The number of people still prepared to defend the Iraq War in public is tiny. The interesting thing is the very strong correlation between those people, and those prepared to pretend to give credence to the farcical sexual allegations about Julian Assange. Zoe Williams Guardian piece about what a jolly good chap Blair is I find breathtaking. War crimes like Blair’s result in terrible anguish for millions. I am prepared for purposes of argument to believe that Williams’ anguish for female victims of crime is genuine; why she can’t extend that to the tens of thousands of women who were raped because of Blair’s Iraq War, or had the still worse agony of seeing their children killed and mutilated I don’t know. Nick Cohen is just very, very sad. I just hold up these two in the hope that those deceived by feminist political correctness into following their lead against Assange will see to what they are subscribing.
Rather a side issue, but even if we accept Zoe Williams view that dead Iraqi children don’t matter, she appears not to have noticed that Blair introduced tuition fees, academies, kick-started NHS privatization, allowed the banksters’ bonanza leading to worldwide economic crash and oversaw the greatest widening of the gap between rich and poor in British history.
And Nick Cohen is an evil POS. IMO.
To continue my point on out use of language and the decisions that are foundered, i turn on the radio 5 and their is a reference to Ben Dover the adult film actor.
7.20 on mainstream media.
There are forces of manipulation that encourage war mentality.
It says a lot about a person’s humanity, nevermind moral compass, that they think killing & mass misery can be thought of as a political consideration that bears any sort of political comparison; the life of one single person is not worth knocking x pence of income tax or raising the minimum wage by x pounds; if they really think that human life is not so precious, especially for an self-righteous “Greater Cause”, then why don’t they validate their conviction by placing themselves in real danger for a real worthwhile cause, instead of white-washing the murder of others; if Zoe Williams, even now, adopted an Iraqi orphan & brought that child up as her own child, she would still be an obscene apologist for mass murder, albeit a slightly less sickening hypocritical one.
Even if Blair really did bring peace to NI & saved lives in Sierra Leone, a once modern country, the size of France, has been destroyed & turned a literal Hell on Earth at the expense of countless lives:
“The modern, educated, advanced nation of Iraq was reduced to a quasi failed state … the Americans, beginning in 1991, bombed for 12 years, with one dubious excuse or another; then invaded, then occupied, overthrew the government, tortured without inhibition, killed wantonly … the people of that unhappy land lost everything – their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women’s rights, their religious tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their past, their present, their future, their lives … More than half the population either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally displaced, or in foreign exile … The air, soil, water, blood, and genes drenched with depleted uranium … the most awful birth defects … unexploded cluster bombs lying in wait for children to pick them up … a river of blood running alongside the Euphrates and Tigris … through a country that may never be put back together again. … “It is a common refrain among war-weary Iraqis that things were better before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003,” reported the Washington Post. (May 5, 2007)“
http://williamblum.org/aer/read/127
Hababbkuk, I am a bit more paranoid than you. I think they wheeled in Zoe Williams – perhaps she even had a little chat with Tony first – to rally the troops for Tony’s next campaign. She actually writes well and the points she makes are eloquently put.
Another thing she doesn’t mention of course is that when Blair started rabbiting on in cabinet about Iraq the entire cabinet including Straw thought he was off his rocker, just like the Tory cabinet did when Thatcher started saying ‘We’ve got to destroy the Unions’ in about 1980.
However both cabinets, seeing the chance of getting their parties in for a stretch behind a strong leader had a couple of pints and chucked their principles out of the window for the duration.
These lickspittles are mostly the ones now who are going ‘Ah, yes Iraq, tut tut’, and dissing their leader to anyone who’ll listen.
At least Straw is still standing up for the things he never believed in in the first place.
Sorry the above should be addressed to Ba’al, not Hababbkuk!
Equality has come a long way since Pankhurst….
Bravo Craig, this nail was asking to be hit on the head for some time. Women can be as ruthless as men, as to why, how and for what reasons is open to debate.
I also support RAWA because they did their utmost when it was dearly needed, sensible tasks in Afghanistans health and social care, under threat of death, don’t think they would take Blairs side.
I heard a 1960’s photographer/reporter speak on TV whilst writing something, she was a 1960’s celeb photographer and journo, I beleieve working for the Observer, she was speaking on taking Blairs portrait during the early seventies, she summed it up as ‘the moment he entered the room I felt uncomfortable and the photo I took was not natural, I could not find his natural side, it was impossible to draw out, he was weird’
sadly can’t remember her name, something Molly or Polly, not sure, but the way she said it made it obvious that she did not like him on sight.
Conjunction –
I think your paranoia may be justified; that would make sense. Your confusion of Me with the other entity is well out of order, though. 🙁
Conjunction. “This is because they were both conviction politicians.”
In my book they should both be convicted politicians.
“I suppose I don’t see this blog as a pyschologist’s couch.”
No, you don’t, its more like an annonymous hole in the wall in some dinghy peepshow for you, somewhere to get off all over people.
Your insunuations, always running in the background, are rude and facetious, your non participation is legend and sadly, so limiting to your very own self.
Detailed dissection of Williams’ arslikhan piece here:
http://www.counterfire.org/index.php/articles/opinion/17156-stop-trying-to-rehabilitate-tony-blair-we-are-right-to-condemn-his-record
Habbabkuk (La vita è bella) !
10 Apr, 2014 – 12:36 am
“It’s pure phantasy…”
Habbabkuk (La vita è bella) !
10 Apr, 2014 – 9:29 am
“…constant phantasizing…”
verb
“…variant spelling of fantasize (restricted to archaic uses or, in modern use, to the fields of psychology and psychiatry).”
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/phantasize
Very strange!
Four letters re. the Williams piece in today’s print Guardian. One weakly supportive of Williams, the others point out the holes in her account; all critical of Blair.
Tony Blair = Toxic Brand
conjunction 10 Apr, 2014 – 10:21 am
If you’re right, maybe this recent hagiography by Bob Geldof, also in the Guardian, is less than coincidence:
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/mar/02/bob-geldof-africa-tony-blair
Nevermind. It was Jane Bown. She was brilliant.
Jane Bown: ‘There was nothing there with Blair’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=546OT_ViFdo
What a marvellous photograph of Bertrand Russell in profile she produced and isn’t she unassuming.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_women_photographers#United_Kingdom
Mary, Jane Bown’s assessment of Tony Blair is a classic put-down. She reminds me of the Conservative lady who described him as “smarmy” before his first term of office. I wish I had listened to her. Instead I wasted my vote in helping to elect the evil warmonger. It was the last time. Blair killed my association with the Labour Party. Blair’s father was a Tory. He inherited the gene.
LOL @ A Node’s Geldof contribution. Certainly shows how slebs can get it disastrously wrong. For all the fine words, Gleneagles achieved precisely zero – a generally and rightly forgotten event. Though it helped set up Blair’s diary and contacts list for his lucrative private operation.
A bit from my link above:
Blair represented the desertion by Labour of the social democratic gains of the post-war period. New Labour placed far greater emphasis on the vacuous New than on the Labour. He wasn’t just a warmonger abroad but someone who pushed through private finance initiatives and deregulation at home, who allowed inequality to prosper, and who displaced blame for social ills onto the victims.
The state became not a support and provider for people from cradle to grave, but increasingly a facilitator of greater enrichment for private business, bankers and speculators. And it became increasingly coercive too, both at home and abroad. There was growth in state-sanctioned Islamophobia, the erosion of civil liberties, and an increase in the surveillance state; subservience to the White House in the ‘war on terror’ meant participation in rendition and complicity in torture.
Re. which, compare and contrast:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4627360.stm
and
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17682879
also
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2010/07/15/uk-sought-rendition-of-british-nationals-to-guantanamo-tony-blair-directly-involved/
with:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/tony-blair/10747166/Tony-Blair-knew-all-about-CIA-secret-kidnap-programme.html
Habbabkuk; “A draft law, Fujisan, a draft law. Which means that it is not yet law. And may in fact never become law”
Actually according to the Telegraph, it “looks likely to pass”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/10753645/Iraq-ready-to-legalise-childhood-marriage.html
Re topic of thread, this comment seems to appropiate;
“This should be OK as well:
Mr. Jonesxxx is a paedophile and he rapes children in Malaysia and kill them in the process, after torturing them of course. But here at home (UK) he is is an exemplary citizen, pays taxes, gives money to charity organizations, and work hard for his country. Anyway, Malaysia is very far away, and who cares?
What about that?
PS: please, don’t tell me that th example doesn’t apply. If you do that I would ask for you to tell the families of all the civilian killed during the invasion and afterwards, all the tortured and imprisoned people, that Tony Blair and his master (Bush) were very good politicians because they cared for the people of their country”
Ba’al Zevul (Thank God Tomorrow’s Friday) 10 Apr, 2014 – 12:18 pm
“LOL @ A Node’s Geldof contribution. Certainly shows how slebs can get it disastrously wrong.”
Oh, I don’t know, I think Geldof achieved exactly what he intended ….
Mary
Rather than focussing on my inadvertent mispelling of ‘psychologist’, you would do better to tell us why you consider the idea that someone in public life might have had a Jewish ancestor so important. And why you consider it important enough to bring it to our attention.
This is Craig’s blog and not Stormfront or one of those other more than dubious websites.
I also wonder why the other Eminences – usually so vocal when a poster remarks on a public figure’s ethnic or religious background – remain so silent when Mary’s off on one of her find-the-Jewish-ancestor hunts.
Is it the silence of agreement or the silence of embarrassment?
*************
Buy US dollars, sterling and shekels!
How anyone can justify on any basis the Iraq War – what Dr. David Kelly was murdered for trying to prevent, and Blair covered up by getting stooge Brian Hutton to do all the necessary dirty work – is beyond me.
Saddam’s ouster was thrown in by Washington’s neocons after the attempt to stop the 19 hijackers turned into a massive cock-up which murdered 3,000 innocent Americans, but Blair still supported is just state terrorism carried to extreme lengths.
Without it, the Middle East would have been more manageable problems, but with it, the area is just a massive mess.
Conjunction
“Sorry the above should be addressed to Ba’al, not Hababbkuk!”
______________
No problem, Conjunction! I’ll be positive (sorry, Excellences, I know it’s like farting at a reception) and assume that you don’t consider me to be paranoid 🙂
Nevermind
“Women can be as ruthless as men, as to why, how and for what reasons is open to debate.”
_______________
Probably, Nevermind, because they’re human? You shouldn’t put any category or group on a pedestal, you know!
Habbabkuk is not much good at working things out, is he?
Nevermind. There are female psychopaths too. At a lower percentage of the population than the male.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hare_Psychopathy_Checklist
“Women’s rights” has been used extensively as justification for NATO/Western attacks in Afghanistan. I haven’t found any articles by Zoe Williams specifically about that, but here she is praising UK military education for people, mostly male (the article refers to “boys”), as young as sixteen:
http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2014/feb/21/why-army-education-is-hard-not-to-admire
The article also links to a timeline, “British forces’ century of unbroken warfare”, something that Habbabkuk recently claimed was false:
http://interactive.guim.co.uk/embed/2014/feb/100-years-of-war/index.html
(Javascript required for above link.)
Just a reminder that the 7/7 London bombings occurred during the G8, from which Blair was flown by Chinook to RAF Leuchars the next day* for a plane home. And the bombings may well have been a direct response to Blair’s enthusiastic participation in Afghanistan and Iraq. Reminder:
On 6 July 2006, a videotaped statement by Shehzad Tanweer was broadcast by Al-Jazeera. In the video, which may have been edited[12] to include remarks by al-Zawahiri who appeared in Khan’s video, Tanweer said:
“ What have you witnessed now is only the beginning of a string of attacks that will continue and become stronger until you pull your forces out of Afghanistan and Iraq. And until you stop your financial and military support to America and Israel.”
*He announced he was leaving Gleneagles just an hour after he had advised the public not to make unnecessary journeys…
Jane Bown, on photographing Blair:
‘There was nothing to capture’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=546OT_ViFdo
That’s quite significant coming from an artist, and particularly of portraiture.
I’d have much preferred she developed that theme than listen to 6 Pilgers patronising tone.
“On February 25th, Iraq’s Cabinet approved a draft law lowering the age of legal marriage for females to nine years old.”
Iran of course already has such a law
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/9500484/Alarm-as-hundreds-of-children-under-age-of-10-married-in-Iran.html
We forget that such things are driven by religion and that child brides still existed within Christianity until recently. As an agnostic living in a largely secular democracy, I find the whole thing abhorrent – but then I would.
Mary
Could we have a full biography of your father so that we can all play the game of visiting the sons of the father on the child? You really are incorrigible.
The point about child bride legislation in Iraq is that it did NOT exist in Saddam’s time prior to the Bush Blair onslaught that laid waste the country and wrecked its institutions. The Sunni Shia divide did not exist and there was very little acrimony in a multiple society. You should keep up and I suggest you read Felicity Arbuthnot and William Blum. Keep up why don’t you or are you being deliberately obtuse.