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Posts Tagged 'Iraq Invasion'
Zelo Street Destroys Blair's Latest Speech about Weapons of Mass Destruction
The former prime minister Peter Hitchens calls 'the Blair creature' crawled out from under whatever rock he and his millions hide under this morning to give a speech to the Royal United Services Institute. This warned that Islamism was still a threat, and that in the wake of the Covid pandemic there was a horrific possibility that such terrorists would use bioweapons against the west. He suggested that 'boots on the ground' may indeed be needed again to help countries overseas tackle the terrorists on their soil. Of the Islamist terrorists themselves, he said
"This ideology – whether Shia, promulgated by the Islamic Republic of Iran or Sunni promoted by groups on a spectrum from the Muslim Brotherhood through to AQ, ISIS Boko Haram and many others – has been the principal cause of de-stabilisation across the Middle East, and beyond and today in Africa".
To which Zelo Street asked rhetorically 'Hasn't he missed someone?'
Yes, yes, he had. Saudi Arabia. 17 of the 19 perps of 9/11 were Saudis. The Street reminds us
"The majority of the 9/11 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia, and if you were to select one country that practises strict, even militant, Islam, that would be it. But Saudi Arabia buys weapons from us. It's got a lot of oil. So, despite its export of terrorism, brutalisation of its own people, and subjugation of women, we are invited to Look Over There."
Quite. There is considerable evidence to suggest that elements within the Saudi secret services were responsible for it, and that responsibility for the attack goes to the very highest levels. Saudi Arabia was firmly behind al-Qaeda and its infiltration into Syria and Iraq and I don't think they had any real problem with ISIS. Not until Daesh went and issued a call for the faithful to rise up and overthrow the Saudi monarchy. Then the Saudi regime changed its attitude.
The Street concludes
"This will not do. Tony Blair could have set out some kind of vision; instead, he showed that he hasn't moved on from 2003. He brings us no credible solutions. No change there, then."
I don't believe Tory Tone has anything credible to say about the Middle East. He may well be right about bioweapons, though I've heard rumours that we used them against the Iraqis. The rumour goes that scientists have developed pathogens that are so lethal they burn themselves out within a short time so that they don't infect anyone beyond the limited number they were launched against. And the South African security service, BOSS, was supposed to be developing gene-tailored germs that would only infect and kill Blacks. Bioweapons may well be a real threat, but I worried that it's not only our enemies who may be developing and using them.
As for Blair, he lied about weapons of mass destruction as part of the whole tissue of lies he and his mate Dubya constructed to justify an illegal war of aggression against Iraq. This war was really about seizing the Iraqi oil fields for the American-Saudi oil industry and Iraqi state industries for multinationals like Haliburton. These malign clowns sent brave men and women to fight and die, not to give the country democracy and freedom from tyranny, but so the corporate elite could loot it.
A few days ago I drew this sketch setting down in pictorial form precisely what I think of Bush and Blair. It shows them and Saudi oil magnate clutching oil wells with the names Aramco and Haliburton behind them. Also behind them are my attempts to draw warplanes from underneath. In front of them are the bodies of a Middle Eastern family.
The caption is 'New Labour, Old Imperialism'.
This is the leader of the Labour party Starmer wants to drag us all back to. He needs to go for the sake of Britain's working people and the safety of millions in the Middle East.
Tags:9/11, al-Qaeda, Aramco, Blacks, Boko Haram, BOSS, George Dubya Bush, Germ Warfare, Haliburton, Imperialism, Iraq Invasion, ISIS, Islamism, Keir Starmer, Middle East, Muslim Brotherhood, Oil Industry, Secret Services, Shia, Sunni, tony blair, Wars, Women, Working Class, Zelo Street
Posted in Africa, Industry, Iran, Iraq, Islam, Persecution, Politics, Saudi Arabia, Science, South Africa, Syria, Terrorism | 1 Comment »
The Guardian on the Failure of the West's Occupation of Afghanistan
Simon Jenkins, one of the columnists at the Groan, has written a very interesting piece about the end of the west's occupation of Afghanistan and the government it has protected. Jenkins begins his piece by stating that the invasion itself was absolutely unnecessary.
"The US had no need to invade Afghanistan. The country was never a "terrorist state" like Libya or Iran. It was not at war with the US; indeed the US had aided its rise to power against the Russians in 1996. The Taliban had hosted Osama bin Laden in his mountain lair through his friendship with the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar. At an immediate post-9/11 "loya jirga" in the southern city of Kandahar, younger leaders pressed the mullah to expel Bin Laden. Pakistan would probably have forced his surrender sooner or later. After the 2001 invasion the US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld demanded that George Bush "punish and get out".
Yet neither Bush nor Tony Blair listened. Instead they experienced a rush of blood to the head. They commandeered Nato, which had no dog in the fight, and began "nation building", as if nations were made of Lego. It would be an age, said the political scientist Joseph Nye, of the "velvet hegemon". For reasons never fully explained, Blair declared a "doctrine of international community" and pleaded for Britain to be in the first bombing run over Kabul. He then sent Clare Short as the minister for international development to stop the Afghans growing poppies. Afghan poppy production soared to an all-time high, spreading from six to 28 provinces, probably Britain's most successful farm product of all time. Opium floated the Taliban back to power."
He goes on to describe the totally misguided optimism among the western forces when he visited the country in 2006, when he was told that the Taliban were all but defeated. Seven years later the Taliban had defeated us, and have now gone on to defeat the Americans. As a result, the soldiers, interpreters, academics, journalists and aid workers are seeing friends threatened and killed. The occupation has been colossally expensive. The Americans have supposedly spent a trillion dollars. It has cost Britain £37 billion.
He concludes that this demonstrates the complete failure of imperialism, and that the proper thing to do now is to establish good relations with the new regime in Afghanistan and its neighbours Pakistan and Iran. Even though Boris still wants to play at Britain being a great imperial power.
"How many times must it be drummed into British heads that the British empire is over? It is dead, finished, outdated, not to be repeated. Yet Boris Johnson has just sent an aircraft carrier to the South China Sea. Britain has no need, let alone right, to rule other countries, to "make the world a better place". No soldier need die for it, let alone 454 British soldiers and civilians in Afghanistan. The best Britain can now do is establish good relations with a new regime in Afghanistan – in liaison with Kabul's neighbours Pakistan and Iran – to protect at least some of the good it has attempted to do this past 20 years. The world is not threatening Britain. Terrorism does not need state sponsors, nor will it be ended by state conquest."
See: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/other/it-has-taken-20-years-to-prove-the-invasion-of-afghanistan-was-totally-unnecessary/ar-AANnrpv?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531
It's a good article, but I'd dispute Jenkin's assumption on the continuing popularity of imperialism amongst the British public. When Blair invaded Iraq a few years later, two million people in Britain marched in protest. I think it was the biggest public protest ever at the time in Britain. I even recall that the Spectator and various Tory politicos were against the invasion, even though Niall Ferguson had previously raved about the new western imperialism in Afghanistan in the pages of the Heil. The British public weren't given a choice about either invasion. The invasion of Afghanistan was sold to Britain and America as the justified reprisal for 9/11. The west wasn't there to occupy the country, but to transform it into a modern, democratic state governed by western notions of human rights. Ditto with Iraq. It seems to me to have been mainly the opponents of these ventures, who recognised what this was really about and described it as such. There was an article in the conspiracy magazine, Lobster, calling Blair a 'Gladstonian imperialist' for example. I think some Guardian or Independent journos also described it as a kind of imperialism, but were also in favour of it because of New Labour support for the neo-con agenda. But there was supposed to be a difference between this new kind of imperialism and the old sort. Britain and America were to act as the world's policemen, preventing tyrannical governments from engaging in genocide and other human rights atrocities, just as the US had intervened in the war in Yugoslavia and there had been calls for western intervention during the genocide in Rwanda. This was supposed to be very different from the conquests, occupations and annexations that had occurred in previous centuries. This means that many Brits probably didn't see the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as imperialist.
But both were. And the real reasons were deliberately kept hidden from the British and American public. I've said before that the real reason for the Afghanistan invasion was the construction of a strategically important oil pipeline that the Taliban government had refused to build in collaboration with the US. William Blum, the late veteran critic of US imperialism, discusses this in some of his books, as does Michael Moore, the 'capped crusader', in his documentary Fahrenheit 9/11. The Iraq invasion was intended to acquire the country's oil industry and reserves for the American and Saudi oil companies, and the country's state enterprises for American multinationals. The neo-Cons also had the dream of turning Iraq into the kind of low tax, free trade economy they wanted for America. They lowered import tariffs, so that immediately the rest of the world dumped their excess products in Iraq. Iraqi business couldn't compete, there was a wave of bankruptcies and unemployment shot up to 60 per cent. All this is described by Greg Palast in his book, Armed Madhouse.
I also wonder if the Guardian really wants the British public to know how Blair lied to them. As their demonisation of Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters showed, the Groan is thoroughly Blairite. One of the sources Private Eye used for its hit pieces on Corbyn and the anti-Semitism smears, according to the redoubtable Tony Greenstein, was a named Groaniad hack. The newspaper also wants to reassure the public that conspiracy theories are just fantasies and that governments, big business and other political actors don't really engage in plots and secret plans. Hence David Aaronovitch has appeared several times in its pages to tell its readers that they don't exist. I might, however, be wrong about this, and that Aaronovitch has published his views dismissing conspiracy theories in the Independent. Either way, what passes for the British left wing press has been extremely reluctant to admit that there was any kind of ulterior motive behind the invasions of these two countries.
But there was. The primary goal was to conquer them for the oil industry and big business. The result has been 20 years of war and chaos, and in the case of Iraq, the destruction of a whole country. The new imperialism of the neo-Conservatives has been a costly, bloody failure. It's high time it was abandoned.
But I'm afraid that the same people who pushed these wars are still around and regrouping, as the speakers at an online left-wing Labour party rally against imperialism and colonialism described several months ago. I'm afraid they'll come back, and push for another middle eastern war, most likely against Iran. All to protect Israel and liberate its people from the Islamic theocracy, of course.
And absolutely nothing to do with revenge for the Islamic revolution and the country's nationalisation of its oil industry.
Tags:'Armed Madhouse', 'Fahrenheit 9-11', 9/ 11, Anti-Semitism Smears, Armed Forces, Big Business, Boris Johnson, Clare Short, Colonialism, Conspiracy Theories, David Aaronovitch, Deaths, Demonstrations, Donald Rumseld, Drugs, Genocide, George 'Dubya' Bush, Gladstone, Greg Palast, Imperisalism, Iraq Invasion, Islamic Revolution, Jeremy Corbyn, Joseph Nye, Kabul, Kandahar, Labour Party, Lobster, Michael Moore, Mullah Omar, Nationalisation, Neocons, Oil Pipelines, Osama bin Laden, Private Eye, Rwanda, Simon Jenkins, State Enterprises, Taliban, Tariffs, Tax, The Guardian, The Independent (newspaper), The Spectator, tony blair, Tony Greenstein, William Blum
Posted in Afghanistan, Africa, Agriculture, America, Democracy, Economics, Film, History, Industry, Iran, Iraq, Islam, Israel, Judaism, LIterature, OIl, Pakistan, Persecution, Politics, Russia, Terrorism, The Press, Yugoslavia | 4 Comments »
No Return Invasion of Afghanistan
According to mad right-wing internet radio host, Alex Belfield, parliament has been recalled to discuss the Taliban's seizure of power in Afghanistan. Belfield made it very clear that we should not go back there. This was a country whose culture and way of life we would never understand. Four hundred British squaddies have already died during the invasion and occupation, and besides, we've too much on our plate here at home with domestic crises like the Plymouth mass shooting, rampant knife crime in London and the surge of illegal immigrants trying to cross the Channel in dinghies and other flimsy craft. I agree with him, but partly for reasons that are very different from his.
Firstly, like the invasion of Iraq, the British and American public were deliberately deceived about the invasion of Afghanistan. Yes, the invasion was an appropriate response to al-Qaeda's attack on America in 9/11, although it was planned and executed by the Saudis. And there is very strong evidence that the responsibility for the atrocity goes all the way up to the highest levels of the Saudi state. But the American neo-Cons had been planning the invasion years before. They'd been in talks with the Taliban over the construction of a new oil pipeline to run through the country, allowing them to get around the Russian affiliated pipelines in the region. These talks stalled and eventually failed. So George Dubya Bush and his friends in big business got together and planned an invasion, waiting for a suitable opportunity to arrive when they could launch it. The liberation of the local people from a deeply repressive, bloodthirsty Islamist regime was never the real, primary objective.
As for Afghan society, this is a deeply conservative, tribal culture. The Taliban have their roots in their traditional way of life and particularly the very traditional Daobandi movement in Islam that stretches across into Pakistan and India. Hence, although extreme, the Taliban will appear to many Afghans to be fighting for their traditional values and society against those imposed upon them by force by the western invader. They have also been given support, supposedly, by elements within the Pakistani military. The Pathan tribe, I believe, form the core supporters of the Taliban, and their tribal territory extends across the border into Pakistan. They thus receive cross-border support from their fellow tribesmen over there.
Besides which, I don't believe that the western occupation has done much to win hearts and minds. Hamid Karzai's government was massively corrupt, and this corruption extended all the way down to the local level, where the police and government officials tried to find every way they could extort more money out of the ordinary citizens. The drone operations in the region have also done much to generate discontent. I recall reading cases where wedding parties were slaughtered in anti-terrorist drone strikes. However, instead of only killing the terrorist targeted, they also killed innocent people who just happened to be present.
A second invasion of Afghanistan would also be extremely expensive. And as this is a Conservative government which is already protesting about the expenses of dealing with the Covid pandemic, the funding for it would be through further cuts in welfare spending and the privatisation of whatever's left of the state infrastructure. Which means the NHS. This will mean more poverty, starvation and misery for Britain's great working people, and poor health as more services are given to private healthcare providers. Who will start cutting their provision so they can make a profit.
The Taliban are a deeply unpleasant organisation and their attitude towards women is particularly misogynistic. There have been reports that wherever they have taken over an area, they have gone to the local mosques to compile lists of the unmarried girls. These are then forcibly married, even though they may be barely into their teens. They do, however, have an age limit of 12. When the Taliban were in power, women were not expected to leave their homes except when they had. If they were out of the house, they had to make themselves as inconspicuous as possible. This meant that they had to be silent. I've read reports in the papers of Afghan women, who'd lost limbs during previous fighting, being beaten because their artificial legs made a noise. And this is apart from the ban on art, music and television, the restrictions on non-Muslim religions, the closure of football stadiums and their conversion into arenas for mass public executions.
Our invasion and attempts at nation-building have failed, and there are dangers in this. Al-Qaeda were encouraged to launch their attack from Afghanistan on 9/11 because of the success the Mujahideen had achieved fighting the Soviet occupation, although much of that was due to covert funding from the West and Saudi Arabia. I am very much afraid that with the withdrawal of western troops and the fall of the democratic Afghan government, the Taliban or some other Islamist terror group will similarly feel empowered and that they can launch another attack to destroy the west.
But Afghanistan is the proverbial 'graveyard of empires'. We found it impossible to occupy the country in the 19th century, as did the Russians a hundred years later. Any further invasion is likely to fail again. As repulsive and dangerous as the Taliban are, we should not go back. We would not be helping its people, only the oil industry and big business who seek to exploit it. And the costs of the occupation would be borne in the lives and limbs of the servicewomen and men sent out to fight, and by Britain's working people as the government slashes more services.
We should not go back to invading countries simply to make massive multinational corporations even more obscenely rich.
Tags:Alex Belfield, Armed Forces, Big Business, Conservatives, Daobandi Islam, Deaths, Drones, Executions, Football, George Dubya Bush, Hamid Karzai, Immigration, Iraq Invasion, Islamism, Knife Crime, Mosques, Mujahideen, Neocons, NHS, NHS Privatisation, Oil Pipelines, Pathans, Plymouth, Private Healthcare Companies, Shootings, Soviet Union, Taliban, the Rich, Welfare Cuts, Women, Working Class
Posted in Afghanistan, America, Art, communism, Crime, Health Service, History, India, Industry, Iraq, Islam, Justice, Music, OIl, Pakistan, Persecution, Politics, Poverty, Radio, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sport, Television, Terrorism, Welfare Benefits | 6 Comments »
Starmer Runs Away from Green New Deal Campaigners – Anyone Surprised?
Mike today posted a tweet containing a video from a young woman and man from the campaign group, Green New Deal Rising, On Wednesday, the pair had attempted to confront Starmer about his policies towards the Green New Deal and the climate crisis. According to them, Starmer ran away protesting that he was too busy to talk about it. So they tackled him today about his refusal to take an action and failure to back the Green New Deal. The video shows Starmer running away from them faster than Boris Johnson searching for a fridge to hide in. He does speak to the pair eventually from behind a line of railings, talking about tackling climate through international negotiations at the forthcoming conference. They're not impressed with him, neither is Mike and frankly, I'm not either. The group end their tweet with "Words mean nothing Keir. We need urgent action. We need you to #BackTheBill" Mike notes that Starmer was right behind the bill when it was one of Corbyn's policies, but now has utterly reversed his position. Noting that the Labour leader is actually avoiding campaigners against climate change, Mike asks 'How does he think this is acceptable?'
I'm not remotely surprised by this. Starmer has broken every one of Corbyn's policies, and has shown just how right-wing he is by writing his despicable piece in the Financial Times about how he wishes to return the party to the glory days, as he seems to see it, of Blair. This is the Tony Blair who accelerated and expanded the Tories' privatisation of the NHS, the destruction of the welfare state, the wholesale implementation of the Private Finance Initiative as a general governmental principle and the further impoverishment of Britain's great working people. And this is apart from his international crimes – the illegal invasion of Iraq and the bombing of Libya to overthrow Colonel Gaddafy. The result has been the descent of those relatively secular societies with welfare states into sectarian violence and chaos. Half of Libya has been overrun by Islamist fanatics, who have opened slave markets selling Black migrants travelling through the country in the hope of reaching Europe. The western occupation of Iraq and the neo-Cons attempts to turn the country into a low-tax, free trade capitalist utopia has utterly wrecked their economy. But western multinationals have done extremely well for themselves, looting and taking over the country's state-owned enterprises as the spoils of war. And Aramco, the American-Saudi oil company, has stolen Iraq's oil industry and its reserves. Indeed, they've actually written into the country's new constitution a clause stating that the Iraqis may not renationalise it.
This was the real aim of the invasion all along.
As was the invasion of Afghanistan. Like Iraq, it had nothing to do with liberating the country from the murderous rule of a brutal regime. Quite the contrary. George Dubya Bush's administration had been in talks with the Taliban about opening up an oil pipeline there. It was only when the Taliban started stalling and looked ready to turn down the proposal, that Bush's bunch of bandits then drew up plans to invade the country if an opportunity presented itself. Which it did with 9/11.
For further information about this, read any of William Blum's critiques of American imperialism and Greg Palast's Armed Madhouse.
Blair himself was a corporatist. He gave positions in government to senior figures from private industry, often on the very bodies that were supposed to regulate those industries, in return for their generous donations. This included the NHS, where he took in various advisors from private healthcare companies. See George Monbiot's Captive State. I've seen absolutely no evidence that Blair was ever worried about saving the planet. Not when he was determined to reward the same businesses that are wrecking it. One of the horrors left over from the Iraq invasion is the pollution from the armaments coated with depleted uranium, which have been responsible for a massive increase in birth defects among the Iraqi population.
I don't see Starmer as being remotely different. He's already shown his contempt for the Labour party's rank and file, whom he's ignoring in order to try to recruit prospective MPs and officials from outside the party. Just as Blair was far more welcoming to Tory politicos who had crossed the floor to join him, like Chris Patten, than his own party and particularly its left-wing. My guess Starmer is probably hoping for more corporate donations, including from the fracking companies wishing to start operating over here.
Right now, he looks exactly the same as David Cameron. Cameron boasted that his would be the greenest government ever. He even put a little windmill on his roof to show how serious he was. But when he finally slithered his way into No. 10, that windmill came down and it was full steam ahead for fracking and hang anyone worried about its damage to the environment and their drinking water.
Starmer's going to be no different. Which is why he's turned his back on the Green New Deal and run away from its campaigners. He doesn't want to hear them, just as he doesn't want to hear from ordinary working people and Labour supporters and members.
Tags:'Armed Madhouse', 9/11, Arms, Birth Defects, Boris Johnson, Capitalism, Captive State, Chris Patten, Conservatives, Corporativism, David Cameron, Fracking, Free Trade, George Monbiot, Green New Deal, Green New Deal Rising, Greg Palast, Imperialism, Iraq Invasion, Islamism, Jeremy Corbyn, Keir Starmer, Labour Party, Neo-Cons, NHS, NHS Privatisaiton, Oil Pipeline, Private Finance Initiative, Taliban, Tax, tony blair, Vox Political, William Blum
Posted in Afghanistan, America, Economics, Environment, Health Service, Industry, Iraq, Islam, Libya, LIterature, OIl, Politics, Poverty, Saudi Arabia, Secularism, Slavery, Terrorism, The Press, Welfare Benefits | 1 Comment »
Starmer Finally Reveals Himself as Blairite
And what a sordid, depressing spectacle it is too! But we can't say it wasn't expected. One of the most dispiriting pieces of last week's news was that Starmer had appeared in the pages of the Financial Times, declaring he was only intent on power and would take Labour back to the glorious policies of Tony Blair.
Yes, Tony Blair! The unindicted war criminal who pressured the intelligence agencies into 'sexing up' the 'dodgy dossier' on Saddam Hussein and lied about the dictator having weapons of mass destruction that he could launch within forty minute. This was all done to provide the pretext for an illegal invasion with his best mate, George 'Dubya' Bush. It was all done ostensibly to liberate the Iraqi people from a murderous tyrant. The reality was that it was all done so western multinationals led by the American-Saudi oil industry could grab Iraq's oil reserves and its state enterprises. The result was the destruction of one of the most secular societies in the Middle East and its welfare state. The country's economy was decimated as the neo-Cons turned into the kind of low tax, free trade state they'd like America to be, unemployment hit 60 per cent and society descended into sectarian violence and chaos. Women could no longer pursue careers outside the home, the American army colluded with local thugs in running deaths squads while the mercenaries also employed by the occupying forces ran prostitution and drugs rings and shot Iraqis for sport. Then, a few years later, Blair joined Bush's successor, Barack Obama, and Immanuel Macro in helping to overthrow Colonel Gaddafy in Libya, with the result that one half of that country is in the hands of militant Islamists, who have re-opened the slave markets to sell Blacks.
Blair's domestic policies have also been horrendous. Blair pushed the Thatcherite programme of privatising the Health Service into a much higher gear, so much so that it astonished some Tories. They remarked that he got away with doing more than they would have dared with Labour in opposition. Blair set up to the Community Care Groups, the doctors' organisations charged with running doctor's surgeries so that they could raise money privately and buy services from private healthcare companies. The new health centres and polyclinics he set up were also to be privately run. More contracts were given to private healthcare companies and more hospitals closed or turned over to private healthcare companies to run instead. His health secretary, Alan Milburn, wanted the NHS to become nothing more than kitemark on services provided by private healthcare companies. The same Milburn is in this fortnight's issue of Private Eye following an article Milburn wrote in one of the papers calling for more of the NHS to be given over to private industry. Milburn is not a disinterested observers, as the Eye's article shows his connections with any number of private healthcare companies.
This is the same Blair who gave positions in government, including regulatory bodies, to the chairmen and senior staff of big businesses that donated to him and his party. He applied the Public-Private Finance Initiative to industry as a whole, resulting in costs and delays massively increasing in public works projects. He favoured the big supermarkets over small, family run stores, thus putting many of them out of business. At the same time, the farmers who supply the supermarkets found themselves locked into extremely exploitative contracts.
He also carried on the Tories' policy of destroying state education. Thatcher's project of revitalising schools by privatising them as 'city academies' had been a failure and was actually being wound up by her education secretary, Norman Fowler. But Blair fished it out of the dustbin, rebranded them as 'academies' and forged ahead with the idea, even against local opposition. The result has been a series of scandals over schools run only narrowly religious lines with draconian and humiliating disciplinary codes. At the same time, the academies have also been criticised for seeking to maintain their academic standards through highly selective admissions policies excluding the less academically able and those with behavioural difficulties. These academies have been boosted with the expenditure of tens of millions on them while ordinary state schools are starved of funds. When this is taken into account, they don't perform any better than ordinary state schools. In fact they often performed far worse, as a string of academies have folded or their schools taken back into state administration.
At the same time, Blair, Mandelson and co also demonstrated their hatred and contempt for the unemployed, the poor and disabled. They fully believed in Thatcher's 'Victorian value' of less eligibility, in which the process of claiming state benefit was to be made as humiliating as possible in order to deter people from claiming it. Based on spurious, fraudulent research cooked up by American private health insurer Unum, they decided that most people claiming disability benefit were malingerers. The result was the infamous work capability tests, which were set so that a specific percentage of claimants were found to be ineligible and thrown off benefit. The result has been even more despair, starvation and deaths for hundreds of genuinely disabled people, who have had their only source of income removed. It was also Blair, who introduced workfare as part of his risible 'New Deal'. Under the guise of teaching long term benefit claimants the necessary skills to get them back into work, the unemployed were handed over to work for various businesses and private sector organisations, like the big supermarket chains and charities. If they refused, they lost their benefits. Contrary to what Blair and his Tory successors claimed, this does not help unemployed people get back into work. In fact it does the opposite. The unemployed actually do far better looking for jobs and voluntary work on their own.
Blair also hated the trade unions, the working class organisations that have been part of the Labour party since it was founded in 1905 or so. The Labour party was partly set up to protect trade unions and their members. But Blair did everything he could to smash their power further. When he became head of the party c. 1997 he threated to cut the party's ties with them if they didn't back his reforms.
Yes, Blair won three elections, but the cost was a massive drop in membership and support amongst traditional Labour voters and activists. From this perspective, Jeremy Corbyn was actually far more successful, turning Labour into the biggest and best funded of the UK parties. This was through the simple technique of putting forward a traditionally socialist, truly Labour set of policies: end the privatisation of the NHS, renationalise the utilities, restore the welfare state, remove the restrictions on the trade unions and give working people proper rights at work. Corbyn became massively unpopular only due to a concerted campaign of personal vilification, but his programme was genuinely popular. Unlike Blair's, who only won the election because almost two decades of Tory rule had made them even more unpopular.
But the Labour left and the continued popularity of socialism continues to worry the Blairites. Hence Starmer's determination to purge the party of them, and most specifically socialist Jews. On Wednesday there was a Virtual meeting of left-wing labour politicos and activists on Zoom discussing Starmer's continuing persecution on the Labour left. One of the great speakers quoted the late Tony Benn. Speaking during the purges of Marxists from the party in the 1980s, Benn stated that it would start with the Marxists, go on to the socialists and end with a merger with the SDP. It was all about protecting capitalism. Occasionally the party would be given a chance to govern the country, but nothing really would change.
And that's really what you can expect from Starmer's return to Blairism. It's just going to be more Tory policies, put forward by people who claim to represent 'real Labour values' but who in reality have nothing but absolute contempt for the working class and the ideals of the people who founded the party.
As Mike has pointed out, it was clear which direction Starmer really was going from the outset. Despite his declaration that he would continue Corbyn's manifest promises, he broke every one of them as soon as he could. He carried on the purges under the pretext of clamping down on anti-Semitism – and who knew so many anti-Semites were self-respecting Jews! – and then had the whip withdrawn from his predecessor. He has also done his best to destroy the party's internal democracy, suspending individuals and constituency parties at a whim and imposing his own candidates against the wishes of local activists.
Somehow Starmer has managed to convince himself that a return to Blairism will be a vote-winner. Well, it hasn't so far. Coupled with the islamophobia and anti-Black racism of his supporters, it's led to the party massively losing members and working class support. The result has been a string of election defeats.
Blair was a mass-murderer, whose wars have turned the Middle East into a charnel house and whose economic and welfare policies have further impoverished this country and its awesome, hard-working people. But they kept capitalism secure and further enriched the already obscenely wealthy.
And to Thatcherites like Starmer and his supporters, that's all that really matters. Expect Labour to lose, and continue to lose, with this open move to the right.
Tags:Academies, Alan Milburn, anti-semitism, Anti-Semitism Smears, Barack Obama, Blacks, Capitalism, Colonel Gaddafy, Community Care Groups, Death Squads, doctors, Elections, Financial Times, Free Trade, George 'Dubya' Bush, health Centres, Immanuel Macron, Iraq Invasion, Islamophobia, Jeremy Corbyn, Jews, Keir Starmer, Margaret Thatcher, marxism, Mercenaries, Middle East, Multinationals, Nationalisation, NHS, NHS Privatisation, Norman Fowler, Private Eye, Private Healthcare Companies, Public Utilities, racism, Saddam Hussein, Schools, SDP, State Schools, Tax, the Rich, tony blair, Unum, Wars, Welfare State, Women, Work Capability Tests, Workers' Rights, Workfare, Zoom
Posted in America, Charity, communism, Democracy, Disability, Economics, Education, France, Health Service, Industry, Iraq, Islam, Judaism, Libya, Medicine, Persecution, Politics, Poverty, Secularism, Slavery, Socialism, The Press, Trade Unions, Unemployment, Welfare Benefits, Working Conditions | 5 Comments »
The Quilliam Foundation, Set Up By the Spooks
Hat tip to Zelo Street for posting about this story. And it's the type of stuff the conspiracy/ parapolitical magazine Lobster was set up to investigate and publicize: the covert shenanigans and dodgy activities of the British, American and western security services. Earlier this week the Quilliam Foundation, an organisation set up to counter Islamist religious extremism, went under. Its demise, as Zelo Street noted, raised the questions of why it had been wound up, considering all the millions had that been spent on it all these years, why its founder Maajid Nawaz had started deleting all his tweets about it, and what was the role of the security services in all of this. Ian Cobain, a former hack with the Groan knew, and told all.
Quilliam had been set up by the Home Office's Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism. He knew this, as the OSCT had told him. The government initially planned to fund it covertly. It would ostensibly be funded by benefactors from the Middle East, but this would be a cover for its real source of income, MI6. However, the government then decided that it should be openly funded by the government, but that this would not publicised. This is now seen as a mistake. It should have been funded by the security agencies, who do it all the time apparently without anyone finding out.
Solomon Hughes also noted that its links to the security services seemed pretty open when it was founded, as early staff included Special Forces Captain Ed Jagger, and a 'journalist', who goes by the pseudonym 'James Brandon'. Both of these men now work private security/ intelligence companies. This was all exposed six years ago by Nafeez Ahmed in an article in the Middle East Eye, 'The Circus: How British Intelligence Primed Both Sides of the Terror War". Ahmed revealed that the Quilliam Foundation was set up by Ed Husain and Nawaz with funding from the British government. And this, according to Ahmed, was why it failed, as neither of its founders were actually jihadis.
"Perhaps the biggest problem with Husain's and Nawaz's claim to expertise on terrorism was that they were never jihadists. Hizb ut-Tahrir is a non-violent movement for the establishment of a global 'caliphate' through social struggle, focusing on the need for political activism in the Muslim world. Whatever the demerits of this rigid political ideology, it had no relationship to the phenomenon of al-Qaeda terrorism".
Hizb-ut-Tahrir spawned a terrorist-supporting offshoot, al-Muhajiroun, which has also, like HuT, been banned in Britain as terrorist organisation. I think it was al-Muhajiroun, which was openly campaigning for donations to go to al-Qaeda from British Muslims at the time of the 9/11 terror attack. If I recall correctly, a couple of these jokers made the mistake of doing so in the street, and some other, ordinary stout Muslims lads showed them how strongly they disapproved of terrorism and mass murder. I think it was because of his role as a leading supporter and campaigner for al-Muhajiroun that Anjem Chowdhry, who never met an Islamist terrorist he didn't like, apparently, ended up in the slammer. I thought Chowdry was behind the outfit, but it seems he wasn't. It was founded instead by Omar Bakri. According to the US army intelligence officer and prosecutor for the US Justice Department, John Loftus, after Bakr left Hizb-ut-Tahrir he was recruited by MI6 facilitate Islamist activities in the Balkans. Ahmed concluded his piece by wishing that they could round up all the activists in the Quilliam Foundation and HuT and their handlers, and then put them in a boat on a journey to nowhere, so that everyone else could get some peace.
Zelo Street: Quilliam And The Spooks (zelo-street.blogspot.com)
It's been Lobster's contention since its foundation in the 1980s that the British security services are incompetent, out of control and very frequently working against the well-being of this country's ordinary people. MI6's recruitment of Bakri to assist in Islamist radicalisation and activities in the Balkans adds further evidence to this view. Years ago I found a book in the Central Library here in Bristol by a Muslim, which suggested that the 7/7 bombings had also been the result of a plot by the British security services. This was part of a wider scheme to keep western troops in the former Yugoslavia, ostensibly to keep the peace, but in reality to maintain control of yet another oil pipeline. I don't know whether MI6 is so lawless that it was behind the 7/7 bombings – I sincerely hope not – but the revelation that it recruited Bakri to promote Islamism in that part of Europe suggests that there's something to the idea that it's all about oil politics. It was to get control of an oil pipeline that we invaded Afghanistan, not to overthrow al-Qaeda or the Taliban. And the Iraq invasion was to grab their oil industry as well as loot the country of its other, valuable state enterprises for the benefit of western multinationals.
And somehow the Quilliam Foundation fits in with this mess of Islamist surveillance and manipulation.
Tags:7/7 Bombings, 9/11, al-Muhajiroun, al-Qaeda, Balkans, Ed Husain, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, Intelligence Agencies, Iraq Invasion, John Loftus, Lobster, Maajid Nawaz, MI6, Middle East Eye, Nafeez Ahmed, Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism, Oil Industry, Oil Pipeline, Omar Bakri, Quilliam Foundation, Security Services, State Enterprises, Taliban, Zelo Street
Posted in Afghanistan, America, Democracy, Industry, Iraq, Islam, Justice, LIterature, OIl, Politics, Terrorism, The Press, Yugoslavia | Leave a Comment »


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Abbott and Costello – the first "Army life" comedy
Abbott and Costello – trailblazers and Oscar nominees? tab through the art clip above to read more!
Abbot and Costello's first blockbuster film Buck Privates, filmed in thirty days, made them box office stars and saved Universal Studios from imminent bankruptcy. The movie was considered the first "service" comedy, with a plot based on "accidental" enlistment during a volunteer peacetime draft.
Buck Privates earned two Academy Award nominations…Best Song and Best Musical Score for a Movie. While neither won the golden statue, Best Song nominee "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy," sung by the beloved Andrews Sisters, became an iconic WWII tune. "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" was recorded on January 2, 1941, a full year before the United States entered WWII. It ranks an astounding #6 on Songs of the Century chart, perhaps in part to its resurgence in popularity after Bette Midler released it in 1973. A second tune from Buck Privates, "I'll Be With You in Apple Blossom Time," with its war-time promise of a lovely May wedding, would soon be heard crackling over command post loudspeakers and radios in Western Europe and the South Pacific.
From 1940 – 1945, Abbot and Costello made fourteen films, and were among the highest paid entertainers in the world during WWII. As a comedic duo, they owned the stage, vaudeville, radio, television and film during the 1940's and early 50's. Among the best skits was their hilarious dialogue "Who's on First?" which is still regarded as one of the greatest comedy routines of all time. Bud Abbott and Lou Costello placed their hand prints in the cement of what was then "Grauman's Chinese Theater" on December 8, 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor was attacked.
Abbott and Costello – one of the great comedy partnerships that helped the nation through the dark years of WWII.
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