Oh, and let’s not forget Leetle Teetch Sarkozy, pictured in the same article warmly welcoming Gadaffi to the G20 summit. Absolutely no truth whatsoever in the crazy rumours put about by the desperate sex-crazed dictator (Gaddafi, not Sarkozy) that someone put funny money into the 2007 French election campaign.

Here's Gaddafi with his mate Berlosconi and one of his 40 virgin female bodyguards - 39 if Silvio had anything to do with it

Gaddafi may have had a head start in the race for the hotly-contested title of most bonkers, loathsome and sociopathic oil-glutted dictator in the Middle East, but he was arguably given a leg up when Ronald Reagan bombed his tent in 1987 and killed his wife, kids and relatives in a vintage example of liberal intervention. Since that time, he took every opportunity to piss off ‘The West’, supporting terrorists of all stripes and persuasions, the nuttier the better. Funny he would react like that.

The rank hypocrisy of his ‘rehabilitation’ has already been discussed in my 2009 article (Oil, money, BP, fear that it might come out in the wash that Libya was at best a bit part player at best in the Lockerbie outrage plus the fact that he was a psychopathic loony). Since he was canonised by Tony Blair Gaddafi may have stopped supporting terrorist groups targeting western interests but he murderously arsed around in Africa with impunity. Moreover, the current Tsunami of cant surrounding the reasons for bombing democracy from 35,000 feet into Libya stands violently at odds with the blind eye shown to last week’s incursion by Saudi soldiers into Bahrain, killing rebels (not freedom fighters?) opposed to the weak-chinned Sheikh presiding over western interests in that boozy  Gulf bastion of R+R and general jiggery-pokery. Complicated? Not really. File under SNAFU (Situation Normal. All Fucked Up).

John J Kelly.

Last year, full of dudgeon, Thus posted a modest and moderate commentary on the 2009 Afghan ‘election’ http://thusmagazine.com/2009/11/afghan-democracy-postponed-in-an-orgy-of-hypocrisy/. Read it and weep – or laugh sardonically, depending upon your smug levels. I’m certainly not proud of stating the obvious, then or now.

The ‘war’ (called, with no hint of irony ‘Operation Enduring Freedom‘ intensified following the ‘surge’ – which in Orwellian fashion was designed to lower the threat of continued violence by killing and maiming as many ‘insurgents’ as possible and winning hearts and minds by drone bombing civilian populations. General Stanley McChrystal, reluctant figurehead of this thinly-disguised ‘shoot-em-up-and-get-the-hell-out-of-here’ attempt to plait sawdust and sell it as a counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy, was allegedly none-too-keen in the first place but refused to take the blame for what he and others saw as desperation tactics on the part of certain Obama administration figures. His ‘unwise’ comments to Rolling Stone magazine in July got him carpeted and fired by Nobel Peace Laureate Obama. His replacement, saintly General Petraeus, ‘inventor’ of COIN’s Iraq surge strategy has had the lasting benefit of a recent increase in violence and an effective caliphate of Shia militias, despite the continued presence of over 65,000 US troops and $7 billion spend on ‘aid’ per month (2009).

The McChrystal-led strategy depended upon legitimising the position of Karzai, whom most of the Afghani population and anyone else with a grain of intelligence knows – not including the US and UK governments of the time – presided over an endemically corrupt, kleptocratic regime which was ‘re-elected’ in a fraudulent pantomime of ‘democracy.’ Petraeus will need to work with the same materials. Over 80% of the enormous Afghan ‘aid’ budget is administered by the Afghan government. As the US continues to ‘devolve responsibility to the Afghan people’ Karzai’s extended family will have correspondingly greater access and even less accountability, I’d say the winner of the Afghan conflict/war/insurgency/Jihad – call it what you will –  is none other than His Excellency President Hamid Karzai, dead heating with the Mullah Omar, whose Taleban Ulema will be ‘allowed’ to lark around chopping off heads and hands, tearing out hearts and warping minds in their own special playground in the south – or wherever they like, given the ‘strength’ of the Afghan forces.

At the risk of sounding unfashionably contrarian, I’d advocate making moderate elements of the Taleban – like the IRA, such people do exist – custodians of civilian-targeted regional aid rather than hand it all to the incumbent narco-kleptocrats. Or withdraw all the aid, 80% of which is stolen anyway. Even though former Thus favourite Ashraf Ghani, now on speaking terms with Karzai in what is presumably an attempted reprise of his time as Finance Minister from 2001-4 is there to keep an eye on the US cash, I doubt he will be capable of keeping Karzai under control as the ‘handover process’ accelerates – with increasing velocity as the next US elections approach – which Obama may lose, especially if the US is still in Afghanistan, now America’s longest war after Vietnam, and, like Vietnam (and Iraq), an ideological shitfight which it has clearly lost at huge cost.

John J Kelly

PS. Funny how we don’t hear much about al Qaeda , much less Osama Bin Laden, nowadays. Does anyone know why?

Actually I quite like smoking and all the things advertised on this poster so it shows how messed up I am and how tricky and pointless it is to pontificate about this sort of malarky.

A couple of posts back Thus got on an uncharacteristically high horse about the dangers of Methadrone. My comments were not based on the government’s (subsequent) decision to ban the Chinese designer drug, but on reports from people I know and respect that it is generally horribly moreish and does one’s head in on an industrial scale. While the same or similar might apply to all sorts of legal highs, including alchohol, Methadrone/Mephedrone is a particularly potent drug.

But there is still no evidence that it kills people, per se. In March, after the death of two teenagers on Humberside, the then government of Gordon Brown jerked its knees and banned the drug, causing the resignation of Professor Nutt (Thus passim) who appears to be a bit of a blowhard but who probably had a point about the government using drugs legislation for political purposes.

A few weeks ago, after the general election, it was (not very widely) reported that Methadrone was not, after all, the root cause of the deaths. Without impugning the intelligence and impartiality of our glorious police force, which we all know is wonderful, the most worrying part about the ‘findings’ is that the police may have confused the word ‘methadrone’ with ‘methadone’ – a heroin substitute which the boys may also have been taking.

Notwithstanding the above, I apologise for straying into the drugs debate. The problem with Methadrone, like Crack, is that it’s far too cheap for the hit it provides. Apparently. But I don’t know what I’m talking about and I’m certain that neither the police nor the government do either.

John J Kelly

Last October, former NL drug czar, the (perhaps) aptly named Professor David Nutt resigned/was sacked from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) for stating that so-called Home Secretary Alan Johnson must have been on one if he thought that upgrading cannabis from class C to B was a good trip. I was not surprised when Johnson later confirmed that Prof. Nutt had indeed been sacked, because his ‘advice’ cut across government policy to attack soft targets, such as weed-smoking kids, in order to maintain the pretence that the police, NL’s lard-arsed  political wing, were meeting their targets. Or something like that.

Nutt was sacked for arguing common sense. Alcohol misuse is linked to the overwhelming majority of violent crimes, ditto the number of admissions to hospital accident and emergency departments, breaks up families but is perfectly legal. Weed, and even Ecstasy are far less dangerous. Stoners can’t be arsed to do much more than flop around. Ecstasy becomes dangerous when taken in conjunction with alcohol. Banning one and not the other is a heavy trip down the road to – er  - somewhere else, man.

David Cameron as he might look were he unfortunate enough to become a Methadrone addict

But the Professor killed his own credibility when he strayed into the twilight zone of policy. A couple of his colleagues joined him and nobody apart from the Guardian gave a monkeys, until last weekend somebody called Dr. Polly Taylor also walked the ACMD plank. Speaking on the radio from Amsterdam yesterday – where he was possibly researching the wonders of legalised hash bars (despite what he was saying, there aren’t many left and it’s a load of bollocks to say that drug use in Holland is any less seedy than in the UK) – Professor Nutt reprised his theme that cannabis/weed is less dangerous than alchohol, criminalising it drives the price up, policing it costs money and wastes resources etc. Heavy.

Of course it is, but it’s a different argument. There is a time for expediency, and in the case of Methedrone, aka Mephadrone/M-kat, the time is now. I’m not a user myself, you may be surprised to know, but living in the ballsachingly trendy Bethnal Green/Shoreditch/Hoxton triangle, I know plenty of people with direct experience  - probably more than Alan Johnson or the nutty professor combined – who state categorically that this stuff is very, very bad indeed. Unlike the government or the squabbling scientists I’m happy to hear their unvarnished opinion that Methadrone is more moreish than Ketamine, Amphetamine Sulphide or Cocaine, can quickly reduce kids to a ‘feral’ state and, whether legal or not, creates a burning habit which sucks away money, energy and self-respect. Bummer.

Alan Johnson, as he may appear to David Cameron in his hypothetical state as a Methadrone addict

It is regrettable that political correctness, as represented by Professor Nutt and his grateful-not-to-be-dead academic colleagues, has fetched up against political opportunism, as represented by Alan Johnson and his soon-to-be-dead-in-the-water authoritarian bastard squad. I almost certainly know more about drugs on a first hand level than most of the boneheads in government – not sure about the Tories, though – but surely here is a clear case for decisive legislation. Regardless as to whether it played a small, middling or large part in the recent deaths of three kids, Methadrone is far more dangerous and nasty than weed and hash – think crystal meth and crack cocaine. Criminalising it may well create an underground black market and drive up the price, but it’s facile to argue that notoriety will add to its popularity, since it’s all over the news that the stuff is legal and relatively cheap. Banning its import and resale will only hurt those who wish to go out of their way to use it, and will almost certainly deter recreational/casual/impressionable drug fashionistas. Result.

Ban Methadrone with immediate effect, not because it may or may not have the potential to kill, but because it sure as hell doesn’t do anyone any good. Nor is this a Human Rights issue. If it drives the price up, then boo hoo for the prats who want to use it. And let’s not confuse this with the cannabis/marijuana debate, policy which is in itself influenced by Britain’s costly role as the 51st state of the USA.This is too serious a debate for the chatterati, so while we’re at it, bollocks to the Guardian and the Daily Mail. The drones who write for those rags should get out more. End of.

John J Kelly

In those great days we were helped by the US, then Imperial apprentices, now big swinging dicks. This time we have stopped short of war. Instead, our very own Great Helmsman, Gordon Brown, recognising the media opportunity, interrupted his Yuletide wassailing to summon the Chinese Ambassador, twice, no less, to the Foreign Office for a stern telling-off. The insolent Chinamens’ excuse was that smuggling more than 50 mg of heroin was an offence punishable by death under their sovereign laws, and claimed that the perpetrator’s 5 kg stash was enough to maim or kill more than 27,000 people. This overlooked the fact that he was British, possibly (but not provenly) suffering from bipolar syndrome (aka manic depression) and was clearly (provenly) delusional – as evidenced by a terrible song which he believed would make him a pop star. Tragic, but hardly worth provoking an international incident.

British heroin smuggler Akmal Shaikh knew what he was doing and did it for money. Bipolar syndrome does not imply the inability to determine right from wrong. China, like all the other countries which endorse or carry out the death penalty – notably the US – should be urged to join the civilised world, but Gordon Brown and his hypocrite cronies are hardly the folk to make them change their point of view. China executes the most people in absolute terms, but is 14th when per capita judicial killing is taken into account, with the US close behind. The Bahamas, a British Commonwealth nation, is top. Singapore, held up as a paragon state by unconvicted mass murderer Tony Blair – is second. Kuwait, whose ‘democratic freedom’ we defended in the first Gulf War, is sixth. British trading partners Jordan, Oman and Saudi Arabia are all in the top 10.

None of these countries are daft enough to execute a British, much less a US citizen, though Singapore and our lovely Saudi friends have been known to administer the cat o’ nine tails to errant expats for boozing/fornicating, while Thailand and Malaysia have mostly commuted the death sentence for EU citizens caught smuggling drugs (usually out of the country). Afghanistan, of course, is the world’s top exporter of heroin grade opium, while the brother of its democratically-elected and UN endorsed President, the fragrant Hamid Karzai (Thus passim ad nauseam) is allegedly Capo di Tutti Capi of the smack barons. But he’s our man, as banana boy Miliband is wont to remind us.

I’m sad for the family of Akmal Shaikh, but this is not about the rights and wrongs of a tragic individual case. It’s about the rank, steaming hypocrisy of a country which scarcely raised a finger in protest when 1200 citizens of occupied Gaza, mostly women and children, were bombed out of existence precisely one year earlier, on December 27, 2oo8. Britain defended the ‘sovereign right’ of Iraq’s corrupt whacko puppets to publicly hang Saddam Hussein after a laughable show trial. As the Chinese pointed out, a country which has played a lead role in the killing and maiming of at least 200,000 Iraqi citizens and displacement of up to 4 million others, killed and wounded thousands of Afghanis and a growing number of Pakistanis, is in no position to point any fingers whatsoever. The same government gave Chinese Premier Wen a regal welcome in 2008 and brutally suppressed protests from Free Tibet campaigners on his triumphal procession through London before the Beijing Olympics. China was executing/ murdering dissidents (as well as common criminals, for offences less than murder) then as now. We’ll continue to buy its tat, often produced in slave labour conditions. We even sold them our beloved car company, Rover (although this could rank as a subtly hostile act).

This week, 10 Afghan citizens, including 8 children, were executed/murdered by US ‘Special Forces’, according to Afghan investigators. The US claim they were militants/terrorists. Even if they were, does this justify execution without trial of these and several thousand others on other sovereign territories? Ask Brown and Miliband. You won’t get a straight answer.

Britain has lost the high, middle and low ground in international diplomacy, and our citizens will suffer commensurately, as surely as we will lose the phony ‘war on terror.’

However distasteful and repugnant, China’s judicial killing of a British citizen carries more legitimacy than the countless acts of extra-judicial killing perpetrated daily by the US under the banner of liberal intervention. Both are crimes against humanity, but to paraphrase Stalin, one death is a tragedy. 1000 is a statistic.

John J Kelly

Meanwhile, the same UN who spent between USD 150 – 250 million arranging this wet fish in the face of democratic practice, fired Peter Galbraith for daring to suggest that the outcome would be flawed and endorsed Kai Eide, the Norwegian Blue Parrot at the head of the UNAMA license to steal, are lining up to line their pockets anew. Why did the UN (and EU) doggedly stick by the election process, despite all the evidence that this will take the country (even further) down into the depths of violence and authoritarian kleptocracy? Sources in Kabul point to a new round of contracts, estimated at USD 4 billion, for the 5000+ UN agencies and NGOs running around in big white trucks doing fuck all. Bookmark this and see if I’m right. I apologise in advance if no new money is voted, Ban Ki Moon kicks Kai Eide up the arse and the ‘international community’ threatens withdrawal and sanctions. But the awful hypocrisy of  a rush to congratulate to Karzai from puddinghead Gordon Brown, wanky Ban Ki and the increasingly Bushlike Peace Prize Laureate Barack Obama are as emetic as anything I’ve seen for a very long time.

None of this was worth a single dead soldier, much less thousands of dead Afghan civilians. By the way, the ‘bad guys’ are in Pakistan – now. Drone bombing villages is winning no hearts and minds there either.

And another thing: while the grim spectre of mass murderer by proxy Tony Blair becoming EU President recedes, the boat is floating for David Miliband to become EU High Representative. His only qualification, apart from being a Blairite, is undying loyalty to Hillary Clinton and the US. If that’s what we want – the United States of Europe – he’ll be perfect and the EU will be involved in full scale conflicts, wherever liberal intervention sounds like a good idea, before you can skin a banana.

John J Kelly

Thus predicted that widespread fraud would take place in the Afghan elections, based on first source analysis on the ground allied to the hunch that the occupation forces would allow blind faith, optimism, expediency and an ideological fundamentalist belief in ‘democracy’ to triumph over common sense.  Kai Eide, Ostrich-in-Chief of  UNAMA and the EU clown troupe observers decreed the elections ‘fair but not necessarily free‘ before any votes had been counted. On the grounds alone that UNAMA spent an improbable $250 million engineering the mechanisms for this danse macabre on the grave of democracy in a failed state, Mr Eide and his money eaters should be declared unfit for purpose. Expecting the current process to produce a team with the credibility to tackle the insurgency and restore stability is, therefore, not realistic. It is more likely that a disenchanted population that now feels disenfranchised will tolerate an expanded insurgency, thereby endangering allied lives and assets, and significantly increasing the nature and dimensions of the challenge to NATO.

Should the election process be validated and the results accepted, the following consequences are probable: First, the government will become more predatory as the officials who committed fraud will feel emboldened by getting away with large scale corruption. Favours promised will be called in. Second, the population would be disenchanted with the process, the integrity and intentions of the Allied and international mission, and the new government, and withdraw further into devising ways to protect themselves from all sides.   Third, the insurgency, facing an openly illegitimate government, will have a renewed rallying cry and cause for recruitment. Fourth, the neighbours, particularly Iran, will become more assertive in Afghan affairs, and the struggle between intelligence services, particularly that of India, Pakistan and Russia, will increase significantly. Fifth, a weaker international community will not be able to take a strong posture vis-à-vis the government.

Richard Holbrooke, US ambassador to Afghanistan, is meanwhile trying to backstop the mess by engineering a runoff between Hamid Karzai and ex-foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah (who declared the election fraudulent at an early stage). This is unlikely to enhance the legitimacy of the outcome, as corrupt chains of entrenched interests allied to both Karzai and Abdullah have already mobilized and near term measures will not suffice to loosen their grip on the levers of power and money. A rerun could consolidate and embolden those interests. Furthermore, an election in October will face major logistical obstacles. Given the discredit brought both on IEC and the UN agencies, proceeding with round 2 is likely to perpetuate some of the same symptoms. Moreover, according to complaints submitted to the Afghan Independent Election Commission, both candidates have engaged in widespread ballot rigging. Afghan sources speculate that if Karzai is disqualified (a big if) then the US should shift its backing to Abdullah on the basis that because he is weak he would be easier to control. The flaw in this twisted logic is that Abdullah has neither the strength, popular mandate nor ethnicity to keep the key warlords in check, his corruption might increase if mandated and once support was withdrawn he would be vaporised. Another option is a Karzai-Abdullah coalition – an infernal tag team if ever there was one.

Ashraf Ghani, whom, like Bashardost, ran on the anti-corruption ticket (as did Abdullah when he saw its potential) has proven experience in establishing governance and financial controls – he was finance minister in the last transitional government – has no presidential mandate (and originally stood reluctantly) but could play a key role as mediator, intermediary and Grand Vizier in a government of national unity, embracing all stakeholders, governed under strict, designed to restore sovereignty to the Afghans – an ostensibly ‘weak’ coalition, but infinitely preferable to a licence to steal for the next five years.

Thus has so far been the only site to point out the seeming anomaly between Karzai’s declaration of dubiously modest assets of $1000.00 plus $10,200 in family jewels‘ and his officially declared campaign war chest of a $2 million dollar interest free loan from the Bank of Ghazanhar. This sum represents 20% of the funds of this ‘bank,’ a philanthropic institution founded and run by the Ghazanfar family. How and when is this modest unassuming man on a salary of $487 per month going to repay the generosity of his altruistic supporters? Rather like the eponymous Producers in the Mel Brooks movie, he has already promised more seats in the new cabinet than currently available, to lovely men such as Dostum (Thus passim). He has polled 3000 votes in stations where observers only recorded 30 people voting. His brother Walid coincidentally hangs out with folks who allegedly control the opium trade while other family members, through sheer hard work no doubt, appear to run the country’s most  lucrative business franchises. He talks of having no truck with the Taliban but shamelessly passed the notorious wife-starving law shortly before the election. Is this a man ‘we’ can do business with? Though it pains me to say it, we have little choice. The most expedient figurehead leader would be Karzai, supported but not endorsed by the international community under strict and irreversible terms of conditionality.

The Taliban, meanwhile, have sat on their hands – having threatened to cut off the hands of anyone who voted – and shrewdly allowed the forces of ‘democracy’ to do their heavy lifting for them. They stand to gain from the continued uncertainty of a protracted runoff, a popular insurrection resulting from forcing through a blatantly corrupt result and a turf war between Tajik, Uzbek and Pashtun forces which would erupt if Abdullah is awarded the paper crown. Time is short: the results will be final on 17 September. So what to do? Clare Lockhart, of the Institute for State Effectiveness, summarises four options thus:

1. Accommodation with Mujahadeen: Accept Karzai’s claim of victory, and put together a Karzai-Abdullah coalition. This government could be stable in the short term, but is likely to be highly corrupt and unstable in the medium term. Some concessions could be extracted, including the inclusion of technocratic positions and commitment to the US 5-point agenda already discussed with candidates and the restoration of Afghan sovereignty. It is questionable as to whether concessions would be agreed upon or adhered to.

2. Formation of a national government headed by Karzai: Instead of waiting for implosion, action is taken now to put together a national government, with inclusion of broad stakeholder interest groups. A set of benchmarks and processes could be followed and the international community and the Afghan government could sign a binding compact.

3. Formation of a Transitional Government for a two to three year period: The election is deemed fatally flawed and the International Community declare it invalid and disqualify Mr Karzai. A Transitional Government is put together, along the lines of the Bonn Agreement 2002-4, with the key change that key figures will commit not to run for elected office in future. This Administration would be tasked with stabilizing the country and building the basic institutions that would allow for exit of the international presence.

4. Form a quasi-protectorate under an US/international driven agenda, creating governance bottom up, and marginalize the Afghan institutions for a period of time.

Option 2 is the most likely and the most expedient. The loser in this entire sorry process has been the notion of democracy, at least in its US interpretation. The bigger loser could be Barack Obama, who will be a one term President if his administration allows Afghanistan to become his Vietnam.

]]> http://thusmagazine.com/2009/09/a-government-of-national-unity-is-the-least-worst-option-for-afghanistan/feed/ 0 http://thusmagazine.com/2009/08/carry-on-up-the-khyber-karzais-lead-narrows-like-we-said-it-would-yesterday/ http://thusmagazine.com/2009/08/carry-on-up-the-khyber-karzais-lead-narrows-like-we-said-it-would-yesterday/#comments Tue, 25 Aug 2009 21:08:30 +0000 John Kelly http://thusmagazine.com/?p=4127 “If Karzai’s warlord cronies have over-egged the firnee and their boy romps home with an incredible margin, Iran-style riots are almost inevitable. On the other hand, if he narrowly wins, it will be more difficult for the opposition forces to cry foul. Given that he achieved only 54 per cent in 2004, the ‘ideal’ result for Karzai would be a tight margin of victory but no runoff, so we’ll see how these figures change if and when the penny drops.” (Thus passim)

There are more twists in the tale of the Afghan elections than Hamid Karzai’s S shaped bed – not that I’d know, I hasten to add. What I do know is that donkeys laden with ballot boxes are finding their way back to Kabul to deliver the verdict that the international community needs – ‘don’t panic, democracy is flowering in Afghanistan.’ Well I reserve the right to panic. Another four soldiers died today, along with at least 30 civilians and 56 others wounded in Kandahar.

Here’s a suggestion for the Afghan election theme:

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss . . .

We’ll be fighting in the streets
With our children at our feet
And the morals that they worship will be gone
And the men who spurred us on
Sit in judgment of all wrong
They decide and the shotgun sings the song

I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
And I’ll get on my knees and pray We don’t get fooled again. (The Who: Won’t get fooled again)

The only thing flowering is Poppy, and the chief gardener, who ‘borrowed’ $2 million interest free from the Ghazanfar Bank, (how and in what form will he make repayments?) has now seen his ‘massive lead’ whittled down to a ‘narrow lead’ over the man who spent the second biggest amount campaigning. To this extent, the Afghan campaign followed the ‘democratic’ model of the US – money talks. As I said several posts back, in lieu of a fair result, we might as well accept Karzai in preference to a prolonged period of even more violence and bloodcurdling carryings-on that might be generated in a runoff – but on the other hand, Abdullah has hinted that his supporters might get frisky if the ‘election is seen to be rigged’. Todays preliminary results (based on 10% of the votes cast, give Karzai 41% and Abdullah 39%, but do not include any votes from the south, where Karzai will win whatever votes the Taliban allowed to be cast. I’ve seen more convincing all-in wrestling bouts – in fact, a novel runoff might take the form of Karzai vs Abdullah, mano a mano, in the ring, wearing tights and masks, of course.

But let’s be serious for once. Thus has a brilliant idea (though I say so myself). Why not bring in Jeb Bush, Former Governor of Florida, to supervise and fine tune the election count? No-one could argue with that – after all, they didn’t in the 2000 US elections.

John J Kelly

The same report claimed that only 7.5 million of Afghanistan’s 17.5 million eligible voters had registered. Free and fair?

If Karzai’s warlord cronies have over-egged the firnee and their boy romps home with an incredible margin, Iran-style riots are almost inevitable. On the other hand, if he narrowly wins, it will be more difficult for the opposition forces to cry foul. Given that he achieved only 54 per cent in 2004, the ‘ideal’ result for Karzai would be a tight margin of victory but no runoff, so we’ll see how these figures change if and when the penny drops. Since Abdullah has already declared the election to be rigged, Karzai has retaliated by declaring that he has evidence that Abdullah engaged in fraud and Ghani has submitted evidence to show that both engaged in fraud (previous post) it would perhaps be pruduent to publicly examine these claims before declaring results and certainly before starting the next Karzai puppet show.

Meanwhile, an Aljazeera film report, broadcast on YouTube shows that rumours of Taliban inactivity during the deeply troubled Afghan election may have been wishful thinking on the part of the UN observers. Indeed, the relative calm from the fundamentally religious fanatics may have more to do with the month of Ramadan, when killing and amputating, especially during daylight hours, especially of other Muslims and women, is strictly prohibited, as any Talib scholar knows. The news clip shows Taliban fighters accusing hapless voters of ‘standing in line with the Jews.’ This pointless and immature anti-semitism should not surprise us but adds another horrid ingredient to the devil’s brew in this terrible conflict. If a central plank of the Taliban’s twisted ideology is to equate the US and occupying forces with ‘Jews’ and the Palestine question, this explains why the US cannot leave (and why AIPAC were so keen to get them in there in the first place). However, it has clearly escaped the attention of the men in black that ‘Jews’ aside,  Hamas themselves have been fighting Taliban/Al Quaeda in Gaza and Fatah is likewise fiercely secularist. Ideologically, the Taliban have more in common with fundamentalist Jewish settlers than they do with secular Palestinians, who have more in common with everyday Israelis than politicians on either side would have us believe.

Elections need a bedrock of governance, and Afghanistan is naturally federalist, to say the least. Given the overwhelming evidence of fraud, intimidation and corruption, it would make most sense to form an interim government of national unity charged with establishing  norms of representative governance, auditable finances, prioritising aid and (preferably) development to the benighted swathes of the population who cannot eat votes.  Easy to say – and actually, relatively easy to do, in principle. A constructive task of nation-building would give everyone hope and put some of the whackjobs on the back foot, whilst buying time for the occupying forces to think up a face-saving exit strategy. Legitimising a joke election will sustain a toxic status quo and will almost certainly lead to more instability and bloodshed, which would suit the Taliban just fine. What price democracy? About $250 million if we’re talking about the UNAMA budget to mismanage this farce.

John J Kelly

Gordon Brown (the ugly one on the left) congratulates Colonel Gaddafi, thinking he is Sarah Boyle, winner of Britain's Got Talent

Over the past three days, as the Lockerbie ‘terrorist’ release turns into a full-blown international incident, we have heard not one word, or even a Twitter, from the man who saved the wurreld (and its banks). This is highly unusual; Gordon and his wife Sarah Twittered from Inverkilliecrankie, or wherever they are on holiday, catching crabs and burying each other in the sand, when the ungrateful Evil Empire dissed the NHS. This time it’s serious. Somebody gave Gordon’s independent-minded fellow Jocks a pass to give Abdulbasset al-Megrahi, the only person convicted for the Lockerbie bombing, a get out of gaol free card on the spurious pretext that he had less than three months to live.

Let’s leave aside the mountain of evidence that al Megrahi and Libya probably didn’t do it. He was threatening to appeal, a process which would have certainly opened the UK and US to wide and embarrassing scrutiny of their highly circumstantial fingering of Libya, then THE axis of the axis of evil, now everybody’s best friend and a bulwark against terror. Blame switched from Syria, the HQ of the PFLP- GQ terrorist cell allegedly paid by Iran to carry out the bombing as revenge for the downing of Iran Air Flight 655 six months earlier (1988) by the USS Vincennes, killing 290 civilians, when Syria joined the Bush 1 and Thatcher ‘Coalition of the Willing’ in the first Gulf War. Let’s ignore Scottish due process which dictates that a terminally ill prisoner should be released on compassionate grounds to die in dignity. Let’s ignore the oft-repeated fact that post-devolution, Scotland makes its own decisions in law. Let’s try and pretend that Britain isn’t the 51st US state, even if the antics of the past few years have understandably left the opposite impression.

Let’s try and focus on the facts. Last Friday UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband furiously demanded that BBC news presenter John Humphrys retract the ‘slur’ that the FCO had anything to do with it. Today’s Sunday Times revealed that Ivan Lewis, UK Foreign Minister responsible for Libya, ‘is said to have written to the Scottish government, encouraging officials to send home’ al-Megrahi. Ten days ago ‘Lord’ Peter Mandelson, Business Secretary and de facto ruler of Great Britain, admitted discussing the subject a couple of weeks ago with Colonel Gaddafi’s son Saif at the Rothschild villa in Corfu. Today, after a mysterious prostate operation (in sympathy with al Megrahi or the result of some other sort of probe?) Mandelson broke his own uncharacteristic silence to declare it ‘offensive to claim’ that this meeting was connected to the release of the Libyan or to trade deals, despite the fact that Saif-al-Islam Gaddafi had emphatically declared the opposite. Colonel Gaddafi, meanwhile, has effusively thanked just about everybody in the UK:

Sarkozy is pissed off because he thought he was welcoming Michael Jackson to the G20 Summit. All Gaddafi had to offer was unlimited supplies of oil, gas and cash, though he performed a passable moonwalk.

“To my friends in Scotland, the Scottish National Party, and Scottish prime minister, and the foreign secretary, I praise their courage for having proved their independence in decision making despite the unacceptable and unreasonable measures that they faced. Nevertheless they took this courageously right and humanitarian decision.” And I say to my friend Brown, the Prime Minister of Britain, his Government, the Queen of Britain, Elizabeth, and Prince Andrew, who all contributed to encouraging the Scottish Government to take this historic and courageous decision, despite the obstacles.” (Reuters).

Barack Obama came slowly out of the traps to declare the decision ‘highly objectionable.’ Despite the fact that the release of al Megrahi was ‘on the agenda at every meeting between Blair and Libyan officials’ it was highly OK for St Tony to broker a return of Libya to the international coalition of the hypocrites in 2004 when we realised we were running out of oil and there was rather a lot of it there, not to mention a strongman capable of bullying the bejasus out of many of the the other whackjobs in Africa, especially Sudan, and Mahgreb Middle East. Despite the fact that we knew more than a week before it happened that this release was on the cards, FBI Head, Robert Mueller, sent a hissy letter expressing outrage and astonishment to Kenny MacAskill, Scottish Justice Minister, clearly intended for public consumption (printed in full in The Times). Various neocons (and David Cameron) have postured their horror at the release of this convicted terrorist and outrage at his hero’s welcome in Tripoli as though this was a bolt from the blue.

Exclusive: what they found when they operated on Mandy's prostate - a banana AND a Miliband.

Those are the facts. Here’s some outrageous speculation. Gordon Brown desperately needs sovereign funds. Mandelson told him that this was a small step to take and that nobody would bother once the dust had settled, and anyway, his new friend (and UK homeowner) Gaddafi jr had assured him the return of al Megrahi would pass off quietly. Scotland, an oil and gas economy, was promised lucrative oil supply contracts and plentiful exports of Dundee rock, Irn Bru, tartan and sporrans. The US agreed to turn a blind eye on the condition that Gaddafi refrained from dancing the Highland Fling. Besides, it’s a big bonus if al Megrahi dies without making an appeal – the dirty secrets surrounding massive CIA manipulation of witnesses and evidence, including the possibility that Pan Am Flight 103 was carrying US secret service contraband die with him. Mandelson wins either way: if Brown is discomfited and if the Scottish National Party is put in the hole, his task of bullying the Labour Party is strengthened (Labour desperately needs seats in Scotland in the upcoming General Election). The inconvenient truth is that Colonel Gaddafi is a loony and his son appears to be a blowhard, so the whole yellow ribbon homecoming was unfortunate, but you can’t win them all. Champagne all round at Chateau Rothschild, Corfu branch. Another dinner guest has provided immense entertainment value on the international stage.

John J Kelly