SOMEWHERE a day’s drive from the rough Pakistan-Afghan border territory of Waziristan the blindfold is removed and I'm surprised to be greeted by Max Clifford.

“Ello Dan, sorry about all this secrecy, you know how it is,” he holds out a hand.

“That’s right, I'm bin Laden’s press officer. He wanted the best in the world, I wanted a challenge,” Clifford shrugs, “don’t get much more of a challenge. And the money’s good,” he winks.

I'm shown to a concealed opening in the cliff face and led through a low tunnel.  The walls are lined with photographs- bin Laden with Gerry Adams, Dick Cheney, Peter Mandelson, George Soros, Gaddafi, the Pope.

“You like my collection?” the voice is clear but slightly clipped, like Apu from The Simpsons.

“Mr bin Laden?”

“Please, Daniel, call me OB, all my friends do. As you can see, I have many friends.”

The photographs go on, OB with Berlusconi, Karzai, Hilary Clinton, Jeremy Kyle…is that Jordan?

He laughs, “Yes, yes, I had a few great nights with Kate in Brighton. Such an intelligent woman. Come sit, can I get you a drink? I'm on the red, but you might like a cold lager after your journey?”

The cave is rough but decorated. I perch on a weary leather sofa. On a side table sits a week old Guardian and a Vote Ken flier. OB returns with a bottle of Murree and cuts to the chase.

“You are here because I want to talk about 9/11.”

“Ok great,” I lean forward and open my notebook.

“It wasn’t me.”

“What?”

“9/11. It wasn’t me. Anyone with a vague sense of curiosity can work out that it couldn’t have been me. You think I organised the most deadly attack on American soil since Peal Harbour?” he pauses, “from a cave?”

OB waves his arms at the gloomy walls, plastered with faded posters from Arsenal’s double wining ‘98 season, overlapped by prints of Mecca.

But the Americans released a video showing you claiming responsibility.

“Ha,” OB throws a sarcy laugh, “the fat man in the video? He didn’t even look like me. Just a bearded Arab in a white turban and you’re all fooled. Flying two planes into New York skyscrapers? This is a difficult job. But even the architects say the buildings would not collapse in this situation. They were brought down by explosives. How did they get in there? Why doesn’t the government acknowledge it? And what about Building Seven? Everybody knows that was a controlled explosion, no plane even hit the building. But the 9/11 Report didn’t even mention it. Put it into Google- ‘9/11 Building 7.’ All the answers are there.

“And don’t get me started on the Pentagon, that was clearly a missile, why wont they release the CCTV footage? Where was the wreckage from the plane? They said it was all incinerated! Two steel and aluminium thee-ton Rolls Royce jet engines incinerated to nothing? You couldn’t do that if you wanted.”

He sits back and sips his Château Pétrus.

“My mistake was not denying this sooner. I admit- I enjoyed the notoriety, but now the joke has gone too far. We should put an end to it Mr Daniel- you, me and The Other Side.”

So who was responsible?

“How the hell should I know? I'm stuck in this bloody cave. I am no conspiracy nut, Allah knows they do my head in, but I’ve been going to Terrorist Anonymous meetings for about a year now, all the big guys are there and they all agree- only someone with many links to the Americans could have done this. And I watch Murder She Wrote, just like everybody else. You have to ask yourself who benefited from this? The arms industry? The Zionists? Maybe the big American corporations thought they would too? I don’t know, take your pick. But as you can tell- I am a loser in this game.”

OB gestures at the grubby glass he is sipping from, shakes his head and sighs: “How they used 9/11 to invade Iraq I do not know. It amazes me.”

His mobile rings and he squints at it, “Bloody Hell. Will I ever get you off my back? Bloody Musharraf isn’t it? Always hassling me, says it’s my fault he’s deep in the shit - pah. Sack half the judiciary, assassinate your rivals, cosy up to the Yanks AND the Taliban, pfff, he made his own problems.

“Now Blair- nothing stick to him hey? That smile, he’s a good man, a reformer. This Brown is boring, but every country needs its technocrats.”

What about Bush?

OB suddenly becomes very serious and lowers his voice.

“Bush is a fool.”

Ok. So why did you contact The Other Side?

“Like you, I too am bored with celebrity culture. Always in the newspaper I am hearing about Cheryl and that cunt Cashley, I'm sick of it. It’s good to see a community rallying together, I admire your spirit. And besides, I have a close affinity with the people of the Northern Line. Many times I have travelled on it to watch my beloved Arsenal. I try to get to the Emirates as often as possible, although it is difficult.”

Because of your notoriety?

He looks hurt: “No you fool, because it is difficult to get tickets. Always sold out.

“Now get out of here, Skins is on in five minutes and I want to make a chillum.”

mrdanmurdoch@gmail.com

Images by archburger: http://www.archburger.blogspot.com/

With elections for London Mayor taking place on 1 May, The Other Side’s Dan Murdoch checks out the two main contenders

Images by Archburger see more here

This year’s elections are set to be the fiercest and most closely contested in the eight years of London’s mayoralty. There is little doubt it will come down to two men, both mavericks with reputations for eccentricity and controversy. The winner picks up the keys to City Hall, a £140,000 salary and responsibility for transport, policing, the emergency services, health, culture, and London’s environmental and economic development. So how does Ken ‘The Red Goblin’ Livingstone measure up to Boris ‘The Blue Blunder’ Johnson?

Despite his significant weight advantage over Wee Willy Kenneth, the biggest spear to gouge Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson’s toffy spleen with is that he’s actually a political lightweight. Career wise he’s a multi-award-winning journalist who made his name at The Telegraph and edited the determinedly controversial, elitist wankfest The Spectator. But the 43-year-old Henley MP can hardly boast any political achievements. Sacked as Shadow Minister for Arts by Michael Howard after lying about an affair, he recently stood down from the frankly worthless post of Shadow Minister for Higher Education. Not exactly the credentials for managing one of the world’s biggest cities and a £9 billion budget.

Compare this to Comrade Kenny, who can boast 30 years at the heart of London politics. In 1981 he was elected leader of the Greater London Council, aged just 35. After 15 years as a troublesome but resolute backbencher he saw off Blair by winning the inaugural 2000 elections as an independent and forcing the Labour party to ask him back. The 62-year-old has revamped the capital’s tired transport system and pushed ahead with controversial, but successful, schemes like the congestion zone, which is set to be mimicked in cities around the country. Latest brain waves include the C Charge on environmentally unfriendly vehicles, and plans to copy Paris’ successful communal bike hire scheme.

Boris’s main talent is for sweepingly un-PC comedy: during the Ken Bigley kidnapping his Spectator leader said Scousers should stop ‘wallowing’ in their ‘victim status’ adding they should accept some blame for Hillsborough. He has labelled black tribesman ‘picaninies’, linked Papua New Guinea with ‘cannibalism and chief-killing’, and said that voting Tory “will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3.”

All fun and games. But compared to the political behemoth that is Ken Livingstone, Boris is little more than a floppy-haired fairy, prancing through the political consciousness on the back of tired tabloid hacks gagging for his next blunder.

“Say something ill-advised Boris,” begged one Sun ‘journalist’ as Blondy left last year’s Tory conference, simply because the red rag’s gutter snipe had nothing to file.

Does Boris court such publicity? Probably, but for some reason everyone is happy to tousle his hair and go: “ahhhh Boris you loveable, eccentric little posh boy, let me finger your bottom.”

Ken too is prone to ruffling feathers, comparing a Jewish reporter to a Nazi concentration camp guard, claiming he’d like to see the Saudi royal family ‘swinging from lamp posts’, and allegedly pushing a male friend of his partner down the stairs at a house party.

Of course both of them promise to turn London into THE GREATEST CITY EVER, but what else are they going to say? I’ve never been too impressed with election promises. So let's put small details like policy to one side (It works for Boris. In fact, I think it is his policy). So what are they like? Well, strangely, they are both confessed thieves. In 2003 Boris nicked a cigar case from former Iraqi Deputy PM Tariq Aziz while on an official visit to the country. In contrast Ken pilfered a book from WH Smith in 1957.

Like a naughty schoolboy, Boris has been ordered off the booze for the duration of his campaign, where as Ken is known to drink whisky at morning meetings of the London Assembly. He claims it eases a bronchial condition.

Boris has an air of the shambolic Latin don about him, and rightly so, he studied classics at Balliol, Oxford. Ken the Red supposedly has a Ho Chi Minh bust in his office. He’s been accused of running London like his ‘personal fiefdom’. In fairness that’s exactly what London is - the elected London Assembly has no power over decision making, it would be hard to find a group of less powerful elected officials outside a parish council. So there’s little to stop Ken swanning around handing out favours and ‘allocating funds’.

“Skyscrapers? Yeah they’re brilliant. We’ll have loads. Thanks for the donation. Chavez? Cracking bloke, proper socialist, we can deal with him. Cheers for the gas.”

The gimlet-eyed incumbent has done well in previous year’s by distancing himself from national politics, but probably uttered a robust Lambeth litany when Gordon Brown ordered they appear together before the media at the end of March. That’ll force the floating voters - with friends like those…

Suggestions about Boris’s competence have seemed increasingly justified since an analyst pointed out a £100m hole in his transport budget. Hard to “Oops crikey” your way out of that one.

So who would you rather have juggling the 2012 Olympics and the £16 billion Crossrail scheme in the face of the much-heralded threat from international terrorists?

The foppish Etonian writer or the street fighting socialist that even Prime Ministers can’t rein in? 

Well it seems Boris is winning. According to the bookies, London’s five million voters have gone all blue. A reflection of national trends? Perhaps. Or maybe the bike riding, blue-eyed albino really has won us all over. Well Boris, if you get it, please don’t do anything ill-advised.

mrdanmurdoch@gmail.com

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Dan Murdoch heads to Turkmenistan

SAPARMURAT Turkmenbashi was the sort of priceless lunatic that only communism seems able to turn up.
A true Soviet relic, the man made David Ike look like a Cartesian realist and creationism seem the result of rational enquiry. He existed on an entirely different plain of consciousness- like Michael Jackson but without the dancing, shrieking, crotch grabbing and completely disproved allegations of child molestation.
First a little history (no beard required).
Turkmenistan sits on the east coast of the Caspian Sea and is divided from Iran to the south by the Kopet Dag Mountains, and Kazakhstan to the north by Uzbekistan.
It’s almost entirely desert and over the last few millennia has been overrun by whoever was dominant in the region. So walking through the bazaar is like strolling through history. Alexander the Great offers you Half the Known World by the Age of 32, there’s Genghis Khan in Rape ‘n’ Pillage, first left after Timerlane’s Mass Murder Emporium, Catherine the Great is on the vodka stand and security is provided by one Joseph Stalin.
With predecessors like that, it’s no wonder old Turkmenbashi was a little extreme.
Turkmenistan was the only Soviet satellite that didn’t want independence when the Union collapsed in ‘91. Moscow gave the country no choice so Turkmenbashi, then just the humble communist party leader Sacharet Asyryov, waited until a load of Aeroflot planes were refuelling at Ashgabat airport then declared Turkmenistan a free nation, gaining independence, ultimate power, and the country’s first and only airline.
After winning 98% of the vote in the country’s first ‘democratic elections’ he managed to keep Turkmenistan from collapsing into civil war and lawlessness while his Central Asian neighbours did just that. He declared international neutrality, billing the country as the Switzerland of Asia, and set about harvesting the nation’s vast gas deposits.
Alongside this he ruthlessly clamped down on opposition and fostered one of the most bizarre personality cults in the modern world, setting himself up as a semi-deity and taking the title Turkmenbashi- ‘Father of All Turkmen’.
But not everyone’s perfect.
Yes he renamed the days and the months after friends and family. He made his quasi-spiritual book, the Ruhnama, part of the curriculum and ordered learner drivers to take an exam on it. He banned beards, gold teeth, pop stars from lyp synching and newsreader’s from wearing make up.

But what’s the country actually like?
Well first off, it’s a police state. I’d never visited one before and I can tell you it’s not just a clever name, it means there are police everywhere. My guide told me there are 50,000 cops on the streets of Ashgabat every night, for a city of 600,000 people: “But many more work in secret, underground. I used to have a delivery job and once I went to the police station and there were thousands of them, but with no uniforms.”
He also claimed to know people who had ‘disappeared’ because of their political activity. “I should not be telling you this, maybe I disappear too.”
I must have been stopped every 50km on the long drive to the capital from the renamed Caspian port town of Turkmenbashi (it’s like Dover being renamed Brown). And in the cities there are police at every major intersection and outside all public buildings. And they love to pull you over, especially if you’re driving a multi-coloured plastic car. Which I was.
Our stay was punctuated by constant police harassment and culminated in the arrest of our entire group of eight- for having dirty cars. We were banished from a city, locked in an old walled compound and watched over by the KGB.
Admittedly we were in the county illegally- never overstay your visa in post-Soviet pariah nations governed by deranged megalomaniacs.
Ashgabat, the capital, is a Legoland wonder of stunning high-rise office blocks and apartments in complete contrast to the rest of the country. It looks as if a demented toddler with a curious lust for marble was left in charge of city planning and accidentally blew the national budget. Which is exactly what happened. On close inspection I saw that these building are virtually empty- sterile phallic monuments to one man’s industrial delusions.
Turkmenistan is a rich country- it has some of the world’s largest reserves of natural gas, and Turkmenbashi made a great show of sharing the wealth. He made running water free, think of that next time you open your water bill. And the subsidised petrol costs 1,500 Manat a litre, which sounds a lot but is actually equivalent to three and a half pence. Energy crisis? What energy crisis?

Turkmenbashi died in December 2006. But his gold statues still stand in cities and towns, his picture hangs from official buildings, his name is on factories, vodka bottles, bank notes, streets, towns, the airport. It’s as if he never went away- though I noticed his successor’s image creeping in too.
Obituaries from the international press usually ran along the lines of: “There goes a man who made Kim Jong Il look like a beacon of representative democracy.”
But on the streets of Turkmenistan I found a different message.
“A great leader,” was the general response: “We needed food and he provided food. We needed a strong man and he was strong. You can do what you want, drink, meet women, live how you like. Just don’t get involved in politics.”
No matter how many people I asked, I couldn’t stir dissent in anyone.
“I'm not surprised mate,” a laconic Australian cyclist told me at a hotel bar, “all the places are wired- the whole city’s bugged and every other blokes an informant. No one’s gonna go bad mouthing the old boss round here.”
It was true. Wires or not, no one had a bad thing to say about the Father of Turkmenistan. In fact they still celebrate his favourite fruit with a national holiday- Watermelon Day. Who said he was crazy?

ends
mrdanmurdoch@gmail.com

For the full story of Dan’s travels in Turkmenistan go to: danmurdoch.blogspot.com

Dan Murdoch faces down crazy men with guns... again.

TONY’S voice crackled over the walkie-talkie: “Um, guys. This village is not abandoned. I can see people.”

We were in Armenia, driving through the lazy Caucus hills along the border with Georgia, when we noticed the derelict villages. Dozens of houses stripped bare, their windows and doors gaping lonely holes in crumbling brickwork, the roofs long collapsed.

Fascinated, we decided to divert for a closer look and some filming. Our convoy left the highway and slipped into a crater-pocked road then a rough dirt track towards the crumbling ruins of the ghost town.

“I say again I can see people,” the walkie burst into life, putting me on edge. Tony, in the lead car of the convoy was 50m ahead but I couldn’t see any people.

“There are people here,” the voice from the walkie distorted, paused, then came across loud but calm, “and they have guns. There are people coming with guns. Back up. These guys have guns.”

The voice didn’t betray a hint of panic, but I slammed on the brakes and squinted through the windshield. In the distance I could see a man in scruffy shirt and trousers, with someone behind him wearing all green. Are those fatigues? What is he carrying?

“They are waving at me, they want me to go to them,” warbled the walkie, “one of them has a gun. I think we should go back.”

I began to panic. There was a man with a large machine gun hurrying towards the lead car. I rammed the stick into reverse with a horrible scraping sound and looked out of the back window. The guys behind were already reversing, but I could see Carlos was out of the rear car and filming the whole thing.

“He has a gun and he wants me to go to him,” said the walkie, a trace panic.

“Reverse mate, let’s go, come on, let’s get out of here. Let’s go,” was my advice.

But his car sat motionless as thoughts raced through my head. Do we leave Tony here? Do we stay and face up to this with him? The adrenaline flowed fast in the panic.

“Tony let’s go. Come on.”

Still no movement from the lead car. I watched as the man with the gun reached it and then broke into a run as he went past. He was clearly in my view now. Wearing a metal helmet, green fatigues, body armour and carrying a machine gun.

Terrorist? Insurgent? Revolutionary? Hostage taker?

The thoughts flew by and he was nearly on us. I’ve never been run at by a man with an automatic weapon before. It is truly frightening.

Fear-induced paralysis set in. There was going to be a confrontation, we were in a lot of trouble, but best it be a verbal onslaught than a bullet-based exchange.

The man ran past us, past the next car, and it became clear who the focus of his attention was – Carlos and the video camera. I saw the impish Catalan trying to stash the thing but it was too late, we were busted. We got out of our cars and we went to face our fate.

It quickly became clear they were Armenian military, a huge relief. There was a lot of shouting and radioing and I was worried they were about to bring their cohorts down and march us off.

But a battered old car arrived and three men stepped out. They too were from the military, but you could immediately tell the difference between them and the squaddy who’d chased us. They wore loafers not boots, had beer bellies instead of armour plating, caps instead of helmets, sidearms on their hips and stars on their shoulders. They were officers, and I didn’t know if this meant we were in more trouble or less.

Initially there was shouting, but OJ used his simple Russian:

We saw these abandoned villages and thought we’d investigate.

We’re driving to Cambodia.

After a lot of gesturing OJ translated their reply: We had stumbled onto the Armenia-Azerbaijan border and just our luck, the two nations were still at war. The villages weren’t ghost towns, they were a war zone. They didn’t crumble under the ravages of time, but were blown apart by Azeri shells. The hills were fortified by both side’s militaries in a tense stand-off.

The officers said that if we had gone further up the dirt road we would have crossed the disputed Armenia-Azerbaijan border. He said the Azeris would have shot at the cars if they had seen them coming over the hill. I tried to imagine what threat our battered convoy would seem. A new fangled Armenian weapon disguised as a band of gypsies?

The filming was the biggest issue. It turns out that the military don’t like their front lines being filmed. We showed the head honcho what we’d shot and he demanded it be erased, or else he’d start shooting something else. So we pointed the camera at the ground and filmed over the offending footage, but when we showed him the result - a five-minute film of Armenian rocks- he went into a rage and demanded it be erased.

So we closed the lens cap and filmed blackness. Anything but give him the tape, which had some good shots of us driving through the countryside.

Tony passed cigarettes to the officers and they seemed to relax. They looked through our passports and laughed at our stamps, inquired about our Azerbaijani visas, but seemed to accept we were just stupid foreigners, not enemy spies. We’d lost our footage, but I couldn’t resist taking a sneaky picture of the military in my wing mirror.

After an hour of interrogation we were escorted back to the main road. One of the officers gave Tony a peach and sent us on our way, another brush with disaster under our belts.

Ends

mrdanmurdoch@gmail.com

For more about Dan’s travels go to: danmurdoch.blogspot.com