A Vacancy in the Imperial Kennel
May 12, 2007
Blair’s imminent exit has brought about some predictable responses. While the majority are understandably relieved that his reign based on terror and war is coming to an end, others like Brian Brivati of Engage (a Zionist propaganda organization), a contributor to the pro-War online journal Democratiya (part of the same Ziocon Engage-Euston Manifesto network), assure us “we’ll miss him”. The sage pulls his head temporarily out of his posterior to add,
We will and we should miss him because of what he came to represent in his articulation of our democratic values in the global war on terrorism. I think we will miss his support for humanitarian interventions and, in partnership with Brown, his lead on issues like debt relief and development spending based on conditionality.
The most apt riposte to these hallucinations of a man whose life’s work is devoted to writing hagiographies of forgettable Labour politicians comes from a Guardian reader:
Looking to write yet another ‘biography of a Labour hero’, eh? What are you going to call this one, ‘Saint Tony, and how I varnished a turd?’ Just think of all the potential customers in Iraq who will not be able to buy it, not now they have been ‘humanitarianly intervened’.
The state’s propaganda organ, BBC, which he had long since intimidated into reflexive obeisance, still manages to feign nostalgia; failing to find anything worth praising about the execrable poodle, it seeks refuge in sentimentalities, and even manages to declare his speech at the last Labour conference “an emotional occasion”. Here is what the poodle actually said on the emotional occasion:
And of course, the new anxiety is the global struggle against terrorism without mercy or limit.
This is a struggle that will last a generation and more. But this I believe passionately: we will not win until we shake ourselves free of the wretched capitulation to the propaganda of the enemy, that somehow we are the ones responsible.
This terrorism isn’t our fault. We didn’t cause it.
It’s not the consequence of foreign policy.
It’s an attack on our way of life.
It’s global.
It has an ideology.
It killed nearly 3,000 people including over 60 British on the streets of New York before war in Afghanistan or Iraq was even thought of.
It has been decades growing.
Its victims are in Egypt, Algeria, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Turkey.
Over 30 nations in the world.
It preys on every conflict.
It exploits every grievance.
And its victims are mainly Muslim.
This is not our war against Islam.
This is a war fought by extremists who pervert the true faith of Islam. And all of us, Western and Arab, Christian or Muslim, who put the value of tolerance, respect and peaceful co-existence above those of sectarian hatred, should join together to defeat them. It is not British soldiers who are sending car bombs into Baghdad or Kabul to slaughter the innocent.
They are there along with troops of 30 other nations with, in each case, a full UN mandate at the specific request of the first ever democratically elected Governments of those countries in order to protect them against the very ideology also seeking the deaths of British people in planes across the Atlantic.”
Needless to say – as the good people at Media Lens point out – every word of this is false. For the BBC, however, there is no reason to doubt the occasion was ‘emotional’ and ‘passionate’ since – Blair said so!
Unconstrained by the occupational hazards of seeking career within the state’s primary propaganda organ, Tariq Ali is then able to tell the truth that one could never trust the BBC to tell.
The departure, too, was spun in classic New Labour, Dear Leader fashion. A carefully selected audience, a self-serving speech, the quivering lip and soon the dramaturgy was over. He had arrived at No 10 with a carefully orchestrated display of union flags. Patriotic fervour was also on show yesterday, with references to “this blessed country … the greatest country in the world” – no mention of the McDonald’s, Starbucks, Benetton that adorn every high street – nor of how Britain under his watch came to be seen in the rest of the world: a favourite attack dog in the imperial kennel.
Tony Blair’s principal success was in winning three general elections in a row. A second-rate actor, he turned out to be a crafty and avaricious politician. Bereft of ideas, he eagerly grasped and tried to improve on Margaret Thatcher’s legacy. But though in many ways Blair’s programme has been a euphemistic, if bloodier, version of Thatcher’s, the style of their departures is very different. Thatcher’s overthrow by her fellow Conservatives was a matter of high drama. Blair makes his unwilling exit against a backdrop of car bombs and carnage in Iraq, with hundreds of thousands left dead or maimed from his policies, and London a prime target for terrorist attack. Thatcher’s supporters described themselves afterwards as horror-struck by what they had done. Even some of Blair’s greatest sycophants in the media confess to a sense of relief as he finally quits.
Blair was always loyal to the occupants of the White House. In Europe he preferred Aznar to Zapatero, Merkel to Schröder, was seriously impressed by Berlusconi and, most recently, made no secret of his support for Sarkozy. He understood that privatisation and deregulation at home were part of the same mechanism as wars abroad.
If this judgment seems unduly harsh, let me quote Rodric Braithwaite, a former senior adviser to Blair, writing in the Financial Times on August 2 2006: “A spectre is stalking British television, a frayed and waxy zombie straight from Madame Tussaud’s. This one, unusually, seems to live and breathe. Perhaps it comes from the CIA’s box of technical tricks, programmed to spout the language of the White House in an artificial English accent … Mr Blair has done more damage to British interests in the Middle East than Anthony Eden, who led the UK to disaster in Suez 50 years ago. In the past 100 years we have bombed and occupied Egypt and Iraq, put down an Arab uprising in Palestine and overthrown governments in Iran, Iraq and the Gulf. We can no longer do these things on our own, so we do them with the Americans. Mr Blair’s total identification with the White House has destroyed his influence in Washington, Europe and the Middle East itself: who bothers with the monkey if he can go straight to the organ-grinder?”
This, too, is mild compared to what is privately said in the Foreign Office and MoD. Senior diplomats have told me it would not upset them too much if Blair were tried as a war criminal. But while neither Blair nor any of those who launched a war of aggression and occupation in Iraq have been held to account, a civil servant and MP’s researcher were yesterday shamefully jailed for exposing some of the dealings between Bush and Blair that lay behind the war.
What this reveals is anger and impotence. There is no mechanism to get rid of a prime minister unless their party loses confidence. The Conservative leadership decided Thatcher had to go because of her negative attitude to Europe. Labour tends to be more sentimental towards its leaders, and in this case they owed so much to Blair that nobody wanted to be cast in the role of Brutus. In the end he decided to go himself. The disaster in Iraq had made him hated and support began to ebb. One reason for the slowness was that the country is without a serious opposition. In parliament, the Conservatives simply followed Blair. The Lib Dems were ineffective. Blair had summed up Britain’s attitude to Europe at Nice in 2000: “It is possible, in our judgment, to fight Britain’s corner, get the best out of Europe for Britain, and exercise real authority and influence in Europe. That is as it should be. Britain is a world power.”
This grotesque fantasy that “Britain is a world power” is meant to justify that it will always be EU-UK. The real union is with Washington. France and Germany are seen as rivals for Washington’s affections, not potential allies in an independent EU. The French decision to reintegrate themselves into Nato and pose as the most vigorous US ally was a structural shift which weakened Europe. Britain responded by encouraging a fragmented political order in Europe through expansion, and insisted on a permanent US presence there.
Blair’s half-anointed successor, Gordon Brown, is more intelligent but politically no different. It is a grim prospect: an alternative politics – anti-war, anti-Trident, pro public services – is confined to the nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales. Its absence nationally fuels the anger felt by substantial sections of the population, reflected in voting against those in power, or not voting at all.
The Legacy
May 10, 2007
Other than the exceptional work by Robert Fisk and Patrick Cockburn, I find the Independent‘s journalism rather lacking. But there is no doubt that the paper is consistent in producing some of the most poignantly eyecatching frontpages. Following is yet another, which highlights Blair’s ‘legacy’.
From Baghdad to Tehran
February 22, 2007
Poodle’s little political gimmick, withdrawing 1600 troops from Iraq, has already had some unforeseen consequences: the Danes and Ukrainians are also hinting retreat. The Iraqi resistance has just shot down the 8th US helicopter since the beginning of the year. In the meanwhile, the US-UK-Israel engineered civil war in Baghdad rages on.
By all accounts, it is an unmitigated success. While all the rapes so far had been committed by the occupiers, it would appear its puppets in the Iraqi Vichy government have also joined the sport. The puppet government of al-Maliki was already fending off allegations of rape (by commending the alleged rapists), only to be hit by another.
Four Iraqi soldiers have been accused of raping a 50-year-old Sunni woman and the attempted rape of her two daughters in the second allegation of sexual assault leveled against Iraqi forces this week, an official said Thursday.
Brig. Gen. Nijm Abdullah said the attack allegedly occurred earlier this month in the northern city of Tal Afar during a search for weapons and insurgents.
A lieutenant and three enlisted men denied the charge but later confessed after they were confronted by the woman, a Turkoman. Abdullah said a fifth soldier suspected something was wrong, burst into the house and forced the others at gunpoint to stop the assault.
Nowhere To Hide
The latest issue of the London Review of Books (a publication I highly recommend), carries an excellent report by Patrick Cockburn on the developments in Baghdad. Here are some excerpts:
Baghdad is now effectively a dozen different cities; they are all at war. On walls there are slogans in black paint saying ‘Death to Spies’. A Shia caught in a Sunni district will be killed and vice versa…Between thirty and fifty bodies, often mutilated, are picked up by the police every day…According to the UN, 3000 people are murdered, mostly for sectarian reasons, in Iraq every month.
Everybody in Baghdad is frightened. There are few friends of mine left in the city. One day I got a phone call from Hussein, a businessman I had known since the US invasion, who had remained an optimist longer than most. He now spoke in a frightened voice, and from London. I hadn’t heard from him for a while, he said, because he had been kidnapped last summer. He came from a well-known Shia family and was lucky to be alive. His kidnappers whipped him, and then ‘came back to apologise because a cleric at their mosque told them it was wrong to whip anybody over 40 years of age’; he was released after handing over all his money. He was told to leave the country, which he did, but he has no residence permit and can’t stay in Britain or Jordan indefinitely. He doesn’t know what to do.
Bombs, kidnappings and sectarian killings: these are what people talk about in Baghdad. There is not much Iraqis can do about these threats, except run away. I am always talking to people about how to get to Jordan or Syria, and about the chances of getting asylum in the UK or elsewhere in Europe. Out of a population of 27 million, four million Iraqis – more than the population of Ireland – have fled their homes. This is the biggest exodus of refugees in the Middle East since Palestinians were forced from their homes in 1948. Many left after finding a bullet in an envelope slipped under the door or a death threat scrawled on the front of their house. There are relatively safe areas inside Iraq to which the Shia can flee; the Sunni are in danger wherever they go unless they leave the country altogether…
Just how dangerous Baghdad is for Americans was underlined last month when a helicopter belonging to the US security company Blackwater was shot down as it flew over the Sunni area of al-Fadhil close to the central market. The US army immediately sent in a rescue team, but by the time it arrived four of the five members of the helicopter’s crew had been executed by shots to the head (the fifth died in the crash); within hours their identity cards were being shown on insurgent websites. The lack of US control is even more apparent in the provinces. Recently US and Iraqi commanders gave a self-congratulatory press conference on the situation in Baquba, the capital of the fruit-growing province of Diyala. ‘The situation in Baquba,’ they claimed, ‘is reassuring and under control’; nasty rumours, they said, were being ‘circulated by bad people’. A few hours later insurgents stormed Baquba’s mayoral office, kidnapped the mayor and blew up the building. The local council’s response was to sack 1500 members of the Diyala police force on grounds that they had failed to resist the insurgency. The council now complains that insurgents are in effective control of Baquba and that Nouri al-Maliki’s government, which is preoccupied with the Baghdad security plan, has sent them no help.
It is hard to see why Bush’s surge into areas of Iraq that the US army has failed to pacify should succeed this time. Sunni insurgents and Shia militias will simply move elsewhere, or fight back using guerrilla tactics. If the US puts pressure on the Mehdi Army in Baghdad then the long and vulnerable US supply lines to Kuwait – the convoys run through the Shia provinces of southern Iraq – will come under attack, threatening the effective functioning of US forces in the capital…
The enormity of the decisions about future US policy that Bush announced in January has still not sunk in outside the US – and perhaps not even there. The implications are considerable. Bush’s plan is a total rejection of the sensible proposals of the Baker-Hamilton report, which recommended talks with Iran and Syria. He means instead to escalate and widen the war. ‘Shia extremists backed by Iran’, Bush said, were now an enemy as significant as al-Qaida. His demonisation of Iran – the hidden hand controlling the Shia militias – was an expression of the same paranoid fervour that four years ago drove his denunciations of Saddam for building weapons of mass destruction to threaten the Middle East. The level of mendacity about the relationship between Iran and the Iraqi Shia is even greater. The Shia of Iraq – who make up 60 per cent of the population – needed nobody’s prompting to take power through victory in the elections of 2005. Perhaps the most dangerous misconception in the Middle East is to see the Shia of Iraq or Lebanon as the pawns of Iran.
Target Iran
While the most recent antiwar rally in Washington (organized by United For Peace and Justice, a Democratic Party front) ignored the threats against Iran altogether, since most leaders of the Democratic party are as hawkish, if not more, on Iran as the Bush junta, the intellectual luminaries of the antiwar movement have been equally remiss in emphasizing the dangers. Colonel Sam Gardiner, a former US air force officer, instructor at various war colleges, who has carried out war games with Iran as the target warns: “We have to throw away the notion the US could not do it because it is too tied up in Iraq…It is an air operation.”
Only two days back, the BBC reported:
US contingency plans for air strikes on Iran extend beyond nuclear sites and include most of the country’s military infrastructure, the BBC has learned.
It is understood that any such attack – if ordered – would target Iranian air bases, naval bases, missile facilities and command-and-control centres…senior officials at Central Command in Florida have already selected their target sets inside Iran.
That list includes Iran’s uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. Facilities at Isfahan, Arak and Bushehr are also on the target list, the sources say.
Two triggers
BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says the trigger for such an attack reportedly includes any confirmation that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon – which it denies.
Alternatively, our correspondent adds, a high-casualty attack on US forces in neighbouring Iraq could also trigger a bombing campaign if it were traced directly back to Tehran.Long range B2 stealth bombers would drop so-called “bunker-busting” bombs in an effort to penetrate the Natanz site, which is buried some 25m (27 yards) underground.
It is well understood in the ranks of the military, diplomatic and financial elite that a war against Iran would be disastrous. Most are opposing it vocally for this reason. The American congress on the other hand is playing to a very different tune. While it may not support Bush if the US leads the attack on Iran, there is hardly anyone in the congress who will raise a bleat if Israel joins the fight first. As we saw during Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon, in both houses of congress, there was only a single individual who had the courage to utter mild words of criticism — and it was a Republican! Other than Chuck Hagel, everyone else, including the most progressive fringe of the Democratic Party lined up behind Israel. Liberals, such as Nancy Pelosi refused to attend a speech by puppet Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki when criticised Israel during his visit to Washington. Howard Dean went further and declared him an “anti-Semite” for refusing to acknowledge Israel’s right to bomb any civilian population its leaders wished.
These cretinous cowardly politicians are aided in their war mongering by the so called “antiwar” movement, which sanitizes its message in accord with the Democratic party’s wishes, and chose to exclude Iran, and Israel’s role in instigating the war, altogether from the agenda of its recent star-studded march in Washington. It even brought “Hanoi Jane” Fonda, a woman who had visited Beirut in 1982 with her husband Tom Hayden to cheer on Ariel Sharon as he proceeded to destroy Lebanon and murder 18,000 of its civilians. (To his credit, Tom Hayden apologized for his craven behavior last year, and als explained the circumstance that dictated his behavior).
There is no reason why the American people should keep themselves in ignorance however. Here is Patrick Cockburn again:
Confrontation with Iran makes little sense in terms of Iraqi politics. The most important elements in the Iraqi government are pro-Iranian, notably the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which used to be based in Iran. When I went to see one of its leaders in Najaf his guards spoke to me in Farsi. The Badr Organisation, SCIRI’s well-organised militia, was set up by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and fought on the Iranian side in the Iran-Iraq war. It is inconceivable that SCIRI would switch its allegiance from Iran to the US. It’s worth noting that the Iraqi nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and the Mehdi Army, prominent on the list of those denounced by Washington as creatures of Iran, have traditionally been anti-Iranian.
Bush’s new vision of Iran as the puppetmaster behind the Shia militias in Iraq is curiously close to that of the Baath Party, which also justifies its attacks on the Shia by claiming that the Shia are Iran’s instruments. The US overthrow of the Baathist regime was bound to benefit both Iran and al-Qaida. ‘We cannot reverse this outcome by more use of military force in Iraq,’ Lt General William Odom, the former head of the National Security Agency, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. ‘To try to do so would require siding with Sunni leaders and the Baathist insurgents against pro-Iranian Shia groups. The Baathist insurgents constitute the forces most strongly opposed to Iraqi co-operation with Iran.’ Because the Sunni insurgents – both the nationalists and those sponsored by al-Qaida – are fighting primarily in order to end the US occupation they cannot ally themselves with Washington as Saddam did during the Iran-Iraq war. The result is that inside Iraq Bush is alienating the Shia without necessarily gaining the support of the Sunni.
Bush’s confrontation with Iran makes some sense in the context of the politics of the wider Middle East. In Sunni countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan he is appealing to sectarian bigotry against the Shia in Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere: a powerful sentiment among leaders and people alike. The Shia takeover of the Iraqi government in alliance with the Kurds is being portrayed as the sharp edge of Iranian imperialism. Sunni rulers realise that the success of Hizbullah, which had widespread popular support when it fought Israel to a standstill in Lebanon last year, shows up the impotence, incompetence and corruption of their own regimes. To avoid such damaging comparisons they are happy to join the US in stoking the anti-Shia and anti-Iranian flames.
The real reason for Bush’s anti-Iranian policy may be its effects on American domestic politics. Ever since the overthrow of Saddam was first planned the White House has shown itself more interested in holding power in Washington than in Baghdad. Bush went to war in Iraq in 2003 because, after overthrowing the Taliban so easily in Afghanistan, he thought he could win an easy victory there too, to his great political advantage at home. He was partly right: the Iraqis did not fight for Saddam. But they also soon made it clear that they did not intend to live under permanent US occupation. Spurious turning points were exaggerated or invented in an attempt to prove that progress was being made: Saddam was captured in December 2003; power was supposedly handed over to an Iraqi government in 2004; elections were held in 2005; Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, was killed by US bombs in 2006. None of these supposed successes made any real difference on the battlefield, but all were claimed as evidence that the US had put an end to the bloody stalemate. The moment American voters realised the extent of the failure in Iraq was postponed long enough for Bush to win the presidential election in 2004 and hold onto both Houses of Congress until 2006.
US confrontation with Iran will prolong the war in Iraq. ‘The Iranians can afford to compromise in Iraq, but they cannot afford to be defeated there,’ Ghassan Attiyah, an Iraqi political scientist, told me. If the US stages air-raids, assassinations or small-scale strikes against Iran then the difficulties it finds itself in in Iraq will only increase. Despite Washington’s claims, there is little evidence that Iran gives significant support to either Sunni insurgents or Shia militias. But if pressed it could do so. After spending four years failing to defeat the five million Iraqi Sunni the US could find itself fighting the 17 million Iraqi Shia as well.
The Trial of Tony Blair
February 6, 2007
Dogshit and the Missing Link
February 2, 2007
So the poodle failed to clean up his mess and is interrogated by the police once again only days after his financier, £Lord£ Michael Levy, is rearrested.
In all the reporting on this incident the British mainstream media seems to consistently overlook Michael Levy’s Israel Lobby connection. The real scandal ought to have been Blair’s appointment of a staunch Zionist as his Middle-East envoy. I still haven’t figured out exactly why the average journalist is so reluctant to touch this fact?
Missing Link
Only yesterday, I had sent the following letter to the editors of the Independent:
Rupert Cornwell’s report about the Brookings Institution study does the reader no favor by excluding mention of the questionable provenance of the study. Kenneth Pollack’s book, The Threatening Storm and his articles in the New York Times were instrumental in selling the case for war against Iraq, by ratcheting up the WMD threat. More recently, he has been busy selling the next war — against Iran. His new book, The Persian Puzzle, makes an equally disingenous case. His institutional affiliations should have already made him suspect. Saban Center for Middle East Policy was set up by the Israeli media tycoon Haim Saban with a donation of $12.3m to rectify the policy research at Brookings Institution which was considered “not sufficiently sympathetic to Israel”. Its Director is none other than Martin Indyk, formerly of AIPAC and the founder of its spinoff, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
At present, the Israel lobby in the United States and the various congressman benefitting from its munificence are the only organized voice gunning for the new war. Failing to point out the conflicts of interest of these individuals, especially in these dangerous times, is in my opinion tantamount to dereliction of duty.
The Day Satire Became Obsolete
The Independent reveals statements made by a Labour leader declaring that Tony Benn is right in believing that the party’s “right-wing was politically bankrupt.” This radical also claimed that reading Karl Marx ‘irreversibly altered’ his outlook. The words must have come as a real shock to Tony Blair?
Perhaps not. The statement is Tony Blair’s, made in a letter to former Labour leader Michael Foot. The letter written in 1982 was only published yesterday.
Flawed Execution
January 3, 2007
Of course I’m talking about the PR strategy that seems to have backfired in the face of the Bush junta and the poodle otherwise known as the Prime Minister of Britain. Bush hoped that executing Saddam Hussein would add to the numerous “milestones” which serve as a measure of success in the absence of real achievements, except his bloodthirsty allies in the Vichy Iraqi government furnished him with a new PR disaster.
Iraq, in Robert Fisk’s words, is a hell disaster. Bush, under the sagacious patronage of the neocons, has already sauntered across the Rubicon. In so doing, he has even left behind his traditional constituency — conservatives and the military. But events caught up with him, and the dreaded 3,000 mark was right across the corner. How could he possibly deny his detractors the propaganda coup that would accompany the imminent rounding of the figures than to submerge it under a headlines of his choice?
Unfortunately for Bush, the desire of his allies in the Iraqi puppet government for a grisly soveneir trumped any pretense at sophistication. The irony of the medieval execution was lost on no one which made even a tyrant appear dignified next to the thuggish executioners who, with US-UK blessing, made a spectacle of their primitive blood lust.
In Patrick Cockburn’s words “Bush and Blair’s choices have led to disaster in Iraq, culminating in a chaotic execution that is fuelling civil war”. It was
an execution which vied in barbarity with a sectarian lynching in the backstreets of Belfast 30 years ago is elevating [Saddam] to heroic status in the eyes of the Sunni – the community to which most Arabs belong – across the Middle East.
Friend and comrade Haifa Zangana points to the obvious irony,
The unofficial recording shows Saddam looking calm and composed, and even managing a sarcastic smile, asking the thugs who taunted him “hiya hiy al marjala?” (“is this your manliness?”), a powerful phrase in Arabic popular culture connecting manliness to acts of courage, pride and chivalry. He also managed to repeatedly say the Muslim creed as he was dying, thus attaching himself in the last few seconds of his life to one billion Muslims. Saddam had literally the final say.
More colourfully still, Robert Fisk adds:
Only the president-governor George Bush and Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara could have devised a militia administration in Iraq so murderous and so immoral that the most ruthless mass murderer in the Middle East could end his days on the gallows as a figure of nobility… in his last seconds … reminding the thug who told him to “go to hell” that the hell was now Iraq.
“Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it,” Malcolm reported of the execution of the treacherous Thane of Cawdor in Macbeth.
The sight was so macabre, that now the Brits and the Americans – who have rarely issued a word of sympathy for the hundreds of thousands of the victims of their war – feel obliged to express outrage at the manner in which the execution was carried out.
This reaction, however, is a cause of embarassment only because of how it is playing out in the rest of the world. In the US and Britain, the media couldn’t stop gloating. As a matter of fact, Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World even wished its readers a happy new year superimposed on a frontpage spread of the execution scene. Inside, there was a picture of Bush, with the word “Justice” summing up everything he represents to the Murdoch audience. The British newspapers (with the exception of the Independent, Guardian and Herald) make even the shit-rags in my own country look respectable.
After centuries of intellectual endeavour uninterrupted by foreing invasions or colonization, isn’t it sad that this is what represents Britain to the expat?
As for Iraq, Haifa sums it up the best,
It is hell in Iraq by all standards, and there is no end in sight to the plight of Iraqi people. The resistance to occupation is a basic human right as well as a moral responsibility. That was the case during the Algerian war of independence, the Vietnamese war of independence, and it is the case in Iraq now.
Dog & Pony Show in Israeli Occupied Territories
December 20, 2006
We all know that the Palestinian Authority has a flag and a post office, but the third great achievement of the Oslo “peace process” has been hitherto overlooked — a red carpet.
So the poodle is now in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (yes, despite the red carpet, the territories still remain occupied) and he promises to bring Palestinians the same thing he has already inundated Iraqis with – dogshit (otherwise known as his “Middle East plan”). The Guardian reports:
Tony Blair yesterday proposed a controversial plan to bolster Mahmoud Abbas in his escalating battle against Hamas by funnelling millions of pounds in aid directly to security forces under the Palestinian leader’s control.The risky move…has been agreed with the US …Mr Blair is suggesting that some of the aid be used to fund the civilian police and increase Mr Abbas’s own security guard, seen as one of the more reliable forces in the region. The guard could be used to secure border passages. Some reports say as much as $26m (£13.4m) in aid would be required.
Ed Balls, the economic secretary to the Treasury, arrived in Israel last night to discuss details of the aid.
In Britain, there must clearly be elatation that the Prime Minister is attempting to elevate himself from poodle to statesman.
Mr Blair faced the accusation at home that he was in danger of funding militias in a country on the brink of civil war.
What about the Palestinians? They must surely have been bowled over by such visionary diplocmay.
Tell us Karma Nabulsi, what do you think?
What we are witnessing today is the horrific and inevitable outcome of a process of deliberate coercion, designed to force an occupied people to surrender their elected representatives.
Surely there must be someone who acknowledges Blair diplomatic achievement?
Mr Olmert praised Mr Blair’s “good and interesting ideas”, saying it was in every one’s interest for the “moderate [Palestinian] elements to be strengthened”.
So Mahmoud Abbas, in this difficult hour for Palestine, when children are being gunned down by Israeli soldiers every day, the entire population is being starved, what message do you have for the Israeli Prime Minister, the architect of these atrocities?
Mr Abbas…said he was ready to meet Mr Olmert, saying: “We need each other. We have a joint cause.”
Small step forward for a poodle; giant leap backward for humanity.
Dog & Shit
December 19, 2006
Comment is superfluous.
Dogshit!
December 16, 2006
So, the poodle has made another mess. For the first time in British history, a serving Prime Minister was interviewed by the Police over allegations of distributing honours for cash. The interview was conveniently timed with the release of the findings of the investigation into Princess Diana and Dodi El Fayed’s deaths.
The only thing that is surprising about this news is its timing. It has been well known for nearly ten years that the government has been rewarding generous donors to the party with peerages and positions. As I had shown earlier in an investigation of the lobby group Labour Friends of Israel, its main fundraiser, Michael Levy, and one of the donors, David Sainsbury, were not only ennobled, but also appointed to questionable positions with obvious conflicts of interests.
Let us start with Lord Levy. Here is an introduction to the man from my earlier investigation:
Michael Abraham Levyis a former chairman of the Jewish Care Community Foundation, a member of the Jewish Agency World Board of Governors, and a trustee of the Holocaust Educational Trust. According to Andrew Porter of The Business, Levy expressed his willingness “to raise large sums of money for the party” which led to a “tacit understanding that Labour would never again, while Blair was leader, be anti-Israel”. The partnership proceeded as Levy started inviting potential donors for tennis at his palatial home where Tony Blair would join them for a set or two. Levy would then proceed to ask the guests for donations after Blair had left. The genius of Levy’s fundraising strategy ensured that most of Labour’s election funds came from private sources, rather than its traditional source – the trade unions, thereby weakening their say over policy.
Levy’s investment eventually paid off, with Blair’s accession to power. The reward was not long in coming as Levy was ennobled and subsequently retained as a “special envoy” to the Middle-East, leading predictably to the development of a strong pro-Israel line. Given the fact that Levy has both a business and a house in Israel and his son Daniel used to work for Yossi Beilin – the former Justice Minister of Israel – speaks of a serious conflict of interest, especially when he is the man assigned by Blair to negotiate impartially with Palestinians and Israelis. The fact that Levy acted as a fundraiser for former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak casts further doubt on his capacity for impartiality.
In his book Labour Party Plc., David Osler is incredulous at the “astonishing appointment” of Levy as the PM’s special envoy to the Middle East giving his “open espousal of Zionism and ties to the Israeli establishment” which “automatically compromise him in Arab eyes”. Osler points out that “there is nothing on his curriculum vitae that indicates any experince relevant to this delicate diplomatic role in a perpetually crisis-ridden region”. The former record company executive was described as “schlock merchant” by his close friend Pete Waterman but given the roster to bands he signed — Alivn Stardust, Bad Manners and the Darts — Osler observes that “even that description grossly overestimates the man’s musical tastes”. (p.59)
Moving on now to Lord David Sainsbury. In September 1997 Sainsbury gave Labour its biggest ever single donation, on October 3 1997 he was made a life peer by Blair and a year later Minister for Science. Mark Seddon, a member of Labour’s National Executive Committee, told the BBC, “In any other country I think a government minister donating such vast amounts of money and effectively buying a political party would be seen for what it is, a form of corruption of the political process.” Seddon said it was causing Labour to lose members amid criticism from the grassroots that the party was now “in the pockets of the powerful and the rich.”
Sainsbury is also a member of the cabinet biotechnology committee, Sci-Bio, responsible for national policy on GM crops and foods, and as such is a key adviser to Blair on GM technology.
In the wake of the scandal, although Sainsbury has finally had to resign, but this comes nearly 8 years too late, as the conflict of interest was obvious from day one. According to Spinwatch:
Through his Gatsby Charitable Foundation Lord Sainsbury has also put millions into the study of plant genetics. Gatsby gives approximately 2 million a year to the Sainsbury Laboratory of the John Innes Centre, which does research into GM crops. Lord Sainsbury helped found the Laboratory in 1987 and his Gatsby Foundation remains its principal source of funding, although it also receives over 800,000 a year from the Biotechnology and Biological Science Research Council (BBSRC) , for which Sainsbury is responsible in his ministerial role. Its grant has increased several fold during Sainsbury’s time as minister.
Like his biotech investments, his Gatsby contributions have been administered through a blind trust run by his solicitor Judith Portrait since Sainsbury became UK Science Minister. Portrait is also a Gatsby trustee. Although he does not attend Gatsby meetings or make decisions, Sainsbury retains the power to appoint and dismiss its trustees.
For some, the choice of an unelected biotech investor and food industrialist to be Science Minister, based within the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), is more than emblematic of the UK’s corporate-science culture.
Dog & Pony Show in Pakistan
November 19, 2006
I bet that is a “moderate” muslim Blair’s posing with. Oh, wait, it is.
