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 Marr blurb is still not saying BLiar is on.
’15/06/2014 9am
Image for 15/06/2014Not currently available on BBC iPlayer
Duration: 1 hour
Andrew Marr is joined by key political personalities and cultural figures to discuss topical politics, current affairs and the arts. His guests include culture secretary Sajid Javid, former home secretary and member of the Better Together campaign John Reid, and actress Kathleen Turner. Victoria Newton, editor of the Sun on Sunday, and Mark Kermode, author and film critic, review the newspapers.’
Protected he is, Mary, more’s the pity. (O Tempora, O Mores, O Shit we can forgive Cicero for leaving out Tony Blair)
Having said that, some Shakespeare in a predictive context springs to mind:
I just cant get excited about a sporting event that a government has spent millions funding yet people live in squalor and deprivation. Where drugs are rife and life expectation is very low.
But enough of the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, the World Cup has started.
From Jives (the Creature of the Night)
“Although i made a joke of it earlier i immediately sensed the ‘story’ reeks of shite.”
_________________
Yeah, sure, Jonathan.
First you believe the story and get very excited.
Then you read some bit of shite from far away Califiorniay and change your mind.
And finally you tell us you “immediately sensed” the story was untrue.
Funny way of showing it, eh, Jives?
Grown up persons aren’t afraid to admit they make mistakes, Jonathan.
********************
La vita é bella, life is good!
What the swill of the corporate media omits in its reporting on Ukraine.
‘At Chernobyl, a compendium of more than 5,000 studies has yielded an estimated death toll of more than 1,000,000 people.
The radiation effects on youngsters in downwind Belarus and Ukraine have been horrific. According to Mangano, some 80 percent of the “Children of Chernobyl” born downwind since the accident have been harmed by a wide range of impacts ranging from birth defects and thyroid cancer to long-term heart, respiratory and mental illnesses. The findings mean that just one in five young downwinders can be termed healthy.
Physicians for Social Responsibility and the German chapter of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War have warned of parallel problems near Fukushima.’
Fukushima’s Children are Dying
http://ecowatch.com/2014/06/14/fukushima-children-dying/
There is another time bomb waiting to explode in Iraq following the use of depleted uranium tipped ammunition on a large scale. It’s in the dust and the air when the desert storms arise and now in the thyroids and lungs of the children and of the women of childbearing age and in their husbands’ zoosperm to terrible effect.
In fact all of us are vulnerable as the winds carry the evil poison around the planet.
Mary
“Habbabkuk (La vita è bella! { Mary Just to tell you that I do like reading your posts about animals and nature generally…. } – Jun 13, 9:01 PM The General Discussion”
____________________
No schizophrenia anywhere, Mary. Your writings about nature and animals are evocative, sometimes moving and welcome (except when you’re trying to make a narrow political point – which isn’t usually the case). Perhaps you just go into off the wall mode when you write about politics, society and so on. Or perhaps you’re less of a pain in real life than you are in this virtual world – I’m informed that this is often the case. Opinions welcome.
Resident Dissident
““I came against this interesting website:”
Nah – I don’t think so
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Globalresearch.ca”
_____________________
I just wanted to thank you for posting that source – I wasn’t aware of the existence of this thing called “rationalwiki”.
Anyway, as readers will know, I have long harboured doubts (to remain polite)about this “Global Research” outfit – these doubts triggered by its excessively pretentious title and then by the fact that it was often given as a source by sundry crazies on CM.
I am pleased to note that my doubts about “Global Research” and its leader (its one and only leader, it seems) “Professor” Michel Chussodovski are amply confirmed by what I read on “rationalwiki”.
I must go there (to “rationalwiki” more often and the said sundry crazies should go to “Global Research” less.
I loved that pastiche by “Peter Kemp” at 03h44 this morning. A rival to our resident pasticher, the Celtic trans-gender leprechaun, has emerged and that’s good because competition is good.
More generally, I note that this last night was “enriched” by a peculiarly large number of Eminences and others. They couldn’t all have beeen doing the night shift like Jives, could they. Was there a full moon last night by any chance?
Peter Kemp. 3 44am
Great reworking of “IF”.
May Bliar have a long life, always aware of the harm he’s inflicted and the contempt in which he’s held by millions and always looking over his shoulder for the citizen’s arrest that succeeds.
My bet is when he finally goes to meet Old Nick the street partys will dwarf Thatcher’s.
In the meantime my wish is for him to answer in court for his crimes before being sent to Fallujah for an extended sentence of community service. That way, he’ll have to look into the eyes of some of the people whose lives he has blighted.
…
Brian. 2 58am
Thanks for the clip. Abby just scratches the surface with her list of shame.
Maybe she should run a series. My favourites would be the thirty plus attempts to assassinate Castro. These included exploding wetsuits, exploding cigars, exploding clamshells, powder in his shoes to make his hair fall out, (so that Cubans would rise up chanting “No vamos a ser gobernados por un hombre que se parece a William Hague!”) and trying to make it appear as if Armaggedon had come…. with Jesus descending from Heaven.
Too bad they blackmailed Mr Bean and the Wily Coyote and forced them to think up dumb schemes for them.
BLiar was speaking from somewhere hot in a garden with palm trees in the background and an ornate wall behind him. He spoke at 15 to the dozen with those damnable hand gestures evident. I feel, having heard and seen the paramount psychopath this morning, that with luck he is hanging himself.
An appalling apecimen of our species.
http://www.theweek.co.uk/world-news/.58976/tony-blair-iraq-chaos-is-not-my-fault
Marr of course has memory loss.
‘On April 9, 2003, as Baghdad superficially fell to the illegal US-UK invasion, Marr lauded Blair’s great triumph on the main BBC evening news:
“Frankly, the main mood [in Downing Street] is of unbridled relief. I’ve been watching ministers wander around with smiles like split watermelons.”
Marr delivered this news with his own watermelon smile. He continued:
“Well, I think this does one thing – it draws a line under what, before the war, had been a period of… well, a faint air of pointlessness, almost, was hanging over Downing Street. There were all these slightly tawdry arguments and scandals. That is now history. Mr Blair is well aware that all his critics out there in the party and beyond aren’t going to thank him – because they’re only human – for being right when they’ve been wrong. And he knows that there might be trouble ahead, as I said. But I think this is very, very important for him. It gives him a new freedom and a new self-confidence. He confronted many critics.
“I don’t think anybody after this is going to be able to say of Tony Blair that he’s somebody who is driven by the drift of public opinion, or focus groups, or opinion polls. He took all of those on. He said that they would be able to take Baghdad without a bloodbath, and that in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating. And on both of those points he has been proved conclusively right. And it would be entirely ungracious, even for his critics, not to acknowledge that tonight he stands as a larger man and a stronger prime minister as a result.” (Marr, BBC 1, News At Ten, April 9, 2003)’
http://www.medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2010/15-a-journey-unchallenged-andrew-marr-interviews-tony-blair.html
and of course we won’t mention Aaronovitch and Cohen’s part in the propaganda for that bloody war.
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2014/06/deadly-fiasco/#comment-461357
Mary many thanks for demonstrating my point so quickly.
Considering all the garbage from the neocon rational wiki as opposed to the real investigative journalism of GlobalResearch it does not surprise me that it has attracted followers like Resident Dissident and Habbabkuk. I came across this doing a search.
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/RationalWiki
If you want your brain full of it read on. It’s produced by idiots for idiots. And they take the bait.
@ http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2014/06/deadly-fiasco/#comment-461368
I would prefer not to have my character and personality discussed by somebody who is a stranger and who is not a friend nor who knows me.
Off out to breathe some clean (and hopefully not radioactive) air after that BLiar fest
Indeed Mary, but even extended for 10K years of CS, Bliar will never have atoned for what he did.
As for our own Little Johnny Howard, “Ratty” to his mates, more or less the same but I really regret that history cheated us, Howard was not with Bush when that Iraqi threw his shoes at a press conference, Bush ducking and Howard (“Deputy Sheriff”) might have copped it right in the middle of his bushy eyebrows. More than half of Australia and all of New Zealand would have ROFL. (As it was I think most of the ME had a victory in the humiliation of GWB that day, a humiliation not fully appreciated in the West within the Islamic/cultural context of feet/shoe throwing.)
Meantime Maliki appears to have disgraced himself yet again, driving whatever remaining Sunnis in the Iraqi army or security services into the arms of extremists:
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/iraq-isis-crisis-pm-announces-death-penalty-deserting-troops-1452703
Sofia
“My bet is when he finally goes to meet Old Nick the street partys will dwarf Thatcher’s.”
1/ They have been on first name terms for a very long time
2/ Thatcher was coining in the millions for Mark because she believed in the stuff. Blair has to have all this money in order to mix with the gangster/ruler class whose games he played, in order to watch his back.
We eat the daily political garbage given to us by the lying neo-cons like hungry pigs. So we really have to sympathise with Blair for having been taken in by the stuff. Free food is usually contaminated and eventually makes your balls drop off. Or whatever is the female equivalent, maybe puts balls on?
Either way, I don’t agree with you that Blair is a true blue neo-con like MaggOTy. I am coming to the conclusion that USUKIS have set up ISIS together with their best religious mates in Iran. Daish like dosh, so plenty of dosh in the bank in Mosul for them. Plenty of tools of the trade, Humvees. Shi’a Honey trap.
ISIS are off CIA Qaida message. So they are probably going to be reminded by USUKISIRAN who’s boss.
By talking like this I can actually see directly behind my back with one eye and straight in front with the other. Great. I’m not going to give up my swivel-eye spectacles for anyone.
The sentence of mine that Craig was forced by his masters to delete above went thus: ‘Everyone is entitled to their moment of idealism, but the world is actually controlled by Zionist banksters, so that moment of hope for peace and reconciliation is always eluding us.’
As to Obama being tired, repeat of the 9/11 face on Bush?
RD Why don’t you get one of those spiritualists in and get them to put you in contact with the late departed and much missed Clarissa to confirm what she said. Alternately you could read her biography which contains the same information.
This is an extract of it ‘Confessions of One Fat Lady’ which contains the same information.
And as I said to Anon the other day, do one, why don’t you.
~~
Have just come inside as it’s raining and who should be on with Andrew Neil’s Sunday Politics but Mark Urban giving it large on Iraq and all the dangers facing the Western world. It is always the same cast of warmongers but on different programmes of the propahanda machine.
Then followed another excerpt of the BLiar interview for extra emphasis, followed by Mark Lyall Brown, ex Brown FCO minister, James Rubin, Amanpour’s husband and neocon ex Bush Ambassador to Iraq, Afghanistan and the UN, and a Ms Rahman from the Kurdistan Regional Government. The latter has extensive assistance from Israel.
Clarissa Dickson Wright: Confessions of One Fat Lady
August 2007
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-476204/Clarissa-Dickson-Wright-Confessions-One-Fat-Lady.html
Mary
Thanks for your mention of Chernobyl re Ukraine.
Grass in Wales remained contaminated for years. Iraqis under Saddam remained oblivious to the concept of radiation from our weaponry until recently.
Re: Fukushima, the pollution if affecting the US West Coast marine life and must be affecting the whole of Japan as well.
I believe there is a cultural difference between Japan, where a disgraced leader will commit suicide and China where there will be a massive cover-up. Japanese engineers must have asked the question what would happen if a wave flooded the cooling pumps and whoever in power ignored the question is now too ashamed to take action over the radiation.
The Chinese are not so disabled by a culture of shame. They would have taken action, and covered-the scandal up, in my opinion.
The UK culture is more akin to the Japanese, bottling it up, than the Chinese, covering it up. This Tory governments only strategy for UK energy is to build nuclear power stations. It’s not a good idea, even if it’s the Chinese who’re going to build them.
The insanity of fracking in the UK and the risk of polluting our water, demonstrates that ‘Nuclear’ and ‘Tory’ don’t mix, because the Tories always shunt the risks aside with their dreams of profits. UK Energy strategy is going to have to change after the Tories are kicked out at the election-FAST.
Peter Kemp
How can a Zombie talk about a death penalty. He should tell them they will be re-incarnated like him as walking dead.
Mr Goss
And what exactly is wrong about what RationalWiki says about Global Research? I note yet another case of your usual approach of attacking those who disagree with you rather than their arguments – which as always I take as a sign of the weakness of your case.
This reads like an Israeli press handout which it probably is. The new photo shows the IDF crouching down wearing those ridiculously big hats. I was once told what they were for but I have forgotten. Something to do with camouflage I think it was.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-27855994
No mention within of the atrocities committed on Palestinian children of course.
PS Marr asked BLiar if he was continuing to be the Quartet representative. Not half. Lovely lolly. He said he has no interest in Brussels. Oh yeah!
“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.”
While I can agree with the second sentence – the first really beggars belief. Saddam, Baathism, religious fundamentalism, the situation in Syria are in effect dismissed as irrelevances. One of the valid criticisms of the invasion of Iraq was that it did not fully understand the history or forces at play in Iraq – now Craig appears to have fallen for the same mistake.
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2014/06/deadly-fiasco/#comment-461375
Such hypocrisy.
“In the meantime my wish is for him to answer in court for his crimes before being sent to Fallujah for an extended sentence of community service. That way, he’ll have to look into the eyes of some of the people whose lives he has blighted.”
It’s a good idea, but I fear that few in Fallujah would even recognise him or remember what he did. Sectarian violence, lynchings, bombings between Muslims, this is the daily reality in these parts of the world. It’s either that or brutal dictatorship. Punishing Blair for what he did 11 years ago would not even register on most Iraqis’ list of priorities. That is what comfortable middle class student union types like Sofia occupy themselves with here. They’re playing their own politics and it’s very far removed from the realities of life in Iraq.
Regarding “If”, Tony Blair was only being a good business person…
I’m sure millions of “would be” millionaires will be pawing over every word he writes and every sound he utters, to give a hint as to how they too could also become rich.
The problem is a system that rewards “being Blair”. This is a system that is all about “getting away with it”, and for those who do the ends justify the means. Such a system is, of course, insane.
I’m no economist but it is simple economics that the purpose of business in a free market sense is to make money. Period. Just to make money. That sounds very cold, but it is true, for those who wish to be successful.
In a capitalist system the potential excesses of business are kerbed by “society”, which through government seeks to protect the people against the excesses of unbridled business.
At some point government became overrun by business. This is no longer a capitalist system, but is rapidly becoming about money, money, money, money, money… ad infinitum. Nice for those having money, but increasingly hell for those who don’t.
In the UK it started with Thatcher, and her mantra “there is no such thing as society” should have been a warning to everyone who wasn’t very rich. Blair has just followed in Thatcher’s footsteps. We shouldn’t blame Blair, but blame ourselves for letting Thatcher’s “no society” become the reality we are seeing today.
Having said that, he still shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it!
Habbabkuk-Turvey 8.57am,
Think you need a dose of your own mistake medicine ya tube.
Read back: i did not ‘ get excited’ at the bet story. If you check back i actually made a joke about the punter being Salmond.
So Habbabkuk,as you say,grown ups admit their mistakes.
Thus i await your admission of such,i thankee.
If youre gonna go scattergun Habtroll at least get yer facts right you fool.
Youre not very adept at the sockpuppet game are ya Haababkuk?
Raise your game fella,your line manager is despairing of you Habbabkuk.
And for the love of God please go and change that awful string vest.
Anyway, latest news is Sunni militia burst into house and execute 17 Shia to accompaniment of 200+ “Allah-o-Akbars”.
Lakbar, lakbar, lakbar!!!
On a more positive note, it is nice of Andrew Marr to remind us all of his crucial “Squealer” role in getting the British public on side with regard to the Blair-Bush monstrosity, and the “Beyond Iraq…” parody by Bremner, Bird and Fortune was a worthy counter to the lies of Marr and co. The fact that this could only get onto the media through devious means like satire shows that we were no longer living in a properly democratic society even then. The historical lessons were to be learned from 1930s Germany… to quote Don McLean”: “They were not listening, they are not listening still, perhaps they never will…”
When GW Bush landed,by his own hand,that remote controlled plane on tha aircraft carrier with the billowing banner in the background declaring “Mission Accomplished” over a decade ago how was he to know these pesky Iraqi towelheads are so dumb they,a decade or more later,stlll dont realise Team USA won the righteous and noble war when he,The Preznet,said so.?
Honestly,how dumb can these Iraqis get?