Wednesday 28 August 2013

They cannot be serious!

I've stopped despising Tony Blair, now I simply loathe him.
Not content to destroy all that the Labour Party once stood for,not content to become the arch-druid of the market economy, and not content to take this country into a needless and cruel war at the behest of his Washington master-the fuckwit's at it again!
History Marx said repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce.
Yesterday Blair wrote an opinion piece in 'The Times' (and probably got well paid for it) in order to bolster Murdoch's line and do a little bit of self justification for his criminal foreign policy.
The gist of Blair's argument as to why military force should be used in Syria boils down to one thing, Assad is a nasty tyrant and we need to punish him!
Curiously Blair is very selective in which nasty tyrant he puts on the naughty step.In the same piece he rationalises why the military junta in Egypt is not a nasty tyrannical force by pointing out that Egypt is an ancient civilisation and is well used to military dictatorships-and anyway the Muslim Brotherhood are also very naughty boys,even naughtier than the Egyptian Generals!

Now just for a moment consider the Blairite rationale;
Is it one that is based on numbers?The Syrian regime has so far probably killed more civilians than the Egyptian one.
Well give them time and I'm sure they can manage to match the Syrians-or not!
Maybe he  has secret intelligence reports that indicate that the Al Qaeda operatives in Egypt are more pussy-cat like than those in Syria- we all know who reliant Blair is on secret intelligence reports and how reliable his information proves to be!
Maybe he is getting his information from some of the dodgy little emirates that pay him squillions of pounds for.......
The events of the past few days all sound so painfully reminiscent of those frenzied times before the invasion of Iraq.
Then there was the duplicitous 'debate' about whether we should rely on the UN, remember the British Government moving resolutions at the General assembly, and then the Americans(and the British Government) completely ignored the UN and went in anyway.
Remember how they bleated on about constructing an international task force of concerned nations,and blah,blah, blah, and of course it ended up with the USA,the UK and a few client states.(I expect Turkey was one then too)
Do you remember the passion and rhetoric that filled the Commons, and despite over 120 Labour MP's voting against invasion, and the Lib-Dems and even a few Tories-the bastards went ahead.
Right now they are softening the ground as they sharpen their Tomahawks
We will await the resolution say the Labour leaders in that grave tone of voice that we last heard before the Iraq debacle.
We know perfectly well that whatever set of words Cameron and Clegg will come up with, the Labour front bench will nod sagely and offer some pieties and then go down the road with the Coalition.

What has happened to that brave dawn of independence that the Lib-Dems displayed last time round, they won many thousands of votes because they seemed principled back then.
The cowards will justify what they are about to do because they like the sniff of power that the coalition offeres them.
And Labour, the party of Lansbury and even dear brave Robin Cook.
The only party leader with integrity tomorrow will be Caroline Lucas of the Green Party.
Like the last time even the top brass of the military are dubious, they have remembered just what went wrong last time.It's fine and dandy to lob in a few missiles and recreate a blitzkrieg everywhere,but what happens after?
What happens when there is no Police, when civil order has broken down, and armed bands of bandit factions are running wild?
Any fucking idiot can start a war, the trick is who will stop it!

A few days ago a commentator likened events in the Middle East to August 1914 in Europe.I fear there are too many parallels for us to feel comfortable.
We need to ask the question-why the unseemly haste? Why is it likely that the conflict will start before even the UN weapons inspectors can complete their report.
According to unimpeachable intelligence reports Washington and London are totally convinced that Assad launched the poison gas,because someone tried to assassinate him a few days ago.
Yet we still do not know what poison gas was used?Was it a sophisticated sort that requires a complex delivery method, or any old common or garden ricin that any A-leel chemistry student can make in his kitchen?

Or indeed any dissident little bandit that can provoke a situation where the government collapses and they can take over.
Or maybe it was a government store of nasty poison that was accidentally blown up?
Who knows, and at the current rate of movement,who will ever know?
Sarajevo could be with us again!
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Sunday 4 August 2013

Column in the Chronicle & Echo

Check out my monthly column in the Chronicle and Echo.You can find it on the C&E's website under the Opinion Heading.You can also find previous columns by searching my name.The only difference between them and this blog is that the language is cleaner!