Baroness Thatcher dies, reactions

This video from Britain says about itself:

Apr 8, 2013

Lingering resentment felt by mining communities towards Baroness Thatcher.

Street parties break out as some of those who were most opposed to her policies seek to counter those paying tribute.The death of Baroness Thatcher has been welcomed by critics of the former prime minister – who labelled her “heartless” and claimed she “destroyed” parts of the country.

Street parties broke out in several locations as those who resented her policies and their consequences celebrated the leader who was more devisive than almost any other in recent history.

As tributes to the 87-year-old flooded in from across the globe, widespread condemnation of her legacy – particularly on social media – showed her ability to polarise opinion remained.

Grievances against the former Conservative leader take in her treatment of miners in the 1980s, withdrawal of free milk for school children, her role in the response to the 1989 Hillsborough disaster and the controversial Poll Tax.

Critics also pointed to her description of Nelson Mandela as a “terrorist“, her government’s support for Pol Pot, her actions in the Falklands War and her subsequent backing of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

From Firstpost:

Margaret Thatcher milk snatcher? Iron lady still divides in death

by FP Staff Apr 9, 2013

… But while US President Barack Obama spoke for many in the wider world in praising the grocer’s daughter with the eyes as steely as her resolve, the scars of bitter struggles left Britain itself as deeply divided now as under her leadership.

Tuesday’s newspapers told the story: “The Woman Who Saved Britain”, declared the Daily Mail from the right; “The Woman Who Divided A Nation”, headlined the left’s Daily Mirror, which questioned the grand, ceremonial funeral planned for next week. …

“Very few leaders get to change not only the political landscape of their country but of the world. Margaret was such a leader. Her global impact was vast,” said Tony Blair, whose term as Labour prime minister from 1997-2007 he acknowledged owed a debt to the former leader of his Conservative opponents. …

Obama led an outpouring of tributes from the United States: “America has lost a true friend,” he said.

Mourners laid roses, tulips and lilies on the doorstep of her house in Belgravia, one of London’s most exclusive areas. One note said: “The greatest British leader” while another said to “The Iron Lady”, a soubriquet bestowed by a Soviet army newspaper in the 1970s and which Thatcher loved.

But, in a mark of lingering anger at a woman who explained her belief in private endeavour by declaring “there is no such thing as society”, someone also left a bottle of milk; to many Britons, for scrapping free milk for schoolchildren as education minister in 1971, she remained “Maggie Thatcher, Milk Snatcher”.

The woman who tore Britain apart: here.

From the Irish Times:

Mrs Thatcher’s death was a “great day” for coal miners, David Hopper, general secretary of the Durham Miners’ Association said. The ex-miner, who turned 70 today, spent all of his working life at Wearmouth Colliery. He said: “It looks like one of the best birthdays I have ever had. “There’s no sympathy from me for what she did to our community. She destroyed our community, our villages and our people.”

From Reuters:

The abiding domestic images of her premiership will remain those of conflict: huge police confrontations with mass ranks of coalminers whose year-long strike failed to save their pits and communities; Thatcher riding a tank in a white headscarf; and flames rising above Trafalgar Square in the riots over the deeply unpopular “poll tax” which contributed to her downfall.

“I found her to be confrontational, dogmatic, abrasive, she attacked people in her own country and didn’t listen to people in her own party,” recalled Caspar Joseph, 51, a history teacher in Manchester. “She was destructive, nihilistic.

“I will be raising a glass. I have some 1992 Dom Perignon which I have been saving for either the birth of my first grandchild or the death of Margaret Thatcher … but actually I might drink some Argentinian wine – her attitude was contemptible over the Falklands.”

Some opponents said on social media that they would hold a party to celebrate her death while a website set up to ask if Thatcher was dead had received 180,000 likes by midday and was updated with a large block-capital “Yes.

To those who opposed her she was blunt to a degree.

“The lady’s not for turning”, she once informed members of her own Conservative Party who were urging her to moderate her policies. In power, she faced plotting inside her party from those who thought she was unreasonably divisive.

Margaret Thatcher’s death greeted with street parties in Brixton and Glasgow: here.

Hundreds gather in Glasgow, Liverpool and Brixton to ‘celebrate’ death of Margaret Thatcher: here.

Some responses by artists and performers to Margaret Thatcher, who died yesterday. here.

The dictate that one ‘not speak ill of the dead’ is (at best) appropriate for private individuals, not influential public figures: here.

MARGARET Thatcher was ignored by the bourgeoisie for 23 years after she was put out of office by the Tory leadership in 1990. This was when her disastrous attempt to bring in a Poll Tax started a revolt on the scale of the original 1381 insurrection. She has now been rediscovered after her death by the same ruling class that dumped her: here.

Left MPs will boycott an emergency parliamentary session for Margaret Thatcher tomorrow, branding it a “waste of taxpayers’ money”: here.

Related articles

• Miner: Thatcher death ‘a great day’ The death of Baroness Thatcher was a “great day” for coal miners, David Hopper, general secretary of the Durham Miners’ Association has said. (belfasttelegraph.co.uk)

Tony Blair supports Kuwait dictatorship

Remember how berserk neo-conservative or “liberal hawkish” supporters of George W Bush’s and Tony Blair’s Iraq war became, whenever someone mentioned the word “oil” in an Iraq context?

This video says about itself:

Stop the theft of Iraqi oil! Hassan Jumaa, Greg Muttitt and Nadia Idle talk about the Iraqi oil law.

When George W. Bush and Tony Blair started the bloody Iraq war, government propaganda, slavishly echoed by the corporate media, said the war was because Iraq had weapons of mass destruction … oops, it did not have those arms … the war was because secularist Saddam Hussein had links to ultra-religious Al Qaeda … oops, that was a lie as well … the war was because Saddam was a dictator and it would bring human rights to Iraq … oops, Saddam was one of many dictators, most of them supported by Bush’s USA and by Blair’s UK (like used to be the case for Saddam); and torture, killings, and other human rights violations got worse, not better, after Bush and Blair had invaded Iraq.

When someone dared to say “No blood for oil“, the Bushite and Blairite apologists for the Iraq war went hysterical. Their lovely baby, their lovely Iraq war, could never ever be about something as prosaic as oil corporations’ profits (or arms dealers’ profits … oil was and is a major factor in a complex of causes, not the sole 100% cause).

Let us return to Blair’s point about Saddam being a dictator, emphasized after the exposition of the “WMD” and “9/11 connection” propaganda lies. Is Tony Blair really opposed to dictators?

As turns out, he is not.

Tony Blair is a crony of the dictator of Kazakhstan, who bloodily suppresses dissent.

There is one of Blair’s many lucrative jobs, as an adviser to the Colombian death squad government.

And, as this picture says, Nicolas Sarkozy is not the only prominent NATO country politician with a dodgy Libyan track record. It shows Blair embracing Colonel Gaddafi of Libya. Gaddafi, to whom Blair deported people for torture. Gadaffi, who later (like had happened to Saddam Hussein before), in the corporate media, suddenly magically transformed from an ally to the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler. Gadaffi, who was brutally murdered with the consent of his suddenly ex-crony Tony Blair.

And then, there is Blair and the absolute monarchy in Kuwait.

By Rachel Sylvetsky:

London Papers: Tony Blair has Middle East Financial Interests

Claim: Tony Blair, Quartet envoy to Middle East, has secret financial deals with Kuwait’s royal family and an oil firm dealing with Middle East.

The London Daily Telegraph and the London Daily Mail have published findings on former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Middle East financial interests as disclosed by the official UK government committee which vets former ministers’ business interests.

The Daily Mail described Blair as waging an “extraordinary two-year battle to keep secret a lucrative deal with a multinational oil giant which has extensive interests in Iraq”, referring to the just revealed fact that Mr. Blair serves as advisor to a South Korean firm, UI Energy, since August 2008, and has made at least £20million since leaving Downing Street in June 2007.

In addition, the daily claimed, the former head of state who is now the Middle East Quartet’s envoy to Israel “went to great efforts to keep hidden a separate £1million deal advising the ruling royal family in Iraq’s neighbor Kuwait”, since June 2008, reportedly with the task of producing a report on the oil state’s future over the next 30 years.

Emir of Kuwait meets former British PM Tony Blair: here.

Tony Blair’s company ‘to make £27m advising Kuwait on how to govern itself’: here.

Well, how does the absolute monarchy Kuwait govern itself, now that Tony Blair has been advising it for years, getting loads of money for that?

This video is called Kingdoms of Loathing: Kuwait, Bahrain step up crackdown on opposition.

This video says about itself:

American Teenager Tortured in Kuwait

Gulet Mohamed, an American teenager detained in Kuwait nearly 4 weeks ago and placed on an American no-fly list, says he was severely beaten by his Kuwaiti captors during a weeklong interrogation about possible contacts with terrorism suspects in Yemen. According to Mohamed, he was simply in the country on a quest to learn more about religion.

Read the full story here.

Read Glenn Greenwald’s article in Salon (audio interview with Gulet’s brother included) here.

Gulet finally arrived back to the United States on January 21st. Check out the video here.

Tony [Blair] Of Arabia Earns $43M As Advisor To Kuwait, While Getting Paid By Morgan Stanley And The UN. Read more here.

Kuwaiti finance minister faces questions over deal to pay ‘millions’ to Tony Blair’s company for advising royal family: here.

From the Kuwait Times:

KUWAIT: Opposition MP Faisal Al-Mislem yesterday [16 April 2012] targeted a contract awarded by the previous government to a consultancy firm headed by former British prime minister Tony Blair. In a series of questions to Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled Al-Sabah, the lawmaker demanded to know the government agency that signed the contract with Blair. He asked if the contract was awarded to Blair on a personal basis or as head of a consultancy firm and if legal procedures were followed in the process.

Mislem inquired about the exact task given to Blair, the contract’s cost, names of the team selected to work with him and on what basis they were selected. The lawmaker asked if Blair completed his mission and if it achieved its results and inquired about its failures if any. He also asked if Blair’s studies had been incorporated in Kuwait’s development plan. Mislem also asked if Blair is still working on other studies. The said contract was awarded to Blair’s consultant firm several years ago at a cost exceeding KD 1 million according to local media reports.

From the Belfast Telegraph in Ireland:

Bare-faced Tony Blair up to his truth-bending tricks again

By Eamonn McCann – 22 March 2013

Defending the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Tony Blair this week cited Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons against his own people as an example of the fundamental evil which the invasion was designed to extirpate.

The reference was to events in the town of Halabja, population 60,000, on March 16, 1988. Halabja had been captured the previous day by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, at that time in alliance with Tehran in the Iran-Iraq war. The response of the Baghdad regime was swift and merciless.

At dawn on March 16, Iraqi bombers sharked across the sky, dropping chemical bombs from Migs, supplied by Russia, and Mirages, supplied by France.

The town was smothered in a fog of death.

The first journalists to arrive in the aftermath were from Iran. Their pictures were flashed around the world, to revolt the conscience of hundreds of millions of people.

One observer described the scene: “The streets were strewn with corpses. People had been killed instantaneously by chemicals in the midst of the ordinary acts of everyday life. Babies still sucked their mothers’ breasts … In the space of a few hours, 5,000 people had died.”

By any definition, this was a crime against humanity. Had it been advanced at the time as a casus belli, many with no stomach for war of any kind might have backed an invasion.

But Saddam was able to shrug off any possibility of an outraged world retaliating. And he was right. Iraq was seen at the time as a secular bulwark against the radical Islam of the Ayatollahs. Five months after the massacre, the UN sub-committee on human rights rejected – by 11 votes to eight – a resolution condemning the dictatorship for human rights violations.

In the US, a Senate resolution calling for sanctions against Iraq was vetoed by George Bush Snr. Bush then authorised a billion-dollar loan to Saddam to build a chemical plant.

Britain’s response to Halabja, and a myriad of other crimes by Saddam, emerged in the course of the Scott Inquiry in 1992 into the collapse of the trial of four directors of machine-tools company Matrix Churchill, which had been selling Saddam equipment with a potential for military use in breach of sanctions that had been imposed in the wake of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

The four men’s defence was that the company had secretly been encouraged by John Major’s Government to continue shipping the equipment.

The trial collapsed when the Government – citing “the public interest” – refused to hand over documents which the defendants claimed would back up their version of events.

(It is worth noting in passing that it was the invasion of oil-rich Kuwait, not his slaughter of the Kurds, which prompted sanctions and a 180-degree turn in attitudes towards Saddam; Bush now referring to him as “the new Hitler.”)

There is not a word about any of this from Blair, as he offers the Halabja massacre in justification of the invasion. But, then, Blair, morally inert, has never allowed trivia like truth to stand in the way of war.

We know from the Chilcot Inquiry into the war that Downing Street chief of staff Jonathan Powell wrote on September 17, 2002, to Blair’s top sidekick, Alastair Campbell, about the foreword to a dossier Blair was preparing for presentation to Parliament.

“In the penultimate para, you need to make it clear that Saddam could not attack us at the moment,” he wrote.

“The thesis is he would be a threat to the UK in the future if we do not check him.”

Just a week later, Blair stood up in the Commons and told MPs that Saddam Hussein posed “a current and serious threat to the UK national interest.”

Other spurious claims in the dossier included that Iraq had formulated “military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons … Some of these weapons are deployable within 45 minutes of an order to use them”.

Thus the Evening Standard front-page splash on September 24: ’45 minutes from attack’. The Star followed up next morning: ’45 minutes from a chemical war’. The front page of The Sun warned: ‘Brits 45 mins from doom’.

Blair is a stranger to the truth. His repellent smarm, as he repeats on television today the bare-faced lies he used to lure his country into war, compounds the sheer offensiveness of his presence in our midst.

In September last year, Bishop Desmond Tutu refused to share a platform with Blair at a gathering in Johannesburg, suggesting instead that “in a consistent world” Bush and Blair “should be treading the same path as some of their African and Asian peers, who have been made to answer for their actions at (the International Criminal Court in) The Hague.”

Sound man, that Tutu.

Related articles

• If they had a scintilla of decency, Tony Blair, Alastair Campbell and John Scarlett would not show their faces in public again (dailymail.co.uk)
• Citizens’ Campaign to Arrest Former UK PM (nalonmit.wordpress.com)
• Should Tony Blair be tried as a war criminal? Majority think he was wrong to invade Iraq (express.co.uk)
• Iraq War: major new questions for Tony Blair (telegraph.co.uk)
• “It cannot be justified”: John Prescott admits to regrets over Iraq war ten years on (mirror.co.uk)

Tony Blair’s Libyan torture scandal, continued

This video from Britain says about itself:

New evidence of UK complicity in Libya torture

8 February 2013

Exclusive: what was the role of MI6 and Tony Blair’s government in the kidnap of Abdul-Hakim Belhaj from Malaysia in March 2004, which delivered him into the hands of Colonel Gaddafi’s torturers?

His cell is a living coffin.

Stretch your hands out and your fingers trail against both of the side walls. Turn your body around and your fingers are tantalisingly close to the back wall and the metal cell door, writes Kevin Toolis.

In the heat of the Libyan summer the concrete walls baked like a furnace radiating heat, 130F degrees plus, into the airless cell. In the winter, in freezing temperatures, rain poured through the open roof grille soaking the two filthy blankets given as a bed. And then there was the solitude.

For one year Abdel Hakim Belhaj was entombed as the only prisoner in the solitary confinement block deep inside the Gaddafi regime’s notorious Abu Salim prison. His only human contact was the twice-daily visit by the guard to drop off food.

But outside the cell was worse. “When I was taken out of the cell for interrogations I was treated very violently. I was blindfolded and handcuffed with my hands tied behind my back. I was often beaten in these small corridors. It depended on the shifts of the guards.

“Some took pleasure in treating us badly or if they were pressurising us to say something they want. Sometimes they would make me stand hooded for long hours in the blazing sun and I would long to be back in this cell despite knowing how hard it was just to be here. It was my sanctuary.

“In the cell I used to spend the time reading the Koran and waiting, waiting for the hope that didn’t go away, that God Almighty will take away this suffering. I thank God I survived to take back my freedom.”

…

What is less clear, though, is the role of MI6, and Tony Blair’s government, with the CIA’s help, in the kidnap of Mr Belhaj and his pregnant wife Fatima Boucher from Malaysia in March 2004 which delivered them into the hands of Gaddafi’s torturers.

Through his English lawyers Leigh Day & Co, Mr Belhaj is now suing former Labour foreign secretary Jack Straw, the then deputy head of MI6 Sir Mark Allen, MI6, MI5, the Foreign Office and Home Office for their alleged complicity in his torture.

For 10 years British politicians like Jack Straw, Gordon Brown and David Miliband have flatly denied that the British state was complicit in torture during the war on terror. But new evidence in Mr Belhaj’s case appears to strongly challenge those claims.

In one of Gaddafi’s luxurious offices, Mr Belhaj showed Channel 4 News piles of Libyan copies of top secret MI6 documents detailing phone numbers, passport numbers and the postal codes of Libyan opponents of Gaddafi living in Manchester as proof of the depth of collaboration between MI6 and the Gaddafi regime. Other documents in English listed the names and whereabouts of Libyan exiles in Iran and showed MI6 trading information gathered in Teheran with the Libyan regime.

Most importantly of all, the files also contained a crucial memorandum of understanding, dating from October 2002, detailing a two-day meeting in Libya between Gaddafi’s external intelligence agency and two senior heads of MI6 and one from MI5 outlining joint plans for “intelligence exchange, counter terrorism and mutual co-operation”. Channel 4 News is not naming the British officials but they are clearly identified on the document.

Other secret files relating to Mr Belhaj’s rendition were discovered by foreign journalists during the fall of Tripoli in 2011, but these new files are far more detailed, wide ranging and, crucially, come from the Libyan side of the intelligence exchange.

By Paddy McGuffin in Britain:

Libyan says he would settle torture claims for £3 and apology

Monday 04 March 2013

A Libyan claimant dealt a major blow to government claims that secret courts are needed to prevent multimillion-pound payouts today, saying he’d settle his case for £3 and an apology.

Abdul-Hakim Belhaj and wife Fatima Boudchar – opponents of former dictator Muammar Gaddafi – are suing the British government, former foreign secretary Jack Straw and former MI6 counter-terrorism director Mark Allen over their alleged role in the couple’s 2004 rendition and torture.

Documents surfaced after the fall of the Gaddafi regime showing that Mr Allen had written to Libyan spy chief Moussa Koussa to say that while the US paid the “air cargo” for the rendition the “intelligence … was British.”

The pair argue that Mr Straw would have had to sign off on the MI6 operation as foreign secretary.

Ken Clarke – the otherwise jobless minister responsible for the Justice and Security Bill – has claimed that secret courts are needed to prevent the government being forced to pay out in cases it can’t defend because of security concerns.

But Mr Belhaj wrote to the defendents, saying: “I am making an open offer to settle our litigation.

“My wife and I are willing to end our case against the UK government and Messrs Straw and Allen in exchange for a token compensation of a British pound from each defendant, an apology and an admission of liability for what was done to us.”

He adds: “Various media reports I have seen suggest that our motive for bringing this case is to enrich ourselves. I wish to lay this misconception to rest.

“We have come to court in Britain because we believe your courts can deliver justice.”

Legal action charity Reprieve legal director Cori Crider said: “What our clients want from the government is an admission, an apology and an explanation of how this was allowed to happen.

“The next time the government repeats its mantra that secret courts will save the public purse, remember – this family was willing to walk away for £3.”

Related articles

• Libyan politician offers to settle UK lawsuit for £3 and an apology (guardian.co.uk)
• Anti-Gaddafi couple rendered by UK offer to settle for £1 and an apology (yubanet.com)
• Libya rendition man ‘will settle’ (bbc.co.uk)
• Libyan Rebel Wants £1 To Drop Rendition Case (news.sky.com)
• Libyan may settle ‘torture’ case for £3 (telegraph.co.uk)
• New Evidence of UK (and US) Complicity in Libya Torture (leaksource.wordpress.com)
• Abdel Hakim Belhaj: Jack Straw fails to explain role in Libyan dissident seizure (guardian.co.uk)
• Forget the Mafia. Our Establishment covers up its crimes better than anyone (oneworldchronicle.com)
• The politics of apologies and why Abdel Hakim Belhaj was never going to get one (blogs.independent.co.uk)
• Former US top brass slam Gadaffi opponents’ rendition to Libya (morningstaronline.co.uk)

British people condemn Iraq war

This video is about the anti Iraq war march – London, February 2003.

From daily The Guardian in Britain:

Iraq war ‘delivered little but bloodshed’, say Britons in 10-year anniversary poll

Majority of voters across both sexes and all age ranges still back anti-Iraq war protesters of 2003, according to Guardian/ICM poll

Tom Clark

Friday 15 February 2013

Iraq war protests – a demonstrator wears a Tony Blair mask outside the Chilcot inquiry into the conflict, in London, January 2010. Photograph: Luke Macgregor/Reuters

After the anti-war marchers took to London’s streets in February 2003, Tony Blair brushed them aside and suggested history would be his judge. Ten years on, the ink on the first draft of history is dry, and, according to a Guardian/ICM poll, Britons are not reading it in the way Blair would have hoped.

A majority of voters, 55%, agree with suggestions that “the London marchers were right”, because “a war sold on a false prospectus delivered little but bloodshed”. That is almost twice the 28% who believe the marchers were wrong, on the basis that the war’s achievement in “toppling the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein” eventually made the world a better place.

The approximately two-to-one balance of opinion against the Iraq war broadly applies across both sexes and every age range. Every nation and region of the UK also retains a clear anti-war majority, with the judgment in Wales – 65% in favour; 22% against – the most emphatic.

The marchers are also vindicated by opinion up and down the social scale, although the 49%-36% balance of opinion in favour of the marchers among the so-called AB occupational grades is somewhat more balanced than the crushing anti-war majorities among working-class voters.

The parliamentary votes on Iraq in 2003 split the Labour party down the middle, with 139 rebels on the final Commons vote, whereas, despite 15 Conservative dissenters, the great bulk of Tory MPs came together to support the invasion.

Ten years on, there is no partisan slant in the public’s opposition to the war. Conservative supporters believe the marchers were right by a 57%-30% margin, statistically indistinguishable to the 57%-29% support for the marchers found among Labour voters. Supporters of the Liberal Democrats, the only big party in 2003 to offer a united anti-war stance, are only marginally more strongly behind the marchers – they are split 59%-24%. The 54%-33% anti-war majority found among Ukip supporters confirms Blair is judged to have been on the wrong side of history, right across the political spectrum.

The public was sceptical about the Iraq war in advance, and the marchers claimed to speak for the country, but what is often forgotten is that by the eve of hostilities, on 20 March 2003, a more belligerent mood was taking hold.

More than 20 polls were carried out between 18 March and September 2003, and every one found a plurality supporting the war. Subsequently, as the debate turned to missing weapons of mass destruction, abused intelligence and Iraq’s developing civil war that opinion swung firmly against Blair.

It is several years since the last proper poll on the Iraq war, but by 2007, when the last surveys were done, opinion had hardened into the same sort of anti-war majority confirmed by the latest ICM survey. In June 2007, for instance, YouGov found a 55%-30% anti-war majority.

Blair had hoped success in Iraq would consolidate support for the broader agenda of “liberal interventionism“, which he put forward in his Chicago speech at the height of the Balkan crisis in 1999. But after Iraq came to be seen as a mistake, things could easily have gone the other way, with voters fearing further military intervention would reap the same sort of chaos.

A decade on, the poll finds Iraq remains a special case, with Britain split on the wider question of armed intervention.

The survey reminded respondents of other controversial engagements, in Afghanistan, Libya and Mali, but found the 48% who believe “military interventions solve little, create enemies and generally do more harm than good” are only three points ahead of the 45% who believe that “through its armed forces, Britain generally acts as a force for good in the world”.

Conservative voters feel slightly more warmly about the troops than others – 53% of them regard interventions as a force for good – but with 47% of Labour and 45% of Lib Dem voters in agreement, the differences are not especially large. Supporters of Ukip are especially anti-intervention, believing by 56%-32% that it does more harm than good, suggesting they are more Little England than imperialist nostalgics. That introverted mood on the political right is only one political consequence of what voters now judge as Blair’s failure in Iraq.

ICM Research interviewed a random sample of 1,001 adults aged 18 and over by telephone on 8-10 February 2013. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to the profile of all adults. ICM is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules.

Ten years ago yesterday, Colin Powell made the Bush administration’s case for going to war against Iraq. Much of what he said about Iraq’s threats to the United States was false. But the media coverage gave the opposite impression, and most of the pundits and journalists who promoted the justifications for the war paid no price for their failures: here.

Related articles

• Bring Tony Blair to justice (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• MSNBC: “HUBRIS: Selling the Iraq War” (goodolewoody.wordpress.com)
• Lest we forget: anti-Iraq war protesters were in the right (theweek.co.uk)
• Iraq war: the march of time | Editorial (guardian.co.uk)
• Iraq war 10 years on: mass protest that defined a generation (guardian.co.uk)
• Majority of Britons say Iraq invasion delivered only “bloodshed” (thehindu.com)
• Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Mali, war, more war (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Tony Blair’s Iraq war was a shameful abomination. Ten years after the London march, it’s time for him to admit it (blogs.telegraph.co.uk)
• The legacy of London’s Iraq War march of 2003 (csmonitor.com)

Bring Tony Blair to justice

This video is about the big anti Iraq war march – London, February 2003.

By Paddy McGuffin in Britain:

Bring Blair to justice

Thursday 07 February 2013

Campaigners renewed their calls today for Tony Blair to be tried for war crimes ahead of the 10th anniversary of the illegal invasion of Iraq.

Stop the War Coalition and CND slammed the “monumental disgrace” of the “bloody and illegal” war and demanded Mr Blair be brought to justice.

Two million people took to the streets on February 15 2003 to oppose the war in the largest protests Britain has ever seen.

The war in Iraq lasted six years and led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians.

A decade on Britain remains bogged down in the quagmire of Afghanistan and the so-called war on terror has expanded to encompass Libya, Syria and now Mali.

Stop the War Coalition, CND and others plan to mark the coming anniversary with a series of events, the first being a major conference in London on Saturday.

Stop the War convener Lindsey German told the Star: “My feeling is that Tony Blair should be in the Hague.

“It is a matter of basic justice that the person who launched the war and who has continued to thrive should be held accountable.

“We have had cover-up after cover-up and lie and lie. Tony Blair has enriched himself since leaving office and continues to hold the position of Middle East peace envoy, whose only role has been to back up military intervention.”

She described the decision to go ahead with the invasion against the will of the people as a “terrible failing of democratic politics” and said no government should ever be allowed to do the same again.

CND general secretary Kate Hudson said the scale of the 2003 march had been “breathtaking.”

“Not only were the numbers astonishing, even to us as organisers, but the demographic was a remarkable cross-section of society, unifying against the terrible, deceitful, drumbeat of war.

“And it is a monumental disgrace that the government refused to listen to the will of the people.

“Instead they pressed ahead with a bloody and illegal war which has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians and was premised on a lie.

“Tony Blair has evaded justice and eschewed responsibility for his actions.”

Saturday’s Ten Years On conference is being billed as one of the most important anti-war events of the last few years.

Among those scheduled to address the meeting at Friends House are Tony Benn, Tariq Ali, Jeremy Corbyn MP, Lindsey German, Kate Hudson and, by video link, Noam Chomsky.

Next Friday, February 15, a protest will be held at 5.30pm opposite Downing Street to demand Western countries stay out of Syria and the wider Middle East and Africa.

Related articles

• People v. Tony Blair: How mass murderers get away with their war crimes and how to stop them (sott.net)
• Dr David Kelly – Conspiracy (catholicglasses.com)
• Tony Blair’s record in the Middle East is a sorry one – it’s time he quit (telegraph.co.uk)
• US uses Tony Blair defence to justify drone killings (sgtreport.com)
• Tony Blair teaches Lord Mandelson how to profit from politics (telegraph.co.uk)

Corporate media, sycophants of warmonger politicians

This video from Britain says about itself:

Sep 5, 2011

Diane Abbott is asked by Andrew Neil which she finds worse, the fact that the previous Labour government kissed Colonel Gaddafi’s backside so much, they even sent people for torture to Libya, or Tony Blair revealed as being a Godfather to the children of Murdoch.

By John Pilger:

In honour of sanitised journalism…

Sunday 27 January 2013

There are awards for everyone. There are the Logies, the Commies, the Tonys, the Theas, the Millies – “They cried with pride” – and now the Shammies.

The Shammies celebrate the finest sham media. “Competition for the Gold Shammy,” said the panel of judges, “has been cut-throat.”

The Shammies are not for the tabloid lower orders. Rupert Murdoch has been honoured enough. Shammies distinguish journalism that guards the limits of what the best and brightest like to call “the national conversation.”

The Shammy judges were especially impressed by a spirited campaign to rehabilitate Tony Blair. The winner will receive the coveted Jeremy Paxman Hoodwink Prize, given in honour of the BBC broadcaster who says he was “hoodwinked” over Iraq – regardless of the multiple opportunities he had to challenge Blair directly and expose the truth and carnage of the illegal invasion.

Shortlisted for the Hoodwink is Michael White, the Guardian‘s former political editor, whose lament for Blair’s “wasted talent” is distinguished by his defence of Blair as the victim of a “very unholy … alliance betwee a familiar chorus of US-bashers and the Blair bait[ers]” (I am included).

On December 19 another contender, White’s colleague Jane Martinson, was granted a “rare” interview with Cherie Blair in her “stately private office” with its “gorgeous views over Hyde Park” and “imposing mahogany furniture.”

In such splendour does Ms Blair – she prefers her married name for its “profile” – run her “foundation for women” in Africa, India and the Middle East.

Her political collusion in her husband’s career and support for adventures that destroyed the lives of countless women were not mentioned. A PR triumph and odds-on for a Shammy.

Also nominated – the brains behind the Guardian‘s ecstatic front page of November 8: “The best is yet to come,” dominated by a half-page picture of the happy-huggy-droney Obama family.

And who can fail to appreciate the assurance from the BBC’s Mark Mardell that, in personally selecting people to murder with his drones, “the care taken by the president is significant”?

Matt Frei, now of Channel 4 News, drew commendation for his reporting of Obama as a “warrior president” and Hugo Chavez as a “chubby-faced strongman.”

A study by the University of the West of England found that, of 304 BBC reports on Venezuela published in a decade, only three mentioned the Chavez government’s extraordinary record in promoting human rights and reducing poverty.

In the Gold Shammy category, the judges were struck by the outstanding work of the Guardian‘s Decca Aitkenhead.

“Everywhere we went, before my eyes people fell in love with him … no-one seemed to be immune.”

This was her memorable encounter with Peter Mandelson in 2009. She described his “effortless allure … the intensity of his theatre is electrifying to behold … His skin is dewy, as if fresh from a spa facial, and his grooming so flawless he looks almost hyper-real, the cufflinks and tie delicately co-ordinated, with their detail inversely echoed in his socks … His whole body seems weirdly untroubled by the passage of time.”

Aitkenhead had previously “profiled” Alistair Darling, the chancellor who presided over the worst financial collapse in memory.

Greeted “like old friends” by Darling and his “gregarious” wife Maggie, “who cooks and makes tea and supper while Darling lights a fire,” Aitkenhead effused over “a highly effective minister [who] seems almost too straightforward, even high-minded, for the low cunning of political warfare.”

The judges were asked to compare and contrast such moments of journalistic ecstasy with the same writer’s profile of Julian Assange on December 7.

Assange answered her questions methodically, providing her with a lot of information about the state’s abuse of technology and mass surveillance.

“There’s no debate that Assange knows more about this subject than almost anyone alive,” she wrote.

No matter. Rather than someone who had exposed more state criminality than any journalist, he was described as “someone convalescing after a breakdown,” a mentally ill figure she likened to “Miss Havisham.”

Unlike the alluring, electrifying, twice disgraced Mandelson and the high-minded, disastrous chancellor, Assange had a “messianic grandiosity.” No evidence was offered. The Gold Shammy was within her grasp.

Then, on Christmas Eve, BBC News Magazine published an article marking the 40th anniversary of the Christmas bombing of Hanoi.

The bombing, wrote Rebecca Kesby, “was president Richard Nixon’s attempt to hasten the end of the Vietnam war, as the growing strength of the Viet Cong caused heavy casualties among US ground troops.”

In fact, Nixon had promised “an honourable end to the war in Vietnam” four years earlier. His 1972 Christmas bombing of Hanoi in the north was as concerned with peace as Hitler’s bombing of Poland – a cynical, vengeful act of barbarism that changed nothing in the stalled Paris talks.

Kesby cites Henry Kissinger’s absurd claim that the North Vietnamese were “on their knees.” Far from hastening “the end of the Vietnam war,” US savagery ensured the war went on for another two-and-a-half years, during which more Vietnamese were killed than in the previous decade.

Kesby claimed that previous US targets had been “fuel depots and munitions stores.”

On my wall is a photograph I took of a hamlet in the north obliterated by F-105 and Phantom fighters flying at 200 feet in order to pick off “soft targets” – human beings. In the town of Hongai, I stood in the debris of churches, hospitals, schools. A new type of “dart bomb” was used – the darts were made from a plastic that did not show in X-rays, and the victims, mostly children, suffered until they died.

Today our memory of all this is sanitised. The US and its allies, using even more diabolical weapons, continue to “hasten the end of war.” Such has been the BBC’s unerring theme since Vietnam. The Gold Shammy is richly deserved.

This article appeared in the New Statesman.

Related articles

• Rupert Murdoch’s Falklands warmongering (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Tony Blair teaches Lord Mandelson how to profit from politics (telegraph.co.uk)
• Kosovo privatisation enriches NATO warmongers (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)

Compensation for Tony Blair torture victim

This video is called Tony Blair meets Colonel Gaddafi in Libya.

By Paddy McGuffin in Britain:

Torture victim given £2.2m

Thursday 13 December 2012

A Libyan dissident forcibly returned to Tripoli in 2004 to face imprisonment and torture has accepted over £2 million in compensation in a settlement with the British government over its role in his illegal rendition.

Ministers have agreed to pay £2.23m compensation to the family of Sami al-Saadi but have not admitted liability.

Mr Saadi was forced aboard a plane in Hong Kong along with his wife and four young children in a joint British-US-Libyan operation.

In Tripoli he was imprisoned and tortured by the Gadaffi regime.

Evidence of Britain’s involvement emerged after the regime fell last year.

CIA correspondence with Libyan intelligence, discovered by Human Rights Watch in Tripoli, states: “we are … aware that your service had been co-operating with the British to effect [Mr Saadi's] removal to Tripoli … the Hong Kong government may be able to co-ordinate with you to render [Mr Saadi] and his family into your custody.”

The operation followed Tony Blair‘s “Deal in the Desert” with late dictator Muammar Gadaffi, which saw Britain agree to help track down and hand over his opponents.

Mr Saadi said: “My family suffered enough when they were kidnapped and flown to Gadaffi’s Libya.

“They will now have the chance to complete their education in the new, free Libya. I will be able to afford the medical care I need because of the injuries I suffered in prison.

“I started this process believing that a British trial would get to the truth in my case. But today, with the government trying to push through secret courts, I feel that to proceed is not best for my family.

“I went through a secret trial once before, in Gadaffi’s Libya. In many ways, it was as bad as the torture. It is not an experience I care to repeat.”

Reprieve legal director Kat Craig said: “We now know that Tony Blair’s ‘Deal in the Desert’ was bought with ugly compromises.

“Perhaps the ugliest was for MI6 to deliver a whole family to one of the world’s most brutal dictators. There needs to be a full and fair inquiry into these issues, and it ought to get started right away.”

A second Libyan, Abdul Hakim Belhaj, who also suffered rendition and torture, will continue to pursue legal action against the British government.

Related articles

• Government pays Libyan dissident’s family £2.2m over MI6-aided rendition (guardian.co.uk)
• Libyan dissident gets £2.2m payout from Government over rendition to Libya (independent.co.uk)
• UK pays £2.2m compensation to Libyan after key role in his illegal rendition (independent.co.uk)
• UK pays $3.5m to settle Libya rendition claim (aljazeera.com)
• Britain pays out £2 million to illegal rendition Libyan (telegraph.co.uk)
• £2m payout to father who MI6 delivered to Muammar Gaddafi (metro.co.uk)
• A state of wickedness: governments and the law (robertkyriakides.wordpress.com)
• UK pays £2.2m to Libyan after rendition (belfasttelegraph.co.uk)

Kazakhstan dictatorship oppresses dissent

This music video says about itself:

April 12, 2012 by Ilse Raf

Ballad of Zhanaozen by Laura Rafetseder: “This is a song about the oil workers’ struggle in Kazachstan and the massacre in Zhanaozen by the Kazakh regime. It is dedicated to all that were killed or still suffer from repression and to all those who keep up the fight.”

As the oil workers’struggle and the struggles against the undemocratic regime in Kazakhstan continue, I would ask you to donate directly to the campaign Kazakhstan (the donations will be used for the building of independent trade unions and social movements):

http://campaignkazakhstan.org/index.php/donate/

You can download the song for free (maybe against a donation) here:

http://snd.sc/J1837c

1) Zhanaozen o Zhanaozen
my thoughts they go out to Zhanaozen
they lie with the oil workers’ struggle there
and their families’ troubling grief

2) They had been on strike for more than 8 months
for decent conditions and higher pay
for trade union rights and nationalisation
so they could control the wealth of their creation

3) The profit making sharks could not tolerate this
nor could the president’s powerful clique
scared they might lose and scared they might fall
they were prepared to go to all lengths

4) A unions’ rep and another one’s daughter
were ruthlessly murdered and others were tortured
union men had to leave their homes
so they could be safe from the goverment’s thugs

5) on the 16th of december a rally was held
to underline the oil workers case
as the regime planned to celebrate
20 years of their capitalist rule

6) the regime went on to demonstrate
what they understood by freedom of speech
or what democracy means to them
compared to the profits they’re so eager to make

7) Nazarbayev’s men went into the demonstration
to provoke and to escalate tension
the riot police reacted with guns
with hundreds wounded and dozens dead

8) The only thing made public bout the incident then
was a statement by the Kazakh regime
saying ‘what is the fuss, there’s just 17 dead’
and then put the blame on the oil working men

9) They shot into an innocent crowd
of those who survived many were charged
for alleged provocation
of a massacre they hadn’t caused

10) So I wonder what happened to those unaccounted for dead
whose families still wait for them to come back
whose deaths had never been recognised
and whose lives might never be mourned

11) Its only been lately that rumours grew loud
of unnamed tombstones and graves in the yards
they grew by the numbers of quite a few
i wonder if they’ll ever be named

12) Another rigged election was held
Nazarbayev’s still head of the state
the oil workers still fighting for their rights
and the system still out against them

13) A system thats rotten, a system thats cruel
that calculates lives for the money of few
the regime must not get away with its lies
and the system must be overthrown

14) Zhanaozen oh Zhanaozen
please shout out the story as loud as you can
the workers’ names might soon be forgotten
but we shall never forget

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Kazakhstan regime moves to ban opposition parties

Thursday 22 November 2012

Kazakhstan moved today to ban opposition media outlets and political parties including the Communist Party, which has been suspended for a year.

State prosecutors for the authoritarian regime told a court that the Alga Party and joint Alga-Communist Party organisation the People’s Front were involved in the Zhanaozen oil dispute last year.

Workers who had been sacked for striking staged protests which ended in a violent police crackdown that left dozens dead.

Alga Party leader Vladimir Kozlov has already been jailed for his alleged role in the dispute.

The government, which employs shadowy British firm Tony Blair Associates as an adviser, also wants to shut down the Respublika and Vzglyad newspapers and TV station K+, saying they promote “extremism.”

President Nursultan Nazarbayev was slated by international observers last year when he won re-election with 95 per cent of the vote amid accusations of ballot-rigging and voter intimidation.

That did not stop Mr Blair appearing in a promotional video in April advertising investment in the state.

Related articles

• Kazakhstan in bid to ban opposition‚ media (thehimalayantimes.com)
• Kazakhstan to ban opposition parties and media (worldbulletin.net)
• Kazakhstan in legal move to ban opposition parties and media (uk.reuters.com)
• Kazakhstan targets media, opposition as extremists (arabtimesonline.com)
• Witness In Zhanaozen Riots Case Found Dead (rferl.org)

Tony Blair jeered by students

This video from the USA says about itself:

Rupert Murdoch Pressured Tony Blair Over Iraq

Jun 18, 2012 by TheYoungTurks

“Rupert Murdoch joined in an “over-crude” attempt by US Republicans to force Tony Blair to accelerate British involvement in the Iraq war a week before a crucial House of Commons vote in 2003, according to the final volumes of Alastair Campbell’s government diaries. In another blow to the media mogul, who told the Leveson inquiry that he had never tried to influence any prime minister, Campbell’s diary says Murdoch warned Blair in a phone call of the dangers of a delay in Iraq…”.* The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down.

Read more here from Nicholas Watt in The Guardian.

Britain: Labour MP Chris Bryant vowed today to hunt Prime Minister David Cameron relentlessly until he reveals all his links with the Murdoch empire: here.

From daily The Guardian in Britain:

Tony Blair jeered by UCL students before speech

The former prime minister is greeted with chants of “war criminal” as he arrives at the London university

Ashley Cowburn

Tuesday 13 November 2012 17.33 GMT

Tony Blair was jeered by anti-war protesters as he arrived to deliver a speech at University College London (UCL) this morning.

Students and campaigners from the Stop the War Coalition used the occasion to reiterate their demand that the former primer minister be tried for war crimes and criticised the university for hosting the event.

Blair was speaking at the launch of the Institute for Security and Resilience Studies (ISRS) – a research institute which is independent from UCL – alongside former defence secretary John Reid and education secretary Michael Gove.

But students say the event-organisers behaved in an underhand manner by failing to advertise the speech, which was open only to guests who paid £700 for tickets.

Chris Nineham, vice chair of Stop the War Coalition, which organised the protest says: “It is completely insane for a man who lied to parliament to be speaking at a conference supported by one of Britain’s premier educational institutions. It is an absolutely mad situation.”

UCL student Ollie Sutherland, one of dozens who protested, agreed that Blair was not welcome on campus: “Universities need to make the world a better place and inviting people like Tony Blair runs contrary to that.”

…

Earlier this week, Labour MPs Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell said they were “appalled” by the news that Blair was to appear at the event, and called on UCL to “reconsider its position in hosting this institution and instead protect its own academic independence.”

See also here.

Related articles

• Stop The War Coalition to stage protest as Tony Blair gives speech at University College London (independent.co.uk)
• No to war criminal Blair at UCL (socialistworker.co.uk)
• How Did Tony Get On At UCL? (ukgovernmentwatch.wordpress.com)
• Tony Blair’s record in the Middle East is a sorry one – it’s time he quit (telegraph.co.uk)
• Tony Blair teaches Lord Mandelson how to profit from politics (telegraph.co.uk)

Against Tony Blair, London 13 November

This video from Britain says about itself:

Dispatches program definitely worth a view…Thanks goes to Channel4 for making this documentary. Here is a summary:

Since resigning in June 2007, Tony Blair has financially enriched himself more than any previous ex-prime minister. Reporter Peter Oborne reveals some of the sources of his new-found wealth, much of which comes from the Middle East.

On the day Tony Blair resigned as Prime Minister, he was appointed the official representative Envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East. By January 2009 he had set up Tony Blair Associates – his international consultancy – which handles multi-million-pound contracts in the Middle East. It is so secretive we don’t know all the locations in which they do business.

Dispatches shows that at the same time as Blair is visiting Middle East leaders in his Quartet role he is receiving vast sums from some of them. If Blair represented the UK government, the EU, the IMF, the UN or the World Bank, this would not be permitted.

He would also have to declare his financial interests and be absolutely transparent about his financial dealings. But no such stringent rules govern the Quartet envoy.

However, he could opt to abide by the rules and principles of public life. They were introduced by John Major, and Tony Blair endorsed and strengthened them for all holders of public office – but chooses not to himself.

By Paddy McGuffin in Britain:

Activists join forces to halt Blair speech

Thursday 08 November 2012

Peace activists, left politicians and academics have united to condemn a London university’s decision to invite former prime minister Tony Blair to speak at a “security and resilience” event next week.

The former PM is scheduled to give the keynote address at the inaugural conference of University College London‘s Institute for Security and Resilience Studies (ISRS), a body alleged to have close links to the arms industry, on Tuesday.

Also on the panel will be Education Secretary Michael Gove MP and former home secretary and arch-Blairite John Reid.

In an open letter sent to the college’s management this week, public figures including Tony Benn, John Pilger, Jeremy Corbyn MP and leading academics have called on the institution to withdraw the invitation, arguing that Blair is a war criminal and therefore not fit to address the event.

In the letter, which has been backed by thousands of campaigners, they said: “We note with great concern that you have invited former prime minister Tony Blair to speak at the inaugural conference of the Institute for Security and Resilience on November 13.

“Mr Blair took our country to war against Iraq in flagrant violation of the UN Charter and in doing so committed the international crime of aggression.

“Mr Blair was explicitly warned by Lord Goldsmith of the illegality of such a war and that he risked being prosecuted for this offence. As a result of the war, up to a million innocent Iraqis were killed.

“A leading education centre should not be seen to endorse such behaviour.”

The address of this dubious “security” institute is University College London – Gower Street – London – WC1E 6BT Tel: +44 (0)20 7679 2000.

From the Stop the War Coalition:

Protest Tuesday 13 November 11am

War criminals & arms dealers out of our universities

Main Entrance, University College London WC1E 6BT

Tony Blair, John Reid and Michael Gove are among the speakers at the inaugural conference of the UCL Institute for Security & Resilience Studies.

Join Stop the War to protest against war criminals like Tony Blair and his friends speaking at a conference to promote the interests of arms dealers in our universities.

See leaflet here.

Related articles

• Lord Mandelson: Tony Blair was wrong to invade Iraq (express.co.uk)
• | TruthTeller: Why it is Tony Blair and not me who should be in the dock on 16 November! (truthaholics.wordpress.com)
• Tony Blair: British business should exploit potential of Iraq after ‘self-sacrifice’ of troops (telegraph.co.uk)
• Campaigners report Tony Blair’s office over use of unpaid interns (guardian.co.uk)