Monthly archives: April 2010

British Elections Are Not Free and Fair

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So, there we have British elections today: an unfair electoral system, censorship of candidates’ electoral addresses, little real political choice for voters, widespread postal ballot-rigging and elections administered by partisan council officials in a corrupt political climate.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/08/craig-murray-general-election

I am back on comment is free. Please comment there as well as here. I would only note though that tte headline is not mine: I would not say the situation here is as bad as Uzbekistan.

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Britain Boosts Karimov: Our Deep Shame

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I urge you to read the full text of this speech by the current British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Rupert Joy.

http://ukinuzbekistan.fco.gov.uk/en/news/?view=Speech&id=21996817

Delivered in what is undoubtedly one of the most vicious and ruthless dictatorships in the world, there is not the slightest hint that Britain finds anything to criticise in Karimov’s Uzbekistan. This is of a piece with recent Home Office claims that there is no human rights problem in Uzbekistan.

Those who have read Murder in Samarkand will know that I was under pressure from the FCO to promote “reforms” by the Karimov regime to justify our alliance with Uzbekistan, even though those reforms were entirely sham.

Joy servilely intones:

“Your parliamentary institutions are developing in a positive direction. We want to support that development through closer parliamentary links with Britain, which has one of the world’s oldest parliaments.”

[FACT – only five fake parties which support Karimov are allowed to take part in parliamentary elections. All three main opposition parties are banned. The OSCE condemned the latest Uzbek parliamentary elections as offering no real choice to the electorate. There is no debate in the Uzbek parliament.]

“We want to support Uzbekistan in areas where it has introduced progressive legislation, such as habeas corpus and the abolition of the death penalty.”

[FACT Uzbekistan is quite happy to appease its US and UK allies by introducing entirely fake reforms. Habeas Corpus is simply ignored by the Uzbek judiciary, which the UN Committee on Human Rights recently affirmed had no independence. The abolition of the death penaly has no meaning in a country where regime opponents disappear and where families are not informed of date of execution or burial place, as again recently reaffirmed by the UN committee. Uzbekistan has 10,000 political prisoners].

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/unhumanrightsreport.doc

The alliance with Karimov is a deep shame to this country. The UK , US and other NATO countries seek to deepen it still further as Uzbekistan becomes the major transit route for supplies to NATO forces in Afghanistan. A railway link is being built to Mazar i Sharif specifically to upgrade the already massive military trafiic by truck. The construction and shipping contracts for NATO supplies are being given to private companies owned by the Karimov family.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/04/pentagon_gives.html

Rather than human rights, the main burden of Joy’s speech is on cooperation on “counter-terrorism” and Afghanistan – which all Uzbeks will know is code for unflinching Western support for the Karimov dictatorship:

“If anyone still believed that Britain’s security depended solely on traditional defence, their illusion was shattered on 11th September 2001, when al-Qaida attached New York and Washington, killing thousands of innocent people. Those terrorist attacks, and the murderous attacks that followed in London, Madrid and elsewhere, demonstrated that our physical security depends on working with other governments to fight extremism”

“Fighting extremism” is of course how Karimov characterises his outlawing and extermination of any domestic democratic opposition.

The FCO seeks to sweep away past criticism of Uzbekistan’s appalling human rights record as having been a “Misunderstanding”. This is perhaps the most nauseous passage of Joy’s appalling licking of Karimov’s arse.

“Our two countries have not always understood one another well enough. That is not surprising. We are far apart: my country is an island; yours is double-landlocked. And we have had very different histories. But the peoples of our countries have much to gain from deeper engagement”

You see, if we just understood each other better, we will realise why President Karimov is forced to boil people alive.

This speech really is deeply, deeply shameful if you think of the context of the totalitarian regime in which it was spoken. It also puts to bed the lie that New Labour supported my actions on human rights in the country.

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The Naxalite Rebellion

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A while ago a friend asked me why the western media ignored the Naxalite rebellion. I confess I looked at them in some bemusement. They gave me a quick briefing and I went to read more.

Yesterday the Naxalites killed 74 Indian para-military forces in a huge gun battle in Chatisgarrh, bringing to over 200 the number of Indian security forces they have killed this year – before we get into the officials and landlords they have killed. A Muslim suicide bamber killing six Pakistani civilians makes broadcast media on every channel. The Naxalites are fighting a burgeoning civil war in the heart of India, yet totally ignored.

The Naxalites are a rebellion of impoverished castes against landowners, and of indigenous people whose environment is being ruined by mineral mining against the government and big business who make sure they don’t benefit. They characterise themselves as Maoist, and their leadership includes Indian university intellectuals with links to the cult of Bob Avakian in the USA and to the Maoist rebels of Nepal. The Naxalites have real control on the ground of a great deal more territory in India than Karzai and NATO control in Afghanistan.

This low level war has been rumbling on for decades, but has burst into real fire by a decision two years ago by the Indian government to switch policy. From trying to undermine the Naxalites by social policies assuaging the greivances of the poor in the region, they dramatically changed to a policy of wiping out the Naxalites militarily. The cause of the change was India’s economic growth and the urge to speed up multinational company access to mineral resources. So far, it looks like a very stupid decision.

How much of that did you know? I maintain that if the Naxalites were Muslim, they would be on the front page of every paper as a threat to India, and the Americans would be bombing them. But they aren’t, so you will find them hard to track in the mainstream media.

They are however just an extreme example of the fact that the losers in India’s economic miracle are not dependably complacent.

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General Election Blues

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I really find it hard to avoid revulsion from the election. Bland inanities and staged photo-opportunities, minutely stage-managed encounters with real people in situations where their behaviour is strictly controlled, like their employment.

Yesterday it started so awfully I thought it could not get worse. Brown walked through St Pancras station, past groups of people we were supposed to believe were just the general public who chanced to be there, who remarkably kept bursting into “spontaneous” and enthusiastic applause of Gordon Brown and stepping up to shake his hand as he passed.

The chances of Brown being greeted by near unanimous applause among a genuine random sample of the population are nil – even in Kirkcaldy. I have never seen such obviously stage managed nonsense. There was one surprising glitch from the New Labour people planting machine, and I rewound the Sky box to make sure I was right. There were virtually no black people, or obvious Eastern Europeans. One nice oriental lady who seemed the only “real” person there, put her shoulder down and determinedly barged past Brown.

Now the chances of any group of a couple of hundred people at a public transport location in London being uniformly white and middle class are bugger all. Interesting New Labour thing, this – the bussed in enthusiastic “ordinary people” crowd waving union jacks that lined the street for Blair’s entrance to Downing St in 1997 were almost all white too. By comparison Cameron yesterday was pointedly with two black Tory candidates.

Anyway, I was in a TV studio this morning and Mandelson was on screen in the background the whole time, so haven’t been able to face turning on the TV today in case I throw something at it.

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Dead Nazi

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For all those commenters who were shocked by my failure to be very sorry about the murder of Eugene Terre Blanche, here is a photo of him

dead%20nazi.jpg

And here’s a massacre by those nice cuddly white South Africans – less than 1% of whom engaged in any form of protest against this massacre.

“>sharpeville.jpg

I don’t think any more words are needed.

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General Election

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So it looks like we are off, with New Labour buoyed by an obviously rogue telephone poll in the Guardian, taken by ICM over the Easter weekend, when only New Labour supporters are sad enough to be answering their telephones in the hope that somebody likes them.

I shall be supporting the Lib Dems as the most progressive mainstream party, but with great concern about their lack of enlightenment over the diasatrous Afghan War, which claimed yet another British soldier yesterday, and doubtless several unreported Afghans. The great scandal of this election will be the conspiracy by the main parties to prevent any debate on Afghanistan.

This is why we should be debating our support for America’s imperial wars:

http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/posted/archive/2010/04/05/wikileaks-video.aspx

Sky News has gone opinion poll crazy this morning. Here is my prediction of the final outcome of the UK election in terms of vote share:

Conservative 38

New Labour 28

Lib Dem 24

Others 10

I will work out a prediction for seats later.

Meanwhile, today is Nadira’s birthday, so no more blogging till tomorrow.

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South Africa

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My last, flippant post on the death of Eugene Terre Blanche brought an interesting comment thread, in which not only did we attract some new South African commentators, we started up interesting disagreements along unusual fault lines between regular commentators. So I thought I might probe further with something less flippant.

I am not actually in favour of hacking people to death as a form of political action. But I am unrepentant at failing to be moved by the death of an out and out Nazi, who thrived in apartheid times in a system in which he was able to put his ideas of racial dominance into practice over his staff and black neighbours.

The apartheid regime killed many thousands, and dispossessed, disenfranchised and enslaved millions. Almost all white South Africans were implicated in it and enjoyed its benefits. Never forget that.

Through colonialism, apartheid and neo-colonialism, white people took control of Africa’s best farming land – in areas where white men could survive the climate – and its amazing mineral resources. Throughout Africa white people still reap the great majority of the economic benefit from African oil, gold, diamonds, rutile, bauxite, uranium etc. The backbreaking labour falls to black people and so does the pollution. That benefit that does come to Africans largely falls to tiny corrupt white-educated post-colonial elites.

In South Africa it is still the case that the large majority of the wealth of the nation. the controlling interest in the gold and other mineral resources and much of the best farmland still lies with white people.

There are some white South Africans who had a genuine moral abhorrence of apartheid and yet become unfortunate victims of violence whose root cause lies in massive disparity of wealth. There are however not many white South Africans lining up to shed their wealth meaningfully to black South Africans.

White dominance over African resources has been maintained brutally and often with the use of mercenaries – officered by the British upper classes and with South Africans doing the actual killing.

That is not to excuse corrupt African elites and misgovernment by the Mugabes of this world. But Mugabe being a dreadful old tyrant does not justify the continued white ownership of land stolen by force from the indigenous peoples. Indeed some of the worst white farmers are close to Mugabe, like Prince Harry’s appalling girlfriend’s family.

Even in a country like Kenya, the recent ethnic conflicts can be traced back to colonial land grabs by white farmers dispossessing one tribe into another tribes’ lands.

I cover all of this with vastly more depth and subtlety in The Catholic Orangemen of Togo. I do hope those commenting will read it.

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Eugene Terre Blanche

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Turned out not to be so superior after all. It is sometimes hard to remember it is always wrong to be glad when someone dies. Must stop smiling about Terre Blanche (was that his real name? Too good to be true).

If I have to refrain from smiling about the death of Terre Blanche, I do hope nobody kills Tony Blair, or I shall have to refraiin from peals of laughter and dancing for joy.

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Christ, Brown and Gay Breakfasts

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Happy Easter everybody.

I am no longer a church-goer, so I can’t remember the answer to this one. If Christ was crucified on Good Friday and rose again on Easter Sunday, surely that’s two days not three? Especially as he had vanished during the night as Mary Magdalen discovered when she turned up in the morning. He was crucified pretty late on Friday as there were a series of events that day beforehand, then rose again on saturday night/sunday morning? Isn’t that the next day rather than three days?

Speaking of timing, I told a friend a week ago that if the Tory lead increased to ten points (as it now has) then I didn’t think Brown would go for May 6 but rather wait till 3 June in case something turned up. New Labour would keep their money in store and not hold a national campaign for the May 6 elections, letting the Tories spend some of their powder. There are obvious disadvantages to letting the Tories build up momentum, but also the hope that Tory triumphalism after the council elections might put people off. There is nothing more unpleasant than a braying toff,

Don’t get me wrong – I think New Labour are toast, and good riddance. But I don’t think they’ll walk manfully to their doom. I think they’ll kick, scream, wet themselves and try to buy a few more seconds in the ministerial limousines.

Finally, I confess I do not share the outrage at Chris Graylings’ comments. I don’t think in general it is useful for the state to try to co-erce tolerance, except in preventing extreme and harmful intolerance. I am not sure where the line comes, but I am not really sure you increase tolerance by forcing bigots to give bed and breakfast to gay people. I think the ancient right of the publican, for example, to refuse to serve people without reason had something going for it. It’s his pub. I once got sacked as a barman for selling someone who ordered a Talisker and coke to fuck off.

On the other hand, if Christian establishments are gay free, where will paedophile priests stay on holiday? (Am I wrong, or were the Catholic priests concerned nearly all after little boys rather than little girls?) Maybe christian establishments should be allowed to ban gays, but only on condition that they erect a large sign saying “A Narrow Minded Joyless Bigot Establishment”. They could display an Ian Paisley mark, and be awarded from one to five Paisleys depending on just how bigoted they are.

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Blackburn Council Jack Straw Electoral Corruption Starts Again

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Despite the certainty of massive postal ballot fraud on his behalf again, Jack Straw is particularly worried about losing his Blackburn seat this time. The reason is that well over half of Straw’s votes come from the Muslim Blackburn community. And this time, a credible and impressive candidate from within that community has emerged to run as an independent.

Bushra Irfan held an opening campaign preparation meeting at which entry was limited by ticket because of the fire limit, but all 200 seats were enthusiastically filled by community leaders. Straw cannot rely on a herd of Muslim voters this time.

But he can still rely on the corruption of his rotten borough. One of the great failings of the British electoral system is that the Returning Officer is the Council chief executive and in Labour authorities that is a highly politicised post. There was a time when you could rely on honesty in public life: that is not true now, and certainly not where New Labour are concerned.

Bushra Irfan has erected a large election poster in her own garden of her own property. Within three hours, several men from Blackburn council arrived to take it down on the grounds Bushra did not have planning permission to erect a hoarding.

What speed, and what an incredibly efficient council!

Election advertising is in fact exempt from planning permission regulations as class E of schedule 1 of The Town and Country Planning (Control of Advertisements) (England) Regulations 2007 which exempts:

An advertisement relating specifically to a pending Parliamentary, European Parliamentary or local government election or a referendum under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000(a).

However that won’t stop Blackburn Council, which has no concern at all for the law when it comes to organising Jack Straw election victories. I still recall their blank refusal to allow me the use of public rooms for election meetings when I stood against Jack Straw.

I pointed out to the council electoral administrators that not only did candidates have a right to public rooms for meetings, but the returning officer had a legal obligation to maintain a register of such rooms in state schools and community centres, and to make the list available to candidates at any reasonable time. The council simply replied “We don’t do that in Blackburn”.

When I telephoned the Electoral Commission to complain, they said enforcement of the law was the job of the local returning officer. When I told them that it was the returning officer I wished to complain about, they said there was no way to do that.

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Pentagon Gives Gulnara Karimova Huge Contract For Supply of US Forces in Afghanistan

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The UN Human Rights Committee is a body which routinely pulls its punches. It treats member states with respect, whether they deserve it or not. The UN is of course composed of nations many of which have much to hide on human rights, so the glass houses and stones argument is much applied.

In that context, the new advisory report of the UN Human Rights Committee on Uzbekistan is absolutely damning – as damning as these reports ever get. It contains one paragraph of “Positive Aspects” and 25 paragraphs of “Concerns”.

Concerns include lack of judicial independence, widespread use of torture, the position of women, the failure to produce bodies or graves of those executed by the state, lack of freedom of speech and movement, and use of forced labour – to name but a few.

Download file“>Download file

Not even the UN can pretend that the human rights situation in Uzbekistan is anything other than abysmal.

Still more astonishing then that the Home Office has refused the asylum applications of every single one of the few dozen escapees from Uzbekistan to make it to the UK – which still has the Soviet exit visa system and locks its people in. Even last week the Home Office was still claiming at immigration hearings that there is no human rights problem in Uzbekistan. (Fortunately judges have been less blinkered and asylum cases have been won on appeal).

The UN and EU countries continue to use Uzbekistan as a major supply base for the occupation of Afghanistan. Major new contracts between the US and Uzbekistan were signed in March 2009, and Hilary Clinton is to pay an official visit to President Karimov in November this year.

Even more disgusting is that it now emerges that the newly reinvigorated US/Uzbek relationship was made possible in negotiations because the US agreed to contract Gulnara Karimova’s company FMN Logistics to provide the transport for all the US supplies passing through Central Asia to the US forces in Afghanistan.

Not only that, but the Karimov company FMN Logistics is involved in construction and supply services on the US airbases in Afghanistan itself, and has been involved in the massive expansion work to the prison at Baghram Airbase to provide a replacement Guantanamo torture centre further away from media access.

The Pentagon contracts are worth $850 million a year to the Karimovs.

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