January 4, 2009
Gordon Brown Is a Murderous Two Faced Cunt
Brown is appeasing domestic horror at the Israeli massacre in Gaza by calling for a ceasefire. Meanwhile British diplomats on the United Nations Security Council are under direct instructions to offer "tacit support" to United States' efforts to block a ceasefire.
I have been told this directly by a former colleague in the UK Mission to the United Nations.
A footnote on the uses of obscenity - 7,200 people read this entry between 15.30 on a Sunday afternoon and 08.30 on a Monday morning. That's normally the slowest time of the entire week.
Amazing what a catchy heading will do. Besides, if you think the title is obscene, how do you describe what is happening in Gaza?
Posted by craig on 3:24 PM 04/01/09 under Other | Comments (103)
January 3, 2009
Publicising the New Book
As legal sharks Schillings caused my publisher to back down, causing me to have to self-publish The Catholic Orangemen of Togo and Other Conflicts I Have Known, we have needed to think imaginatively about promoting the book. One plan will involve promoting some individual short quotes. I have been through the book and extracted some personal favourites, which I need to whittle down to about ten.
Any of these strike anyone as particularly attractive or a turn off?
Autobiography is a form in which individuals observe sharply the failings of others, but are themselves near-perfect.
It is not always the man society finds most respectable who is likely to try to do what is right.
Thousands of senior British diplomats, civil servants and members of the military knew of our policy of acceptance of torture.
You don’t have to be a saint to call torture when you see it.
Diplomats rather pride themselves on not caring.
Blair believed that he alone was the judge of right, and did not care how many had to die to prove it.
Blair’s policy of “Projection of hard power” was simply the return of formal Imperialism.
In conflict with Cook over ethical foreign policy, Blair would always overrule his Foreign Secretary, especially if the interest of the UK arms industry could be invoked.
The great fallacy of the Blair years was that foreign conflicts could be seen in black and white, as goodies versus baddies.
George Washington was fighting for the right to keep black people in chains.
Executive Outcomes – as enthusiastic a band of white killers as has been unleashed on Africa since King Leopold ran the Congo.
UN official, I regret to tell you, too often means corrupt and untrustworthy.
Having met Spicer, I was worried about his intentions and didn’t trust him.
A fundamental part of this new Blair doctrine was to be the ultimate privatisation – the privatisation of killing.
The Sandline Affair was a deeply squalid plot to corner the market in Sierra Leone’s blood diamonds.
It was the old story – trained white men go in, shoot up a load of Africans and gain control of key economic resources.
Sandhurst has been responsible for educating those who generated untold repression and economic ruination in Africa.
President Abacha died in bed with three hookers, from an overdose of Viagra. I quipped that it would take days to nail down the coffin lid.
The Customs and Excise team told me that the recommendation was that both Spicer and Penfold be prosecuted for breach of the embargo.
The dossier was returned to Customs and Excise from the Crown Prosecution Service the very same day it was sent. It was marked, in effect, for no further action.
The decision not to prosecute in the Sandline case was the first major instance of the corruption of the legal process that was to be the hallmark of the Blair years.
Hundreds of thousands of people have died in Iraq, including thousands of British and American soldiers, but some people have made huge amounts of money from the war.
Tim Spicer has made a fortune out of the Iraq War.
Tim Spicer has long been an advocate of shooting civilians in case they have bombs.
Butchering your live victims’ limbs with a machete is only more horrific in its immediacy than planting a car bomb or bombing an Iraqi town from the air in your invulnerable jet.
I realised that I was almost certainly the only person in that room who had never killed anybody.
Isaac was the product of the sores of Africa: he was a hardened killer, but he was also the little boy forced to kill his own mother.
Having led the way in African nationalism, Nkrumah was pioneering the forms of economic mismanagement that were to destroy the economies of the continent and bring starvation and immeasurable suffering to millions.
Those who did benefit, massively, were the dictators, their cronies, and the bonus-quaffing Porsche-driving bastards of the City of London.
Africans have destroyed their own regional trade, for the protection of corrupt private interests.
These first years of Rawlings in power unleashed political terror on Ghana which outstripped anything done by British colonial rule or by Nkrumah.
“That’s about the right number,” opined the Prince, “We have about six hundred and fifty MPs, and most of them are a complete bloody waste of time.”
There are some things that are too weird even for me, and the lower reaches of the Royal household are one of them.
Personally, I never understand why people accept honours, when there is so much more cachet in turning them down.
The United States, in what seemed to me an absurd example of political correctness, sent a delegation of blind election observers.
I was myself to encounter more electoral fraud in Blackburn than I ever did in Ghana.
In West Africa, among people who wear silk suits and are driven in Mercedes, the standards of truthfulness sadly leave in general a great deal to be desired.
Valerie Amos is the very antithesis of a democratic politician. One of the Blair inner circle, she rose to Cabinet level without ever having faced the electorate.
At launch over one third of Travant’s first equity fund came form DFID. A few months afterwards Baroness Amos, ex DFID minister, joined the board of this profit-making private equity firm.
Posted by craig on 8:08 PM 03/01/09 under The Book | Comments (21)
January 2, 2009
Ghana - Nana Akuffo Addo Should Concede Now
In the course of this election campaign, Nana Akuffo Addo was repeatedly accused of arrogance by opponents and commentators alike. His lack of populist body language has cost him dear, but being lucky enough to know the man personally, he is a charming, considerate, witty and good humoured man who serves you in his home with his own hands - which is not true of many of his detractors.
So it is with regret that I say that it is essential for the good of Ghana that my friend now concedes defeat. With 9 million votes cast, only the tiny fraction that is 23,000 votes separates the two candidates, with one last constituency, Tain with 51,000 voters, voting today.
But Tain is an NDC constituency and has not been strong NPP in recent history. The kind of winning margin Akuffo-Addo needs there is near impossible. There have been recurrences there, now, of the thuggery and intimidation that have marred the second round in many places.
But the governing NPP's decision to boycott today's Tain run-off can only be construed as a decision to repudiate the entire election result. I see nothing else it can mean. Particularly when combined with yesterday's failed attempt to obtain an injunction against the results.
We are already seeing more political violence in Accra than we have in the past decade. If the government repudiates the election result, then force becomes the only arbiter. It has been plain in Accra the last few days that the security forces will back the NDC, as they have historically. In not accepting the results, the NPP risks starting a fight it cannot win.
Look at the broad picture. This race is quite incredibly close. I have no doubt, that if you eliminated all cheating by all sides, the result would still be within just 1%. The NDC started from a base of 45% in 2008 and have, beyond any shadow of a doubt, genuinely picked up support in this election.
If you have two runners over one hundred metres, and one clocks up 9.86 seconds and the other 9.87 seconds, that does not make the loser a bad runner. But there has to be a winner, and the adjudicator's decision must be accepted.
It would be unfair for Akuffo-Addo to lose, but it would also be unfair for Atta Mills to lose. The NDC have the genuine and consistent support of between 43% and 50% of the electorate over the long term. You cannot keep a group with that much support permanently out of office, and a system which did keep them permanently out of office would not be a true democracy.
The NDC has its liberal and democratic wing, personified by Vice President Elect John Mahama and Moses Asaga; and it has its wing that would happily jail the opposition on any pretext, personified by Tony Aidoo and Nana Konadu Rawlings. Jerry hovers between the two. Atta Mills is a good man, though how strong he is against Jerry remains to be seen.
But for the NPP not to hand over power gracefully, would strengthen the hand of the old PNDC undemocratic tendency in the NDC, and could lead to allegations of plotting and unconstitutionality.
I was heavily involved personally in 2000 when John Atta Mills, like the gentleman he is, undercut the hardliners in his own party by conceding defeat before the result was announced. It now behoves Nana Akuffo Addo to do the same.
Posted by craig on 11:07 AM 02/01/09 under Ghana | Comments (12)
National Demonstration Against Gaza Conflict
NATIONAL DEMONSTRATION: SATURDAY 3 JANUARY
HANDS OFF GAZA: STOP THE BOMBING: FREE PALESTINE
ASSEMBLE 12.30 PM EMBANKMENT, LONDON WC2
Nearest tube Embankment or Charing Cross
A national emergency demonstration has been called for Saturday 3 January by Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Stop the War, British Muslim Initiative, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and many other organisations, assembling at 12.30pm at Embankment WC2.
More info and updates from: http://www.stopwar.org.uk/
Posted by andrew on 9:12 AM 02/01/09 under Other | Comments (2)
Very Strange Indeed
Between 2am last night and this morning, all the comments ever made on this site seem to have disappeared. I can't find them inside the site anywhere.
Posted by craig on 9:11 AM 02/01/09 under Other | Comments (14)
December 30, 2008
The Big Lie Technique
Breathtaking lies from the White House press spokesman:
"Israel is only doing what is necessary to prevent terrorism. Nobody supports violence."
The horrific thing is, some people do actually believe this ludicrous propaganda. But on the subject of supporting violence, I had a momentary emotion today of which I feel deeply ashamed. The BBC reported an Israeli civilian killed by a Palestinian rocket, and my involuntary reaction was:
"Good - they got one back. 340 Palestinian dead, but at least they got one of the bastards".
I then froze in horror at my own thought, and said a quiet apology to the soul of the poor man killed, and to his family and friends.
I am happy to say my initial emotion still seems to me repulsive and aberrant, and if I think back on it I do not recapture any of that feeling. But if the Israeli offensive can make someone as dedicated to peace, and far removed from the conflict, as I feel that kind of instinct, even if momentarily, how truly counter-productive it must be. How much hatred and antagonism has been stirred among those related to the four young sisters killed in their bed, to give only one example? We are seeing not just the death of hundreds now, but the instigation of yet additional violence for decades to come.
Of course, some people will make money and/or gain political power and influence out of that. "Nobody supports violence" is bollocks. Some people profit very nicely from it, in a variety of ways.
Posted by craig on 12:43 AM 30/12/08 under Other | Comments (30)
December 29, 2008
John Atta Mills elected President of Ghana
It appears that John Atta Mills has been elected President of Ghana. Although the result will not be declared until tomorrow, it now appears in practice impossible for Nana Akuffo Addo to close the gap.
There remain a number of concerns about the count which puzzle and worry me. In particular the swing ti Mills in the final fifteen constituencies to declare appears to be three times the average swing over the rest of the country. Constitutencies which together delivered a net majority to Nana Akuffo Addo of over 150,000 in the first round have yielded him a majority of only about 40,000 in the second round. Looking at each in turn and the swings in the surrounding constituencies, there is no readily available explanation that occurs to me. For example Bantama and Kumawu in Ashanti region, both in the final batch of results, showed substantial falls in Nana Akuffo Addo's vote whereas all the other seats in Ashanti Region had shown a sufficient increase. Beyond doubt the last twenty constituencies to declare have been much better for Atta Mills than any rational amalysis would lead you to predict.
However I understand that the Electoral Commissioner, Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, is inclined to accept the result as genuine. He was personally out and about during voting in some of the Volta constituencies which particularly concerned me earlier.
I would trust Kwadwo Afari-Gyan with my life. I personally witnessed him, just the two of us in the early hours of the morning, refuse to budge when soldiers held his wife and children at gunpoint and threatened them unless he falsified the result of the 2000 election. If Kwadwo accepts the result, so will I, and I urge Ghanaians to do so too.
Alternation of power is a healthy feature of democracy, and Mills is a good man. But the elephant in the room is the ex-dictator, multiple murderer and half (at least) mad Jerry Rawlings. Does he still control his protege Mills? We have no choice but to wait to find out.
Posted by craig on 8:15 PM 29/12/08 under Ghana | Comments (6)
Serious Concerns of Fraud in the Ghanaian Election
I am becoming very concerned about the electoral process in Ghana. With 207 results declared, John Ata Mills has a lead of 200,000 votes, but in the first round Nana Akuffo Addo had a majority of 170,000 in the constituencies yet to declare - and has been substantially increasing his lead in his strongholds in the second round, while falling back elsewhere.
I hve already mentioned the extraordinary leaps in the NDC vote since the first round in some Volta constituencies. And now we have this extraordinary result declared:
Evalue Gwira (Central Region)
Nana Akuffo Addo 10,818 (minus 36,182 on first round)
John Atta Mills 9,094 (minus 5,906 on first round).
Elsewhere we have the extraordinary appearance of 50% more NDC voters in just three weeks. Here we have the disappearance of 75% of NPP voters in the same period.
In my book The Catholic Orangemen of Togo I introduce the concept of the margin of cheating.. There is regrettably cheating in elections in every country in the World. The problem becomes acute where the amount of cheating exceeds the margin of victory. That is the suspicion which will always hang over the Bush election win in 2000. It looks like this Ghanaian election is going to be won by a figure within the margin of cheating.
Incidentally, in Blackburn where I stod against Jack Straw in the last general election, almost a third of votes were cast by postal ballot - three times the national average. The postal ballots favoured Jack Straw by a margin far higher than the "normal" ballots. I would estimate that Labout boosted its vote by cheating in Blackburn by some 20%.
Posted by craig on 11:02 AM 29/12/08 under Ghana | Comments (8)
Vote Increases In Volta Region Lack Credibility
My last post mentioned that an advantage of statistical psephology is that it highlights anomalies as pointers to possible abuse.
I am concerned by some quite extraordinary figures of increased voting for the NDC in certain parts of Volta Region, which are difficult to believe can be genuine. This is particularly so as they occur in districts where there was no or negligible third party vote.
It is very hard to believe that in Hohoe South, for example, the NDC managed to increase its vote by a full 50% after the first round three weeks ago. Increases of 20 to 25% in Anlo and Avenor also seem extraordinary and out of line with what is happening in general.
These large apparent increases in voter interest have resulted in apparent voter turnouts in excess of 90%. There is a natural friction on election registers, due to death, people moving, being ill or away at election time, forgetting or not wanting to vote, etc. Voting levels in the areas mentioned are apparently well above the average for Ghana and at levels I am not sure I believe to be practical - another flash of a warning signal.
Further Projection
With 135 constituency swings now calculated, a run of very large swings to Mills has increased his projected majority ti 33,000.
Posted by craig on 3:19 AM 29/12/08 under Ghana | Comments (3)
Ghana Elections Halfway Projection: Narrowest of Wins For John Atta Mills and the NDC
Having now calculated the exact swings between the parties in 115 of the 230 constituencies, and applying the average swing across those constituencies which have not declared, we now project a win for John Atta Mills and the NDC by 14,000 votes, or by 50.08 to 49.92%.
It remains a fact that our projections have been remarkably consistent; and that the methodology proved extremely accurate in predicting the results of the first round. But again it must be stated that this is so close that it could yet go either way.
I am making a projection based on sound psephological principles and a methodology used worldwide to project election results. The calculation is then purely mathematical. This is an exercise in prediction largely for fun, but it also has a use in that, if the methodology throws up any anomalies, they could represent fraud. In fact in general the consistency of results within regions in terms of swing trend tends to support the idea that these are fair and genuine elections.
Posted by craig on 2:12 AM 29/12/08 under Ghana | Comments (7)
December 28, 2008
Ghana Election Projection: Too Close To Call (again)
Based on 37 constituencies for which I have full results, the current average swing between the second and first rounds is 2.9% from the NDC to the NPP. That would result in a overall majority for John Atta Mills of 28,000 votes. That is definitely well within the margin of error at this comparaively early stage.
Turnout is higher everywhere, except in Mion where a strangely low turnout resulted in a big swing to the NPP. That may bear investigation. On the other side, turnout in Anlo, where the NDC further extended its lead, reached suspiciously high levels and may also bear investigation.
But so far the patterns of voter behaviour appear consistent and explicable and the indications are that the election is broadly fair, despite both parties positioning themselves to cry foul if they lose.
The problem is that, if the result is as close as it looks at this early stage it will be, then small disputes become critically important. I pray that Ghanaians maintain their hard-won tradition of peace and democracy.
STOP PRESS
My calculator is suffering the strain and I have bits of paper covered in figures strewn all over the kitchen table, but with 53 constituency swings now worked out I am projecting a win for Atta Mills by just 8,000 votes. Again, that is so close as to be statistically meaningless.
00.39 I have now calculated the swings from 82 different full constituency results, calculated the swing in each, calculated an average swing, and projected this on to the first round results nationally.
The projection now shows a majoriy for Atta Mills of 20,000. Again still too small to be decisive, but there has been a real consistency to the projection results which reduces the margin of error. I am confident that, whoever wins, they will not obtain more than 50.2% and probably less than 50.1%.
01.31 With swings fully calculated for exactly 100 constituencies, the projection is for a majority for Atta Mills of just 5,000 votes. Again the projections are remarkably stable, but again the result is so close it could easily still go either way.
Posted by craig on 11:16 PM 28/12/08 under Ghana | Comments (0)
December 27, 2008
The Continuing Horror of Palestine
The call by the US Presidential spokesman for Hamas to stop its rocket attacks on Israel, as Israel pours over 100 tonnes of high explosive into that cooped-up territory, illustrates perfectly the "Big lie" school of propaganda about Palestine to which the people of the United States have been subjected for the past sixty years.
Of course Hamas should stop the rocket attacks. But the Israeli response is wholly disproportionate. Only today did Hamas kill their first Israeli in the last twelve months. So far today Israel has killed 212 Palestinians, and counting.
I regard Hamas as an unpleasant aberration, but just the kind of aberration you will get when you steal the land of an entire population, and ethnically cleanse them into a ghetto so tight, poor and beleagured it is simpy a prison. What Israel has done to the Palestinians for decades, with strong US support, is as unconscionable as the crimes of Hitler and Stalin. It may not reach those tyrant's full scale, but there comes a level of evil where further scale is irrelevant. After what has been done, and is being done, to the Palestinians, did people seriously expect them to turn round and vote for Liberals?
The Israeli state is an appalling racist aberration. Israel's creation was, exactly like the growth of Hamas, an understandable but deeply regrettable phenomenon arising from a terrible evil done to a people, hijacked by a rampant religious extremism and its pre-existing plans. For cultural reasons, and in strong contrast to the religous extremism of Hamas, the religious extremism of Zionism found strong support in the West.
Zionism is complete bullshit. I have just as much right to claim the Celtic lake sites in Switzerland that were holy to my vague and supposed ancestors.
It is high time that thinking Europeans had the courage of their convictions and completely rejected the notion of the racist and mystic Israeli state. There can and should be no two state solution. What is needed is a single state, blind to ethnicity or religion, on the lands of Israel/Palestine. That is the only path that has any hope of leading to peace.
Posted by craig on 9:27 PM 27/12/08 under Other | Comments (38)
December 26, 2008
Harold Pinter
It was over two years ago that I came home from Morrisons in Shepherds Bush, carrier bags dangling from both hands, their handles cutting into my palms and fingers. Emily, then twelve years old, opened the door for me as I rang the bell with my chin, and quickly taking the bags from one hand, she replaced them with the telephone.
"Dad, there's some bloke on the line", she said, "I think his name's Harold Pinter."
I did a quadruple take, paused to control myself, and spoke into the phone dubiously.
"Hello? Craig Murray here".
The reply came in that stage whisper voice and laboured breathing that characterised the great man's tortured years.
"Hello. This is Harold Pinter. I have just read your book. Bloody marvellous effort. Might I invite you to lunch?"
I accepted with great alacrity, and a few days later walked along to Holland Park, to his favourite Italian restaurant. He was chauffeured to the door and helped out of the vehicle, but insisted on walking to the table himself, doing so with enormous difficulty and in some obvious pain. He ordered a bottle of white wine and poured it himself, the extreme shake of his hand spilling a good deal of the contents of the bottle over his trousers, the table and me. He actually got quite sharp with me when I offered to take the bottle. He positively snapped:
"No, I can do it."
When Harold Pinter snapped at you, it left you in no doubt what had just happened. I wasn't sure how to recover and, with instantaneous but very conscious calculation, decided to risk a joke about his condition. I launched in:
"Hmmm, reminds me of the old joke:
'Doctor, doctor, my hand keeps shaking'
'Do you drink much?'
'No, I spill most of it.' "
He laughed genuinely at this old chestnut, and handed me the bottle. We drank a good deal over lunch; I believe three more bottles followed.
He told me that he found his plays funnier than audiences did. He did not miss writing plays because he had become "sanctified", and people felt they were not allowed to laugh at the absurd. On the other hand he felt his poetry was better crafted than his plays, yet did not get the same degree of analysis.
He spoke at great length about Murder in Samarkand, which he was kind enough to call one of the most important books written in his lifetime. He was full of absolute fury for Bush and Blair. He called them "Liars and thieves", and he was rather despairing about the lack of really serious challenge to the attack on civil liberties in the UK and US. He said his great desire was to live to see Bush and Blair on trial in the Hague as war criminals. He realised he might not make it, and urged me to make sure I stayed alive long enough to do it.
He drew great heart from the young people in the anti-war movement, and suggested that, terrible though the government was, we should not fall prey to hopelessness.
I remember two things he said especially: "Hopelessness is the disease of old men", and : "Bush and Blair are fucking cunts. You know, the English language has fantastic resource. Fucking cunts. Bush and Blair, fucking cunts. It is absolutely right for them."
He said this quite deliberately in a voice the whole restaurant would hear.
All the other lunchers had long gone by the time we left the restaurant. At the end, he wrote on a menu for me the quote that appears on the cover of Murder in Samarkand. He insisted I did not wait around while they "load me in like a sack of coal".
A couple of days later a signed original from the ceremony of his Nobel acceptance speech arrived, together with some manuscript poems. A few weeks after he emailed me to offer me financial assistance as he had heard (correctly though I do not know how) that I couldn't pay the rent - I declined but was most touched. He took an interest by email in Nadira's progress through drama school and with her one woman show. I only ever saw him once again, and that in a large company.
Obviously of those who could really say they knew him, I knew him very little.
But I am deeply saddened by this passing, and I offer these recollections to add to the picture of a wonderful man, great writer, and true friend of liberty and peace.
Posted by craig on 10:01 PM 26/12/08 under UK Policy | Comments (10)
December 25, 2008
Oh Hush The Noise, Ye Men of Strife
As a seasonal thought, and a reminder that the Christian religion can be a force for good despite its abuse by Bush, Palin and their ilk, I wanted to share with you my favourite carol.
It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth,
To touch their harps of gold:
"Peace on the earth, goodwill to men,
From heaven's all-gracious King."
The world in solemn stillness lay,
To hear the angels sing.
Still through the cloven skies they come,
With peaceful wings unfurled,
And still their heavenly music floats
O'er all the weary world;
Above its sad and lowly plains,
They bend on hovering wing,
And ever o'er its Babel sounds
The blessèd angels sing.
Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.
And ye, beneath life's crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow,
Look now! for glad and golden hours
come swiftly on the wing.
O rest beside the weary road,
And hear the angels sing!
For lo!, the days are hastening on,
By prophet bards foretold,
When with the ever-circling years
Comes round the age of gold
When peace shall over all the earth
Its ancient splendors fling,
And the whole world give back the song
Which now the angels sing.
It was a poem before it was a carol, and it is worth savouring it as a poem. It is actually American - and interestingly in the US nowadays the great third stanza, which to me sums up the best ideals of the religion in which I was raised, is often omitted.
A week ago the Archbishop of Canterbury also reminded me that there can be much good in his tradition, with his strong comments on the economic crisis. His analogy of an addict returning to his drug, for the proposed government programmes for recovery, was extremely apt in so many ways.
Not the least worrying is the emphasis on reducing interest rates, and in the case of the UK government positively compelling banks in which they have a majority stake to start lending again. As a solution to a problem so evidently caused in large part by a colossal credit bubble, that is crazy. In particular, the desire to prop up the UK housing market is completely misplaced. My cramped, rented flat in Shepherds Bush is "worth" £350,000. There are over a thousand such flats just in Sinclair Road and Sinclair Gardens, and just in my own little corner of Shepherds Bush there are at least ten thousand of them. To buy a £350,000 house, even if you have £100,000 cash for a deposit, you should in rational lending be earning £75,000 a year. But the majority of households in this area have well less than half that income.
Your house is worth half what you thought it was last year. Live with it. Attempts to put patches on a bubble are stupid.
Posted by craig on 8:19 PM 25/12/08 under Other | Comments (6)
