Hazel Blears is the epitome of New Labour populism. She is the friendly face of outflanking the BNP to the Right. Portrayed as a bouncy little “no-nonsense” politician, “no-nonsense” and “common-sense” are code for “very very right wing indeed”.
In this video interview with George Monbiot, she reminds me irresistibly of Gracie Fields, if Grace Fields were campaigning for Oswald Mosley:
“‘Ee, Ducks, don’t you worry about that Mr Hitler, e’ll do alright. Just you think about the ordinary working folk here in’t mill. That’s what I call decent politics, like.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/video/2009/apr/25/monbiot-meets-hazel-blears
Except that the Blears act is very thin indeed. Seven minutes in to the Monbiot video, he challenges her over New Labour support for the evil “President” Karimov of Uzbekistan. Blears pretends hardly to have heard of Karimov, and as Monbiot presses, she makes out that she knows nothing about Uzbekistan and is only interested in “Jobs and education for the people here in Salford”.
But Blears has played a key role in New Labour’s support for Karimov. In October 2005 Hazel Blears told the House of Commons that the Islamic Jihad Union had been responsible for bomb attacks in Tashkent in March 2004. In fact, there were no bombs in Tashkent in 2004. I was able personally to inspect each of the alleged bomb sites within hours – and in one case minutes – of the alleged explosions, and there were no bombs.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2005/oct/19/foreignpolicy.uksecurity
A very full description is given on pages 325 to 340 of Murder in Samarkand.
The purpose of the false bombing campaign was to provide cover for the shooting dead of several dozen dissidents, and more importantly to establish a new black ops “terror” group, the “Islamic Jihad Union”. This group, never heard of before, was immediately blamed by the Uzbek government for the “bombs”.
In fact the Islamic Jihad Union was a creation of the Uzbek and German security services, with CIA involvement. The “bombs” were timed for the day a senior level delegation of German MPs and MEPs were in Tashkent. The motive behind creating the “Islamic Jihad Union” was to firm up political support for the controversial German deployment of troops in Afghanistan, supported by the German airbase at Termez in Uzbekistan, which is still operating.
German security services have since arranged a series of terror scares in Germany over pretended planned bombing campaigns by the “Uzbek Islamic Jihad Union” inside Germany, to continue to whip up German public support for their alliance with the odious Karimov.
Blears specifically told the House of Commons that the Islamic Jihad Union was reponsible for the “bombs” in Uzbekistan, and then defended this in subsequent debate against sceptical MPs.
For her to pretend to Monbiot that she has no idea what he is talking about on Uzbekistan, is sickening. The woman has “Fake” stamped all the way through her.
So Western intelligence agencies create the Islamic terrorist groups that their governments say they are fighting?
Not always, but sometimes.
Having seen the Monbiot interview, would you buy a used car from this woman?
Craig
You might consider writing formally to the Guardian saying this, and referencing your evidence to the SC.
It will be interesting to see if they publish it!
“She is an awful, awful person who needs to be locked away. To call her a sociopath or a psychopath is to dignify her malevolence with a legitimate excuse when she has none. She is the new face of terror. One that smiles and pretends to consider your arguments before blithely burying them in a torrent of misrepresentation and dissemblement.”
Hmm… it seeems we’re tiptoeing our way to somewhere.
There is real terror and there is fake terror. If there is real terror then why do our governments need to fake it?
And between fake terror curtesy of our own governments (and their allies), and real terror curtesy of people who are obviously marginalised and impoverished, which one is the greater threat? I’m inclined to think that if our governments weren’t the kind of people to be faking terror, and were instead decent people, then there wouldn’t be any ‘real’ terrorists. Besides, given that our governments create fake terror, what would they do if they fell upon some real terrorists? Stop them? Or give them a hand?
I could spiel off a list of terror attacks that are cold hard certainties as fake but I couldn’t name a single one that is without a doubt ‘real’, ie. was in fact what we were told it was.
Would you blame a fellow who was perfectly convinced that there is fake terror, for taking one further step in that direction and wondering if there’s any real terror at all?
Sorry, ‘courtesy’.
And what I find appalling, indeed chilling, is that this dreadful woman – “Salford’s Sarah Palin” one CiF comment dubbed her – is in charge of community relations when she obviously hasn’t got a clue about anything and lies like a trooper [if that isn’t am insult to the Guards].
Nobody,
There is obviously real terrorism. To believe all terrorism is invented by governments, you would have to be very weird. I recommend as a good starting point Robin Soans’ play, “Talking to Terrorists”, based on his interviews with some of them and a very good exploration of the motives of terrorism.
That governments would wish to exaggerate, and sometimes promote, a real phenomenon to their advantage, is not a hard concept to understand.
Quote from Craig in this article by William Blum on Counterpunch on Obama and Torture.
http://www.counterpunch.org/blum05052009.html
I wholly agree with the foregoing about the hideous diminuitive, once ‘Google Bombed’ as the 50″ woman. Sorry to be ‘shortist’!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1048296/Blears-falls-prey-Google-bomb-Attack-Of-The-50-inch-Woman.html
mary???
So she’s 50″ tall and lies… I don’t see any connection other than two separate comments about the same person.
If Craig comes out and denounces Jimmy Krankie in the next post, I’ll think harder about this.
“If there is real terror then why do our governments need to fake it? ”
Because terrorists are pretty bloody incompetent – most of the stuff they do is just totally inadequate. If it wasn’t for British and US government grants and training schemes we’d never have heard of most of these jihad thingies. Nationalisation of terrorism still hasn’t entirely succeeded, though. Further clarification here at the Daily Mash:
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=249&Itemid=59
She has her Albright moment just 2 mins in. Hundreds of thousands of people have died, but she still thinks it was the right decision. That’s very similar to saying it’s a price worth paying.
@craig: “That governments would wish to exaggerate, and sometimes promote, a real phenomenon to their advantage, is not a hard concept to understand.”
…exaggerate, and sometimes promote, and sometimes CREATE.
She shares the same mad grin with Gordon’s recent YouTube performance of Batman’s archenemy, The Joker.
On a more serious note she epitomizes the unprincipled hunger for high office and job security. I wonder if she was the inspiration for “Shameless”?
Wow, that Monbiot bloke is very smart… or is it as much that Hazel Nut is easy prey due to her predigested patter, making her predictable.
I can’t help thinking of the Christian fundamentalists I used to argue with at Uni’; they seemed pre-programmed as they chirped out their assured messages. By filling their heads and vocabulary with ‘the good news’, they ostracised all off message thinking; like some mantra of self hypnosis, they sway with the comfortable rhythm of the cult’s truth.
How uncomfortable they become when brought into confrontation with their own contradictions; Monbiot’s skill of the dialectic is masterful.
You are left wondering, when you see their happy assured faces begin to blink and frown, if these ‘nice’ people wouldn’t resort to evil so as to maintain their blissful self-delusion.
The Politics of Fear end in the Politics of Control. The British people weren’t frightened during the much greater bombing and rocket terrors they had to endure during the 1939-45 war – they were defiant. They weren’t frightened during the IRA’s mainland bombing campaigns – they were contemptuous. Now we have a government that since 2001 has ripped away most of our hard fought for civil liberties either because it is scared witless by the spectre of Islamic terrorism, or because it finds that spectre a convenient pretext for abolishing the individual citizen’s right to privacy.
Either way, we should all be very, very afraid of the incompetent control freaks who currently govern us.
I think anticant has summed it up perfectly; I have nothing to add save to say that I have nothing to add.
The fact that she has addressed the House of Commons on this issue, yet could claim to know so little about it, demonstrates the point Monbiot was trying to make – that, under President Bliar and King Gordon, she and her ilk have de-evolved to the point of having zero personal integrity.
Someone should tell Blears that WE KNOW that awful false grin is for the cameras, FOR FUCKS SAKE!
Also, for an insight how governments operate or are controlled then check out THE OBAMA DECEPTION on youtube. (cant add link am afraid)
One aspect of the interview puzzled me, and still does. It seemed to me that there was a ‘think local’ theme running through it. Although she only said it a couple of times (I think – I can’t bring myself to watch it all again) she used it purposefully: “I’m only interested in .. education .. health .. good people of Salford …”. OK, I expect every MP who wants to get re-elected to say they will do good things for the constituency; that’s a big part of the job.
But she’s a Cabinet Minister, and people – God help us – are talking of her as a possible future leader of Labour. I was shocked that she used this line to so blatantly turn away questions about foreign policy and actions. Several things puzzle me. First she’s no fool; she’s a lawyer and a senior politician (no jokes please). She surely must know how stupid this is and how ostrich-like it makes her appear. Next, a large part of her constituency have close links – family and business links – with faraway parts of the world, while she is saying (I paraphrase) “I don’t care what goes on over there, that’s a long way away. Let’s just keep our heads down in Salford”.
She was being interviewed by a smart guy for a paper with smart readers. She is smart. Why so much dumbness?
My guesses are:
1. There is no substantive answer that she could discuss in public.
2. She wants to inculcate the idea that these are hard matters that are really only for the big boys and girls to understand. Everybody else should just concentrate on Mr Mayor at the Town Hall.
3. No one has given her the script for this bit.
But *she* (unnecessarily) invited Monbiot to visit *her*. Wasn’t she prepared for some tough questions?
It has taken me a long time but I have finally learned to trust my own judgement (and not assume that I’m simply too thick); in particular when I feel that something does not hang together and I feel uneasy about it, then there is a rodent to be smelt.
What’s she up to?
She doesn’t bother her dyed little head about far away countries of which she knows nothing and others of us know far too much.
ALL politicians are overpaid actors, what’s new about that? Are people only beginning to notice that Monbiot is part of the charade too?
Another insightful and interesting post.
In the interview, the only question Blears had to spin out of was labour’s support of Karimov.
Now we know why…
And, anyone who doubts that Governments will allow the killing of their own people in false flag operations should google the word ‘Gladio’.
I remember thinking that she was irresponsible to talk about the support for an extreme right wing party increasing in poorer areas – why was she doing their work for them?
But she may have put a foot wrong in suggesting that voters don’t believe everything that politicians say on TV. After all, publicly doubting the credibility of the Current Beloved Leader is letting the side down. Anyway, come election night, we should get some entertaining relief. Imagine, cabinet ministers in ‘safe’ seats getting thrown out. I wonder what it would take in Blackburn, though.
Craig. I’m being serious now!
Could you tell us briefly what restrictions still exist on Germany having a ‘defence’ posture 4000 miles from Berlin. I believe that post WWII treaties required Japan and Germany to limit their militaries in various ways.
“it is scared witless by the spectre of Islamic terrorism” – No it’s not. What claptrap.
“She was being interviewed by a smart guy for a paper with smart readers. She is smart. Why so much dumbness?”
Can’t remember who said it, but here it is anyway:
“You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time. That second lot is what you focus on.”
There is some comment here about the politics of fear and control, and I subscribe to those ideas. But watching the video of Hazel Blears, she doesn’t strike me as someone who is nasty enough to deliberately scheme in such a way.
But her unrelenting niceness, the sheepish smiling, her desperate willingness to be liked – in the face of the huge contradictions before her – is quite chilling given the atrocities and failures she is asked to consider. Hundreds of thousands dead in Iraq? Support for a dictator that boils his prisoners to death? Tax measures that could have been predicted to hurt the people they were meant to assist? The building of a new runway against a background of climate change?
To these she has no answers, and offers only the suggestion that “politics is complex” and “sometimes we get it wrong”. Sound-bites that mean nothing, and in their complacency are a million miles away from the lies of the war machine and the screams of the torture chamber. She refuses to consider these questions, regards Blair as fundamentally decent, and sleeps well at night.
I propose a new interview with her, with the very capable Monbiot at the helm. She claims not to know much about the situation with Karimov and Uzbekistan. That’s worrying in itself for a senior politician, but let’s let that pass. Let Monbiot obtain printed information about the background to the region, photographs of the torture there, and let Blears have her coaching from Labour’s miserable party linesmen. Then, ask her these questions again, and see her reaction when she considers the reality of the scald marks on the photographs of Karimov’s victims. The video might need editing down, since the reading of material and the discussions might take an hour or two. But would it not be worth it, in an attempt to root out politicians so bland and nice they will agree to anything?
I saw Blears on a Sunday morning show not so long ago. She was promoting democracy at the grass roots and urging folk to use their voices apparently. Didn’t really ring true to me. Seemed like she just waffling. I don’t think she is a big player in the theatre.