While Gaza writhes in agony, Middle East Peace Envoy Tony Blair’s private jet last week was in Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Two months earlier Blair had certainly visited Las Vegas and Los Angeles on the same journey. In Las Vegas Blair was paid a large but undisclosed sum to attend a conference of hedge fund managers. His meetings in Los Angeles were “private”.
I have been unable to discover whether Blair was on his jet last week, or it was Cherie shopping or Alistair Campbell following up on the “business opportunities” for Blair from the July meetings. But he was not evidently in the Middle East. Just before the jet left for the USA he was in Britain hosting a lavish and deeply tasteless birthday party for his wife, two months before her birthday.
Yesterday the Guardian announced Blair’s new role as adviser to the Government of Azerbaijan, to add to the money he gets from advising Sisi of Egypt, Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, numerous Gulf despots and any other dictator who does not realise that the Blair brand has become even more toxic than their own.
Blair’s attendance at the July conference of hedge fund managers was appropriate, as they are the epitome of the heartless irresponsibility and short term financial outlook of the new capitalism which Blair so heartily embraced. His fellow guest speaker at that conference was Francis Ford Coppola. I went to bed last night mulling this article and the aptness of combination of Tony Blair and Apocalypse Now.
Then I woke up this morning to the news that after twenty years of peace fighting had broken out between Blair’s brand new client, Azerbaijan, and Armenia. The man really is cursed. Perhaps once you voluntarily brought so much war and terrible death, there is no way to stop. Apocalypse Blair. He should rename that private jet The Four Horsemen.
the only other coverage i can find so far –
NSA has close partnership with Israel
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/08/04/373997/nsa-has-close-partnership-with-israel/
full Fabius statement in French posted in the following:
ZeeIndia: LIVE: Child killed in attack on Gaza refugee camp during 7-hr
truce declared by Israel
According to Palestinian medics, an eight-year old girl was killed and
thirty others injured when a missile from an F16 warplane struck a refugee
camp in Gaza City on Monday just after six minutes into an Israeli-declared
truce, the AFP reported.
The strike on Shati refugee camp came killed an eight-year-old girl,
emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra told AFP.
France and Israel share an old bond of friendship and Israel’s right to
security is total, but this right does not justify the killing of children
and the slaughter of civilians, said French FM Laurent Fabius.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has said that a political solution
must be imposed on Israel and Palestinians.
The brutality of Gaza violence can leave one unimaginably pained. According
to a tweet posted by al-Jazeera journalist named Femi Oke, the bodies of
children killed in Israeli shellings are ending up in ice cream freezers as
Gaza’s morgues are chock-a-bloc with victims’ bodies…
http://zeenews.india.com/news/world/gaza-live-israel-acting-like-hitler-will-drown-in-the-blood-it-sheds_952265.html
***GRAPHIC***GRAPHIC***
INSIDE EUROPEAN HOSPITAL, RAFAH…BABIES, FAMILIES MASSACRED….
NDTV INDIA: reports from Rafah in South Gaza
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=N7lcNjTRSn4
About bloody time department:-
http://www.civilsociety.co.uk/governance/news/content/17945/charity_commission_probes_tony_blair_faith_foundation
But-
We are assessing the issues raised in the article to determine whether they raise any regulatory concern for us. Please note we are not investigating the charity.”
They’d raise a regulatory concern, surely, if the entire income from all his charities disappeared into an unaccountable LP and its satellites?
Which it does.
NDTV India: Inside Gaza: Reporter’s Diary
NDTV’s Sreenivasan Jain has reached Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip where the fighting is most intense. More than 1500 people have died in the conflict between Israel and Hamas. (WARNING: The information being sent by our reporters from Gaza includes graphic photos from the war)
13:20 (IST)NDTV Reports on the Carnage in Rafah in Gaza
As the war in Gaza takes on a new intensity, NDTV is the only TV crew to travel to Rafah in South Gaza, where the fighting has been most fierce….
17.13 (IST) …We came here to find evidence of a massacre in the border town of Rafah. Israel had pounded Rafah claiming that a soldier had been kidnapped. But despite Israel declaring yesterday that the soldier has been killed and PM Netanyahu announcing a partial rollback of the offensive, Rafah is still under heavy attack and Khan Younis is unable to keep pace with the rush of bodies
http://m.ndtv.com/blog/show/inside-gaza-reporter-s-diary-568380?curl=1407156501
Talking about on the “wrong side” of History.
“People in Israel have to know that they have a lot of friends here in Europe, because I think we have a common struggle going on: the struggle against radical Islam. We are aware of the fact that Israel is the only European, Western and democratic country in the Middle East, surrounded by radical Islamic countries who want to kick all the Israelis into the sea,” Filip DeWinter, EU member from Belgium whose daughter An Sofie posed for anti-Islam ad wearing a bikini and hijab in 2012.
http://rehmat1.com/2012/11/01/lobby-belgium-next-islamic-state/
4 Aug: Irish Independent: Shona Murray: They just want to go home. But most have nowhere left to go to after the onslaught
Doctor Abdul Latif Alhaj, General Director of the ministry of health in Gaza, says he has one word to describe the operation: “barbaric”.
“I use the word barbaric because for years, nobody has attacked civilians like this – people are sleeping and suddenly their home is destroyed all over their bodies,” he said.”
In the last few days of this barbarian war in the Gaza Strip, we are seeing strange sorts of injuries that might be due to different weapons.”Unfortunately, we don’t have the specialised laboratories or staff to diagnose the weapons or the injuries…
“The wounds coming in to us are immediate amputation of limbs. There are multiple small inlets- a lot of destruction inside the body. I think, and according to other doctors’ testimonies, these injuries are different – multiple amputations, burns, amputation of the head.”…
“The Israelis should stop attacking civilians. There is no reason to attack civilians. The militants are operating on the border, they are in clashes with the Israeli tanks and even airplanes.”He questioned why they are attacking people in their houses.”They just want people in civil society here in Gaza to be in conflict with the militants.”But whose militants are they – the sons and brothers of those people – they’re not imported from outside.”…
At a Hamas press conference outside Al Shifa, Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zohri said: “Ban Ki-moon gave legitimacy to Israel to kill Palestinians.”Hamas yesterday committed to the truce and Israel did not. The war proved a lie of Israel and the sincerity of Hamas.”However last night Mr Ban, the UN Secretary-General, condemned an attack that killed 10 people yesterday at a UN school in the Gaza Strip as “a moral outrage and a criminal act”…
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/they-just-want-to-go-home-but-most-have-nowhere-left-to-go-to-after-the-onslaught-30480851.html
Craig – apparently apocalyptic Blair has arrived in Cairo… perhaps.
Ahram – Palestinian delegation member praises Cairo talks on Gaza ceasefire
Ziyad Nakhala of Islamic Jihad told Ahram Online on Sunday that the Cairo talks to end Israel’s offensive on the Gaza Strip were “friendly,” and the Palestinian factions managed to agree on a unified paper of demands….
He added that Egypt is following the issue with “great concern.” Nakhala said a new round of meeting will take place on Monday, a point announced to reporters by Hamas representative Ezzat Al-Rashq after the meeting….
Another source at the delegation, who preferred to remain anonimous, told Ahram Online that Envoy of the Quartet Tony Blair arrived in Cairo on Sunday, mentioning that US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns is expected to arrive as well.
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/2/8/107661/World/Region/Palestinian-delegation-member-praises-Cairo-talks-.aspx
Oddie –
These reports are distinctly offbeat. First Burns was expected to go to Cairo, then he cried off after the altest school shelling. About the same time the TBFF announced that the Dear Leader was on his way too. Some of the Egyptian media seem to have jumped the gun, announcing Burns and Blair as having arrived on the basis of their announced intention. The Guardian and Israeli media are now reporting the arrival of Blair and Lowenstein: is this in fact copied and pasted from erroneous Egyptian reports, I wonder?
Meanwhile I have no evidence that Blair’s plane is anywhere other than Los Angeles. It may be, and if so, Blair is getting shyer about his movements than an honest man should. Or even a murderer on the run…
Google “blair cairo sunday” to assess the confusion.
“USUKIS want Islam to become a religion of mindless violence, such as we have witnessed in Gaza, and Libya, and Afghanistan and Pakistan and Somalia, and Nigeria, and Sudan and Iraq.”
And pretty much everywhere else over the last 1500 years as the soldier ants of Islam have spread through one continent after the other, subjugating native cultures well before the Spanish and British learnt the art of intercontinental conquest.
I am yet to hear any argument, let alone one that stands any chance of being taken seriously, supporting the claim that Islam is a religion of peace. Perhaps people mean ‘peace’ of the sort we see in the rubble of the aftermath of war. Or the kind of peace we see in a people who are too terrified to challenge the imposition of Islamic values.
In any case, there simply is no evidence that Islam is a religion of anything but seemingly mindless, although quite purposeful violence.
Jives, you can go fuck yourself – if your fist can reach that far.. I have never commented in support of Israel and sometimes I have posted sharp criticisms of it. So go get yourself an education, some good manners and a new personality that doesn’t repel everyone you assault with your ignorant commentary. To be honest, I feel embarrassed just responding to a piece of earwax that you are.
‘France and Israel share an old bond of friendship.’
Oddie- if anything Fabius is understating the depth of these bonds. In the post Suez decade France was Israel’s principal armourer- the decisive blows struck by the Israeli airforce in the 6 day war were launched from Mirage jets, and the Dimona nuclear programme was begun with French assistance.
Of course de Gaulle had a falling out with Israel post 1967; French military assistance ceased and the US willingly filled the gap thereafter.
‘About bloody time department’
Komodo- one more item for your new department; the MSM have finally caught on that senior Israeli figures wish to ethnically cleanse Gaza, and that the professed concern of the IDF to ‘minimise civilian casualties’ there is just PR hogwash.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2715466/Israeli-official-calls-concentration-camps-Gaza-conquest-entire-Gaza-Strip-annihilation-fighting-forces-supporters.html
Makes Liebermann look like a cuddly bunny, doesn’t he? Completely verifiable admission that at least one senior member of the Israeli government is taking the Nazis as a model. Sorry, Craig, but what other conclusion can be drawn?
Cameron wants to ‘review’ arms sales to Israel:
http://www.timesofisrael.com/uk-reviewing-arms-export-licenses-to-israel/
THAT’ll frighten them, Dave. The US has no such plans…
Earlier this week, a top Pentagon spokesman stressed that the Obama administration would not leverage arms transfers to Israel to bring about a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
The arms and ammunition provided to Israel is “through a long-standing foreign military sales program,” Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, told reporters on Saturday. “Israel is a staunch ally in that part of the world….”
I’d love him to explain why Israel’s policy is in any way advantageous to US interests. Other than keeping the region nicely stirred up, that is. The US had to lean on its ‘staunch ally’ to prevent it from joining in on both Iraq wars. Because that really would have chucked the shit in the fan.
Just for the record, I’m beginning to think that Blair has switched charter firms: G-CEYL may be attracting the wrong* sort of attention and hired to an innocent. There’s been a security crackdown at Farnborough – the aircraft’s base, and that of other business jets of interest, too. It would be good to think he’s beginning to look nervously over his shoulder.
*pure relativism. Sorry.
The Blair phenomenon amazes me. He is a notorious ignoramus and thicko who didn’t know they spoke Portuguese in Brazil until a few days before he became P.M. What on earth use is he to anyone, hedge-fund managers or otherwise? Why would anyone pay for his ‘advice’? – advice about what??!! Yet he’s been farting through silk for years!
Having said that (and writing as one who never liked him, even when he was shadow Home Sec.) part of me feels sorry for the poor sod. Would you like to be obliged to service Cherie? Would you like to attend parties with Alisair Campbell, Mandelson and the other members of the clique? Would you like to kiss the arses of Central Asian despots? Would you like to hear voices in the night? He’s sold his soul for a few pieces of gold and a night or two in Berlusconi’s villa and he must know that he’s damned.
…he must know that he’s damned.
Deep down, I think he does. But after a quick bask in the adulation of sycophants attracted by his considerable but superficial charm, he also genuinely believes he’s got a direct line to God, and that globalisation will solve the world’s problems in a one-er. And, of course that consumerism grows out of the barrel of a gun.
Giap would have re-educated him….
Je,
You are absolutely correct and i offer a genuine and unreserved apology for including you in the troll list.My mistake completely.I know and value you as a quality poster here in good faith.
***********
The rest of the nauseating sockpuppets and shills-and their grotesquely transparent propaganda and diversions can still get lost.
Richard and Dragon,
Good posts.
I cant however help but wonder if there’s another story with Blair i.e.:
He has no choice.
He’s been owned for years by forces he cant resist and they have the goods on him long time…
Jives:
You could well be right; he probably doesn’t have a choice – these days, anyway. After all, what else could he do? buy a couple of acres in the Cotswolds? live peacefully and grow strawberries? He who rides a tiger etc.
But there must have been a time when he did have a choice; sometime when he came to a fork in the road and took the wrong one. There’s a lesson there for all of us, I suppose: be good, be kind to animals, be peaceful and don’t do anything which will come back on you later.
He must have done something truly abominable if that’s the way it is, Jives. I’m trying to keep an open mind, and cheerfully accept your hypothesis as looking as likely as any other.
Kuntsler, for the 2nd week in a row demonstrates that all perception is selective.
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/all-hell/
He is spot-on when discussing Peak Oil and Finance Fulminations, but he’s a fookin’ idjit blinded by his ancestral loyalty on Palestinian questions.
Incapable of learning from history, too.
Here is what I think is going to happen now. Israel will withdraw from Gaza. Hamas’s war-making ability has been deeply degraded for a while, but any further rocket attacks will be answered in kind. Perhaps the citizens of Gaza will rethink who they want to have as leaders.
Didn’t work the last three times, why should it work now? If the basic issues raised by confining a million plus people in a prison camp for decades aren’t addressed, Hamas will either carry on or be overtaken by a more effective armed resistance.
@Ben: he’s not exactly a mainstream author, but a new book out called “Perception Deception”. Don’t intend to read it… the title is quite enough!
war crimes.
VIDEO: Democracy Now – “Everything That Moves in Rafah is a Target”: Israel Continues Shelling of Gaza During Short “Pause”
MOHAMMED OMER: The situation in the southern part of the Gaza Strip is rather terrifying, with a lot of people who are injured and still on the ground waiting for ambulances to pick them up. Now, hospitals are not able to cope, because Abu Youssef al-Najjar Hospital has come under fire, and the other hospital, which is supposed to be for maternity, is functioning, but only for a few cases. So, dead bodies are on the streets at the moment. Nobody is able to evacuate them. I have talked to some health officials who informed me that there is about 300 people who were killed in the last three days in Rafah alone and over 1,000 who have been injured…
I have been also talking to the mayor of Rafah, Subhi Radwan, who also informed me that about 30,000 to 40,000 inhabitants in Rafah, they have no access to water, and they have no access to electricity. They have been trying to call the International Red Cross, and the International Red Cross is not responding to any phone calls from citizens. There is a lot of criticism from the local population in Rafah that the International Red Cross is not responding, is not taking phone calls of people. And people are just at a loss of who would they call and turn to in times of a crisis when they need help…
The situation in Rafah is quite deteriorating at this moment. There are people who are appealing to ambulances at this moment, as we speak, and there are no ambulances that can get into the area and no ambulances that can evacuate the bodies. People cannot get in outside of the Rafah area. The Rafah area is under constant bombardment and constant siege, and it’s been isolated completely from the rest of the Gaza Strip. And I take this sign as a very alarming sign that if this is going to continue, we are going to expect more and more massacres. Talking about massacres, the family of al-Ghoul family, the man who is a 63-year-old man who was killed by an Israeli F-16 missile in Yebna refugee camp, and killing other nine family members from his home, including one child, Youssef, who’s only about two months…
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/8/4/everything_that_moves_in_rafah_is
Independent – Kim Sengupta – Israel-Gaza conflict: Israel takes brutal revenge on Rafah for the loss of a soldier
His sister, Maha, was at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, watching over Ramadan’s three-year-old son, Ali, when she heard about her brother’s death. “My family, our people, are being slaughtered like animals,” she said. “This continues day after day, all the big leaders around the world say this must stop and then they do nothing. How many of the resistance have the Israelis killed? Look in the morgue and you will see the dead are children, women, old people. What has this little boy done to be hit by a bomb?”
Lying in his hospital bed, Ali stared ahead with frightened eyes. He had not spoken since being dug out of the rubble three hours earlier….
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israelgaza-conflict-israel-takes-brutal-revenge-on-rafah-for-the-loss-of-a-soldier-9648004.html
the situation has reached breaking point –
VIDEO – Democracy Now – “Disgraceful,” “Criminal Act”: Israel Condemned as 10 Die in Another Strike on U.N. Shelter in Gaza
CHRISTOPHER GUNNESS, UNRWA: In our facilities, there are 270,000. That’s an average of just under 3,000 per facility… there is an overwhelming human displacement catastrophe going on in Gaza, and there is no way that UNRWA will simply leave and allow civilians—women, children, the elderly, the sick, the dying—to fend for themselves….
There are some 475,000—and that’s a conservative estimation—people who have been displaced in Gaza. We will run the risk of people soon being stranded in the streets, because there simply is nowhere for them to go….
this time around, I think we are going to discover, sadly, that tens of thousands of people’s homes have been leveled. And the fact is that many tens of thousands of those people in our facilities right now probably don’t have homes to go back to. And those lucky enough to have homes to go back to may have homes to go back to which are no longer on the water or electricity systems, because those, too, have been very, very badly damaged. So, there’s a homelessness crisis—call it a human displacement crisis, call it what you will—of uncalculated proportions….
It’s going to be a public health problem….
And in al-Shifa Hospital, the main hospital—it’s the largest hospital, actually, in the occupied Palestinian territory, which includes the West Bank—the largest hospital in Gaza in the Occupied Territories has people in the car park—the wounded, the sick, the injured—because they simply don’t have space. That, in anyone’s book, is a public health disaster, and it compounds the appalling human displacement crisis that’s already there. And I think it really is just a matter of time before we do see the outbreak of communicable diseases….
On top of that, when the fighting in times of conflict starts to encroach on our buildings, we phone them (the Israeli authorities) up, and we say,—literally pick up the phone and say, “Excuse me, but your firing is getting closer and closer. There are over 3,000 people in that school. Would you please not endanger their lives?” And in this case, it got closer, and, of course, you know, there was that missile adjacent to the gate. The last phone call to the Israeli army was an hour before that strike. In the Jabaliya case, we also made multiple phone calls the night before, and look what happened. You know, I mean, I can’t explain it. You ask what lies behind it. You really do have to phone up Peter Lerner again and put it to him that the U.N. had pointed out 33 times, including up to the hour beforehand, and ask them for an explanation. We simply don’t have one…
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/8/4/disgraceful_criminal_act_israel_condemned_as?autostart=true&get_clicky_key=suggested_next_story
Just a thought, which I haven’t seen expressed during the several invasions of Gaza…
Think French Resistance. The Resistance in WW2 Occupied France were completely embedded in the population – they had to be. Their invader was superior in every military respect (except adaptability and cunning), and this was an asymmetric war. The Germans took hideous reprisals for Resistance actions, on the civil population. No doubt, although the term hadn’t been coined yet, the Germans were intensely frustrated by the use of ‘human shields’ and the storage and deployment of what weapons the Resistance had in places which put civilians at risk; notably the quisling civilians the Germans cultivated.
Yet the Resistance were the good guys. They were chucking out a brutal occupier…
As Gaza Death Toll Tops 1,800, Dr. Mona El-Farra Mourns Loss of 9 Relatives in Israeli Strike
DR. MONA EL-FARRA: Yeah. It was 2:30 in the morning that day, and the first rocket hit the house. Then the father, who is my second cousin, and the children and the rest of the family were trying to leave the house, got into the street, where the second [inaudible] hit on the side, has hit [inaudible] the house. So, it was not eight; it was nine people who were killed, and many injured. And one of my second cousins, she is very pregnant; she lost her baby in the hospital. The children were in their pajamas. And I don’t think my cousins and their grandchildren were human shields there for Hamas or anybody. For me, I’m very devastated, but my family is no different from any other family [inaudible]. Up to now, at least 60 families have been wiped away completely during those attacks….
LAILA EL-HADDAD: It was, I believe, nine, as my aunt just mentioned, five of them children. And those two youngest children were fleeing the house as that second Israeli missile targeted them and killed them. And again, these are not human shields. These are not Palestinians who have had weapons in their house—not that that would justify in any case, under international law, their assassination, their extermination from existence. But we see this happening again and again and again, young children overwhelmingly being targeted, being killed, civilians, unarmed, you know, huddled in schools or in shelters or in their homes—
TO BE CONTINUED TOMORROW
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/8/4/as_gaza_death_toll_tops_1800?autostart=true&get_clicky_key=suggested_related
Independent – Baroness Warsi resigns over Gaza conflict saying she ‘can no longer support Government policy’
Announcing her resignation this morning, the former Chair of the Conservative Party said that she had written to the Prime Minister “and tendered [her] resignation”.
“I can no longer support Government policy on Gaza,” she wrote….
Her resignation comes as yesterday Mr Cameron refused to condemn Israel’s recent apparent air strike on a UN-run school in Rafah, Gaza as “criminal”…
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/baroness-warsi-resigns-over-gaza-conflict-saying-she-can-no-longer-support-government-policy-9648529.html
The true Zionist agenda that we knew all along:
An Israeli official has called for concentration camps in Gaza and ‘the conquest of the entire Gaza Strip, and annihilation of all fighting forces and their supporters’.
Moshe Feiglin, Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset and member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party, posted the inflammatory message on his Facebook page at the weekend.
He lays out a detailed plan for the destruction of Gaza – which includes shipping its residents across the world – in a letter he addressed to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The message, which received more than 2,000 likes on his page, lists four action points which he wants to be enforced as soon as possible.
Feiglin details the first one as ‘defining the enemy’ and states: ‘The strategic enemy is extremist Arab Islam in all its varieties, from Iran to Gaza, which seeks to annihilate Israel in its entirety. The immediate enemy is Hamas. (Not the tunnels, not the rockets, but Hamas.)’
He says another important part of his plan is the ‘conquest of the entire Gaza Strip, and annihilation of all fighting forces and their supporters.’
Feiglin details how he wants the Israeli PM ‘to turn Gaza into Jaffa, a flourishing Israeli city with a minimum number of hostile civilians.’
In 1948 Jaffa was a Palestinian town but there was an exodus of most of its Arab population when it fell to the fledgling Israeli army and right-wing Jewish militias.
In the letter he expresses his desire for the IDF to find areas on the Sinai border to establish ‘tent encampments…until relevant emigration destinations are determined.’
He says that the supply of electricity and water to the Gaza would be disconnected before being ‘shelled with maximum fire power.’
Feiglin explains how the IDF would then ‘exterminate nests of resistance, in the event that any should remain.’
Part of his plan includes shipping the people living in Gaza across the world.
He says to encourage the movement those who willingly agree to emigrate will be given ‘a generous economic support package.’
But those who resist leaving their home will be required to publicly sign a declaration of loyalty to Israel, and receive a blue ID card similar to that of the Arabs of East Jerusalem.
Then Israeli law will be extended to cover the entire Gaza Strip and ‘the city of Gaza and its suburbs will be rebuilt as true Israeli touristic and commercial cities.’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2715466/Israeli-official-calls-concentration-camps-Gaza-conquest-entire-Gaza-Strip-annihilation-fighting-forces-supporters.html