The present problems of Iraq are 100% down to our murderous invasion and occupation. The idea that further western bombing will make things better is so deluded as to beggar belief.
I was surprised to find during my Burnes research that the imperialist powers of Britain and Russia were explicitly exploiting Sunni and Shia divisions to further their conquests of Islamic lands as early as the 1830’s. This has been the major tool of the neo-con Middle Eastern gameplan for some time, spreading disunity and crippling war throughout the Middle East, with the hope that this will benefit the interests of Israel.
The peculiar result has been that in general the West is very actively supporting Sunni armies and miscellaneous forces, but in Iraq is supporting the Shia. ISIS – which is heavily backed by the Saudis, who hate al-Maliki – brings this paradox into sharp relief. The current US and UK strategy is to persuade Saudi Arabia to get ISIS to reconcentrate their efforts against Assad, on the understanding they will be allowed to keep the Sunni areas of Iraq (the old neo-con plan of dividing Iraq is firmly back on the agenda).
The BBC News this morning said that ISIS would not be capable of using the billions of dollars of sophisticated western armaments they have captured. I think you will find the Saudis remedy that one quite quickly. It is quite possible we will see some token airstrikes to kill civilians in Mosul, in order to appease Obama’s domestic backers who are never happy if Americans aren’t killing enough people, but only after agreement has been reached with the Saudis that no serious harm will be done – except to the ordinary people neither Obama, the Saudis or al-Maliki care in the least about.
The entity of ‘Israel’ knows no borders.
23 June 2014
Israeli air strikes target Syria after Golan death
Israel says it has carried out air strikes on military targets in Syria.
The military said it had attacked nine targets in response to the killing of a 15-year-old boy in a strike in the occupied Golan Heights on the border between the two countries on Sunday.
Two others, including the boy’s father, an Israeli defence contractor, were injured when a blast hit their vehicle.
/..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-27970274
ANDREW PIERCE: Red Ed’s team and the ghost of David Kelly
Red Ed Miliband and his deputy Harriet Harman have run a mile from Tony Blair’s claims that the Iraq war was justified
Red Ed Miliband and his deputy Harriet Harman have run a mile from Tony Blair’s loopy claims that the Iraq war was justified. B ut the death of Dr Kelly casts a pall over their team.
Tom Baldwin, now Red Ed’s senior media adviser, was the newspaper journalist who named Kelly as the source behind the BBC story by Andrew Gilligan that the Blair government had ‘sexed up’ a dossier about Iraq’s ‘weapons of mass destruction’ to justify war against Saddam Hussein.
Alastair Campbell, who advises Miliband on election strategy and was Blair’s communications chief at the time, wrote in his diaries that releasing Kelly’s name would ‘f*** Gilligan’. And Michael Dugher, the Labour MP in charge of communications strategy now, was then the special adviser at the Ministry of Defence — which was criticised by the Hutton report into the death of Dr Kelly for the way it confirmed the weapons expert’s identity.
Campbell later claimed remorse over his actions — and demonstrated it by signing a copy of the Hutton report which was auctioned in 2006 for £400 for party funds.
Kelly, the day he died, emailed friends referring to ‘dark actors playing dark games’. Red Ed’s team appears to contain some dark actors of its own.
Ed miliband’s response to growing criticism of his private office is to advertise for a ‘Parliamentary Apprentice’. Applicants must answer this in no more than 250 words: ‘What interests you about working for the Rt Hon Ed Miliband MP?’
Applicants will find this tricky — given that even shadow cabinet ministers would struggle to answer it.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2665444/ANDREW-PIERCE-Red-Eds-team-ghost-David-Kelly.html
can u believe how different this guardian report is from what the MSM is reporting? ran over a bomb? a planted bomb? son of IDF contractor, not “israeli settler”? i’ve heard no mention by MSM of previous three bombings of syria by israel. and israel in another all-out war on the palestinians without international concern. tragic. watching bbc female presenter talk to bbc female reporter in israel yesterday nearly made me ill. their discussion was so warped, they were almost stumbling over every word:
Israeli teenager killed in attack on Syrian frontier
Israeli media reported on Sunday morning that the victim was the 15-year-old son of a civilian contractor employed by the Israel Defence Forces and that four other people were injured. An official told the Associated Press that the vehicle in which they were travelling appeared to have driven over a bomb or been struck by fire from Syria…
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/22/israeli-teenager-killed-syrian-frontier
The trial of Tony Blair
Essay of the week by Neil Mackay
Sunday 22 June 2014
The charge:
That Tony Blair, former UK prime minister, in lock-step with US policy, deliberately misled Britain, its parliament and people, into the catastrophe of the illegal invasion of Iraq in March 2003 that resulted in the deaths of at least 100,000 people – a crime against peace and humanity – and in doing so created the circumstances that have brought Iraq to the brink of ruination today.
Photo Montage
From top: Donald Rumsfeld, who met Saddam in 1983 in his role as Reagan’s special envoy to the Middle East; David Kelly, the British weapons expert who took his own life; Blair staffer Alastair Campbell, who was involved in the presentation of the WMD dossier
/..
http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/columnists/the-trial-of-tony-blair.24526819
Oddie. I think the mayhem that has been created in the region will lead to an all out attack on Syria ere long by members of the USUKIsNATO axis. ‘We had to do it’. ‘There is no alternative’ ‘We had to protect Israel’ ‘Finish it’…etc etc. I hope I am wrong.
PS The caption on the Sunday Herald photo was incorrect. It was just a ghostly (and ghastly! image of BLiar superimposed on an image of Baghdad burning.
Mary – u could be right.
what is awful is watching bbc camera crews moving along the highways, filming one or two vehicles driving along behind them with the obligatory rebels (ISIS in this case) holding rifles, etc….precisely as the beeb did in libya. it is so predictable. talk about using the same M.O.
patrick cockburn is pushing the meme that iran has turned on maliki, following the fake msm reports that sistani had turned on him, yet some alt media in the US thinks cockburn is trustworthy. what good could it possibly do to create even more of a power vacuum in baghdad at this point?
Jihadism and the Petroleum Industry
by Thierry Meyssan
While the Western media portray the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant as a group of jihadists reciting the Qur’an, the ISIL has started the oil war in Iraq. With the help of Israel, it has cut off Syria’s supply and guaranteed the theft of oil from Kirkuk by the local government of Kurdistan. The sale will be assured by Aramco who will camouflage this diversion as increased “Saudi” production…
http://www.voltairenet.org/article184382.html
Mary –
did u hear about this?
20 June – Press Conference the UN Doesn’t Want You To See
Yesterday at 11am, the Syrian Mission to the United Nations convened a press conference featuring people from the US who observed the recent elections.
Five minutes into the opening comments of Syrian Ambassador Bashar Al-Jaafari, the UN webcast cut off. The thousands of journalists, political analysts, and others who view UN webcasts each day from all over the world were denied the ability to watch the press conference, and hear what was said…
http://www.iacenter.org/nafricamideast/syria062014/
VIDEO: Syrian ambassador decries UN mistreatment
Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, also responding to a question from Press TV, stated his displeasure with this occurrence.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MtNXHQiuNA
Have been out Oddie doing battle with Vodaphone. That is the giant multinational that does not pay its proper share of taxes. They have swiped £9 off me and disconnected my SIM card/number. This is because I had forgotten to make a dummy call in the last three months on my old pay as you go which I keep in the car as a back up in case of emergency and the other one is out of juice. What rogues. So now I have a new number, paid more shekels to them to ‘top up’ and need a new identity disc for my dog which displayed the old number.
PS They have three branches in the town.
◾Vodafone’s tax case leaves a sour taste
◾How Vodafone made tax dodging respectable
◾Why are there protests against Vodafone? A simple guide
◾Taxman let Vodafone off £6bn bill
http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/targets/4
In India there is the same evasion. http://businesstoday.intoday.in/story/resolution-of-tax-row-on-govt-agenda/1/207351.html
PPS Also spitting feathers as banners were going up for Armed Forces Day/Help the Heroes. That was a construct of bloody Gordon Brown’s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armed_Forces_Day_(United_Kingdom)
King of Welsh Noir – there is a difference between Habba not revealing his identity and Global Research and Voltaire Net not revealing theirs and anything he does to assist in that is welcome. BTW I enjoyed Mary’s comment about Lady Penelope / david Miliband and IRS.
Bremer defends his actions in Iraq.
22/6/2014
Former US envoy defends Iraq policies
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1VfMODgSUs
Paul Bremer, former governor of Iraq blames Obama for the current situation, not himself or Bush
http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/thread/1403518095.html
Mary –
never had a mobile phone, & don’t plan to get one. what a scam they are.
“My beloved wife and three beautiful children, I can say they were really extraordinary people,” he said.
“They were very charitable. They had a strong concern for the welfare of others, even before their own comfort.
“They had devoted their lives to a dream to give to others – the needy, the less privileged and the misguided. Four amazing human beings.”
Dr Taufiq said he had no hatred for the eight men convicted.
“You hate crime. You don’t hate individual people,” he said.
The paediatric neurosurgeon was working at a hospital in Dublin at the time of the fire.
Dr Taufiq is one amazing man.
Leicester fire deaths: Eight people found guilty
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-27972796
‘Seven men and a teenager have been convicted for their part in a revenge arson attack that killed four people.’
BLiar’s response to the letter requesting his removal as Quartet Envoy.
Tony Blair’s office has responded as follows:
“These are all people viscerally opposed to Tony Blair with absolutely no credibility in relation to him whatsoever. Their attack is neither surprising nor newsworthy. They include the alliance of hard right and hard left views which he has fought against all his political life. Of course he completely disagrees with them over the Middle East. He believes passionately in the two-state solution, but also believes that can only be achieved by a negotiation with Israel.
“The truth, and anybody who knows anything about the situation in respect of Palestine knows this, is that transformational change is impossible unless it goes hand in hand with a political process. There was hope that this could progress with the recent US-led talks which were underpinned by a hugely ambitious economic plan spearheaded by Mr Blair.
“Mr Blair has done no work for JPMorgan in the Middle East – he is the chair of their International Advisory Council – where he provides advice on global political issues.”
It means nothing.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/24/appeal-to-quartet-on-middle-east-sack-tony-blair
This Boston subway has done more to expose Israeli crimes than Blier has.
http://mondoweiss.net/2014/06/shocking-reality-ground.html
Dear friends,
We just finished our 27th interview for the documentary and we have some pretty amazing material so far, watch this space!
As you may have seen, our #SackBlair campaign is gaining huge momentum. The open letter that was signed by 3 former UK ambassadors, 5 MPs, Noam Chomsky, Ken Livingstone and many others has now been covered on Channel4 news, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, The Huffington Post and several other news outlets.
If you haven’t done so already, please sign the petition and share it among friends and family: http://www.change.org/petitions/ban-ki-moon-sack-tony-blair-as-the-middle-east-peace-envoy.
We will send you another update today on the event we have organized for Friday 27th June in central London at lunch time. June 27th is the actual 7-year anniversary of Tony Blair’s appointment and we cannot let it pass unnoticed!
Greetings
^^ Oops, update from George Galloway ^^