Harry's Place

3) they block out reality because they see people from other continents as good savages.

4) They believe that all these reports are exaggeration, lies and propaganda.

Does anyone know the historic origin of the cry a luta continua? This of course was one of the rallying cries of the ANC, among other movements, and of course “viva ANC/Mandela/whoever viva”. I was reminded of it last wekk when watching an induction video for women prisoners here in the UK made by someone I know who does poetry sessions with women prisoners. In the film, one of the black women prisoners recites a poem about my land Africa, concluding with a shout ‘a luta Africa a luta’. I wondered to what extent these are authentic Africa liberation phrases, or did Che import them during his adventures in Africa?

3) they block out reality because they see people from other continents as good savages.

An idiot nutter ~/David T~ as Newman is, I don’t think he believes that. See his statement that Sankara combated the local Burkinabe chiefs. This ain’t some Rosseuean admiration of the noble savage. It’s Marxist Millenarianism.

Thank you for the info on Machel, Paul. I strongly suspect you’re going to get Paul Fauvet in a mo’.

What kind of hallucinogenics are these guys taking? They live in a parallel reality!

I remember very well Samora Machel, and the way he and his wife lived in great luxury while the people was starving to death. Now Graça Machel, currently married to Nelson Mandela, only wears african style clothes, but back then she prefered Dior.

I deeply regret my country’s serious responsibilities in the way power was handed over. The peoples formerly oppressed by the portuguese colonialism didn’t have the chance to exert their right to self-determination.

What happened is simply that after the 1974 revolution in Portugal, the army factions controlled by the communist party created a situation that prevented the new democratic government of Portugal to guarantee a political solution that would allow the africans to choose who would govern them.

By that time, Portugal itself was close to civil war, with a serious confrontation being held between the Socialist party, supported and the Communist party.

With the exception of Guinea-Bissau, where the liberation army had already practically defeated the portuguese army, in all the other countries the communist factions within the portuguese army had the power to choose whom to give the colonies to.

In Angola they gave it to MPLA, then a soviet-backed. They are still there, but now they are savage capitalists.

In Mozambique it was Frelimo who got chosen. After some years of civil war, Machel approached the American administration, was received in the White House by Reagan and then shortly after that the airplane where he was traveling crashed.

So, not only he was a tyrant, but his love for “socialism” was not that big, because he was preparing to switch sides.

By the way, Machel was indeed a nurse, but he was not the son of a peasant, but instead he was the son of an important tribal leader. Anyone with a basic knowledge of Africa knows how traditional structures overlap with political movements (not only in Africa, even in Europe it’s like that in smaller countries). A son of a simple peasant would simply not be able to get to the top of Frelimo, because he would lack a power basis.

But, then, that small detail would spoil the the picture.

These people make me feel sick.

What next? A praise for Robert Mugabe?

Sarah, has happened. Then there was the time Seumas Milne went to South Africa to cross the picket and offload the whole damn shipment of arms himself (TM Mike, 2008).

4) They believe that all these reports are exaggeration, lies and propaganda.

Which prompts the further question: why do they disbelieve the reports about Machel and Castro but not the reports about Mobutu and Pinochet?

Their political animism, Paul.

If it’s not too glib, surely there is a third possibility:

3. That they are utterly deluded and have managed either to ignore or deny the reality of life under these regimes.

It would not be all that hard to achieve. First of all, one needs to be able to discount utterly any account of the regime that does not accord with the views you already hold. This is quite simple if you have already been indoctrinated with the notion that Capitalist = Bad and Socialist (even if in name alone) = Good. Therefore, anyone who criticises the regime must be an evil capitalist, and their opinions may be discounted.

With this mindset in place, you can tune out dissenting opinions and focus only on the twaddle your associates and the leaders of the regimes feed you.

1. They want to impose the same tyranny and commit the same atrocities here.

You think?

It is a strange type of craziness. I tell my Guardian reading Dad about the problems my friends had in Venezuela and how they are even frightened to vote against Chavez living in the UK – but he still is not convinced.

and frelimo didn’t militarily defeat the portuguese army.

Colonialism defeated itself.

After 13 years of war, a group of young captains decided that they had had enough, then overthrew the dictatorship.

Horrible crimes of war were commited by the portuguese army in Mozambique, which enabled it to have a substancial control over the territory.

There was no military defeat of the portuguese, there was no military victory of the rebels.

Let’s not falsifie History.

The fight against portuguese colonialism had had great leaders, the greatest of them being Amilcar Cabral, who was murdered by the portuguese political police.

You can say that Eduardo Mondlane was a leader with vision, also murdered by the portuguese political police.

in both cases there are suspicions of complicity from insiders.

Machel was not a great leader in any way you look at him.

alec, I am a newcomer!

I should have guessed. at least they are coherent. What I don’t understand is why don’t they equally praise Pinochet, Suharto, etc…

are extreme left wing dictators better than extreme right wing dictators?

No, I think they’re aware of what goes on, but consider it a reasonable price to pay – especially given that they’re not paying it – in order to defeat colonialism, imperialism etc.

If you’ve ever the “anti-imperialist newspaper” Lalkar it comes out with stuff like “Zanu-PF’s record is one of immense achievements of historic proportions”. Although it’s probably unfair to compare Andy Newman with Lalkar because Lalkar is barking mad.

in both cases there are suspicions of complicity from insiders.

Sarah, would you then compare this to Ian Smith’s destruction of moderates within the, then, black Rhodesian population and the subsequent power grab by the likes of Robert Mugabe?

First of all, one needs to be able to discount utterly any account of the regime that does not accord with the views you already hold. This is quite simple if you have already been indoctrinated with the notion that Capitalist = Bad and Socialist (even if in name alone) = Good. Therefore, anyone who criticises the regime must be an evil capitalist, and their opinions may be discounted.

Here is a classic example:-

The Thai ruling class finds its options narrowing… Laotian and Cambodian reactionary refugees in camps in the northern part of the country are being promised colonist landholdings, in return for fevered and fabricated stories of communist “bloodbaths” and atrocities in their liberated homelands for the “free world” media. As privileged alien landowners, these lackeys will obviously have strongly anti-communist motives.

(Malcolm Caldwell, “Thailand: Towards the Revolution,” Race and Class, 18:2, Autumn 1976, p148)

Caldwell was eventually murdered by the communist butchers he championed.

Hang around, Sarah. I guarantee Paul Fauvet is going to have a fit!

What I don’t understand is why don’t they equally praise Pinochet, Suharto, etc…

Simply put, they were in vague connexion to the USA and ‘capitalism’.

Your photostream is bringing back good memories my last holiday, to Lisbon. Sheer coincidence, I ran into Glasgow Celtic for their match against Benfica. Still, the city got off better than Manchester does with Glasgow Rangers.

Done a bit of traveling around Mos by Land Cruiser. It’s a stunning country, but quite unbelievably buggered, the war detritus is still lying around, old T34 tanks, BMP APCs, old Soviet trucks, thousands of items of railway rolling stock, smashed, like an abandoned train set all over the country .. and so on, sod-all infrastructure. Many of the people live in the most unbelievably grinding poverty.

Samora Michel is rather lionised now in South Africa; hardly surprising I suppose really – given the tacit endorsement of mad Bob by the ANC.

It is a form of racism, that not allows to know itself. It agrees with other countries having leaaders that would never accept for onself.

Yes, I was trying to think of an example but work got in the way. Caldwell is a very good one.

I believe Bertrand Russell and other upper class commies of his ilk refused to acknowledge the accounts of dissidents from the Iron Curtain.

It is a form of racism, that not allows to know itself. It agrees with other countries having leaaders that would never accept for onself.

There must be something about having that sort of world view that means your brain is ill-equipped to deal with things like every day political administration and so forth. It would certainly explain why Western leftist organisations seem to be hard pressed to distinguish their posterior from their humerus.

I surmise that any state run by such people would go tits-up in a matter of weeks, much as Respect its descendants and predecessors have done, again and again, for the last century or so.

There must be something about having that sort of world view that means your brain is ill-equipped to deal with things like every day political administration and so forth
Yup, it’s known technically as ‘The Chomsky Effect’.

The traditional CP hack justification for atrocities committed by Communist and marxist regimes was “you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.” You don’t hear that much nowadays; the last person I heard utter it in all seriousness was Professor Harold Rosen, father of Michael. He also gravely informed me that the vanguard (folk such as himself) were always in possession of the most advanced ideas…

Sadly, part of the reason that the Samoras of this world continue to be sanitised and lionised is their association with the sainted Mandela and the he-wishes-he-was-sainted Desmond Tutu who still see themselves as maintaining solidarity with their comrades in the liberation struggle.

And of course, there’s always “we are all Hezbollah now”…

Not wanting to sound like a broken record, but hard leftists adopt these ossified positions because it is their religion.

When there is a conflict between ‘faith’ and reality, leftist faith triumphs.

They’re a bit like the 17th century Vatican vis à vis Galileo, with the exception that The Vatican eventually admitted to the new world view.

The hard left, on the other hand is still Ptolyomic

Marxist sundials.

Not wanting to sound like a broken record, but hard leftists adopt these ossified positions because it is their religion.

Indeed. In this sense they are no different from a astrologer or an anti-vaccinationist. It matters not one jot that they have no evidence to support their case: what such people value more than anything else is the *fervency* of their belief, most particularly perhaps in the face of powerful and plentiful evidence to the contrary.

david t-i like cheese.
sarah franco-i like cheese too!
alex macperson-lol!gorgonzola is nice!
pabluski-no way dude.wensleydale rocks!
etc etc etc etc etc

Judy: “The traditional CP hack justification for atrocities committed by Communist and marxist regimes was “you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.”

To which the easy reply is, “I see lots of broken eggs – but where are the omelettes?”

When I was a kid growing up in South Africa I remember a joke that went around after Samora Michel’s plane was blown up (I was 7 or 8) at the time.

‘Have you heard, they found Samora Michel?’

‘Really?’

‘Ja, they found Samora Michel and Samora Michel and Samora Michel.’

I remember not knowing who he was — only that he was some African leader.

But for some reason the fact that you could make a pun out of someone’s name and a joke out of a tragedy was something that left an indelible impression on me.

“trellis” .indeed .in this sense you sound no different to a pompous funeral parlour owner.

blah: You of course are Oscar Wilde and we are not worthy

a few years ago when I left the swp AN contacted me and told me that it was a long and winding road overcoming residual trottery- I always believed that AN was ploughing a happy course back into a left reformism/ eventual labour party career. Unfortunately he has become embroiled in the political shennanigans of George Galloways post split Respect and his site is now the home to some of the worse of GG style stalinism.see for example His recent support for Chinese repression in Tibet, and the interview with the american Green leader Joel kovel http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=2295 which was a good example of how modern “anti-zionism” and anti- semitism merge seemlessly together

Judy:

The traditional CP hack justification for atrocities committed by Communist and marxist regimes was “you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.”

Nick:

To which the easy reply is, “I see lots of broken eggs – but where are the omelettes?”

And there is another question: did they intend to make omelettes in the first place?

blah:
I am sorry, I am a little dumb and not a native english speaker. I don’t understand what is there to mention about cheese. I like cheese, though. But I am not a sofisticated person, so I never ate gorgonzola.

anyway, it’s good to know that you like cheese. It’s good for your health. Congratulations.

Alec:

I don’t know how to compare the case of Ian smith’s regime.

About Mondlane and Amílcar cabral I know more, especially about Cabral, who by coincidence lived on the building next to my family’s home when he was studying in Lisbon. He was a great man, comparable to Leopold Senghor. He was fighting colonialism but he also loved Portugal and the portuguese people. My mother remembers him very well, although she didn’t know at that time that he was more than a student.

He also had good contacts with portuguese exiled dissidents based in Algeria.

Mondlane was a UN official. One of Salazar’s most important advisers, Adriano Moreira, met him at the UN when both were working there and, recognizing his qualities, tried to bring him to the portuguese side, but he didn’t go, and latter joined the resistance movements in Mozambique, who lacked a credible leader.

Both were killed by letter-bombs. It is a proven fact that PIDE, the political police send those bombs. The mystery is how come the letter-bombs were not opened by someone else. They both knew they were targets and there were security measures that they took to protect themselves.

They were both moderate people who had no option than to embrace armed conflict in order to liberate their people. Their death was highly convenient to others less moderate whose goal was not freedom but power.

This is a classical pattern in rebel movements. Even with the romans it was like that, not to mention the Trojan horse.

In every war there are people who are ready to betray those who rely on them. The fascist regime was highly skilled in using different factions against each other.

sarah Franco: I loved that encouraging post you have just done on your site about your friend. Maybe you can answer my question about a luta continua- I had been thinking it might have originated with Cabral?

“david t-i like cheese.
sarah franco-i like cheese too!
alex macperson-lol!gorgonzola is nice!
pabluski-no way dude.wensleydale rocks!
etc etc etc etc etc”

I like cheese too. Give me anything soft, French and smelly. (I like my cheese like I like my wome- anyway.)

The fondue is a noble, if rather retro form of cheese consumption. Of course, you can have meat fondues too. Maybe one with little shredded bits of blah would be good. What’s sauce for the Mozambiquan goose is surely sauce for the blah-ian gander?

I feel quite fatigued by all these poor-quality food-based analogies.

“We can’t afford to be choosy.” — J Pilger

Say cheese, Blah!

One mustn’t forget that Renamo, the creature of the SA Defence Force and its spooks, committed unspeakable atrocities as they laid waste to the countryside. So Mozambicans endured terror from left and right.

AMI:

a luta continua is a communist slogan created in the period that we call PREC.

Amílcar Cabral had nothing to do with it.

dave F: renamo, in Mozmbique, UNITA in Angola… the geopolitics of the civil wars in Mozmbique and Angola is fascinating.

I am most aquainted with Angola. These movements had no ideology whatsoever.

They would just adopt the ideology of their sponsor.

UNITA was backed by the chinese, then by the portuguese to fight the other movements, then by the USA and South Africa, then by Mobutu, then the Berlin wall came down and apartheid in south africa too, then US shifted its support for MPLA, then Mobutu was overtrown with the support of MPLA and Zimbabwe, then Namibia let MPLA use its territory to attack UNITA etc etc etc.

But don’t undervalue local actors. They have their own agenda. they are not merely puppets of major interests.

To Mozambique once again: there is ONE cardiologist for all the population of Maputo. Millions are being invested in tourism in Mozambique, and in agriculture. But the children of Maputo have to relie on charity to get medicines.

These people are no more than predators.

Bogdanor relies on a book by Joao Cabrita, a sympathizer of Renamo–about as bloodthirsty a bunch of goons that you will ever run into. Here’s a review of his book which describes his pro-Remano tilt:

http://www.iss.co.za/pubs/ASR/10No2/BookReviews.html

That’s par for the course here. Yell and scream about the sins of Anglo-American imperialism’s enemies and turn a blind eye to your own.

Dave F:

Mozambicans endured terror from left and right.

Renamo’s leaders, Andre Matsangaissa and Alfonso Dhlakama, were both former Frelimo officers.

John Doe:

Bogdanor relies on a book by Joao Cabrita, a sympathizer of Renamo–about as bloodthirsty a bunch of goons that you will ever run into.

Actually Cabrita’s book discusses Renamo atrocities as well as Frelimo atrocities.

That’s par for the course here. Yell and scream about the sins of Anglo-American imperialism’s enemies and turn a blind eye to your own.

A particularly stupid comment. “Anglo-American imperialism” supported Frelimo against Renamo. Reagan’s State Department gave financial aid while Thatcher actually sent the SAS to train Mozambique’s army.

That’s the problem with conducting “anti-imperialist” polemics based on a Google search. It quickly becomes clear that you don’t know what you’re talking about.

I was wondering how long it would take someone to mention Renamo.

The reason I didn’t mention it in my post is that no-one worships Renamo’s Dhlakama to the ridiculous extent that Newman worships Frelimo’s Machel.

a luta continua is a communist slogan created in the period that we call PREC. Amílcar Cabral had nothing to do with it.
Ok, having found something via Google (pace Paul) that suggested it was connected to Cabral, I had hoped it did have some authentic connection with the African liberation movements. But if what you say is correct, my immediate reaction to the Nigerian woman prisoner reciting her poem in a UK prison is revived, namely saddened that these fragments of forgotten imposed agendas are encrusted onto what she cherishes about her heritage.

Bogdanor: “Actually Cabrita’s book discusses Renamo atrocities as well as Frelimo atrocities.”

Well, that’s what you say, but the review I linked to says the following: “No detailed account is provided of atrocities by Renamo. Sometimes, the presentation has an apologetic character that almost borders on cynical in its naivete.” I can certainly understand why a rightwing fanatic like you would rely on such a book. I am also grateful for Harry’s Place publishing your tripe since it establishes their own rightwing appetites no matter their laughable attempts to speak on behalf of a “decent” left.

John Doe:

the review I linked to says the following…

My research, unlike yours, isn’t limited to an online review discovered through a Google search. I have actually read the book. It discusses Renamo atrocities explicitly and without apology. It has no “detailed account” of either side’s war crimes. That’s because it’s a political history of Mozambique and not a NGO report.

rightwing fanatic like you… publishing your tripe… their own rightwing appetites…

Since the Stalinist dictatorship you obviously adore was supported by the right-wing “Anglo-American imperialism” you claim to oppose; since the same Stalinist dictatorship was the source of the “bloodthirsty bunch of goons” you purport to condemn; and since, in your previous message, you displayed either complete ignorance or blatant mendacity regarding these facts, it’s clear that your tantrums are not to be taken seriously.

And unlike you, Bogdanor, I was in Mozambique in 1990. By any measure, the government of Mozambique was far more faithful to the kind of values that Harry’s Place pays lip-service to than the goons that were trying to overthrow it. That is why the apartheid state backed Renamo. People can judge for themselves whether the book you rely on is objective or not. My guess is that the review is correct, that it does whitewash Renamo. Indeed, another scholarly review (Journal of African Studies, June 2002) describes the book as guilty of “systematic bias” on behalf of Renamo. Another (African Studies Review, April, 2002) describes it as a “hatchet job” on Frelimo. Anyhow, people can figure out where you are coming from on your neoconservative website. Harry’s Place is welcome to you. That mangy dog does have a way of attracting fleas.

Oh yes Bogdanor very convincing. So you give us an utterly distorted and one sided account and then justify yourself by suggesting its for the lefts moral education. hmm. interesting.

John Doe:-

By any measure, the government of Mozambique was far more faithful to the kind of values that Harry’s Place pays lip-service to than the goons that were trying to overthrow it.

Since HP’s values don’t include one-party dictatorships, banning of opposition parties and independent trade unions, religious apartheid, slave labour, concentration camps, and systematic torture, rape and murder, and since HP doesn’t celebrate tyrants whose models include Mao and Pol Pot, plainly you’re expressing your own support for the state terrorists who committed those crimes.

Now if you want to identify with some of the worst sadists in Africa, that’s your problem. But don’t pretend that you’ve visited Mozambique, or that you have any knowledge of the conflict at all, when you’ve just falsely asserted that “Anglo-American imperialism” supported the other side. That’s the sort of blunder made by someone whose information comes from a 5-second Google search.

My guess is that the review is correct, that it does whitewash Renamo.

But of course, you haven’t read the book, so you wouldn’t know that Cabrita cites, e.g., Zimbabwe and Frelimo allegations of Renamo atrocities including attacks on civilian targets, destruction of villages, hacking people to death, etc. (pp253-4). That’s what happens when you don’t know what you’re talking about.

On the other hand, when you do know what you’re talking about, your dishonesty is apparent:-

Indeed, another scholarly review (Journal of African Studies, June 2002) describes the book as guilty of “systematic bias” on behalf of Renamo.

In fact the reviewer (in the Journal of Modern African Studies – you can’t even get the title right) raises the issue of bias because the coverage of Renamo’s record doesn’t match the items on

Frelimo human rights abuses (most of which are entirely credible).

So the source you offered to discredit the author you haven’t read explicitly affirms his credibility on the very issue that I used him to document.

Another (African Studies Review, April, 2002) describes it as a “hatchet job” on Frelimo.

The full passage (p202) reads:-

Can Mondlane still be considered the equal of Agostinho Neto, Amilcar Lopes Cabral, Julius Nyerere, Frantz Fanon, et al.? If so, in what way?

It is important to raise these questions, if only to spare Cabrita’s work from being perceived as a hatchet job. Ultimately, though, this text stands in need of a broad conceptual fabric to hold the inquiry together.

In other words, the criticism has nothing to do with Cabrita’s discussion of Machel’s dictatorship; it’s about the political biography of Machel’s predecessor.

To sum up: you’ve boasted of your support for Stalinists, you’ve vilified a scholar you haven’t read, and you’ve defended yourself by falsifying the few second-hand items you have read.

Psychopath, dunce and liar: what a combination!

John Doe:-

By any measure, the government of Mozambique was far more faithful to the kind of values that Harry’s Place pays lip-service to than the goons that were trying to overthrow it.

Since HP’s values don’t include one-party dictatorships, banning of opposition parties and independent trade unions, religious apartheid, slave labour, concentration camps, and systematic torture, rape and murder, and since HP doesn’t celebrate tyrants whose models include Mao and Pol Pot, plainly you’re expressing your own support for the state terrorists who committed those crimes.

Now if you want to identify with some of the worst sadists in Africa, that’s your problem. But don’t pretend that you’ve visited Mozambique, or that you have any knowledge of the conflict at all, when you’ve just falsely asserted that “Anglo-American imperialism” supported the other side. That’s the sort of blunder made by someone whose information comes from a 5-second Google search.

My guess is that the review is correct, that it does whitewash Renamo.

But of course, you haven’t read the book, so you wouldn’t know that Cabrita cites, e.g., Zimbabwe and Frelimo allegations of Renamo atrocities including attacks on civilian targets, destruction of villages, hacking people to death, etc. (pp253-4). That’s what happens when you don’t know what you’re talking about.

On the other hand, when you do know what you’re talking about, your dishonesty is apparent:-

Indeed, another scholarly review (Journal of African Studies, June 2002) describes the book as guilty of “systematic bias” on behalf of Renamo.

In fact the reviewer (in the Journal of Modern African Studies – you can’t even get the title right) raises the issue of bias because the coverage of Renamo’s record doesn’t match the items on

Frelimo human rights abuses (most of which are entirely credible).

So the source you offered to discredit the author you haven’t read explicitly affirms his credibility on the very issue that I used him to document.

Another (African Studies Review, April, 2002) describes it as a “hatchet job” on Frelimo.

The full passage (p202) reads:-

Can Mondlane still be considered the equal of Agostinho Neto, Amilcar Lopes Cabral, Julius Nyerere, Frantz Fanon, et al.? If so, in what way?

It is important to raise these questions, if only to spare Cabrita’s work from being perceived as a hatchet job. Ultimately, though, this text stands in need of a broad conceptual fabric to hold the inquiry together.

In other words, the criticism has nothing to do with Cabrita’s discussion of Machel’s dictatorship; it’s about the political biography of Machel’s predecessor.

To sum up: you’ve boasted of your support for Stalinists, you’ve vilified a scholar you haven’t read, and you’ve defended yourself by falsifying the few second-hand items you have read.

Psychopath, dunce and liar: what a combination!

Is pwn too juvenile a word to describe Paul’s post?

“Sometimes, the presentation has an apologetic character that almost borders on cynical in its naivete. “Initially, Renamo ambushes on the south-north highway, as on other routes, were by means of road blocks. Passengers from civilian vehicles, usually buses, were ordered to alight with their belongings. Renamo says it resorted to ambushing road traffic when government soldiers travelling in civilian vehicles began shooting at guerrillas. Renamo did try to discourage civilians from travelling together with FAM personnel.” The author obviously tries either to conceal or simply forgets the fact that the civil war in Mozambique was of such viciousness that, until Liberia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone, it marked the most serious degradation of human rights in Africa. From the late 1970s until the early 1990s, Renamo set about devastating the country and terrorising those who failed to support them. It was in Mozambique that, for the first time in independent Africa, Africans resorted to the systematic use of mutilation and the killing of parents by their children in order to assure subservience”

From the link posted by John Doe. Not only has Bogdanor relied on an account which seeks to cover up these horrendos crimes, but he is in fact far more one eyed and tub thumping then even an apologist for Renamo for goodness sake. You’d never know reading his account above that the crimes he documented were committed during a civil war in which there were two sides, a civil war during which the kinds of horrors with which we have tragically become more familiar since, where actually pioneered.

So is history re-written for the purposes of cheap polemic. Odd how much those who write like this resemble the stereotypes they decry.

Bogdanor’s frantic efforts to salvage the reputation of Cabrita’s book should fool nobody. The consistent thread through all the reviews I cited is that he is partial to Renamo. And as far as the Washington Post item cited by Bogdanor about cab drivers being thrown in prison (for what? overcharging?), it actually appeared originally in the London Telegraph. You can get a sense of the political leanings of the author, “an American electronics designer” by reading the final sentences of his report: “We landed in Johannesburg Airport 45 minutes later. At Jan Smuts airport, we were surprised by a sound that we hardly ever heard in Mozambique: laughter.” I am sure you must know what laughter this knucklehead racist is referring to, the sound of Afrikaner cops as they torture Black prisoners.

So is history re-written for the purposes of cheap polemic.

Of course. Anything which declines to praise some perpetual Swuppie student’s designated savour is writing “polemic”.

johng:-

While your comrade started with a 5-second Google search, it seems your research has only just reached that primitive stage. As I’ve just cited Cabrito references to Renamo atrocities, I think the reviewer’s claim that he conceals the brutality of the conflict needs rather more support than a banal quotation about ambushes on roads.

And the reviewer’s statement that systematic mutilation, etc., in the Mozambique civil war occurred “for the first time in independent Africa” is laughable. Such atrocities had taken place in Uganda, Burundi, Angola, and elsewhere.

You’d never know reading his account above that the crimes he documented were committed during a civil war in which there were two sides, a civil war during which the kinds of horrors with which we have tragically become more familiar since, where [sic] actually pioneered.

Most of the atrocities chronicled in my post did not occur during the civil war. They started as soon as Frelimo came to power. They had nothing to do with the civil war.

If you had bothered to glance at the dates in my footnotes you wouldn’t have made that blunder – which, I admit, is not as impressive as your comrade’s falsehood about “Anglo-American imperialism,” or his lies about quotations.

Just for once, John Game does (sort of) have a point.

Let’s not forget that Renamo (backed first by the Smith regime in Rhodesia, then by apartheid South Africa) were a pack of bastards as well. It doesn’t detract from Paul Bogdanor’s original point.

“John Doe” may be a self-disclosed Stalinist, a self-confessed ignoramus, and a proven liar, but at least he’s serviceable as an object of mockery:-

You can get a sense of the political leanings of the author, “an American electronics designer” by reading the final sentences of his report: “We landed in Johannesburg Airport 45 minutes later. At Jan Smuts airport, we were surprised by a sound that we hardly ever heard in Mozambique: laughter.” I am sure you must know what laughter this knucklehead racist is referring to, the sound of Afrikaner cops as they torture Black prisoners.

That’s right: John Doe concludes that a man who was released from one country’s concentration camps and heard laughter in another country’s airport must have been a supporter of that country’s political system! He heard laughter in an airport – so he was a racist! Could anyone makes this up? Presumably John Doe’s powers of deduction tell him that the Telegraph was racist because it published this account, and the Washington Post was racist for reprinting it! Who could hope to compete with such a pathetic display?

The book review that inspired these absurdities from John Doe and johng attacked Cabrita for the “apologetic character” of his presentation, which is “almost cynical in its naivete.” The basis for that criticism is this quotation from Cabrita’s book:-

Initially, Renamo ambushes on the south-north highway, as on other routes, were by means of road blocks. Passengers from civilian vehicles, usually buses, were ordered to alight with their belongings. Renamo says it resorted to ambushing road traffic when government soldiers travelling in civilian vehicles began shooting at guerrillas. Renamo did try to discourage civilians from travelling together with FAM personnel.

The reviewer commented that Cabrita “obviously tries either to conceal or simply forgets” the viciousness of the civil war.

Here is the rest of Cabrita’s paragraph:-

As the war dragged on, horrific accounts of ambushes on the highway targeted by Renamo began to emerge. A total of 262 people were reportedly killed in two separate ambushes on the north-south highway in October 1967. (Cabrita, p198)

The reviewer was lying about Cabrita’s concealment of Renamo atrocities in this passage.

John Doe and johng used a dishonest book review to defame a scholar without bothering to read him.

John Doe and johng have no basis whatsoever for rejecting Cabrita’s evidence of Frelimo atrocities.

For people interested in real reporting from the same period as opposed to some “electronics designer”, I recommend Michael T. Kaufman’s Nov. 12, 1977 article in the NY Times. It starts off, “In slightly more than 2 years of independence, this Marxist state seems to have succeeded where so many developing African nations have failed: creating a sense of discipline without outwardly turning the country into an armed camp.” He continues, “what was even more striking to a visitor was the absence of men in uniform or men with guns.”

In distinction to Bogdanor’s redbaiting hysteria, the NY Times reports that “though there were nightmares in the settler community, there was no bloodbath.” Western diplomats were cited by the Times for acknowledging only 2 executions in this period, and that was a couple of Blacks found guilty of murdering a white priest. However, Frelimo regarded this as a mistake because the new constitution banned capital punishment.

There were some social changes (nightclubs were closed) but “no one complained of outright repression” according to the Times.

At any rate, anybody who wants to find out what was going on in Mozambique in this period can do searches in Proquest in any public library. What Bogdanor is trying to do is paint a picture of Mozambique as Cambodia but it is utter and complete bullshit. He cites one book written by a Renamo sympathizer, the Economist and some “electronics designer” to build his case. Most serious researchers would go to the Washington Post and NY Times to read what their correspondents had to say. NONE OF THEM report anything like the lurid and utterly false portrait painted by the hysterical redbaiter and neocon Bogdanor.

John Doe:-

In distinction to Bogdanor’s redbaiting hysteria, the NY Times reports that “though there were nightmares in the settler community, there was no bloodbath.”

The NYT also reported that there was no Stalinist famine during forced collectivisation in the Ukraine, that there were no Stalinist frame-ups during the Moscow purge trials, that Castro was not planning a communist dictatorship in Cuba, that Pol Pot’s impending victory promised a better life for the population of Cambodia, etc., etc.

To assess the NYT journalist’s claims about Mozambique, consider this report from Time Magazine:-

There are now fewer than 1,000 trained administrators and only 15 medical doctors for a population of 8.5 million people. Machel, 42, a onetime medical orderly who led the struggle for independence and became the country’s first President, set about at breakneck pace to convert Mozambique into what he calls “Africa’s first Marxist state.” All land was nationalized. The large colonial plantations, which supported more than half of the population, were organized into collective farms. But, reports one visitor, “nobody can agree on how they are to be run, so production from the land is at a virtual standstill. While the bureaucrats argue, nobody does any planting.”

Food production is down by 75% in some areas. Bread, rice, milk and eggs are in short supply. Production of major cash crops like sugar and cotton is off at least 50%. Investment has been scared away, unemployment has soared, and the last remaining whites (who number fewer than 30,000) are scrambling to get out.

Thousands of people have been packed off to “reeducation centers,” where Machel’s brand of Marxism is taught with a heavy and sometimes brutal hand. Machel does not coddle even his own supporters. He has warned that many workers might have to toil for as long as three years without pay “for we are without funds to reward your labors.” After independence, Frelimo soldiers were given the choice of leaving the service without pay for their years in the guerrilla movement or of staying in the service—also without pay. Says Machel: “We cannot tolerate a bourgeoisie in Mozambique, even a black one.”

Now recall John Doe’s closing rant:-

NONE OF THEM report anything like the lurid and utterly false portrait painted by the hysterical redbaiter and neocon Bogdanor.

John Doe has defamed an author he hasn’t read.

John Doe has lied about reviews of the author he hasn’t read.

John Doe has used a dishonest book review to defame the author he hasn’t read.

And now John Doe has lied about press coverage of the Stalinist dictatorship he supports.

There is summat Sonic-like and disreputable about hiding behind an ad hoc moniker to spend a day seizing on single points in heavily referened essays, offering little more than secondary reports and 30 year old opinion columns yourself; not to mention the ‘neo-con’ denouncement.

Plus, even if the poster John Doe were in Mozambique in 1990, the events being discussed stretch back to the late 1970s. Even Machel died four years whence.

Oh please. I use a moniker because if I used my real name, my posts would be deleted as was the case when I first posted here. And who gives a shit if I used my real name or not. The issue is what I am saying. Let me repeat. In 1977, there was no “repression” in Mozambique. If you don’t believe me, get your ass over to a public library and do your own search on Proquest. There is NOTHING to indicate that people were being arrested, tortured, etc. Harry’s Place allowed a guest post from a filthy neocon liar. I guess that after being caught in a lie over supporting Bush’s war in Iraq, the “decents” have no other option but to go back to a period that is less familiar. In either case, you are dealing with neocon disinformation, the hallmark of this dreadful blog.

Ass? Don’t you mean arse?

As I said, disreputable. No effort to present your case, merely expecting others to research your meanwhiling, and presenting opposing opinion as inconceivable.

And too accustomed to the name-calling and deletion of dissenting opinion at Lenin’s Tomb, methinks. Unless you’re the creature known as W J Philips, you ain’t going to be deleted.

John, it’s quite simple: if you think this blog is dreadful then fuck off. There must be millions of blogs about. No sane person goes around seeking out ones he finds dreadful and then trolling them. And nobody’s posts get deleted unless they’re either (a) porn or other spam or (b) pointless aggressive trolling.

Paul, have you apologized for supporting the Iraq War?

I will “fuck off” when this blog stops writing filthy lies against true *decent* leftists like Samora Machel. Why don’t you people just drop the pretenses about being leftists and rename it something like Union Jack, Kipling’s Wet Dream or Churchill’s Tomb.

I haven’t yet. The YouGov Iraq War Tracker poll says that on March 18 2003 50% of the public thought the USA and UK were right to military action against Iraq. Four years on it was only 30% who still (somehow) thought it was right. I was in the original 50%, but not in the 30. I’m not saying sorry though, even though I feel a bit of an idiot.

John, instead of this not enormously constructive talk of filthy neocon lies and fucking off and so forth, if you have a strong case for Samora Machel being an actual decent leftist, and you want to write a post about it , I’d be happy to publish it here if you want to email it to me.

John Doe:-

Let me repeat. In 1977, there was no “repression” in Mozambique. If you don’t believe me… do your own search on Proquest. There is NOTHING to indicate that people were being arrested, tortured, etc.

From the Christian Science Monitor, May 7, 1976:-

The refugees’ stories tell of the regime’s increasing ferocity, where summary arrests for anything from being late at work to not carrying the correct identification papers can send a person to prison or to labor camp. Desperate overcrowding, semi-starvation and torture in these prisons are often described.

Reports circulating in Lisbon say Frelimo is holding 3,000 Portugese, 60,000 black Africans, and 12,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses, as well as Americans and Europeans, in these camps and prisons.

Please note that I decided to meet John Doe’s arbitrary stipulation: I specifically accessed this through the ProQuest database.

And please recall John Doe’s exact words:-

There is NOTHING to indicate that people were being arrested, tortured, etc.

As I’ve now shown repeatedly, John Doe is simply a liar.

People can decide for themselves which is more accurate. A correspondent from the NY Times, who was *in* Mozambique or a Christian Scientist reporter who was where? Lisbon? The version of Proquest I use does not include the Christian Science Monitor so I can’t even follow up.

At any rate, clearly the newspaper of record did not represent Mozambique as being gripped by military, Stalinist terror. In contrast to the “electronic designer’s” report of capitalist farmers being swept up into gulags, here’s what the Washington Post reported on February 21, 1977:

“Far from pushing the rapid, and premature, nationalization of the tottering private sector, his government is actively courting the remaining private owners to keep their factories open.”

That doesn’t sound very Pol Pot-ish to me.

But I don’t think there’s much point in comparing newspaper articles. People can judge for themselves whether Bogdanor’s portrait of Machel’s Mozambique makes sense. The guy is not interested in a balanced study of the country, but cherry-picking newspaper articles or pro-Renamo books to back up the hard-right ideological point he is interested in making. A typical Bushite neo-con, in other words.

John Doe:-

The version of Proquest I use does not include the Christian Science Monitor so I can’t even follow up.

Right. That’s why John Doe set that arbitrary rule about the NYT and the WP: his version of ProQuest only has access to those papers.

That’s why he automatically dismisses reports from The Economist: he doesn’t have access.

That’s why he defamed a historian with misquotations from book reviews: he hasn’t read the book.

John Doe has not read anything about the subject. And if John Doe hasn’t read it, the evidence doesn’t count.

Of course, if John Doe does read it, the evidence still won’t count, because he’s a self-confessed disciple of a Stalinist dictatorship.

Let me illustrate. From the Washington Post, April 22, 1976:-

about 35,000 members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses sect – many of them refugees from prosecution in neighboring Malawi – have been forcibly moved to reeducation camps in central Mozambique in recent months.

And since John Doe has such faith in official statements from Stalinist dictatorships, here’s the official justification for this policy of religious apartheid:-

In a recent statement, the government warned: “The people must be made to understand that to attend church services or to obey the preachings of the missionaries is simply to work against Mozambique and to serve the imperialist powers.”

Quoting John Doe:-

do your own search on Proquest. There is NOTHING to indicate that people were being arrested, tortured, etc.

I accessed that report through ProQuest.

Again: John Doe is simply a liar.

Wardytron,

I very much hope that John Doe’s comments won’t be deleted, regardless of how many lies he tells and regardless of what insults he throws at me (”hysterical redbaiter and neocon,” “filthy neocon liar,” “typical Bushite neo-con,” etc.)

His lies are easily exposed and his non-stop use of the “neocon” code-word speaks for itself.

On the other hand it’s not clear why his systematic lying and his open contempt for HP merit the reward of an HP post in defence of his favourite dictatorship. Sonic, Benji, TheIrie, etc. don’t have that privilege, so why offer it to John Doe, whose beliefs and conduct are much worse?

I also suspect that John Doe hasn’t disclosed his real name because he uses it when he posts on another group blog. Readers of my original post can guess which one.

Paul,

I see you have quoted Malcolm Caldwell above. Caldwell was at SOAS. johng is also at SOAS. OK admittedly, so was Bernard Lewis, but johng seems to have more in common with Caldwell than Lewis. We all know what happened to Caldwell don’t we?

johng should probably take note and be very careful what mad dictators he chooses to support.

Paul

I’ve noted, with surprise a while ago, Newman saying how he liked some of Mao’s writings.

comment nr.6 to that post at “SU” blog is worth looking up, as Newman’s growing love affair with stalinism was noted by a poster.

You didn’t note Machel’s use of the term “marxism-leninism” in a quote Andy Newman supplies. It may not have registered? It is a term used by stalinists and maoists not socialists.

No, Alec Macpherson, Paul Fauvet is not going to have a fit. I’m merely sad that people are content to write off Samora Machel on the basis of Cabrita’s book. There is a voluminous literature on post-independence Mozambique, but Paul Bogdanor chooses the most anti-Frelimo writer of them all.

Let me suggest that he also read, at a minimum, the sole biography of Samora Machel, “Machel of Mozambique” by the late Scottish journalist Iain Christie, “Mozambique: the Revolution under Fire”, by Joseph Hanlon, and my own book, co-authored with Marcelo Mosse, “Carlos Cardoso: Telling the Truth in Mozambique”. The latter does not focus on Machel, though he looms large in the early chapters, but I think it gives a more nuanced version of the complexities of an attempt to build socialism in southern Africa.

Although Cabrita does acknowledge some Renamo atrociities, his work, before and after his book, is basically Renamo propaganda. And althogh Renamo is now playing by the rules, and is the country’s largest opposition party, in the past it was the tool of the local white supremacist powers.

It was set up by the Smith regime in Rhodesia after Mozambique announced the implementation of UN sanctions against Smith. It acted as an irregular unit in the Rhodesian forces until, in 1980, it was transfered to bases in the Transval where it cam under the control of South African Military Intelligence. (For the Rhodesian creation of Renamo, see the memoirs of the then head of the Rhodesian Central Intelligence Organisatio, CIO, Ken Flowers, “Serving Secretly”).

Some claims in this thread are completely off the wall – such as the idea that Frelimo did not win its war against Portuguese colonial rule, and that the Portuguese army just meekly handed power over. In fact, the military situation prior to the Portuguese revolution of 1974 was catastrophic in both Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique (although in Angola, divisions in the nationalist movement gave the Portuguese some breathing space).

In Mozambique, Frelimo had withstood General Kaulza de Ariaga’s “Gordian Knot” offensive the largest operatrion in any of te colonial wars, which the Portuguese boasted would eliminate the liberation movement. When the offensive ended, Frelimo still controlled large parts of Cabo Delgado, Niassa and Tete provinces – which, admittedly, the Portuguese could cope with, since these areas were sparsely populated and marginal to the economy.

But when Frelimo crossed the Zambezi, and started operating in southern Tete, it posed a direct threat to construction work on the Cahora Bassa dam. The Portuguese had to tie down thousands of troops to defend the dam site.

That made it all the easier for Frelimo guerrilla units to move deep into the centre of the country, and strike at the Beira-Zimbabwe railway, causing panic among colonial circles in Beira.

This sort of war is not won by marching into the capital city, but by sapping the enemy’s will to fight. It wasn’t the Portuguese Communist Party that told the army to stop fighting – the soldiers and the junior officers realised these wars could not be won.

In the first post-coup government in Portugal, an attenpt was made to deny Frelimo its victory. There was talk of a referendum to see if the colonies really wanted independence. To which Machel replied with the acid words “You don’t ask a slave if he wants to be free”. General Antonio Spinola’s attempt to continue the war was one of the factors that led to his downfall – while Frelimo replied by reopening its front in Zambezia province, meeting next to no resistance from Portuguese troops who were not prepared to give up their lives for a lost cause, and just wanted to go home.

As for the way in which Machel came to power – it wasn’t by murdering opponents. The founder and first President of Frelimo, Eduardo Mondlane, was assassinated by a parcel bomb sent by the Portuguese secret police, the PIDE, in February 1969.

The Frelimo executive set up a troika to lead the party formed by Machel (then commander of the army), Marcelino dos Santos, and Uria Simango. The arrangement broke down when Simango denounced his fellow members of the troika, and wrote the pamphlet “Gloomy situation in Frelimo”, in an attempt to garner support among other members of the OAU. Following this, Simango ws expelled, Machel was elected president of Frelimo, and dos Santos Deputy President.

The myth has sprung up that Simango was a heroic fighter against marxism. In fact, after his expulsion simango tried to win support from the Chinese by posing as a Maoist, and even denouncing Frelimo as “anti-communist”.

Claims that Machel was a Maoist who supported Pol Pot are quite absurd. The reality is that Frelimo refused to get involved in the Sino-Soviet dispute, and independent Mozambique managed to maintain cordial relations with both sides. Then came the Vietnamese overthrow of Pol Pot, and the Chinese invasion of Vietnam. The Mozambican government publicly concened the Chinese action, and when a Cambodian delegation visited Mozambique in 1981, it was an ant-Pol Pot one (at a time when much of the world, including the United States was quite happy for Pol Pot’s “Democratic Kampuchea” to retain that country’s UN seat).

Human rights abuses were perfectly real, and Machel, as leader of te state, the army and the party, must bear responsibility for them. The worst of them took place, not immediately after independence, but in 1983 – when the Frelimo leadership was panicking over Renamo/South African advances. It was then that the death penalty was introduced for racketeering, that there were several public executions, that corporal punishment (lashes) was introduced for a variety of crimes, and there was a demented attempt to deport the unemployed from the cities to the countryside. It was probably also in 1983 that Simango, and several other dissidents who had been arrested in 1974-75 were secretly executed, thus breaking a promise that Machel had given to the Tanzanian and Zambian Presidents, Julius Nyerere and Kenneth Kaunda.

I don’t intend to make excuses for any of this. But I would point out that a few months later, faced with opposition from the pro-Frelimo intelligentsia and even from judges who resisted sentencing people to lashes, all these policies were quietly dropped.

Again Bogdanor is only making matters worse for himself with his elaborations. He clearly has little idea of the scale of the atrocities conducted by Renamo. The point stands that his original piece he wrote here is really quite astonishing in its one-sidedness, and, effectively, its covering up of massive human rights abuses. Why do I put it like this, when he would claim that he was merely pointing to the lefts inability to accept that human rights abuses were carried out by liberation movements against colonialism? (this is sometimes true incidently). Largely because his account is located within a larger revisionism about world history which seeks to mystify why it was that so many millions of people did support these liberation movements despite their own brutalities and horrors.

And what he abstracts from is precisely the catalogue of vicious abuse and destruction which was the reaction of white Rhodesia and South Africa to the prospect of decolonisation during the same historical period, and which any socialist of any kind would have wished to see defeated. Its also why Stalinist and Maoist ideas became widespread in these parts of the world, offering both the prospect of military and logistical support not forthcoming from the west, and on the other hand it was thought an alternative model of development. It is perfectly comprehensible why this should have been so, and the attempt to argue as if this was perplexing or a moral failure of some kind, ignores completely the brutal destruction of not only these movements but their countries by the kind of scorched earth policies of both third force movements and their minority rule sponsers.

Its kind of ironic where you have the same bunch of people finding it offensive if civilian casualties are even mentioned on the BBC in relationship to discussions of the dambusters (the interesting justification for this being that this was ‘total war’: you really couldn’t make it up, given the provenance of that phrase), and similarly advocating the use of nuclear weapons against civilian populations if the cause is right.

Again the close resemblence between these kind of muscular liberal approaches and stalinist hackery of the worst kind cannot be a co-incidence can it?

I must say my favourite post above was the one that tried to argue that it was ’sad’ to see Nigerian women shouting Communist slogans as these were ‘alien’ to her heritage: presumably the same isn’t thought about liberalism, democracy and human rights by these heroic cosmopolitans, who in reality seem to be advocating a bizarrely selective form of indigenism and moral relativism.

Putting your head in your hands and crying very softly, at least, Paul F? As I’ve said before, I have a great deal of admiration for you and, on many points, am probably more in tune that not. However, you have a tendency to project and assume that the likes of the IMF and neo-liberalism are there to fund your socialist plans whilst you constantly decry them. Not to mention believing your have ownership of certain words.

(at a time when much of the world, including the United States was quite happy for Pol Pot’s “Democratic Kampuchea” to retain that country’s UN seat)

Far be it from me to point out that that ain’t the same as supporting it. The US was hardly likely to launch into another war.

Claims that Machel was a Maoist who supported Pol Pot are quite absurd.

Followed, without apparent hint of irony, by:

[...] and there was a demented attempt to deport the unemployed from the cities to the countryside.

In fact, after his expulsion simango tried to win support from the Chinese by posing as a Maoist, and even denouncing Frelimo as “anti-communist”.

As far as I can see, you are the first person in the thread to mention Simango. Paul Bogdanor will have his motives and wider perspective, but he has explicitly not sought to sanctify Renamo despite John Doe’s – and, to a lesser extent and overtly, you – bandying around of the “neo-con apologist” accusation.

(This also applies to his use of “you people” – always a sign of a fascistic demand for conformity, I find – and broadsides with random details – always a sign of a moron who cannot win even on his stated terms, I find – about Churchill or Kipling. I’m sure we’ll be given a Morgoth quote in a moment, but no-one serious is holding those individuals up as exemplars of a particular struggle. Compare this to his – and, yes, yours, Paul – insistence that support for a certain cause is defined by adoration of a figurehead. Although, you tend more towards supporting national determination or opposition to the gang-rape of a country rather than pathological loathing of whatever the hell neo-cons are.

As for the way in which Machel came to power – it wasn’t by murdering opponents. The founder and first President of Frelimo, Eduardo Mondlane, was assassinated by a parcel bomb sent by the Portuguese secret police, the PIDE, in February 1969.

The implication given before was that rival factions were complicity in this, and similar assassinations.

[...] when the Frelimo leadership was panicking over Renamo/South African advances.

Hilarious. Everything bad which happens is the result of outside interference or events, and sole personal and direct responsibility for executing or torturing to death petty criminals and captive political rivals can never be ascribed to your chosen heroes! Universal principles are meant to be applied universally, not when it suits your pre-determined opinion.

I don’t intend to make excuses for any of this.

You just have.

JOHN DOE

People can decide for themselves which is more accurate. A correspondent from the NY Times, who was *in* Mozambique [...]

Have you ditched the one about your being there in 1990?

[...] or a Christian Scientist reporter who was where?

Renamo leaders were also in Mozambique. Should we defer to their opinion? Joao Cabrita was also there… oh, wait… he heard some [unspecified] South Africa laughter after a dearth of it, and torture in Mozambique, so was clearly a neo-con Apartheid fascist. Thousands of JWs were also there… oh, nothing happened.

Disreputable, low personal morality, betrayal of entire populations by proxy to fuel an Internet feud. At least Felix Dzerzhinsky was willing to kill a man, even if he fainted immediately afterwards.

For crying out loud, give us a preview!

paul fauvet:-

Can you confirm or deny that you are the same Paul Fauvet who made the following statement in the newspaper of the Communist Party of Great Britain?

I fell proud to call myself a communist. The positive side of our movement far outweighs the negative. The spectres of Stalin and Brezhnev weigh heavily on us, but in the historical balance they are surely outweighed by the contributions of such diverse figures as Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Gramsci, Dimitrov, Ho Chi Minh and Samora Machel… (7 Days, February 3, 1990)

Can you also confirm or deny that you were in charge of the English-language division of the Frelimo state news agency AIM, the equivalent of the Soviet propaganda agency Tass?

Can you confirm or deny that Carlos Cardoso, the subject of the biography you coauthored, was in charge of the same Frelimo news agency and that he became a personal adviser to the dictator Samora Machel?

Can you confirm or deny that Iain Christie, a source recommended in your comment, also worked for that Frelimo news agency, and that he was in charge of the English-language division of Frelimo’s Radio Mozambique?

Can you confirm or deny that Joseph Hanlon, the other source recommended in your comment, is a Frelimo supporter whose books repeatedly cite Frelimo press releases as objective fact?

If you can confirm these points, can you please explain why you did not see fit to disclose them in your long message bewailing “propaganda” about Mozambique?

Ah Paul Bogdanor falls back on the old interrogation techniques. You made the post Paul. On the whole do you think decolonisation was a good or bad thing? Do you think the roll back of white minority rule was on the whole a good thing? Do you accept that you have distorted the historical record in a cheap attempt to have a pop at contemporary political opponents? And that now your falling back into naked whataboutary in a fairly unattractive ranty sort of manner? Yes or no answers, and no waffle man!

johng:-

Again Bogdanor is only making matters worse for himself with his elaborations.

I exposed your comrade in this exchange as a serial liar, I exposed the source you quoted to discredit one of my sources as a liar, and now you respond by claiming vindication.

He clearly has little idea of the scale of the atrocities conducted by Renamo. The point stands that his original piece he wrote here is really quite astonishing in its one-sidedness, and, effectively, its covering up of massive human rights abuses.

This is also the rhetorical technique of the Holocaust deniers. Write about the horrors of Auschwitz and they will immediately complain of “one-sidedness” and “covering up” of Dresden, the Gulag, etc.

On the whole do you think decolonisation was a good or bad thing? Do you think the roll back of white minority rule was on the whole a good thing?

Decolonisation and the rollback of white minority rule were good things. Detotalitarianisation and the rollback of communist minority rule were even better.

Do you accept that you have distorted the historical record in a cheap attempt to have a pop at contemporary political opponents?

You have not shown a single distortion of the historical record. Your only substantive contribution so far has been quoting an allegation from an online book review, which I exposed as a straightforward lie.

‘Caldwell was at SOAS. johng is also at SOAS. OK admittedly, so was Bernard Lewis, but johng seems to have more in common with Caldwell than Lewis. We all know what happened to Caldwell don’t we?

johng should probably take note and be very careful what mad dictators he chooses to support.’

I think there’s as much chance of John Game putting himself in harm’s way (as Caldwell did by placing himself at the mercy of Pol Pot’s regime) as there is of him constructing a coherent argument. Or of him actually researching about a topic before he comments on it. Or of him engaging with someone’s argument in an honest matter. Or of him completing his PhD, and actually producing some scholarly research.

That mean’s there’s no chance at all.

“presumably the same isn’t thought about liberalism, democracy and human rights by these heroic cosmopolitans, who in reality seem to be advocating a bizarrely selective form of indigenism and moral relativism:”

You got it. The same is not thought. Precisely because I am not a moral relativist about Communism, especially as represented by the historic movement which espoused that slogan. Because unlike Communism, I do elevate democracy and human rights to a universal value.

Mr Bogdanor, I looked at the wikipedia article for Samora Machel and none of his atrocities are so much as mentioned. Seeing as you are evidently well informed on the issue and very few in the English speaking world are, I request that you make the necessary emendations. Getting political wikipedia articles to reflect the truth is, unfortunately, arduous work, but it does sometimes work and even if you fail to overcome the dedicated ranks of those who work to scrub Wikipedia of information damaging to the Left, you can at least get a “neutrality disputed” label stuck on. Please do a service to truth. (I’m sorry if that sounded sarcastic, it was not meant to be).

G,

So much I have looked at on Wikipedia contains nonsense that I have stopped looking at it. I would guess anyone could spend their lives trying to correct that site and you will still get no-nothings reverting things to show erroneous material. It is an exercise in time wasting.

If you want to know about a subject obtain a decent book by a reliable author published by a reputable publishing house. Failing that read a peer reviewed journal article or at least a perceived reliable source. Wikipedia does not even claim to be accurate so why should anyone rely upon it?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/1608628.stm

Wiki remains good for obscure historical personages or locations and, above all, scientific matters. Contentious politics? N-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o.

After a cursory search on the web, I could find no sites that offered what I would consider a reasonably balanced take on Machel. The only “balance” that BBC webpage offers is one sentence near the end: “Samora Machel was no saint. His regime was intolerant of criticism, and some of its economic policies did Mozambique great harm.” No details.

Has anyone else noticed that left wing dictators are usually poets and jazz-lovers, while right wing dictators prefer recreational torture? Yet strangely left wing dictatorial regimes always kill far more people – by several orders. Pinochet’s 3000 wouldn’t even be breakfast for Lenin or Ho.

Was Machel into jazz? Perhaps Paul Fauvet could tell us, as it was presumably his job to make up Machel’s hagiography?

Is it fair to say, to paraphrase the phrase from the Bible about King Saul and the young Warrior David, Pinochet has killed his thousands and Machel his tens of thousands?

For several days computer problems have prevented me from gaining access to Harry’s Place, so only now have I seen the series of rhetorical questions raised by Paul Bogdanor.

Lest he thinks I’ve chickened out, I shall answer them all, though not in the same order. I shall start with Carlos Cardoso, since he was a much more important figure in Mozambique than I am. I’ve repeatedly seen the claim that Cardoso was an adviser to Machel – this is completely untrue. The fact that Cardoso, and other senior journalists, were sometimes invited to off the record briefings with Machel does not mean that they were advising the president.

Machel’s real advisors were people like Aquino de Braganca, director of Maputo’s Centre of African Studies, the British-educated intellectual Fernando Honwana, his brother the writer Luis Bernardo Honwana, and foreign Minister (later President) Joaquim Chissano.

Cardoso was director of the Mozambique News Agency (AIM) from 1980 to 1989. It’s not the “Frelimo News Agency”, but the national news agency. When the one-party state ended, in 1990, Cardoso, and several others who had worked with him at AIM, became prominent in the campaign to ensure that press freedom was included in the new constitution.

For Frelimo’s model for the media failed, and failed in its own terms. It failed to ensure the link between Frelimo and the people. It failed to provide reliable information, despite Cardoso’s eforts at AIM to make it do so. So people who had been staunch supporters of Frelimo (such as former Information Minister Jose Luis Cabaco) fought to change the system, and the result, in 1991, was the passage of one of the most liberal press laws, not only in Africa, but in the world.

Cardoso went on to found his own papers (distributed by fax and e-mail), and was murdered in 2000 while he was investigating the largest bank fraud in the country’s history. You can find all the details in the biography of Cardoso that I and Marcelo Mosse wrote.

Joseph Hanlon is one of the most knowledgeable writers on modern Mozambique. Bogdanor has obviously never read any of his work, since
Hanlon does not treat Frelimo press statements (which are few and far between, by the way) as the unvarnished truth. Hanlon’s writings are severely critical of much Frelimo/government economic policy – try reading his “Peace without Profit”, on Mozambique’s relatons with the IMF.

Iain Christie worked at AIM in the 1970s, setting up its English service. He moved to Radio Mozambique (which, again, is not owned by Frelimo – it’s the national radio station). His most important job there was to train the Zimbabwean journalists who worked on “The Voice of Zimbabwe”, the radio station beaming from Radio Mozambique equipment into Ian Smith’s Rhodesia, in support of the Zimbabwean liberation struggle.

As for me, Bogdanor gets the tense wrong. He says I was in charge of the English service of AIM – no, I am in charge of it. (While Machel was alive I was not, since Cardoso was very much in charge of the whole agency, and he edited most of the copy, since he was fluent in English).

I see that Bogdanor seems to have dug deep into the archives to come up with a quote from “Seven Days” he believes will damn me in the eyes of readers of this blog. This is known as quote mining, and is a disreputable tactic. Why does he not also quote from letters of mine in the British communist press opposing military rule in Poland, or opposing the crushing of the Prague Spring?

As for the letter he does quote, this is from the debate leading up to the dissolution of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and setting up a successor organisation which was called Democratic Left. I was one of those opposed to dropping the word communist.

And yes, I am still proud to have been a member of the CPGB, to have been a member of its eurocommunist wing, and to have fought consistently against stalinism. And yes, I do still think that the positive contributions of revolutionaries such as Antonio Gramsci, Rosa Luxemburg, Ho Chi Minh, and Samora Machel outweigh the dead hands of Stalin and Brezhnev. But I must admit to feeling more ambivalent towards Lenin today (in 18 years one can change one’s opinion, and I now regard Lenin’s Jacobin tendencies as highly damaging to the international socialist movement. Rosa Luxemburg’s critique of Bolshevism was essentially correct).

Returning to Bogdanor’s original post – I’m afraid that relying on Cabrita for information on Mozambique is equivalent to relying on Milosevic groupie Neil Clark for information on the Balkasn, or on David Irving for information on the Holocaust. They are all falsifiers and fantasists.

I welcome Paul Fauvet’s belated admission that he is, in effect, a Mozambique state propagandist, as well as a long-time member of the Communist Party of Great Britain.

Perhaps he will now explain why he did not see fit to mention these rather important facts in his extended lecture on “propaganda.” And perhaps he will also explain why these facts were not mentioned in his various “news” reports for the British media during Mozambique’s civil war (e.g., The Guardian, November 13, 1986, August 12, 1989, June 8, 1991, June 25, 1991, June 29, 1991, November 30, 1991, May 15, 1992, July 6, 1992).

Fauvet’s effort to downplay the significance of his conduct hardly merits rebuttal. His argument that AIM is

not the “Frelimo News Agency”, but the national news agency

and that Radio Mozambique is

not owned by Frelimo – it’s the national radio station

disguises the obvious point that Mozambique’s national media were controlled by the Frelimo dictatorship throughout the civil war, and that Frelimo is still in power. Thus Fauvet was, and by his own account still is, a paid spokesman of the Frelimo government, the sequel to the dictatorship that sent Jehovah’s Witnesses to concentration camps, etc.

In his first message, Fauvet referred me to his book, Carlos Cardoso: Telling the Truth in Mozambique. Fauvet now confirms that Cardoso was “telling the truth” on behalf of the media arm of the Frelimo dictatorship. But he wasn’t “telling the truth,” because, as Fauvet gingerly admits, the official media (wait for it…) “failed to provide reliable information.”

According to Fauvet, the claim that Cardoso was an adviser to the dictator Machel is “completely untrue.” My source was the obituary by Hanlon, described by Fauvet as “one of the most knowledgeable writers on modern Mozambique.” And with regard to Hanlon, Fauvet observes:-

Bogdanor has obviously never read any of his work, since
Hanlon does not treat Frelimo press statements (which are few and far between, by the way) as the unvarnished truth.

Alas, I have read Hanlon’s work, which does indeed cite Frelimo press statements as objective fact:-

According to Constantino Reis, an Olympic runner who defected to the MNR and then back to Frelimo, Dhlakama had not wanted to attack the Malawi railway but had been forced to do so by the South Africans. (AIM [Mozambique Information Agency], Maputo, Dec. 1984)

- Beggar Your Neighbours: Apartheid Power in Southern Africa (James Currey, 1986), p324.

On that page alone, Hanlon cites the Frelimo dictatorship’s propaganda agency three times. Fauvet has “failed to provide reliable information,” to use his own phrase.

His account of Christie’s career is equally misleading:-

His most important job there was to train the Zimbabwean journalists who worked on “The Voice of Zimbabwe”…

Fauvet would have us believe that Christie’s main role was training journalists to agitate for the “Zimbabwean liberation struggle” (Mugabe’s mass murders); but Frelimo’s official obituary tells a different story (emphases added):-

In Dar Es Salaam, Christie met leaders of Frelimo, and helped edit the Frelimo English language magazine Mozambique Revolution. In 1972, he visited the liberated areas of the northern province of Cabo Delgado, in the company of Frelimo President Samora Machel. In 1976, Christie was asked to train Zimbabwean reporters on The Voice of Zimbabwe… With the independence of Zimbabwe in 1980, The Voice of Zimbabwe ceased broadcasting, and in its place Radio Mozambique established its own English language External Service, with Christie as its director. (AIM, February 21, 2000)

Christie also managed to insinuate himself into Reuter’s services. There he proved a most useful asset for Frelimo. Among other propaganda achievements, he peddled a Frelimo fabrication that Renamo had massacred 1,000 villagers and displayed their heads on store shelves (e.g., The Independent, July 24, 1991, two-sentence retraction on January 10, 1992). Christie, like Fauvet, was in the habit of disguising his Frelimo role when disseminating Frelimo propaganda.

Fauvet accuses me of a “disreputable tactic” in quoting his statement in the Communist Party newspaper, which will “damn” him “in the eyes of readers of this blog.” Actually it will damn him in the eyes of any civilised human being. Is it really necessary to tell him this, at the beginning of the 21st century? As the USSR collapsed he “fought consistently against stalinism” while active in the party of Stalin, and nine decades after the Bolshevik bloodbath began he is “ambivalent” about the methods of Lenin! At this rate we only have to last until 2065 to hear Fauvet’s doubts about his favourite dictator sending Jehovah’s Witnesses to concentration camps…

Which leads me to Fauvet’s masterstroke:-

relying on Cabrita for information on Mozambique is equivalent to relying on Milosevic groupie Neil Clark for information on the Balkans, or on David Irving for information on the Holocaust.

Anyone who has read this far down the page will know that I also quoted reports from the Washington Post, the Economist, Time Magazine and the Christian Science Monitor. Perhaps Fauvet finds these sources less credible than the official propaganda agency he serves. But comparing a Mozambican historian to a Holocaust denier was particularly unwise, in light of Fauvet’s membership of the party that championed the pact with Hitler.

“Can you confirm or deny that you are the same Paul Fauvet who made the following statement in the newspaper of the Communist Party of Great Britain?’

Can Mr Bogdanor confirm or deny that keeping HUAC-style dossiers on HP commenters is both profoundly creepy and a little bit futile?

1. I don’t keep “dossiers” on HP commenters. I do know something about totalitarian propagandists, but they don’t typically show up in the HP comments section.

2. HUAC’s activities were wrong because (a) many of the targets were innocent of the charges; and (b) their civil rights were violated. Neither applies in this case.

3. You seem to find my opponent’s career as a propagandist for a dictatorship less objectionable than my public exposure of his record – which he invited through his own subterfuge. Why?

1. An 18-year-old quote from Seven Days? Sorry, that smacks of dossier.
2. (c) They attempted to demonise opponents by using past associations with the communist party. I have to give you some credit for persistence though. Even the people who went after Alger Hiss only went back a decade, not 18 years.
3. Because I think you’re the sort of vaguely odd right-winger who in happier times wouldn’t have been given house-room here. But that’s just my opinion.

1. To be honest, I don’t care at all whether you think it’s a “dossier” or not, but if you find it satisfying to concoct paranoid fantasies and exhibit them in public, that’s your business.

2. Your (c) is equally irrelevant, since my critic has confirmed that he is proud of his communist beliefs and that he runs the propaganda agency of a former communist dictatorship. And since Alger Hiss was guilty, your complaint is rather strange.

3. It seems to me that opposition to dictatorships is neither right- nor left-wing, it’s the minimum standard for all decent political opinions. Apparently you disagree with that assumption. Or perhaps you just don’t aspire to the status of minimal decency?

“if you find it satisfying to concoct paranoid fantasies and exhibit them in public, that’s your business.”

Funnily enough that’s exactly what I thought when I took a look at your “interesting” website…

Of course you did. Your thought process is known as projection. But you can cure yourself. You can do some research. Then you’ll be competent to join a political discussion. And you’ll be confident to use your real name.

‘Mike S’, if you’ve nothing useful to add, go away and stop wasting everybody’s time.

“And you’ll be confident to use your real name.”

“You can do some research. Then you’ll be competent to join a political discussion.”

So could you, then you might realise just how preposterous it is to accuse a member of the CPGB in 1990 as being in “the Party of Stalin”.

According to “Mike S,” Fauvet had no reason to argue that the “spectres of Stalin and Brezhnev weigh heavily on us” because there was no “spectre of Stalin” in the Communist Party.

He has no reason to insist that he “fought consistently” against Stalinism because there were no Stalinists to fight.

He could have saved himself all those battles with Stalinists in the Communist Party. According to “Mike S,” I invented them.

To repeat, “Mike S” is not competent to join a political discussion.

Paul, after drawing all those inferences I’m trying hard to avoid the easy retort that you’re not competent to pass a reading comprehension test. But…

I defend your right to hold your views, but the fact you’ve been permitted to post them on this site indicates to me that the nature of it has changed considerably since I started looking at it.
Adieu

Paul Fauvet tells us that he was bravely fighting Stalinism in the Communist Party and “Mike S” infers that the Communist Party was free of Stalinism.

But why would “Mike S” (or Paul Fauvet for that matter, if they are distinct individuals) defend my rights in Britain, while supporting a dictatorship in Mozambique?

And why would he (or they) impute such double standards to this blog? If you can’t find Stalinism in the Communist Party, is it logical to look for it on Harry’s Place?!?

Thanks for this post about Machel and FRELIMO. While I had realized that FRELIMO’s rule was authoritarian, did not know it was anywhere near as bad as it was. Am afraid Machel and FRELIMO will continue to be seen as less oppresive then they were because their enemies was the murderous RENAMO and RENAMO’s backers, the Apartheid South African govt. Also Machel will probably be continued to be seen as a matyr to the Liberation struggle as it is widely believed, with good reason, that South Africa caused the plane crash in which Machel was killed.

Sidebar: About “giving” power to an anti-colonial force that did not “win” on the battlefield. Most colonial wars of liberation do in fact end this way. The liberation movement and its army only rarely ends up, as in the US War of Independence or the Viet Minh War against the French, dealing the Imperial Army a decisive military defeat. Usually colonial wars drag on until the Imperial govt at home realizes that their effort to subdue the rebellion is proving far more costly in human and financial terms and growing unpopularity among their own people, then can be justified by any eventual “victory” over the rebels. Or to roughly paraphrase Edmund Burke’s famous attack on the British govt’s persistance in fighting the American Patriots, when the home govt. gains the wisdom to grant what is no longer in their power to withhold. (Burke’s attack was that George III & Lord North did NOT have this wisdom.) As to turning power over to the liberation movement that only makes sense. After all the liberation movement is usually the one with both popular support as well as the weapons. If they did not have support of the populace, they would have been flushed out & destroyed by the colonial army. This has historically been the pattern from the Maccabee Rebellion* against the Greek Seculids,** in the 2nd Century BCE to the Russian withdrawl from Afghanistan in 1989.

*the real Judean Peoples Front!
**not the Syrians as my Jewish high school classmates said.

I would also include the US withdrawl from South Vietnam in the early 70s after the Tet Offensive in early 1968 convinced a majority of Americans that the US could not prevail in Vietnam at any bearable cost and that any further escalation of the war ran a serious risk of war with a nuclear-armed China.

Is there a conspiracy afoot? Along comes the only Harry’s Place post on the country where I live that I can remember, and I can only gain access to the blog once every three or four days. Anyone else suffering the same problem?

Bogdanor has comprehensively proved that he knows next to nothing not only about Mozambique, but also about the Communist Party of Great Britain. Apparently he believes the Party still exists, for he says that I am (present tense) a “longstanding member”. Afraid not – the CPGB voted to dissolve itself at a congress in 1991 (much to my dismay). There is a joke outfit that has tried to steal the name, and publishes something called the “Weekly Worker”, but I assure you I have nothing to do with that.

Bogdanor seems to have serious problems with the English language. He thinks there is a contradiction between Mike S’s denial that the CPGB was “the Party of Stalin”, and my reference to fighting Stalinists within the Party.

Bogdanor may be unaware of it, but there are Trotskyists inside the Labour Party. Does that make the Labour Party “the Party of Trotsky”?
Does the presence of racists aming the Tories make the Conservative Party “the party of racism”?

Bogdanor says my party “championed the pact with Hitler”. Yes, I’m afraid it did – unfortunately I was in no position to vote against this aberrant policy since it happened 11 years before I was born.

Mike S suspects Bogdanor has kept a dossier on me. No, Mike, Bogdanor didn’t draw up that dossier – he doubtless got it from Cabrita or from Cabrita’s friends in South African Military Intelligence, who certainly did keep tabs on anti-apartheid activists all over the world.

But it doesn’t worry me – as a journalist, my writings are in the public domain. Since I’m rather proud of most of them, I don’t mind Bogdanor quoting them. Perhaps he’d like to send me a copy of the dossier, since I didn’t keep copies of all my earlier scribblings.

And no, I am not the same person as Mike S. Can’t Bogdanor tell that the style is completely different? Since I am proud of what I write, I see no reason to use pseudonyms.

Most of Bogdanor’s disinformation about Mozambique does indeed come from Cabrita – though, to give it a patina of respectability, he has leavened it with a few quotes from western press articles. Had he looked a little further he would have found literally thousands of articles in the western press over the years since Mozambican independence that say very different things about the country.

He is, of course, quite silent about the apartheid regime’s war of destabilisation against Mozambique. In that war, by 1989, some 900,000 people had perished (UN figures). Most, of course, were not killed by bombs or bullets, but by famine when food aid could not get through because the apartheid-backed Renamo rebels had destroyed roads, railways or bridges, or by disease – around half the fragile health network was destroyed, sometimes by apartheid’s surrogates literally dynamiting clinics.

By the end of the war, in 1992, the death toll could easily have been a million or more. And when Mozambique was able to hold a census (in 1997), when the figures are compared with the 1980 census and the population growth rate of that time, we do indeed find that there are about a million missing people.

To sum up – I am proud that I played a role, however minor, in the struggle aainst colonialism and apartheid. I am proud that I took part in an attempt to build socialism in southern Africa, an attempt which Bogdanor’s allies drowned in blood.

I’ll probably compose another guest post on the various Fauvet falsehoods in this exchange, but for now let me note the following:-

1. Fauvet doesn’t even pretend to explain why he wrote about Mozambique in the British media (and on this page) without disclosing the rather important fact that he was (and is) being paid by the government in question.

2. Fauvet alleges that I received a dossier about him directly or indirectly from South African military intelligence. This defamatory invention tells us what we need to know about the kind of journalism Fauvet produced on behalf of the Frelimo dictatorship while concealing his Frelimo status.

3. I can set his mind at rest: there is no dossier. The sources on his conduct are available in university libraries (7 Days) and newspaper databases (Guardian). In fact the evidence is remarkably easy to find:-

we no longer have what used to be called our safe rear guard: we no longer have the Soviet bloc to fall back on.

Let me assure him that I did not learn of this quotation from South African military intelligence either.

4. Fauvet offers another example of his journalistic standards:

he says that I am (present tense) a “longstanding member”. Afraid not – the CPGB voted to dissolve itself at a congress in 1991 (much to my dismay).

I wrote that Fauvet

is, in effect, a Mozambique state propagandist, as well as a long-time member of the Communist Party of Great Britain.

Fauvet cannot even render a quotation accurately when it appears on the same page.

5. Of course, someone who wrote in 1960:-

Johann von Leers is, in effect, an Egyptian state propagandist, as well as a long-time member of the National Socialist German Workers Party

would in no way be asserting the continued existence of the Nazi Party. Fauvet’s deductive powers are as impressive as his talent for quotation.

6. Fauvet admits that he joined the party that championed Stalin’s pact with Hitler. He claims that he spent much of his time in that party fighting Stalinists. And then he denies that it was the party of Stalin. He would like us to believe that Stalinists infiltrated the CPGB in the same way that Trotskyists tried to infiltrate the Labour Party.

7. I don’t doubt for a moment that there were hundreds of thousands, perhaps even a million, war-related deaths in Mozambique. Nor do I doubt that the guilt is shared equally by the Renamo rebels and Fauvet’s paymasters in the Frelimo dictatorship.

Fauvet is proud of joining the party that championed Stalin’s pact with Hitler, proud of joining the propaganda arm of a dictatorship, and proud that he published news reports in the British media while violating the basic full-disclosure principle of journalistic ethics.

He is dismayed at the dissolution of the CPGB, dismayed at the collapse of the USSR, and dismayed at the failure to build communism in southern Africa.

But even Fauvet has his moments. How often does the head of a government news agency complain in public about the “conspiracy” that denies him access to a functioning computer?

I’ll probably compose another guest post

Before you do that, think about making a trip to Mozambique and doing a bit of on-the-ground research. The striking difference between Fauvet and you is of someone who was and is there and has seen for himself and is relaxed about things (his nicely ironic remark about internet access), and someone who is stuck at a computer terminal in the UK and is – let’s put it like this – unrelaxed.

Of course you have no idea whether or not I’ve been to Mozambique. Just as I have no idea why you’d believe a government press agent who doesn’t disclose that he’s a government press agent. Do you also reply to those emails asking you to hold millions of dollars from a Nigerian bank?

Since, after a gap of a couple of days, Harry’s Place has let me in again (and it’s definitely a problem with the blog, not with Mozambican computers), let me make my final contribution to this debate

According to Bogdanor, anyone who contributes comments to blogs must preface them with a mea culpa disclosing their political affiliation and their present and past employment. That would be fun, particularly in an environment where the great majority of contributors don’t even reveal their names.

Bogdanor, it seems, has a really inquisitorial mindset, and would have made a great hatchet man for the late Joseph McCarthy. And, in addition to knowing nothing of the subjects he writes about, other than what he cribbed from the writings of a far-right enthusiast for the apartheid regime’s wars against its neighbours, he is distinctly deficient in any sense of irony.

As for whether Bogdanor has a dossier or not, I really don’t care. I am, however, mildly flattered that anyone would plough through yellowing copies of CPGB publications to find articles which he imagines will dish the dirt on me.

Bogdanor makes much of my quoting him as saying I am a “longstanding” rather than a “longtime” member of the CPGB. This is a ridiculous exercise in hair-splitting, since my dictionary tells me that these words are synonyms.

As for the CPGB being “the party of Stalin”, based on its support for the Hitler-Stalin pact, you can no more blame members of the CPGB who weren’t even alive at the time for that, than you can blame David Cameron for Winston Churchill’s repugnant views on Gandhi and Indian independence.

Paul Fauvet has decided that the “conspiracy” against the official press agency of Mozambique is being perpetrated not by capitalist computer manufacturers but by the bloggers of Harry’s Place. He defines this as irony; I call it comedy.

Fauvet misleads when he hides his status from the readers of this blog, but he violates one of the most fundamental principles of journalistic ethics when he reports on Mozambique for the media without disclosing that he is paid by the Mozambique government.

Fauvet illustrated his standards of journalism when he accused me of receiving a dossier about him from South African military intelligence. Now he says he doesn’t care if there’s a dossier. In other words, he peddled a libellous hoax and he doesn’t care that it was a hoax. That may prove relevant if, in lying about Cabrita, Fauvet has chosen a more litigious victim.

Fauvet protests that he wasn’t alive when his party supported Stalin’s pact with Hitler. Presumably he was alive when he decided to join the party that had supported Stalin’s pact with Hitler. Presumably he was still alive when he decided to stay in the party that sent a delegate to the regime of Ceausescu (The Guardian, December 8, 1990). Just as Fauvet was alive when he decided to work for the dictatorship of Machel. Or does Fauvet want us to think that he has been brain-dead all along?