Craig Murray's Blog, page 192

Why is Sunny Hundal a Neo-Con Lickspittle?

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.

A Real Treat in Store

But I can tell you that after I am through with the piece on Jennifer I will write a piece on Craig Murray that will make people think that I was very nice to Naomi Wolf. What is important that YOU DO NOT TELL ANYBODY OF THIS AND WHAT IS COMING.

UPDATE – I published this without explanation and caused some confusion. The quote and link above are from an email exchange in which someone called Goran Rudling says he is planning to publish something about me, but it is a secret. I thought it amusing to repost it. I look forward to seeing what Mr Rudling comes up with.

Gay Marriage and the Joy of Living

I received an email from someone called Kevin accusing me of having refused to state my position on gay marriage. I have never been asked, but am in fact entirely in favour. I think human relationships are essential to human happiness, and I am not in the least concerned about the gender combinations or sexual practices in which people find happiness. Nor am I obsessed with the number two. I have no objection to polyandry or polygamy (or the gay equivalent) either. The key thing is that people enter and leave relationships entirely consensually, once of an age to consent. I do not believe in matters of tax, immigration or any other governmental sphere, any combination of family life should be favored over any other.

My own family life is “conventional” and very happy, but I do not make the mistake of believing one model fits all.

Thoughts From Madrid

I got back to Ramsgate last night, and I am trying to arrange to fly to Accra tonight. I pause to note down the train of thought that went through my mind as I left Madrid. I should start by saying I have no expertise on Spain at all; having by some strange chance been there less often than to any other EU country!

I was there as a guest of INSEAD, and in consequence living in great luxury at the Villa Real hotel, right next to the Spanish Parliament on the Plaza de las Cortes, and very nice it is too. Watching the politicians, lobbyists and senior businessmen in the expensive bars and restaurants of that area, and the ladies shopping in the designer boutiques off the Calle Mayor, there was no clue at all that Spain was in any kind of economic difficulty.

Except for one – the quite extraordinary police presence everywhere. There were more policemen than tourists in the Plaze de las Cortes, and more policemen around our hotel than around the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. There was an unmistakeable frisson in the air. The elite were living in – a description applied to the late Hapsburg Empire – a nervous splendour.

You did not have to move far from the centre of the city to get a very different picture. A Japanese visitor might get the impression that the Spanish word for shop is “liquidacion”. I knew that a proprty bubble collapse had been a major factor in the Spanish economic crisis, but I was shocked by the extraordinary number of empty homes for sale not only in new developments, but in old established communities. They represent not a loss to building speculators, but repossessed homes of families of the unemployed. The scale of the disaster is stunning to comprehend.

On a visit to friends in Toledo, I found the same thing apparent even right in the heart of the old town, with for sale and to rent signs eveywhere. Almost the entire distance of the motorway between Madrid and Toledo is flanked with vast modern stores and depots selling building supplies, home improvement products and construction equipment. Some were obviously closed down, some you could not tell immediately as you drove past, but certainly customer car parks were completely empty. It was like some strange post-apocalyptic scene; fifty miles of it.

On the positive side, my INSEAD hosts were not only delightful and generous, but were a great deal more open to radical or non-establishment thought than I would expect to find in a similar business-oriented group in the UK. We had a very good discussion. Of course, those of their members who chose to attend to hear me were a self-selecting group, but I was nonetheless impressed with their openness.

Something else nagged at my mind in Spain, I am not sure whether it was set off by my having watched “Pan’s Labyrinth” again recently. In Toledo I was horrified by the Army Museum, a dreadfully ugly concrete structure slapped right on the the Alcazar. If you can imagine encasing the whole North and East of Castle Rock in Edinburgh below the castle in a giant concrete bunker, bristling with vents and conduits, that would give you the idea.

Yesterday was a national holiday in Spain to celebrate Columbus’ “discovery” of America. A military ceremony and parade was the centrepiece. I found myself in the peculiar position of being one of the very very few non-military people allowed to walk in the Plaza de las Cortes, while Spanish families, many of whom had turned up with Spanish flags to wave, were being turned away in their thousands. I imagine there may have been other parts of the city where the public could watch the soldiers march by, but at the centrepiece it was very strictly invitation only, with large stands erected for the military officers and families and doubtless some of those I had seen as clients of the expensive restaurants and shops. Lots of uniforms. These things are a matter of feel – and the police who were turning away the ordinary people who came to support the event (and I saw no evidence of any coming to protest), were turning them away with a definite and highly pronounced air of hostility

Just a few days in Spain, viewed from the Bullingdon side of the metaphorical barricade. But it left me feeling that Spain’s elite sees Spain’s people as the enemy. Watch this space.

I Vote For Shooting Bankers

Not content with focusing public ire on those social spongers who have the temerity to be unemployed or disabled, government has scored a great populist coup, and caused great rejoicing in the land of the tabloids, by decreeing that it is quite acceptable to kill burglars with machine guns, rocket propelled grenade launchers, tactical nuclear weapons or any of the other items the British householder keeps by them for such an emergency.

But if a burglar were to strip my home of its entire contents, it would not reach a tenth in value of the money that is going to be taken from me in taxation by government for the rest of my life to fund the bank bailouts in which my cash was given to reckless and incompetent bankers to cover their gambling losses.

Not only have they taken all my money, the majority of the money I shall be paying to cover it for the rest of my life, will consist of interest to the bankers because the government borrowed at interest from the bankers the money it then gave gratis to the bankers to bail them out.

And, as doubtless you will have noticed, nothing changed. No reduction in massive salaries and bonuses, no split of casino from high street banking, no transaction tax to deter multiple speculative trades. A million more unemployed, but none of them investment bankers – they have however sacked over a hundred thousand mostly female staff from their high street branches, which were the only sensible and profitable bit of the operation. No bankers in jail, not even for LIBOR fraud. Quantitive Easing, or printed money, is given not for infrastructure projects to produce growth, but given to banks to improve their liquidity. They do not lend it on to companies but pay it to themselves, as bonuses.

Forget burglars. Shoot a banker.

Outage

Apologies for the outage, which was purely technical and non-sinister and to do with the domain name expiring yesterday, but having to be renewed the Friday before because yesterday was a public holiday in San Francisco. I am dashinng off to Madrid today to give a talk there. Am seething with outrage about Babar Ahmad and at George Osborne; please express some outrage for me on those topics till I get time to do so!!

Presidential Debate Sends Me to Bed

Am off to bed having seen 30 minutes of the first US Presidential debate. Anyone who wants to watch more of it should seek counselling. In terms of content it is impossible to distinguish what either of them is actually proposing on taxation policy. What comes over to me is the lack of any divergence from a neo-liberal economic model.

But in terms of style and presentation, which I presume this is about, rather to my surprise Romney is coming over the better. He is glib whereas Obama is stuttering a lot; they are both achingly dull, but Obama’s phrases seem curiously disconnected and there are gaps when you can see the gears meshing in his head. Neither of them shows any evidence whatsoever of charisma.

Four years ago Obama was talking with apparent belief about the need for change and inspiring people to follow him. He may even at the time have believed much of what he promised, but given the speed of abandonment of principle in office, I doubt it. Now Obama is just trying to present as a more managerially competent neo-con; a managerially competent neo-con competition is about the only one Romney can actually perform in.

I don’t really care who wins – debate or election.

Establishment Darkness

I am a guest speaker tomorrow at the NUJ Conference in Newcastle, on the subject of blogging. Never one to appease an audience, I shall give them it straight on my opinions of the collusion between mainstream media and power, and thus those who work within it. I expect to hear a lot about how bloggers are irresponsible, do not check sources etc.

I shall be drawing on some of the content of this talk:

I post this again because nowadays this website has far more readers than when I first posted it, and because it encapsulates my thoughts rather well.

I shall tell the NUJ that the mainstream media remains very constrained in what they publish. The Jimmy Saville affair broke on the internet in a big way a year ago, and yet the mainstream media is only now catching up – and still not making key links, like to Haut de la Garenne.

I receive, constantly, emails from people wishing me to take up various cases on my blog and furnishing information. 95% of the time I do not publish because I am not able to investigate fully (there is just one of me) and I do not know the source: the exclusives on this blog come mostly from my access to well-placed sources I have known for years through my past diplomatic career, and trust.

A notable proportion of the cases brought to me by those I do not know involve alleged paedophile rings. I was sent information about Haut de la Garenne for years, which named a string of senior people alleged to take advantage of organised paedophilia in the care home. Among the judges, politicians and aristocracy, there was indeed the name of Jimmy Saville. I have to admit it was not just that I could not prove any of it, I was actively sceptical about what seemed a random list of names of the famous. We now know for certain that Saville visited the place several times. The whole Haut De La Garenne investigation always seemed to obscure more than it revealed; I do hope it is mow re-opened, and taken away from the local Jersey police.

Another case which caused me great concern was that of Hollie Greig, where the jailing of Robert Green seemed to me vicious and unjustified. But I had earlier refused a request on behalf of the Greig family to involve myself in the case because the allegations made seemed to me incapable of proof without investigative powers and resources of the kind the police have. That the police do not properly deploy those resources where allegations involve the powerful appears to me too often to be too likely. Where the accusation is that the judicial establishment is involved in a paedophile ring, for the same judicial establishment to start jailing campaigners is extraordinary.

But the Alisher Usmanov and Adam Werritty cases will be the main thrust of my talk to the NUJ. In the first, the mainstream media still to this day persist in covering up the criminal past of the convicted blackmailer and Putin cohort who purchased 10% of Facebook and 35% of Arsenal Football Club.

The Werritty case is much more sinister because it goes to the media collusion in burying evidence of the influence of Israel on British politics. The public were told that Werritty was at a small number of meetings where he should not have been. The mainstream media refused to discuss why he was at those meetings or what his participation was actually about – leaving the public to infer he was merely Fox’s lover or in some way they were making money.

Even when I was able to produce undeniable evidence that Fox and Werritty held eight meetings with Matthew Gould, now and during six of those meetings British Ambassador to Israel (and Private Secretary to the Foreign Secretary for the first two meetings) the mainstream media refused point blank to publish it. Mossad were present for at least two of those eight meetings. Gus O’Donnell’s report, whcih led to Fox’s resignation, had revealed only two of these eight meetings. This should have been a massive story. The media buried it (with the sole and belated exception of the Independent on Sunday).

No media were prepared to put any investigative resources into what Gould, Werritty and Mossad were doing. I had an impeccable senior source who told me that they were discussing preparing the political ground for an attack on Iran. You would think that, given the Werritty affair caused Fox to resign, that was worth investigating. The media completely blanked it. To this day the fact that Werritty and Fox met Gould eight times has been reported nowhere but one column in the Independent on Sunday.

I think my encounter with the journalistic profession could be quite fun. I shall also be arguing that bloggers should be allowed to join the NUJ; an internal NUJ debate on this is the background to my invitation to speak.

Victorian Sexuality and Empire

On 6th June 1837, in a letter dated “On the Indus above Mooltan”, Alexander Burnes wrote to Charles Masson in Kabul:

” Mr Trevelyan writes that he is instructed to join me, but I take it he is snug in Calcutta – he travels with four wives! “

The only Trevelyan with whom I can find evidence Burnes was in touch is Sir Charles Trevelyan, who later married Macaulay’s daughter and was famously the author of the great civil service reforms which were the major Victorian step towards meritocracy. My generation all learnt about these reforms at History O-level, not least because we learnt it from the textbooks by Trevelyan’s son and grandson, G.M. and G.O. Trevelyan, which were pretty well compulsory reading in British schools for sixty years.

Burnes definitely was in contact with Charles Trevelyan, who had recommended Mohan Lal to him. Trevelyan definitely lived in Calcutta in 1837. Trevelyan was two years younger than Burnes, and could well have been instructed to join him. I am pretty confident about the identification.

C.E. Trevelyan is one of the great, solid figures of the Victorian establishment. It is fascinating to think of him having four Indian wives. We know from Mohan Lal’s later writings that Burnes, in his camp near Mooltan, was being kept warm at night by some Kashmiri girls (plural) whom he lived with for some years and travelled with him.

I found that Burnes letter in the British library; we get the odd glimpse, but unfortunately there is no way to recover the voices of the women.

Much history has been active censorship. Trevelyan’s boss at the time was Sir Thomas Metcalfe, who was a great and good man (he missed out on the permanent post of Governor General of India because when acting in that position for a year he abolished press censorship, annoying the Government). Metcalfe only had one Indian wife, whom unlike Trevelyan he acknowledged – possibly another obstacle to his becoming Governor-General.

There is a fascinating timeline to the setting in of Victorian morality. Burnes’ letter was written a few days before Victoria became Queen. Racism and hypocritical sexual morality became dominant in the ensuing decades – there was remarkably little colour prejudice in the UK before. Thus when three decades later Sir John Kaye came to write a three volume biography of Sir Thomas Metcalfe, he did not mention his marriage at all, or the existence of his children – despite the fact that one of them was then aide-de-camp to the Governor General of India!

On my Burnes biography, I was advised by William Dalrymple that the time to stop researching and to finish writing up is when you stop finding things that make you say “Wow!” Plainly I am not there yet.

UPDATE Thanks to commentators who have pointed out Trevelyan’s callous argument when adminstering relief during the Irish famine. This was quoted by Daniel below from Trevelyan:

‘The great evil [the Irish famine] with which which we have to contend’, said Trevelyan, ‘is not the physical evil of the famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the [Irish] people’

Resonance

I hope and pray April Jones is found alive and well. It brought back forgotten memories of cries of “April” in the woods, walking behind a line of adults near Roman Camp, looking for a girl called April Fabb who disappeared from a small village close to me when I was ten. My friends and I were searching the woods for weeks afterwards hoping to find her, and I remember the chill and fear that descended on parents in North Norfolk. I don’t think she was ever found.