A terrible, delusional, wasteful misjudgment

May 4, 2007

Blair’s support for Israel last year was wrong. And we said so

Mary Ann Sieghart

Never believe people who protest: “I don’t want to say ‘I told you so’.” Of course they do. There is nothing more satisfying than to be vindicated. So here you go.

Last July I wrote a couple of columns on these pages excoriating Israel for its overreaction to the kidnap by Hezbollah of two of its soldiers. I criticised Tony Blair for not condemning Israel’s disproportionate response and I predicted that his action – or rather inaction – would hasten his demise.

Inevitably, I was deluged with e-mails accusing me of anti-Semitism (as if!), anti-Israeli bias and ignorance. Patronising readers told me that I had no understanding of Israel’s position in the Middle East. My warnings that Israel’s killing of nearly 1,000 Lebanese civilians and displacement of half a million would only add to the ranks of Hezbollah sympathisers and further inflame Muslim opinion against the West were dismissed as prejudice.

So it is some consolation that the Winograd Commission – set up by the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, himself – savagely criticised him this week for the failed war against Lebanon. On the decisions made in launching the war, the report says: “We determine that there are very serious failings in these decisions and the way they were made. We impose the primary responsibility for these failures on the Prime Minister, the Minister of Defence and the Chief of Staff.

“The decision to respond with an immediate, intensive military strike was not based on a detailed, comprehensive and authorised military plan . . . The Government did not consider the whole range of options, including that of continuing the policy of ‘containment’, or combining political and diplomatic moves with military strikes below the ‘escalation level’, or military preparations without immediate military action.”

Mr Olmert “made up his mind hastily, despite the fact that no detailed military plan was submitted to him and without asking for one. Also his decision was made without close study of the complex features of the Lebanon front and of the military, political and diplomatic options available to Israel . . . All of these add up to a serious failure in exercising judgment, responsibility and prudence.”

Phew! If that is the interim report, what has the commission saved up for its final statement? I cannot remember ever reading such trenchant criticism of a government in an official report.

What this ought to (but doubtless won’t) do is puncture the delusion held by many in the Jewish community that any criticism of any action by any Israeli government is either anti-Semitic or anti-Israel or both. It simply isn’t.

Only last week I mentioned in passing that, had Jack Straw still been Foreign Secretary last July, he could have moderated Mr Blair’s support for Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon. One reader e-mailed to say that I was either “entirely stupid” or “an anti-Semite happy to plant some anti-Israel poison” or “almost unbelievably ignorant of the facts”. Oh, and apparently, I am a “journalist-idiot” too.

Perhaps this reader would like to put the same charges to Judge Eliyahu Winograd, the commission chairman? Or perhaps he and his ilk could grow up and accept that candid friends of Israel may occasionally be justified in disagreeing, in good faith, with its government? It doesn’t mean that we hate Jews or that we don’t defend Israel’s right to exist.

But the problem does not lie only with paranoid e-mailers. Our own Prime Minister labours under a similar delusion. It is not that he believes criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic; but he is determined that no disapproval of Israeli action will ever pass his lips in public. He has held to this stricture as rigidly as he has to its cousin: unstinting support of US policy.

Mr Blair’s justification is that, by defending these governments in public, he has more “traction” with them in private. Would that this were so. Our Prime Minister met Mr Olmert just before the war and whatever he said at No 10 had zero effect. He warned President Bush that a better plan was needed for post-war Iraq, and what transpired? Sometimes, I suspect, he does not even tell the hard truths in private, since he shrinks from personal confrontations and is happier telling people what they want to hear.

It is not as if Mr Blair was not warned at the time that his position was ill-judged. Colleagues told him that the Israeli bombing of villages in southern Lebanon would strengthen Hezbollah, undermine Lebanon’s democracy, fail to achieve the military objective and weaken Mr Olmert. What is more, his support for the bombing would play into the hands of those who wanted to radicalise Muslim youth.

This was possibly the worst foreign policy misjudgment of his premiership, and it left a scar that remains to this day. Ministers and MPs who were prepared reluctantly to support the case for war in Iraq watched the pulverising of southern Lebanon and felt morally sick at their leader’s refusal to condemn it. Sure, Israel had a right to defend itself, but not at this level of untargeted aggression.

Previously supportive colleagues started to peel away. Because of the summer recess, their misgivings went largely unreported. But it meant that, when the Brownite coup happened last September, many more MPs and ministers were receptive to the idea of Mr Blair going within the year.

Another sad consequence is that the man who might have had so much to offer the Middle East peace process is now discredited there. Mr Blair could have applied the lessons he learnt in Northern Ireland – in particular, that he could not make peace by involving only moderates from the UUP and SDLP. It was the arrival of Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams at the negotiating table that made an agreement possible.

The same boldness is needed now in the Middle East. Any negotiation will have to include Hamas as well as Fatah, the ultra-orthodox Shas party as well as Labour. Had Mr Blair remained even-handed last July, he could now be the perfect peacebroker. Instead, he will have to content himself with lecturing conventions of American mortgage brokers. What a waste.

maryann.sieghart@thetimes.co.uk

Blair set to quit as MP for £10 million bonanza

BENEDICT BROGAN & KIRSTY WALKER

Thursday May 03, 2007

Tony Blair will walk away from British politics this summer and pocket £10 million in his first year out of office.

The sale of his memoirs, lucrative directorships and the vast sums available on the American lecture circuit will turn the Prime Minister into a multi-millionaire overnight.

He will leave behind him a bankrupt Labour Party - and an uphill battle for Gordon Brown to restore its tarnished fortunes.

Mr Blair, who as polls close is facing sweeping losses in the local and devolved elections, intends to bring his political career to a close by leaving the Commons at the end of July, weeks after he stands down as Premier.

His departure halfway through a Parliament would make him the first former PM since the war to abandon the Commons and trigger a by-election.

This could turn into an early test of Gordon Brown's popularity as Prime Minister, and would also open Mr Blair to charges that he is treating the voters in his Sedgefield constituency with contempt by quitting before his full term expires.

Sources claim that Mr Blair and his wife Cherie are eager to cash in on his decade as a world statesman, and do not want to have to make their earnings public.

A scheme planned in close consultation with his wife would see Mr Blair escape the vigilance of Parliamentary watchdogs by resigning as an MP.

This would relieve him of the obligation to record details of his earnings in the Register of Members' Interests.

Mr Blair has been criticised in the past for failing to record details of his free holidays and other perks in the Register.

Experts predict that Mr Blair will easily make more money than Bill Clinton or John Major on the back of book deals - his memoirs could fetch £8 million - speaking tours, property investments and fees from high-profile companies that he has ruthlessly courted.

Mrs Blair is also expected to pocket around £2.5 million a year from speeches.

As a former Prime Minister, Mr Blair will get an immediate pension worth £117,500 a year. The Blairs will also enjoy a £90,000 a year taxpayer-funded 'public service' allowance to help them cope with life after Number 10.

The tax-free allowance can be claimed every year until Mr Blair dies.

He is also entitled to free telephone calls, stationery, an official car and driver and Special Branch protection worth around £1.5 million a year.

Sources say Mr Blair will stand down as an MP just before the House rises for the summer recess, with July 23 earmarked as the preferred date.

On Thursday Downing Street fuelled speculation about Mr Blair's future by refusing to deny that he will quit as an MP before the General Election, expected in 2009.

His spokesman said Mr Blair had not yet made a decision about his political future after he leaves office, probably on July 2.

"He has made no decision whatsoever to stand down as an MP and very firmly remains MP for Sedgefield and proud of it," he said.

It is believed that the announcement about his resignation as an MP was being held back as a surprise following the widespread speculation about his drawn-out departure.

Mrs Blair is reported to have told friends: "Now is the time for us to go and make some money. There is no way he is ever going to serve under Gordon Brown, even as a backbencher."

As details of Mr Blair's escape plan seeped out, there was surprise among some Labour MPs that he was 'deserting' the party.

There was even speculation that some of his die-hard allies, including Alan Milburn, Stephen Byers and John Reid, are planning to leave the Commons at the same time.

A Labour source said: "They have no future under Gordon Brown, so they reckon they could quit together and trigger a byelection 'Super-Thursday' to annoy him."

Mr Blair will tell his party at his Sedgefield constituency next Thursday that he is resigning as Labour leader, triggering a process to confirm Mr Brown as plan his successor. The outcome is due to be announced on June 30.

Rumours that Mr Blair might quit as an MP have been denied until now, but Labour officials are now openly preparing for a by-election.

Would-be MPs are already jockeying for a plum seat that Mr Blair has held for 24 years. He was re-elected in 2005 with a majority of more than 18,000.

The Prime Minister is widely expected to embark on a lucrative lecture tour of the US when he leaves Downing Street.

Wes Neff, the boss of a prominent New York speakers' agency, said: "Tony Blair has a future bigger than Bill Clinton as a speaker. The big names at the moment are Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, and Colin Powell but all these have been in the market place for three or four years.

"He'll be the first world leader to come on the market in all that time. People will be interested to hear what he has to say. If he keeps his ideas interesting and has thoughtful opinions he can do this for decades."

UK Daily Mail

Meacher: 'Blair's Britain makes me sick'

Melissa Kite, Deputy Political Editor, Sunday Telegraph

Last Updated: 11:41pm BST 21/04/2007

Tony Blair has created a "staggering degree of inequality" in Britain, perpetuated a culture of greed and undermined democracy, according to one of those vying to succeed him. Michael Meacher: 'We now have four classes' Michael Meacher, the former environment minister, now a Labour leadership candidate, said that society was more unequal now than at any time since the 1930s. A new class, the "mega rich", had been given unprecedented power and access to government by Mr Blair, who was himself obsessed by money, he claimed. Mr Meacher said that he was close to securing the 44 names necessary to mount a challenge to the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, the overwhelming favourite to succeed Mr Blair. "I'm getting very close to it," Mr Meacher said. "I have 25, [John] McDonnell has 15 and the overwhelming majority of those will switch to me if John realises that he can't make it and drops out." The MP for Oldham West said he believed passionately that Mr Brown should face a challenge. "People should have a choice. We should not have a coronation when there has been no debate on policy since Blair came in, in 1994. "It's crucial that Brown is made to answer as to what he's going to deliver to us. We are entitled to know." advertisement While Westminster was fixated on a Blairite challenger, Mr Meacher said, it would be wrong to underestimate the Left. "David Miliband, Charles Clarke, John Reid, it's a matter for them but it's quite interesting that there is a desperate thrashing around to find a candidate and they have not been able to do so. The tendency is to regard the Left as non-existent. That is a really serious misreading of the state of the Labour Party." Accusing Mr Blair of exacerbating inequality, he added: "We are now a more unequal society than at any time since the 1930s. The average package of the chief executive of a FTSE 100 company is £46,155 a week. The average wage is £400 a week. That is a staggering degree of inequality. "We now have four classes - an underclass who are so poor that they cannot participate in any meaningful way, a working class who are okay, a fairly well off middle class then a new category, the mega rich who are in a category of their own in terms of wealth, power and their influence on the Government through private meetings with ministers. "I feel very sick and angry about it. I didn't expect this to happen under a Labour Government. The reason it has happened is, if I can quote Peter Mandelson in 1997, New Labour is very relaxed about people getting filthy rich." Mr Blair, he said, had "far too little concern" for the people at the bottom. "Tony's natural mates are his big business friends. He feels comfortable with them, he admires and respects them and he gets a good response from them. They are only too glad to have someone in power whom they can do direct deals with." The Prime Minister, said Mr Meacher, had also ridden roughshod over Parliament. "It would be hard to say this is a genuine parliamentary democracy. The framework is there but the decisions are fixed at private meetings between the Prime Minister and the power brokers in society, the financial houses, industry and the media." Hitting out at the influence of Lord Sainsbury, the former science minister, with whom he sparred over the issue of genetically modified crops, Mr Meacher said: "People say that is why I was sacked. Lord Sainsbury was appointed by Blair. Blair himself is also pro-GM. Lord Sainsbury provided a lot of money to the Labour Party and he was clearly involved in a lot of GM research. This all mixed in with the Government's objectives." He said a "conscience of the nation" watchdog should be created to look at all decisions of national importance and prevent abuses of power. He claimed Mr Brown blocked a decision he took as environment minister to force the top 1,000 companies to publish their greenhouse gas emissions. "So if you ask if he's green - anything but. His feel for this agenda is very weak." Publishers wishing to reproduce photographs on this page should phone 44 (0) 207 931 2921 or email syndication@telegraph.co.uk

Blair's 10-year leadership to end 'within weeks' (May 9th)

Related
Police poised to charge Blair's top adviser
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Publisher: Jon Land

Published: 22/04/2007 - 09:06:06 AM

Blair's 10-year reign to end 'within weeks' (Pic: PA)

Relevant News
Police hand over 'thick' file in cash-for-honours affair Blair: 'My legacy as PM will stand the test of time'

Tony Blair's decade at 10 Downing Street marks him out as one of those rare politicians who put their stamp on an era.

But no sooner has that milestone been passed than the Blair era will come to an end, with the Prime Minister's resignation expected within weeks, or even days.

There is almost universal agreement that Mr Blair's successor will be Chancellor Gordon Brown. But the apparent inevitability of this long-awaited transition masks a considerable degree of uncertainty about the era to come.

Will a Brown premiership mark a radical break from the Blair administration? Or will the man who insists he was as much a progenitor as the PM of the New Labour project preside over a period of continuity?

Will Mr Brown embark on a purge of Mr Blair's ministers and policies?

And, perhaps most importantly, how long will the Brown era last?

Conservatives have been busy over the last few years predicting that Brown will swing Labour to the left, ushering in a period of business-unfriendly, bureaucratic centralisation.

But Mr Brown himself has been equally busy sending out signals that he will not be a creature of the left, voicing his support for nuclear power and the renewal of Britain's independent nuclear deterrent as well as loudly trumpeting his patriotism with calls for a Britishness day and pride in the flag.

No-one doubts that Mr Brown is planning to hit the ground running with 100 days of eye-catching policy announcements to match the declaration of independence for the Bank of England he made within days of becoming Chancellor.

Only a few in the Chancellor's inner circle know what those announcements will involve. Speculation revolves around the creation of a written constitution, a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, NHS independence, scrapping ID cards or a Whitehall shake-up including the abolition of the Department of Trade and Industry.

He is expected to reward key allies with top Cabinet posts, with Alistair Darling tipped to succeed him at the Treasury, promotions for Ed Balls, Douglas Alexander and Ed Miliband and a senior position for his campaign manager Jack Straw.

But it remains to be seen whether he clears out ministers too closely linked with the Blairite past. David Miliband, who has ruled out a challenge for the top job, will almost certainly survive as a signal that Mr Brown wants to lead a "Cabinet of all the talents", but there are doubts over the future of close Blair allies like John Reid or Tessa Jowell.

Mr Brown will also have to decide whether to appoint the victor of the deputy leadership race to be his Deputy Prime Minister.

Although the deputy's contest is seen as a chance for Labour's grassroots and the unions to influence the shape of a Brown premiership, there is no requirement for the winner to become DPM, or indeed for the post to be filled at all.

Left-wing candidate Jon Cruddas has said he does not want the DPM job, and there are others who Mr Brown would probably prefer not to see standing in for him during his holidays. Mr Prescott's old job could even go to Mr Straw if he is not sent to the Treasury or Foreign Office.

Whatever the personnel of his Cabinet, Mr Brown faces an enormously more difficult economic and political climate than Mr Blair did when he arrived at Downing Street on a wave of euphoria in 1997.

He will take office against the backdrop of possible charges in the cash-for-honours inquiry, rising inflation threatening to force up interest rates and no end in sight to the violence in Iraq.

Rather than representing a clean break after years of Tory rule, as Mr Blair did, Mr Brown faces the far more daunting challenge of winning back voters disillusioned by a decade of Labour.

And in place of the deeply unpopular John Major, he will face Tory leader David Cameron buoyed by months of comfortable opinion poll leads - with surveys suggesting the gap in the Conservatives' favour may even widen when Mr Brown takes over.

After one of the longest waits for power ever seen, Mr Brown knows he has his work cut out if he is not to enjoy one of the shortest periods in power in British political history.

Despite some speculation over a snap election in 2008, he will almost certainly wait until 2009 or 2010 to give himself time to turn the polls round and maximise his chances of winning a fourth election victory for Labour.

The actual process by which Mr Brown - or, just conceivably, someone else - becomes Prime Minister has been set out by Labour's ruling National Executive Committee.

Mr Blair's announcement of his resignation - accompanied by that of his deputy John Prescott - will not mean the immediate arrival of removal vans in Downing Street.

The NEC will meet within 72 hours to finalise a timetable for seven-week contests for the leadership and deputy leadership, and would-be candidates will then have a week to file nomination papers bearing the signatures of 12.5% of Labour MPs - 45 names, including their own.

Mr Brown will have no difficulty in clearing the nomination hurdle, but his two declared rivals - left-wing MPs John McDonnell and Michael Meacher - will struggle to do so.

Even if they get onto the ballot paper, neither man will present any threat to the Chancellor's elevation. Indeed, he would probably welcome their candidacy as a chance to demonstrate his mainstream credentials.

The prospects of a challenge from the "Blairite" centre seem to have receded in recent weeks, with Mr Miliband saying he will vote for Brown and problems at the Home Office making a leadership bid by Mr Reid less credible. Long-shot Blairite candidates Charles Clarke and Alan Milburn have not ruled out running in order to ensure the Chancellor is not anointed unopposed.

If the leadership is contested, the winner will have to secure more than 50% of Labour's electoral college, which is divided three ways between 380 MPs and MEPs, 200,000 party members and 3.2 million trade union affiliates.

Even without a rival, the NEC's rules require Mr Brown to attend hustings alongside the deputy leadership candidates before finally taking the crown he has waited a decade for.

But he will not have to face an "affirmative vote" in the absence of a challenger, as some Labour figures demanded.

The new leader - and deputy leader - will be announced at a weekend meeting of representatives of each section of the electoral college, probably in late June or early July.

Candidates so far declared for the deputy leadership are Hilary Benn, Hazel Blears, Jon Cruddas, Peter Hain, Harriet Harman and Alan Johnson.

Copyright Press Association 2007.

The Emperor of Africa

Posted April 17, 2007

Tony Blair cannot let go of Britain’s inordinate global powers

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 17^th April 2007

The disease that afflicts all British governments is an inability to let go. Unable to accept the end of empire, they cling to past glories. However much they speak of modernity and democracy, they cannot help managing other people’s lives, preserving foreigners – often at gunpoint – from the mistakes they would make if they were allowed to govern themselves.

I was going to call this an imperial delusion, but the United Kingdom has been remarkably successful at defending its powers. Our government has retained a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Its membership of the G8 is unchallenged. Most importantly, it has preserved its unwarranted share of the vote on the boards of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. And it has no intention of giving this up.

In advance of the IMF’s spring meeting (which has just concluded in Washington) France and the United Kingdom rejected any political reform(1). It is true that the fund’s proposals are feeble. It is true that even after far more ambitious reforms the IMF would remain the wrong body, constitutionally destined to fail. But this is not why our government is holding out. It is resisting change because it wants to preserve its imperial rank.

The United Kingdom, with 1% of the world’s population, has 5% of the IMF’s votes(2). Sub-Saharan Africa, with 12% of the population, has 4.6%(3). The UK’s share equals that of China and India put together. It is 5 times as big as Argentina’s, 19 times Bangladesh’s, 35 times Kenya’s, 124 times bigger than Malawi’s(4). The G7 nations – the UK, US, Japan, Germany, France, Canada and Italy – together possess 45% of the vote. The other 177 members are left to squabble over the remains.

Even these numbers tell only half the story. The five countries with the biggest quotas – the US, UK,

Japan, Germany and France – are each allowed to appoint their own executive director to the IMF’s board(5). The rest must submit their candidates for election. Because poor nations don’t know what’s good for them, they are assigned to the tutelage of richer ones. The votes of the English-speaking Caribbean countries are given to Canada. Mongolia is represented by Australia, Kazakhstan by Belgium(6). The reason the UK and France are resisting even the most timid reforms is that these would tip them below the threshold for automatic election: like the other countries they would be represented on the board as part of a bloc.

Power is distributed like this because the IMF is a plutocracy. A country’s vote represents its “quota”, which is a function of its gross domestic product. In theory the quota reflects countries’ financial contributions to the fund. This is no longer the case, as the IMF receives much of its income from loan repayments from poorer nations. But the old formula has resisted 60 years of complaints.

The result is that the governments which are never made subject to the IMF’s strictures control it, while those whose countries have been reduced to an IMF franchise have no say in the way it runs. The fund’s allocation of votes is a perfect inversion of democracy.

A new report by ActionAid gives us a glimpse of how this unfair distribution of power affects the poor(7). After years of protests by poor countries and their supporters in the rich world, the IMF and the World Bank at last permitted them to provide healthcare and education without charge. The rich nations also promised, in 2000, to ensure that by 2015 every child on earth would have primary education(8). It looked like a great victory for the global justice movement. But the IMF is ensuring that the promise won’t be met. It has, in effect, forbidden the poorest nations to hire sufficient teachers.

No one disputes that public sector wage rises can contribute to inflation. No one denies that governments have to exercise some degree of restraint. But the paternalists who run the IMF – who are fixated on creating safe havens for foreign capital – cannot help micromanaging the economies of the poor nations, without reference to the needs of the people who live there. The limits they have imposed on the public sector pay bill ensure that schooling can’t be improved.

ActionAid studied three very poor countries with major education problems: Malawi, Mozambique and Sierra Leone. After they abolished user fees (and when the civil war ended in Sierra Leone), vast numbers of pupils enrolled. But a combination of the rich nations’ failure to provide the foreign aid they had promised and the restrictions imposed by the IMF has prevented these countries from meeting the new demand. As a result, the pupil to teacher ratio in Sierra Leone is 57:1; in Malawi 72:1 and in Mozambique 74:1. That’s the average: in rural areas it can be much higher. Many of the teachers are untrained; many give up because they cannot survive on their wages. In Malawi, for example, the goods required for the most basic level of subsistence cost $107 a month. A trained teacher receives $55(9).

So crowds of pupils strain to hear a scarcely-literate teacher somewhere in the middle distance seeking to instruct them without books, chalk, paper or pens. We should not be surprised to discover that 40% of children fail to complete primary school in Sierra Leone and Mozambique, and 70% in Malawi. Most of the drop-outs are girls.

As a result, these countries are stuck in a vicious circle of misery. Until education improves, GDP remains low. Until GDP rises, there’s little money for education. As one of the agencies charged with rescuing countries from poverty, the IMF should be seeking to break this circle. But the conditions it attaches to its loans keep these countries in their place. In Malawi the IMF sets the ceiling for public sector wages directly; in Sierra Leone and Mozambique the broader macroeconomic rules it imposes have the same effect. ActionAid argues that its fiscal targets are outdated and unnecessary: all these countries have now achieved sufficient stability to start raising teachers’ pay.

But in no case did the IMF consult either the public or the state’s own ministry of education before laying down the law. The amount of money a teacher in rural Malawi is paid is decided by the men in Horse Guards Road and Pennsylvania Avenue. Except for the district commissioners in pith helmets, little has changed since the country was called Nyasaland.

Last year Tony Blair acknowledged that the IMF “must become more representative of emerging economic powers and give greater voice to developing countries.”(10) But he just can’t let go. The proposed reforms do nothing to democratise the IMF; by linking the quota to purchasing power parity rather than raw GDP, they simply turn it into a more sophisticated plutocracy. But they would have the effect of very slightly empowering some middle-income countries while taking a few votes away from some of the rich ones. Even that is too much for the Emperor of Africa. If the British government wants to help the poor, it must first give up its power to tell them how to live. Until that happens, everything the prime minister says about “partnership” and “solidarity”(11) with the world’s oppressed is humbug.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. Larry Elliott, 13^th April 2007. UK opposes plan for developing nations to have more say at IMF. The Guardian.

2. International Monetary Fund, 2007. IMF Members’ Quotas and Voting Power, and IMF Board of Governors

http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/memdir/members.htm

3.David Woodward, New Economics Foundation, February 2007. IMF Voting Reform: Need, Opportunity and Options. Paper for the G24 Technical Meeting, 12 March 2007. http://www.g24.org/wood0307.pdf

4. International Monetary Fund, ibid.

5. David Woodward, ibid.

6. International Monetary Fund, ibid.

7. Akanksha A. Marphatia et al, April 2007. Confronting the Contradictions: The IMF, wage bill caps and

the case for teachers. ActionAid. http://www.actionaid.org/assets/pdf/1%20%20CONFRONTING%20THE%20CONTRADICTIONS%20E-VERSION.pdf

8. The UN Millennium Development Goals, 2000. http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/

9. ActionAid, ibid.

10. Tony Blair, 26^th May 2006. Foreign Policy Speech 3. http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page9549.asp

11. Tony Blair, 8^th July 2005. Statement on the final day of the G8 Summit.

http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page7877.asp

Jazz and Jihad

April 16, 2007

By Gilad Atzmon

Speech given at University of Denver, 13 April 2007

Ladies and Gentlemen,

For many years I considered America as my promised land. As a young Jazz musician I was pretty convinced that sooner or later I would end up living in NYC. My Jerusalem was Downtown Manhattan and of course my holy scriptures were the old Blue Note vinyls. My Rabbis were named Coltrane, Bird, Miles, Duke, Dizzy, Bill Evans and naturally, there were many others. I was convinced of this reality for a while, and in fact, it took time before I realised that Jazz was far more than mere music. It took a while before I gathered that Jazz was something else, that it was actually a form of resistance. Nowadays I realise that Jazz is no different from Jihad, accordingly, playing Jazz is my personal Jihad. I do grasp that some people in this room may already find my ideas nostalgic, some may even be convinced that I am either totally deluded or just out of my mind. I can live with it. I do realise that ‘things have changed’, they’ve changed for you as much as they’ve changed for me. I do realise that Jazz is not exactly a form of resistance anymore. May I mention that America isn’t my promised land either. In fact, at the time of writing this talk, I wasn’t even sure whether I would be allowed entry into your country. As much as Jazz, the classical music of America, has been a call for freedom, America is not a free place anymore. I often argue that before liberating others, it is the American people who should first liberate themselves. I am pretty sure that sooner or later they will.

Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine

I have been participating in some public debates lately concerning the common denominator between Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan. I’m glad to mention that it is rather noticeable that more and more people are now happy to admit what some of us realised years ago. The Palestinians, the Iraqis and the Afghanis are paying a very dear price for the Ziocentric shift within the Anglo-American decision-makers circuit. Seemingly, Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine are just the aperitif for an endless feast. The Ziocons have some big appetite to satisfy. The same lobbies that led America towards this disastrous invasion in Iraq and Afghanistan are now doing whatever they can to push America towards intervention in Iran and Syria. For those few who still fail to realise it, America has been operating officially as an Israeli mission force. It currently fights the last sovereign pockets of Muslim resistance.

Often enough, the true aim of the Zionist lobbies is concealed. Instead the Zionist lobbies promote some righteous phoney humanitarian alternatives. The American Jewish Committee (AJC), for instance, is aggressively lobbying against human rights abuse in Iran and Darfur. Since human rights issues are really close to my heart, I find myself wondering whether the Jewish organisation shouldn’t rather be concentrating on the colossal war crimes that are daily repeated by Israel in Palestine. Rather occasionally we read about AIPAC equating Iran and Syria with Nazi Germany. Again, someone should remind the Zionist lobbyists that actually it is Israel, the “Jews Only State”, that happens to be the one and only ideological remnant of racist nationalism.

Three weeks ago the Palestine Chronicle made an on-line poll. It asked the following question: ‘Does the Israel Lobby control US policy on the Middle East?’

Needless to mention, no one would even have dared raising such a question five years ago. Now this question is asked repeatedly and as it seems, people aren’t shying off from telling what they really think. 80% said yes, 15% said no, and 4% were not sure. Looking at these results points to the reality many want us to deny. The vast majority of English-speaking Palestinians, Palestinian solidarity campaigners and anti-war activists are now ready to admit that the Israel Lobby controls US policy in the Middle East. We are ready to accept the fact that America operates as an Israeli mission force. America straightens the line with Israeli interests and sacrifices its sons and daughters maintaining Israeli regional hegemony.

But here is an interesting twist. I do not intend to talk to you about Zionised America. I want to believe that the majority of Palestinian supporters and anti-war activists in this room know far more about it than me. I would like to try taking the discussion further. I would like to elaborate on the notion of solidarity and empathy.

Those who are familiar with my writings know that I am not exactly a political scientist. I am not interested in politics and I am even far less interested in politicians who, generally speaking, evoke nothing but a strong sense of repulsion in me.

Rather than politics per se, it is humanity and the notion of humanism that I am interested in. Often I find myself wondering what being in the world may entail. And I better admit it; I am puzzled by the fact that as a society, as a collective bunch of individuals, we have managed to continuously fail to act for the people of Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan. I think that this very collective failure is in itself an alarming message. Thus, rather than looking into the crimes committed by Blair, Bush and the Ziocons, I am becoming gradually interested in the general Western apathy. To be more precise, I would argue that the common denominator between Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine is our collective indifference to a crime that is committed on our behalf and in our names.

As some of us may remember, in the days leading to the doomed illegal invasion of Iraq, the anti-war movement was extremely successful in mobilizing millions of people into protest. We saw them in every capital. They were calling Blair and Bush to withdraw their military plans. Millions of people questioned the sickening Anglo-American intelligence hoax. We could all see through the lies, we could all foresee the emerging crime, we were outraged, and we were convinced that we were doing the right thing. Yet, strangely enough, just four years later, with hundreds of thousands dead, with millions of casualties, with many millions of displaced people, when it is clear that everything went as wrong as it possibly could, when it is openly established that “the danger of Iraq’s WMDs” was nothing but a lie, not very many care about it all anymore. Now when the grim prophecy turns into reality of genocide with no end, we are collectively sinking into apathy. What are the logos behind this collective indifference, why did we lose interest? Why don’t we fight? Why aren’t we a mass movement?

I am not so sure whether I have the exact answers at my disposal, yet, I may be able to throw some light on the issue.

Cultural Clash

I am inclined to admit that the notion of Cultural Clash has indeed some deep meanings especially when it comes to the discourse of solidarity. Naturally, we tend to expect the subject of our solidarity to endorse our views while dumping his own. As much as Blair and Bush insist upon democratising the Muslim world, we, the so-called left humanists have our own various agendas for the region and its people. In Europe some archaic Marxists are convinced that ‘working class politics’ is the only viable outlook of the conflict and its solution. Some other deluded socialists and egalitarians are talking about liberating the Muslims of their religious traits. The cosmopolitans within the solidarity movement would suggest to Palestinians that nationalism and national identity belongs to the past. Noticeably, many of us love Muslim and Arabs as long as they act as white, post-enlightenment Europeans. In other words, we love Muslims as long as they stop being Muslims.

For those who fail to realise, I may as well mentioned that ‘working class politics’ has nothing to do with Palestine, Iraq or Afghanistan. For those who fail to see the obvious truth, I may as well mention that the industrial revolution has never made it to Gaza. Furthermore, the landslide victory of the Hamas proves beyond doubt that Palestinians are not exactly on the verge of dropping Islam. The million Shias that protested in Najaf last Monday were not exactly secular Arabs either. It is crucial to mention that the Palestinian struggle is a national struggle. The million Iraqi Shias who followed their Cleric Muqtada al-Sadr last Monday were overtly burning American flags while raising their own Iraqi ones as high as they could. In other words, we have good reason to believe that they may hold a consistent and genuine nationalist vision of their conflict and its resolution. Again, to expect Palestinians or Iraqis to become secular, cosmopolitan and working class ideologists is to expect Arabs and Muslims to act as European Marxists. It has noting to do with solidarity; it is actually nothing but projection. We project our solipsistic worldviews on others.

Self-centred Activism

In Lacanian terminology, love means loving oneself through the other. At large, our notion of solidarity is not much different: we run a constant risk of performing solidarity with ourselves through the suffering of Palestinians and Iraqis. We are at risk of using Palestinians and Iraqis as an approval of our greatness. Alternatively I would suggest that to support the other means to accept otherness, to accept that which you may never grasp. To accept otherness is to let in the unknown and the unfamiliar. To support Palestine is to back the Hamas and to support Iraq is to back the Iraqi resistance and liberation struggle. Simply speaking, to show solidarity is to support and accept other people and their will.

But somehow, instead of doing just that, in most cases we happen to transform our subject of solidarity into a fetish. We self indulge with peace ideologies at the expense of other people’s pain. We instrumentally use the cry of the other as a reassurance of our own goodness. This may explain why so many of us have lost interest in Iraq and Palestine. If all we are interested in is just making love to ourselves, Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iran and Syria are more than replaceable. As it happens, once in a while we may show up in mass demonstrations and then just fade away into apathy for a decade or so.

We Get Away with It

Why do we fade away? Because we get away with it. Legally speaking, America and Britain are responsible for the colossal carnage in Iraq. Bearing in mind the fact that America and Britain are democracies and adding the embarrassing fact that the people of these two ‘great democracies’ have re-elected war criminals, leaves no other option but admitting a collective guilt. To a certain extent, every American and British citizen is liable for the crimes in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and Afghanistan. Yet this state of criminality means very little to most of us. Americans and Brits at least for the time being simply get away with it.

America has lost 3,000 of its sons and daughters in the Iraqi war. As much as I feel sorry for those who lost their beloved, for a superpower the size of America, such a scale of loss is nothing but a negligible casualty rate. In comparison, on D-Day, America lost more or less the same number of combatants in a few hours. In modern warfare, superpowers are mainly engaged in killing innocent people from afar. America doesn’t risk its soldiers. It doesn’t provide occupied Iraq and Afghanistan with even elementary security. Seemingly, the American Generals realise that this would cost lives of their troops. How come the Americans fail to provide security? They simply get away with it. Why are we sinking into apathy? More or less because of the same reason, we get away with it.

A Bridge too Far

As I am getting to the end of my talk, I may conclude that supporting Muslims and Jihad is probably a bridge too far for most Westerners. The typical Westerner doesn’t know how to bridge the gap between ‘materialism’ and ‘Jihad’ or between ‘self-loving’ and ‘martyrdom’. We happen to regard our lives as a precious gift with an immense value. We submitted to the post-enlightenment notion of individuality and individualism. Succumbing to the school of orthodox rationalism we believe in the ultimate power of reason. We adore science and admire technology. We are libidinally aroused by electronic gadgets.

Seemingly, spirit and beauty means very little to us unless attached to a commodity. In our Americanised reality, existence means market value. Yet, spirit of resistance and beauty are invaluable. I may suggest that we will never be able to fully understand what the Palestinian and Iraqi struggle means to its people unless we liberate ourselves from our narrow material vision of reality. We can never grasp people who sacrifice the ultimate unless we acknowledge that there is far more to life than just life. We can never understand Iraqi insurgency and the Palestinian liberation struggle unless we try to understand what soil may mean to people who refuse to get drunk on Coca-Cola.

The search for the meaning of solidarity is a personal issue. I believe that the meaning of solidarity is probably a very dynamic notion. I am starting to realise that within the current structure of affairs, the left who was pretty effective in mobilizing anti-imperial campaigns for years, may not provide anything for Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq. The left, being a rational, post-enlightenment outlook, has its problem to solve with Islam and religious devotion. I hope that I am wrong here. I can see some isolated islands of left dialectic thinkers are ready to acknowledge that Muslim resistance may as well convey an alternative vision of reality and resistance.

I can speak for myself. For me, Jihad and Jazz are very similar forms of commitment. For me, the generations of Black Americans who sacrificed everything for the sake of beauty and resistance were actually engaged in a holy war. For me it was Bird, Max Roach, Dizzy, Coltrane and others who went far beyond the American dream of materialism and market value. Jazz was their voice of freedom. Jazz was their call for a change. Jazz was an ideology, a spirit, and a way of living as well as dying. To be a Jazz musician is to fight for beauty, to create and recreate, to construct and deconstruct, to question while knowing that answers may not be available for a while. To play Jazz is to get lost deliberately. To play Jazz is to leave the self behind.

Gilad Atzmon is an internationally acclaimed jazz musician whose CD Exile was selected by the BBC in 2003 as Album of the Year. He was born in Israel and served in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), and is now living in self-exile in the UK. Visit his web site at: www.gilad.co.uk. He can be reached at: gilad@gilad.co.uk

Blair blames crime on 'black culture'

Mystery solved. Black culture killed over 600,000 Iraqis.
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Blair blames spate of murders on black culture

· Political correctness not helping, says PM
· Community leaders react angrily to comments

Patrick Wintour and Vikram Dodd
Thursday April 12, 2007
The Guardian

Tony Blair yesterday claimed the spate of knife and gun murders in London was not being caused by poverty, but a distinctive black culture. His remarks angered community leaders, who accused him of ignorance and failing to provide support for black-led efforts to tackle the problem.

One accused him of misunderstanding the advice he had been given on the issue at a Downing Street summit.

Black community leaders reacted after Mr Blair said the recent violence should not be treated as part of a general crime wave, but as specific to black youth. He said people had to drop their political correctness and recognise that the violence would not be stopped "by pretending it is not young black kids doing it".

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It needed to be addressed by a tailored counter-attack in the same way as football hooliganism was reined in by producing measures aimed at the specific problem, rather than general lawlessness.

Mr Blair's remarks are at odds with those of the Home Office minister Lady Scotland, who told the home affairs select committee last month that the disproportionate number of black youths in the criminal justice system was a function of their disproportionate poverty, and not to do with a distinctive black culture.

Giving the Callaghan lecture in Cardiff, the prime minister admitted he had been "lurching into total frankness" in the final weeks of his premiership. He called on black people to lead the fight against knife crime. He said that "the black community - the vast majority of whom in these communities are decent, law abiding people horrified at what is happening - need to be mobilised in denunciation of this gang culture that is killing innocent young black kids".

Mr Blair said he had been moved to make his controversial remarks after speaking to a black pastor of a London church at a Downing Street knife crime summit, who said: "When are we going to start saying this is a problem amongst a section of the black community and not, for reasons of political correctness, pretend that this is nothing to do with it?" Mr Blair said there needed to be an "intense police focus" on the minority of young black Britons behind the gun and knife attacks. The laws on knife and gun gangs needed to be toughened and the ringleaders "taken out of circulation".

Last night, British African-Caribbean figures leading the fight against gang culture condemned Mr Blair's speech. The Rev Nims Obunge, chief executive of the Peace Alliance, one of the main organisations working against gang crime, denounced the prime minister.

Mr Obunge, who attended the Downing Street summit chaired by Mr Blair in February, said he had been cited by the prime minister: "He makes it look like I said it's the black community doing it. What I said is it's making the black community more vulnerable and they need more support and funding for the work they're doing. ... He has taken what I said out of context. We came for support and he has failed and has come back with more police powers to use against our black children."

Keith Jarrett, chair of the National Black Police Association, whose members work with vulnerable youngsters, said: "Social deprivation and delinquency go hand in hand and we need to tackle both. It is curious that the prime minister does not mention deprivation in his speech."

Lee Jasper, adviser on policing to London's mayor, said: "For years we have said this is an issue the black community has to deal with. The PM is spectacularly ill-informed if he thinks otherwise.

"Every home secretary from [David] Blunkett onwards has been pressed on tackling the growing phenomenon of gun and gang crime in deprived black communities, and government has failed to respond to what has been a clear demand for additional resources to tackle youth alienation and disaffection".

The Home Office has already announced it is looking at the possibility of banning membership of gangs, tougher enforcement of the supposed mandatory five-year sentences for possession of illegal firearms, and lowering the age from 21 to 18 for this mandatory sentence.

Answering questions later Mr Blair said: "Economic inequality is a factor and we should deal with that, but I don't think it's the thing that is producing the most violent expression of this social alienation.

"I think that is to do with the fact that particular youngsters are being brought up in a setting that has no rules, no discipline, no proper framework around them."

Some people working with children knew at the age of five whether they were going to be in "real trouble" later, he said.

Mr Blair is known to believe the tendency for many black boys to be raised in families without a father leads to a lack of appropriate role models.

He said: "We need to stop thinking of this as a society that has gone wrong - it has not - but of specific groups that for specific reasons have gone outside of the proper lines of respect and good conduct towards others and need by specific measures to be brought back into the fold."

The Commission for Racial Equality broadly backed Mr Blair, saying people "shouldn't be afraid to talk about this issue for fear of sounding prejudiced".

Mr Blair spoke out as a second teenager was due to appear in court charged with the murder of 14-year-old Paul Erhahon, stabbed to death in east London on Friday. He was the seventh Londoner under 16 to be murdered since the end of January, and his 15-year-old friend, who was also stabbed, remains in hospital.

Out of America

Rupert Cornwell

Bush and Tony Soprano: two capi in big trouble

Published: 08 April 2007

This is twilight time in the United States: not of the gods but of two mafias. One family is in the White House, headed by the most unpopular President of modern times, beset by dissent and desertions. The other is the make-believe mob family headed by Tony Soprano, in what may be the best TV drama of modern times.

Tonight the first episode of the final series of The Sopranos goes on the air in the States. By the time it ends in mid-June, the show will have been around for eight years, which happens to equal two presidential terms. Nor do the similarities between politics and art end there. Just as Bush and his brand of conservative Republicans are an increasingly endangered species, so is the once legendary American Mafia. Likewise on the small screen, Tony Soprano - for all his authority and ruthlessness - can feel the net closing on his criminal kingdom in northern New Jersey.

"Is this it?" Carmela Soprano screams in the first minutes of tonight's show, as a pre-dawn knock on the door awakens her and her husband, Yes, it is indeed the feds. But on this occasion Tony will only spend a night in jail, on an FBI firearms charge. Nevertheless, the stage has been set, just as the real life stage is set for the final lame-duck episode of the Bush presidency, in a bunker-like White House, consumed by crumbling loyalties and waning power.

The betrayals and desertions are multiplying. The veteran conservative columnist Robert Novak wrote the other day that no President, not even Richard Nixon in his Watergate agonies, was as isolated in his own party as Bush is now. Then came Matthew Dowd, once a believer, as rough a political operator as they come and an important consigliere in Bush's winning campaigns of 2000, 2002 and 2004.

Last weekend Dowd broke publicly with his former boss, telling The New York Times that Bush was "secluded and bubbled-in" and generally "not the person I'd thought." He'd even drafted an editorial headed "Kerry was Right", he said, arguing that the Democratic White House contender whom Dowd helped to defeat in 2004 had been correct in urging a pullout from Iraq.

And that wasn't the end of it. Just 24 hours later Vic Gold, an old family friend of the Bushes and Cheneys, was announcing his apostasy in The Washington Post. Contrary to his assiduously cultivated image of toughness and decisiveness, Gold declared, Bush was "the weakest, most out-of-touch President in modern times".

Bush must grin and bear it, damning the errant Dowd with pity and faint praise, pretending that all is well. The TV boss has no need for such niceties. But somehow you feel sorrier for the vicious and unforgiving fictional criminal who has wrecked so many lives than for the real-life politician.

Therein lies the genius of The Sopranos. Only incidentally is it about the Mafia. At bottom it is a parable about the dark side of the American dream. For all Tony's wealth and power, there is no escaping the family demons, nor the sense of being trapped in a system that forces him to act as he does, yet whose days are so plainly numbered.

Bush must have the same feeling. He makes speeches, but nobody listens. He pulls the same levers, but now nothing happens. You are reminded of Norman Lamont's cruel jibe about John Major being "in office but not in power".

So how will these two Mafias end? Bush will presumably stagger on to his appointed exit date on 20 January 2009. But Tony Soprano's fate is far less certain. In the first episode, back in January 1999, Tony is with his shrink, delving into his unhappy childhood, trying to explain the panic attack triggered when a family of ducks that lived in his garden abruptly flew off for good. In tonight's debut of the final series, a duck skims ominously across the sky, a harbinger - but of what?

We listen to Tony musing about how 80 per cent of people in his line of business finish either in jail or "in the embalming room". So how will it end for him: killed by a rival, tried and convicted in a court of law - or, most improbably, dead of a heart attack, like Marlon Brando in The Godfather, as he tends his tomato plants? As for Bush, his leave-taking will be gentler, but no less painful. Wasn't it another politician who observed that "all political lives end in failure"?

Exposing Tony Blair’s secret army: Death Squads

7 April 2007

Features

Exposing Gordon Kerr and Tony Blair’s secret army

Two of Britain’s most secret military units operating in Iraq are run by a man who ran death squads in Northern Ireland.

British covert military unit the Joint Support Group (JSG) works alongside US covert forces in the aptly named “Task Force Black”.

Earlier this year the JSG was lauded in the Sunday Telegraph for its role in running dozens of double agents in Iraq, many of who had infiltrated the various insurgent groups and militias.

The Telegraph claimed the regiment is “one of the coalition’s most effective and deadly weapons in the fight against terror”.

The other unit is the Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR). At its creation in 2005, suitably anonymous “military sources” told the media, “We want to place electronic ‘bugs’ close to terrorist leaders such as Osama bin Laden and have agents within the ranks of global terrorist groups.

Shooting

“We got very good at doing this in Northern Ireland in the 1980s and 1990s, and now we want to transfer this capability to the global war on terrorism.”

In July 2005, the SRR was involved in the surveillance operation which led to the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell tube station in London.

SRR officers were apparently engaged in “low-level intelligence behind the scenes” when Jean Charles was shot. According to the “military sources”, this was the first time the new regiment had been engaged in an operation.

In December that year two British soldiers in the SRR were arrested by police in Iraq.

Who were the two men and what were they doing when they were seized outside al-Jamiat police station in Basra?

What prompted British soldiers to smash down the wall of the station and demolish several buildings inside the compound in the operation to snatch them back?

At the request of the MoD, the British media obscured the faces of the two captured men (pictured above).

They had been sitting in a car outside the police station in Arabic dress. They were heavily armed and had an impressive array of surveillance equipment with them.

It was claimed at the time that the two undercover men had opened fire when they were stopped at a police roadblock, killing at least one police officer. They were part of the Britain’s undercover war in Iraq.

Both the JSG and the SRR are run by Brigadier Gordon Kerr.

Kerr’s career has taken him to troublespots all over the world. An officer in the Gordon Highlanders, he served briefly in Cyprus before his first posting in Northern Ireland in 1972.

Tony Blair appointed Kerr to head up military intelligence in Iraq in 2003 – just two weeks after an inquiry into collusion with paramilitaries in Northern Ireland sent a file about Kerr to the director of public prosecutions.

Kerr is the most senior serving intelligence officer in the army and has been rewarded with both an OBE and the queen’s gallantry medal.

In Iraq Kerr applies the “methods developed on the mean streets of Ulster during the Troubles”, as the Sunday Telegraph excitedly relates.

The government has repeatedly claimed that Northern Ireland provides the blueprint for the British army’s operations in Iraq.

Paramilitaries

From the late 1970s, various British governments backed a secret unit of the army, the Force Research Unit (FRU), which, along with the special branch of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, supplied names, addresses and photographs of Catholic targets to Loyalist paramilitaries.

The FRU was led by Gordon Kerr. When Kerr became the FRU’s commander in 1986, the 100-strong squad adopted a more aggressive approach to the running of informers.

The key person supplying information was British army agent Brian Nelson.

He infiltrated the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), the biggest Loyalist paramilitary group. His information was responsible for the murder of at least 30 Catholics.

These included many who had no connection to the IRA, including the Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane who was murdered in 1989 by the UDA’s death squad, the Ulster Freedom Fighters.

The FRU also obtained “restriction orders” from other British security and military units whereby the FRU would withdraw from an area to allow Kerr’s UDA agents to get in and out without hindrance.

Drawing on his sources in British intelligence, Nelson passed on the names and addresses of apparent IRA activists to the UDA, whose gunmen would promptly go out and “execute” the suspects.

Nelson’s activities were regularly discussed at London meetings of the Joint Intelligence Committee.

This was chaired by then Tory prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

In January 1992 Nelson agreed to plead guilty to five conspiracies to murder, and at least four sectarian murder charges against him were dropped.

In a bizarre court case lasting less than a day, Nelson’s real role was effectively covered up. After a moving tribute to his sterling work for the British army from an anonymous colonel, Nelson got ten years.

Speaking from behind a security screen the colonel stressed the lives Nelson had allegedly “saved”. Nelson was released after serving less than half his sentence, and spent the rest of his life under a false identity.

The anonymous colonel was Gordon Kerr.

Beyond Gordon Kerr, the Special Reconnaissance Regiment includes at least 100 other veterans of Britain’s dirty war in Northern Ireland.

How much does Tony Blair know about what they are up to?

Between Good and Evil

April 6, 2007

By Gilad Atzmon

The main British editorials happen to agree that Ahmadinejad has scored points in this latest naval round. I find their take on it all rather disappointing. With over 650,000 innocents dead as a direct result of the invasion of Iraq and a war against Iran looming on the horizon, it is about time British columnists stopped telling us about tactical gains and losses. Instead they should once and for all be endorsing a humanist and ethical discourse that is grounded on genuine responsibility.

The battle between Ahmadinejad and Blair is not a political or diplomatic one, it is not about points. It is actually a clash between civilizations, but more than that, it seems to be a fight between humanism and cold pragmatism. As it emerges, in this battle, it is Ahmadinejad rather than Blair who reminds us where goodness rests. Seemingly, a man who has been repeatedly presented to us by our deluded Western media as a’ radical’, ‘fundamentalist’ and ‘Islamofascist’ has proved beyond doubt that he is actually the one who knows what forgiveness and grace are all about. It was Ahmadinejad who has pardoned the enemy, it was Ahmadinejad that evoked some prospects of a peaceful future.

Brits and Americans should ask themselves whether they can recall Bush or Blair meeting with any of the many illegally detained Guantánamo Bay inmates. Brits may also want to ask themselves when was the last time their Prime Minister was seen chatting with Abu Hamza* or anyone like him. My usual Ziocon critics would obviously blame me for equating here ‘innocent’ naval personnel to ‘murderous bloodthirsty terrorists’. I would suggest to them to bear in mind that it is ‘us’ who label others as ‘terrorist’ as much as it is ‘us’ who generously label ourselves as ‘innocent’. I may as well voluntarily suggest to my possible critics that within this so-called ‘cultural clash’, it is again ‘us’ who launched an illegal war, it is ‘us’ who are legally and morally responsible for the ongoing genocide in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is ‘our’ democratically elected governments that support the Israeli atrocities in Palestine. It is ‘our’ leaders who happen to be the terrorists who fail to talk to the so-called enemy. It is ‘our’ leaders who fail to offer any hope for peace. Instead they just prepare us for many more conflicts to come. More importantly, I may suggest to my critics that in the eyes of an Iranian, the captured naval personnel are part of an invasion army that destroys Arab and Muslim States.

I wonder how the majority of British people would feel about a bunch of Iranian naval commandos operating in the English Channel, stopping every Western vessel and searching its belly for some potential military goods. I wonder as well how most Brits would feel about the democratically elected Iranian government interfering with the British Parliament’s recent decision to spend dozens of billions of Sterling on a new Trident, a weapon designed for the indiscriminate killing of millions of people. Obviously there is no need to elaborate on these rhetorical questions, the answers are clear. The vast majority of Brits wouldn’t accept anyone interfering either with British politics or with the Kingdom’s territorial waters. Yet, for the majority of Westerners, constant intimidation and destruction of Muslim or Arab States seems to be nothing other than business as usual.

I better admit it; I do not know exactly where the fifteen British sailors were captured. I am far from being qualified to say who tells the truth about this saga, whether the seamen were captured in Iranian seas or if it was in international waters. Reading some expert commentators about the subject, I tend to believe that no one has a clear-cut answer to offer. In fact, most British papers have now adopted the notion of ‘caught in disputed waters’ just to disguise their premature judgment some days ago.

However, the issue here has nothing to do with truth. The question to be asked here is: “why is it so complicated for us, Western people, to accept the possibility that the truth of the other may be slightly or even very different from ours?” I may admit that I find it rather concerning that the British press willingly and blindly bought the British government account of the naval dispute while dismissing the possibility that the Iranians may have had an adequate argument to offer.

At the end of the day, we may have to face it, Blair and his government’s record for telling the truth is not very impressive. In the last five years the British government has managed to lie more or less about everything; whether it was Iraqi WMD, 45 minutes of deployment of those imaginary weapons, or more worryingly, whether it was a phantasmic pretext for an illegal war.

It would be fair to comment that as much as Blair can hardly tell the truth, President Ahmadinejad has yet to be caught telling a lie. Ahmadinejad, though being rather unpopular in Britain, is far from deceiving his listener. Indeed, he has some harsh things to say. Unlike Blair who was generous enough to admit that the Iranian people have some past to be proud of (“we respect Iran as an ancient civilization, as a nation with a proud and dignified history” Tony Blair, 4.4.06), President Ahmadinejad insists that Iranian people are entitled as well for a present and even for a prospect of some future.

The President whom some of us call ‘Islamofascist’, believes actually that the Iranian people are equal human beings. Thus, he genuinely believes that like more or less every Western country, his country and his people have the right to benefit from atomic energy and nuclear research. Is it that outrageous? I may suggest that considering Western governments are becoming increasingly enthusiastic about atomic energy, it is basically impossible to produce any sufficient ethical argument against Ahmadinejad on that matter. Moreover, bearing in mind the Israeli nuclear might, there is not a single moral argument for preventing any of Israel’s neighbours from having at least a similar deadly capacity.

Ahmadinejad doesn’t shy off. He says what he believes to be right. He believes for instance that if the Europeans feel guilty for their past crimes against the Jews, it is the Europeans who should face their past and take responsibility for the Jews rather than dumping them in the Middle East at the expense of the Palestinian people. Again, this thought is rational as well as implacably ethically grounded. Whether we like its implication or not is a different matter. Ahmadinejad may be seen by some as a Holocaust denier, yet as far as I can see, he is one of the very few statesmen who manages to internalise the real meaning of the Holocaust. He says No to racism. Accordingly, he believes that Israel, the ‘Jews only State’, a racially orientated nationalist entity, has no right to exist as such. Ahmadinejad has never called for the liquidation of the Israeli people but rather for the dismantling of the Zionist apparatus. Again, I see nothing ethically wrong with that.

In the last days, Ahmadinejad proved again that as far as humanism and peace seeking are concerned, he is ahead of his Western rivals. Seemingly, we have a lot to learn from our Muslim brothers. In this cultural clash, it is we, the West who have lost touch with the notions of empathy and ethics. May I suggest that we start to assume some level of responsibility for things and admit that it is not Blair and Bush who should be blamed, it is we the people who are failing collectively to listen to the cry of the other. Rather than blaming Blair and his shrinking circuit of supporters, we are the ones, the silent crowd who should launch into a serious self-searching process. If humanism, rationality, analytical thinking and ethics have been seen as Western cultural assets at a certain stage, it is currently the leaders of the so-called Muslim ‘fundamentalists’ who grasp the real meaning of those qualities far better than we do.

Ahmadinejad was there to remind us all what grace was all about. Seemingly, it is Ahmadinejad who evokes the feeling of goodness and it is Blair who couldn’t match it. It was Blair who couldn’t even recruit the minimal dignity and kindness to salute his foe. British columnists should know better. Ahmadinejad didn’t win by points; it wasn’t about winning a political battle. This was just another chapter in an ongoing clash between civilizations, between Good and Evil and as it seems, we are stuck at least momentarily with Bush, Blair and their Ziocon philosophy, not exactly the civilized one and not remotely the carrier of ‘goodness’, so to say.

*http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3752517.stm

For Blair, it's child's play to make us all criminals

From identifying potential miscreants in childhood to fingerprint-activated iPods, Labour's new crime review takes the theft of our liberty to new extremes

Henry Porter
Sunday April 1, 2007
The Observer


Years ago, I asked some well-known people to write their obituaries for publication during their lifetime. The wonderful Lord Longford said that he was cowardly and had failed to serve his country properly in the war. Robert Maxwell claimed the fall of communism as one of more important personal successes. Both men were wide of the mark.
The thing about writing your own obituary, whether accurately or not, is that nobody is going to believe it anyway. Reputation, like political legacy, is not the possession of the individual to fashion how he or she likes. It is public property and each one of us has to live with that. Even Tony Blair.

Last week, an important part of the Prime Minister's Operation Legacy was published in a policy review document called 'Building on progress: security, crime and justice'. It is a dreary work and reading it, I remembered HL Mencken on President Warren Harding's use of English. 'It reminds me of a string of wet sponges,' wrote Mencken. 'It reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup... it is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself up out of a dark abyss of pish and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.'
Perhaps that's a little unfair because the review document does contain an awful lot that establishes the Prime Minister's character, the obsessions with antisocial behaviour and crime that have been responsible for the 53 law and order bills since 1997, the creation of 3,000 new criminal offences and a rise in the prison population to a record 80,299.

Some have been tempted to see the review as a liberal adjustment, but read it closely and you'll find all the old fixations about the control of the British public and 'bottom-up citizen accountability', a gargoyle of a phrase that leers at you demanding proof of your identity, your innocence and your worth to the state. Instead, it is for the government to demonstrate its worth to us and we are all innocent until proven guilty by a normal court of law.

There is something Maoist in the review's exhortation. Think of the lunacy in China when Mao ordered the people into the fields to bang drums and tins so that the birds could never settle and therefore died of exhaustion and you have the tenor of this report. It is both self-congratulatory and demanding. As long as one bird is alive, none of us can rest. We must press on eradicating all crime and ensuring against the slightest possibility of deviancy.

We are told that every child in the country will be assessed to see if they are likely to turn to crime. Those that comply to a profile set by some grim determinist working for the government will be 'actively managed' by youth justice workers and local social services. This is what Blair meant by being tough on the causes of crime.

In the introduction, he says: 'It was never this government's belief that poverty and deprivation were excuses for crime.' Note the use of the word 'excuse' in this context, rather than the expected 'cause'. It lets the government off the hook about poverty being a contributing factor in crime.

What kind of intervention will the state contemplate? Fatherly chats on responsibility and homework, or will children end up being taken from problem families for a period of special attention and re-education? The implications are sinister; it seems clear that the government is taking too much upon itself. That is the common theme. On page 46, the review says: 'Citizens are asked to accept the gathering of greater levels of information and intelligence in the knowledge that this will facilitate improvements in public safety and law.' Which is to say we must all expect to be under total surveillance from the cradle to the grave.

The review mentions ID cards, mobile fingerprint readers, crowd scanners and an expansion of the DNA database of people who have committed no crime. There will be iPods and mobile phones that will work only when they sense one person's fingerprints. So we will be required to give Apple or Nokia fingerprints before buying a piece of equipment.

There will be automatic visual recognition cameras - no better way of controlling the population in times when the government is under pressure - and we read of virtual courts, in which a 'video-link technology could allow for hearings where a defendant is dealt with at the police station'.

This is utterly wrong. Such a court would not have the chance to examine the defendant in person, to assess his circumstances and character, the likelihood of his telling the truth or the treatment he may have received in the police cells. A video link hides much, for you can never tell what is going on off-camera, what threats are made, what prompts are being held up.

We must perhaps accept that the back-room boys in Blair's blue sky lab may be indulging the Prime Minister with these control fantasies at the same time as seeking to throw this part of his legacy forward into the political culture of the future. We must accept also that they may mean well despite the leaden evidence of autocratic mania.

In all this, there is a very large mystery. At the same time as arguing for the necessity of this 21st-century version of the police state, the report also does a pretty good job of telling us about Blair's great success. 'Crime has fallen 35 per cent since 1997', with 'six million fewer offences committed each year'. And: 'Offences brought to justice increased by 37 per cent from March 2002 to September 2006.' It even admits to the perception gap: 'Two-thirds of the public believe that crime has been rising' when there has, in fact, 'been a significant fall in crime levels since 1997'.

Who has kept this state of siege alive in the minds of the public? The Blair government. How else would the Prime Minister have managed to mount the assault on our liberty that he has?

That is certainly part of his legacy. There is another element which is more hidden or, rather, it is one that we have become used to, and that is the widespread confusion in Blair's administration between state and government. Senior civil servants complain how Blair and his ministers refuse to recognise that in order to function properly they must keep the politics of government at arm's length. Blair's administration thinks of itself as the embodiment of the state. Therefore, everyone who works for the state works for the government.

It is the same attitude that allows the Prime Minister's strategy groups to dream up the bossy, intrusive, controlling, presumptuous and downright dangerous practices described in 'Building on progress'. When Gordon Brown becomes Prime Minister, we will be able to judge whether the review is Blair's legacy or New Labour's.

As to a proper memorial for the Prime Minister, a man I would dearly love to be praising now, we must look no further than the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square which falls inside the area where spontaneous demonstration of any sort has been banned by Labour. A modest bronze of an ordinary man, gagged and holding a blank placard perhaps? Or a cascade of birds falling from the sky, each one representing a lost right or freedom?

henry.porter@observer.co.uk

Bush, Iran & Selective Outrage

consortiumnews.com

By Robert Parry
April 2, 2007

One of the least endearing features of Washington’s political/media hierarchy is its propensity for selective outrage, like what is now coming from George W. Bush about the “inexcusable behavior” of the Iranian government in holding 15 British sailors whom Bush has labeled “hostages.”

This is the same President Bush who often mocks the very idea that international law should apply to him; he’s fond of the punch line: “International law? I better call my lawyer.” But Bush becomes a pious defender of international law when it suits his geopolitical interests.

The major U.S. news media predictably follows along, getting into an arms-crossed harrumph over foreigners trampling on the inviolate principles of international law, the same rules that should never constrain U.S. actions.

So, when British sailors were captured on March 23 after they may or may not have crossed over an ill-defined demarcation between Iraqi and Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf, the assumption in the U.S. media was that Iran must be wrong. After all, Bush has listed Iran as a charter member of the “axis of evil”; its leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a notorious hothead; and everyone knows the Brits always play by the rules.

Of course, left outside this narrow frame of reference was the gross violation of international law – the bloody invasion of Iraq in 2003 – that put the Brits there in the first place.

Back then, international law was deemed little more than a nuisance getting in the way of what President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair wanted to do, i.e. conquer Iraq, install a compliant government, "privatize" its resources, and threaten other countries in the region to get in line.

Bush regarded the United Nations Charter and its ban on aggressive war as some goofy experiment in multilateralism. Blair actually knew better. Though he recognized that the Iraq invasion would violate this fundamental tenet of international law, Blair went along anyway.

From a longer-range historical context, there were other facts that would need forgetting if one wanted to get worked up into a moral frenzy. These include British colonial domination of both Iraq and Iran, and the CIA’s role in overthrowing Iran’s elected government in 1953 and reinstalling the brutal Shah of Iran on the Peacock Throne.

The combined interventions by the United Kingdom and the United States may have cost the lives of hundreds of thousands – possibly millions – of Iraqis and Iranians over the past century, but somehow Blair and Bush have positioned themselves as the innocent victims – at least as far as the Western press corps is concerned.

Iranian Detentions

So, in December and January, when Bush ordered raids against Iranian government offices inside Iraq and had five Iranian military officials detained indefinitely, there was barely a peep in the Western news media about violations of international law. Though the Iranians weren’t formally charged, their plight elicited little sympathy.

There were expectations that the Iranians might be released on March 21, the start of the Iranian new year. After that date passed, some observers believe Iran may have opted for a tit-for-tat response in seizing the 15 British sailors.

If that is the case, the Iranians apparently don’t understand the rules of the game: that President Bush has the unilateral right to do whatever he wants in the world and any reaction is unjustified, if not an invitation to an American military retaliation.

Escalating the war of words with Iran during a press conference at Camp David on March 31, Bush dismissed out of hand any possible “quid pro quos,” such as a swap of the two sets of detainees.

“The Iranians must give back the hostages,” Bush declared. “It’s inexcusable behavior.”

Regarding the captured British sailors, Blair and other U.K. officials have taken particular umbrage over videos released by Iran showing the sailors eating or being interviewed. This complaint references the principle of the Geneva Conventions against subjecting captured soldiers to public humiliation.

This same Geneva provision also was an issue – and another example of Western double standards – in the early days of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

In the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriya, five American soldiers were captured and their images were broadcast on Iraqi TV. Bush administration officials immediately denounced the brief televised interviews as a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

"It's illegal to do things to POWs that are humiliating to those prisoners," declared Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Rumsfeld’s charge was repeated over and over by U.S. television networks as the American people were agitated to a fever pitch. But American TV reporters stayed silent about the obvious inconsistency between the outrage over the footage of the American soldiers and the earlier U.S. broadcasts of Iraqi prisoners of war.

The Iraqi POWs had been paraded before U.S. cameras as "proof" that Iraqi resistance was crumbling – and no U.S. journalist working for a major news outlet raised any question about a Geneva violation. Some Iraqi POWs were shown forced at gunpoint to kneel with their hands behind their heads as they were patted down by U.S. soldiers. Other Iraqis were bound by plastic handcuffs and shown with bags over their heads.

Beyond the hypocrisy implicit in the double standards, CNN and other U.S. cable networks apparently saw no irony in the fact that they presented these scenes of kneeling and bound Iraqis over the title, “Operation: Iraqi Freedom.”

Guantanamo Bay

In protesting alleged Geneva violations by Iraq in March 2003, the U.S. news media also was silent about the fact that Bush had drawn worldwide condemnation for his decision to strip many POWs captured in Afghanistan of their Geneva Convention rights.

Bush ordered hundreds of these captives to be put in tiny outdoor cages at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The prisoners were shaved bald and forced to kneel with their eyes, ears and mouths covered to deprive them of their senses.

The shackled prisoners were filmed shuffling about in leg irons or being carried on stretchers to interrogation sessions. Their humiliation was broadcast widely.

In early 2002, U.S. allies, including some British officials, objected to the treatment of these prisoners and to Bush's unilateral assertion that they were "unlawful combatants" outside the protection of international law.

Legal experts noted that "unlawful combatant" was not even a category recognized by international law. The Geneva Conventions also required that detainees whose status was in any doubt must be accorded all enumerated rights until a "competent tribunal" was established to determine each individual prisoner's legal status.

Instead, Bush insisted that he had the sole right to declare which prisoners were POWs (with protections under the Geneva Conventions) and which ones were to be considered "unlawful combatants" (with no protections under the Geneva Conventions). Even Bush-designated POWs only received the Geneva rights that Bush saw fit to grant.

Human rights groups charged, too, that the U.S. treatment of some prisoners crossed the line into torture, which also is forbidden by international law. According to a variety of public accounts, prisoners have been subjected to water-boarding, a practice that simulates drowning, and to painful stress positions for long periods of time.

For its part, however, the Bush administration has denied engaging in torture and insists that all prisoners have been treated humanely.

Though these controversies about Bush’s disdain for international law are well known to the U.S. news media, the context disappeared again when press interest turned to the captured British sailors in late March 2007.

Suddenly, it was a new day with Bush and Blair fully committed to international law. Even a relatively minor Geneva transgression, such as filming captives eating, became a justification for unrestrained outrage.

Without any acknowledgement about their own abrogation of international law, the British and U.S. governments lifted these principles from the gutter, dusted them off and put them on a pedestal. The grand human rights defender, George W. Bush, lectured other countries about “inexcusable behavior” – and no prominent Western journalist called him to account for his contradictions.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

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