Why is Sunny Hundal a Neo-Con Lickspittle? 222

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Sunny Hundal is pulling the Nick Cohen trick of claiming that “Lefties” who fail to applaud every action of Bush, Blair, Netanyahu and Obomber are actually supporting Osama Bin Laden’s cause.

The Taliban is an excrescence but it is not a spontaneous outpuring of human evil. Its roots lie in the devastation of Afghanistan by foreign invasion, first by the Soviets and then by the Americans, coupled with the failings of Pakistani society due in very large part to hideously corrupt governments and politically powerful military, aided and abetted by the West. The Taliban is, in short, as much a symptom as a cause of disaster.

Hundal is a sad figure. He asked me to join Liberal Conspiracy when it started, and I refused on the grounds it was going to be a vehicle for New Labour war criminals. It has become precisely that. Hundal’s basic decency has predictably been eroded as he was sucked in by the neo-con establishment. He joined New Labour and the Guardian and is now in the states working for the drone-killer President who has launched a campaign against free speech which has seen the prosecution of more whistleblowers under Obama than under all previous US presidents combined. Hundal recently helped the anti-whistleblower cause further by publishing a fawning “exclusive” interview with the odious Harriet Harman (Of course it’s exclusive – who the fuck other than sell-out Hundal wants to talk to Harman) repeatedly labeling Julian Assange as guilty of rape.

Hundal’s question “Why do lefties keep ignoring the threat of the taliban to Pakistanis” is a stupid slur. “Why is Sunny Hundal a neo-con lickspittle?” is a question worth discussion.

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222 thoughts on “Why is Sunny Hundal a Neo-Con Lickspittle?”

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  • Ben Franklin (Anti-intellectual Colonial American Savage version)

    The fingermen? Sorry, Mark. No speeka.

  • Jay

    T-total.

    Most indulge, best liberal we had in ages, Charles Kennedy, messed it up.

    Good reason not to indulge.

  • Villager

    Suhayl Saadi
    14 Oct, 2012 – 12:23 pm

    Suhayl, very succinct summary of a highly complex and critical problem.

    Surprising that no one engaged you in any dialogue over this issue on this sunny Sunday. Is it because everybody agrees, or no one really cares, I wonder?

  • Ben Franklin (Anti-intellectual Colonial American Savage version)

    ” Is it because everybody agrees, or no one really cares, I wonder?”

    No disrespect to Suhayl, but if perpetual motion machine popped up tonight, and petrodollars went away, it would be a no-brainer.

  • tony roma

    Why is Sunny Hundal a Neo-Con Lickspittle?

    who cares
    the simple question is and i am hoping to get at least 100 replies from mi5 and gchq on this forum.

    hello james bonds.
    could you tell a simpleton what checks are done before the queen dishes out o.b.e. and knighthoods.
    what checks are done to protect the innocent royal family from murdering paedophile sodomite jingly jangly dj’s

    if i was dishing out awards vetiing would be important yes no.
    special branch reports done yes no
    dj’s going to the israeli war cabinet of interest to mi6 yes no.
    the future king being allowed to sleep under the same roof as a bbc child wrangling psychopath.
    instead of spending times on sites like this how about protecting are innocent royal family from bbc danger and reputational association loss

  • oddie

    the tragedy is too many $$$ for too many players for too long for peace to be allowed in pakistan/afghanistan.

    “How Jimmy Carter & I Started the Mujahideen” – Zbigniew Brzezinski
    http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a13_1240427874

    was the following the worst idea ever? this has never been fully exposed…yet consider the terrible ongoing consequences:

    March 2002: Washington Post: From U.S., the ABC’s of Jihad
    Violent Soviet-Era Textbooks Complicate Afghan Education Efforts
    By Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway
    Published in the dominant Afghan languages of Dari and Pashtu, the textbooks were developed in the early 1980s under an AID grant to the University of Nebraska-Omaha and its Center for Afghanistan Studies. The agency spent $51 million on the university’s education programs in Afghanistan from 1984 to 1994.
    During that time of Soviet occupation, regional military leaders in Afghanistan helped the U.S. smuggle books into the country. They demanded that the primers contain anti-Soviet passages. Children were taught to count with illustrations showing tanks, missiles and land mines, agency officials said. They acknowledged that at the time it also suited U.S. interests to stoke hatred of foreign invaders.
    “I think we were perfectly happy to see these books trashing the Soviet Union,” said Chris Brown, head of book revision for AID’s Central Asia Task Force.
    AID dropped funding of Afghan programs in 1994. But the textbooks continued to circulate in various versions, even after the Taliban seized power in 1996.
    Officials said private humanitarian groups paid for continued reprintings during the Taliban years. Today, the books remain widely available in schools and shops, to the chagrin of international aid workers.
    “The pictures [in] the texts are horrendous to school students, but the texts are even much worse,” said Ahmad Fahim Hakim, an Afghan educator who is a program coordinator for Cooperation for Peace and Unity, a Pakistan-based nonprofit.
    An aid worker in the region reviewed an unrevised 100-page book and counted 43 pages containing violent images or passages.
    The military content was included to “stimulate resistance against invasion,” explained Yaquib Roshan of Nebraska’s Afghanistan center. “Even in January, the books were absolutely the same . . . pictures of bullets and Kalashnikovs and you name it.” …
    Above the soldier is a verse from the Koran. Below is a Pashtu tribute to the mujaheddin, who are described as obedient to Allah. Such men will sacrifice their wealth and life itself to impose Islamic law on the government, the text says.
    “We were quite shocked,” said Doug Pritchard, who reviewed the primers in December while visiting Pakistan on behalf of a Canada-based Christian nonprofit group. “The constant image of Afghans being natural warriors is wrong. Warriors are created. If you want a different kind of society, you have to create it.”…
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5339-2002Mar22?language=printer

  • Jay

    Am I stupid, a leading point, consensus describes how we political instrumented and we just skip over it.

    Neoliralism is a top down political system and Robert’ Rule as it is, has us divided and competing on a merry go round of opinion.

    Craig my point is you should quit the alchohol as it is proven to be detrimental and shape up.
    This point scoring is damaging and dividing and lets find a Mantra

  • Brendan

    Anyone who regularly uses the term ‘the left’ is to be distrusted. This should be, I think, an iron rule. Like all rules, there can be exceptions – Lenin’s Tomb, or George Orwell spring to mind – but mostly it’s the rhetorical technique of mediocrities. The Left, in this technique, really just means ‘people who I disagree with’, or perhaps, ‘a handy sterotype for the purposes of elucidating an argument’. It’s not especially big or clever.

    As an aside, I’ve long thought that Nick Cohen no longer writes his own byline. It’s so bizarrely lacking in basic fact-checking, and its argument so tenuous that it really does look like its been written by the interns. I’m not even sure I’m kidding, his articles really are more than a little slap-dash …

  • Katz

    Hundal may or may not be a lickspittle.

    It is more certain that he is in denial.

    Specifically, he cannot bring himself to admit that, for a variety of reasons, most Pakistanis perceive the US to be a greater threat to their sense of well-being than the Taliban.

    And why?

    Having announced that they intend to bug out of the region, the US has set about infuriating a formidable cultural group that has defeated every intruder for the last 2000 years.

    I never thought that I’d see anyone more inept than George W. Bush. And then Obama came along.

    The Americans have no patience, no insight, no sense of history, no understanding of the possible. They used to have a lot of money. They don’t have that any more.

    Hundal cannot bring himself to admit these facts.

    Sad, really.

    [Mod/Clark: correction applied, see below.]

  • Mary

    I am very sorry that Malala Yousafzai was shot and that her life is threatened.

    Does anyone else have doubts that it was the ‘taliban’ that shot her, or like me, think that maybe other agencies were at work to further demonize the taliban? The attack on her has achieved much international publicity and I see that Hague was piping up this morning on the matter. See the BBC headline writ large below as an illustration of what I am saying.

    She is being brought over here for treatment, the UAE being the paymasters.

    Malala Yousafzai: Taliban shooting victim travels to UK
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19944078#

  • Mary

    Frank ‘I Was There’ Gardner again.

    Saudi Arabia ‘insulted’ by UK inquiry

    By Frank Gardner
    BBC security correspondent

    Saudi Arabia’s Sunni monarchy suspects Iran of covertly supporting Shia activists in Bahrain

    UK’s dilemma in balancing the Gulf
    Saudi Arabia’s al-Qaeda challenge
    Bahrain profile

    Saudi Arabia says it is “insulted” by a parliamentary inquiry into how the UK deals with the country and Bahrain.

    Saudi officials have told the BBC they are now “re-evaluating their country’s historic relations with Britain” and that “all options will be looked at”.

    /..
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-19943865

    He said on the radio this morning that he had been to see the Saudi Ambassador and other officials in the Saudi Embassy. He is obviously HM’s Unofficial Ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

    The weight of his vanity and self importance is threatening to overbalance him.

  • Phil

    Cryptonym 14 Oct, 2012 – 3:13 pm
    “You could also include Monbiot and his conversion to nuclear power. Asked their price, they named it and got it. They are maximising for the present their non-cash assets, knowing that whenever it all inevitably collapses…it’ll give them some advantage in the aftermath.”

    I find Monbiot sincere and so would welcome evidence that reveals he is corrupted. What exactly is the price he asked? I am unsure if you mean he has a secret stash of gifted gold sovereigns, or has booked his place in a post apocalyptic bunker.

  • Ben

    Put bluntly there are two types of conservatives: those who directly support the ruling order, and second those who systematically attack anyone who seriously questions or opposes the ruling order. I think Mr Hundal falls under the latter category.

  • Ginger Nuts (was: Tea Cakes)

    Malala Yousafzai, the 14 year old shot in the head has been on the News every single day since her unfortunate run in with a trigger happy Pashtun.

    The media could be forgiven for this excessive coverage if it were not for the fact that just a few days before Malala was injured 5 Afghani women and 4 Afghani girls were MURDERED by NATO while out collecting fire wood.

    There may well have been survivors from that disgusting attack that are in desperate need of medical attention but we will not hear any of it, nor we will hear from the victims grieving families. That is simply the sort of News that you are not allowed to hear.

    [Mod/Jon: posted as Tea Cakes, but has posted in the past under Ginger Nuts, so fixing]

  • Ginger Nuts (was: Tea Cakes)

    US tipped again for Nobel Economics Prize, as Europe lags
    http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ha3bfD73gsvxGNuZ32SQ_Qexn12Q?docId=CNG.44c45173aef6c56319fed4b890504032.11

    Sub-prime mortgages, multi-trillion Credit Default Swaps fraud, Stock market rigged, printing billions of dollars every month to prop up the long dead T-Bond market???

    Warmongering European countries get the peace prize and economic basket case the US gets this. The world is truly insane.

    [Mod/Jon: posted as Tea Cakes, but has posted in the past under Ginger Nuts, so fixing]

  • nevermind

    To be fair to George Monbiot, Cryptonym,he has changed his mind on nuclear power. before he became a father his views did not much differ, only when the need to provide on a regular basis and for a family came along did he change his mind. I knew George from the time of the Newbury Bypass demonstration, we shared a roll up or two those days and he was more open to the substantial debate on issues that mattered, since he works from that newsrag and has a family to care for, he has changed considerably.

    George so obviously did not know of our massive latent potential for alternative technologies, especially in the east of England where rising sea levels and a slowly sinking land mass is offering us engineering projects that could solve our energy problems for some time to come, buying time it is also called, for this sinking is permanent and the last time I looked at the rise in sea levels, they were all going up over time.

    So, we need to safeguard estuaries and build dike’s and lock systems and whilst we are at it, use these tidal differences to generate electricity, a few tens of thousands of job in that for some time to come. We must marry the protection of our estuaries and homes with the production of latent energies that exist around us.

    George has not seen, or dared to look at the full potential without comparing it to the prediction of the nuclear industry he’s obliged to cover. For example a barrier across the Wash would reduce our need for two nuclear power stations, constant energy day and night

    Salinity in the Wash would slightly be lowered, enough to bring the combined green wrath of the RSPB, their tax dodging lawyers, allegedly, and other supposedly caring bodies down on you. Human peril is not on the radar of many Greens, their redux-environmentalism is not even decided by their members, but by leading questions imposed as choice by those who run the charity. So called Green bodies, whether its FoE, Greepeace or the RSPB, are all hierarchically ordered with campaign’s being decided by the top echelons, the members merely being allowed to agree with their choice of campaign. Their work has been directed to shuffle along for decades, keeping their profile up and the membership money flowing, a few emotive pictures and issues do the rest, whilst guilt ridden middle class families pay up and feel better for it. What a shame.

    It is selective Greens who are holding back major infrastructure work and the safety of the Fenlands and its inhabitants, 1/5th. of our national fresh food supply is produced there, with non existing threats to our bird population, these so called Greens are small minded, blinkered and selective.

    George has become accustomed to life and its needs to conform, may of us have done that in the past, including myself, change does not come easy and he’s obviously not a whistle blower or a rebel.

  • Phil

    Nevermind 15 Oct, 2012 – 9:59 am
    “George…obviously not a whistle blower or a rebel.”

    Most of your comment seems to say that Monbiot is wrong about nuclear, and compromised by family-needs/corporate-work. Fair, if debatable, points. But what do you mean by the whistle blower line? Are you suggesting he lies to keep his job? Do you have anything to back this up (beyond not agreeing with him)?

  • Phil

    @Nevermind
    Just to explain further my above question. I absolutely distrust the corporate media and agree that anyone who writes for it is compromised to some degree or other. However, although Monbiot may lie by omission I do not know him as someone who overtly lies and therefore I do hold store in what he writes. To dismiss everyone who writes for corporate media as a liar is too simple.

  • nevermind

    @Phil. Far from calling him a liar, he is meticulous in his research, I think he has been using his column selectively, pleasing certain views. For example his story on a right wing insurrection or the political system.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/01/rightwing-insurrection-usurps-democracy

    It is incomplete, he could have been much harder hitting and most likely was able to back up much more than this timid piece.
    I agree with his not so timid response to a poster question ‘ so, what’s to be done George’

    He answered’

    Only three solutions: mobilise, mobilise, mobilise. Do nothing alone. Don’t start a group if one exists already. Join, protest, march, demonstrate’

    I feel as if he has changed his personal outlook as to the effectiveness of the actions he is promoting and that this is normal for anyone who has started a family, that we are all in some kind of dependency loop, despite the article he’s written and the many valid protests he’s been on. I feel as if George must come Home one day and its not too far off.

    I’m in disagreement with his nuclear stance and expect him to write a long article on the Fukushima outfall and future resolve to this industry in the wake of another disaster, George is not a foe or liar, just a tad off course.

  • Suhayl Saadi

    “In a few years, like the Maoris who took the bible but lost the land to UK missionaries, powerful, atheist Asians will rule the UK, but the indigenous people of this country will have Islam. Inshallah.” Guano, somewhere above.

    Here we go again. Inveigling itself into every thread. Is this the ‘Genocide in Leicester’ theory, or the ‘Lizards in Hounslow’ Theory?

    So, on the one hand, we are slammed for being religious fundos, and on the other, for being atheists. A little like, ‘they take all our jobs’ and then also ‘they scrounge benefits’.

    Now then, now then… how’s about this then: We witness a powerful paedophile and his helpers on national TV for decades, given knighthoods, OBEs, open access to children’s hospitals and residential homes, the lot and everything covered-up – and guess what, Jimmy Savile was not Asian! Shock! Horror!

    ********

    Villager, at 11:53 pm on 14.10.12, thanks very much.

    Mary, at 8:33am on 15.10.12, the Taliban don’t need anyone to ‘give them a bad name’. They do things and say that they’ve done them and then celebrate doing them – they are, what they say they are.

    Except, of course, for the basic fact that they are the creation and instrument of the Pakistani Military-Security state (a military-security state consistently supported in every way by the USA/UK for over five decades). Not every act of theirs is determined by the Pak Military-Security and they got somewhat out of control during the latter part of Musharraf’s rule, but in essence, in Pakistan, they are the shock troops that keep uppity civilians in line. The growing tyranny of the Islamists in Pakistan enables – facilitates – continued de facto military rule.

    The shooting of Malalai will result in no real action, there will be no change in policy. The generals and their paramilitary cohorts didn’t give a hoot about having the Governor of Punjab shot dead, and his son later kidnapped, after he criticised the blasphemy laws, so they wouldn’t think twice before organising the shooting of some peasant girl. Think: Central American death squads. That’s the model. That’s no accident. All the generals were trained in the USA (School of the Americas or whatever it’s called now, the Hemispheric Institute – as though it were a weather forecasting body – or some such malevolent euphemism) or UK (Sandhurst), by the militaries of those countries and by the CIA. AS you know, it’s called neo-colonialism.

    So, we have NATO killing civilians and the Pakistan Army/their Islamist paramilitaries killing civilians – what a choice, eh? And both NATO and the Pakistan military will engage in PR stunts to obscure their real provenance/epistemology, which is, of course, the will to power.

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