The number of people still prepared to defend the Iraq War in public is tiny. The interesting thing is the very strong correlation between those people, and those prepared to pretend to give credence to the farcical sexual allegations about Julian Assange. Zoe Williams Guardian piece about what a jolly good chap Blair is I find breathtaking. War crimes like Blair’s result in terrible anguish for millions. I am prepared for purposes of argument to believe that Williams’ anguish for female victims of crime is genuine; why she can’t extend that to the tens of thousands of women who were raped because of Blair’s Iraq War, or had the still worse agony of seeing their children killed and mutilated I don’t know. Nick Cohen is just very, very sad. I just hold up these two in the hope that those deceived by feminist political correctness into following their lead against Assange will see to what they are subscribing.
Rather a side issue, but even if we accept Zoe Williams view that dead Iraqi children don’t matter, she appears not to have noticed that Blair introduced tuition fees, academies, kick-started NHS privatization, allowed the banksters’ bonanza leading to worldwide economic crash and oversaw the greatest widening of the gap between rich and poor in British history.
“Buy US dollars, sterling and shekels!”
it shrieks.
Meanwhile, in the real world, people are buying Renmimbi.
You can open a Yuan account at HSBC or Bank of China. Certainly worth considering before the western financial system collapses:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2013/05/09/why-investors-should-buy-chinese-yuans/
@Goss
“Blair killed my association with the Labour Party.”
Yes he was rather good at clearing out the infiltrators.
Could we have a full biography of your father so that we can all play the game of visiting the sons of the father on the child? You really are incorrigible. (@ Mary)
Personal attack.
“Blair killed my association with the Labour Party.”
Yes he was rather good at clearing out the infiltrators. (@JG)
Personal attack.
Mods?
Habbabkuk, when you visit this blog, do you realise what this site is, why you find so much negativity here, and why you’re often considered disruptive?
This little blog is part of democracy’s conscience; that is the vital function being performed here. It has developed around the conscientious actions of a single individual, and has attracted many contributors who also feel that there are injustices to report; hence what you deride as “negativity”.
If you disrupt conscience, you nurture psychopathy.
ESLO, 1:22 pm
As, I believe, was Stalin.
Ba’al Zevul
You of course missed the personal attacks on Welby and Blair – but that is ok in your book I presume?
You of course missed the personal attacks on Welby and Blair – but that is ok in your book I presume?
They post here?
“there was very little acrimony in a multiple society”
Complete and utter bollocks – why did all those people flee the country, why did Saddam invade his neighbours, why so much torture and killing of political opponents, why the appalling treatment of the Kurds and Marsh Arabs, why the victimisation of trade unionists etc. etc. Please stop rewriting history – you can argue about the rights and wrongs of the war, but to pretend everything was sweetness and light beforehand is a complete fantasy and fabrication.
They post here?
Why is that of relevance – is insulting people behind their backs somehow better?
“As, I believe, was Stalin.”
I believe he used rather different means – they would probably fall within MAry’s definition of “very little acrimony in a multiple society”.
Mary; “Keep up why don’t you or are you being deliberately obtuse”
Mary, some people’s blinkered POVs depend on them being exactly that !
“The Sunni Shia divide did not exist”
Also completely untrue.
“The Sunni Shia divide did not exist”
Also completely untrue.
Correct for once. On the other hand we have done our best to exploit the division, and in Iraq succeeded beyond comprehension.
“On the other hand we have done our best to exploit the division”
I would put it more down to ignorance rather than genuine intent.
Iraq, now Syria …. more collateral damage from Western intervention.
Some Syrian refugees arriving in Jordan are opting to marry off their daughters at a young age believing that marital status offers a form of protection and insurance.
http://www.irinnews.org/report/95902/jordan-early-marriage-a-coping-mechanism-for-syrian-refugees
They post here?
Why is that of relevance – is insulting people behind their backs somehow better?
You are with President Obiang of Guinea, I take it:
“What right does the opposition have to criticise the actions of a government?”
As the people – in the public domain – you are defending almost certainly remain unaware of any insult*,and are far too important to take notice of it it if they did, it’s probably more harmless than incessantly stalking the contributors you don’t like here and being as unpleasant as you can to them for no particular reason – or maybe you have a reason?
* Do note that criticism, or outright condemnation, especially when backed by checkable facts, are not per se insulting. Also that people whose columns you could read every week in the Spectator, if you were literate**, do a far better crucifixion job on people who are not actually present in their office than anyone here.
** Insult.
I would put it more down to ignorance rather than genuine intent.
Please support that opinion. As I recall, the UK media were falling over themselves to tell us in 2003 how the Shi’a would welcome us into Iraq – and they did, briefly, because we’d been telling them they would at last be able to express their majority view democratically. And I am absolutely certain that someone in the FCO was aware that the Shi’a traditionally look to Iran for support, and that Israel for the last twenty years has been urging the US to attack Iran. Ignorance? If so, there was no possible justification for intervening in the first place.
The current civil war in Iraq is largely Shi’a vs. Sunni. Lousy as the previous regime was, they weren’t murdering each other on a industrial scale then. Indeed, they shared neighbourhoods. Not any more.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-vicious-schism-between-sunni-and-shia-has-been-poisoning-islam-for-1400-years–and-its-getting-worse-9139525.html
The invasion of Iraq instigated by George Bush and Tony Blair in 2003 was the second big factor in the deterioration of Sunni-Shia relations. Saddam Hussein led a Sunni elite which governed Iraq’s Shia majority with a reign of state terror. The US had backed Saddam in Iraq’s war with Iran throughout the 1980s, in which half a million troops died.
But after 9/11 the US changed its mind about Saddam, overthrew him and brought democracy to Iraq. The resulting election placed in power leaders from the Shia majority who have excluded the Sunni minority – who have responded with the car bombs which are killing thousands in Baghdad and elsewhere. Al-Qa’ida jihadists have flooded into the country to join Sunni terrorists in attacking the Shia government. And now the polarised sectarian conflict has spilled over into Syria.
When the Arab Spring reached Syria in 2011 it began as a protest against the corruption, nepotism and human rights abuses of the Assad government. But within two years the armed uprising against the regime was transformed.
Rebels motivated by political indignation, who received limited backing from Western governments, slowly became outnumbered by rebel groups with extreme Islamist motivation fighting to create what they call the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
These jihadists have come from across the Islamic world but they are backed by Saudi cash. More recently Shia militants from the Lebanese paramilitary group Hezbollah have arrived to support the Alawite-led army of the Assad regime. Full-blown civil war is the result.
What all this means is that Sunni and Shia are locked in conflict all across the Shia Crescent. As each side steps up its activities, the other feels more threatened and hardens its response in turn.
Sunni-Shia tensions are increasing across the world as a result. They are on the rise in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, Kuwait, Lebanon, Bahrain, Libya, Tunisia, Malaysia, Egypt, and even in London as issues of identity, rights, interests and enfranchisement find sectarian expression.
The tensions are deep-rooted in wider economic and geopolitical concerns. But the risk – given the long history of division and tension – is that predictions of a transnational civil war between Sunni and Shia could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Which side will we be supporting? Think we’re going to stop selling arms to Saudi?
Stop destabilising Iran?
ESLO 10 Apr, 2014 – 2:14 pm
……………………………
http://www.globalresearch.ca/britain-apologizes-for-terrorist-act-in-basra/1094
A Node and Ba’al Zevul:
You may be right, A. Node about Geldof being part of the promote Blair conspiracy I hyposthesized, but whether or not this is true, is it right, Ba’al, to regard the Gleneagles summit as worthless?
For decades previously I read every week in the papers how debt was crippling what we then called the third world. This term is not used anymore, since around the time of 2005 and I would guess that the cancelling of massive amounts of global debt has made a big difference.
Craig in his book on Africa and elsewhere has documented the way Blair has exploited African capitalism for the personal gain of himself and his cronies, but to acknowledge that is not the same thing as dismissing the value of Gleneagles and related agreements.
Furthermore to call Geldof a ‘sleb’ does him a disservice. In the year or two leading up to the first Bandaid concert back whenever that was, Geldof toured Africa interviewing political leaders and astonished certainly me with his cojones.
We all know aid has limited value in itself but we should be discerning in criticising people like Geldof I think.
ESLO, and not just Iraq and Iran. Saudi Arabia too.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8493402.stm
Here are a couple of petitions you, and others, might care to sign.
http://www.walkfree.org/show-support-yemen-free-forced-child-marriage/
http://www.change.org/petitions/stand-firm-against-child-brides
Your comment in support of Blair, the mass murderer and war-criminal, is distasteful. Anybody with a conscience would disassociate themselves from such a character, a person who has probably murdered, and continues to murder, more children than Beria and Stalin put together, in Afgahnistan, Iraq and Libya. His Judas kiss of Gaddafi said it all.
“a person who has probably murdered, and continues to murder, more children than Beria and Stalin put together, in Afgahnistan, Iraq and Libya.”
Not even near I’m afraid – not even with your estimates for Blair.
I’m not a fan of any backward religion – I find it difficult to place them above and below each other as they have all been pretty nasty at different stages in their development.
conjunction 10 Apr, 2014 – 2:49 pm
I think Geldof knowingly and deliberately created his Live 8 event to relieve pressure on Blair and Bush at the G8 summit. I believe he is a liar and a fraud.
More of the same from me in a post on previous thread:
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2014/03/andy-myles/comment-page-4/#comment-450741
“Not even near I’m afraid – not even with your estimates for Blair.”
Figures?
Mr Scorgie
“verb
“…variant spelling of fantasize (restricted to archaic uses or, in modern use, to the fields of psychology and psychiatry).”
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/phantasize
Very strange!”
__________________
Why strange? Other links and sources to back up your assertion, please.
Nevermind
““I suppose I don’t see this blog as a pyschologist’s couch.”
No, you don’t, its more like an annonymous hole in the wall in some dinghy peepshow for you, somewhere to get off all over people.”
___________________
“dinghy peepshow” – your expression, not mine! 🙂
These are a few of Blair’s child victims.
http://www.coia.org.uk/
It says 300 children die every day. 138,000 children under 5 die a year according to UNICEF. And that’s just Iraq! You might want to associate with a mass-murderer like that. But I have morals.
Macky
“Habbabkuk; “A draft law, Fujisan, a draft law. Which means that it is not yet law. And may in fact never become law”
Actually according to the Telegraph, it “looks likely to pass”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/10753645/Iraq-ready-to-legalise-childhood-marriage.html”
____________________
Ah well, if that’s what the Telegraph says, it must be right, eh?
“Looks” and “likely”.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
““This should be OK as well:
Mr. Jonesxxx is a paedophile and he rapes children in Malaysia and kill them in the process, after torturing them of course. But here at home (UK) he is is an exemplary citizen, pays taxes, gives money to charity organizations, and work hard for his country. Anyway, Malaysia is very far away, and who cares?
What about that?”
________________
Not OK at all. The contrary of OK I should have thought. Why do you think I think it’s OK (links, please!), and why do you seem to think it is?
ESLO
““On February 25th, Iraq’s Cabinet approved a draft law lowering the age of legal marriage for females to nine years old.”
Iran of course already has such a law”
__________________
Thank you for bringing that to my attention, ESLO. As an Eminent Poster on here might say : “I was not aware”.
But Iran’s OK, I mean, isn’t it? ‘Cos it’s deemed to be anti-Western?
Jaafari Law;
“The law appears to run counter to the UN Convention on Rights of the Child, ratified by Iraq in 1994—which expressly bans the legalization of child marriage—as well as Iraq’s own constitution, although al-Shimmari, himself a Shi’a, has dismissed critics of the bill. “By introducing this draft law, we want to limit or prevent” child marriage outside the legal system, according to al-Shimmari.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/09/iraq-wants-to-legalize-child-marriage.html
It seems the West’s imposition of their version of democracy has unintended consequences.
We didn’t intend for them to mimic our form of government in toto.