If bombing a country really made it better, we would have made a paradise of Iraq by now. Instead it is a total disaster, with access to electricity, drinking water, education and health services all far worse than they were before we started bombing it. That is even without the growth of the Caliphate, or ISIS, a direct result first of our deposing Saddam and conniving in the intolerant Shia rule of Maliki, and then of our connivance in arming and funding anyone willing to fight Assad.
So now we are told we have to bomb Iraq yet again, and this time, finally, that will make it all better. There are two extraordinary contradictions in the British position.
1) The justification in international law given by the neo-cons for the current bombing of Iraq is that it is at the invitation of the government of Iraq. But simultaneously they propose to bomb Syria to attack the government of Syria. This is the most astonishing hypocrisy.
2) The Caliphate forces were encouraged and trained by the CIA initially. They continue to be massively financed from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. In fact, the Caliphate is still funded to a massive degree from the very states who are currently bombing them alongside the United States – Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE. It is the ruling families of those states which are attacking ISIS in an official capacity, who are financing ISIS in a private capacity. The BBC manages to avoid any mention of Saudi funding for ISIS. The interests of the City of London are, as always, the most important factor for the British establishment.
The security state here in the UK needs the “War on Terror” to justify its continued existence and the power and jobs of those who administer it. One thing that is certain to keep the conflict going, and thus keep the security state going, is for us to start bombing the Middle East again.
The right wing old crawler Menzies Campbell just came on the BBC to support British bombing. Stand by to see the Unionist parties united in neo-imperialist brotherhood.
OK, Fred, never mind.
Anon1
23 Sep, 2014 – 9:36 pm
“George Orwell once pointed out that the British Left are unique in that they have a visceral hatred of our country.”
__________________________________________
Can you reference that Anon1?
In the introduction to the most popular edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four in the US, the reviewer quotes him accurately as saying that all his work “was against totalitarianism,” but they cut out his important following phrase “and FOR democratic socialism.”
Perhaps you are doing similar Anon1
Ishmael be careful of your new friend Gutter, as you said take time to get to know the posters here. Gutter is a new poster too, a fanatical unionist of the nastier sort.
Someone on the guardian suggested boycott US goods. Seems like there is more than this reason to do that. Ie Israel.
Intercept article I was reading last night.
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/23/nobel-peace-prize-fact-day-syria-7th-country-bombed-obama/
Sky News giving a run down of ISIS funding through selling plundered oil, money through exhortion, other black market activity, etc… Fascinating! Interesting that Sky are doing this now – could they be trying to cover up/cloud the real/initial source of ISIS funding?
“Gutter is a new poster too, a fanatical unionist of the nastier sort.”
He was right though. I can take or leave ideas most people have, Not Cameron though come to think of it, I can see nothing he’s said that’s useful or good.
Truly the man is living in a medieval head. Castles kings and queens. Doesn’t he want to a lord of some kind? Some kind of prehistoric title he was on about.
For balance against my earlier comment… Amazing Tory MP on Sky at the moment… openly said that Tony Blair lied to Parliament to take us to war with Iraq. Never heard it said so openly before. Wow!
Somehow i’v got to get more useful on this blog or go away. I often get very dark and wander off into some personal…….stuff. It’s not helping Craig get more support is it, going of on strange tangents, with sloppy typing.
And bad language there is just no need for.
You watched a different referendum to me. It was the Yes propaganda that was relentless and most of it based on lies designed to arouse racist and tribalist emotions.
Now we see the elitist nature if the Nats if they genuinely still believe they were right and that those who voted No did so because they were stupid. If they can’t see that people voted No because they like being British then nothing they can say about Syria can have any credibility.
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FRED
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What an utter load of nonsense, the people who voted yes, didn’t do so because of any form of discrimination towards, anyone on these islands. The reasons for voting yes were many and varied from removing WMD’s to controlling Scotland’s revenue, to moving in a different direction from Westminster regarding policies.
I don’t know what referendum you watched, but it certainly wasn’t the Scottish one, though your tribalistic animosity shows exactly how you feel about the Scottish residents who voted yes.
As for your comment “People voted no because they like being British.” That statement doesn’t hold water, recent surveys showed more Scots identified themselves as being Scottish rather than British. The reasons people voted no are many and varied,but in my opinion people are resistant to change, especially when the media and press bombard them 24/7 with doom and gloom messages.
SNP membership up by 30.000 since last Friday, and its still rising, the more the merrier.
“Never heard it said so openly before.”
Can’t be bad. Seems often to take time to really sink it, I think for a lot it stll hasen’t really, still (with press help). Maybe veterans / familys have the correct loss of respect. Or total disdain for this man.
to really sink in*
Tony M:
Blimey. I opposed secession because I think effective opposition to our corrupt rulers requires class unity not tribal division. If that makes me “a fanatical unionist of the nastier sort”, I wonder what you think the nicer sort would be!
The referendum’s over. We in Britain who oppose warmongering, neoliberalism and the wealthy elite who profit from them need to work together now to build the alternative, not fight old battles among ourselves.
Will he be comforting the grieving families of people lost in the inevitable intensification? Who know what may happen.
Some people seem to view this (when they should know far batter) as events we can control, but war is not like that. As we can CLEARLY see. And the dead they used to create this mess. And the dead to be, ‘justified’ to continue it as it gets worse?
It was not right from the start. And they did start it. The international crime of 9/11 was 0 justification.
What’s clear as day is any action will increase the threat to the UK people. The establishment are safe like we would not believe, IS is no threat to them at all. AT ALL..
Apropos of absolutely nothing, if you Google Tony Blair for any timeframe over 24 hours, you get an extensive collection of Blair’s advice on absolutely everything. Blair on ISIS (“People should listen to my advice on Isis as I have been to war in Iraq before”), Blair on Ebola ( he invaded it too, personally), Blair “needs professional psychiatric help”…sorry, that was Boris speaking.
There is very little Blair doesn’t consider himself qualified to illuminate with his opinion, then, and I am pleased to see his humble work among the good folk of Husborne Crawley has now been recorded. Here:
http://cyber-coenobites.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/church-maintenance-with-tony-blair.html
What would he say truthfully? You son or daughter died to ensure the control of recrosses that’s critical to our countrys safety and security? That’s nonsense, We don’t need to be doing this to defend our country. There are tones of options for other energy but, go figure. ‘Unsupported’
It’s not world war II and he, and others, are still using that dam lie of pure good an evil to hide the awful truth of there motives.
Im sure there is sickess in the ME but it’s really not that that’s making me feel sick today.
Republicofscotland 25 Sep, 2014 – 12:40 pm
Well said.
5566hh
24 Sep, 2014 – 4:22 am
“I haven’t seen anything to confirm that attacks on non-ISIS-held areas of Syria are planned.”
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Has it not occurred to you 5566hh that such plans would be secret?
What a silly arse you are.
Right you are Gutter. And what form did your fight for the common man take. You sided with the Conservative & Unionist Party, New Labour, the LibDems, US neo-cons, the City of London, the banks, corporate giants and multinationals, the BNP, EDL, the Orange Order, Ulster Unionists, the National Front and so on. You’re a lying cunt, don’t fucking dare come on here all sweetness and light and brotherly love now, worming your way into people’s trust with this all in it together, brother, Guardian leftie pish.
The one chance in a generation of real change, you sided with the worst elements. It’s your problem now if you can’t live with it. If you can’t live with it, change to one of your other nicks, your present one is well and truly busted mate.
Distinctly worth a read…
http://www.fedtrust.co.uk/filepool/Devolution_in_England.pdf
The overriding legal authority of the UK Parliament has, particularly since the
Second World War, allowed local government progressively to be stripped
of revenue-raising power and policy autonomy, and the influence of central
government to increase. Accompanying this diminution of local authority
has been regular alteration of the structure of local government, again at
the behest of the centre. Units have changed in size, and whole tiers been
introduced and removed. The Local Government Act 1972 abolished a
structure that included 83 County Boroughs and 58 County Councils, replacing them with a new organisation comprising six Metropolitan CountyCouncils and 47 County Councils.
New methods of organisation, moving
away from the traditional committee system, were imposed. While recent
UK governments have committed themselves to reversing the erosion of
local government, they have in practice continued it. A practice of seeking
to transfer specific powers to vaguely defined ‘communities’ has detracted
from the position of elected, multi-functional local government. Policies such
as academy and free schools undermine the role of local authorities in
the provision of public services. Initiatives supposedly intended to increase
local flexibility have often been heavily steered from the centre, devised in
line with its policy objectives. Other efforts to increase local autonomy have
had negligible impact. Introducing directly-elected mayors was intended
to encourage greater public interest in local politics, but they have made
no discernible difference in this regard in the areas that have adopted this
innovation. The low turnouts at local elections are perhaps unsurprising given how little relevance their outcome has. It is hard to find any democratic
country where there is less territorial dispersal of political power than in the
UK, with arrangements in England making the greatest contribution to this
tendency.
The consequence of devolution not being introduced to England
means that over eighty per cent of the UK population has no significant tier
of government between it and the Westminster/Whitehall core.
Unionism? What those who mediate between the save and owner? 🙂
I think ultimately it’s a firewall against social progress.
In post war Germany they made children pay for all there own school materials (no doubt forced capitalism gone mad, imposed to wipe out any trace of socialist thinking within Germany) It’s a crazy system of exploitation that kills the human spirit, Not that ever really existed anyway, it’s always just been an ideology some try to force on others.
I believe in worker ownership, and a basic income for everyone. Working or not. A society that values at least the life of each of it’s people for the basics, Unconditionally.
between the slave* and owner
RAF to unleash its “Storm Shadow” bunker busters, on ISL as Cameron vows to take on the “Psychopathic murderers.”
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David Cameron last night urged Britain to shake off the spectre of the Iraq war and back potentially years of RAF strikes against the “psychopathic murderers” of Islamic State.
MP’s have been scrambled for an emergency recall of Parliament tomorrow to sanction bombing raids on terrorist positions in northern Iraq.
All three party leaders indicated support for air strikes, and the attacks are expected to begin as early as tomorrow night.
But the Prime Minister said the fight against Islamic terrorism could last for years.
Mr Cameron, who last night held talks with Iraqi prime minister Haider al-Abadi to finalise military plans, stressed that British troops would not be sent back to Iraq.
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Not in my name, that’s for sure, I’ll be bitterly disappointed if the Scottish Parliament votes,in favour, of the inevitable boots on the ground, assault in Syria.
‘Working or not’
And to be fair that’s not true because eveyone works. Thoes who do the least, (some even don’t done bush there own teeth) are the elite. The most lazy ‘feckless’ bum does far more work to live. And no way near to value loss to Society.
“All three party leaders indicated support for air strikes, and the attacks are expected to begin as early as tomorrow night.”
Better together?
Big military exercise or flap on over the Borders and D&G around 10:30 this morning, reports of low flying military jets in the air over the area around Langholm, a couple of hundred feet at most, with sonic booms rattling windows and terrifying the local population, telephone emergency call 999 system down too.
Moderate US armed Rebels slam, Obama’s airstrikes on extremists.
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The so called moderate rebels in Syria who have received arms and training from the US, have condemned the US led airstrikes on ISIS extremists, underscoring the fact that their fight is against the Syrian government, not the terrorists the Obama administration claims it is funding them to fight.
The US-backed Harakat Hazm rebel group in Syria, which consists of an estimated 7000 fighters who have been given US weapons, slammed the US led airstrikes Tuesday, according to reports.
The sole beneficiary of this foreign interference in Syria is t President Bashar Assad regime, especially in the absence of any real strategy to topple him, a statement posted by the group on Twitter reads. The rebels described the airstrikes as “an attack on national sovereignty that undermines the Syrian revolution.
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This US led assault on Syria could end galvanising the Syrian people, and extremist groups, which could backfire on the US and its allies, which could lead to a long protracted war.
Maybe that’s exactly what the “Axis of Evil” Washington, Westminster,Tel Aviv, et al actually wants.
An al-Qaeda linked terrorist group targeted by the US in a second round of air strikes had been working with bomb makers from Yemen to produce explosives that could pass airport security undetected, including toothpaste tube bombs, an intelligence official has claimed.
The Pentagon said the Khorasan Group were plotting an imminent attack against America and Western interests when training camps, an explosives and munitions factory, a communication building and command and control facilities associated with the cell were attacked in eight strikes in the west of Aleppo
_________________________________
Whats to be made of this, government and media propaganda, to help justify causing ,1000’s of deaths in future, in the Middle East/Africa. Or hard won intelligence that could thwart an aeronautical disaster, in the near future. I personally feel its the former and not the latter, that applies.
“Nine arrested in anti-terrorism raid”
It’s all getting better isn’t it, and this will make it even better.
Survivors of sex abuse dismayed, at Lord Mayor of London Fiona Woolf’s links to Leon Britten. Lord Britten, was at the centre of the scandal, of a missing dossier, handed to the Home Office which contained, a list of VIP paedophiles.
http://www.exaronews.com/articles/5373/fiona-woolf-faces-calls-to-declare-links-with-leon-brittan-fully