, who could only tolerate 20 minutes of theocratic point of view before declaring silence.
Indeed the silence about the slaughtering and displacement of millions of Muslims is what is weird.
‘You have asked enough questions, Don’t give yourself airs. Be off before I kick you downstairs.’ It’s your blog, Craig, and your life, this one and the next.
But for myself I will never forget my father’s last words which were: ‘I have wasted my whole life.’ Please waste yours, with party compromise which you have always stated you hate, and refusal to listen to God’s grace in sending His messengers to guide our life.
@Anno re guilt: I think you’re confusing the Catholic Church with the C of E! Catholics may get officially forgiven for everything by a priest once a week, but since they’re taught to believe in original sin manage to feel bad for no reason on a daily basis; a condition known as ‘Catholic guilt’ in fact.
In the C of E, on the other hand, you have to rely on other people forgiving you. And you might occasionally feel guilty, but it is not mandatory, it is true. I would hate to generalise, but out of Blair (Catholic) Gordon Brown (Presbyterian) and C of E (Rowan Williams); the representative of the relatively benign and hopeful school of thought opposed the invasions, and the guilt-ridden started them.
There was massive opposition across the country. There still is. The silence in this election is extraordinary, I agree. But as you say, I think we’re all still in shock.
I wonder, what are you doing about the election? Are you supporting an independent?
PS Sorry, don’t mean to offend any Catholics and Presbyterians; of course that was a massive generalisation!
Technicolour
I was not talking about Christianity or any of its branches. I meant the internalised remnant of our Christian past, which I believe lives on in UK values. Others see no connection between our values and former theocracies and therefore no need to press Refresh on the subject of theocracy.
As to the election, I configure myself as a French Huguenot living under Robespierre. A Muslim about to live under a Conservative Cameron who is going to legislate against freedom to oppose UK foreign policy. The War against Islam being conducted in the wider world, will be directed against the Muslims within the UK. If Cameron gets in, I’m going. My vote will be with my feet. I regard Nick Clegg as equally dangerous to Muslims in the UK as Cameron, because he is a toff, and a most unlikely bedfellow of Mr Murray for that reason. The toffs hate the feeling that large parts of their country have been subverted to another value system.
They are completely Islamophobic, unlike Craig.
Anyway, I’m hoping that the British public will see behind Cameron’s smokescreens of change, and realise that he will privatise everything, like the bad old Thatcher days. And that they will ignore the LibDems because they did not give them an anti-war vote. I can live with New Labour, because apart from the friends of Israel elements, they are normal people, like the Muslims. Doesn’t mean I’m going to vote for them, though.
Anno,
I find the continuing attachment of Britain’s Muslims – apparently including yourself – to New Labour absolutely nauseating. Who precisely backed and joined in Bush’s wars, and ramped up Islamophobia to introduce all kinds of coercive domestic legislation?
To claim that the Lib Dems would be worse for Muslims than New Labour is frankly such crap it is not worth addressing. You are licking the boot that kicks you.
“…drinking alcohol and consorting with bad women.” Archetypal Heavy Metal lyric!
Mind you, like Richard III and to some extent Cromwell, Robespierre is a much-demonised figure in British histories of the French Revolution.
In his favour, not only did this pale-faced, dry lawyer try his best not to have Danton et al sent to the guillotine, he also pushed through emancipation of the slaves; this was promptly reversed by the succeeding regime of the Directory who then proceeded to crush Haiti.
And of course, the Huguenots – though I realise that anno will know immensely more about this than I – had been persecuted most viciously under the French kings during the C17th.
Yes Craig, of course it’s crap. The election is crap because there is no anti-war choice. Don’t lump me in with other Muslims. I was brought up with the Westminster Cleggs and I know that they are the most stubbornly ignorant, devious, unchangeable, class-fossilised, Islamophobes. Tadpoles of the FCO in fact.
When I came into Islam, the elders of the mosque told me they were waiting for Allah to change the hearts of the elite, the members of the establishment. I told them that these people had dedicated themselves from first consciousness to oppose the thinking and beliefs of Islam.
Many of the offspring of the establishment have come into Islam, but not the die-hards like Clegg, who ruthlessly deposed his rivals within the Liberal party. Maybe you like politics. I detest it, especially amongst Muslims.
As I said before, even if your new found bad woman, Libera Demcock wins the election, and installs you as Prime Minister, and is good to Muslims in a patient and patronising kind of way, it will still end in tears, because she, like you, rejects the important thing, the reality of religion. She like you will continue to persecute the concept of faith while posing as an anti-Islamophobe.
Anno
“But on the inside they loathe us, our religion and our Allah, because we are witness to the condition of man, half beast, half angel.”
Absolute bollocks.
Craig
I know that you are a secularist and a liberal, and you believe that this is the best system for this country.
I that same way that you have the right to choose secularism and liberalism for this country, Muslims have the right to implement Islam in their countries, or even turn it in to a single country if they so desire.
I think what Anno was trying to refer to
was how secularism and liberalism are imposed on Muslim countries, on people who would prefer Islamic law to secularist liberal laws.
I said the same thing using other words.
Craig, you don’t believe in the absolute.
I think the vogue for political parties which call themselves ‘Islamic’ has peaked. In Pakistan, the second-largest Muslim country in the world, people systematically have been voting ‘Islamic’ parties out and secular parties in, across the country over the past several years. This includes in the NWFP, supposedly the most ‘traditional’ part of the country, where the people voted-in the Awami Party, a leftist secular party. People are very much against the US/UK/Pakistan Army bombing civilians with drones, etc., etc. and want to see the back of foreign troops as well the back of Pakistan Army in domestic politics, but it seems equally clear that the vast majority of the population wants no truck with parties which call themselves ‘Islamic’. They have seen what such parties do in practice, on the ground.
What the ordinary people of these countries want is proper healthcare, universal education and a more equitable distribution of wealth. It will be incremental, perhaps, but now in local, provincial and state legislatures, 33% of the participants – by law – are women, from the grassroots, up. The Constitution of 1973 has been restored. Next, cautiously, it is likely that the Govt. will turn its attention to those heinous laws – Hudood and Zina Ordinances, etc. brought-in by the Zia Junta in the 1980s – anti-woman laws masquerading as ‘Islamisation’. By and large, women know what the priorities are and it is they who hold society together. Does this not accord with the micro-finance schemes established by that wonderful Bangladeshi economist? This is beginning to usher in seismic shift in policy. A silent revolution is occurring – silent, only because it’s barely reported in the global media who are obsessed with ‘Jihadism versus NATO’. There are other paths.
The only segment in Pakistan who fret about ‘how Islamic’ this or that is, is a minority of the Islamic fashionista ‘drawing-room salon’ class.
The PPP is far from perfect and is a broad church – with a feudal base in Sindh Province. But it also contains those who genuinely want to see the underlying conditions of the people improve. It is the only political entity capable of uniting the country. So-called ‘Islamic’ parties signally have failed to do so.
And almost no-one wants the Taliban.
Karimov…
http://tinyurl.com/y76a2u7
Dear Craig,
Thank you very much for your discussion of my article! I wrote to the email address that is indicated on your blog, but am not sure if the .ru one is correct. I would be grateful for your response , if you have the time.
Best
sonia
‘They have seen what these ( Islamic ) parties do in practise, on the ground.’
We have to keep this simple for the religiously dim.
There is no point in conceiving of obedience to God in terms of what suits ourselves. God sees the wider picture of what our position will be in our afterlife, not just what suits us in this life. He sees what is benefit to the world, not just what will benefit my clan or my self. Democracy is not compatible with Islam, because what people want, by and large is benefit in the here and now and me and mine.
We have only to look to the UK as an example of the selfishness of democracy. Wealth has been transferred through interest from the working people to the money-seekers. Weapons of mass destruction have been deployed on innocent populations, on the grounds of their non-compliance with Western interests, or their protest at Western interests continuously exploiting other countries through abusive puppets, armed by Western powers. Morality, which cradles the vulnerable in society, has been superceded by selfish lusts, leading to a generation of lost elderly people and a generation of lost youngsters, some of whom have only the refuge of drugs.
Craig argues thus: He is against the Laws of God being imposed on people by government. The internal sanctions of the religion, further internalised inside the individual, should suffice.
That’s nice, because the majority don’t believe in religion, and of those that do, many follow corrupted versions of God’s religion, and many are weak in faith.
It’s a bit of a free for all, then. Who’s got big bombs, big dicks, big plans, big egos, are guaranteed to prevail over the rest of the world. That’s what Craig believes in, freedom of the individual from outside control. But what he says he wants to achieve, which the cessation of horrendous wars, and cessation of government restricting our rights, will never be achieved by the Liberal paradigm.
It reminds me of the parable of the house that was built on sand. This country rejected the illogicality of Liberalism over a hundred years ago.
It always happens that when this country has exceeded all bounds of self-control, as has happened in Iraq and Afghanista, carpet-bombing civilians!!!!!, then for a short time the English panic and resort to fantasy land. Freedom. What is in fact needed is a re-establishment of Divine principles over the man-made principles which saw George Bush cancelling the Geneva Convention for his philosophical opponents. A re-establishment of Divine principles over the free for all of sexual liberation and a re-establishment of Divine principles over what the individual is trying to achieve as a human being.
I don’t want to hear about the horrible things people do to eachother. I want to wake up in the morning and join the universe in praising my Creator. Muslims are worrying about whether they missed a piece of their body out in their pre-prayer ablutions, not about who bombed who, who fucked who, who won the banking lottery.
Every time this country degrades itself by committing excesses of violence beyond all bounds of decency and humanity, God changes us, to worse than we were before. I really cannot believe that we have a country which can justify its violence on the grounds of the principle that we detest the rule of Divine Law. We didn’t really want the oil, we didn’t really want strategic control of the country we bombed. All we wanted was to prevent the abomination of Divine Law being used to determine the government of a foreign, sovereign land.
Echoes of Darwinism, the theory that emerged from the Slave Trade, that really we were better than the black man. Now we are stating that our selfishness and violence are better than Islam, because we have freedom, and Muslims submit to a Higher Being.
Words fail me about the implications of an intellectual like Craig, adopting a slogan of this futility. But don’t let me stop you. It is a matter already decreed, and the ink is dry.
Yet history demonstrates to us that no matter what system – ‘divinely-inspired’ (of whatever religion), materialist (communist, capitalist, whatever), feudal, neolithic, hunger-gatherer… all of the killings and maiming to which you refer has gone on and on and on down through time. These are demons we will always be fighting. They may destroy humanity and the planet, now that the weapons exist with which to achieve this form of Armageddon. Or perhaps a volcano or two will suffice. This is the human tragedy. This the human condition.
We can strive to make things better according to this or that law or faith-based rubric. Perfectability is not possible for us pompous animals in this universe. Great humans like the Prophet Muhammad, Buddha, Jesus (Hazrat Issa), etc. lit the way, and viewing what they all went through, the rest of us can but strive to make things better and not become depressed when we find that it is hard and that the forces ranged against us are as high as mountains.
Suhayl
No theocracy + anti-war = diplomacy
No theocracy + pro-war = armaggeddon
Craig appears to have walked blindfold from liberal tolerance to Liberal aggression. Not happy.
But anno, I may have missed something enormous, but I don’t see where our host has stated that suddenly he’s become pro-the-wars in Asia.
One or other person may have mixed feelings about someone like him re-joining a mainstream party and/ or view it as a ‘cop-out’ or as a concession to the Hard State and to feel annoyed about that, yet there are a lot of people in the LibDems and Labour who are very much against the war/ Trident/ Israel’s aggression/ fundamentalist capitalism, etc., etc. Perhaps they are indeed deluded and ought not to be members of these parties. That’s for debate. I’m aware of the various longstanding (eg. anti-imperial) critiques of liberalism.
My point was simply that being a theocratic (as opposed to a monarchical, feudal, polyarchic, plutocratic, autocratic, democratic, etc. or a mixture of any of these) political entity seems to have had no effect, historically, on the alacrity of the state for war/ the use of violence internally and externally. I think human beings seem to be hard-wired for war. This is soemthing we need to tackle, but it won’t go away.
Maybe you’re right, though, and I’m missing something like an elephant in the sitting-room.
The other thing, anno, is you can’t have it both ways. First, you say that “95% of Uzbeks would” like a Taliban government and then, when I write that the vast majority of Pakistanis would not like a Taliban government, you say that it doesn’t matter what people want because – and this philosophical view is very Marquis de Sade, actually not very Islamic at all – people are motivated primarily by greed and lust. So which is it?
If Mr Murray has signed up to Mr Clegg who has signed up to Mr Obama who has signed up to Mr Brizhinsky who has signed his name in blood to attack Muslims on all sides, it’s not very nice, is it.
Why do lots of lovely Liberals who totally disagree with Mr Clegg, continue to support him as if their little cosy party would never do any of the nasty collective genocides the other nasty parties would do. Party collective self-brain-washing is the cause of the problem. To think otherwise is to deny the history of the last ten years, with politicians wringing their hands and shedding crocodile tears at all the pwoblems caused by Mr Blair, who took his power from their nasty grubby little signatures, not me guv, it was ‘im wot did it. Hypocrites all of them , including Mr high and mighty CM himself, if you ask me.
Suhayl
As Arsalan pointed out, the Taliban and the US war machine are not the only systems of government in the history of the universe. The Taliban is not what it is portrayed by Western media to be. Take a photo of me when I’m in a bad mood, it isn’t the sum total of me, or even me at all, unless you see the context of my bad mood in the total round, which even I cannot see.
No, the principle of establishing theocratic government is fundamental to Islam, No Law without authority. No authority without mercy and humanity. The West always projects its own violence on Islam. Say no more.
I do not support New Labour at all at all. I said that Mr Clegg is in the same category as Mr Blair, devious, public school, manipulative, say anything to please the establishment, such as Yes I will fight your anti-Muslim wars just to get power,
Then like Blair, he can use the support he cultivated by good policies that turned out to be false promises, to repeat what Blair did in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Craig appears to want to be to Clegg what Gordon Brown was to Tony Blair.
He seems to think that he can afford to buy into the realpolitic of global aggression on the back of his reputation as an anti-war critic. but once you buy into it, you start to take shares in it, and before you know what’s happened you’re supporting it like Gordon Brown.
As I have stated many times, the purpose of the election is to give the bloody sheets, clothes and murder weapons of UK plc a thorough whitewash and clean. Mr New then says ” Don’t think all politicians are the same, I am totally different from those awful new Labour, Trust me, Look at all these starry-eyed idealists I have in my government.”
I am not prepared to be taken in again. Craig Murray signing up to Clegg’s genocidal manifesto is a repeat of the Blair scenario. Exactly the same.
I don’t say that Gordon Brown won’t have his neck twisted to go to war again. he will. But we will tell him that he has form. We will tell him that everything web wanted to do to Blair, we will definitely do to him if he signs us into another genocide. If Clegg or Cameron are in power, they will both say NO NO NO, ask my anti-Karimov Foreign Secretary Craig Murray or my ex MI5/6 Foreign Secretary who has spent many years getting to know and love the people of Afghanistan. We are clean, clean clean. It’s just that we don’t like theocracies and dictators, so we have to invade Syria, Iran and all the other -stans.
If you think that’s too clever political garbage, in my opinion so is Craig’s supporting a pro-war leader while he is anti=theocracy.
My policy is no compromise, no party games, and no tolerance of anti-Islamic racism that theocracy is by definition a bad thing.
“As Arsalan pointed out, the Taliban and the US war machine are not the only systems of government in the history of the universe.” anno
Actually, anno, it was me who pointed that out. Arsalan may have, too, in which case, good on him.
“A silent revolution is occurring – silent, only because it’s barely reported in the global media who are obsessed with ‘Jihadism versus NATO’. There are other paths.” Suhayl
I’m sure I’ve expanded on this somewhat elsewhere on this or another thread of this blog recently, something about there being many possible permutations.
Nonetheless, I know that the mainstream parties are all imperialist war-parties – that’s obvious. I think a voice like CM is more powerful and effective if it does not compromise and if it stays out of mainstream party politics. But CM’s made his decision, it’s up to him.
Craig, plz don’t say 95% of uzbeks dring alcahol. this is not true. absolutely not true. i guess when u were in uzbekistan, u just have been in bars frequesnly, where of course u’ll see the drinking people. but there are plenty of places in uzbekistan, where you can find those, who are not doing that. thank u for telling the issues we have to the world- i do hope this will make the situation better