I can’t be bothered watching Brown at Chilcot any more. Mildly interesting but unsurprising that Blair kept him out of the loop on dealings with Bush,
Brown’s primary concern is to deny that Treasury constraints cost British soldiers’ lives. He has therefore said six times in the first half hour that, as far as the Treasury were concerned, cost was never an issue.
It bloody well should have been. To all those unemployed and steeped in debt, does this feel like a country that had £100 billion to throw away on a totally needless aggressive war?
Gordon Brown. Unquestioning writer of cheques for a psychotic warmongerer.
What a tosser.
Larry from St.Louis….as you mention Mein Kampf….relax and put your feet up!
http://moronail.net/img/219_Mein_Kampfy_Chair_MEIN_CHAIR_Its_quite_hitler
Thanks for link Dreoilin 🙂
I missed Harpers and I will take apart every single point and publish in the Washington Post.
“And then there is the Iraqi girl, hands soaked in her dead father’s blood, whose little brother does not yet understand that his childhood just came to an end. Fearing for their lives, US soldiers killed the parents in the front seat of the family car. Demons will likely haunt their nights. Stuff happens. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, bless their souls, will sleep well tonight.”
Professor Bernard Chazelle
anno: Again you simply make assertions about what you believe without giving any evidence. You are welcome to your devout faith and I would not dream of challenging your right to hold those beliefs but for most of us that is insufficient to understand the world.
Let us agree to disagree as we will never persuade one another about this.
Richard: You’re thinking of Lt. General Boykin, who declared “The enemy is a guy called Satan”, and went on to claim, “I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.”
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1016-01.htm
This sort of thing is nothing new – the US military, the air force in particular, is infested with Christianists, who like to go around with religious symbols on their aircraft, religious inscriptions on guns, baptising, preaching and giving anyone not enthusiastic about their mumbo-jumbo a miserable time.
Langry,
Why do you pose as two posters? I know both ‘silly gooses'[sic]
The archbishop of Canterbury has renewed his criticism of Tony Blair by urging the former prime minister to recognise his “absurdity” in the wake of the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war ?” and suggesting he read more Dostoevsky.
Repeating a previous quip that Blair is “very strong on God, very weak on irony”, Rowan Williams said the former prime minister had perhaps not done enough soul-searching.
Speaking at a lecture on the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky, Williams was asked by an audience member how he viewed Blair’s appearance at the hearing last week in the context of his studies of the Crime and Punishment author.
Williams said: “I think Tony Blair is one of the most un-Dostoevskian characters in Britain.”
Dostoevsky I believe was the precursor of 20th-century existentialism.
Before Blair decided to preach he should have re-evaluated his concept of caring and thought more about the virtues of humility, submission, and suffering.
I suggest Mr Blair and Mr Brown, it is about time you understood that the individual is solely responsible for giving his own life meaning and living that life passionately and sincerely.
In reality however, like Gordon Brown, you snubbed this suggestion from Robin Cook and went on to murder innocent children by con – vincing the British public that we were in imminent danger from nuclear and biological weapons.
Oh one more thing, Blair – Bush told you Saddam “tried to kill his dad.”
Wrong!
For one thing, Saddam, according to the Duelfer Report, was convinced that the CIA had thoroughly penetrated his regime and thus would know not only that he had dismantled his WMD (which the CIA apparently did not), but also would know about his plans for important intelligence operations. Under those circumstances, it is hard to understand why he would then order an assassination attempt on the former U.S. president.
Even more interesting, according to the report, was Saddam’s ”complicated” view of the U.S. While he derived ”prestige” from being an enemy of the U.S., he also considered it to be ”equally prestigious for him to be an ally of the United States — and regular entreaties were made during the last decade to explore this alternative”.
Indeed, beginning already in 1991, according to the report, ”very senior Iraqis close to the President made proposals through intermediaries for dialogue with Washington.”
”Baghdad offered flexibility on many issues, including offers to assist in the Israel- Palestine conflict. Moreover, in informal discussions, senior officials allowed that, if Iraq had a security relationship with the United States, it might be inclined to dispense with WMD programs and/or ambitions,” it added.
The report even concluded that Iraq was willing to be Washington’s ”best friend in the region bar none”.
From the report again, Saddam seems to be not a madman, but someone who would understand very well the consequences of an assassination”, notes Gregory Thielmann, a former senior State Department analyst who specialized in Iraq’s WMD programs.
So, all is not what it seems, and the reason why America wanted a quick trial and hanging, which by the way, was attended by senior agents of the CIA.(1)
(1)Ahmed al-Neda
Ian – (thanks, btw) “I would expect that in the next 20-30 years there will quite a lot of anti-Chinese hysteria whipped-up in the West due to their increasing economic and military power and foreign policy initiatives to secure critical natural resources.”
Indeed. If this long-threatened horror on Iran does come about, this would give a long stright line, more or less from the Med., through Iran, Iran, Afghanistan … and then, trouble in Xinjiang … I know what I’d be thinking if I was just beyond the end of that line.
I’m intrigued by various commentary I’ve seen (can’t call any particular recommendations to mind) on how the Chinese are actually doing verynicelythankyou with regard to getting access to resources, all over the place, seemingly by being an alternative to the chaos. While, of course, remaining mindful that the Tibetans don’t seem too keen on it …
Always wondered how long it would take for a backlash against USA imperialist and colonial resource mongering in Indonesia, it was long overdue and Bali seems to have been just the start.
East Timor’s Oil resources and possible Ossi development rights of the latter are opposed by Indonesias generals, watch them move with US help.
Gordon was full of his newly found election poll lift, carefull to stress that he cared. His reiteration of how proud he was to have supported the demands of the military in both conflicts will come back to haunt him.
As for the planned TV debate to come, would we miss any important policy or commitment if we do not watch it?
Somehow, I will find something far more significant to seize my interest, I’m sure there must a worm wriggling in my garden.
‘And to warn those who say ‘Allah has taken a son’. Staggering words that come from their mouths. Indeed they say nothing but a lie’ Surah Kahf. Holy Qur’an.
The archbishop may only receive a modest salary of £80K, compare with XPM Blair, but the archbishop should remove the mote of idol-worship from his own eye before he lectures even Tony Blair.
anno,
Thank-you,
Noted.
Larry is an operative in my opinion. Defend Brown if you will, yeah he isn’t running the show, but he is complicit in the murder of millions of innocent people, at the very least through his lying and politicing.Possibly in the early days Brown was naive, but he certainly knows the score now. Blair is a psychotic, he showed no remorse and he is incredibly smart. Straw, Blair and Campbell are all war criminals.
Even if the Racist elements of our Establishment have flattened themselves under the carpet underlay for the moment, e.g. the chairman of Lloyds TSB who refused to permit his bank to handle charity money going to Interpal, and allowing for the realpolitik of New Labour being in bed with global neo-colonialism, it is truly astonishing that a leader and chancellor of a New Labour party could look at the issue of the illegal invasions and say, ‘This is a military enterprise that our country can afford.’ I hope when they build their pipeline, and their frontline concrete weapon-bunkers against Russia, China and India, and relax on the red and green leather of parliament benches, they realise that for the thinking people of this country they have legitimised forever the concept of Islamic Jihad.
“Always wondered how long it would take for a backlash against USA imperialist and colonial resource mongering in Indonesia, it was long overdue and Bali seems to have been just the start.”
Are you talking about the Bali bombings? Are you seriously trying to justify them?
technicolour.
Thank you for the William Nordhaus piece–we will never know the true costs of these business-promoted wars–it is not only in dollars and pounds, but in human corruption of the dead and twi-light living kind, who will affect society in future. It’s probably as you suggest: wars are grist to the mill for media businesses–they fatten like carrion on the dead.
Richard Robinson:
“. . . in a more ideal world it would be startling that this was even worth mentioning”.
Of course, you’re right, but for that very reason, the obvious, becomes overlooked and the British people, in particular, are so brow-beaten and supine that, they are endangering the quality of life for generations to come.
I marched along with almost two-million others, on February 15th 2003, to Hyde Park, in a demonstration, which would have given the lie to those who thought that, the British people were sold on the rightness of the Iraq invasion/war. Remember also that, we were available representatives of many more, who were not there–in my case two from my family of seven. All those, I spoke with on the march, were aware of the great lie and the rubbish “intelligence” presented for war. Unfortunately, there is no political mechanism to use, to bring the Government before the Public, prior to wars. Referenda, at these times would soon be overruled by obvious need for expediency, but that does not mitigate public stupidity–to believe that such a situation could blow up suddenly to threaten the UK. The length of the military build-up time, would have been long enough for a public inquiry to have been carried out, to investigate Bliar’s lies, prior to war. Your last paragraph echoes my feelings and I am a decade older, so the political changes seem just as acute–and mainly unscrupulous in their implementation of political protocol and diplomacy.
In conclusion, the people of Britain need to wake up and defend their country and their children’s future from internal suppression and propaganda, as well as any real or contrived external dangers. Americanised dumbing-down methods must be rolled back and more questioning must be encouraged and promoted.
Angry,
Every terrorist act has a justification (some more twisted than others mind), that is what makes it a terrorist act and not just plain murder.
If we try to understand what brings people to commit such acts, maybe we could stop them from happening in the first place.
Anent ‘Americanised dumbing-down methods’
Been reading about postmodernism in music and wondering if what we are experiencing is postmodern politics. In postmodern music anything goes, if you can sell it: the only rules are the market rules. Seems apt, looking at Brown at Chilcot. Value-free and content-free, but that will do just fine – or just as well as anything, because the political market, like the musical one, is rigged to offer only pap.
All things are a-flowing, Sage Heracleitus says; But a tawdry
cheapness Shall outlast our days.
Larry, you wrote: “Idiots like you, like Hamas politicians, believe in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
I missed the hidden references to the Protocols in this article from a few years ago by Ismail Haniyeh:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/10/AR2006071001108.html
In fact, this particular Hamas politician (and elected prime minister) seems to be rather advocating a two-state solution.
Clearly, Larry, you have other writings/speeches/interviews from Ismael Haniyeh that show what he really believes. Larry, please do share these with us.
Otherwise, Larry, some “idiots” might think you are simply repeating racist innuendo.
technicolour.
Thank you for the William Nordhaus piece–we will never know the true costs of these business-promoted wars–it is not only in dollars and pounds, but in human corruption of the dead and twi-light living kind, who will affect society in future. It’s probably as you suggest: wars are grist to the mill for media businesses–they fatten like carrion on the dead.
Richard Robinson:
“. . . in a more ideal world it would be startling that this was even worth mentioning”.
Of course, you’re right, but for that very reason, the obvious, becomes overlooked and the British people, in particular, are so brow-beaten and supine that, they are endangering the quality of life for generations to come.
I marched along with almost two-million others, on February 15th 2003, to Hyde Park, in a demonstration, which would have given the lie to those who thought that, the British people were sold on the rightness of the Iraq invasion/war. Remember also that, we were available representatives of many more, who were not there–in my case two from my family of seven. All those, I spoke with on the march, were aware of the great lie and the rubbish “intelligence” presented for war. Unfortunately, there is no political mechanism to use, to bring the Government before the Public, prior to wars. Referenda, at these times would soon be overruled by obvious need for expediency, but that does not mitigate public stupidity–to believe that such a situation could blow up suddenly to threaten the UK. The length of the military build-up time, would have been long enough for a public inquiry to have been carried out, to investigate Bliar’s lies, prior to war. Your last paragraph echoes my feelings and I am a decade older, so the political changes seem just as acute–and mainly unscrupulous in their implementation of political protocol and diplomacy.
In conclusion, the people of Britain need to wake up and defend their country and their children’s future from internal suppression and propaganda, as well as any real or contrived external dangers. Americanised dumbing-down methods must be rolled back and more questioning must be encouraged and promoted.
anon – “I marched along with almost two-million others”
(I like that attribution …)
Yes. I did the ‘moderate’ thing, above, about maybe ‘we’ would have agreed to pay for it, given the propaganda (beg their pardon, “shaping of public opinion”), and someone else gave opinion polls suggesting otherwise, and, of course there is the demo. Which is all true, and suggests I was wrong (which is fine with me, I like it when other people can strengthen my points). I didn’t go on it – I’d arranged to go and do something else before I knew the date, and, having begged favours and pulled a string or two to get there, I didn’t quite feel up to backing out; but, on the way to where I ws going, we stopped for a cuppa in Ludlow, Shropshire. I don’t know it, it may be a wild hotbed of radicalism, but it looks like a small & quiet town. There was a poster in a shop window giving details of the arrangements to get to the demo – they sent *three* coaches. Wow !, I thought. Perhaps I’m still in shock from realising I was actually with the majority on something, for once.
“Your last paragraph echoes my feelings and I am a decade older, so the political changes seem just as acute–and mainly unscrupulous in their implementation of political protocol and diplomacy.”
That last phrase has, perhaps, usually been the norm ?
I should have added something by way of not seeming unaware of the troubles over northern Ireland. But I do have a sort-of “Oh, but that’s different” there – from the way it started, I think; a different slant on “humanitarian intervention”. Or does that make me a sucker for the propaganda ?
“All things are a-flowing, Sage Heracleitus says”
You never invade the same country twice, nor can you go home.
technicolour – http://www.stoneschool.com/Reviews/MarchOfFolly.html – “The Laocoons of this book are destined to be ignored, providing a key reminder of the value of dissent.”
*wince* That’s awful. Unless they really meant to suggest it has none.
I’d disagree about ‘her greatest book’, mind you; I first read her ‘1914’ somewhere in the late 60s, and will read anything else she ever wrote on the strength of that, as I come across them (her ‘Stilwell and the Chinese nationalists’ one was fascinating, being entirely stuff I’d never heard anything of before). I never realised how difficult ‘popular history’ must be to manage, until I read some of the others.
It annoyed me greatly when I first read it – disppointment; it felt gimmicky, straitjackety, forcing disparate stuff into a Grand Scheme. But, somewhere between end-of-2001 amd spring-of-2003, things started going ‘twang’ at the back of my mind. “No, hang on, this is what she was talking about, isn’t it ?”.
Cameron is now campaigning on a platform of unspecified “Change”. Remind you of anyone? Hope and change, unspecified. In other words, more of the same. Obama-style (as he probably likes to think).
Tell us, Angry (and Larry when you get here), do you justify torture?
And if so, of whom?
And what is your justification?
Do you justify detaining people without charge or trial?
Do you justify rendition? Or kidnapping for torture as it’s better known?
Do you think habeas corpus should be restored in the US?
Do you think Obama should have the right to assassinate US citizens abroad, because he “suspects” them of “terrorist-related” activities?
Do you think it was right to talk about giving access to court to Guantanamo detainees, while rejecting it for Bagram detainees?
Do you think Obama was right to “cave” on putting KSM on trial in New York?
Why don’t you give us some answers for a change? You and Larry sit here picking holes, pulling threads, demanding answers, but when Larry is asked, he can’t repond, so he resorts to abuse. Let’s see if you’re capable of doing otherwise, eh? Because neither of you managed it on the 9/11 thread.
The grey suits behind the Foreign Office, who sent Craig to prepare good relations with Uzbekistan calculated thus:
1/ We have been ripping off Asian countries for a very long time, by selling them financial products which are worthless, and taking loans from them that we do not ever intend to repay.
2/ We need to prepare realistic defense systems inside Asia in order to threaten the rising military might of our Asian competitors.
3/ We need to level flat the counter culture of Islam in Asia. We need willing pimps in the region and need to be ready to throw any amount of money at military and bribery campaigns.
4/ We need to level flat the counter culture of Islam in Africa etc.. the same.
But what the grey suits forgot is that the people of this country, and indeed every country on earth, have principles , and that as fast as the grey suits dig the foundations for their new world order, the rise of horror and compassion of our citizens turns in sympathy towards Islam.
Yes the media have so far kept that tide at bay, with rabid, Racist with a big R for establishment Racism and racist with a small r for BNP level, lies. We will see now what the reaction is to Joe Glenton’s jail sentence. Soldiers are use to being made an example of. Grey suits are not used to it. If I was them I would be very uncomfortable indeed with the kind of exposure they receive on blogs like these.
dreoilin, you’re a limited thinker, hopelessly stuck in a false dichotomy.
I’d be willing to give you my nuanced answers to those questions, but Craig Murray would delete them.
But three things –
1) You’re a 911 nutter, which eliminates you from mature debate. If you really think that the WTC was preplanted with explosives, there’s no point in discussing any serious topic with you.
2) You remain hopelessly focused on America.
3) Your question of “Do you think habeas corpus should be restored in the US?” shows just how ill-informed and incurious you are.
Mardy Lardy from St US,
What is your line of argument exactly with dreoilin? I can see the needle, but I can’t see any thread.
You’re a jew-hating racist; fuck off.
Your Jew hatred is given a pass by Craig Murray and other shady left-wing nutters, but that doesn’t mean that the rest of the world should have to converse with you.
THE WARNING SIGNS FROM GEORGE OSBORNE
Cameron’s lieutenant George Osborne showed his complete lack of economic skills at the recent Canary Wharf convention. His ideals on foreign policy are all the more alarming. Osborne, Cameron’s unreconstructed hawk, is one of the mentoring neoconservative trio of MP’s Gove, Vaizey and Osborne, the parties driving for Pax Americana.
Osborne enthusiastically acclaimed the ‘excellent neoconservative case” for the massacre and plunder of Iraq in 2003 and now denies that the invasion has radicalised Muslim opinion.
Gove and Vaizey are signatories to the statement of principles of the Henry Jackson Society. The society is named after the US Democratic senator who opposed detente with the Soviet Union – campaigns for a “forward strategy” to spread “liberal democracy across the world” through “the full spectrum of ‘carrot’ capacities, be they diplomatic, economic, cultural or political, but also, when necessary, those ‘sticks’ of the military domain”. Calling for the “maintenance of a strong military with a global expeditionary reach.”
The list of Henry Jackson patrons reads like a Who’s Who of US foreign-policy hawks: including the former CIA director James Wolsey, William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, and Richard Perle, former chairman of the Defence Policy Board and the man many see as the architect of the Iraq war.
Cameron himself voted for the Iraq war, believing that to vote no “would have been to break the US-UK alliance which has been the cornerstone of our peace and security”. Saddam, according to the new Tory saviour, posed a threat not just to the Middle East region, but “to the world”, and like all good neocons Cameron blamed the conflict on the French and their promise to veto any second UN security council resolution.
The strategy has not worked. Slowly but surely the British public are realising the ‘change’ mastered by guru Daniel Finkelstein is a return to 1980’s economics, a hostile attitude to Europe and British participation in military invasions of Iran and Syria or any other country the ‘Great Satan’ that is the US decides to attack. Thank God Britain is blessed with great thinkers and those that can read the small print! Twice now Cameron has been seen entering or leaving MI5 headquarters.
Larry
This tea party is the same as the US tea party, for the same reasons but different objectives. We want, we don’t want, we are going to get more conservatism, because if they win the election New Labour will devalue the pound and all sorts of other commercial sins we call the Welfare State. You want, you don’t want, you are going to get Liberalism, because now they have won the election the US needs a good guy to cover up America’s recent crimes.
We only come here for the tea, we know nothing we say is going to change anything. Why not sip tea politely with us together and face the reality with a peaceful exchange of small-talk and amusing anecdotes to pass the time?
“I’d be willing to give you my nuanced answers to those questions, but Craig Murray would delete them.”–Larry the lawyer
He didn’t delete you when you said to me, “Shut up you dishonest pretend-fence-sitting cunt” on the 9/11 thread, so he’s not going to delete your answers to the above. You will never post your ‘nuanced answers’ — you don’t have any and couldn’t argue them.
“You’re a 911 nutter, which eliminates you from mature debate”
You’re a slinger of mud and abuse who can’t answer anything, which eliminates you from all debate.
“You remain hopelessly focused on America”
And you find that strange? It’s where all this “Global War on Terror” started, Larry. (Didn’t you know??)
Shame you kicked your credibility to kingdom come, but it’s what I expected.
Maybe Angry can do better.
“Why not sip tea politely with us together and face the reality with a peaceful exchange of small-talk and amusing anecdotes to pass the time?”
I know someone who used to talk about forming a band called “Tea, Vicar”, all for the sake of the name of its second LP.
“you’re a limited thinker, hopelessly stuck in a false dichotomy”
That, Larry, is projection on your part. I sometimes wonder if your pouncing on “anti-semitism” here is in the same category.
I fear me there is a difference between a “limited thinker” and someone who holds you to the point, so you don’t get away with not answering questions. Hence your fury on the “other” thread.
Have a nice day