I am in Tbilisi at the moment, where I spent this early morning drinking tea with some of the 2,000 strong Yazidi community. They see their religion as much more closely descended from Zoroastrianism than appears in most accounts I have read.
I very much enjoyed a visit to Tsinandali which was most useful for gaining a Russian perspective of the Great Game. I don’t have my books with me and am suffering a mental block as to whether it was Connoly, Abbott or Malcolm who visited Tsinandali. I had not realised that Griboyedov was married to a daughter of the house, Nina Chavchavadze. The murder of Griboyedov, Russian Ambassador in Tehran, by a mob rates little more than a footnote in British accounts of the Great Game, even though the British had bribed the religious authority to stir up the riots. What revisionist history there has been, has come from the Iranian side and falsely tried to obscure the fact that the refugees Griboyedov was sheltering were runaway slaves from harems.
This is a neglected recurring theme. When Shuja agreed the treaty already negotiated between Macnaghten and Ranjit Singh, the main stipulation he sought to add was that the British would return to him any runaway slave girls. The immediate motive for the ringleader of the attack on Alexander Burnes was that Burnes had refused to intervene to return a runaway slave girl who had sought the protection of another British officer. My fellow anti-imperialist historians have in general been guilty of emphasising rapaciousness by the British in these incidents and overlooking or excusing the slave status of the girls. Both aspects need to be faced squarely to write honestly the full facts of history. Tellingly, it is generally impossible to recover names of the girls involved.
Griboyedov deserves to be remembered for much more than his murder. An accomplished playwright and poet, he was a friend of Pushkin and had links to the dissident groups who attempted revolution in 1825. His murder left Nina a widow at either 17 or 19 by different accounts, and pregnant. She lost the child on hearing of her husband’s death, and never remarried. It is a tragic story which came alive to me in visiting the family home.
Griboyedov had fought Napoleon in the 1812 campaign, but had helped those Napoleonic adventurers Allard and Ventura evade a British blockade and go into service with Ranjit Singh. Griboyedov’s successor as Russian Ambassador to Tehran, Simonicz, had actually fought on the Napoleonic side against Russia, presumably in the Polish Legion. Nina’s sister was to marry a Murad nephew of Napoleon. The political elites of Europe melded quickly after the convulsion.
With which clumsy segue I shall note that the battle against the entrenched political elites of the UK appears to be going extremely well without me. I cannot express without a welling up of real emotion how happy I am that all I have been saying about the stultifying neo-liberal consensus and exclusion of dissent, and appalling burgeoning wealth gap between rich and poor, has found such massive traction between Jeremy Corbyn in England and the SNP in Scotland. I may have gone AWOL for a few days, but the cause of social justice appears in extremely safe hands.
May be it is time for Labour party to partition into 2. One goes with new labour and continue sucking up to TB and his gang. And another part will need to stand up to TB gang and to Tories as it used to be in 1940th. The real Labour party could even be called real or true Labour to distinguish them from TB gang.
But this might also divide labour voters and put both labours out of N10 forever.
Wise men say “Politics is dirty business but either you do politics or politics does you”.
On nationalisation and all that…
“What this is your destruction ? The old woman with a crutch ? Witch, who knocked out all the windows, put out all the lights ? It does not exist. What do you mean by this word? It is this: if I, instead of operating every evening will start singing the chorus in my apartment, I will come ruin. If I’m going to the restroom, I will begin, pardon the expression, urinate by the toilet, and the same will make Zina and Darya Petrovna, it will ruin the toilet and the apartment. Consequently, the disruption is not in the closet , it is in our heads.” – Professor Philip Philipovich Preobrazhenskiy, Dog’s Heart, Bulgakov.
Defeated Liberal Democrat minister Danny Alexander has been nominated for a knighthood in the long-awaited Dissolution Honours List, it has been reported.
No surprise there then, that Alexander, who was a loyal servant against Scottish independence will soon be strutting his stuff in the obscenely undemocratic House of Lords.
To add to the unelected gravy train:
David Cameron is expected to reveal about 50 new lords, with up to 40 Tories, when the list is announced in the next days, taking the number of peers past 800.
The House of Lords is an affront and shows that Britain isn’t really a democracy, 800 Lords and Ladies ride the unelected gravy train, with more and more troughers likely in the future.
Only China carries more dead weight.
Jon @ 10.54pm,
I agree with you that Israel’s existence is predicated on a wider imperialist project. The concept of Eretz Yisrael in which the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian’s is deeply implicated, is central to this. It therefore, follows, that Jewish malice cannot be disentangled from the wider imperialistic motivations of the Jewish State.
N @ 4.36,
I agree 100 per cent.
“Only China carries more dead weight.”
Not sure this is really true. Considering that there are more autocracies and indirect democracies (reminds me half-pregnant quote) than democracies in present world, there are many more countries which have more than 800 unelected (or indirectly elected) officials having all good things for the expenses of others.
Not that I support HoL but you need to get your facts right.
THE SNP is on course for another “remarkable electoral success” in next May’s Holyrood elections, according to Scotland’s leading political analyst.
Professor John Curtice of Strathclyde University was speaking after the party held three Glasgow City Council seats, took one from the Greens and held another on South Lanarkshire Council in a series of by-elections.
Before this the SNP’s conference will be held in Aberdeen, and their mandate they must include a Scottish independence referendum.
But they must have water tight answers to currency, a central bank the EU, taxation and pensions.
We mustn’t give the BT camp room for manoeuvre over important questions like last time.
“We should remember as well there are a number of Jewish people and groups in all countries – including Israel – who are opposed to Israeli/US imperialism.”
BDS, JVP and others are controlled opposition groups.
Am I correct in guessing that there is nobody from the SNP in the Honours List?
You’d think Salmond would get something for services rendered.
“China has become a superpower using old socialist ideas.”
Clearly comes from someone who have never been to China and never spoke to Chinese national. All Socialist which remains in China today is on the paper and in the name of the Chinese Communist party. Chinese elite is more capitalist than Dave and his friends. Chinese elite invest billions and billions into property, hi-tech, energy and other profitable businesses around the globe.
If only you spoke to people who used to live in presently gentrified areas of Shanghai you would not want that piece of socialism.
If only you spoke to Muslim Uygur from Kashgar you would not want that piece of socialism.
Chinese economic development started when Deng followed his famous “white cat/black cat” speech and prioritised economic development over ideological purity. It is true that CCP is still in power and will likely to be in the next 10 years, BUT calling them communist of socialist is truly ignorance.
Bevin
Just a couple of comments on your long post, above. I should point out that, like you apparently, I was “around” at the time.
“What happened to Foot’s campaign in 1983 was that a large part of Labour’s leadership seceded calling the Labour platform extremist and marxist. This had the effect, amongst other things, of confusing much of Labour’s traditional support.”
___________________
I wouldn’t disagree entirely with the fact but I would with what seems to be your conclusion, ie that part of the electorate did not vote Labour because they feared that the left agenda might not in fact be implemented if Labour was elected. An equally valid conclusion would be that part of the electorate did not vote Labour precisely precisely because they were not confident that the rightist (or centrist) tendency in the Labour leadership would succeed in tempering the left thrust of the Footist tendency.
//////////////////////
“The notion that Foot was defeated in a straight contest with Thatcher and that his mild socialist policies were rejected in favour of her hard right programme is nonsense.”
___________________
The truth here is rather that while Margaret Thatcher’s announced policies (insofar as they WERE announced clearly and in detail and insofar as voters did not believe that she would not do a Heath-like U turn – his “lame ducks” policy refers) did not command overwhelming enthusiasm, voters were even less enthusiatic about the Footist agenda.
////////////////////////
“His position was sabotaged….. by a right wing faction that has, since the 1940s, relied upon US governmental patronage on condition that it use every weapon to thwart those in Labour opposed to the Cold War and in favour of nuclear disarmament and peace.”
______________________
This is just the usual anti-American rhetoric which pervades thinking on this blog. The US was far from favorable to the Atlee govt’s geopolitical,including nuclear, ambitions (the 1946 MacMahon Act refers) and it was your namesake Ernest Bevin – far from being part of a right-wing faction in the Labour Party and an American stooge – who insisted, against, apparently, the opposition of the PM himself as well as Chancellor Dalton who insisted that Britain should go ahead with its own nuclear programme leading to the development and possession of its own atomic bomb. The often-quoted intervention by Bevin in Cabinet in October 1946 reads as follows:
“No, Prime Minister, that won’t do at all. We’ve *got* to have this…I diin’t mind for myself, but I don’t want any other Foreign Secretary of this country to be talked at, or to, by the Secretary of State of the United States as I just have, in my discussions with Mr Byrnes(1). We’ve got to have this thing over here, whatever it costs….We’ve got to have the bloody Union Jack on top of it.” (source: Peter Hennessey, “Cabinet”, Oxford 1986, pp 126-7)
/////////////////////
“Those who actually recall the history of the period will confirm that both within the Labour party and in the broader population nuclear disarmament, getting out of NATO and declaring British independence from the US were very popular policies”
_____________________
As I said at the beginning, I was around at the time and would strongly dispute that claim at least as far as the population is general was concerned. Those matters may well have been of great importance to the left wing of the Labour Party but were of very little importance to the general population.
///////////////////////
“When predicting the result of the next general election it would be best to understand that, for the great majority of the electorate, the coming five years are likely to see the NHS going the way of free education, a housing crisis which will see large numbers of working families, once again, living in crowded slums, an enormous increase in unemployment and a radical decline in living standards. A return to Victorian conditions”
______________________
This is polemical rubbish which relies on emotive language (“slums”, “enormous increase”) and is unsupported by likely facts; it is merely a description of Britain at the next election as you would like it to be (for electoral reasons, I mean). I could spend some time going into each of the rubrics you mention but couldn’t be bothered because your reference to a “return to Victorian standards” demonstrates both the falsehood of your prophecy and your ignorance of conditions in Victorian England.
(1) James Byrnes, US Secretary of State at the time. Interestingly enough, an Irish-American not very sympathetic to the UK.
Mr Murray,
One hope is that your readers know who Griboyedov was. I think Gore ot Uma (Woe from Wit) is one of the greatest writings of 19th century and not just in Russia.
Spencer-Davis
“If Corbyn becomes the leader of the Labour Party, I would not be at all surprised to see history repeating itself, and the right wing of the party breaking away from the left.”
_____________________
Hush! You will annoy Herbie if you talk about history repeating itself 🙂
Don’t forget the Herbie line that “things have changed!” !
Mary
“The Zionist-supporting CAMERA outfit, aka BBC Watch, do not like William Dalrymple one jot. They said:
‘However, Dalrymple’s baseless smear does not come out of the blue. Although the BBC describes him merely as “a writer and historian”, Dalrymple is also a patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and a patron of Sabeel…”
_________________
Sounds fair enough to me, Mary.
After all, aren’t you the one who’s always posting about MPs belonging to the “Friends of Israel” and other people’s connections with Israel, or Zionist movements, or even just common garden Jews?
If history repeats itself and the right wing of Labour breaks away from the left, I would not be surprised to see history also repeat itself in seeing the separated right wing wither away for failure to distinguish itself from the Tories.
Am I correct in guessing that there is nobody from the SNP in the Honours List?
The SNP’s position is that it wouldn’t take a seat in the Lords if one were offered.
http://www.snp.org/media-centre/news/2015/aug/knighthoods-continue-westminster-patronage-circus
After my strictures on the Transatlantic Sage for miss-spelling Macmillan as MacMillan I suppose I should, in equity, correct my miss-spelling of MacMahon to read McMahon. 🙂
“If history repeats itself and the right wing of Labour breaks away from the left…etc”
___________________
Herbie – comments please on history repeating itself.
“Am I correct in guessing that there is nobody from the SNP in the Honours List?
The SNP’s position is that it wouldn’t take a seat in the Lords if one were offered.
http://www.snp.org/media-centre/news/2015/aug/knighthoods-continue-westminster-patronage-circus”
____________________
Thanks, Ba’al – I didn’t know that either.
The Blairs must be delighted.
UK dismisses Rwanda spy chief case
19 minutes ago
Breaking News
A UK court has rejected a bid to extradite Rwanda’s spy chief to Spain to stand trial for his alleged role in massacres after the 1994 genocide.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-33846457
“Not sure this is really true. Considering that there are more autocracies and indirect democracies (reminds me half-pregnant quote) than democracies in present world, there are many more countries which have more than 800 unelected (or indirectly elected) officials having all good things for the expenses of others.”
_________________________
Uzbek in the UK, the HoC and the HoL are offical agreed? I’m not concerned about maybe autocracies or half democracies.
“Am I correct in guessing that there is nobody from the SNP in the Honours List?”
_______________________________
That’s correct Lysais, the SNP don’t submit candidates for the unelected and undemocratic gravy train known as the House of Lords.
Mary,
“UK dismisses Rwanda spy chief case
19 minutes ago”
May be they have done it in retaliation of Spanish police penetrating Gibraltar in pursue of suspected criminals. It reads like Tory run government demonstrates their cowboy attitude to our immediate neighbours.
Does anyone know Spain’s stand on Falklands?
A look at why the word democracy doesn’t feature in the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel.
http://m.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/Is-Israel-a-true-democracy-352445#showLinkhttp://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/Is-Israel-a-true-democracy-352445?rumbleredirect=1
Republicofscotland
Russia has official parliament too you know. It consists of 2 houses with total number of deputies/senators of 650. You need to add here local parliaments – 22 regions of Russia have republican parliaments with total number of deputies of over 6000.
Now if you tell me that Russian’s participate in real and open election I will laugh at your face. Before you go further and claim about people going to the polls and election days, I want to remind you and Soviet polling stations and voting days in USSR, they took place even between 1930-1954 (I hope you realise what I mean).
Three cheers for Prof Steven Salaita whose tenure was under threat from the Z Israel lobby at his university and for freedom of expression.
University of Illinois Chancellor steps down as judge upholds Salaita lawsuit against school
Palestinian-American professor Steven Salaita was effectively fired from a tenured position in American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 2014 for tweets critical of Israel. Salaita subsequently sued the university, arguing it violated his rights to freedom of speech and academic freedom.
On August 6, a federal court upheld Salaita’s lawsuit on free speech grounds, ruling that the professor’s tweets “implicate every ‘central concern’ of the First Amendment.”
Drawing on complex academic procedures, UIUC had claimed it did not have a contract with Salaita, and thus did not wrongfully fire him. At the time, Salaita had already resigned from a tenured position at Virginia Tech University and was to begin teaching at UIUC in just two weeks. The court rejected this claim, arguing that if it “accepted the University’s argument, the entire American academic hiring process as it now operates would cease to exist.”
[..]
In the midst of this ruling, Phyllis Wise resigned from her positions as UIUC chancellor and vice president, in which she had served since 2011.
Wise faced harsh backlash for overseeing the firing of Salaita. Sixteen of UIUC’s own academic departments voted no confidence in the administration. Leading academic organizations such as the Society of American Law Teachers, the American Historical Association, and the Modern Language Association reproved the university.
More than 5,000 academics from around the country agreed to boycott UIUC, Illinois’ flagship public university, in protest of what they argued constituted an egregious violation of academic freedom. Over three dozen scheduled lectures and conferences were cancelled in protest.
/..
https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/university-of-illinois-chancellor-steps-down-as-judge-upholds-salaita-lawsuit-against-school-on-1st-amendment-grounds/
Good riddance to Wise too.
‘Salaita’s lawsuit charges unnamed big donors to the university with “tortious interference” in his contract because they threatened to withhold donations to the university unless it reneged on hiring him.
But the court found that even if that were true, the donors would have been engaging in protected speech. “The First Amendment is a two-way street,” the ruling states, “protecting both Dr. Salaita’s speech and that of the donor defendants.”
In a July 2014 email released under the Freedom of Information Act, Chancellor Wise revealed the existence of a “two-pager” memo about Salaita handed to her by one of the big donors she met.
The contents of this memo have been the subject of intense speculation. The Electronic Intifada made extensive efforts to obtain it under the Freedom of Information Act, but the university claimed it had been lost.
Salaita’s lawsuit alleged that Wise “wrongfully destroyed” the memo, and thus got rid of vital evidence.’
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/judge-clears-way-steven-salaita-lawsuit-over-gaza-tweets-firing
The identity of the ‘big donors’ can only be left to our imaginings.
Mary,
“The identity of the ‘big donors’ can only be left to our imaginings.”
Let me guess…
Mary,
Soviet Prosecutor Andrey Vyshinsky used to be called master of Rhetorical questions.
“That’s correct Lysais, the SNP don’t submit candidates for the unelected and undemocratic gravy train known as the House of Lords.”
Apart from Sir Brian nominated for his services to homophobia.