Yearly archives: 2007

Usmanov Bluster

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Usmanov’s lawyers are now blustering that the coverage of Usmanov in Murder in Samarkand is libellous.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2414738.ece

Given that he has such hyperactive lawyers, is it not strange that the book has been out for over a year, but they have made no move to sue for libel? Their bluff and bluster really is quite pathetic, and I am getting bored with it.

Sadly, it still continues to work on British newspaper editors. I find it astonishing that even the Sunday Times can report so deadpan Usmanov’s ludicrous claim that he was not jailed as a criminal but as a “political prisoner”.

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Who Ate All The Pies?

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From the Evening Standard, an article about Alisher Usmanov and me that is almost entirely wrong.

Arsenal billionaire in Red and White rumpus

07.09.07

A legal row has blown up between billionaire Alisher Usmanov, the man who has bought a ’75million stake in Arsenal, and the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan.

Craig Murray, who became a fierce critic of the Uzbek government after being the ambassador to the country from 2002 to 2004, was yesterday forced to remove a series of critical comments about Usmanov from his personal website.

The former diplomat penned a piece about Usmanov after his company Red and White bought ex-Arsenal vice-chairman David Dein’s 14.58% stake in the club last week.

Usmanov was born in Uzbekistan before moving to Russia and Murray made a number of allegations about the tycoon’s links with the Uzbek regime.

Usmanov has instructed solicitors to take action against media outlets making any damaging claims about the businessman and they threatened to sue Murray unless the article was removed.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/sport/article-23411391-details/Arsenal+billionaire+in+Red+and+White+rumpus/article.do

In fact, I have received no communication of any kind from Usmanov or his solicitors. the opposite is true; I telephoned Schillings and asked them to sue me, but they didn’t seem keen.

I know lawyers who would be delighted to have the chance to quiz Usmanov in the witness stand (if we can find one wide enough), about his criminal conviction in the Soviet Union, how he secured his pardon, his relationship with President Islam Karimov, Gulnara Karimova and Gafur Rakhimov, the sources of his wealth and the doings of Gazprom Investholdings. I should be interested in his views on the mysterious fall from a window of his employee Igor Safronov.

I know several people who would like to take the witness stand themselves.

To many people it might seem strange that somebody should need to get expensive libel lawyers to write to all newspapers, before anyone had published anything, threatening to take them to court if they did. Some people might conclude that indicates something to hide.

My earlier post was removed by my web server after the webhost was threatened with legal action. I have heard nothing – a cowardly way of proceeding, in my view. I support the webhost’s decision to remove the article rather than have the site, and other valuable sites, perhaps closed down. But once the truth has escaped onto the internet, it is out there, despite all their frantic efforts.

Everyone, whatever their crimes, deserves legal representation in the criminal law. But lawyers who, for money, work on suppressing the truth for people like Usmanov, are themselves slugs.

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US Diplomats and Human Rights

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The house magazine for US diplomats, Foreign Service, has published its September 2007 issue on “Human Rights Promotion in the Post-9/11 Era”. It contains a number of excellent essays, and also one by me on the lessons of my time in Uzbekistan, which I reproduce here:

The Folly of a Short-Term Approach

By Craig Murray

Ambassador Craig Murray resigned from the British Diplomatic Service in February 2005. He is now rector of the University of Dundee and an honorary research fellow at the University of Lancaster School of Law. His memoir of his time in Uzbekistan, Murder in Samarkand, is available from Amazon.co.uk. Paramount and Brad Pitt’s production company Plan B are producing a movie based on that memoir, with filming scheduled to begin in February 2008 under British director Michael Winterbottom.

I am very pleased to be offered the chance to pass on to you some thoughts on the conflict between human rights and the ‘War on Terror,’ drawn largely from my recent service as the United Kingdom’s ambassador to Uzbekistan. As a result of that experience, I should acknowledge, I was recently vetoed as a participant in a U.S.-sponsored seminar on that topic by a very senior State Department official, on the grounds that I was ‘viciously anti-American.’

That is not true, of course. Yes, I am a person who holds his beliefs very dear and who believes strongly in individual liberty in all spheres. Thus, I am a passionate supporter not just of democracy and human rights, but also of capitalism and free markets.

So how could someone with that belief set come to be perceived as anti-American? The answer is that I do not believe that recent U.S. foreign policy has promoted those goals at all, but rather has been doing something very different.

Walter Carrington Avenue

To illustrate what I mean, let me offer an example of diplomacy at its best. One of my inspirations was Walter Carrington, the U.S. ambassador to Nigeria from 1993 to 1997. Amb. Carrington never accepted the brutal dictatorship of the Sani Abacha regime (1993-1998), and constantly went beyond normal diplomatic behavior in assisting and encouraging human rights groups, and in making outspoken speeches on human rights and democracy.

Carrington’s approach was a direct challenge to the British Embassy in Nigeria, which pursued a much more traditional line of polite interaction with the president and his cohorts. This appeasement did us no good, as Abacha repeatedly moved against our interests; for example, he banned British Airways from flying into Nigeria. Nonetheless, my diplomatic colleagues looked down their long noses at Carrington with disdain, for raising unpleasant subjects like torture and execution at cocktail parties. (I regret to say that some of the career subordinates in the U.S. embassy did the same.)

The Abacha dictatorship hated Carrington so much that the Nigerian armed forces even stormed the ambassador’s farewell reception and arrested some Nigerian participants, a breach which was rightly condemned by the U.S. Congress. But a grateful Nigerian people did not forget his efforts on their behalf, and soon after Abacha’s downfall, the street on which the U.S. and British consulates in Lagos were situated was renamed by the local authorities as Walter Carrington Avenue. I believe it is still called that.

Carrington’s example taught me a great lesson in diplomacy: that the relationship of an embassy should be with the people of a country, not just with their authorities. Regimes which are hated by their people will never survive indefinitely, though they may endure a very long time. A fundamental role of an embassy in these situations should be to do everything in its power to hasten the dawn of freedom.

A Perfect Failure

Uzbekistan is undoubtedly one of the most vicious dictatorships on Earth. Freedom House ranks it as one of just five countries scoring a perfect 7 ‘ complete lack of freedom ‘ on both political rights and civil liberties. The Heritage Foundation’s view of economic freedoms there is similarly critical. In short, Uzbekistan does not follow the Southeast Asian model of an authoritarian government overseeing a free economy and rapid economic development. It is more akin to North Korea than to Singapore. Soviet institutions have been strengthened and corruption even increased. Only the iconography switched, from communism to nationalism.

Yet Uzbekistan was embraced as a Western ally following the 9/11 attacks, a member of the ‘Coalition of the Willing.’ In 2002 alone the U.S. taxpayer gave the Uzbek regime over $500 million, of which $120 million went to the armed forces, and $82 million direct to arguably the world’s most vicious security services. Also during that year, according to impeccable British government pathology evidence, at least one Uzbek dissident was boiled alive. The U.S. taxpayer paid to heat the water.

(more…)

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The Mysterious Islamic Jihad Union

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The three alleged “terrorists” arrested in Germany, aimed to blow up US military airports, civil airports, bars, discos and other targets, according to the German authorities, motivated by a fanatical hatred of the United States.

They have been identified as coming from the “Islamic Jihad Union”, an alleged offshoot of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. This organisation was first heard of in intelligence passed by the Uzbek intelligence services to the United States during alleged “Terror attacks” in Tashkent in spring 2004. Those attacks were in fact largely fake and almost certainly the work of the Uzbek security services, from my investigations on the spot at the time. These are detailed in pages 325 to 339 of Murder in Samarkand. These “attacks” were followed by the arrest of many hundred people in Tashkent, largely those with a little money and a Western lifestyle. From the torture chambers, hundreds confessed to membership of the Islamic Jihad Union. The United States, still an ally of Uzbekistan at that time, was keen to accept the narrative and moved succesfully to place the Islamic Jihad Union on the United Nations list of terrorist organisations.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1595387,00.html

In fact there was no evidence of the existence of this organisation other than that given by the Uzbek Security Services. There are, for example, no communications intercepts between senior terrorists referring to themselves as the Islamic Jihad Union.

Germany houses the biggest concentration of exiled Uzbek dissidents in the West, and in May of 2004 the Uzbek security services were already passing on alleged intelligence about attacks by the Islamic Jihad Union on US targets in Germany. Peculiarly, newspaper stories about these IJU plots in Germany have been surfacing regularly for the last two years, ahead of the recent arrests.

Germany is of course now Uzbekistan’s major ally in the West. Germany has an airbase in Uzbekistan and still has very close security service coopertation with Uzbekistan. Germany has been pushing hard within the EU for the lifting of sanctions imposed on Uzbekistan following the massacre bu the Uzbek armed forces of at least 700 demonstrators at Andijan in May 2005. Germany’s close relationship with Uzbekistan is based on the interests of Gazprom and its $8 billion Nordstream Russian/German joint venture for a Baltic pipeline to bring Russian and Uzbek gas to Germany. This was orchestrated by Gerhard Schroeder, now Chairman of Nordstream, and Alisher Usmanov, chairman of Gazprom Investholdings.

http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2007/05/uzbekistan_and.html

Germany therefore remains very open to the Uzbek security service agenda. It is in the light of these interests that the story being given about the latest arrests should be considered. There are some peculiar points about it: why are the German authorities connecting a Turk and two ethnic Germans, who allegedly trained in Pakistan, to an obscure and possibly non-existent Uzbek group?

I should make plain that regrettably it is a fact that there are those who commit violence, motivated by a fanatic version of their faith. Sadly the appalling aggression of US and allied war policy has made such reaction much more frequent. These men may or may not have been planning to commit explosions. But if they were, the question is who was really pulling their strings, and why?

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The Women at the Tomb

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nadiratomb.jpg

Nadira playing Magdalene in The Women at the Tomb

Nadira is playing at the moment in a fringe production of The Women at the Tomb by Michael De Ghelderode, at the Lion and Unicorn theatre (above the pub) at 42 Gaisford St, Kentish Town, NW5. The play runs till 16 September if you want to go along and see it.

Details here:

http://www.actprovocateur.net/home.html

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Murder in Tashkent

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I am much shaken by the assassination of yet another of my Uzbek friends, the brave, talented and internationally renowned theatre director, Mark Weil.

Mark created and led an independent theatre company, the Ilkhom Theatre of Tashkent. They were the very first independent theatre company in the whole Soviet Union. Their artistic freedom, performance of previously banned works and tackling of social issues made them one of the sensations of the late Soviet Union, enabled by Glasnost. They became the toast of Moscow intellectual circles in the late 1980’s.

As Mark described it to me, they then had the irony of being part of the destruction of the Soviet Union, only to be plunged into the even greater gloom and tyranny of Uzbekistan. But by then Mark, a native Uzbek of German stock, had built up the formidable international reputation that enabled Ilkhom to continue to flourish as a tiny, bright and incredibly unlikely beacon of light in Tashkent. They played to great acclaim on every continent, their last appearance in the UK being a sell out run at the Barbican last year. I had a long talk with Mark and his family afterwards and found him less optimistic, his cares heavier, than ever before. He was, however, determined to stay in Tashkent and battle it out.

Mark’s style was always in public to deny breezily that he faced any particular problems, and to try to shelter everyone else – his company, his family, his loyal audiences – from them. He would avoid direct criticism of the regime, but allow his art to talk for him, still using his theatre to tackle challenging questions of Uzbek society – unemployment, drug addiction, freedom, homosexuality, religion – which are absolutely forbidden from discussion, both in Uzbekistan’s 100% state controlled media, and in public. Typical of his style was his TV documentary on Tashkent’s monumental architecture. Showing the change of monster iconography in bronze from Tsarist generals, through Lenin, Stalin and Marx to Karimov’s use of the Tamerlaine cult, on the surface it was a paean to state progress, but the message that “Karimov too will pass” could not have been more clear. Mark was a great subverter.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ft20070222a1.html

He was currently engaged in one of those collaborations with Western theatre companies which so worried the authorities, in this case a British company. He was also preparing for the opening tonight of Ilkhom’s new season. Arriving back at his apartment block after final rehearsal last night, he was murdered by a group of men in T-shirts. Reports are confused as to stabbed or shot.

The method of killing is precisely that used in every one of the murderous assaults on Russian journalists I investigated earlier this year. In each case, they were ambushed on return home from work – the standard method of the security services. Mark had told his British collaborators he was under great pressure.

http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2007/06/russian_journal.html

What happens now is very predictable. Karimov will blame “Islamic militants” and there will be further arrests, and probably convictions, of dissidents in Tashkent as usual. With Mark a great talent dies, and one of the last flickering embers of freedom in Uzbekistan.

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Usmanov Redux

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You may have noticed that the post regarding Alisher Usmanov has disappeared. This is at the instigation of Schillings, lawyers retained by Usmanov.

Pending legal advice which – as web host – I am unable to obtain prior to tomorrow, given Schilling’s deadline and in light of Godfrey v Demon Internet, the post may or may not reappear. In the meantime, it is always now somewhere on the web. If you know where to look, you’ll probably find it.

Cheers

Clive – webhost

edit 07-Sep in response to further communications from Schillings

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Arsenal

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I have been delighted by the reaction of Arsenal fans – the large majority seem not to want Usmanov’s money, and juging by yesterday’s performance they don’t need it.

I am most happy to give evidence to the Premier League if anyone can point me in the right direction. But I rather hope Usmanov’s hyperactive and expensive lawyers will sue me for libel. Questioning Usmanov in a British court would bring a much fairer result than anything I expect from our tainted football authorities.

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Alisher Usmanov, potential Arsenal chairman, is a Vicious Thug, Criminal, Racketeer, Heroin Trafficker and Accused Rapist

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I thought I should make my views on Alisher Usmanov quite plain to you. You are unlikely to see much plain talking on Usmanov elsewhere in the media becuase he has already used his billions and his lawyers in a pre-emptive strike. They have written to all major UK newspapers, including the latter:

Mr Usmanov was imprisoned for various offences under the old Soviet regime. We wish to make it clear our client did not commit any of the offences with which he was charged. He was fully pardoned after President Mikhail Gorbachev took office. All references to these matters have now been expunged from police records . . . Mr Usmanov does not have any criminal record.

Let me make it quite clear that Alisher Usmanov is a criminal. He was in no sense a political prisoner, but a gangster and racketeer who rightly did six years in jail. The lawyers cunningly evoke “Gorbachev”, a name respected in the West, to make us think that justice prevailed. That is completely untrue.

Usmanov’s pardon was nothing to do with Gorbachev. It was achieved through the growing autonomy of another thug, President Karimov, at first President of the Uzbek Soviet Socilist Republic and from 1991 President of Uzbekistan. Karimov ordered the “Pardon” because of his alliance with Usmanov’s mentor, Uzbek mafia boss and major international heroin overlord Gafur Rakimov. Far from being on Gorbachev’s side, Karimov was one of the Politburo hardliners who had Gorbachev arrested in the attempted coup that was thwarted by Yeltsin standing on the tanks outside the White House.

Usmanov is just a criminal whose gangster connections with one of the World’s most corrupt regimes got him out of jail. He then plunged into the “privatisation” process at a time when gangster muscle was used to secure physical control of assets, and the alliance between the Russian Mafia and Russian security services was being formed.

Usmanov has two key alliances. he is very close indeed to President Karimov, and especially to his daughter Gulnara. It was Usmanov who engineered the 2005 diplomatic reversal in which the United States was kicked out of its airbase in Uzbekistan and Gazprom took over the country’s natural gas assets. Usmanov, as chairman of Gazprom Investholdings paid a bribe of $88 million to Gulnara Karimova to secure this. This is set out on page 366 of Murder in Samarkand.

Alisher Usmanov had risen to chair of Gazprom Investholdings because of his close personal friendship with Putin, He had accessed Putin through Putin’s long time secretary and now chef de cabinet, Piotr Jastrzebski. Usmanov and Jastrzebski were roommates at college. Gazprominvestholdings is the group that handles Gazproms interests outside Russia, Usmanov’s role is, in effect, to handle Gazprom’s bribery and sleaze on the international arena, and the use of gas supply cuts as a threat to uncooperative satellite states.

Gazprom has also been the tool which Putin has used to attack internal democracy and close down the independent media in Russia. Gazprom has bought out – with the owners having no choice – the only independent national TV station and numerous rgional TV stations, several radio stations and two formerly independent national newspapers. These have been changed into slavish adulation of Putin. Usmanov helped accomplish this through Gazprom. The major financial newspaper, Kommersant, he bought personally. He immediately replaced the editor-in-chief with a pro-Putin hack, and three months later the long-serving campaigning defence correspondent, Ivan Safronov, mysteriously fell to his death from a window.

All this, both on Gazprom and the journalist’s death, is set out in great detail here:

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

Usmanov is also dogged by the widespread belief in Uzbekistan that he was guilty of a particularly atrocious rape, which was covered up and the victim and others in the know disappeared. The sad thing is that this is not particularly remarkable. Rape by the powerful is an everyday hazard in Uzbekistan, again as outlined in Murder in Samarkand page 120. If anyone has more detail on the specific case involving Usmanov please add a comment.

I reported back in 2002 or 2003 in an Ambassadorial top secret telegram to the Foreign Office that Usmanov was the most likely favoured successor of President Karimov as totalitarian leader of Uzbekistan. I also outlined the Gazprom deal (before it happened) and the present by Usmanov to Putin (though in Jastrzebski’s name) of half of Mapobank, a Russian commercial bank owned by Usmanov. I will never forget the priceless reply from our Embassy in Moscow. They said that they had never even heard of Alisher Usmanov, and that Jastrzebski was a jolly nice friend of the Ambassador who would never do anything crooked.

Sadly, I expect the football authorities will be as purblind. Football now is about nothing but money, and even Arsenal supporters – as tight-knit and homespun a football community as any – can be heard saying they don’t care where the money comes from as long as they can compete with Chelsea.

I fear that is very wrong. Letting as diseased a figure as Alisher Usmanov into your club can only do harm in the long term.

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BAE and the Arms Industry

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Sorry, that was a long break from blogging because of another visit to Ghana on energy projects, an appearance at the Edinburgh Book Festival, commitments at Dundee University and agreeing contracts for my next three books. I am also just finishing a play.

The Mail on Sunday is today carrying another one of my blasts.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23410665-details/How+BAE+and+a+rather+mysterious+Labour+peer+get+rich+as+our+troops+die/article.do

As I have said before, I think the Mail deserves great praise for the range of opinion it is prepared to cover, more so than any other British mainstream newspaper. Strangely, the Mail website doesn’t mention who wrote it. You can see the full article from the link, but to whet your appetite:

After the First World War, Stanley Baldwin surveyed the House of Commons of which he was soon to become Conservative Prime Minister. He was filled with disgust, dismissing the MPs as ‘a lot of hard-faced men who looked as though they had done rather well out of the war’.

He had hit upon a universal truth.

To you and me, the Iraq and Afghan wars may look like unmitigated disasters. Hundreds of our young soldiers have died, as have untold thousands of local civilians, but to what end? Even the minority who supported the invasion of Iraq are inclined to agree that the subsequent occupation has been catastrophically handled.

Iraq is more than ever a failed state, with an abysmal decline in the most basic water, energy and health services for the majority of the population. Armed militias control their little fiefdoms, sometimes actually constituting the laughably named Iraqi security services. Nowhere is that more true than in Basra, now controlled from Tehran, while our troops hunker in ditches under mortar fire and take casualties whenever they venture out on patrol.

Last month, for the second time, the Iraqi governor of one of the provinces we had declared secure and ‘handed over’ to Iraqi forces was murdered, almost certainly not by Al Qaeda but by the very warring factions to whom we have handed control.

Meanwhile in Afghanistan, the drugs warlords we promoted to the Karzai government preside over massively increased opium harvests and busy heroin factories. The United Nations has just announced that this year the opium harvest is up 30 per cent, after a massive 60 per cent increase last year. Heroin production has increased more than tenfold since our invasion, while there are more men in arms against us than at any time since the conflict began.

It is hard to believe anybody can think our policy is a success.

Yet there are those who have indeed, in Baldwin’s biting phrase, ‘done rather well out of the war’. It has been waged at a great cost, not just in young soldiers’ lives but in cash.

When we talk of the vast sums that have been spent ‘ more than ‘250billion by the United States and at least ’30billion by the UK – the eyes tend to glaze over. Strings of noughts, such as those in ‘30,000,000,000, look surreal, but it is very real cash indeed, taken from your pocket and mine. And very little of it goes to the poor bloody infantry, who get pitifully little extra pay for their daily heroism.

Their value in the grand scheme of things was well illustrated this week by the campaign for Ben Parkinson, the 23-year-old Lance Bombardier who lost both legs and sustained permanent brain damage from a landmine last year in Afghanistan. The Government valued the ruin of his life at a pathetic ‘152,150. Parkinson’s mother denounced the compensation as ‘contemptible’, and she was absolutely right.

But his plight neatly illustrates an important truth. Even in the most extreme circumstances, our highly professional servicemen see only a minute fraction of the vast sums of money spent.

More than 90 per cent of it goes to private-sector firms who benefit from war, including arms manufacturers.

The Baldwin quote was pointed out by one of the commenters on an earlier post here, for which thanks. Keep commenting – I can recycle your comments and make money out of you!!!

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A Letter for Gordon

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From Stop the War

Gordon Brown will make a statement on the war in Iraq when parliament returns in October. Stop the War has begun organising a new mass campaign calling on Brown to bring all the British troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan immediately and to use his October statement to signal a break from George Bush’s foreign policy. An open letter to the Prime Minister is printed below and you can add your name online now at: http://www.stopwar.org.uk.

On Monday 8 October, Stop the War is organising a national troops out protest at Parliament, at which MPs will again be lobbied to reflect the opinion of the vast majority of people in Britain.

The latest opinion polls show that two thirds of the British people want the troops out of Iraq now and only six per cent think the war in Afghanistan is being won. Leaders of the British military have made it clear that they think the game is up in Iraq, or as Major General Richard Dannatt puts it, “We should get ourselves out sometime soon because our presence exacerbates the security problems”.

OPEN LETTER TO GORDON BROWN:

Dear Prime Minister

We urge you to use your October statement to signal a break from George Bush’s foreign policy and to bring all the British troops out of Iraq immediately, regardless of US plans. It is clear the presence of British troops in Iraq is a pointless waste of life. The majority of Iraqis want them to go. Most soldiers have been withdrawn to base outside Basra where they play no active role but are coming under fire regularly and taking heavy casualties. It is time to go. The occupation of Afghanistan is sliding in to chaos so familiar from Iraq and the troops should be brought home. An attack on Iran would be a disaster for the population and would increase instability in the region.

We need a change of course.

If you would like to join us in helping to build the troops out now campaign, contact the Stop the War national office and we will explain how you can get involved: Telephone 020 7278 6694 or email [email protected]

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How much longer? How many more?

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Yesterday, Muqtada al-Sadr was quoted as saying of the British military presence in Iraq:

“They are retreating because of the resistance they have faced. Without that, they would have stayed for much longer, there is no doubt.”

Unfortunately for the British, the trend in casualties in Iraq does reinforce what he had to say about the situation. For the last year, the 3-month moving average for combat classified casualties has climb steadily, rising from 7 per month in July 2006 to 42 per month by the end of June this year. Total casualties for 2007 have so far reached 1246.

British casualties in Iraq

Casualty Monitor has more details and also looks at the more mixed picture arising from the statistics for the war in Afghanistan.

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Scottish Independence

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Alex Salmond has endeavoured to launch a “National conversation” on Independence, with a White Paper leading to a referendum if he can get the Scottish parliament to legislate for one. New Labour has predictably responded that all this democracy is “A waste of money”, while presumably the ’50 billion they have squandered in Iraq and Afghanistan is money well spent.

I hope to contribute to the conversation myself by the publication of my next book. It is called Influence Not Power – Foreign Policy For An Independent Scotland, and will be published by Birlinn/Polygon in late Autumn. I will be finishing it over the next fortnight.

I strongly favour Independence for two basic reasons.

Firstly, Thatcherite economic and social policies were anathema to the Scottish people and convinced them they needed more control of domestic legislation, leading to the devolution settlement. Blairite foreign and defence policy – Iraq and Afghanistan, Zionism, Bush poodle, the hideous waste of Trident – is also anathema to the Scottish people and should lead to the realisation that we need our own foreign and defence policy as well.

Secondly, as a diplomat I worked beside excellent and effective Irish, Portuguese, Swedish, Slovenian, Slovakian, Danish, Norwegian and other diplomats. They were protecting their countries’ interests and playing a full and constructive role – often much more so than the UK – in mutually beneficial international cooperation. What is wrong with us Scots that we think we can’t handle the responsibilities and opportunities of Independence, if they can?

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The Location of the Holy Grail

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I am really not that bothered about the Holy Grail. If my next door neighbour Rafa had irrefutable genealogical evidence, backed by DNA testing, that he was a direct descendant of Jesus I would say “So what”? Actually if Jesus did have children, there is a good chance he has many thousands of descendants wandering around. If someone could produce a drinking vessel he used, I would think that was a great historical artifact, but I wouldn’t be inclined to use it to cure my varicose veins.

So I neither know nor care much what the Holy Grail is, but I do know where it is, and it is in Scotland. For those feverishly studying the masonry at Rosslyn Chapel, you are less than an hour’s walk away. The Holy Grail is in Shillinghill in Midlothian, formerly known as Temple and before that as Balantrodoch, with numerous variant spellings. Dan Brown addicts will find the clues on the gravestones a particularly thrilling place to start.

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More Lord Scumbag

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My article below detailed how some have done very well out of the war, particularly British Aerospace, with their unique hold over New Labour, their enforcer Jack Straw and his henchman Lord Taylor of Blackburn.

http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2007/08/theres_good_mon.html#comments

I noted that since the BAE scandal, their name had been dropped from Lord Scumbag’s extensive list of paid consultancies and directorships in the House of Lords’ Register of Members’ Interests, but postulated that some of his many other contracts might be from/for BAE.

With hust an hour’s googling, one of us (who will be known as “V”) has sent me the following:

Here’s the list of companies Lord Taylor of Blackburn has a registered interest with.

Non-parliamentary consultant

Adviser, Initial Electronic Security Systems Limited

Adviser, Electronic Data Systems Limited

Adviser, Drax Power Limited

Adviser, Experian Limited

Adviser, NPL Estates

Adviser, Lucent Technologies

Adviser, Fujitsu Services

Adviser, Canatxx Energy Ventures Limited

Adviser, LogicaCMG UK Limited

Adviser, BT plc

President, Wrens Hotel Group

Remunerated directorships Non-executive Director, A Division Holdings Limited

Non-executive Director, Eisis Limited

1: Initial Electronic Security Systems Limited

Initial Electronic Security Systems was purchased by UTC Fire & Security in July, 2007

The following is from the news section of their own website:

http://www.iess.co.uk/news05.html

Monday, August 13, 2007

Flying High

High flyers Initial Fire Systems flew into action when BAE SYSTEMS awarded the fire company ‘Phase one’, the first stage in a complete refurbishment programme of fire protection at the defence manufacturer’s huge Warton facility.

The 750 acre site, where over 9000 people are employed is a final assembly site for BAE SYSTEMS – a major international company and one of this country’s leading exporters. Warton leads the world in systems integration and engineering for military aircraft, such as the Nimrod, Tornado, Eurofighter and Harrier.

The contract, one of the largest fire installations undertaken by Initial Fire’s Blackburn branch, involved the design and installation of 31 smoke detection and fire extinguishing systems, monitored and controlled by the British Aerospace Fire Station on sophisticated PC based NT graphics software, again designed and installed by Initial Fire Systems.

2: Electronic Data Systems Limited

From BAE’s website news archive:

http://www.baesystems.com/Newsroom/NewsReleases/2003/press_07012003.html

BAE SYSTEMS Awarded Major Sub-Contract For Royal Navy Messaging Enhancements

07 Jan 2003

BAE Systems C4ISR has been awarded a major sub-contract by EDS Defence within the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence’s Naval Afloat Messaging Coherency (NAMC) programme. This will provide a coherent formal military messaging facility to Royal Navy vessels at sea and enable access to Information Exchange services provided by the shore-based Defence Message Handling Systems (Navy) [DMHS(N)], which was also supplied by BAE Systems.

BAE Systems will be supplying its Summit-iX Information Exchange software product to EDS Defence for incorporation into the NAMC solution. Summit-iX is also employed within the DMHS(N) and is currently being delivered to the Royal Navy’s new Type 45 destroyers.

Summit-iX represents the United Kingdom’s first implementation of NATO’s new messaging standard STANAG 4406 Edition 1 and, to ensure inter-operability with ships and submarines using the existing older standard, features the proven BAE Systems’ MPS2000 product integrated within it.

NAMC is a key element in the process of rolling out a consistent information infrastructure into the Royal Navy. Supporting the creation of network-enhanced capability, it will be fitted to current Royal Navy aircraft carriers, Type 42 destroyers, Type 23 and Type 22 frigates, and to some Royal Fleet Auxiliaries, replacing a number of legacy systems. This will allow the Royal Navy to gain the benefits of coherence with its existing systems, planned future systems and under-pinning shore based support infrastructures.

The BAE Systems C4ISR Communications & Defence Infrastructure team based at Portsmouth will be supporting EDS Defence’s activities, which are focused on completing fleet-wide rollout by the middle of 2007.

BAE Systems awarded contract for new Royal Navy Warfare Operator Training programme

http://www.baesystems.com/Newsroom/NewsReleases/2006/press_13012006.html

13 Jan 2006 | Ref. 014/2005

BAE Systems has been awarded a contract by the Defence Logistics Organisation (DLO) for the Maritime Composite Training System (MCTS) Phase 1 programme, valued at approximately ‘100M.

This will provide the Royal Navy with a new shore-based Warfare Operator Training capability to meet the needs of the Type 45 Ready for Training later this decade and current in-service surface platforms.

MCTS offers a more flexible approach to training than is currently available and supports the aims of the Navy’s Versatile Maritime Training concept. Flexibility is achieved through the use of generic Classroom Based Skills Training for early training requirements ensuring that allocation to platform type can be deferred to the latest possible point in the training pipeline. High functional fidelity training is used where platform specific Individual Skills and Warfare Team Training are required. MCTS facilities will be situated at both the Maritime Warfare School Collingwood and the Devonport Waterfront.

Captain Mark Darlington, FLEET Assistant Chief of Staff (Naval Training and Education), said: “The SEABRIDGE partners bring a unique blend of expertise to this project. Their combined experience in the field of maritime operations and the training needed to support it, together with the already proven hardware and simulation software will better assist the RN produce capable, motivated and highly trained sailors primed to take their new skills into a highly demanding operational environment. The signing of this contract represents a very important step in bringing to life the concept of Versatile Maritime Training to support the Royal Navy of the 21st Century. The successful delivery of the MCTS project is vital to both individual and collective team performance.’

BAE Systems Integrated System Technologies (Insyte) leads the SEABRIDGE team with its partners Aerosystems International, EDS, Flagship Training, MDA and Serco.

Clive Richardson, Managing Director, BAE Systems Integrated System Technologies (Insyte), said: ‘BAE Systems, with our partners in the SEABRIDGE consortium, is delighted to have been selected to deliver the Maritime Composite Training System. We have used our deep experience in maritime operations to develop a cutting-edge, versatile training environment for Royal Navy personnel to develop and practice their skills. BAE Systems regards MCTS as an early step in the strategy to deliver coherent, timely and effective training to meet all the Royal Navy’s emerging requirements and to form the foundation of realisable joint training’.

Work on MCTS has started and facilities will be situated at the Maritime Warfare School Collingwood, Portsmouth and the Devonport Waterfront, Plymouth.

3: Fujitsu Services

Eurofighter Typhoon

We are working with Bae Systems and CASA on the European Eurofighter programme and Ground Support Systems for the aircraft. Fujitsu’s UK, Spanish, German and Italian arms are providing fixed and deployable IT infrastructures to their airforces. These run both engineering and mission support systems essential to the aircraft’s operation.

Source (http://www.fujitsu.com/uk/industries/defence/experience/)

Also Fujitsu seem to have been working with BAE on some sort of software for Joint Operations/battlefield situational awareness. I can’t really work out what this is apart from its military, its communications and it’s something to do with BAE, take a look at the pdf and see if it makes any sense to you.

http://www.fujitsu.com/downloads/EU/uk/industries/defence/UKIT36-openJOP.pdf

4: LogicaCMG UK Limited

This is an old news story from BAE’s own archives.

http://www.baesystems.com/Newsroom/NewsReleases/2002/press_06062002.html

BAE SYSTEMS awards contract for security evaluation of royal navy’s type 45 destroyer communications system

06 Jun 2002

BAE Systems has awarded a contract for the security evaluation of the Royal Navy’s Type 45 Destroyer’s Fully Integrated Communications System (FICS) to Logica UK Ltd of Leatherhead, Surrey, United Kingdom, acting in the role of a CommerciaL Evaluation Facility (CLEF).

This represents a further significant phase in the fulfilment of the FICS programme – in February 2001, the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence awarded a contract for the development and installation of the FICS to Thales Communications Ltd. The latter is working in partnership with the BAE Systems C4ISR’s Communications & Defence Infrastructure team, based at Christchurch, United Kingdom, and Raytheon Inc, USA, to fulfil the requirement.

The contract award for security evaluation for Type 45 FICS follows closely upon the completion of the security clearance of the integrated internal and external communications systems being installed by Thales, in partnership with the BAE Systems team, on the Royal Navy’s new Landing Platform Dock (Replacement) platforms, HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark.

The contract complements Logica UK Ltd’s other commitments within the Type 45 programme. These include providing security evaluation services on the Data Transfer and Combat Management Systems, and supplying consultancy services for security evaluation to the BAE Systems Prime Contract Office.

5: Non-executive Director, A Division Holdings Limited

From their own website:

http://www.adivisiongroup.com/content.asp?did=23765

Our history

The establishment of the A Division Group of companies was the culmination of many years of expertise and experience in education ,health and information technology on the part of the core members of our team, which resulted in the formation of the A Division Group in London, England in April 2001.

Although the Group has wide ranging international activities ,interests and operations and indeed, global ambitions, the Groups primary activities are centred upon the educational field, where A Division Learning Systems Limited is a primary sub-contractor to BAE Systems plc ,one of the World’s leading Defence contractors, for the delivery of education based projects worldwide.

To date A Division Learning Systems Limited has successfully delivered and continues to support IT based educational systems and programmes ‘ including Smart Learning and CAD-CAM, in Brunei, Kuwait, Malaysia and Thailand.

6: Non-executive Director, Eisis Limited

Eisis Limited is a subsidiary of EDS Electronic Data Systems Limited which owns 50% of Eisis

(source http://www.transnationale.org/companies/eds_electronic_data_systems.php)

This is the only thing I could find about Eisis, couldn’t confirm it from any other source as yet.

As Rector of the University of Dundee, one thing that shocked me was the way that New Labour have packed their apparatchiks on to University Courts (as on every other Board and Quango in the land.)

http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2007/04/dundee_universi.html

It therefore comes as no surprise to find that Lord Scumbag of Death, aka Lord Taylor of Blackburn, a man doing very nicely out of the war, is a life member of the Court of the University of Lancaster – where I am now an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Law. I think I know some of the direction my research might take.

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Prisoner of Conscience

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The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee reports the bleeding obvious, that our failure to support a ceasfire in the Lebanon materially damaged the UK’s political standing (courtesy of rabid Zionist and “Peace Envoy” T. Blair). The FAC report is well worth reading in full, as it is scathing on the disaster of Iraq as well.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselect/cmfaff/363/363.pdf

The official government response shows that, for all Brown’s claims, spin is still alive and well. Lying through his teeth, an FCO spokesman said that:

The UK worked strenuously for a ceasefire in Lebanon.

In fact the opposite was true. I had a friend and former colleague call me from our Mission to the United Nations phone me from New York at the time in deep personal despair, as he had been instructed to keep an early ceasfire resolution off the Security Council agenda by making it known that we would veto it. Meanwhile everyday he was seeing news footage of dead Lebanese chhildren dragged from the rubble of their homes.

One brave man who tried to do something about it was Marcus Armstrong. For having better moral sense and a great deal more guts than the rest of us, Marcus is now in jail. I received this email yesterday asking for messages of support, and I thought this was the best way I could pass it on, with my warmest endorsement.

During August 2006 US airforce planes, and planes chartered by them, were stopping to refuel at Prestwick airport while delivering munitions to the Israeli army. These bombs were then being used in the indiscriminate bombing of Lebanon and Lebanese civilians.

Protestors gathered at Prestwick. Their aim was to raise awareness among the population locally and worldwide and to try to stop the flights. Information in the press and public channels was incomplete and contradictory.

Some of the issues under discussion were

Prestwick is a civilian airport unsuitable for such military activity

There was much secrecy surrounding the flights . Why?

Muntions passing through our peaceful part of Ayrshire were killing innocent civilians elsewhere

Shannon airport had already refused permission . Why was it granted at Prestwick?

On 3 nights in early August some of the protestors broke into Prestwick and to carry out a citizens inspection of the planes to establish whether the flights were actually carrying munitions. 8 of these protestors were tried at Ayr sheriff court ;last week . Evidence against them was incomplete. After the first 5 days of the trail 7 were released. Today was the last day of the trial. The last protestor, Marcus Armstrong , stood accused of breaking into the airfield and boarding a plane.

Marcus bravely conducted his own defence. He didn’t to deny the action but defended his motives. It was, he said, his responsibility , right and duty to try to protect the innocent civilians for whom the munitions were destined. He was trying to do this by gathering information, raising awareness and perhaps he would be able to disrupt the flights.

Its a difficult thing for a civilian to defend himself in a court of law. Marcus remained calm and focussed. At the end of the day the sheriff found him guilty and fined him ‘750. ( the maximum for this offence is ‘5 000) Marcus maintains that his action was not a criminal offence. He refused to pay the fine and has chosen the alternative, imprisonment.

The term of imprisonment is 28 days, though he is likely to serve only half of this. If you wish to support him you can write to

Marcus Armstrong,

c/o

Her Majesty’s Prison Kilmarnock,

Bowhouse,

Mauchline Road,

Kilmarnock,

Ayrshire,

KA1 5AA

you may wish to add ‘prisoner of conscience’ on the envelope

A previous peace protestor says a picture postcard is most uplifting!

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“Recklessly Truthful” and “Heroically Flawed”?

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A long interview with Steve Coogan in The Independent today:

Murray, says Coogan, is “recklessly truthful” and “heroically flawed”, the sort of well-intended but slightly damaged character that he relishes.

http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article2859337.ece

I am pretty happy with his characterisation of me and of Murder in Samarkand. I trust Steve and Michael, and I think they have got the message the film needs to convey. If it can be conveyed with humour, all the better. I am really starting to look forward to the filming now. We are just about at the point where production work will really take off, as filming on Genova is almost finished.

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There’s Good Money in Death

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In posts below I outlined the theory, first put forward in JA Hobson’s Imperialism: A Study, that imperial adventures abroad impoverish a nation but enrich certain powerful interest groups within it. I applied this to the Iraq war. Market events of the last few days bear out my description of the fragility of the United States’ current financial architecture. Gordon Brown has loyally bought $125 billion of US Treasury Bonds in the last few months to help shore up his ally, with my money. Brown is a man who prides himself on economic prudence, that is a move he will come to rue.

http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2007/08/us_economic_vul.html#comments

http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2007/08/j_a_hobson_impe.html#comments

When I give talks on Murder in Samarkand , I am keen to emphasise that the driver behind US Central Asian policy was the meeting between Bush, Enron and the Uzbek Ambassador in 1997. From twenty years experience as a diplomat I can tell you that the idea that big companies drive foreign policy is not an abstract concept, but comes down to very real contracts, very real money and very real, and often very nasty, people.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/bushlay12.html

The same point was made last week by a BBC report that the arms manufacturer British Aerospace has made record profits due to the War in Iraq. The BBC, for once, deserves some credit for the frankness of this report, which begins:

BAE profits soar on Iraq conflict

Work to re-equip UK and US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan has helped profits to soar at defence group BAE Systems.

The UK’s largest defence firm, BAE made a pre-tax profit of ‘657m ($1.4bn), compared with ‘378m a year earlier.

BAE said the “high tempo” of UK and US military operations was increasing demand for land systems to support armed forces overseas. BAE, which is facing an anti-corruption probe by US authorities, saw its half-year revenues rise by 10%. The firm said its sales had benefited from its US operations, which achieved organic sales growth of 12% during the period.

Overall sales at BAE’s Land & Armaments business, which includes everything from tanks to munitions, rose 43%.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6938085.stm

British Aerospace is of course the company that provided $1.2 billion in bribes for Saudi Princes, as well as trafficking in sex for them, and had Tony Blair decide that an investigation into the crime should be dropped “In the national interest”.

http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2007/06/bae_corruption.html

http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2007/06/transcript_of_t.html

British Aerospace has the closest relationship with New Labour. When Robin Cook became Foreign Secretary in 1997, he announced that he intended to institute an “Ethical Foreign Policy”. Blair was determined to scupper this, particularly as it was known in the FCO and Downing St that Robin Cook planned to block a substantial sale of British Aerospce Hawk jets to Indonesia, a country which had a record of using air power against civilian populations in internal dissident areas.

Before Cook was ready, Blair ambushed him on the issue at one of New Labour’s very first Cabinet meetings. Jack Straw led the attack speaking in favour of BAE, strongly supported by Gordon Brown. In the first few weeks of Blair’s premiership, nobody was prepared to speak against him at Cabinet, and Cook was not just defeated, but deliberately humiliated by Blair. I have had an eyewitness account of this meeting from a then Cabinet Minister.

Cook was later to say that:

“I came to learn that the chairman of BAE appeared to have the key to the garden door to No 10. Certainly I never knew No 10 to come up with any decision that would be incommoding to BAE.”

Jack Straw has always been the most pervasive and insidious supporter of BAE in the Cabinet. It was Straw who lobbied hardest against Cook’s plans to limit BAE arms sales, and when Blair sacked Cook it was Straw who replaced him as Foreign Secretary. It was Straw who lobbied hardest for the investigation into the BAE bribes to be dropped, and it is Straw who now has become, supreme irony, Minister of Justice.

When Straw escorted Condoleeza Rice around the North West of England in March 2006, a BAE arms factory was the highlight of the trip.

Straw’s links with BAE are partly conducted through Lord Taylor of Blackburn, the former leader of the Blackburn with Darwen Council that includes Straw’s Blackburn constituency. Lord Taylor, an archetypal New Labour apparatchik from Straw’s constituency machine, has lived off the taxpayer in Labour Party appointed posts all his life. He is now chiefly known as the second highest claimer of expenses in the House of Lords. In 2005 Lord Taylor claimed over ‘57,000 of tax-free expenses, over three times the average claim of under ‘19,000. he spoke 15 times in the year.

But he doesn’t really need that public money anymore, as the grasping creep Taylor is the primary conduit between the defence industry and New Labour. He has been a highly paid “Consultant” to BAE for over a decade. He also has used some of that money to make major contributions to Jack Straw’s election expenses in his Blackburn constituency, declared by Straw in the Register of Member’s interests. Lord Taylor also regularly makes large contributions to fund Blackburn New Labour. When I stood against Straw in Blackburn at the last election, Taylor was present with Straw at a black tie event hosted by BAE in the constituency said to be “unrelated to the election”.

Interestingly, this year in the House of Lords’ Register of Members’ interests, BAE has disappeared from Taylor’s list of eleven paid consultancies and two paid directorships. It might be interesting to dig for links between these companies and BAE. Some are certainly arms firms – including the highly sinister Electronic Data Systems.

EDS is another of the arms companies that has made many billions from the Iraq war. Among their many current defence contracts is a $12 billion project on electronic systems for the US armed forces. Presumably a well-plugged in New Labour apparatchik like Lord Taylor was of no hindrance to EDS in March 2005 when they landed a ‘2.5 billion contract from the UK MOD for a similar project. Indeed, if Lord Taylor cannot help swing that kind of contract, why are EDS paying him?

I do not have power of words sufficiently to condemn the institutional sleaze of a system where a scumbag like Lord Taylor can be put, unelected, by Labour into a seat for life in the national legislature. There, while a legislator, he can act as a well paid and highly connected lobbyist for the arms industry. As someone who has been deeply patriotic, I must now say that I find myself unable to have any pride in my own country any longer.

What are our soldiers dying for again?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/baefiles/story/0,,2091253,00.html

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Forum Theatre Malvern 3 October

 in The Book by | View Comments

img027.jpg

Unfortunately my talk at the Edinburgh Book Festival sold out weeks ago, but I shall be appearing at the Forum Theatre in Malvern on 3 October at 7pm, in support of Amnesty International.

You can buy tickets online here

http://www.malvern-theatres.co.uk/

Or call the Box Office on 01684 892277

Hope to see you there.

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