Blair, the Media, Intellectuals, Complicity and Cowardice.

William Rees Mogg, in The Times, February 1st, 2010 writes in his first paragraph of an article headed :  - Blair the dictator bulldozed us into war -

 " It may never lead to his being tried in any court, but there is nevertheless a public verdict of his responsibility for the British action in Iraq." ...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/william_rees_mogg/article7010321.ece

Why might it never lead to a trial? What right does he have to make such an assertion and then pour his feeble outrage onto paper for the public domain, and at the same time imply that 'International Law needs to be clarified' - International Law prohibiting War is the clearest Law on the planet. What planet is Rees-mogg on, or more to the point what drugs?

Is not the Law clear? YES.

Has not the crime been reported to British Police? YES

Is there an investigation under way(ish) at The London Metropolitan Police War Crimes Unit? YES

Is this a secret or covert operation, requiring special police investigation? NO!

So, why is Rees Mogg not saying all of this and not asking the following questions :

WHY IS THAT INVESTIGATION STALLED?

WHO IS STALLING IT?

AND WHAT ARE THE FULL CHARGES, and the LIST OF ALL THOSE LEGALLY LIABLE FOR THESE WAR CRIMES?

Is it possible he is unaware of all this?  Hardly.

Very slightly since those involved

( http://www.makewarshistory.org.uk )

have written to EVERY MP, to every News Media outlet, have hosted meetings in both Houses of Parliament, posted videos to youtube, have facebook, myspace, twitter and other online resources, which have been  active for quite some time (the first attempt at reporting war crimes was in 2001, for Afghnaistan!) and have an online international campaign informing people of the Law, and asking that the Law be obeyed, calling their campaign a CIVIL OBEDIENCE campaign. Hardly the shrinking violets of the activist movement, yet totally ignored by mainstream mdeia, an absolutely focussed and active ignorance. Caught in the act of ignoring.

While certain forces may have bulldozed towards war, as Rees Mogg writes, certain others (public intellectuals, media pundits etc ) refused to face the facts at the time : That  War as a Tool of Policy Enforcement is wrong, amoral AND illegal.... and they parroted the lines that Policy dictated. Terrorists. WMD. Nasty Dictators (who used weapons systems our State sold him on his own people, who waged a war with Iran on our States behalf). Half truths are often worse than outright lies.

http://www.medialens,org  a British website that had been challenging the way in which media reports wars with such deep bias as to actively support those wars, is replete with such examples, carefully de-constructed, almost to tedium, based on irrefutable evidence, by the medialens crew;  and vehemently defended by said intellectuals and pundits. Some of the former is quite entertaining. Most of the latter is utterly reprehensible.

And now, when the veil is lifted by Blair himself, when he exposed his crass logic and astute denial before Chilcott's gentle probing, in full public view, (with no option but to go the whole hog), a veil many of us have been able to pierce and had removed, even as he prepared for war, and so now, some of these intellectuals finally find their voice? Give us a break!

STOP THE WAR coalition must have known at the time that the war was utterly illegal. They have access to the best legal minds in the country. Look to the results of their actions. Did they inform or mop up concern? Did they harness the compassion, the horror and anger of the people and use that to act, or did they organise a we will  'do our best' gig, much as Bob Geldof might have, again mopping up concern, knowing that it was futile because it offered no real challenge?

A general strike would have been a good move. A blockade by the 2 million people and their friends who did not turn up for the march, yet who supported the intent of that march in Hyde Park would have been fun. And effective.It was estimated that for every one person on that march at least another 4 agreed with them. Some say 15. That's between 8 and 30 million people. That's a lot of power if marshalled. Polls say more than that opposed the war. Anyways, STWC failed, and failed miserably, in their stated aims.

So back to the future, 2010 : the majority of mainstream media even still parrot the policy line; Blair's testimony last Friday was 'assured', a 'fine performance' according to most press this weekend...

Iran still the de-stabilising force in Iraq ( a lie I have dealt with in detail elsewhere), Tony the 'victim' of circumstance and unfortunate planning...

The disconnect is further highlighted with the recent press coverage of the issue of assisted death in cases of severe debilitating painful fatal disease, where the assistance is requested by individuals whose minds are clear, whose intent is clear, whose assistant is a close and dearly loved one.

The DPP saw fit to go ahead with a prosecution for murder for a woman who helped her daughter, who had lain in bed for nearly 20 years, her body shattered by disease, her life shattered by constant unrelenting pain, who had decided enough is enough and I want to die, and was so weakened she required assistance up to the point she herself pressed the plunger of the syringe containing her final does, her final act in her own life.

Yet stalls with regard to a man and a system that not only   failed to protect a nation of 29 million innocent people, but actively and illegally enabled a war of aggression, that denied the Iraqis grass roots democracy when the Iraqis made so bold as to unite and hold their own elections, that selected it's own chosen men to run Iraqs cities, towns and villages, that actively funded and supplied a police force that actively repressed those who dared to engage their own democracy, that started a war of resistance that was portrayed as 'sectarian', that led to even more slaughter, torture, terror for Iraqis?

These are the facts.

What say you now, Rees Mogg? Defend your pious stance from this perspective. You cannot!

Take a walk to your local police station, and report the crimes of Blair and the UK Government. Do something useful.


Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's your gift to universe

Shock Doctors of The World ........

Iraq - The REAL purpose behind the Invasion, Occupation and Shock and Awe

I have just completed reading through a few books, “Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Klien, “The Lucifer Effect” by Philip Zimbardo and “The Age of the Warrior” by Robert Fisk.

Some heavy reading indeed as all books look at the reality behind the myth of the US/UK Governments desire to bring democracy to Iraq in the context of Global Free Trade Movement as espoused by Milton Friedman, the IMF, WTO et al.

Shock Doctrine explores the connection between torture techniques as developed from the (insane) idea of Electro Shock Therapy, Sensory Deprivation, disorientation etc and the history of Free Market Economics in South America over the past 40 years.

The policies of the IMF, WTO and the UK/US Governments have never been voted into being for one reason alone - those policies attack the very poorest, undermine workers rights and collective power, dismantle the welfare state and hand a countries resources over to ‘the market’ - those who trade in shares, commodities and currencies - in the belief, the ideology of Milton Freidman and the Chicago School, that unrestrained capitalism is the only way to enable economies to continually expand and grow.

Freidman hated the idea that a Government could control and own it’s own utilities, health system, education system etc. on behalf of its population. His belief was that all these ‘Services’ ought to be run as business enterprises in private hands as he believed that the pure self interested profit motive would be more efficient, more effective in delivering the services than the welfare motivation of Keynes. He saw Keynes as an appeaser of the working classes in the same way Tony Blair sees the Anti-war movement as appeasers of Saddam.

In South America, the experiment started with Chile and Pinochet, and continues today in Iraq, an experiment (it is an experiment!) that is as bloody and cruel as anything the Nazis ever did. Nearly 20 million have died as a direct result of these policies in South America. Many more have died in Africa, Asia. And in Europe all our public utilities have been placed in private hands, along with the bulk of our health systems, and currently our education in the process of being transferred as we speak.

Friedman knew that the only way to test out his theories was to start from a blank slate, which entailed the destruction of whatever was in place prior. He also knew that it would most likely or not take a huge shock to the system to create the conditions required. Because of course the poorest voters would never vote for these kinds of policies, and the poor in many countries make up the bulk of the electorate.

The theory of Shock Therapy and Torture is that by obliterating the patient/prisoners sense of who they are, through disorienting procedures, one arrives at a point wherein the object of the process is a blank slate, and can then be rewritten, recrafted in terms that the therapist/torturer can define. Of course the doctors believed that they were doing this for the patients own good. Or so they told themselves.

Torturers too believe in the ultimate aim of their work. So do the economists of the WTO and IMF. In fact their attachment to their belief is so strong that they ignore/deny the damage their procedures cause, and invariably lay the blame, when it appears not to work, upon the patient, prisoner or country. Comments about Arab peoples being unable to manage their affairs are frequently made by the Economists and Neo-Conservatives such as Dick Cheny, Donald Rumsfeld and others…

Iraq was invaded for two reasons. One reason is that in Iraq there is much oil. Saddams attempt in November 2002 to sell Oil in Euros, showed that he was no longer ‘Our Man’. That move had to be stopped, because the strength of the US dollar resided in it’s exclusive use as the currency for buying/selling Oil.

Furthermore, there was a distinct possibility that in time, with the potential fall of Saddam through internal Iraqi action, Iraq would become an independent democracy, like it’s neighbour Iran, and that it’s people would refuse to accept the privatisation their various branches of Government (Health. Education, Communications, Transit Systems etc etc) as required by the Global Free Trade movement.

That would place the Oil of Iraq and Iran outside the influence of the Free Trade Movement, and threatened the cosy relationship between the US/UK Government and the corrupt dictatorship of the Saudis… and it would also allow another economic model, based upon Democratic Islamic principles (which says usury is a crime), to build a base from which to compete with the Free Trade Movement (the stock exchanges of New York and London). A movement that would usurp the powers of the rich in favour of the poorest and equate to a redistribution of wealth across the board which the Global Free Trade Movement was designed to avoid. A movement that might, like the current resurgence of Indigenous South American People Power, usurp the IMF and the W|TO.

The second reason was to create the absolute shock required to re-engineer Iraqs economy.

Iraq is also a warning, that after 40 years of Free Market Economic Expansion through covert means, that now the gloves were off and that the UK/US Governments were openly prepared to go to War (ignore the pretexts you have read about) to ensure that The Free Market would dominate the economies of the Globe.

Governmental Robbery nothing less. Tony Blair is a War Criminal, yet he is also an economic gangster, as was Thatcher, Major and as is Brown.

I highly recommend this book - it’s easy to read, her prose is excellent and what she reveals is essential for activists and concerned citizens to know and understand. Only when you know what has been done can you make changes towards health.

http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine



Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's your gift to universe