Craig Murray's Blog, page 171

The Aaronovitch Scandal

The Wayback machine has shown that there is a scintilla of truth to Aaronovitch’ claim, in that one single one star review was posted before his procured five star reviews arrived.  But it also shows that four one star reviews, which arrived no earlier than a larger number of five star reviews and appear equally genuine, were deleted by Amazon. No five star reviews were deleted.

I therefore contacted Amazon’s press office to ask for their reaction to Aaronovitch’s admission of posting fake reviews, and asked who initiated the deletion of his poor reviews.  They asked me to put my questions in writing by email.  This I have done.  Answer came there none.

To pressoffice@amazon.co.uk

Re: Voodoo Histories

I refer you to these comments by David Aaronovitch published recently in The Times newspaper:

“Something like half of all book sales are now made through Amazon, and when you find a book on Amazon it is accompanied by reviews from “readers” who give it a 1 (lowest) to 5 star rating.  So, almost before my book was published, the first 1-star reviews started to appear, from people who had never read it. After a week, even I wouldn’t have bought it.

There is only one thing you can do in this situation. You ask every friend and family member to go onsite PDQ and 5-star your baby. You get your frauds to balance off their frauds. Ce n’est pas magnifique, mais (grâce à Amazon) c’est la guerre.”

These are my questions:

1) Do you agree it is a reasonable practice for authors to persuade friends and family to post favorable reviews on Amazon? Do you agree with Mr Aaronovitch’s implication that Amazon’s policy forces authors to do this?

2)  A wayback archive search shows that in fact a number of poor reviews of Voodoo Histories were deleted by Amazon.  Did Mr Aaronovitch  contact Amazon to initiate these deletions?

3)  In fact, the poor reviews deleted were not, with a single exception, posted any earlier than similar quantities of five star reviews.  Why was it decided to delete several one star reviews and no five star reviews?  Who took this decision? Was it in any way motivated by Amazon’s own political sympathies? Was it motivated by a desire to boost sales?

4) Now Amazon has been informed by Mr Aaronovitch that the five star reviews were procured, will it be taking action to delete these early five star reviews, particularly those posted on the very day of publication?

5) Do you agree that Mr Aaronovitch’s boasting in the Times of his action in procuring false reviews for Voodoo Histories may, if Amazon will not decry it, encourage other authors to do the same?

I would point out to you that Mr Aaronvitch has himself put these matters into the public domain by publishing his actions in The Times.  It therefore makes no sense for Amazon to refuse to answer any of these questions on the grounds of Mr Aaronovitch’s privacy.

Craig Murray

 

Overpaid Yet Happily Forgotten

The greatest boost ever received by Islamic fundamentalism was the invasion of Iraq.  Closely followed by extraordinary rendition, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and drones, and Israeli bombings of Gaza.  All of those things lead some Muslims to believe a violent response by terrorism is required to defend themselves.  So for Tony Blair, who has promoted huge hatred and caused unnumbered deaths through a career of deceit and self-enrichment, to warn about the dangers of Islamic terrorism is something nobody but a few Guardian and Murdoch acolytes wish to hear.

Blair of course has many tens of millions stuffed into his capacious back-pocket by oligarchs from the ex-Soviet space, so it is unsurprising to hear him call for understanding between Russia and the West.  It is even more to form that this understanding should be based on joint hatred of Muslims.

There is an alarming failure by many in the UK to understand that Russia is an Empire.  Russia’s Asian possessions were taken  by invasion from their indigenous and Muslim populations in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, at precisely the same time Britain was taking its own colonies.  The Russian conquests were no less colonial from the accident of geography that they were contiguous.  Dagestan and Chechnya were only conquered in the 1830′s.  Most of Tartarstan later.  The “Islamic fundamentalist threat” Russia faces jointly with the UK, is actually the struggle of colonized peoples for their freedom.

Blair includes China, which likewise is the colonial occupier of the Uighurs and other suppressed Muslim populations.  To conflate the struggle for freedom from colonial occupation of these people with an over-reaching monster of “Islamic terrorism” is part of Blair’s trick.  His examples in Africa are again born of despair from the consequences of centuries of colonial and now neo-liberal exploitation.  I find his pronouncements on Boko Haram ironic, given that Blair’s single biggest legacy is to move the United Kingdom close to Nigerian standards of equality of wealth distribution.

The extraordinary thing is that Blair is somebody so hate-filled he wants to see yet more hatred, killing and violence.  It is worrying that the establishment media are so happy to promote his view without providing any balancing opinion. I comfort myself that the real motive of this silly speech was that, other than his media acolytes, absolutely nobody cares what he is saying.  It wasn’t so much a speech as a public display of ADD.

 

 

Pyongyang Style Unionist Propaganda

 

 

The unionists were worried that the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn might remind Scots of their national history.  So they brilliantly have co-opted the MOD to counter any possible effect on popular perception, by holding British Armed Forces Day in the same location on the same date as the celebrations of Bannockburn (28-9 June 2014).

Armed Forces Day is held every year at Edinburgh.  It has never been held on the site outside Stirling before.  Suddenly to move it there, on the same day as a long-planned event already attracting tens of thousands of people, can hardly be a coincidence.  I just watched a live broadcast of a session of a committee of  the Scottish Parliament where officials of Stirling Council refused to answer questions as to who took the decision to hold the same events on the same day.  They did so on the grounds there will be an independent audit of this ludicrous decision.  Evidence given to the committee said that the late addition of the MOD event had caused ticket numbers for the Bannockburn event to be cut by over half.

STIRLING COUNCIL IS RUN BY A NEW LABOUR AND CONSERVATIVE COALITION of unionists aimed to keep the largest party – the SNP – out of power. A more interesting question is the decision making process in the MOD that led to this gross abuse of the army for political propaganda purposes.

This demeaning of the commemoration of Bannockburn is yet another Bitter Together initiative that will backfire spectacularly.  Nobody in Scotland was going to base their vote on a battle that happened seven hundred years ago.  But the banding together of Labour and Tories to attempt to downplay the sacrifice and cause, to offer a gross and deliberate insult to the memory of those who fought and died for their country, is going to upset an awful lot of people.

David Aaronovitch Posts Fake Book Reviews and Lies About Why

David Aaronovitch entered into a conspiracy with others to post fake 5 star reviews of his last shoddy book on Amazon.  He now lies about why.  He has attempted to defuse the row by coming clean and making light, courtesy of his Murdoch employer.

But his explanation is a plain lie.  Aaronovitch claims that :

“almost before my book was published, the first 1-star reviews started to appear, from people who had never read it. After a week, even I wouldn’t have bought it.”

In fact, the very first eight reviews on Amazon were all five star - which by his own argument must be “from people who had never read it”.  That is very probably true, as the first two five star reviews were posted on the very day the book was released, 7 May 2009. In fact the average rating of the first reviews is very much higher than the average rating he gets from the general public overall, extremely suspiciously so.  (One remote possibility is he was getting Amazon to delete critical reviews, but that also would negate his justification for procuring the fake positive reviews).

He claims “After a week even I wouldn’t have bought it”.  In fact, after a week it was averaging a literally unbelievable five stars.  It was a full month before the first one star review arrived. Then it was from an amazon real name verified customer who Aaronovitch plainly does not think should be entitled to their opinion.

His excuse for this attempt to defraud the public by planting false reviews of his product is, quite simply, a lie.  Aaronovitch is a liar.  Which makes you worry a little about his journalistic standards otherwise, does it not? It is an interesting glimpse into the dark mind of one of the leading propagandists for the Iraq War.

It seems that Aaronovitch with others entered a conspiracy to boost book sales through fraudulent reviews.  Which as his book in question argues that pro-establishment conspiracies never have existed, is rather ironic. I do not regard this as a minor dereliction.  I believe it opens serious questions about a journalist’s integrity.  In the days when the Times was a respectable newspaper, it would have led to Aaronovitch’s dismissal.

I should say I have never asked anybody to post a positive review of one of my books on Amazon.  I am happy to say that Murder in Samarkand has a much higher star review rating than Voodoo Histories, and unlike Aaronovitch I did not have to cheat to get it.  Only one of my 49 reviews by “Biodiplomacy” is actually from a friend but I did not ask him to do it, and I am sure in any circumstances he would give his honest opinion. He often disagrees with me in comments here!

I am conscious that one probable consequence of this posting is that neo-con trolls will now bomb Murder in Samarkand with bad reviews.  I very much welcome reviews, good, bad, or indifferent, from anybody who has honestly read the book and is giving their genuine opinion.

This is an extract from the article in the Times where Aaronovitch admits to his fraud, and lies about the cause. I can’t link to it because it was behind a paywall.  To Mr Murdoch’s copyright lawyers, I am quoting a brief extract for the purpose of legitimate analysis and debate.  If you have any sense, you would realize I am also doing you a favour by exposing your star columnist as a cheat and a fraud:

Something like half of all book sales are now made through Amazon, and when you find a book on Amazon it is accompanied by reviews from “readers” who give it a 1 (lowest) to 5 star rating.  So, almost before my book was published, the first 1-star reviews started to appear, from people who had never read it. After a week, even I wouldn’t have bought it.

There is only one thing you can do in this situation. You ask every friend and family member to go onsite PDQ and 5-star your baby. You get your frauds to balance off their frauds. Ce n’est pas magnifique, mais (grâce à Amazon) c’est la guerre.

Actually, David, ce n’est pas la guerre.  La guerre is what you supported so enthusiastically in Iraq, and involves the blasting to pieces of young children, the rape of countless women, the end of hundreds of thousands of lives and the wrecking of millions more.  It involves the destruction of the infrastructure of countries and the loss of decades of economic development, and a ruinous expense to our own economy.  It involves the bombing of densely packed urban areas in Gaza, for which you are an enthusiast, and from which the terror and suffering is something you will never understand.  For you just sit here in the highly paid heart of the warmongering Murdoch establishment, and indulge in lies and cheats to further your income and your grubby little career.

 

 

 

 

Positive Headlines

The Guardian will still do anything to oblige the war criminals who invaded Iraq.  The Bitter Together campaign has crashed in the polls.  It has done so because people are not stupid, and they can work out that the cold logic of the unionist argument boils down to an assertion that Scots are too stupid, work-shy and poor to make a success of running their own nation.

The Bitter Together campaign therefore sees a need to be getting over a “positive” message.  How do you do that?  Well you get that brilliant economist Gordon Brown, the man who gave the bankers years of your and my earnings so they can gamble and snort cocaine again, to make a speech.  The speech says that Scots are too stupid, work-shy and poor – and Gordon added unhealthy – to pay their own pensions.  Then, at the last moment, you tack on a paragraph at the end about “five positive reasons” to support the union.  Then you get a pisspoor, press release regurgitating, salary pocketing mainstream media lickspittle like Severin Carrell to promote it under the heading “Scotland has ‘five big positives’ to staying in UK, Gordon Brown says.”

Despite the fact that the exact same paper ran the story about the exact same speech yesterday, but using the old “warns” meme.  It is so obvious it is laughable.

I analyzed a few months ago the BBC’s state propaganda linking the words “independence” and “warning”. I can guarantee you, now that one backfired, that one month from today, I am going to be able to present a similar table of BBC stories which link the words “union”, “UK” and “positive”.

Brown was at Glasgow University   I also object fundamentally to the hosting by universities of closed political rallies.  Universities certainly should host political debate – that is a function of a university.  But for a university to host a political function where nobody – including members of the University – who holds a contrary view is allowed near, is absolutely wrong and the antithesis of the function of a university.  The fact that the public are not allowed in to key Bitter Together meetings, and that Brown is scared to accept questions other than from handpicked cronies, should alert people to the fact that his arguments do not stand much scrutiny.

 

Darling Thanked For Honesty And Hard Work

After seven months of appalling results, Alistair Darling was today thanked for his “hard work and honesty” in a brusque dismissal.  Fans were quick to point out that in his previous job he had won no trophies, in fact rather the opposite.  A whole series of dismal results had led to confidence ebbing away, and the recent disastrous performances by Gordon Brown and George Robertson were the last straw.

 

A key factor in the dismissal was the dissatisfaction of the wealthy shareholders in the City of London, banks and in the United States who are the owners.  It was pointed out that some of the major players in the campaign, like the entire journalistic staff of BBC Scotland, had not been achieving the results expected.

The news was broken by a smug fat git

 

 

Speculation is now rife about who will lead the team for the rest of the campaign.  Odds-on is John Reid, who supporters believe could increase the intensity of threat and violence which is now needed.  There is some worry however whether his associations will appeal to the core fan base.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmGjiokfQ2A

One possibility being seriously considered by the owners is to look abroad for new management.  One well-placed source told the BBC  ”When the entire campaign is predicated on the idea that the Scots are incapable of running anything, it looks a bit odd to have a Scot in charge.”

 

 

A Key Test for International Law

The ethnic cleansing by the British of an entire small population and culture – the Chagos Islanders – is probably the most despicable act by Britain of my lifetime.  As if the Iraq War and Extraordinary Rendition were not enough, New Labour’s moral dereliction – or more properly evil – was confirmed by the breathtaking cynicism of David Miliband’s proclamation of a Marine Protected Zone around the islands, designed to protect the American base on Diego Garcia and make it impossible for the Chagos Islanders to return to their living as native fishermen, and keep away any eyes that might see the secret prison inmates.

Extraordinarily and to their eternal shame, a number of prominent British environmentalists and conservationists lent their support to the Diego Garcia marine protected zone.  These purblind fools, obsessed with a single cause and blind to wider policy and justice, are in the same category as the ridiculous “feminists” who were co-opted by the neo-conservatives agents (be they propaganda media or secret service or both) to frustrate the aims of Julian Assange and Tommy Sheridan.

In truth, if colonial conquest and force majeure are legitimate grounds of sovereignty, and if extermination of a population can wipe out the legal right to self-determination, then in international law Britain has the right to Diego Garcia and to give it as tribute to their US overlords.  But if international law has any relationship of any kind to principles of justice, then Britain should not be permitted to reap the dubious benefit of genocide.  What international law actually is in the neo-conservative era is the real question before the UN tribunal now looking at the Diego Garcia question.

The UK is represented by Sir Michael Wood.  He is the man who overruled my objection inside the FCO to the use of “intelligence” gained from torture, and argued that British cooperation with extraordinary rendition was legal.

If anybody in Scotland can read through this and read through the links, and does not want to take the chance to leave the stinking cesspit of international shame that is the United Kingdom, they are severely deficient in moral sense.

 

UK Moves to Block US Senate Report to Protect Blair, Straw and Dearlove

From a British diplomatic source I learn that Britain has lobbied the United States against the publication of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on torture and extraordinary rendition.  The lobbying has been carried out “at all levels” – White House, State Department and CIA.  The British have argued that at the very least the report must be emasculated before publication.

The British argument is that in a number of court cases including the Belhadj case, the British government has successfully blocked legal action by victims on the grounds that this would weaken the US/UK intelligence relationship and thus vitally damage national security, by revealing facts the American intelligence service wish hidden.  [We will leave aside for the moment the utter shame of our servile groveling judges accepting such an argument].  The British Government are now pointing out to the Americans that this argument could be fatally weakened if major detail of the full horror and scope of torture and extraordinary rendition is revealed by the Senate Intelligence Committee.  The argument runs that this could in turn lead to further revelations in the courts and block the major defence against prosecutions of Blair, Straw and Dearlove, among others, potentially unleashing a transatlantic wave of judicial activism.

The unabashed collusion of two torturing security states in concealing the truth of their despicable acts – including complicity in the torture of women and minors – and blocking criminal prosecution of the guilty is a sign of how low public ethics have sunk.  Fortunately there are still a few people in the British Foreign Office disgusted enough to leak it.

 

The Feminist Defence of Blowing Out the Brains of Small Children

The number of people still prepared to defend the Iraq War in public is tiny.  The interesting thing is the very strong correlation between those people, and those prepared to pretend to give credence to the farcical sexual allegations about Julian Assange.  Zoe Williams Guardian piece about what a jolly good chap Blair is I find breathtaking.  War crimes like Blair’s result in terrible anguish for millions.  I am prepared for purposes of argument to believe that Williams’ anguish for female victims of crime is genuine; why she can’t extend that to the tens of thousands of women who were raped because of Blair’s Iraq War, or had the still worse agony of seeing their children killed and mutilated I don’t know.  Nick Cohen is just very, very sad.  I just hold up these two in the hope that those deceived by feminist political correctness into following their lead against Assange will see to what they are subscribing.

Rather a side issue, but even if we accept Zoe Williams view that dead Iraqi children don’t matter, she appears not to have noticed that Blair introduced tuition fees, academies, kick-started NHS privatization, allowed the banksters’ bonanza leading to worldwide economic crash and oversaw the greatest widening of the gap between rich and poor in British history.

 

Andy Myles

One of my oldest and dearest friends has gone public on his support for Scottish Independence.  I am greatly cheered by this.  More thoughts later.