Miliband Goes the Full Henry Jackson 110


Full on neo-con philosophy underpinned Miliband’s “speech” to the Royal Institute of International Affairs yesterday. Miliband acknowledged that our bombing of Libya back to the stone age was the root cause of the boat people crisis.

Sirte-destroyed-1

Sirte-destroyed-2

But Miliband was not admitting that the Guernica style massacre was wrong – he voted for it. No, he was going the full Henry Jackson and arguing that what had been needed was neo-colonial occupation of Libya in order to reform its institutions – precisely as had been done in Iraq. And we all know how that went.

This is a blow to those who believed that Miliband was different from Blair, Brown, Murphy and his brother. In fact, the entire “speech” could have been written by the Henry Jackson Society. It bemoans the decline of the authority of international institutions like the UN and International Court of Justice, but states that this is because they had failed – and failed in particular to back western military intervention everywhere. Miliband argues that the solution is for individual states to take unilateral armed action abroad, but bemoans that this is more difficult because of cuts in western defence budgets. He wants increased defence spending to fund increased military intervention abroad. He does not acknowledge that it is precisely unilateral western military action in attacking other states which has destroyed the authority of the UN in the first place.

The “speech” is in fact a series of slogans, loosely connected. Both the content and the style say a huge amount about the depths to which our civic society has sunk. The prospect of this intellectual midget and neo-con lickspittle becoming Prime Minister is frankly appalling.

The RIIA, better known as Chatham House, does not normally hear lectures written by somebody incapable of constructing a paragraph of more than ten words. It would give me great pleasure if you would be so kind just to glance at the lecture I gave to Chatham House eleven years ago. Of course it is on a much more specific subject than Miliband’s neo-con declaration of faith, but I still feel I come rather well out of the contrast.

Rather like those Soviet parade photos where the nomenklatura got airbrushed out after execution, all trace of my lecture has disappeared from the Chatham House website.


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110 thoughts on “Miliband Goes the Full Henry Jackson

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  • Republicofscotland

    Staying on Labour,Gordon Brown is in Paisley today,in a desperate attempt to help Douglas Alexander keep his seat.

    Brown,who constantly usec the words Scottish Patriot,yesterday in Fife will tell anyone who’ll listen today that Douglas Alexander,is a man for positive change.

    But in reality Brown has been wheeled out to save Alexander’s seat,because Miliband has promised Labour’s campaign manager a senior position in a future Labour government.

    Hopefully the polls hold true and Alexander will, lose his seat,to a 20 year old SNP candidate.

  • Mary

    3.29pm The troll takes the biscuit. Earlier he told me to be ‘continent’. There was inference there of ‘incontinence’. Revolting as per usual.

  • Mary

    And Hosie became Howie. We have already spoken of predictive text on Android gadgets.

    Habbab becomes hubbub
    Habbabk offers Hannah I ??
    Habbabku offers Habbabaku Q. Are you from Azerbaijan?
    Habbabkuk becomes Habbab UK !!

    So there.

  • Mary

    His correct name is STEWART Hosie incidentally so you got that wrong O pedantic one.

  • Mochyn69

    Sorry to go slightly off topic, and to be so rude, but Gordon Brown has crawled out of the woodwork again in the UK general election campaign.

    Please, Gordon Brown, will you just fuck off.

  • craig Post author

    Hab,

    Yes, we are talking of a lecture actually delivered. I think the only time I ever used a prepared text. It was on the Chatham House website, and has been removed. That could be part of a policy of deleting old lectures, but that seems a peculiar thing to do. You would think there would rather be an online archive, for a research institute.

  • nevermind

    “But Nevermind seems to have forgotten that bit. He also seems to have rather glossed over the bit of Craig’s speech that called for a “British policy based on support for human rights” or perhaps he reads “support for” as “ignoring”?”

    And I have enthusiastically, and more than once, RD, voiced support for a Magreb partnership based on our need for cheap sustainable energy, and their need for education, employment, a partnership that demands human rights to be respected.
    But thanks to the destruction of Ghaddafi’s regime, he was getting a little long in the tooth, he should have thought about his ‘retirement’ and what happens to Libya.

    He did not, and we all chimed in unison, thirsting for Libyan sweet crude, with NATO, once again being used as the attack dog. This creation of chaos by oil addicts, who must control the market or go bust, undermines everything modern Europe wants to achieve in the Magreb.

    Those who bombed Libyans from great height killing thousands, are now stum on the plight of African refugees from Mali, Syria, Somalia, Libya, and Afghanistan, they are sniping from the sidelines in the middle of an election, laugh over Kate Hopkins vile inhumanity, exposing her tribal excretions to the masses, a product of interest to some.
    But with no offers for help and or admittance of responsibility for some of the refugee crisis, those who bombed Libya are liars, cold hearted liars.

    you’re welcome

  • John Goss

    I’ve seen nowhere in the Labour plans where it says they intend to bring back military personnel from training the Ukraine fascists so cannot offer Labour my vote. It is unlikely to stop Labour being returned. It’s a very safe seat. My vote would go to the Green Party except in its manifesto I can find nothing whatsoever regarding opposition to war or any international issues. It reads like a local election campaign. So I’m flummoxed. I can’t vote for the Tories because they are outright evil, or the United Kingdom Independent Nazi Party. Hopefully in five years Left Unity will have got its act together.

  • John Goss

    “You on the other hand have noting to say about the assassinations, suppression of free speech, fascists and other extreme nationalists roaming the streets of Russia with encouragement, the extreme racism of the Putin regime (and I will happily use the standard of the “fascist Theresa May” (your words not mine) as my measuring stick, the extreme right wing economics of said regime or its stultifying corruption.”

    https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/04/lord-gill-the-flouncing-fool/#comment-520367

    So as well as selectively quoting to present a false idea concerning Russko-Uzbek relations

    https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/04/miliband-goes-the-full-henry-jackson/#comment-521963

    the fascist supporter makes up a quote, ascribes it to me, and then has the cold-brass effrontery to call them “your words not mine” meaning my words not his. He’s so full of shit to clear him out he’d need more enemas than he has friends to administer them.

  • Republicofscotland

    An international drive has been launched against China’s growing networks of “Confucius Institutes”

    There are many of them spread all over the world,the classrooms are funded by the Chinese Communist regime,but recently the Chinese have cracked down on what can and what cannot be displayed or spoken about in the classrooms.

    Such as Human Rights issues,or Tibetan issues,it’s all rather reminiscent of the IDF and ghe AIPAC.

  • Republicofscotland

    Scotland will play host to a series of commemorations,of the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising,which marked the beginning of the end of British rule in Ireland.

    The first of these event will take place on Tuesday,at the Irish Consulate in Edinburgh,Scottish singer Eddi Reader,whose great-uncle was involved in the Rising will meet the Irish envoy to launch the commemorations.

    Scots activist such as James Connolly,played a major role in the Easter Rising,that eventually led to Irish independence.

  • Republicofscotland

    Actually that’s Stuart HOSIE, Mary.

    A silver-tongued, slippery so-and-so if there ever was one. He did a Michael Howard on a BBC Radio 4 interviewer a couple of weeks ago when questioned about whether he saw any moral difficulty and hypocrisy in getting rid of Trident (ie, nuclear weapons)while at the same time remaining under the (NATO) nuclear umbrella.
    —————————

    badHABBit

    As Mary so kindly pointed out his name is STEWART,do pay attention old boy.

    As for Scotland wanting rid of WMD’s whilst remaining in NATO?

    NATO has 28 members with only 3 members France,the USA and the UK,holding WMD’s so when filibusters like you doublespeak,no one really pays attention.

    No doubt the other 25 NATO members in your eyes are hypocrites for not have WMD’s.

  • fedup

    South African Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande has been denied a visa to zionistan can you imagine if it was the other way round?

    antisemi……. anteisemi…… antisemi…..

    As it stands none of the corporate media will dwell on this and the weekend talking heads will be debating why o why o why zionistan’s right to exist is so ignored by everyone and they want to drive zionistanis into the sea and stuff!

  • Resident Dissident

    Goss

    What you actually said was

    “Doug, it’s good to have these racists expressing their views openly. That way decent people know who they are. Theresa May is of this persuasion. I bet she’s clicked the Like box together with nearly 2,700 other fascists.”

    If you want to label May as a fascist and a racist might I suggest you improve your grasp of the English language.

    As for portraying the current state of Putin Uzbek relations I think the Valdai club site and Putin’s own put the picture across perfectly well – lets just say the degree of sycophancy matches your own to Putin.

  • Republicofscotland

    The US has taken over leadership of the Arctic Council, as Russia opens more bases in the Arctic region.

    In the last year, Moscow has upped its military presence in the region, increasing sorties by fighter jets and opening new bases in the region, constructing 10 search-and-rescue stations, 16 deepwater ports, 13 airfields, and 10 air-defence radar stations across its Arctic coast.

    Russia has also reopened previously closed Soviet bases in the far-north, including one in the Murmansk region, just 31 miles away from the Finnish border, which will house over 3,000 ground troops, 39 surface ships, and 35 submarines.

    The Arctic Council is made up of eight nations,including the USA,its estimated that under the Arctic,there’s between 13 to 25 percent of natural oil/gas resources just waiting to be extracted.

  • RobG

    Can I remind some folks of the background to the western intervention in Libya. The following is a short news clip from Al Jazeera, broadcast on March 2nd 2011…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHWcolj7too

    This intervention was given the nod by the UN Security Council…

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_1973

    … ie, it was sort of ‘legal’ under international law.

    In early 2011 the revolution in Libya did appear to be a popular uprising, and a very bloody one at that. What happened with the western intervention and its aftermath is another story that I won’t go into here.

    Also from March 2011, here’s an edited version of an interview that Gaddafi gave to the BBC…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uOGz9qOQqI

  • RobG

    Oh, and something else happened in March 2011 that no one ever talks about.

    What a year 2011 was! and it was capped-off on New Year’s Eve, when Obama signed the NDAA 2012 into law (because he thought no one was looking).

    To summarise 2011:

    The Arab uprisings were completely crushed, not by vile Arab dictators, but by the west, because we can’t have plebs demanding genuine freedom and democracy. It would set a dangerous precedent.

    Fukushima, the worst disaster in human history that is ongoing and will be for centuries to come, yet ostrich-like it is almost completely ignored.

    The NDAA, which for the first time allows for the indefinite detention of American citizens without trial (cue the sound of the American Constitution being ripped to shreds), yet ostrich-like, this seismic shift in US law is almost completely ignored.

    2011 was certainly way out there. I’ve no idea who won the FA Cup that year?

  • Dreoilin

    “We have already spoken of predictive text”

    You should be able to turn that function off, Mary.

  • Porkfright

    More Neocons and Henry Jacksonians amongst the upper echelons of the LibLabCon alliance? Who’da thought it? Well of course one or two of us who have been quietly on their case for years knew the depth of their penetration into our political system-if it could be called that. Great contribution, Craig.

  • Abe Rene

    @Craig “It would give me great pleasure if you would be so kind just to glance at the lecture I gave to Chatham House eleven years ago.” I just read it all, and I agree with your last sentence: “It was worth a try.”

    It reminded me of Donald Woods in his book “Biko” who said, if I recall rightly, that looking back, all his editorial activism appeared to have been for nothing. Yet he said, he would do it again. And within a decade of his writing this, Mandela was freed and a few years later South Africa became a full democracy.

    So perhaps within a few years Britain will stand up to the US and say ‘Our agreement to share intelligence gives us a right to a share in yours, but that is not an obligation to receive it – and we want nothing that comes from torture, since, apart from being against our values, it is known to be unreliable.”

    However there is a difficult question: what about the the head of MI6 saying to the BBC that information obtained from Saudi Arabia helped to prevent the printer cartridge bomb in the UK only a short time before the explosion, the classic “ticking bomb scenario”? How would we refute Sawers’ argument, if we refused on principle to receive that Saudi intelligence?

  • RobG

    The ‘printer cartridge bomb in the UK’? It gets more and more Pythonesque.

    The NSA conducts mass surveillence on UK citizens, whilst GCHQ reciprocates in return for a buck. Both agencies spy on behalf of each other in order to get around the already feeble laws that are supposed to restrain them.

    GCHQ accepts payments from a foreign power (the US NSA). Last time I looked this was called treason.

  • lysias

    I just got and watched a DVD of the 1980’s movie The Whistleblower about GCHQ/NSA misdeeds in the Britain of that time. The misdeeds — including murder — were committed for the sake of concealing crimes committed by members of the Establishment. So some people saw what was going on already back then.

    Great job of acting by Michael Caine.

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    Craig

    Thanks for yours at 17h18; also to Resident Dissident for his info at 19h12.

    I’m inclined to think that stuff of a certain age is taken off the website and put into the (paying) archive.

  • Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)

    Those who believe that every film plot is based on real events are rather deluded, I fear.

    They may of course WISH that this was the case but that’s another matter….

  • John Goss

    “If you want to label May as a fascist and a racist might I suggest you improve your grasp of the English language.”

    Do you want to label her a racist and fascist? Or do you just want to make others think I said something I did not say? What I did say is this and I stick by it verbatim.

    “He’s so full of shit to clear him out he’d need more enemas than he has friends to administer them.”

    You can quote me if you like. And I won’t pull you up for misquoting. 🙂 Provising you quote correctly.

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