The newspapers today carry the unsurprising news that Blair’s business affairs are routed through a multiplicity of companies operating in tax havens. He is raking in over £5 million per year, aside from his official job of chief Zionist – sorry, I mean Middle East Peace Envoy.
But I was more struck by the information in Michael White’s Blair puff piece that, before his arrival in the Sedgefield constituency yesterday, six policemen blocked off the roads around the venue with trafic cones.
Why? I am not making a petty or petulant point, I mean it. Why? This was a Labour Party event, not a government event. Blair holds no executive office in this country. The election has not been called. Even if it had been, he is not a candidate. Why do the police cone off the roads for a Blair New Labour speech?
How much did the six policemen cost? And they were just the bottom of the pile, the road coning bobbies. Blair arrived in a huge entourage of cars, at least some of which were taxpayer provided. There was a large police car and motorcycle escort. Not to mention the close protection officers. How much did all that cost?
Thatcher and Major move around with no blues and twos and a single close protection officer when required. The Duke of Edinburgh moves around privately with much less security than Blair. As a taxpayer I object fundamentally to footing the bill for protecting this war criminal. He should get a single close protection officer and fund anything else himself. He can certainly afford it.
Surely Blair’s book tours and so on, not to mention his numerous lucrative enterprises, are nothing less than profiting from crime?
He could be prosecuted for proceeds obtained from America under these statutes:
http://www.cga.ct.gov/2002/olrdata/jud/rpt/2002-r-0809.htm
This Home Office document appears to suggest a citizen can get a percentage of the proceeds by blowing the whistle on him, and that Blair’s assets can indeed be seized:
http://press.homeoffice.gov.uk/press-releases/tough-measure-stop-profit-crime.html
As far as Goldsmith’s “legal advice” is concerned, this is no better than the Mafia getting the nod from their legal stooge. Subsequently claiming innocence on the grounds of acting upon legal advice has not been found to be a convincing argument in court.
“While acting as head of state he served Israel and only Israel.”
I agree Arsalan and Craig’s description of ‘chief Zionist’ is particularly astute.
Interestingly David Cameron has also pledged to slavishly serve Israel. Many of the original members of WebCameron including myself saw the connection in discussions via comments on the link between Friends of Israel and the Conservative party shortly before the frustrating demise and sudden termination of Cameron’s ‘secret weapon’ – WebCameron.
Let this be a warning of what will happen if the Conservatives gain power.
Webcameron began in 2006 as the Conservative Leader’s direct appeal to the British voter to see him not as an Eton and Oxford educated politician of privilege, but as an honest, hardworking family man who had the interests of common people at heart. All lies.
Cameron talks recently of diverting power from Whitehall to local groups headed up by natural leaders from your neighbourhoods. All lies.
I leave you with some comments from founding members (thanks to ‘WebCameron rejects’)
People are finding their way around now but are getting restless with the lack of information and, of course, interaction, the whole point of WebCameron.
Also, the reaction from the site to the Evening Standard is still leaving a nasty aftertaste; I still don’t understand what really went on. And will Smokie ever be able to post about pistols?
BUT the Ask David feature had become a total farce and I’m glad it’s gone.
Little did we realise how appropriate the name ‘Webcameron Rejects’ was to become.
Though I can just about understand why DC did what he did (malice aforethought) the discourtesy will not be forgiven.
But much, much worse is to use the name to advertise the Conservative home site. As the taxpayer paid for his site I hope he has the wisdom to pay the money back.
It’s very sad that DC couldn’t find the time to say good-bye to us properly – and perhaps thank us for our contributions.
Posted: Sun May 27, 2007 9:30 pm Post subject:
I think the implementation was wrong – bang! all of a sudden a new site[WebCameron makeover], and I think he should have answered the questions[ask Cameron] that were voted for before it changed.
“Surely Blair’s book tours and so on, not to mention his numerous lucrative enterprises, are nothing less than profiting from crime?”
Sequestration of assets certainly sounds like a good idea. But given that the man has been instrumental in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents, proportionality in the punishment seems impossible to find. Perhaps he should be parachuted into Iraq or Afghanistan to explain his case to those he attacked. Goldsmith, Brown, Hoon and Straw could go along to help.
Why not legislation in accordance with which those who give rise to the probability of a breach of the peace when they appear in public are required to cover the cost of whatever protection the police deem it necessary to provide.
Blair should have no difficulty covering such costs. Less well-remunerated anti-social elements would have to consider staying at home.
Craig is right. In fact, Nu Labour should be re-dubbed The War Criminal branch of the Labour Party.
all the above comments about the arrest of blair depends on a real functioning democracy with a truly independent legal and police system. Dream On Liberals! This is not such a place and the facade which used to lend that opinion has been smashed since blair got shafted at george W’s ranch. Now we no longer pretend we have democracy, we know we don’t but no one seems to care and that is the annoying thing about it. Until the chavs and benefit scroungers take to the streets and smash the place up a bit when their state hand-outs are stopped, we are going to have to grin and bear it. Even then nothing will really change in the United Kingdom until there truly is a real crisis or full scale revolution. Sadly politicians are never going to sort it out for us (all bought and paid for) and nither will writing in these bloggs…. now them time for a cuppa and a digestive…
The only fitting punishment for Blair and his bunch is bringing back the treason laws.
He is a traitor, so should receive a traitors punishment.
So is it fair to say that everyone here, including Craig, wants Israel wiped off the map?
I don’t mean to force anyone into a false dichotomy, but you collectively already have some rather strange beliefs …
@Park Keeper: “Now we no longer pretend we have democracy”
We, who it could be said are on the fringes of political punditry, do not pretend we have a democracy, true. But “we” as a society still do pretend this – in fact it is very much still regarded as a democracy by mainstream media standards. But this sort of self-delusion is nothing new.
I would rather hope that in a revolution, it will involve all sections and classes of society, so it can pass without bloodshed. If it is just the “chavs and benefit scroungers” then it might not achieve much at all, and will meet significant, violent state oppression.
@Arsalan: a traitor’s punishment is a long time in prison. We oppose state murder elsewhere, so it pays to be consistent 🙂
I have a better suggestion. Take away all his police protection, give him a sharp stick and tell him to watch his back.
Jon
I’m sure we can make an exception for Blair?
Or maybe we can extraordinaryily rendition him to a country which still has the traditional punishment for traitors?
Larry, we all agree that Apatite in what you call Israel should be wiped off the face of the Earth, just as Apatite in South Africa was wiped off the map.
The land will still be there, the people may still be there, but we all agree that the racism you support should be wiped away.
Zionism is racism. Israel is Racism. What should remain is what was there before the Zionist take invasion.
The Zionist may choose to remain after the racist state is removed, but it will be as citizens and not as masters.
I think you would call that Anti-Semitism ?
Am I right Larry?
Arsalan, so you want the Turks back?
i would say Blair gets the protection he deserves! the reason other prime ministers and certain royals deserve less is because they are not targets in the same way as TB is. He really really must be hated and in a way that people on here can not understand. I guess he will be kept safe while on UK land but outside of this he must be very vulnerable. He has paid a price in personal freedom but has been handsomly rewarded for his trouble.
as for the illusion of democracy, most of the public in the UK have been well protected at home from foreign foes and have benefited indirectly from overseas military adventures in one way or another. we put up with it because we have much better standards of living than many in the world and so we are essentially bribed to keep stumm, good old british hypocisy at work once more. actually i dont think there will be a revolution, the british are too fat, lazy, docile and brainwashed to give a damm, there we have it…
arsalan – no, no exceptions, to my mind. I was disappointed that the UK went ahead with the killing of Saddam Hussein, regardless of his abominable crimes – because the UK does not, in theory, support capital punishment. I suspect the UK may have made some weak representations to the US, and got nowhere.
So, if it was wrong to kill Hussein – I think all state murder is wrong – then I think it would be wrong to kill Blair. In any case, I would want Blair to have considerable time behind bars to consider the enormity of what he has done, and the international hatred and divisions he has aroused. He can’t do that all that well if he is dead – afterlife beliefs excepted of course!
Park Keeper said,
..”Even then nothing will really change in the United Kingdom until there truly is a real crisis or full scale revolution. Sadly politicians are never going to sort it out for us (all bought and paid for) and nither will writing in these bloggs…”
Surely most revolutions have been influenced by writers and today because of technology we have an advantage. Of course, governments realise this and plant commentators to try and disrupt blogs.
People make comments that bloggers and commentators are armchair dissenters/revolutionaries. But they haven’t been tested. Once they experience oppression first hand I believe they’ll react. They’ll know that hundreds and thousands of people feel the same and this will empower them.
It’s all just a matter of time.
@Park Keeper. Your racism does not win you any arguments. We “put up with it” (i.e. the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) because we are largely powerless to do anything about them. Not that people didn’t try: we had a million people march in London prior to the war in 2003, and it went ahead anyway.
If you are interested in having a civil conversation with people here, feel free to explain your angle. For example: was the war in Iraq legal, in your view, and is it permissible to break international law in certain circumstances?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/mar/29/jack-straw-labours-great-survivor
On another war criminal, hypocrite and election fraudster. See Craig’s previous on BAE, Blackburn and Lord Taylor.
As I asked before what hold does the man of Straw have within NuLabour? He isn’t there on merit.
Jon I think the death penalty is one of the issues which the both of us will always disagree. I actually believe a quick death is better than a lifetime behind bars. But if that is the case, maybe you are right, he should be imprisoned. But not the white colour prisons, let him spend the rest of his very long life in Belmarsh, with the same conditions which he gave to the so called detainees.
Larry would I accept the Turks? Yes I’d accept anyone but you.
Larry I don’t want Zionist racism wiped out of the face of the Earth for some Nationalist reason. Just because you are a racist, don’t think everyone else is.
If it isn’t obvious to you by now, I’m not an Arab. I’m against Israel existence because the existence of Israel is wrong.
And we Muslims couldn’t careless about the race of a ruler. Turk, African Native American, who cares, all of us are the Children of Adam.
You can’t see this because you don’t believe in Adam. All you believe in is Zionist racism, your own superiority and the inferiority of others.
The carbuncle of puss that was Mrs Thatcher was eventually changed from within her own party. The same with Blair. Mrs T and Blair will never understand how much their policies were hated and they will repeat them again and again on special occasions however much their policies have been discredited.
Complete financial collapse is the direct but delayed outcome of Mrs T’s monumental stupidity. Total disrespect for this country in a world dominated by by Asia will be the outcome of Mr B’s monumental stupidity in a few years time.
Life carries on in spite of the executive vandalism of politicians. What will deter the next idiot, if the last ones go unpunished? Only the realisation of their predecessors’ failures. That is our role. We have to win the argument that reckless abandonment of public consultation always fails. It is an achievable goal.
Larry said:
So is it fair to say that everyone here, including Craig, wants Israel wiped off the map?
This is a loaded question. How about “want the apartheid state dismantled”?
That Israel discriminates between people on the basis of perceived race cannot be denied. For example, someone of perceived Jewish race from anywhere in the world is free to immigrate there but a Palestinian whose family lived there for many generations before being ethnically cleansed is not allowed to return.
Was Apartheid South Africa “wiped off the map”?
By the way I put “perceived race” because it is likely that most of the people identified as Jewish have less chance of being biological descendants of the inhabitants of ancient Judea than the Palestinians who were kicked out by Zionism. They are in fact more likely to be biological descendants of converts to the religion of Judaism, which actively welcomed such converts in many times and places.
Real Labour must: Nationalise the Blairs’ without compensation. If they want protection–the State should show compassion and loan them blunt pen-knives.
Simple Larry should be wiped off the map. Or at least the blog.
This is by Far The Best Thing I Have Read Today
Good-Bye: Truth Has Fallen and Taken Liberty With It
by Paul Craig Roberts
There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest.
Today Americans are ruled by propaganda. Americans have little regard for truth, little access to it, and little ability to recognize it.
Truth is an unwelcome entity. It is disturbing. It is off limits. Those who speak it run the risk of being branded “anti-American,” “anti-semite” or “conspiracy theorist.”
Truth is an inconvenience for government and for the interest groups whose campaign contributions control government.
Truth is an inconvenience for prosecutors who want convictions, not the discovery of innocence or guilt.
Truth is inconvenient for ideologues.
Today many whose goal once was the discovery of truth are now paid handsomely to hide it. “Free market economists” are paid to sell offshoring to the American people. High-productivity, high value-added American jobs are denigrated as dirty, old industrial jobs. Relicts from long ago, we are best shed of them. Their place has been taken by “the New Economy,” a mythical economy that allegedly consists of high-tech white collar jobs in which Americans innovate and finance activities that occur offshore. All Americans need in order to participate in this “new economy” are finance degrees from Ivy League universities, and then they will work on Wall Street at million dollar jobs.
Economists who were once respectable took money to contribute to this myth of “the New Economy.”
And not only economists sell their souls for filthy lucre. Recently we have had reports of medical doctors who, for money, have published in peer-reviewed journals concocted “studies” that hype this or that new medicine produced by pharmaceutical companies that paid for the “studies.”
The Council of Europe is investigating the drug companies’ role in hyping a false swine flu pandemic in order to gain billions of dollars in sales of the vaccine.
The media helped the US military hype its recent Marja offensive in Afghanistan, describing Marja as a city of 80,000 under Taliban control. It turns out that Marja is not urban but a collection of village farms.
And there is the global warming scandal, in which NGOs. the UN, and the nuclear industry colluded in concocting a doomsday scenario in order to create profit in pollution.
Wherever one looks, truth has fallen to money.
Wherever money is insufficient to bury the truth, ignorance, propaganda, and short memories finish the job.
I remember when, following CIA director William Colby’s testimony before the Church Committee in the mid-1970s, presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan issued executive orders preventing the CIA and U.S. black-op groups from assassinating foreign leaders. In 2010 the US Congress was told by Dennis Blair, head of national intelligence, that the US now assassinates its own citizens in addition to foreign leaders.
When Blair told the House Intelligence Committee that US citizens no longer needed to be arrested, charged, tried, and convicted of a capital crime, just murdered on suspicion alone of being a “threat,” he wasn’t impeached. No investigation pursued. Nothing happened. There was no Church Committee. In the mid-1970s the CIA got into trouble for plots to kill Castro. Today it is American citizens who are on the hit list. Whatever objections there might be don’t carry any weight. No one in government is in any trouble over the assassination of U.S. citizens by the U.S. government.
As an economist, I am astonished that the American economics profession has no awareness whatsoever that the U.S. economy has been destroyed by the offshoring of U.S. GDP to overseas countries. U.S. corporations, in pursuit of absolute advantage or lowest labor costs and maximum CEO “performance bonuses,” have moved the production of goods and services marketed to Americans to China, India, and elsewhere abroad. When I read economists describe offshoring as free trade based on comparative advantage, I realize that there is no intelligence or integrity in the American economics profession.
Intelligence and integrity have been purchased by money. The transnational or global U.S. corporations pay multi-million dollar compensation packages to top managers, who achieve these “performance awards” by replacing U.S. labor with foreign labor. While Washington worries about “the Muslim threat,” Wall Street, U.S. corporations and “free market” shills destroy the U.S. economy and the prospects of tens of millions of Americans.
Americans, or most of them, have proved to be putty in the hands of the police state.
Americans have bought into the government’s claim that security requires the suspension of civil liberties and accountable government. Astonishingly, Americans, or most of them, believe that civil liberties, such as habeas corpus and due process, protect “terrorists,” and not themselves. Many also believe that the Constitution is a tired old document that prevents government from exercising the kind of police state powers necessary to keep Americans safe and free.
Most Americans are unlikely to hear from anyone who would tell them any different.
I was associate editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal. I was Business Week’s first outside columnist, a position I held for 15 years. I was columnist for a decade for Scripps Howard News Service, carried in 300 newspapers. I was a columnist for the Washington Times and for newspapers in France and Italy and for a magazine in Germany. I was a contributor to the New York Times and a regular feature in the Los Angeles Times. Today I cannot publish in, or appear on, the American “mainstream media.”
For the last six years I have been banned from the “mainstream media.” My last column in the New York Times appeared in January, 2004, coauthored with Democratic U.S. Senator Charles Schumer representing New York. We addressed the offshoring of U.S. jobs. Our op-ed article produced a conference at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and live coverage by C-Span. A debate was launched. No such thing could happen today.
For years I was a mainstay at the Washington Times, producing credibility for the Moony newspaper as a Business Week columnist, former Wall Street Journal editor, and former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. But when I began criticizing Bush’s wars of aggression, the order came down to Mary Lou Forbes to cancel my column.
The American corporate media does not serve the truth. It serves the government and the interest groups that empower the government.
America’s fate was sealed when the public and the anti-war movement bought the government’s 9/11 conspiracy theory. The government’s account of 9/11 is contradicted by much evidence. Nevertheless, this defining event of our time, which has launched the US on interminable wars of aggression and a domestic police state, is a taboo topic for investigation in the media. It is pointless to complain of war and a police state when one accepts the premise upon which they are based.
These trillion dollar wars have created financing problems for Washington’s deficits and threaten the U.S. dollar’s role as world reserve currency. The wars and the pressure that the budget deficits put on the dollar’s value have put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block. Former Goldman Sachs chairman and U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is after these protections for the elderly. Fed chairman Bernanke is also after them. The Republicans are after them as well. These protections are called “entitlements” as if they are some sort of welfare that people have not paid for in payroll taxes all their working lives.
With over 21 per cent unemployment as measured by the methodology of 1980, with American jobs, GDP, and technology having been given to China and India, with war being Washington’s greatest commitment, with the dollar over-burdened with debt, with civil liberty sacrificed to the “war on terror,” the liberty and prosperity of the American people have been thrown into the trash bin of history.
The militarism of the U.S. and Israeli states, and Wall Street and corporate greed, will now run their course. As the pen is censored and its might extinguished, I am signing off.
Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at: [email protected]
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18339
“By the way I put “perceived race” because it is likely that most of the people identified as Jewish have less chance of being biological descendants of the inhabitants of ancient Judea than the Palestinians who were kicked out by Zionism. They are in fact more likely to be biological descendants of converts to the religion of Judaism, which actively welcomed such converts in many times and places”
What the fuck does that matter? Usually I only see such things written in Neo-Nazi propaganda.
Well its back, and because his new place ain’t sorted yet, it is in our house.
Both cabinets have been almost completely dismantled…
So far as we can tell after initial testing and diagnosis, is about half the parts are totally fucked and will need to be replaced…
What surprised us is all this kit is so young – like less than 5 years old since manufacture…
The good news is that the half of the parts that are fucked, are really cheap to replace compared to, the rest of it which includes the high value parts which seem to be in perfect working order…
Of course the reconstruction will take a bit of time and hard work – but my lad and I can do the work for Free in our spare time….
The end product should be fully functional and is not for sale…
It will be used, when the Electricity Board Fucks Up
I have never seen so many lead acid batteries in my life, but only half of the little ones seem to be fucked. All the Big Ones seem 100% and should last for about another 7 years. The half of the little ones which seem O.K., may last another 5 years if we are lucky.
Hopefully My Son’s Business Will Last For The Rest of His Life…and keep Him From Starving after we have gone.
It was O.K. driving the lorry, but loading the kit was a total pain in the arse. It took Four of us, including the fucking crane (street lifter)
Tony
Tony we have already discussed that GR piece (why didn’t you just give an extract or the link?) LfStL called Roberts a nutter by the way.
Larry
“Usually I only see such things written in Neo-Nazi propaganda.”
Yes and we see it in Zionist sites.
NeoNazis and Zionists use the same justification.
They are the same.
In the UK they work togeather.
Because they are the same
They believe in the same things.
Larry, you are a Neo Nazi, and you are a Zionist.
http://www.alternet.org/
Why are we giving Larry and the other Zionist bastards so much attention?
Lets discuss the topic instead of discussing Racist Zionist bastards.
I believe the reason why Blair used tax payers money for his own security instead of the hords he had stolen while priminister is his greed.
He has stolen so much, and taken so much as bribes from Zionists for his wars against humanity, paying for six extra security officers would have meant nothing to him. but he didn’t because he he can get us to pay for it.
You would think the Zionists would have no interest in pasting on this thread. This thread is more about Blair the theiving bastard and little about Blair the war monger or blair the America puppet or Blair the rabbid Zionist. But the Zionists are here, both Larry and Larry with a knew name.
Why?
Because an attack on Blair is an Attack on Israel. This is because Blair only acts for Israel!
The fact that only the Zionists are defending him, gives you an indication of just what a Zionist Blair is.
I think what we have to remember is Blair, Larry and the other Zionists don’t just support what the Zionists are doing in Afghanistan. They support all evil.
including this one:
As hundreds of concerned citizens hold a Day of Remembrance in Pakistan to commemorate the seventh anniversary of her disappearance, the Justice for Aafia Coalition reveal for the first time, in the English language, specific harrowing details of the abuse Aafia Siddiqui was forced to endure in the years spent in secret detention.
During the course of an interview by Kamran Shahid on Pakistan’s Front Line, screened 26th March, Siddiqui’s mother and sister described publicly for the first time the various forms of torture she underwent at the hands of US agents. This included being:
forcefully stripped by six men and then repeatedly sexually abused
beaten with rifle butts until she bled
bound to a bed, with her hands and feet tied whilst unspecified forms of torture were administered to the soles of her feet and head
injected with unknown substances
dragged by her hair
having her hairs pulled out one by one
forced to walk on the Qu’ran which had been desecrated in her cell whilst naked
Maryam Hassan, founder of the Justice for Aafia Coalition (JFAC), commented:
“These most recent horrific revelations shine a light for the first time on years of detention shrouded until now in darkness and mystery. Forced nudity, violent sexual abuse, the desecration of the Qu’ran, video-taped torture sessions have become infamous hallmarks of US detention since the start of the War on Terror, from Bagram to Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.
The Obama administration must immediately disclose any video evidence in its possession relating to Ms Siddiqui’s detention and torture. The American public has a right to know what is being carried out in its name as much as the Pakistani public are deserving of knowing the horrendous abuse one of their citizens has been subjected to. ”