Yearly archives: 2010

Civil Service Redundancies

 in Economic Policy by | View Comments

I am entirely in favour of civil service redundancies, and even more of local authority redundancies. We have a crazy economy, heavily dependent on vastly over-rewarded people who perform useless financial casino services for much of the world. The taxation this brings in goes to fund many more people who fill in forms all day relating to government targets.

The number of people who actually make anything is miniscule. The entire economy is not sustainable.

I suggested how to cut the foreign office here:

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/06/for_william_hag.html

and gave more general views on cuts here:

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/06/budget_day.html#comments

I support redundancies. But I do not support the attempts – started by New Labour – to cut civil service redundancy terms for existing employees. Civil servants entered into employment with a contract with their employees. New Labour lost two court cases in their efforts to unilaterally revoke the contractual redundancy rights of civil servants. The notion that the government may now pass primary legislation to give itself the right to change redundancy temrs of existing employees is contrary to natural justice. Private sector employers cannot unilaterally change employment contracts of existing staff. Nor should the public sector.

Redundancies are an initial cost which must be found, but lead to long term savings. As I have argued in relation to the FCO in particular, sales of government property should be used to help meet the redundancy costs. The MOD has vast tracts of land and a great many buildings which could be sold. Chevening, Dorneywood, Windsor Castle and Osborne House would bring a few quid. If you can enact primary legislation to cut civil service redundancy pay, you can enact primary legislation to allow you to sell those. I would nationalise the estate of the Duke of Westminster too, then sell it off. That would meet a lot of the redundancy costs.

I have no objection to changing conditions of employment – including on redundancy and pensions – for new employees, within reason. The impact on recruitment and retention must be carefully weighed. But to abrogate existing employees’ contracts is plain wrong.

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Gaza Blockade

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I presume that Israel’s “agreement” to ease the Gaza blockade after the murders on the Mavi Marmara was just a ploy to influence the international media until the agenda moved on, which it now well and truly has. Is there any reliable and up to date information on the current state of the blockade, particularly as regards construction materials?

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The 4.45pm Link

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Interesting piece from the curmudgeon on welfare reform.

http://www.thecurmudgeonly.blogspot.com/

We should not forget the extent to which every possible step was taken to discourage benefit claimants already under New Labour.

A friend of mine who works in what used to be called a Jobs Centre says it is heartbreaking to see the unemployed who have worked all their lives, sometimes in quite senior positions, now being put through the deliberately humiliating and onerous process of claiming benefit. They have to show they have applied every week for numerous often inappropriate jobs and continually provide evidence of their rejection.

She says that there really does exist a class of benefit scrounger who have no intention of working. They are precisely the ones who are not discouraged. They know how to fill the forms, happily send off a quota of hopeless online job applications every week, and don’t mind explaining themselves to a gormless eighteen year old clerk who has the power to send them and their family to starvation. It is the honest people humiliated at having to claim benefits who can’t cope and fall through the net.

That is the problem with making benefits harder to claim – you discourage the wrong people.

The interesting thing is that the staff do know broadly who are real and who are the scroungers – but they are not allowed to use discretion, but have to make decisions according to set procedures and criteria based on form filling and production of meaningless rejection letter paperwork.. Absolutely symptomatic of New Labour’s Britain.

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Westminster Foundation For Torture

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duffield.jpg

This is Linda Duffield’s take on the vexed moral question on whether or not it can be justifiable to boil somebody alive to obtain information from them:

There were difficult ethical and moral issues involved and at times difficult judgements had to be made weighing one clutch of “moral issues” against another. It was not always easy for people in post (embassies) to see and appreciate the broader picture, eg piecing together intelligence material from different sources in the global fight against terrorism.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/06/proof_of_compli.html#comments

Linda is now the chief executive of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, an all-party supported organisation, funded by the FCO, to spread democracy abroad. This is their blurb:

Established in 1992, WFD is an independent public body sponsored by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, from which it receives an annual grant. Over the years we have grown in strength and diversity, working to achieve sustainable political change in emerging democracies. Working with and through partner organisations, we seek to strengthen the institutions of democracy, principally political parties (through the work of the UK political parties), parliaments and the range of institutions that make up civil society. We believe that, for a democracy to flourish, all of these institutions must be strong and sustainable.

I don’t imagine this includes training in the reasons why it can be OK for a democracy to condone boiling people alive, but who knows? I have worked with WFD in Poland and it used to do very good work, but it was distorted by Blair to focus its work in support of places we were invading, occupying, bombing or selling arms to. See how many of the current case studies on its website fall into that category?

http://www.wfd.org/pages/standard.aspx?i_PageID=144

And what an interesting gathering this was in Prague of the proponents of “democracy” by invasion, organised by “democracyandsecurity.org”.

http://www.democracyandsecurity.org/doc/List_of_Participants.pdf

The conference brought together Richard Perle, Aznar, the American Enterprise Institute, the exiled Cuban opposition, numerous Israeli representatives and the neo-con funded Amir Abbas Fakhravr of the “Iranian Freedom Institute of the USA”. From Wikipedia about Fakhravr:

In late April 2006, he arrived in the United States from Dubai where he had been greeted by Richard Perle [5] who interrupted his trip to central Asia in order to meet Fakhravar in a hotel. [23] They had been in touch through a contact since 2003. [23] Their meeting in Dubai was recorded and some of it is included in a documentary titled “The Case for War: In Defense of Freedom”. [24][25]

Since his arrival he has called for a unified Iranian opposition to the Islamic government, in order to bring regime change in Iran. [23] He has had several meetings with American officials from the Pentagon to the State Department, as well as with Vice President Dick Cheney.[26]

Some very interesting other delegates included the Las Vegas Sands Corp.. From Wikipedia:

Las Vegas Sands Corp. (NYSE: LVS) is a casino resort company based in Paradise, Nevada. It is the world’s leading Casino based company with a market capitalization of $17.3 billion as of April 2010. At one point in 2007, it had a market capitalization of $43.7 billion, making its majority shareholder, Sheldon Adelson, one of the world’s richest men.

Any idea what they were doing there? Oh yes, and Linda Duffield was there too. Doubtless it was relaxing to be in the company of so many who might share her views on the efficacy of torture.

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Torture Inquiry: My Letter to William Hague

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This is the letter I wrote to William Hague, via my local MP Angela Bray, on 24 May. I was not going to publish it until I received Hague’s reply, but as he has not replied after six weeks…

I did receive almost immediately from Angela Bray a copy of the very fair letter with which she forwarded mine to William Hague.

24 May 2010

Dear Ms Bray,

UK Ministers’ Complicity in Torture

May I congratulate you upon your election? I should confess I was campaigning hard for your

Lib Dem opponent Jon Ball, but I offer you my sincere good wishes for your career in parliament.

I should be most grateful if you could forward this letter and attachments to the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, for his comments. The attachments are FCO documents but I rather suspect are not amongst those which his officials would select to show to him.

The documents arise from my time as British Ambassador to Uzbekistan. I have obtained them under the Freedom of Information Act. Those not written by me were carefully drafted to lessen the disclosure of culpability, and have further been carefully redacted. However I believe you will agree with me that it is impossible to read this short series of documents without drawing the conclusion that they reveal a policy of knowing complicity in torture. The Secretary of State referred to in the documents is, of course, Jack Straw.

I should also be most grateful if Mr Hague would personally consider again the substantial redactions which have been made from the documents. I of course saw the originals and I would argue that these redactions are not genuinely made in the interest of national security, but rather to avoid embarrassment to ministers. In the real world, it is not a secret that we receive intelligence reports from the CIA, nor that ministers read them. No specific intelligence is disclosed under the redactions.

The Guardian has reported that Mr Hague is considering the initiation of a public inquiry into allegations of UK complicity in torture. I would applaud this. I would however urge that it is essential that any evidence to such an inquiry be given under oath and at risk of perjury proceedings. I believe that otherwise the truth may be hard to discover. I should most certainly be prepared to give evidence to any such inquiry.

Finally, and with both shame and reluctance, I feel compelled to ask something for myself. I should state that this request is of nowhere near the same order of importance as the matters above, and I do pray that in dismissing it you do not dismiss the rest.

I believe I was the only senior official to minute his opposition to our complicity with torture, and very shortly after the events outlined in these documents, I was suspended and faced with 18 disciplinary allegations which branded me a sexual blackmailer, an alcoholic and a thief.

I am not, and have never been, any of those things and, after a four month investigation, was cleared on all those charges. But in the meantime my physical and mental health and, more dear to me, my public reputation had been destroyed. I came extremely close to sharing the fate of poor David Kelly, and I believe for very similar reasons.

The only disciplinary charge on which I was convicted was that of telling people about the false charges which I had been told to keep secret ?” but without telling people, how could I clear my name? The FCO line has always been that, when faced with such serious allegations, it had no choice but to investigate them. But that is completely at odds with the fact that the formal investigation found there was “No evidence” to support 16 of 18 allegations.

I genuinely believe that the allegations were concocted within the FCO, with malicious intent, because my internal opposition to torture was seen as endangering our secret policy of collusion with torture In fact I can think of no other explanation.

As you may be aware, a great many other people believe the same and the case has become justly notorious.

My request for myself is that the Secretary of State initiate an inquiry, by somebody external to the FCO, into what was done to me and why. Failing that, a simple apology that I was faced in such a public way with such heinous charges, of which I was innocent. To this day, the FCO has always avoided acknowledging my innocence of these dreadful accusations. It would mean the world to me.

Yours faithfully,

Craig J Murray

I have censored part of the final sentence, relating to impact on my family, for personal reasons.

If the government’s inquiry does go ahead, and is a formal inquiry under the Inquiries Act, I shall be applying to be a core participant. As the only civil servant who attempted to stop the policy which the inquiry is investigating, and having been sacked for my pains, I feel I have a strong case. As a core participant I would have the right to counsel who could submit questions to all witnesses. Frankly, few are in as good a position as I to know the right questions to ask.

Senior civil servants are pushing very hard to ensure the inquiry does not consider the general policy of torture, but only looks at individual cases of those who were tortured. A few MI5 and MI6 junior officers would be scapegoated, and compensation paid to a few victims of torture. Ministerial and senior civil service direction would be ignored. They also want most of the proceedings to be secret and – amazingly – at one stage MI6 have even been pushing for disgraced 79 year old Lord Hutton to head the inquiry.

It is by no means certain that there will be a meaningful inquiry at all.

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Who Cares About Torture in the UK?

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This is perhaps the best of eleven analyses I have found so far on major US blogs of the new material I recently posted proving a UK ministerial policy of torture.

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2010/07/01/torture-and-truth/

I have done numerous foreign press interviews in the last two days, including Liberation, Boston Globe and Der Spiegel. But I got the brush off from the Guardian and Telegraph, no response from sending the documents to Channel 4 and the BBC, in fact precisely zilch from the UK media. What is wrong with this country?

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Proof of Complicity in Torture

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An FCO source warns me this morning that a vicious rearguard action is being fought within the FCO, to ensure that any government inquiry excludes my evidence and does not consider whether there was a policy of complicity with torture. Rather the security services wish it only to look at individual cases like Binyam Mohammed and assess compensation for them. The cover-up that these individual cases were accidents would be maintained.

I have now obtained under the Freedom of Information Act the final documents in the Tashkent series. These show beyond doubt that there was an official policy of obtaining intelligence through torture. I was, to the best of my knowledge, the only senior civil servant to enter a written objection to the policy of complicity with torture.

The picture built up by these documents is overwhelming and undeniable evidence of a policy of complicity in torture, even despite the censorship by government. The censorship has removed all mentions of the role of the CIA in procuring the torture intelligence from the Uzbek security services, and passing it on to MI6. Protection of the CIA appears to be the primary aim of the censor.

I set out below transcripts of the documents with a link to each document beneath.

CENSORED

CENSORED

FM TASHKENT

TO IMMEDIATE FCO

TELNO 147

OF 170345Z DECEMBER 02

INFO IMMEDIATE UKMIS NEW YORK, UKMIS GENEVA, UKDEL VIENNA

FOR PUS AND MICHAEL WOOD

FOR HEADS OF MISSION UKMIS NEW YORK, UKMIS GENEVA AND UKDEL VIENNA

SUBJECT: RECEIPT OF INTELLIGENCE PROBABLY OBTAINED UNDER TORTURE

1. CENSORED

This is useless, immoral and I believe illegal.

2. UN Special Rapporteur on Torture van Boven recently visited Uzbekistan. As a result of his investigation he described the use of torture by the Uzbek authorities as “widespread” and “systemic”. This accords with our own description of it as “endemic”. Suspected Islamic radicals are particularly often tortured – with increasing frequency to death.

3. I doubt the situation is much better in other Central Asian states. CENSORED

What safeguards are in place to ensure that we are not receiving, and potentially exposing Ministers to, intelligence obtained under torture?

4. CENSORED

5. Two thoughts occur. CENSORED

6. I would be grateful for the opinion of Sir Michael Wood on the legality in both international and UK domestic law of receiving material there are reasonable grounds to suspect was obtained under torture, and the position of both Ministers and civil servants in this regard.

MURRAY

CENSORED

View Document

CENSORED

CENSORED

DEYOU

FM FCO

TO IMMEDIATE TASHKENT

TELNO 323

OF 241445Z DECEMBER 02

INFO IMMEDIATE UKMIS NEW YORK, UKMIS GENEVA, UKDEL VIENNA

YOUR TELNO 147

FROM WILLIAM EHRMANN (IN PUS’S ABSENCE)

SUBJECT: DEYOU: INTELLIGENCE PROBABLY RECEIVED UNDER TORTURE

1. CENSORED

I have consulted Michael Wood.

CENSORED

2. No-one is in any doubt that torture is endemic in Uzbekistan, as van Boven’s report testifies. Your suggestion that intelligence is extracted under torture is disturbing.

CENSORED

3. CENSORED

4. I do hope that this reassures you. If not, perhaps we can have a discreet conversation in the margins of the FCO Leadership Conference.

STRAW

Main

DG DefInt

CENSORED

View Document

CENSORED

CENSORED

Manuscript Note: Matthew Kidd, CENSORED

Grateful for views from both CENSORED and Legal Advisers.

Wm Ehrman

Fm Tashkent

To Routine FCO

TELNO Misc 01

Of 220903 January 03

INFO ROUTINE UKMIS NEW YORK, UKMIS GENEVA, UKDEL VIENNA

FOR WILLIAM EHRMAN

Your relno 323

RECEIPT OF INTELLIGENCE PROBABLY OBTAINED UNDER TORTURE

1. Thank you for TUR. I apologise for not findng you at the Leadership Conference, but I had decided to drop this. What seemed to be a major concern seemed not a problem to others, and this caused me some self-doubt.

2. However I see that the Economist of 11 to 17 January devoted its front cover, a full page editorial and four whole pages of article to precisely the question I had raised. Reading a newspaper on the flight back here 12 January, I was astonished to find two pages of the Sunday Mail devoted to exactly the same concerns. Back in Tashkent, I find Human Rights Watch urging the US government not to extradite Uzbek detainees from Afghanistan back to Uzbekistan on the same grounds. All of which emboldens me to think I am in good company in my concern. These stories all quote US sources as indicating that the CIA is accepting intelligence obtained under torture by “allied” governments. As I already explained, I too believe that to be most probably true here.

3. CENSORED

You accept that torture of detainees in Uzbekistan is widespread. Redacted.

4. CENSORED.

I can give you mounds of evidence on torture by the Uzbek security services, and I have et victims and their families. I have seen with my own eyes a respected elder break down in court as he recounted how his sons were tortured in front of him as he was urged to confess to links – I have no doubt entirely spurious – with Bin Laden. Redacted.

5. CENSORED.

6. I am worried about the legal position. I am not sure that a wilful blindness to how material is obtained would be found a valid defence in law to the accusation of having received material obtained under torture. My understanding is that receiving such material would be both a crime in UK domestic law and contrary to international law. Is this true? I would like a direct answer on this.

7. CENSORED.

8. The methods of the Uzbek intelligence services are completely beyond the pale. Torture including pulling out of fingernails, electrocution through genitals, rape of dependants, immersion in boiling liquid – is becoming common, and I weigh those words very carefully. CENSORED.

MURRAY

YYYY

Single Copies

DG DEFINT 1

CENSORED

View Document

CENSORED

From: Linda Duffield

Date: 10 March 2003

Reference: 1

To PUS

cc: Michael Wood, Legal Adviser

Matthew Kidd CENSORED

SUBJECT: UZBEKISTAN; INTELLIGENCE POSSIBLY OBTAINED UNDER TORTURE

1. Michael Wood, Matthew Kidd and I had a meeting with Craig Murray (Me, British Ambassador to Tashkent) to discuss his telegram (Tashkent Telno Misc 01).

CENSORED

I said you had asked me to discuss this with Craig personally in view of the sensitive nature of the issues involved.

2. Craig said his concerns had been prompted by a presentation to the Uzbek authorities by Professor Korff (OSCE Adviser) on the UN Convention on Torture. Craig said that his understanding was that it was also an offence under the Convention to receive or to possess information obtained under torture. He asked for clarification on this. Michael Wood replied that he did not believe that possession of information was in itself an offence, but undertook to re-read the Convention and to ensure that Craig had a reply on this particular point.

3. I gave Craig a copy of your revised draft telegram (attached) and took him through this. I said that he was right to raise with you and Ministers (Jack Straw) his concerns about important legal and moral issues. We took these very seriously and gave a great deal of thought to such issues ourselves. There were difficult ethical and moral issues involved and at times difficult judgements had to be made weighing one clutch of “moral issues” against another. It was not always easy for people in post (embassies) to see and appreciate the broader picture, eg piecing together intelligence material from different sources in the global fight against terrorism. But that did not mean we took their concerns any less lightly.

4. CENSORED

5. After Michael Wood and Matthew Kidd had left, Craig and I had a general discussion about the human rights situation in Uzbekistan and the difficulties of pushing for a Resolution in Geneva, which we both agreed was important.

CENSORED

CONCLUSION

6. In conclusion, Craig said that he was grateful for the decision to discuss these issues with me personally. At the end of the day he accepted, as a public servant, that these were decisions for Ministers to take, whether he agreed with them or not. If it ever reached the stage where he could not accept such a decision, then the right thing to do would be to request a move. But he was certainly not there yet. He had fed in his views. You and Ministers had decided how to handle this question. He accepted that and would now go back to Tashkent and “Get on with the job”.

7. I think it was right to see him. I am not sure this is the end of the issue (or correspondence), but it was a frank and amicable discussion and Craig appears to be making efforts to balance his work on human rights with other FCO objectives. We shall, of course, be reviewing these again once he has produced his post objectives for the upcoming year.

Signed

Linda Duffield

Director Wider Europe

View Document

Linda Duffield

UZBEKISTAN

Last night the Foreign Secretary (Jack Straw) read a copy of your minute of 10 March reporting your conversation (in the company of Michael Wood and Matthew Kidd) with Craig Murray.

The Foreign Secretary agrees with the PUS that you handled this very well. He has asked me to thank you.

Signed

Simon McDonald

(Assistant Private Secretary to Jack Straw)

14 March 2003

cc PUS

PS/PUS

Michael Wood

Matthew Kidd

Alan Charlton

View Document

FROM: Michael Wood,

Legal Adviser

cc: PS/PUS

Matthew Kidd, WLD

Linda Duffield

UZBEKISTAN: INTELLIGENCE POSSIBLY OBTAINED UNDER TORTURE

1. Your record of our meeting with HMA Tashkent recorded that Craig had said that his understanding was that it was also an offence under the Convention to receive or possess information obtained under torture. I said that I did not believe that this was the case, but undertook to re-read the Convention.

2. I have done so. There is nothing in the Convention to this effect. The nearest thing is article 15 which provides:

“Each State Party shall ensure that any statement which is established to have been made as a result of torture shall not be invoked as evidence in any proceedings, except against a person accused of torture as evidence that the statement was made”.

3. This does not create any offence. I woud expect that under UK law any statement established to have been made as a result of torture would not be admissible as evidence.

Signed M C Wood

Legal Adviser

View Document

Nobody can, on a critical reading through the above documents, doubt that there was a deliberate and considered UK government policy of receiving intelligence from torture, and that it had the support of Jack Straw.

The large scale censorship of the documents does not succeed in obscuring this. My favourite bit of censorship is from para 5 of my first telegram above:

“Two thoughts occur. CENSORED”

Quite right, of course. There is nothing so dangerous as one of my thoughts, but two? Thank God the government have censored and protected the public from me.

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Those Russian Spies

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I don’t have any difficulty in believing that the FBI really have discovered a colony of Russian sleeper spies in the United States.

Spying is an industry. Most of its activity is pointless, counter-productive and misdirected. Those employed in it have the strongest urge to strengthen and perpetuate their own industry. They are, worldwide, shielded from public scrutiny of their efficiency, and it is easy to persuade politicians to dole out more and more funds. Politicians are flattered to see papers marked “Top Secret” and their vanity is stoked by knowing about things happening that the public is not allowed to know about. It gives them a feeling of power.

But the extraordinary question is why the FBI would, after years of surveillance, pull the plug exactly now? A spy ring you have under complete surveillance and whose communications you have decoded is the most valuable asset imaginable. Simply think what could be learnt of Russia’s intentions towards the US from decoded instructions to these agents over the years. Think what “traitors” may have been revealed, with whom agents may have been asked to make contact. Why on earth would this priceless asset be thrown away?

Of course, for the long term future of their industry, spies are heavily dependent on the perception of an “enemy”. Perhaps there was concern that the perception of a viable enemy was slipping, so anti-Russian public and political sentiment needed to be stoked. Spies, of course, are not the only ones whose livelihood depends upon poor relations with an “enemy”. Obama’s pursuit of arms reduction negotiations with Medvedev is worrying the defence industry, Now what might cause domestic political problems for arms reduction negotiations with Russia?

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Government Torture Inquiry

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Another breathless day without a moment to blog, but I am delighted at the prospect of an inquiry into British government complicity with torture. I had already written to William Hague offering to give evidence to any such inquiry, and suggesting to him that it is essential that all evidence is taken under oath and at risk of perjury proceedings.

I understand from FCO sources that tomorrow’s official announcement has now been postponed while desperate last minute efforts are being made by the security services and by the US Embassy to tighten the terms of reference. The answer to the question “Did the British government specifically request that anybody be tortured” is quite probably no, and there is a battle going on to ensure that this is the only real question asked.

There is also of course the crucial question of who conducts the inquiry.

I shall be posting tomorrow at 11.30 am new official documents from 2002, never public before, which make completely plain New Labour’s policy of complicity in torture.

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Doune The Rabbit Hole

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doune.jpg

Jamie is co-organising a music festival at Dounce Castle, largely I think because this is the kind of music he likes, and it sounded fun. Makes me wish I were young again. Acts confirmed so far include

Francois and The Atlas Mountains

Glider

Les Bof!

The Junipers

Adam Stearns

My Old Blue Terraplane

The Fast Camels

The Koolaid Electric Company

Punch and the Apostles

The Higher State

Paul Messis

The One Ensemble

The Wise Guys

Sunken, Drunken, and the Broken Boat

While the pitch is enticing:

Doune the rabbit hole is a two day tea party situated in the beautiful countryside surrounding Doune Castle, Stirlingshire. Come sit at our table and let me tell you what treats we have in store. Expect the tea to be strong; a blend of the finest psychedelic music complimented with a dash of folk brewed to perfection in a big pot of sunshine. And we mustn’t forget the cakes; indulge yourself in a delicious array of freshly baked delights comprising of poetry, dancing, philosophy, forests, stories, lights, trees, cows, theatre, comedy, dressing up boxes, whisky, games, face-painting, giant mushrooms, rainbows (but no rain), local ale and cider, lovely organic food, and many more surprises to come.

http://www.dounetherabbithole.co.uk/Doune_the_Rabbit_Hole/Home.html

Interesting to see how they get on with a festival featuring a style of music rather than anybody famous.

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Sheikh Abdul Aziz Bukhari

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“The stronger one is the one who can absorb the violence and the anger from the other and change it to love and understanding…This is the real jihad.” – Sheikh Abdul Aziz Bukhari

Sheikh Bukhari died last week, and is much mourned by religious Uzbeks, and especially the exiled opposition leadership, to whom he was close. Bukhari was a direct descendent of Imam Muhammad Ismail al-Bukhari of Bukhara, the ninth-century author of the Hadith al-Bukhari. Sheikh Bukhari led a colony of Palestinians of Uzbek descent, mostly now in Gaza, who have maintained their Uzbek identity for generations.

http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=177302

He died shortly before a scheduled meeting with Turkish PM Erdogan to discuss reaction to the Gaza Flotilla attack. He devoted much of his life to seeking, through working with like-minded Jewish religious leaders, to use religion as a force for peace and agreement, rather than hatred and division.

This often placed him in a difficult position. For example, he lead a delegation to Sderot, to show sympathy for the population there but at the same time to explain to them the sufferings of his own relatives in Gaza. This attempt to promote understanding drew criticism from all sides.

The danger also exists that a non-violent tradition will be exploited by oppressors. Others, particularly Sheikh Kabbani and the Sufi Muslim Council, sought to hijack the Sufi Naqbandi tradtion and put it at the service of the linked Karimov and Israeli regimes and US neo-con organisations, and received a great deal of money for doing so.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/03/sufi_muslim_cou.html

Unlike them, Sheikh Bukhari never endorsed Karimov or the “War on Terror”. He never abandoned the rights of ordinary oppressed people. He lived a simple lifestyle, and was a living rebuke to those who seek to malign and misrepresent his religion.

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On Being Happy

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I feel full of energy and – strangely – youth at the moment. The last two nights I did extremely good public meetings with the Global Justice Group in Halesowen

http://www.myspace.com/halesowengjg

and for Medical Justice in Manchester.

http://www.medicaljustice.org.uk/

They were vibrant and full meetings – the collection for Medical Justice afterwards raised over three hundred pounds for their Manchester branch. One of the things cheering me up is that I took a look through my engagements and realised I have raised tens of thousands for good causes at meetings over the last five years. It relieves the fear that my life has been wasted.

But what really cheers me up is the fact that there are so many good, informed and active people out there. I really must do more of this.

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Keeping Up With The Afghan Disaster

 in Afghanistan by | View Comments

As of 1pm, the BBC were still running a piece recorded about twelve hours ago on McChrystal’s sacking. It included the observation that the military strategy was not plainly succeeding, given the 76 NATO dead in June alone.

Keep up. That was twelve hours ago. It is now 83 dead, including 4 more Brits.

That does not mention the 412 Nato wounded in June alone as well.

When will they stop this madness?

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