Guido Fawkes and the BNP UPDATE UPDATED UPDATED UPDATED
Update @ 10.15am: Paul Staines insists he has a retraction of the Guardian article making assertions against him. He has made assurances that he will make copies of it available as soon as possible.
In the mean time, therefore, I’ve removed the post that was here.
UPDATE UPDATED 12/2: The post on Paul Staines’ blog where he brags of issuing ‘legal notices’ has now vanished. Am I allowed to airbrush my past as well?
UPDATE UPDATED UPDATED Who once said: ‘The libel laws in Britain have long been overly restrictive and frustrated Guido’s efforts.’ Yes.
UPDATE UPDATED UPDATED UPDATED: Sunny gets another scoop.
Posted on February 11th, 2007 at 9:07 am
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Presumably you are unaware of the 400 word retraction written by David Rose subsequently.
You are now on notice.
Please remove immediately.
Perhaps you would like to give a date for the publication of Rose’s retraction? Also, 400 words seems awfully long, doesn’t it? Usually retractions are written by the editor (or readers’ editor, if they had one then) and consist of something like “we’re sorry, we have found that the article we printed on such and such a date was inaccurate/unfounded and we apologise to whoever for the offence it caused”.
Guido Fawkes, the BNP, and ruthless pragmatism…
Pickled Politics - Exclusive: Guido Fawkes’ skeletons in the closet Chicken Yoghurt - Guido Fawkes and the BNP Guido 2.0 - He was young… he needed the muscle… That ‘plonking’ sound you hear is Paul Delaire/Delarie Staines being dropped from……
Yes. I’d like to see a copy of that retraction please, Paul. No doubt you have a copy readily to hand.
Curious, reading the original post, links, comments and then purging. Never put down to conspiracy what is more easily explained by incompetence.
Very fair-minded of you to take the article down while we wait Justin!
Britblog Roundup #104…
Once again, your nominations for those posts from the Britblogging community that you think should be seen by us all. You can make suggestions for next week’s extravaganza by emailing the URL to britblog AT gmail DOT com. The big…
Osama: Thank you, I thought so. You’ll also notice that I haven’t moderated Guido’s comment.
This whole thing was covered in the Guardian backbencher all of two years ago:
Acid tongue (2 Feb 2005)
Remember Remember (2 Nov 2005)
There’s even a link to Mr Paul Staines with his T-Shirt glorifying terrorism (but not of the Guido kind but of the CIA and apartheid regime sponsored kind).
Tut, tut. The MSM trumps the blogosphere again…. When exactly did Guido say all this was retracted?
Interesting date on that link, as 1987 was pretty much the transitional year in Angola. In 1986 and before, it was more or less defensible to regard Savimbi as an anti-Communist freedom fighter (although a purist might suggest that it’s an odd anti-Communist that worships Mao, African politics is funny that way). From 1988 and onwards, anyone who still supported UNITA was either kidding themselves or didn’t care that they were backing a maniac.
[just in the interests of clarity here; Savimbi was a murdering maniac much earlier than 1988, but the details of what went on in Angola weren't generally known in the UK]
It was also at about that time (1987) that a number of vociferous campaigns emerged (often sharing the same address and personnel) jointly promoting UNITA, RENAMO, the Contras and the Afghan Mujahdin. So it wouldn’t be too surprising if Guido (who apparently believes that there were no elections in Nicaragua in 1984) also had a UNITA T-shirt. I’ve often wondered what happened to that crowd from 27 Old Gloucester Street. They stayed very quiet when UNITA lost the 1992 Angola elections and re-started the war (a war that only really ended 10 years later after almost destroying the country). They stayed very quiet when their freedom fighters in Afghanistan started another civil war in Afghanistan after the Soviets left. Perhaps they went off to dig wells in Afghanistan or clear land-mines in Angola, but somehow I doubt it.
[...] reading: Tim Ireland and Justin McKeating. Iain Dale calls for ‘blogwars’ to cease, though Dave isn’t impressed. [...]
“Savimbi was a murdering maniac…â€Â
What do you know about it? If it weren’t for Savimbi, Angola would be in a right mess.
And Guido, Harry. Don’t forget Guido.
If it weren’t for Savimbi, Angola would be in a right mess.
And if it weren’t for Savimbi, the Chingunji family would still be alive, including one year old babies who had their brains dashed out against trees. Sorry Harry but my jolly Welsh sense of humour deserts me on this one; my dad knew Savimbi’s biographer, Fred Bridgland, a bit in Zambia in the 1970s (where I was born) and I do actually know a bit about that bit of Africa - for example, I know what the phrase “Setembro vermelho” refers to.
I would still regard support for UNITA as honourable up to about the mid 1980s - hence the comment - but as early as 1983, Savimbi was accusing his political opponents of being witches and burning them alive with their children (this didn’t really come out in public until about five years later though). And after the 1992-2002 decade of pointless civil war that he put Angola through - minus the support of nearly all his 1980s UNITA comrades from when it was a liberation movement - I can’t personally find it in my heart to give him even a little bit of credit.
erratum to the above: the victims of the red September murders weren’t even Savimbi’s political opponents - they consisted of family members of UNITA cadre who he suspected of being potentially more popular than him, plus women who had refused to have sex with him.
You guys are the darndest!
Savimbi went on the CIA payroll, and formed his alliance with South Africa, in 1975. Pretty much from the late 1970’s he was South Africa’s sock puppet in Angola. This is well known and documented in articles going back to the late 1970s. There are many articles and academic papers on the subject, but see for example Africa News, 23 March 1981. By 1981-1983 the situation was very intense and South Africa and UNITA were conducting many joint operations. In 1984 Savimbi of UNITA was the only African leader to attend the presidential inauguration of apartheid leader PW Botha. Savimbi is the man who remarked in a 60 Minutes interview that “I can see the Executive President of South Africa as my friend … I consider him my friend”.
There is a long history here, and not enough space to go into it, so I will leave it at that.
However one more thing is worth mentioning: a very sinister development during the 1980s was the South African sponsored international propaganda war, aimed at winning hearts and minds. Supposedly under an anti-communist agenda the apartheid government launched a number of international front organisations into which it poured millions. It established links with right wing groups around the world who weren’t to fussy where their funding came from, and used these groups to parade UNITA and Renamo bandits to an international audience.
The article suggests that PDS was hanging around in these unsavoury circles in the 1980s. He admits that he hung out with a “hang Mandela” crowd, but never wore their badges. The photograph of him with the UNITA member places him closer to the heart of the international apartheid conspiracy than he would probably care to admit.
I would still regard support for UNITA as honourable up to about the mid 1980s - hence the comment - but as early as 1983, Savimbi was accusing his political opponents of being witches and burning them alive with their children (this didn’t really come out in public until about five years later though).
1986 and 1987 were indeed turning points in the history of Angola. Freed from the Clarke Ammendment, the US under Ronald Reagan directly poured millions into the exercise to install UNITA as the government of Angola.
The dreams came to an end when Cuban and Angolan firepower routed a combined South African - UNITA force at Cuito Cuanavale in December 1987. All sides claimed victory, but the South Africans changed tack to press for a negotiated peace. It was only in 1992, when it was clear that UNITA was not going to win free and fair elections and Savimbi walked away from the peace process that his main supporters pulled the plug. He fought on for another decade using diamond money.
Though you will not get many old Lefties to admit it, being allied with apartheid South Africa was by no means the most evil thing you could have done in Africa in the 1970s. UNITA was a principled liberation movement which was committed to total independence and free elections. MPLA carried out their own fair share of atrocities in the wars of the 70s and 80s, and the Cubans were surprisingly horrible too.
In the early days Savimbi would take help anywhere he could find it (UNITA started off as a Maoist movement). He was a genuinely popular leader - the only warning sign at the time was that he was probably lacking in cross-ethnic appeal. But lots of people were taken in by him, many more than by the Ayatollah Khomeini. Fred Bridgland was the journalist who first broke the story of South African troops in Angola, and he was a Savimbi believer until Tito Chingunji told him about the atrocities in 1987.
That’s why I say that being a UNITA supporter in 1987 isn’t really a smoking gun; Savimbi had started down the road to madness by then, but it wasn’t generally known.
Glasshouse Lessons…
So a sort of peace has broken out in the recent “blog war”. Whether it is a temporary peace or something more enduring has yet to be seen. In all honesty such an outbreak of hostilities was inevitable. The Labour……
dsquared,
I’m not going to argue with you about Angola, except to say that Bridgeland’s breaking of the 1975 invasion of Angola by South Africa doesn’t undo his hagiography of Savimbi. Savimbi had a reputation that Bridgeland overlooked, for ideological reasons, for too long.
Regarding PDS, you imply he was merely a “useful idiot” for not knowing about (or ignoring) Savimbi’s actions “at least until 1987″. But it is clear from the links above that he was leading a student group which was part of the apartheid regime’s “Operation Babushka”.
Now, given everything you have read about PDS including the article he wrote on drug taking, would you speculate that he was a principled politician who was ignorant of UNITA’s true nature or that he was a greedy opportunist who wasn’t too particular about enquiring where the shill’ was coming from?
No fair enough marcuse, there’s a lot in what you say. I think your assessment in para. 3 is substantially correct, although I am slower than you to hang someone for being an idiot about third world guerillas in the 80s, if only because it would mean that a lot of mates of mine would be next through the gallows door for some of the unbelievable shit they supported in the Communist interest in the same period.
On the specific subject of Fred Bridgland (and craving Justin’s indulgence for this wild offtopic diversion), you might be interested in this interview where he very much walks away from “Key to Africa” and this ebook (WARNING: not to be read while eating food, or unless you are in a quite robust frame of mind) where he gives the gory details that he learned post 87.
It was possible to work out what UNITA were about in the Eighties by noticing who their chums in Britain were.
As Guido wont publish my comments I’ll try here instead. The BNP allegations are a side-show. The real story is the continuty of right-wing muck-spreading and disinformation. Remember ‘Anarcho-capitalists’ are just Tories with a thesaurus.
More at http://www.1820.org.uk
…and craving Justin’s indulgence for this wild offtopic diversion…
You go ahead, Daniel. All this is most illuminating. Educational in all kinds of ways as ejh says.
The thing is dsquared that ‘I am slower than you to hang someone for being an idiot about third world guerillas in the 80s’ would be fine if this wasn’t part of a bigger picture of Staines political activity.
Naive he was / is not.
“And Guido, Harry. Don’t forget Guido.”
You mean Guido is a murdering maniac? Or do you mean that, if it weren’t for Guido, Angola would be in a right mess?
Someone told me the other day that malaria came to South America, or was reintroduced here, by Cuban soldiers returning from Angola. Is that possible? I thought I’d better check with Daniel before I go around repeating it.
Harry, the latter. His sloganeering t-shirts struck a blow for democracy.
The real point is that for people like Staines, then and now, it’s all a larf. No matter who gets hurt.
Unless it’s them who gets hurt, which they’re not expecting. Then, suddenly, it’s not a larf any more.
Which perfectly sums up this whole shooting match, as far as I’m concerned.
Someone told me the other day that malaria came to South America, or was reintroduced here, by Cuban soldiers returning from Angola. Is that possible? I thought I’d better check with Daniel before I go around repeating it.
Never heard that one myself. I don’t really know much about South America though - did the Cubans send troops to Nicaragua or something? Cuba certainly contributed a lot of malaria treatment facilities to Angola.
I guess they could have been a vector for the malaria parasite, but I’m not aware of it ever having been wiped out in Latin America. This chart seems to show a big spike in malaria cases in Colombia shortly after the Cubans withdrew in 1989, but the people who put it together say it’s an El Nino cycle event. It also shows endemic malaria since before the Angolan civil war began, so I don’t think the Cubans can be wholly responsible.
http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/climate_impacts_and_tropical_diseases_in_columbia
In general, though, the track record of Cubans in Africa is yet another data point for the thesis “fucking around in other people’s civil wars is a really stupid idea”. About the best that could be said of them is that they didn’t massacre prisoners, much.
Sir,
You are, for my money, the best blogger in the country - your post on personal responsibility won the ‘Reactionary Snob Award For Best Blog Post’ in the annual snobbies.
Don’t waste your time with this nonsense - get back to what you do best.
RS
Thank you, RS, thank you for saying so.
Bar one or two tidying up exercises, mainly when Sunny Hundal’s interview with Guido is released, I’m out of the blog war business. Trying to act in good faith in these matters is largely fruitless and demoralising.
dsquared,
As far as Cubans in South America - they were definitely in Argentina and Bolivia and probably elsewhere as well. The latter is particularly significant as every 17 year old’s favourite T-shirt and some of his loyal band went almost directly from Angola to there. And it is, of course, where he (of the beret and the diaries) famously kicked the bucket - or, more acurately, the CIA threw it at him.
Malaria is extinct in Cuba. It existed pre-revolution, was wiped out by DDT in the ’60s, and hasn’t come back. So my suspicion is that Hutton’s source has been fed anti-Cuba spin by the usual Miami suspects…
I don’t know about this malaria/Cuban link.
I do know that the various guerilla armies that were trained in China are said to have introduced the more virulent, quinnine-resistant malaria into Africa (from China or Vietnam as I recall). There’s an article on this in the (South African) Daily Mail & Guardian of a few years back - a full online archive is available on their website.
dsquared, thanks for the links. I’ll read them in due course. Regarding your:
“I am slower than you to hang someone for being an idiot about third world guerillas in the 80s”
I’m against capital punishment, and I don’t believe that pointing out the contradictions and/or opportunism in someone’s behaviour is hanging them. If anything one could say that PDS has hung himself - because he has been exposed as being as vulnerable to criticism as the people he attacks mercilessly from his own high horse every day.
And if you think about it he could have said “mea culpa, I was a bit of a follower of stupid causes as a student” and nobody could really hold that against him. But instead he came out with his guns blazing, apparently using a law which he has publicly criticised, to silence criticism.
And the criticism of him has not been personal (like much of the gay-bashing innuendo we see on his site for example) but has been substantial criticism of his actions and behaviour, and of the disreputable people he has chosen to be associated with.
[...] Being something of a night-owl, Sunny Hundal at Pickled Politics beat the rest of us to the punch and published the article. Early Sunday morning, Tim Ireland, Labour MP Tom Watson and I followed suit. [...]
Amusingly, of course, a prime recipient of the Nats’ propaganda budget was none other than Jack Abramoff, who even went to Savimbi-controlled Angola to stage a “world anti-communist congress” on the BOSS dime.
Anyway, given his relationship with David Hart, I say we just rename him “Silver Birch Online” and have done with it.
late as usual, a couple of comments on the Angolan diversion:
1. as a conscript in the armies of apartheid in the early 80s, we were trained to sing anti-FAPLA chants (probably a version of the chants Roman barbarian mercenaries were taught about barbarians). General principles of enemies’ enemies’ led me to believe Savimbi to be of dubious moral character: but particular information, then and later, shows there were no innocents in any of the southern African conflicts. Manichean approaches failed, a preponderance of wickedness on every side.
2. when I contracted the quinine-resistant malaria, the story I heard was that of the mercenaries bringing it from SE Asia to the Congo, and spreading from there. It’s certainly physically possible, see
http://www.cdc.gov/Malaria/history/index.htm#discoverytransmissionhuman