Get lost, Tony!

After 10 long years, Tony Blair is finally leaving Downing Street 10. While some still parrot that he has been a great British prime minister, the reputation of Great Britain in the Middle East has reached freezing point after Britain's participation in the two disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The fact that Blair refuses to make any self-criticism and blatantly continues to defend the indefensible, shows how far out on limb he his, out of touch with the British people, who wants its government to stop meddling in the Middle East.

Ten years ago Britain welcomed Blair full of hope after long years of Tory government. Blair would bring a fresh wind of change. Guess what? Ten years later Britain is clamoring for change, again. Blair failed to deliver the goods, and his successor Gordon Brown will also fail. He may indeed soften a bit the blind adherence of the British government to the war policies designed in Washington. But the new prime minister has been a long-standing member of Blair's government as Chancellor of the Exchequer and is therefore also responsible for Britain's crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Blair has barely left Downing Street and he's appointed special envoy for the Middle East by the Quartet (U.S., E.U., U.N. and Russia). Of course, the U.S. and Israel believe he would make a good envoy because they are absolutely sure he will defend their interests against the Arab peoples. (The Jerusalem Post: Livni: Blair would be perfect ME envoy) Others see it differently. “His selection for the job takes American policy in the Middle East to new heights of absurdity. [...] The decision is lunacy itself. The guiding question could only have been: who is the most profoundly resented and bitterly hated man in the Middle East. Bar Bush, the honour could only have gone to Blair.” (The Guardian: Adding insult to injury) and (The Times: Mixed welcome awaits Blair in Middle East role). Russia procrastinated a bit but finally relented, which shows the Russian government failed to stand up to Washington. (The Independent: Russians withhold approval of Blair envoy role)

How can Blair, the war criminal, bring any “peace” to the Middle East? Why is he not prosecuted for war crimes, now that he has lost his immunity? “Blair, who supported the American occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan, may not be a man of peace. He will not do anything to support the Palestinian interests but will do everything to support the Israeli occupation,” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum told AFP. Indeed.

The big dividing line is now between the big powers (and that unfortunately includes China) and the peoples of the world. The central battlefield: the Middle East...

'Feral' Blair

Tony – the liar – Blair compared the news media to “a feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits” and further lamented that he “was not the first prime minister to face extraordinarily brutal treatment”. (The Independent: Simon Kelner: Would you be saying this, Mr Blair, if we supported your war in Iraq? ; The New York Times: Blair Compares News Media to ‘Feral Beast’ in Angry Parting Shot)

Yo' Blair! Getting a bit ahead of yourself, aren't you!? The real problem is that the news media were not 'feral' nor 'brutal' enough early enough to tear a budding war criminal like you – and your buddy Bush – too pieces so the Iraq war could have been avoided. Far from 'feral', the press was too weak and meek to denounce your blatant lies with sufficient ferocity to kick you out of office and into the place where you belong: the dock of an international war crimes tribunal. The lies you invented to start the Iraq war amount to incitement to genocide and mass murder and warrant the death penalty.

As Martin Bright observes (New Statesman: It takes one to know one): “In fact, the real media scandal remains the journalists who were complicit in justifying the spurious intelligence on behalf of the government and presenting it as fact to an unsuspecting public. Collectively, the profession failed in its duty by being too credulous in the weeks leading up to the war. Too many journalists who should have known better became willing collaborators in the government's propaganda machine, rather than holding the government to account.”

When you leave office in two weeks time, Mr Bliar, you will walk out of damned Downing Street No 10 a free man. 650,000 Iraqis are dead as a result of your lies. That will leave a permanent blood stain on the reputation of Britain. One of the reasons is, the British press was not 'feral' enough.

The B-liar years: 1997 – 2007

British prime minister Tony Blair finally announced that he will resign on June 27. How hopefully it all began ten years ago! The British were tired of John Major's Tory leadership and voted for change. Tony Blair promised to usher in a new era, the era of New Labour, socialist but modern. Blair went on to win two more elections, to become Bush's poodle and drag Great Britain into the illegal, genocidal and destructive Iraq War. The young, dynamic and promising man of ten years ago became a grizzled war criminal, spinning and lying to justify the unjustifiable and finally getting embroiled in corruption scandals.

The British people's hopes turned to cynicism. They will be happy to get rid of Tony Blair. He went from being one of the most popular British prime ministers to become one of the least popular. That is the legacy he is leaving.

Will his successor, Gordon Brown, do anything to forthwith end British involvement in the Iraq war? After all, Brown was part of the government which sent British boys and gals into losing battles in Afghanistan and Iraq and praised Blair's “unique achievement over 10 years and the unique leadership he had given to the party, Britain and the world”. Yeah, right... Britain will get more of the same and Britain deserves better.

Blair boosted about what he had achieved in Britain: “more jobs; fewer unemployed; better health and education results; lower crime; and economic growth in every quarter”. Even if that would indeed be true, if you go out to destroy another country, thousands of kilometers away, whatever achievements you may have in your own is worth nothing. The British ambassador to Washington once told the BBC's Matt Frei “that if he wanted to, the prime minister could veto this war”. Well, he didn't. And so he should be held responsible for the consequences.

And there is still the injustice that Blair will go on to write his memoirs, cashing in hundreds of thousands of pounds and perhaps live happily ever after, while the people of Iraq are still being murdered thanks to his policies. Tony Blair is a despicable war criminal. He should be brought to justice. Until he faces an international war crimes tribunal and is duly convicted for his immeasurable crimes against humanity, the Blair Era is not over yet.

While this war criminal basks in the limelight, a British judge sent a real hero, David Keogh, to jail. We'll come back to his story tomorrow, as villain Blair and hero Keogh shouldn't be mixed up in one story. The villains go free and the heroes end up in jail: what a wonderful world we live in...

“Hand on heart, I did what I thought was right,” Blair crowed. No, Blair, you were wrong, and not only wrong – you have oceans of blood on your hands. “I came into office with high hopes for Britain's future, and I leave it with even higher hopes for Britain's future,” he continued. With criminals like you at the helm, there is no future for Britain. Remember the lyrics of the Sex Pistols' song: “NO FUTURE, no future for you...” (CNN: Disillusionment after Blair decade) (The Independent: 27 June: Blair sets departure date)

Premeditated provocation

Fifteen British sailors have been captured by the Iranian coastguard while conducting espionage in Iranian waters. What were they doing there? Boarding ships to combat smuggling. Where does Britain get the authority to do so? Is it an international policeman? Trying to stop arms smuggling to the insurgents, who have every right to fight the occupation, while the U.S. and Britain are transporting billions of dollars of military hardware to kill the Iraqi people? But, that of course is not called smuggling!

Britain is allowed to defend its coast, but what is Her Majesty's Fleet doing in the Gulf? Why isn't it stopping smuggling vessels off the coast of England, Scotland and Wales? It is an open secret that U.S. special forces are operating inside Iran, why wouldn't the British give it a try in Iran's territorial waters?

The British government is appalled that its boys (and one girl) have been captured, but they were not supposed to be there in the first place. It was an incident waiting to happen, that so far has not spinned out of control to give the U.S. an excuse to launch the long-planned attack on Iran. But the next incident might.

On January 11, U.S. forces stormed the Iranian liaison office in Arbil, Iraq, and seized five Iranian officials, who are still held in captivity. All these incidents are pre-planned to build a case for war. To justify the unjustifyable: another war of aggression, the third in a row, following Afghanistan and Iraq.

Britain claims its 15 soldiers were in Iraqi waters, thereby trying to put the blame on Iran for crossing an international boundary. Considering the blatant lies the British government has told and continues to tell, until further proof, we'd rather believe the Iranians. The British are playing a dirty game in the service of their American patrons to provoke a war with Iran.

They might indeed succeed, but in the end they will be defeated.

“Grave and deteriorating”

The Iraq Study Group made its report public today. It is not worth the scrap paper it is printed on. The only thing on the minds of the members of the commission is how to get the U.S. out of the shit. They don't give a damn about the Iraqi people who find themselves in a living hell created by the Devil and His Poodle, war criminals Bush and Blair.

It is not going to give back a decent and peaceful life to the Iraqi people and it isn't even going to get the U.S. out of the shit. Because it doesn't recommend immediate and unconditional withdrawal of U.S. forces. And Bush is not going to implement it anyway... He already rejected one of the key recommendations, to hold direct talks with Iran and Syria.

The report recognizes that Iraq is in a mess. Do we need a commission to know that? And the two B's remain in denial.

A useful recommendation would have been to arrest Bush and Blair and fly them under armed guard to the International Court in The Hague to be prosecuted for the crime of aggression, genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

“Nice words that had no effect," was the comment of a Sunni Arab employee of Iraq's Industry Ministry on similar reports written in the past (CNN: Iraq Study Group report gets cool reception among Iraqis)

And Bush will start to blame it all on the Iraqis, ungrateful for being 'liberated'... He is still waiting for other reports, from the Pentagon, the State Department and the National Security Council. More stupid words to hide behind and continue the slaughter of innocent Iraqis.

One of the commission's major recommendations is training and equipping more Iraqi security forces. That's exactly the same recommendation which was implemented after the U.S. military got stuck in the Vietnam War. When if finally realized it could not win the war, the U.S. government withdrew combat troops, increased the number of military advisers and beefed up the training of South Vietnam's forces. The end came in April 1975 when the last American diplomats fled by helicopter from the roof of their embassy in Saigon.

The same is bound to happen in Baghdad. The situation is indeed "grave and deteriorating". Just wait and see. 

Blair's WMD

Britain's PM Tony Blair joined His Master George W. Bush in an illegal and criminal invasion of Iraq because Saddam was supposedly building weapons of mass destruction and helping terrorists. No WMD were found and there are many more 'terrorists' in Iraq now than under the rule of Saddam.

Again together with Bush, he is lambasting North Korea because it tested an atom bomb and Iran because in his distorted view he thinks it is also building the bomb. Neither of those two countries has violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. North Korea has left the NPT according to its provisions and Iran is not violating it.

And guess what? Blair has just decided to violate the NPT, deciding to build a new generation of nuclear ballistic-missile submarines at a cost of at least £20 billion.

This is a blatant violation of the treaty. Signatories have committed themselves to gradually diminish the number of their nuclear weapons. Cutting the nuclear submarine fleet from four to three and reducing the number of operational nuclear warheads by a fifth to about 160 cannot be called disarmament when the U.K. is also designing more powerful nuclear weapons.

Britain's nuclear defense consists of Trident missiles carried aboard four Vanguard-class nuclear-powered submarines. The missiles are leased from the U.S. at an exorbitant price and London has to ask the U.S. for permission if it wants to use them. Britain owns its 200 atomic bombs but cannot use them without Washington's go-ahead.

The U.S. has around 11,000 nuclear weapons, enough to destroy the whole world many times over. It doesn't need the British ones, and Britain itself cannot used them without U.S. consent.

Perhaps Saddam should raise an army to invade Britain and help rid the world of Britain's WMDs. Of course, he can't and he won't. So all peace-loving people in the world should join together to stop warmongers from building even more powerful nuclear weapons. As European citizens, let's start making Europe free of nuclear weapons. That will set an example, giving us the moral high ground to take on the U.S.

Shameless Wicked Witch

Granted, there is a big difference between the crimes of aggression, genocide and crimes against humanity of which her husband is guilty and the mere misdemeanor of claiming there is “no professional morality in journalism”.

Still, it’s a blatant lie. Sure, some journalists lack all professional morality. Tabloid journalists just like to dig up dirt. Others even stoop so low as to defend the immoral occupation of Iraq.

But telling an audience of journalism students at Roehampton University in the south-west of London that there is “no professional morality in journalism”, that journalism is “not a noble calling” and that journalists “have no ethics” is disgusting. The Independent called it an extraordinary attack on the media.

The words quoted are those of Cherie Blair, wife of Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara, Her Majesty’s Prime Minister, whose only rightful place is in the dock of the accused at the International Court of Justice.

BBC World Affairs Editor John Simpson apparently presided over the meeting. Now I like Simpson’s books (although he can’t match Robert Fisk) and he went through hell in Northern Iraq barely escaping a vicious bombardment by the U.S. Air Force. So the man must have had quite a bit of courage. In Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and a dozen other places. But in south-west London, he lacked even the courage of a weasel. Simpson declined to comment, because “it was a private meeting”.

“The Wicked Witch is utterly shameless”, commented Richard Littlejohn, the columnist of the Daily Mail. I don’t know Richard and have never read anything he has written, but a quick Google search turns up he’s a controversial right-wing commentator. So there’s probably not much he and I can agree on, but his characterization of Cherie Cherie is right on the spot.

After all, right wing bastards must have a hell of a lot of experience with wicked witches and must certainly be able to recognize one when they see one. Whereas John Simpson even lacked the courage to stand up to the Wicked Witch.

Wicked Witch Cherie and War Criminal Tony, what a lovely couple!

Read the story in The Independent: Journalists have no morality, PM's wife tells students