The ICC Will Not Prosecute Tony Blair, Others are Planning To

Posted on July 5, 2016

by Richard Edmondson

[ Ed. note – I have a feeling the Chilcot Inquiry report, due out tomorrow, is not going to be what a lot of people had hoped, and as noted by Felicity Arbuthnot in the article below, the International Criminal Court is unlikely to take any action against him in any event. Of course, the ICC is rather a disgrace. War criminals who have killed millions, rather than just a few thousands, seem forever immune from its prosecutions. And yes–interesting interpretation of international law the ICC gives in the article below!!! Soldiers who commit war crimes are fair game, it seems, but the criminal leaders who gave them their orders can’t be prosecuted “retrospectively.” How convenient. If Blair is to undergo any type of criminal prosecution it presumably will have to be in Britain or possibly Scotland. ]

By Felicity Arbuthnot

But then, once in a lifetime the longed for tidal wave of justice can rise up,and hope and history rhyme. Believe that a further shore is reachable from here. Believe in miracles.” (Seamus Heaney, 1939-2013, “The Cure at Troy.”)

In an astonishing revelation, the Daily Telegraph has established that Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague will examine the Chilcot Inquiry Report in to the Iraq invasion – due to be released on Wednesday 6^th July:

“ … for evidence of abuse and torture by British soldiers but have already ruled out putting Tony Blair on trial for war crimes …” (1)

Whilst the Report is “expected to strongly criticize” Blair’s role in the illegal invasion:

“It means individual soldiers could be prosecuted for war crimes but not Mr. Blair.”

This, in spite of the fact that it is now confirmed that Blair’s commitment to George W. Bush’s determination to invade Iraq was made personally, a year before the assault, at a meeting at Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, without the knowledge of Parliament. The ICC however, whilst considering the introduction of a crime of aggression, thus brining illegal invasions in to their legal remit – to which Bush and Blair’s actions would seemingly be relevant – would “not apply retrospectively.”

Thus, currently the:

“decision by the UK to go to war in Iraq falls outside the Court’s jurisdiction.”

Whilst any British or US soldier responsible for the litany of appalling crimes committed in Iraq should be pursued relentlessly – which has broadly been less than the case to date – the ultimate responsibility for the whole tragic disaster for which both countries’ leaders and military brass will surely be haunted throughout history, lies with those at the political top. Their blatant mistruths led to the invasion and its bloody, inhuman, ignorant, culturally clueless, unending aftermath. Of the ICC decision, Reg Keys, who stood against Blair in the 2005 election and whose twenty year old son, Tom was killed in Iraq said: “It makes me very angry. They don’t call him Teflon Tony for nothing.”

However, Anthony Charles Linton Blair, QC, will still have to spend a lot of time looking over his shoulder. In what the Daily Mail describes as: “a dramatic attempt to impeach Tony Blair for misleading Parliament over the Iraq war”, a cross party group of MPs are building support: “for an attempted prosecution of the former Prime Minister”, after Wednesday’s publication of the Inquiry’s findings. (2)

The MPs are using an ancient parliamentary power, unused since 1806 to bring Blair to trial in Parliament. The groups charge is that:

“he should be impeached over allegations (that) he breached his constitutional duties as Premier.”

His pivotal claims regarding Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction – which, he had asserted, could reach the West “in 45 minutes” had been “contradicted by his own intelligence (agencies) assessments”, points out the Mail. A parliamentary source told the Mail: “Impeachment is on our minds, but we will need to digest the Report.

There is definitely a feeling that Blair must be properly held to account for his actions in the run up to what was a disastrous war.” Not so much a war but the near annihilation of a sovereign nation without even the minimal wherewithal of self defense, many will reflect. If the impeachment attempt is approved by MPs, the defendant is delivered the top parliamentary ceremonial official, known as Black Rod, ahead of a trial.

“A simple majority is required to convict, at which point a sentence can be passed, which could, in theory, involve Mr. Blair being sent to prison.”

The MPs are not alone in their potential plans. Whatever the Chilcot Report may lack in judgmental findings, it will deliver to relevant legal experts a wealth of potential for civil litigation against all responsible for crimes against sovereignty, humanity, the peace – and what many will argue has been genocide.

The Chilcot Inquiry is 2.6 million words. Many figures show that between the embargo, the 1991 desert slaughter, the silent holocaust of the residual deaths from the Depleted Uranium weapons (radioactive residue 4.5 million years) and the 2003 invasion – massacres ongoing -that may represent less than one word for every Iraqi death.

Notes  

1.    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/02/outrage-as-war-crimes-prosecutors-say-tony-blair-will-not-be-inv/

2.    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3670751/MPs-say-ll-use-ancient-law-impeach-Tony-Blair-misleading-Parliament-Iraq-war-wake-Chilcot-report.html

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Felicity Arbuthnot, Global Research, 2016

Tony Blair: Arabs are ready to recognize Israel

Rehmat

Posted on May 26, 2016 | 

On May 24, UK’s former prime minister Tony Blair spoke to Bronwen Maddox, editor-in-chief London-based Jewish monthly Prospect magazine. He said that Arab regimes are ready to establish diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv if Israeli regime accept the “2002 Saudi Initiative” – proposing that if Israel withdraw its occupation forces from the West Bank and Gaza, and recognize ‘Palestinians Right of Return’ – 22 member states of the Arab League wouldn’t mind foreign Jews occupying more than 80% of the historic Palestine.

“With the new leadership in the region, today that is possible,” Blair said, citing Egyptian President Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, a Crypto-Jew.

Things have changed a lot since 2002. Saudi ‘royals’ have been spotted sleeping inside Israeli bed lately from being scared of rising Iranian influence in the region. Egypt and Jordan have already established diplomatic relations with the Zionist entity. However, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq have stuck in Riyadh throat as they have joined Iran’s ‘Axis of Resistance’ against Israel and its allies.

Interestingly, in August 2015, former US president Jimmy Carter told  Bronwen Maddox that there was ZERO chance of the so-called Two-state solution as long as Netanyahu is in power.

Last week, Gen. al-Sisi called on Israeli officials and the Palestinians to groups what he termed a “real opportunity” for peace, since Netanyahu appointed Russian-born extremist Jew Avigdor Lieberman as entity’s new defense minister to replace Gen. Moshe ‘Bogie’ Ya’alon.

Blair was referring to latest France Jewish government’s proposed “Peace Talks” between Israel and Mahmoud Abbas whose mandate as president of Palestinian Authority expired in January 2009. None of the so-called “Peace Talks” arranged by the US or EU in the past involved Palestinians’ elected government of Hamas in Gaza. The French offer to attend the meeting in Paris was rejected by Netanyahu on Monday for the second time.

Tony Blair also touched on US-UK invasion of Iraq in 2003, saying it’s because of “misunderstanding”, which resulted in the failure of “Mission Accomplished”. The Shi’ite regimes installed by the US occupation forces to replace Saddam Hussein have turned out to be more pro-Iran, and anti-Israel.

Democrat presidential hopeful, Bernie Sanders, has acknowledged that he was against removal of Saddam Hussein because he feared that his removal would bring Iranian threat closer to Israeli borders.

Blair also predicted that under Jeremy Corbyn leadership, Labour party has a very slim chance to win majority in 2020.

Tony Blair who has made tens of millions of dollars by lobbying for dictators and foreign butchers was convicted of ‘War Crimes’ by an International Court on War Crimes in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) in 2013. Former MP George Galloway has called Tony Blair a “War Criminal”, (Listen to him below).

Now, Jeremy Corbyn is planning to investigate Tony Blair for ‘War Crimes’ based on the Chilcot Report. The Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war will publish a 2.6 million-word report on July 6, following seven years of analyzing evidence about how the British government acted before the invasion of Iraq and during the war.

Tony Blair’s Israeli-butts-licking has paid off in a new field. He is the new chairman of the European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation (ECTR), a watchdog to monitor antisemitism and delegitimization of Israel.

The Prospect magazine was founded by British Jewish journalist and author Sir David Goodhart, who acted magazine’s first editor-in-chief also.

Jewdas-a glimpse into Jewish Left Duplicity

February 02, 2016  /  Gilad Atzmon

 

By Gilad Atzmon

The Zionist UK Jewish Chronicle reported last weekend that Jewdas, a so-called  ‘Left’ Jewish group, recently participated in an Anti-Fa march in Dover against ‘right wing extremists’ who oppose the entry of Syrian refugees into the Kingdom.

In fact, many British humanists and ethically oriented beings agree that the UK should provide shelter to refugees from a battle zone, especially when it is Britain that made Iraq, Syria and the entire region into a battle zone. One could anticipate that ‘Left’ Jews would be at the forefront of a call to help Syrian and Iraqi refugees because Jewish ‘Leftists’ ought to know that the 2003 criminal war against Islam in particular and Arabs in general was an immoral Zio-con operation. The Jewdasses must know that it was Lord Levy and the Labour Friends Of Israel who were Tony Blair’s leading fundraisers when Britain was taken into that criminal war. They should certainly remember that Jewish Chronicle writers David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen were the leading advocates for the war within British media.

So it was not a surprise that Jewdas joined the Anti-Fa campaign for Syrian refugees.  But astoundingly, none of the expected humanist concerns brought Jewdas to the streets of Dover. In fact, it was the other way around. Crude Jewish self-centric interests motivated Jewdas. Their spokesperson said:

“We think it’s important that the Jewish community takes the threat of far-right violence seriously – a point we made at various stages last year when anti-Jewish demonstrations were taking place in London.”

His statement is unambiguous. It wasn’t the plight of the refugees or any kind of acknowledgment of Jewish political complicity in the humanitarian disaster in the Middle East that brought Jewdas to the streets of Dover. Once again, it was Judeo-centrism at play. Jewdas joined the Anti Fa protest to defend their own Jewish tribal and racial interests. Their spokesman stated: “These (right wing) groups pose a clear threat to our (Jewish) community.”

Bizarre, by expressing such views, the Jewdas spokesperson revealed that Jewdas has more in common with the ‘Rightwing extremists’ than with most immigration advocates or minority support groups.

Yet, I admit that this news item left me a bit puzzled.  On the one hand, Jewdas claims to care for minorities in Britain while they seem to lack even remote empathy towards indigenous English people who have been reduced into a minority in their own capital.

I guess that within the Jewish political universe, the indigenous population is always an enemy, whether it is in Britain, Palestine or anywhere else.  Maybe this helps explain why Jewish history is a chain of countless holocausts and pogroms.

Assad will remain, so what about Saudi Arabia?

Sami Kleib

And now Washington has agreed that President Bashar al-Assad remains [in power] until March 2017. This is what was said in a leaked document, which was most probably leaked on purpose. When the foreign ministry sought to minimise the concern of Assad’s opponents towards the leak, it only added further concern by saying: “The timing of the departure of President Bashar al-Assad has not been specified according to the American view”. Washington forgot its past statements in which it used to affirm since 5 years ago that Assad must leave prior to any solution. The solution then will be with Assad, but as for its ending, we will have to wait and see. The name of Assad was completely absent from the document of the international solution in Vienna. As for postponing the elections for 18 months, the aim behind it is to see through the term of President Barack Obama. Is there anything clearer than this that indicates that Obama has left the Syrian file for his arch counterpart Vladimir Putin? There definitely is not a clearer indication.

 

In this way, with the global acknowledgment that Assad remains for a timeframe that is officially outlined and not from behind the scenes, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia would have lost, even if temporarily, the main arenas of competition with Iran. Added to its losses aswell, is the killing of its military man in Syria, the leader of “Jaish al-Islam” Zahran Alloush. Huge assassinations of this type usually occur when the elites begin reaching understandings.

There are two possibilities here: either America agrees to the weakening of Saudi Arabia [from Syria to Yemen, and hence in Iraq and Lebanon] in order to put the new generation of rulers in Saudi Arabia in their place, and to produce a new throne more suitable for it [this is possible], or it has become overpowered [this is unlikely]. Yet in both cases, it will not allow Saudi Arabia to collapse.

We open two brackets here so that we recall that when leader of the “Democratic Meeting”, Walid Jumblatt, visited the White House in 2007 during the term of the “great preacher” of good and evil, George Bush junior – who killed in Iraq along with Tony Blair one million and a half Iraqis – Bush walked into a meeting between Jumblatt and the National Security advisor Steven Hadley, and his two main assistants in charge of Middle East affairs, Michael Doran, and Elliot Abrams [who has a hand in every Arab calamity]. At the time, and amidst hope by a Lebanese side for the inevitable fall of the Syrian regime, Bush said that he does not seek the overthrow of the regime, but rather “to improve its behaviour”, just as what Obama sought after him in “improving the behaviour” of Iran.

Perhaps this is what Washington wants today from Saudi Arabia, which has reached a point in which it poses as a burden, especially because of its objections to the Iranian-Western agreement and its attempts to obstruct it, and opening its markets to French military productions. The burden has increased much now, after the military, political, and economic attempts, which are particularly led by Prince Mohammad bin Salman, aimed at reviving a Sunni Arab project against “the Persian, Iranian, Shia expansion”, according to leaked descriptions.

These attempts, which are led by Prince Mohammad bin Salman, as he is the Defence Minister, puts the Western allies in an awkward situation. They believe that every further weakness to Saudi Arabia is more influence for Iran. What is required then is setting things aright, because what is needed is a dual-containment that makes Iran an acceptable and effective partner in the context of fighting terrorism and guaranteeing Western interests, and keeping Saudi Arabia as an active player.

Let us remember that America forsook its Egyptian ally Hosni Mubarak when he lost his role in ensuring its interests and securing internal stability, and it forsook its Tunisian ally due to similar reasons. Yet it never thought about letting go of Egypt or Tunisia, let alone a state with the weight of Saudi Arabia, and the role it plays according to Washington, the NATO states, and regional states.

So what does the American administration want from Saudi Arabia?

– It is well known that American decision-makers use to, and perhaps still, prefer the Crown Prince Mohammad bin Nayef over Prince Mohammad bin Salman, the deputy crown prince. The man is well known in America. He studied in the United States. He worked in combating terrorism. He established the idea of “Counselling” to convince terrorists to forsake their crazy ideas. He obtained deep Western trust, especially when he became deputy interior minister, and especially considering the long time he spent working alongside his late father Prince Nayef. He was the target of an assassination attempt by terrorists.

As for Prince Mohammad bin Salman, the deputy crown prince, he did not study in America, and he was not fit to assume an influential post due to his young age, and the first American articles and studies on him did not conduce assurances, due to his tendency to solve problems in a more vocal and adventurous way. He was the one that said that he will be the first to bring about an economic, security, and political revolution in the Kingdom. Perhaps the age of revolutions over there is not acceptable yet from the point of view of the West and the Gulf.

– If the information of the American “Washington Post” writer, David Ignatius, in his article “A political storm sweeping Saudi Arabia” is correct, then America has expressed its concern recently towards the dismissal of Saad al-Jabri, a prominent adviser to Prince Nayef. He was dismissed after the return of Salman and his son, Prince Mohammad, from Washington. According to the Americans, it may be linked to his objections to the Yemen war plan, and his concern regarding the rise of “Al-Qaeda”. In addition, Khalid Humaidan has been pushed away from the circle of Prince Nayef, and there has been a reorganisation of the Royal Court in order to confine decision-making between the king and his son.

– A while ago, the British newspaper “The Guardian” published two strongly-worded letters which were attributed to a Saudi prince, in which he calls for the overthrow of the current crown. He has been contacted by Ignatius himself and it was understood that he wants to get Prince Ahmed bin Abdul Aziz, 73, to power. That is, the return of the rule of the sons of Abdul Aziz. [Remember the story of Sudairiyeen and others].

– The Yemen war, which costs Saudi Arabia one billion dollars every month, has become a burden on both the Kingdom and the West. After each passing day criticism by human rights organizations grows over the death of innocent people. The spread of “al-Qaeda” has increased, and attempts by the Houthis to penetrate the Saudi border have also increased. In addition, pressure on the West to stop the war has grown, a war which has not prevented the Houthis, according to the Saudi spokesman, from penetrating or attempting to penetrate the border with Saudi Arabia more than 1000 times [see “Al-Safir”].

– The Obama administration has strengthened its relations with Iraq and Iran, in order to accelerate the pace of the taking control of Ramadi and other areas. This cooperation granted the Iraqi army high morale, and the defense minister began to talk of “unparalleled” battles. Nothing remained for Saudi Arabia in Iraq except for relying on the former Baathists [i.e whom they themselves contributed to their overthrow in the past], or extremists and Takfiris, to face the “Iranian expansion”. This is most likely no longer acceptable to the Americans.

– America was quick to contact Iran after the execution of Sheikh al-Nimr, and called on the two parties to ease tensions, yet a White House spokesman literally said: “America repeatedly expressed its concern regarding the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia, and warned Riyadh recently of its executions”.

– Prince Mohammad bin Salman tried to allay fears. He held an interview in which he entirely ruled out war with Iran. The interview seemed to be an attempt to reassure the capitals of the West, which were unanimous in saying that the execution of al-Nimr may increase tension and deterioration. It is said that the interview was based on a US request to ease fears. This is possible but not certain. It is also said that it seemed to be an attempt to hold Prince Mohammad bin Nayef the responsibility of carrying out the execution as he is the Interior Minister.

– Now the international trend is in favour of managing the Syrian war, in parallel with some of the political breakthroughs that would no doubt be hampered dozens of times before they are settled. The thing that will stabilize it, is, at best, expanding the government to include some of the opposition, and the introduction of armed factions in the Syrian army, and parliamentary elections that lead to the entry of opposition faces. The powers of the President, and his remaining in or departing office, is no longer on the table. At least it will not be raised with slogans and statements until the departure of Obama. All things can be talked about with the arrival of the next administration.

There is no doubt, that all the fires in the region have occurred due to the desire or anger of one side, or the floundering of the West, added to the internal Arab disintegration and the stupidity that brought us to the stage of sedition. Yet after the Western-Iranian agreement, there is a serious inclination to engage the new Iran – that is to monitor it on the nuclear level, and with the positive of the presence of its Reform movement – in political solutions.

There is no doubt also, that the Saudi attempts to assume a leadership role through the mobilization of the Sunni Arabs, did not receive a large, real resonance within the main states, not even within some Gulf neighbors. It is true that Egypt is close and Turkey is getting closer, yet Saudi Arabia well knows that these compliments will not survive for long, and it also knows that other states such as Sudan, Djibouti, the Comoros Islands, and Somalia, are driven by their economic needs more than anything else. They are the same needs that made them closer to Iran and Turkey at certain times.

The Economy is a Concern Factor

Then comes the economy to add further anxiety. Prince Mohammad bin Salman himself announced the first decisive, global shift in the “Aramco” oil company. Some of its shares will be sold. This is one of the world’s largest oil companies. It is said to be the largest. It has reserves of up to 261 billion barrels. Its stocks exceed $ 323 billion, more than twice the reserves of giant American company “Exxon Mobil”. This is an indication to the change of the internal economic behavior on the one hand, and on the existence of a real economic crisis.

This caused Saudi newspapers themselves to speak about the weakening of the economy. Dr Fahd Mohammad bin Jumuah says in the “Riyadh” newspaper on the previous 7th of July: “The unemployment rate reached 11.75 % for two consecutive years, affecting 651,305 Saudis”. Global institutions, namely the International Monetary Fund, warns of a significant risk that oil prices will no longer rise. Here, too, there are real questions about the feasibility of Saudi Arabia pumping large quantities of oil in the past two years. If the matter is as Russia and Iran said, directed against them, yet it has also had a negative impact on US oil and the Saudi budget.

Now, and after the cooperation of America and Iran in the terrorism file, and involving [Iran] in finding a political solution for Syria, and their cooperation in Iraq, and the readiness to lift the sanctions off [Iran], and its abdication from seeking to acquire any nuclear weapons [according to the Energy Agency report], and after the removal of the Syrian chemical weapons [which reassures Israel, just like with regards to the Iranian nuclear program], does America feel that Iran is now more capable of securing the common interests, and striking terrorism, and perhaps later accepting a long military ceasefire at the Israel-Arab borders?

If it did in fact feel this way, will it work to reduce the Saudi explosive factor, by working to move Prince Mohammad bin Salman away from power, just like what happened before him with the distancing of Prince Bandar bin Sultan? Or will it suffice itself with usual taming tactics?

All the Israeli studies [the lecture of Avi Dikhtar, or the strategy of Israel for the 80s, which was published by the “Kivonim” magazine, which is published by the International Zionist Organisation], or American studies, speak about plans to divide Saudi Arabia. For example, this is a document published in 2006 by the US retired Colonel Ralph Peters in the US Armed Forces newspaper with the headline “Borders of Blood”, in which he says: “Saudi Arabia will suffer the biggest type of division, whereby it will be divided into two states: the holy Islamic state, like the Vatican, whereby it covers all the important religious sites for world Muslims, and a political state, and other parts of it will be cut out for other states [like Yemen and Jordan]”. The “New York Times” published a complete map outlining the process of division.

These Israeli dreams find in the Iranian-Saudi conflict the most fertile ground for it. Perhaps this flood of announcements by war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu and his gang, by expressing such love in order to get closer to the Gulf, is aimed at moving things towards a confrontation with Iran and division thereafter.

I do not believe it is in the interests of Saudi Arabia, nor America, nor even Iran, in reaching such a situation. The terrorism that strongly knocks on the doors of Saudi Arabia will be the alternative. There must then be a restructuring of the makeup of the rule in Saudi Arabia. This is what the Americans say, one voice of which was the latest article in the “Foreign Affairs” magazine, written by Richard Sokolski.

Source: As-Safir Newspaper, Translated and Edited by website team

 

And So This is Christmas…David Cameron’s Christmas Gift to the People of Syria

Posted on December 16, 2015

by Richard Edmondson

[War is over if you want it…key words being if you want it. You have to want something hard enough in order to achieve it, and obviously the war mongers running America don’t want to see peace, at least not yet. If peace came up and tapped them on the shoulder and said, “Take me, I’m yours,” they’d run as fast as they could in the opposite direction. Peace is just not a part of their agenda–and the same seems to hold true with the war mongers running Britain as well…as the article below makes rather clear.]

Cameron’s Bombings of Syria Equals Blair’s Iraq War Crimes: Illegal Slaughter

By Felicity Arbuthnot

“Russia bombing Syria will lead to further radicalization and increased terrorism”. Prime Minister David Cameron, 4^th October 2015.

How desperately Prime Minister Cameron has been yearning to bomb the Syrian Arab Republic…

In August 2013 when his aim was defeated in Parliament by a 285-272 vote, his vision of the UK joining US-led strikes bit the dust. His dreams of illegally joining the bigger bully and bombing an historic nation of just 22.85 million people (2013 figures) three and a half thousand kilometers away, posing no threat to Britain, was thwarted.

The US threw a conciliatory bone to the snarling Cameron and according to the BBC (1): “would ‘continue to consult’ with the UK, ‘one of our closest allies and friends.’

France said (that) the UK’s vote does not change its resolve on the need to act in Syria.

After the vote … Cameron said it was clear Parliament did not want action and ‘the government will act accordingly.’

Chancellor George Osborne whined on BBC Radio 4′s flagship “Today” programme that: “there would now be “national soul searching about our role in the world “, adding: “I hope this doesn’t become a moment when we turn our back on all of the world’s problems.

Translation: “Inconsequential politicians on small island only feel like real men when sending off their depleted air force to blow modest populations far away to bits.”

The then Defence Secretary Philip Hammond: “ … told BBC’s Newsnight programme that he and the Prime Minister were “disappointed” with the result, saying it would harm Britain’s “special relationship” with Washington. Ah ha, that tail wagging, panting, lap dog “special relationship” again, for which no body part licking, no crawling on all fours, no humiliation, no deviation of international law is too much.

The excuse for the 2013 rush to annihilate was accusations that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons in March and August of that year, a claim subsequently comprehensively dismissed by detailed UN investigations (2.)

Cameron’s excuse for attack had all the validity of Tony Blair’s fantasy Iraq weapons of mass destruction, but of course he regards Blair as a trusted advisor. Judgement, it might be argued, as Blair’s, is not one of Cameron’s strong attributes.

Then came the Friday 13^th November tragedies in Paris and by 2^nd December Cameron’s parliamentary press gangs managed to threaten and arm twist through a vote to attack Syria in an action of shame which will surely haunt him as Blair is haunted by Iraq.

As the bombs fell, on 6^th December, Cameron celebrated the anniversary of his his tenth year as Leader of the Conservative Party with his very own military action, Libya’s tragedy forgotten and belonging to yesterday. That, as Blair’s Iraq, it is entirely illegal (3) apparently bothers the former PR man not a whit.

As the Parliamentary debate was taking place, before the vote, it was reported that RAF reconnaissance ‘planes had already taken off for Syria from Scotland – of whose fifty nine parliamentarians, fifty seven voted against the attack. Cameron thumbed his arrogant nose to near and far.

Apart from the illegality, did it even cross Cameron’s mind, or did he care, that using the Paris attack not only defied law, it defied reason. To repeat again, the attackers were French and Belgian born, of North African extraction, with no Syrian connections apart from that some of them had been there joining the organ eating, head chopping, people incinerating terrorists. Syria is the victim, not the perpetrator, deserving aid and protection, not cowardly retribution from 30,000 feet.

After the vote, pro-killing MPs reportedly went straight into the Commons bar to celebrate with tax payer subsidized booze. Warned that the main doors in to Parliament had been closed due to anti-war protesters outside, one woman MP apparently shouted gleefully “It’s a lock in.” How lightly mass murder is taken in the Palace of Westminster.

Chancellor George Osborne: “eschewed the celebratory drinks … and joined a carol service in nearby St. Margaret’s Church – in aid of a charity for child amputees. You couldn’t make it up”, wrote a ballistic friend.

Within a week Osborne was in the US addressing the Council on Foreign Relations stating that with the air strikes Britain had “got it’s mojo back” and stood with the United States to “reassert Western values.”

It was he said “a real source of pride” to have the authority for air strikes in Syria.

“Britain has got its mojo back and we are going to be with you as we reassert Western values, confident that our best days lie ahead.”

Britain was prepared to play a “bigger role”, he vowed.

“Mojo” according to varying dictionaries means “a quality that attracts people to you, makes you successful and full of energy”, denotes “influence” and “sex appeal.” The man needs help.

Immediately after the vote during a visit to RAF Akrotiri, the British base in Cyprus from which the airborne killers will take off to drop their human being incinerating ordnance, UK Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon, told military personnel that their mission had the backing of “both the government and the people of Britain.” He lied.

A recent ITV poll showed 89.32 % of British people against bombing. Governmental “mojo” has clearly passed them by.

Pro bombing MPs though, it seems, are anything but warrior material. When angry emails arrived from their constituents condemning the bombing, the heavyweight Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Tom Watson (pro bombing) complained of “bullying” saying stronger social media policy was needed to prevent such correspondence.

Anti war campaigners had also sent graphic photographs of dead Syrian children to MPs to persuade them not to vote for creating more mutilated little souls. This, the warmongers said, was “intimidation.”

One pro-war parliamentarian said the messages led him to have concerns for the health of his pregnant wife. Beyond pathetic, try being the husband of a pregnant wife, or the wife, in Syria with Britain’s bombs incinerating your neighbourhood.

Another MP was so keen to become a member of the “bullied” club, she was found to have added a death threat to herself at the end of a justifiably angry email from a member of the public. Her attempt to was speedily uncovered. The desire to tarnish those repelled by illegally murdering others is seemingly becoming common currency in the Cameron Reichstag.

A majority of British politicians, prepared to drop bombs on people, blow their children, parents, relatives, villages, towns, homes to bits and are cowed by a few words. As for “bullied”, try being under a bomb Mr Watson, one of the bombs you voted for. “Bullying” doesn’t come bigger than that.

Upset at being sent pictures of dead babies? Imagine being a mother or father holding the shredded remains of theirs. Courtesy the RAF.

Have they any idea of the reality of their “mojo” moment? People tearing at the tons of rubble that was a home, trying to dig friends, beloveds out with bare, bleeding hands?

Further reality is the demented, terrified howls of the dogs who hear the ‘planes long before the human ear can, the swathes of birds that drop from the sky from the fear and vibration, their bodies carpeting the ground, the cats that go mad with fear, rushing from a loving home, never to be seen again. And the children that become mute in their terror, losing the ability to speak for weeks, sometimes months and even years.

Yet David Cameron allegedly called Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn and those who voted against this shameful act of terror: “terrorist sympathisers”, reportedly telling a meeting of a Parliamentary Committee before the vote: “You should not be walking through the lobbies with Jeremy Corbyn and a bunch of terrorist sympathisers.” (5)

This presumably was juvenile pay back time for Corbyn having stated correctly that: “Cameron’s approach is bomb first, talk later. But instead of adding British bombs to the others now raining down on Syria what’s needed is an acceleration of the peace talks in Vienna.”

Cameron also received widespread derision, including from Conservative Parliamentarian Julian Lewis, Chairman of the influential Defence Select Committee, for his claims that there were 70,000 “moderate” fighters on the ground ready to take on ISIS after British bombing.

One government source compared the claim to Tony Blair’s fantasy that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction on the West “in 45 minutes.” Lewis commented: “Instead of having ‘dodgy dossiers’, we now have bogus battalions of moderate fighters.” (6) Another commentator referred unkindly to Cameron’s “70,000 fantasy friends.”

Perhaps the best encapsulation of anger and desperation came from author Michel Faber, who sent his latest book to Cameron (7.)

In searing sarcasm, he wrote in an accompanying letter that he realized: “a book cannot compete with a bomb in its ability to cause death and misery, but each of us must make whatever small contribution we can, and I figure that if you drop my novel from a plane, it might hit a Syrian on the head … With luck, we might even kill a child: their skulls are quite soft.”

He explained:

“I just felt so heartsick, despondent and exasperated that the human race, and particularly the benighted political arm of the human race, has learned nothing in 10,000 years, 100,000 years, however long we’ve been waging wars, and clearly the likes of Cameron are not interested in what individuals have to say.”

He speaks for the despairing 89.32% who hang their heads in shame. He speaks for those of us who simply cannot find the words.

Notes

1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23892783
2. http://www.globalresearch.ca/syria-un-mission-report-confirms-that-opposition-rebels-used-chemical-weapons-against-civilians-and-government-forces/5363139
3. http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-uk-parliaments-decision-to-bomb-syria-is-illegal/5493200
4. http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14129765.Osborne__UK_has__got_its_mojo_back__with_air_strikes/?ref=twtrec
5. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/dec/01/cameron-accuses-corbyn-of-being-terrorist-sympathiser
6. http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2015/dec/04/so-david-camerons-70000-syrian-forces-claim-really-is-dodgy?CMP=share_btn
7. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/07/michel-faber-donates-book-of-strange-things-to-syria-cameron

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Felicity Arbuthnot, Global Research, 2015

From Iraq to Syria: Repeating a Debacle

EDITOR’S CHOICE | 02.12.2015 | 18:38

Proof that the British political class hasn’t learned anything after Iraq came with David Cameron’s ludicrous assertion that there are 70,000 moderate rebels fighting in Syria. It was an outright fabrication to rank with Blair’s sexed up dossier on Saddam’s WMD, which the then prime minister asserted could be launched against Britain within 45 minutes.

 We know Cameron’s claim is pure fiction because as far back as 2012 the US Defense Intelligence Agency produced a classified intelligence report which identified that, “The Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and and AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.” This was a full two years before ISIS exploded across the region at the beginning of 2014.

The British Prime Minister’s assertion was made as part of an increasingly desperate attempt by him and his supporters to win support for British airstrikes which every military expert agrees will have no appreciable impact when it comes to defeating ISIS in Syria.

 Make no mistake, crushing this menace must be the priority of all right-thinking people, with the only question one of how not if. It is a priority which makes the cognitive dissonance and contradictions that have underpinned the West’s actions and policy towards the conflict in Syria all the more grievous, ensuring we have only helped to prolong the conflict and, with it, the ability of ISIS to operate, rather than the opposite. In this regard the equivalence that continues to be drawn between the secular government of Bashar al-Assad and this medieval death cult is not just fallacious it is utterly and wholly obscene.

No sentient being would compare the Syrian president to Nelson Mandela. But comparing him to Hitler is even less credible. He leads a secular government under which the rights of Syrian minorities are upheld and protected, a government that still enjoys the support of the majority of Syrians and a government whose survival in 2015 is indistinguishable from the country’s survival. The alternative to Assad at this point – the only alternative – is Syria being turned into a mass grave of said minorities as it descends into an abyss of sectarian mass murder and slaughter that will make the status quo seem like child’s play by comparison. The Assad government can be negotiated with, ISIS cannot, and as bad as anybody believes Assad is he is not in the business of planting bombs on passenger aircraft or sending death squads to massacre British tourists in Tunisia or civilians in Beirut, Paris and anywhere else.

Attributing the refugee crisis to Assad, or claiming the majority of civilians who’ve been killed have been killed by his military, comes to us straight from the regime change playbook. We heard the same propaganda in the run up to the war in Iraq in 2003 and also in the run-up to NATO’s intervention in Libya in 2011. Both countries are now failed states as a direct consequence of our military intervention.

Making the same catastrophic mistake again would be a crime that history will not forgive.

 While crashing into the third Arab country since 9/11 may titillate the Churchillian sensibilities of the British ruling class, it will do little when it comes to defeating ISIS and ending the conflict. Indeed, given the recent incident of a Russian jet being shot down by Turkish F16s the risks involved in throwing British aircraft into the mix are self evident. If the Americans, who’ve been bombing ISIS (at least so they’ve been telling us) in Syria for the best part of a year, have failed to make any appreciable difference, what makes David Cameron and his Labour supporters believe Britain’s handful of fighter-bombers will or can?

There is a glaring need for the West to coordinate its efforts with the Russians and the Syrians, who are engaged in the very joint air and ground campaign every military expert agrees is the only way to crush ISIS/Daesh. However miltary action is not by itself enough. Confronting the murky relationship that exists between ISIS and Western allies in the region is also now non-negotiable.

Turkey and Saudi Arabia in particular have been at the heart of supporting the medieval fanatacism that recently exploded onto the streets of Paris. In the case of the former, without Turkey’s Syrian border being tantamount to a revolving door for ISIS fighters, materiel, and arms to pass through, we wouldn’t be where we are now. Nor is it anymore a wild claim to make that Turkey, elements within Turkey, have actively facilitated the trade in stolen Iraqi and Syrian oil that has funded their operations and so-called caliphate. Here we are entitled to ponder the question of whether Turkey’s real motive in taking the extraordinary step of shooting down a Russian jet was because Russian airstrikes had begun targeting the huge convoys of trucks transporting this oil towards Turkey’s border?

 As for the Saudis, the fanatacism and medievalism which underpins ISIS/Daesh in Iraq and Syria is indistinguishable from the Wahhabi Sunni doctrine that bears the imprimatur of state religion in Riyadh. A major crux of this issue has been the Wahhabisation of Sunni Islam that has led to the normalisation and legitimisation of sectarianism. The Saudis have used their oil money to fund the building of mosques and other projects across the Muslim world, all with the aim of asserting the dominance of this particularly extreme literalist form of Sunni Islam. This influence must also be challenged.

Until Britain, the United States, and other Western governments are willing to deal with the role of both Turkey and Saudi Arabia in fomenting this crisis, they are not serious when it comes to defeating ISIS and the wider issue of the perverse ideology that drives it.

 As for those 70,000 moderates fighting in Syria, the only place they are to be found is in the ranks of the non sectarian Syrian Arab Army, made up of Alawites, Sunnis, Druze, and Christians fighting for their homes, their people, and their country.

John Wight, counterpunch.org

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Tony Blair: Iraq Invasion Led to Rise of ISIL

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said the US-led invasion of Iraq was partly responsible for the emergence of the Takfiri group, ISIL (so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Levant) in the Middle East.

Blair told CNN that “there are elements of truth” in the assertion that the war caused the rise of ISIL.

“Of course you can’t say those of us who removed Saddam in 2003 bear no responsibility for the situation in 2015,” he said in the interview to be broadcast Sunday, Wall Street Journal reported.

He added that the Arab Spring had also played a role in creating instability that allowed the terrorist group to flourish.

Blair’s decision to take Britain into the Iraq war—based on what turned out to be false claims about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction—remains hugely divisive, and contributed to his Labor Party’s loss of power in 2010.

Blair said he didn’t believe the world would be a better place if Saddam were still in power. But he apologized, as he has before, for failures in postwar planning.

“I apologize for the fact that the intelligence we received was wrong,” he said in clips released by CNN before the broadcast.

“I also apologize for some of the mistakes in planning and, certainly, our mistake in our understanding of what would happen once you removed the regime.”

Some 179 British personnel died in Iraq between 2003 and 2009. A public inquiry into decisions and mistakes in Britain’s planning and execution of the war began in 2009 but has yet to issue its findings. The process has been held up while people criticized in the report are given a chance to respond.

Critics of the war hope the inquiry will conclude that Blair was determined to back President George W. Bush in his invasion plans, whether or not it was supported by the public, Parliament or legal opinion.

Source: Websites	26-10-2015 – 10:42 Last updated 26-10-2015 – 10:4

 

You know Jeremy Corbyn is the right man for the job when the “Labour Friends of Israel” comes out against him

Corbyn will not aid MidEast peace, Labour Friends of Israel official claims

RT | August 11, 2015

The chair of Labour Friends of Israel has urged party members not to back anti-war advocate Jeremy Corbyn in the leadership race because he previously called for Arab groups Hamas and Hezbollah to be involved in Middle East peace talks.

Joan Ryan said Monday there were “deep concerns” about Corbyn’s leadership campaign and in particular the positions he has taken on Israel.

The Labour Friends of Israel official asked supporters to back a candidate who could play a “constructive” role in negotiating peace between Israel and Palestine.

Corbyn has faced criticism during his leadership election campaign for previously calling Hamas and Hezbollah “friends” and insisting they be involved in regional peace discussions.

Ryan, who replaced Anne Mcguire as head of Labour Friends of Israel on Monday, told the Jewish Chronicle that Labour must be “steadfast” in its support for Tel Aviv.

She added that last month’s Jewish community hustings for the Labour leadership contenders had been a key step in the party’s efforts to “win back the trust and confidence of the Jewish community.”

Ryan, who nominated Blairite Liz Kendall in the leadership contest, went on to caution Labour voters that members should elect the candidate that is most likely to play a “constructive” role in the peace process.

“We hope that Labour party members and supporters will consider when they vote which candidate is best placed to ensure that the next Labour government can play a constructive and engaged role in the crucial search for a two-state solution,” she said.

“We recognize the deep concerns which exist about positions taken, and statements made, by Jeremy Corbyn in the past and recognize the serious questions which arise from these.”

Ryan, a former Home Office minister and party whip, said Labour Friends of Israel would “continue to work with progressives in both Israel and Palestine who share our commitment to peace and co-existence.

“At the same time, we remain adamantly opposed to boycotts and sanctions, which delegitimize Israel, do nothing to further these goals and have no place in the Labour Party.”

Corbyn was grilled by Channel 4 journalist Kristan Guru-Murthy in an interview in July for having previously called Hamas and Hezbollah “friends.”

During the interview the veteran left-winger rejected the idea that he agreed with the two organizations, which Israel considers to be terrorist groups.

Following intense questioning by Guru-Murthy, Corbyn explained his position.

“Does it mean I agree with Hamas and what it does? No. Does it mean I agree with Hezbollah and what they do? No,” the Labour MP said.

“There is not going to be a peace process unless there are talks involving Israel, Hezbollah and Hamas – and I think everyone knows that.”

Corbyn added that even the former head of Israeli intelligence agency Mossad agreed that more comprehensive talks must be pursued. The Israeli intelligence chief argued at the time that any viable peace process would involve negotiations with people who hold opposing viewpoints.

The socialist candidate has faced intense criticism from Labour elites since announcing his candidacy, with a number of high-profile politicians urging voters to back other candidates.

Attacks on Corbyn’s campaign became even more heated after a YouGov poll, published by The Times newspaper on Monday night, found that Corbyn had doubled his lead over the past week and would now poll 53 percent, meaning he could secure a first-round victory without needing to count the second preferences of Labour supporters.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair, former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and Blair-era PR guru Alistair Campbell have all urged Labour supporters to reject Corbyn, arguing he would make Labour “unelectable” in the 2020 general election.

Press TV-Tony Blair Is Blamed for Labour defeat

July 25, 2015  /  Gilad Atzmon

A senior British politician has blamed former prime minister Tony Blair’s decision to invade Iraq as a major reason stopping people from voting for the Labour Party.

John Prescott, who served as Blair’s deputy prime minister for 10 years, called on his former boss to accept his own responsibility for the fall in support for the Labour Party.

His comments came shortly after Tony Blair warned of what he called “electoral suicide” if Jeremy Corbyn is elected as the new leader of Labour Party.

Blair has warned that the Labour Party would lose two more elections if it chose the “old-fashioned leftist platform” of Jeremy Corbyn. (AFP image)

“Even if I thought it was the route to victory, I wouldn’t take it,” the former prime minister was quoted as saying.

However, Prescott lashed out at his former boss and urged him to “think about the reasons” why the support for the party had plunged.

“Tony, on the doorstep it was Iraq that stopped a lot of people voting for us… I found that absolutely staggering. To use that kind of language is just abuse. The Labour Party is about the heart as well as the head,” he was quoted as saying by the British media.

Many critics say Blair is responsible for the deaths of countless Iraqi people as well as many British soldiers killed in the unpopular US-led invasion of Iraq.

The US and Britain invaded Iraq in violation of international law back in 2003 under the pretext of finding weapons of mass destruction (WMD) allegedly stockpiled by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. No WMDs, however, were ever discovered in Iraq.

Meanwhile, a London-based political commentator believes that Britons have already learned the lesson and will not play into the hands of warmongering politicians like Blair any longer.

“It is very clear that British public is tired of these Zionist wars. It is tired of fake left and fake Labour. And the success of Jeremy Corbyn is probably the most positive sign we see in British politics for decades. It means that there is a support for genuine call for equality, for proper working class politics,” Gilad Atzmon told Press TV’s UK Desk on Friday.

source: http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/07/24/421682/UK-IRAQ-WAR-LABOUR-PARTY-BLAIR

Congratulation Tony Blair

June 04, 2015  /  Gilad Atzmon

By Gilad Atzmon

The Guardian reports this morning that Tony Blair is to take on a new role leading the European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation.

This is no doubt great news. The 21st century’s greatest war criminal is called to lead the campaign against ‘extremism’ which he himself instigated. Truth be told, it only makes sense to appoint a mass murderer to such a delicate job because only a genocidal character could be intimately familiar with the nitty gritty of institutional hatred and intolerance.

The British former prime minister who launched an immoral interventionist war has been appointed as chairman of the European Council on Tolerance following his spectacular success as a Peace Envoy to the Middle East introducing reconciliation and new harmony to the entire region.

In a joint article (paywall) with Moshe Kantor, the president of the council of the European Jewish Congress, Blair recently expressed his devotion to the Jews and the primacy of their suffering. “Antisemitism is not a Jewish problem, but one infecting the whole of society and needs to be tackled for the sake of us all.”

The penny dropped. Blair, seemingly understands his contribution to Jew hatred. Next time when he launches a global criminal war with no end he must make sure that rather than using Lord Cash Point Levy  as his chief fund raiser he should consider using someone else, preferably a ‘gentile’ (If he finds one).  Even Blair must have grasped by now that the clear association between his Ziocon war and a Jewish financier is ‘not just a Jewish problem.’  With 5 million people dead in the region it infects the whole universe.

It is encouraging to learn that the council chaired by Blair doesn’t really believe in elementary freedom, quite the opposite, it believes it should promote legislation to confront  ‘holocaust denial’, and this makes a lot of sense to me. As a person who perpetrated a holocaust himself, Blair is interested in laws that would stop any attempt to narrating and revising the past. I totally agree. I believe that all history except the Jewish one, must be abolished all together and immediately. We are moving forward, we progress, we should invest in the future rather than attempt to find out what really happened let alone why.

 

War Criminal Tony Blair’s Save the Children Award: An Inadequate Apology.

By Felicity Arbuthnot

Global Research, March 05, 2015

“If justice and truth take place,

If he is rewarded according to his just desert,

His name will stink to all generations.” (William Wesley, 1703-1791.)

On the evening of 19th November 2014, the charity Save the Children (STC), with a gala event in New York, “recognized” Tony Blair – whose government enjoined in the ending of the fledgling lives of children on an industrial scale in Afghanistan and Iraq – with their “Global Legacy Award.”

In Iraq’s decimation of course, Blair’s regime was responsible for the dodgy dossier alleging Saddam Hussein’s ability to annihilate in “forty five minutes”, thus persuading for war, but had also enjoined with the US between 1997 and 2003 in ensuring, via the United Nations Sanction Committee that Iraq’s infants and children were denied all normality from the womb to their young deaths at an average of 6,000 a month.

Blocked were scanners to check the developing foetus, incubators for the frail newly arrived, paediatric oxygen, paediatric syringes, tracheal suction tubes to clear airway obstructions and all needed to combat a challenging start to life in order to become a healthy toddler and enter happy childhood.

For those who survived to childhood, reading and exercise books, paper, pens, pencils, blackboards, toys, tricycles, bicycles, scooters, all juvenile joys and normality were vetoed. When they suffered what are normally relatively simply treated ailments, infections, asthma, the antibiotics, inhalers needed were invariably also vetoed or fatally delayed. All policies endorsed by Blair’s government.

Then Iraq’s deprived, traumatized children were bombed and invaded in an action largely publicly justified by his government’s documented lies.

Yet Save the Children honoured Blair – to immediate condemnation. In the UK a petition on site “38 Degrees” quickly garnered nearly 125,000 signatures in protest (UK only, world wide it would certainly have been in orders of magnitude more.)

Judging by the uproar on blogs, Twitter, social media sites, it has been a spectacular own goal for Save the Children with countless supporters cancelling their subscriptions or donations.

At a meeting with Brendan Cox, the charity’s Director of Policy and Advocacy, a small delegation with Robin Priestley of 38 Degrees, handed in the petition and in a meeting: “ … all had to agree that it was impossible to remove the Award from Tony Blair now …” (1) Given the damage caused by this insane honour, Mr Cox should surely have committed to moving heaven and earth to doing exactly that.

However, now he has a chance. Justin Forsyth, Save the Children’s UK Chief Executive, who personally delivered the invitation to Tony Blair and was a former aide to him as Prime Minister, apologized on 3rd March (sort of) on BBC Radio 4’s flagship “Today” programme.

He was sorry for the offence caused and that it had become an “unnecessary distraction” (2) from the organization’s work. Given Blair’s record in endorsing child deaths and resultant uproar the Award caused and the redesign of their logo to “Kill the Children” found across social media, it was not a “distraction” but an outrage.

Upsetting people, said Mr Forsyth: “ … is not really what we do at Save the Children.” Really? After this so close to home, can their judgement in differing global cultures possibly be trusted?

There was some verbal footwork about the Award being for Blair’s work in Africa, however this is defined as a “Global Legacy Award.” The former Prime Minister’s “legacy” is mass graves of dead children from Kandahar to Falluja.

Moreover, according to Blair’s Faith Foundation website: “Mr. Blair was recognised for his work … in 2005 to pledge to double aid to Africa and provide 100 per cent debt relief to eligible countries, as well as his work in partnership with African governments through the Africa Governance Initiative (AGI).” It might be worth trawling the potentially “double aided” and “100 per cent debt relief” countries to see if and how many of the beneficiaries he might have one of his many lucrative advisory roles with. Politics is hardly known for lack of back scratching.

The Daily Mail on line also quotes Mr. Forsyth as stating: “I know that many of our supporters and volunteers were very upset and our staff, several of our staff too, and I’m very sorry for that.” Another verbal sleight of hand and it was not “several staff.”  By 28thNovember, The  Guardian reported: “An internal petition circulated among Save the Children employees around the word is to be presented to head office.” Describing the award as “morally reprehensible” and calling for it to be rescinded, the petition has gathered more than 500 staff signatures.”(3)

The letter accused Save the Children of “a betrayal to Save the Children’s founding principles and values.”

Their ”Vision, Mission and Values” (4) include:

* “We aspire to live to the highest standards of personal honesty and behaviour; we never compromise our reputation and always act in the best interests of children.” Tell that to Iraq’s five million orphans and their uncounted counterparts in Afghanistan, to the bombed, orphaned, traumatized children of Gaza who the “Middle East Peace Envoy” has ignored.

* ”A world in which every child attains the right to survival, protection, development and participation.” Think about it, Save the Children. Were words ever more hollow after the honouring of a man mired in the destruction of every aspiration in that sentence.

* “To inspire breakthroughs in the way the world treats children and to achieve immediate and lasting change in their lives.”  Endorsed is seemingly one to whom “breakthrough” and “immediate and lasting change” is deprival of life, childhood, parents, home, healing, freedom from fear and all semblance of normality. “Lasting change” indeed.

On 5th December 2014, a letter (5) was sent to Save the Children by Inder Comar of the legal firm Comar Law, San Francisco. outlining starkly the enormity of the illegality of the attack on Iraq in which Mr Blair had been so integral. It pointed out that Save the Children’s hero’s name is entered at the International Criminal Court at the Hague in its “Register of War Criminals.”

The correspondence, in which I declare an interest, was sent on behalf of Denis Halliday, former UN Assistant Secretary General, Professor Michel Chossudovsky, Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization and myself included:

‘As you may be aware, in March 2003, Mr. Blair, while Prime Minister, likely participated with several high-ranking United States leaders in committing the crime of aggression against Iraq. The crime of aggression is the “supreme international crime,” as declared by the Nuremberg Tribunal in 1946. In addition to being prohibited by international law, the crime of aggression is a crime also defined by the International Criminal Court in the Hague, over which it may have the opportunity to exercise jurisdiction in the coming years. “Resort to a war of aggression is not merely illegal, but is criminal.” United States v. Hermann Goering, et al., 41 AM. J. INT’L L. 172, 186, 218-220 (1946); see also Charter Int’l Military Tribunal, art. 6(a), Aug. 8, 1945, 59 Stat. 1546, 82 U.N.T.S. 279.

‘As you may also be aware, in 2004, Secretary General Kofi Annan declared the Iraq War illegal and in contravention of the United Nations Charter.1

‘In 2006, a former prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, Benjamin Ferencz, stated that the Iraq War was a “clear breach of law.”2 “There’s no such thing as a war without atrocities, but war-making is the biggest atrocity of law.”

‘In 2010, a Dutch inquiry concluded that the Iraq War had no basis in international law.3

‘In 2010, Hans Blix, the former chief weapons inspector for the United Nations, stated that it was his “firm view” that the Iraq War was illegal.4

‘In 2012, judges empanelled before the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal, an independent commission headed by former judges and involving input from several international law scholars, concluded that a prima facie case existed that Mr. Blair committed the crime of aggression against Iraq. The tribunal reported its findings to the International Criminal Court in the Hague and entered the name of Mr. Blair in its “Register of War Criminals.” ‘

It concludes:

“Was there any consideration to the optics of giving this Award to Mr. Blair in light of the fact that many of Save the Children’s current management – including Jonathan Forsyth, Jonathan Powell, Sam Sharpe and Fergus Drake – have intimate ties with Mr. Blair and his government? Was there any consideration to the moral paradox of providing this Award to a person whose destitute victims are concurrently succored by Save the Children staff?”

It demands: “Please confirm that Save the Children will rescind the Global Legacy Award forthwith.”

There has been no reply. That action however, would a gesture of, albeit belated, tangible apology and might be a start at repairing Save the Children’s tattered image.

If State Honours, Knighthoods and Peerages can be withdrawn from those subsequently deemed unworthy of their bestowal, surely so can Save the Children’s woefully misplaced Global Award.

Notes

1.     https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/stop-save-the-children-charity-from-giving-tony-blair-their-annual-global-legacy-award

2.     http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-31707195

3.     http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/nov/28/save-the-children-tony-blair-award-row

4.     https://www.savethechildren.net/about-us/our-vision-mission-and-values

5.      http://www.globalresearch.ca/lawyers-letter-to-save-the-children-stc-rescind-the-global-legacy-award-to-war-criminal-tony-blair/5418469

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The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

The Trial of Tony Blair – Martin Noakes

February 16, 2015  /  Gilad Atzmon

 

 

NEWS ALERT! JORDANIAN WINS 2014 TONY BLAIR LIAR OF THE YEAR AWARD

They say if you keep your mouth agape, all the evils of this world will make it their nest for incubation and proliferation.

The Board of Trustees of Syrian Perspective (at a plenary session), the Cultural Outreach Department at the Mercury News Service in New York City, the readers and contributors to Syrian Perspective, (the world’s most renowned source for news on the war against Jihadist terrorism in Syria), are proud to announce the winner of last year’s 2014 Tony Blair Liar of the Year Award.  The winner for 2013 was Public Broadcasting’s most prolific prevaricator, Judy Woodruff.  Another miscreant by the name of Brian Williams may walk away with the award for 2015.

Winning this award is not a simple task.  No way.  It requires Rabelaisian exaggeration, deceit, concealment and finesse on a scale rarely seen amongst even the most adept pickpockets in Naples or Cairo.  You have to have nerves of steel as you espouse, declare, aver or sputter the most nonsensical folderol before a gullible audience – and all this with barely a grin to break the solemnity of your lying.  Romans say a poet is born, not made. (Poeta nascitur, non fit).  And so it apparently is with the profession of lying. It is as though one were born to it as an obligation of fraudulent nobility.

The winner of the 2014 prize is no stranger to the wellspring of Satan’s most powerful craft.  He has suckled from it since a child in the arms of his English mother, Antoinette Avril Gardiner.  He has sipped it’s nectar as the son of the former Hashemite king of Jordan, no slouch himself when it came to bamboozling an entire Arab World.  He scarfed it – nay – wolfed it down – as he became America’s “partner” in the war against terrorism.

He is none other than the Master of Medacity and the Prince of Profligacy, HIS HIGHNESS, KING ‘ABDULLAH II of the HASHEMITE KINGDOM OF JORDAN.  (Wild applause)

image: http://www.syrianperspective.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/CARI.Abdullah.gif

(Image: JohnCoxart caricatures)

When one of your air force pilots is brutally burned to death by savages you helped to train and foster, it’s hard to keep a straight face when consoling the family of the poor aviator.  But, that is exactly what this Lilliputian monarch is all about.  He was even seen with the pilot’s father, managing to produce a tear of anguish as he bussed the old man in the traditional Arab manner on both grizzled cheeks.  Most touching.  Some witnesses swore they could detect a subtle snicker as the king moved away from the grieving parent.

From the day the unrest in Der’ah started, ‘Abdullah II was training agents provocateurs on Jordanian soil with the assistance of Robert Ford whose own plan to rock Syria was already in full blossom.  This king, a toad-like blunt instrument of the same Western World and World Zionism which insure his longevity on the throne of a country so ineptly cobbled together by the British as a consolation prize to the cuckolded Hashemites that it reeks of Chad, Somalia or Mali, makes no secret of the fact he is ready to hire on as a chamberlain for any visiting English fusspot.  He chastises the Zionists for anti-Islamic acts in Jerusalem, but, arrests anyone who actually goes out into the street to enunciate exactly the same grievance.  He smiles benignly at the cameras, while – all the while – the screams of detainees at the General Security HQ outside Amman infuse the air with hair-raising horror, no different than those same sounds his father enjoyed so much during the days of Muhammad Rasool Kaylaani.

He has instructed his representatives to deny any role for Jordan in assisting the terrorists.  In doing this, he has entrapped his own ministers in a web-work of deceit so convoluted it smacks of an Ealing Comedy.  How many times have we delighted in seeing and listening to Jordanian politicians speak into the camera to say that “Jordan is neutral” or “Jordan will not play a role in the crisis in Syria”.  But the best is: “Jordan cherishes the brotherly relations between our two countries”.  It’s camp at its best.  Tasteless, yet, pungent with the aroma of sewer humor.  Some of us have suffered left inguinal hernias as we laughed ourselves silly listening to these Jordanians denying any relationship to the terrorists who are murdering innocent Syrians on a daily basis with so many coming in from Al-Mafraq, Al-Ramtha or Al-Zarqaa`.

In this photo from psychnews, another professional fibber can’t control his laughter as he listens to King Abdullah denying any terrorist bases on Jordanian soil.  When the Great Satan laughs, you know you’ve got a real whopper of a lie.     

And so, with his Zionist affinities bursting from the seams of an ancient overused divan of feathery mendacities, he denies any coordination with the Zionist allies to whom he looks for support whenever somebody suggests he start looking for a palazzo in the English countryside.  He is unique among liars.  He spends his entire life denying the lies everyone knows he’s telling.  His tenacity is mind-bending. ZAF

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“Civilization” of the Neocons

By Peter Koenig

“We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.”  ~Albert Einstein 

January 23, 2015 “ICH” – Imagine – a bunch of French, CIA and Mossad special forces, one of them or a combination of the three, attack a racist, Moslem-insulting publisher in Paris and a kosher supermarket at another end of town – killing altogether 17 people, notwithstanding the ‘suicide’ of the French police chief in charge of investigating the atrocity.

A million and a half people in Paris take to the streets – about 6 million throughout Europe – all screaming or carrying posters with a maddening, inexplicable “Je Suis Charlie” – depicting an utterly brainwashed mindset, brainwashed for decades with Washington directed mind control.

They do not know, do not want to know, that the Charlie massacre was yet another staged event, another false flag that will eventually give their masters green light to intensify their ‘wars on terror’ around the globe. Terrorists are mostly Muslims; so is their dictum. Before the massacre, the powers that be identified three Muslims as the perpetrators of the crime to come. Soon after the Charlie attack, they sent killer squads to massacre them, before anybody could question them. The fight on terror – don’t leave witnesses behind.

The millions of demonstrators’war cry is literally asking the western armies, led by NATO to turn- and speed up their brutal killing machine in the Middle East – to exterminate the Moslem population.The western public has been told and is constantly being told by the western powers dominated main stream media thatMuslims are at the heart of all evil; when in fact quite the contrary is true. The West under neoliberal leadership (sic) has become a horrifying merciless killing machine.

That’s Paris Charlie revisited and in a nutshell. – That’s our neoliberal ‘civilization’ – with a purpose.False flag written all over the walls of Charlie Hebdo’s blasphemous  infrastructure. Waging even more savage war on the 1.6 billion Muslims.Killing 17 people by Empire and its stooges, will allow Empire and its stooges to kill more millions, perhaps tens of millions, to exterminate this ‘evil’ Muslim sect of ‘terrorists’. A ‘terrorist’ is anybody who doesn’t bend to the empire’s boot. That doctrine has been impregnated in western minds ever since another false flag killed on 9/11 about 3,000 people in New York, allowing the beginning of the eternal war – wars, one succeeding the next – the criminal Bush-Blair legacy of the 21^stCentury.

The Afghanistan invasion of empire directed NATO forces was to control the TAPI pipeline project (Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India), for which the Taliban were unwilling to negotiate with the Bush family, nor with a secret Congressional commission in 2001. The project is as of this day a bone of contention – and a good reason for Obama to leave a permanent ‘residue’ of troops in Afghanistan.

To keep a roving mindless populace tight – local false flags, à la Boston Marathon bombing are necessary to intensify repression, abrogate ever more civil liberties – and this even on demand from the very people affected by the repression. They want more security, more protection.

As with Charlie Hebdo, the bad guys were pre-identified,so that when the secret special forces launched their ugly plot, they were easy to trace and chase – and kill. One of the designated ‘perpetrators’ in the Boston case and all of them in Paris. Dead men don’t talk.

The Bostonians literally invited armed police to take over their streets and invade their homes. In Paris the marchers of 1.5 million people were silently screaming, “Hollande go to war and free us from evil! “ –What a depressing joke this is. It would be laughable if it weren’t that serious. – It is one more step won by the neoliberal empire – a step towards full dominance and subjugation of the populace.

The Washington funded AlQaeda-turned-Taliban-turned-AlQaeda Osama BinLaden was made responsible for the Twin Tower’s collapse – in no time. And in no time, two years to be exact, the wind shifted. Iraq’s Saddam is the culprit.  The power of the msm – in combination with the brainless masses works wonders.

Saddam, the newly designated culprit of the New York 9/11 monstrosity triggered the war on Iraq – the empire taking over the country’s riches, her oil wells; at that time the world’s cheapest oil to bring to the surface – and making sure that Saddam would not tell who helped and incited him to wage an eight-year war against his neighbor Iran, and who gave him the poison to gas in 1988 the Kurds in the North, and especially, that he would not convert his forced dollar denominated sales of hydrocarbons into euros, as he unwittingly announced – he had to be executed. He received a world stage hanging, propaganda for justice, for American justice – justice of the exceptional people, supported and road-mapped, as always, by the banking backed ‘chosen people’.

The Bush-Blair led ‘coalition of the willing’ slaughtered more than a million and a half Iraqis, mostly civilians;women, children and elderly; creating other millions of refugees.Countless people murdered in Afghanistan. In parallel the NED-induced (National Endowment for Democracy) infamous machinery of ‘regime change’ produced the so-called Arab Spring which had nothing to do with spring, but everything with devastating one Middle Eastern and North African country after another. The obliteration of Libya and Syria through NATO bombing and NATO prompted civil wars, and more brutal and bloody conflicts all over Mother Earth.

Obama’s personally directed drone war on Yemen, Pakistan, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, Turkey – and the list goes on – is further fomenting and funding local unrest, killing masses of defenseless people.

It is American judgment over nations by war. ISIS, a US-EU-NATO creation, generously funded by the empire and its European and Middle Eastern stooges, as a rebel force to fight Syrian troops and to take over Iraq, is torturing and slaughtering in the (concealed) name of the neocon empire, other thousands of people.

ISIS, supplied with cutting-edge weaponry by the US and NATO, is assailing Iraq, where George W. Bush notoriously declared in May 2003, two months after his shock and awe invasion, “Mission Accomplished”.

Not to mention the horrifying eight more years of war Iraq and her people endured until Obama ceremoniously announced the end of war, pulling out US troops in 2011– not without leaving a core presence behind, though.

As Eduardo Galeano, the famous revolutionary Uruguayan writer and philosopher said – once US troops are in a country, they never leave. Hence, the more than thousand US military bases around the globe.

Wars must go on. The US neoliberal economy depends on them. The war machine and its ramifications contribute more than 50% to the US GDP.

Without wars, the country would collapse. All peace talks and negotiations initiated or feigned by Washington are fake, a deception, propaganda for the goodness of the naked emperor. Kudos for the exceptional nation.

World peace would mean a black hole for the United States, demise.

In both cases, Iraq and Syria, ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) – the Sunni caliphate having merged in 2013 with Syria’s al-Nusra Front – and whatever other names the ‘rebels’ may morph into –are paid to fight national armies unwilling to bend. In turn, they are justifying US interventions, bombing the same ISIS they created, though only a little bit, to make believe, lest ISIS might really be wiped out. Recent US helicopter food and ammunition drops behind ISIS Iraqi lines testify to the west’s double standards and deceit.

In reality, when bombing ISIS, NATO is bombing Iraq and Syria for regime change, and as an added icing on the cake, to grease the US war machine, the ever hungry military industrial complex.

Estimates have it that US carried out and inspired wars and conflicts around the globe have killed over ten million people in the last decade and a half.

That’s neoliberal ‘civilization’ – murdering 17 to kill millions – making billions by weapon manufacturing and selling, plus more billions by stealing hydrocarbon – the God of Energy of our ever growth-lusty western greed economy; and making even more billions by converting small-holder agriculture which still today feeds 80% of world population – into pesticide-implanted genetically modified food production, the Monsanto world.

As if this destruction, annihilation and misery of war and mass killing were not enough, there is reconstruction after war, another bonanza for the destroyer. The words of former World Bank president, Robert Zoellick, also known as the US neoliberal trade tsar, will not be forgotten, when he said in the midst of NATO devastating Libya in 2011 – “We hope that the World Bank will also be involved in the reconstruction of Libya.” Well, this wish has not come through yet, but in other war-torn zones it has.

After destruction comes reconstruction with all the neoliberal strings attached, financial robbery of public goods, reduction of pensions, minimum wages, social services, privatization of education and health, expropriation and privatization of natural resources by foreign corporations –and the list goes on, all requisites of extreme austerity measures as conditions for the sacrosanct IMF, World Bank and ECBso-called rescue packages.

At times, countries whose existence remains somehow important for the empire, like those in Southern Europe, will be driven into misery without physical war, just by financial abuse and economic slavery. Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and even Italy, were driven to the abyss of suffocation by the all-powerful, but appallingly criminal troika, the IMF, ECB and the European Commission.

After coercing or replacing their elected governments with neoliberal puppets, mostly former Wall Street execs, as is the President of the ECB, they – the troika and their masters – forced these countries into debt, after debt and more debt – debt that is virtually unrecoverable in a generation; debt that causes astronomical levels of unemployment, Greece, Spain and Portugal, hovering above 25% and 65% among the young people, slashing social services, health care, pensions, leaving a huge proportion of their population in absolute poverty and in physical and mental misery.

And who funds all these atrocities – wars and financial devastation? – Wall Street, the extended arm of the Zionist-Anglo-Saxon controlled monetary system, and its puppets, the FED, IMF, World Bank, European Central Bank and their subordinate European mega-banks. Naturally.– Who else?

All of these neoliberal mayhems are guided by the invisible hand of the PNAC – the Plan of a New American Century, designed by Zionist Washington think tanks, the tail that wags the dog. The PNAC foresees the annihilation of the Middle East, the pocketing of Europe by implanting puppets – done! – and finally the encircling and eventual subjugation of Russia and China – the ascent of a Washington directed One World Order.

It shall not happen. There is hope in the solid alliance of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, of Russia and China; a strategic economic and defense pact, the western media are silent about. The less the public knows of the truth, the more it will adore the ‘exceptional nation’, as its one and only master – so goes the theory of western self-adulation.

Neoliberalism wants it all, the supremacy of the 1% – addressing the lowest common denominator in human kind – greed, using the main stream media concocting lies and deceptions to nurture more greed which in turn is the engine that fuels the neoliberal doctrine of private property, of privatization of public goods, privatization – stealing – of other countries natural resources, the steady pursuit of instant profit, of police and military oppression of the few who refuse to comply. A Win-Win-Win situation – energy, food and money, as per Kissinger’s infamous dogma– who controls energy controls continents, who controls food controls people, and who controls money controls the world.

Neoliberalism, the religion of the West, is the epitome of evil, of destruction of civilization itself.Neoliberalism – thanks to its unifying factor of greed, has ravaged the west like brushfire and taken over the world in less than 30 years, a feat grander than that achieved by mono-theistic Judo-Christianity in over 2000 years.

Citizens of Mother Earth – BEWARE ! – Wake up ! Open your eyes and ears ! – Become vanguards of a new world, new values – where the neocons and their globalization bite the dust, and where local production for local markets funded by local banks propels solidarity and harmony into new generations of mankind.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He is the author of Implosion: An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe.

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“Je suis Ali Abbas”: The Forgotten Victims of State Terrorism

Ali Abbas who lost both arms and 13 members of his family

By Dr. David Halpin

Global Research, January 12, 2015

Massive terrorist attacks were hatched back soon after the pretext of cinematographic ‘terrorist’ attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001.

The state broadcaster in the UK pumped out the propaganda for these with all vigour and its usual guile.  The people of Afghanistan were first in line, that winter bombing and invasion had been planned for some months before smoke billowed up from the Twin Towers.

Iraqi humans were to be next.  Perle, Wolfowitz, Edelman, Bolton and other Zionists were sitting in our homes as bold as brass.  People like Tom Mangold frightened the old ladies with stories about the nerve gas attacks on the Tokyo tube and how Sarin in a bursting light bulb could kill in seconds.  ‘Free speech, fraternitė, and democracy’ were in the mix, but only a small part of broadcasting time was given over to speakers who were against terrorism by states.  They naively thought the Nuremberg protocols and the Charter of the UN had meaning in international law.

The psychopathic cabal in No 10 got the cogs turning in the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign Office and MI6.  A ‘dossier’ was produced in September 2002 but it turned out to be a ridiculous cut and paste job of a PhD ‘thesis’ from LA.  To laugh in the faces of those with any power of analysis is usual.  And there were the anthrax attacks in the ‘land of the free’.  Those were surely false flags, and lo, Perle claimed that they originated from Iraq.

The war machinery was gathering pace in spite of a majority of British citizens which tried quite hard to throw a spanner in the works.  The smiling, paramount psychopath and war criminal Blair, was undeterred (image).  A second ‘dossier’ was washed many times through the MoD and No 10 computers.  Another psychopath and ex-Mirror journalist Alistair Campbell (image -attached) was the editor it seems.  Saddam, the terrorist, could hit UK forces in Cyprus after a 45 minute order to launch.

This planned holocaust  – the mass killing of humans by humans, as usual, gained it own momentum.  A Danish freighter, the MV Barbara, had cast off 1st February from Torquay, Devon, with four Britons aboard bound for Palestine. (1)  A symbolic fifty tonnes of food, medical supplies etc were in the hold.  The purpose was to share our common humanity with our sisters and brothers in Gaza and to shout against the looming war upon the people of Iraq.  As we steamed eastwards in the Mediterranean, the war and supply ships overtook us on their course for Suez.  On one day the officer of the watch on our ship was interrogated five times by ‘coalition’ terrorists. (2)

On the 16th of March, brothers met to share blood.  The trio who were flown to the Azores consisted of Bush, the capo di tutti capo, Blair and Aznar. (3)   In fact, the attack had already started; Australian special force terrorists were already in theatre – as they say.

On the 22nd March,  massed terrorists from 39 nations including Arab ones, streamed from Kuwait by land and by air, and with cruise missiles, into Iraq.  They were not wielding AK47s but were tooled up with everything.  They had come to liberate the nineteen million humans in Babylon.  This would include liberation of their limbs from their bodies.  The altruistic and ultimate aim was to usher in a golden democracy, as experienced in those 39 nations like Saudi Arabia, the UK and the US, and in the ‘only democracy’ in the Middle East, the Zionist entity.  But the plan laid out by Oded Yinon was central.

A splinter of this terror came to Ali Abbas, then 12 years of age and formerly of the village of Zafaraniya, near Baghdad about 10 days after the shocking and ‘aweing’ started.  (4)  His arms were incinerated and the front of his trunk burned to a depth of an inch.  His mother who was six months pregnant, his father, brother and at least 10 other relatives were incinerated by the coalition of willing terror.  It had been reported that, just after midnight on 30 March 2003 and 10 days into “Operation Iraqi Freedom”, a weapon or two weapons exploded.  The village lay directly alongside the Al Rasheed camp.  This had been an RAF base after 1922 from where, ironically and probably, the British had terrorised the native people.  It also lay about 15 km from Baghdad airport. (5)

There had been a big battle for the bridgehead of Baghdad airport, the Special Republican

Guard fighting the US 7th Infantry Division.

Three images (attached to this paper) of Ali – view from the side, view from his feet and Ali pictured in Kuwait after amputation of his arms and excision of the deep trunk burn.

If one looks carefully one sees :-

• That his head and neck, groins and legs are unblemished.  It would seem that he was irradiated through a rectangular window aperture.
• That it is appropriate to describe his arms as incinerated.  The bones of some fingers are naked and white.
• That the burn over the front of his chest and abdomen tapers off down each side of his trunk.  If massive thermal or nuclear radiation had been applied en face the ‘burning’ would be like this.  Given the much higher thermal capacity of the trunk cf with the arms, the same energy would have required a longer time to incinerate the trunk.
• He had not moved, otherwise there would have been loss of this symmetry.

Imagine his pain and the pain of then knowing that his mum and dad had been killed. What was the agent of this terror?The energy was either thermal or nuclear.  A neutron shell was the most likely source.  This weapon, developed by Samuel T Cohen at Livermore (6 &7) has limited blast and destroys living tissue as opposed to material like concrete or steel.  It does produce radioactive isotopes.  This story, and others, which reports the removal of ‘topsoil’ (8) from Baghdad airport ( and also from Fallujah in other articles) lends support to the strong belief that ‘Enhanced Radiation’ was used on the inhabitants of Zafaraniya.

Conclusion

This act of terrorism on this family went unreported.  Ali’s terrible injuries were presented as an accident of war.  This was but a fragment of the conjoined terrorism of Himalayan magnitude.  It has sat easily on the consciences of the Europeans and other nations from soon after Iraq was turned from blood and loss,  into chaos, blood and loss.

It is noteworthy that although I have published these images several times, I have received only one comment – ‘napalm’!

Je suis Ali Abbas.  We are humanity, trampled to death by the European, and soaked in his hypocrisy.

I am a Palestinian (9)

Notes

1.  The Voyage of The Dove and The Dolphin

http://dhalpin.infoaction.org.uk/15-articles/the-dove-and-dolphin

2.  Video 20 mins  Eyes Open Gaza

http://dhalpin.infoaction.org.uk/videos/16-palestine/64-eyes-open-gaza

3.  http://dhalpin.infoaction.org.uk/41-articles/blair/104-blairs-journey-questions-before-charge

4.  http://www.gailvidahamburg.com/articles/2004/12604.html

5.  http://wikimapia.org/8697320/Al-Zafaraniyah

6.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_bomb

7.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bk_u_kV5NtE

8.  http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread597957/pg1    baghdad airport

9.  http://www.palestine.org.nz/

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Desmond Tutu: ‘Put Tony Blair in the dock for war crimes’

DECEMBER 29, 2014

21st Century Wire says…

Another blow to the legacy of Britain’s international man of mystery…

Groomed by the intelligence services from his early college days, he didn’t bat an eyelid while lying to his electorate – and to the world about fictional WMD’s in Iraq, and he dazzled George W. Bush with his alluring pillow talk, used his cozy globalist-appointed positions and high-flying (albeit meaningless) titles to broker deals for JP Morgan investment elite, while he creates wonderous business opportunities on the backs of the world’s poor – he is the world’s most hated man, and he doesn’t drink Dos Equis (but he does drinks Cristal).

Certainly, it’s a charmed life for the man with the fake smile. Recently, 21WIRE reported how he caused a PR meltdown at the international children’s charity, Save the Children, after someone tried to him a “Global Legacy Award” (spooky). The charity are now deeply regretting that move, calling the whole affair ‘a painful experience’.

To add insult to injury, a former Nobel Peace Prize winner and international icon is now gunning for Britain’s most famous war criminal.

Welcome to Tony’s World…

STILL COINING IT IN:  The Establishment are still protecting Blair with titles and jobs, while the people grow tired of his international charade.

Guardian

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has called for Tony Blair and George Bush to be hauled before the international criminal court in The Hague and delivered a damning critique of the physical and moral devastation caused by the Iraq war.

Tutu, a Nobel peace prize winner and hero of the anti-apartheid movement, accuses the former British and US leaders of lying about weapons of mass destruction and says the invasion left the world more destabilised and divided “than any other conflict in history”.

Writing in the Observer, Tutu also suggests the controversial US and UK-led action to oust Saddam Hussein in 2003 created the backdrop for the civil war in Syria and a possible wider Middle East conflict involving Iran.

“The then leaders of the United States and Great Britain,” Tutu argues, “fabricated the grounds to behave like playground bullies and drive us further apart. They have driven us to the edge of a precipice where we now stand – with the spectre of Syria and Iran before us.”

But it is Tutu’s call for Blair and Bush to face justice in The Hague that is most startling. Claiming that different standards appear to be set for prosecuting African leaders and western ones, he says the death toll during and after the Iraq conflict is sufficient on its own for Blair and Bush to be tried at the ICC.

“On these grounds, alone, in a consistent world, those responsible for this suffering and loss of life should be treading the same path as some of their African and Asian peers who have been made to answer for their actions in The Hague,” he says.

The court hears cases on genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. To date, 16 cases have been brought before the court but only one, that of Thomas Lubanga, a rebel leader from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), has been completed. He was sentenced earlier this year to 14 years’ imprisonment for his part in war crimes in his home country.

Tutu’s broadside is evidence of the shadow still cast by Iraq over Blair’s post-prime ministerial career, as he attempts to rehabilitate himself in British public life. A longtime critic of the Iraq war, the archbishop pulled out of a South African conference on leadership last week because Blair, who was paid 2m rand (£150,000) for his time, was attending. It is understood that Tutu had agreed to speak without a fee.

In his article, the archbishop argues that as well as the death toll, there has been a heavy moral cost to civilisation, with no gain. “Even greater costs have been exacted beyond the killing fields, in the hardened hearts and minds of members of the human family across the world.

“Has the potential for terrorist attacks decreased? To what extent have we succeeded in bringing the so-called Muslim and Judeo-Christian worlds closer together, in sowing the seeds of understanding and hope?” Blair and Bush, he says, set an appalling example. “If leaders may lie, then who should tell the truth?” he asks.

“If it is acceptable for leaders to take drastic action on the basis of a lie, without an acknowledgement or an apology when they are found out, what should we teach our children?”

In a statement, Blair strongly contested Tutu’s views and said Iraq was now a more prosperous country than it had been under Saddam Hussein. “I have a great respect for Archbishop Tutu’s fight against apartheid – where we were on the same side of the argument – but to repeat the old canard that we lied about the intelligence is completely wrong as every single independent analysis of the evidence has shown…

(Advice to the former PM: that’s precisely the reason everyone hates you Tony, because you know you are wrong, but are not big enough to actually admit it)

Continue this Story at The Guardian

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ICC to Examine UK Troops Abuses during Iraq Invasion

Source

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is reportedly expected to look into hundreds of new cases accusing British soldiers of abusing civilians in Iraq between 2003 and 2008.

The Hague-based court will review the cases which detail torture techniques such as rape, sexual assaults, electrocution, sleep deprivation, beating and hooding used by British forces in Iraq during interrogations in the period, the Independent reported on Sunday.

The cases, which have been presented by lawyers and human right activists, accuse UK troops of abusing Iraqi children, women and men aged between 13 and 101.

In one of the cases, an Iraqi policeman died after British soldiers “forced his head into a bucket of cold water a number of times. He stopped breathing and died. His wife and children witnessed the soldiers killing him.”

The Independent report comes ahead of the publication of an official report into allegations that British forces mistreated and unlawfully killed Iraqis back in 2004.

The report, due to be released on Wednesday, is likely to fuel anger against the British government, which reportedly was aware of the torture techniques by the US spy agency CIA.

Source: Websites	14-12-2014 – 13:51 Last updated 14-12-2014 – 13:51

 

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Staff of “Save the children” charity furious the Blair was given an award

Save the Children staff furious over ‘global legacy’ award for Tony Blair

Internal letter signed by almost 200 staff members says award is ‘morally reprehensible’ and endangers STC’s credibility globally

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/nov/25/save-the-children-furious-charity-global-legacy-tony-blair

Tony Blair at the Save the Children Illumination Gala in New York City. Photograph: Getty Images

`

The charity Save the Children faces a backlash from staff after it presented Tony Blair with a “global legacy award” in New York last week – despite privately acknowledging that he is a controversial and divisive figure.

Amid widespread criticism on social media, many of the charity’s staff have complained that the presentation of the award has discredited Save the Children (STC). An internal letter, which gathered almost 200 signatures – including senior regional staff – in the first six hours of dissemination, said the award was not only “morally reprehensible, but also endangers our credibility globally”, and called for it to be withdrawn.

It said that staff wished to distance themselves from the award and demanded a review of the charity’s decision-making process.

“We consider this award inappropriate and a betrayal to Save the Children’s founding principles and values. Management staff in the region were not communicated with nor consulted about the award and were caught by surprise with this decision,” it said.

The move has also raised questions about Save the Children’s (STC) integrity and independence because of close links between the former British prime minister and key figures at the charity’s helm.

Its UK chief executive, Justin Forsyth, was a special adviser to Blair for three years, and Jonathan Powell, Blair’s former chief of staff, is currently on the board of STC.

Blair was presented with the award by the US arm of the charity at a glittering “Illumination Gala” at the Plaza Hotel in New York on 19 November, in recognition of his “leadership on international development”.

The charity cited two G8 summits hosted by Blair during his premiership which focused on debt relief for poor countries. At the Gleneagles summit in 2005, world leaders pledged to “Make Poverty History”.

Forsyth, who was appointed chief executive of STC in 2010, previously worked for Blair, focusing on global poverty. In an introduction to his blog on STC’s website, Forsyth writes: “In 2004, I was recruited to No 10 by Tony Blair, where I led efforts on poverty and climate change and was one of the driving forces behind the Make Poverty History campaign.”

Accepting the award at the New York gala, Blair said: “From the beginning of humankind there has been brutality, conflict, intrigue, the destructive obsession with a narrow self-interest. But throughout all human history, never has been extinguished that relentless, unquenchable desire to do good. To act not only in self-interest and sometimes to even to act in defiance of it.” Protesters swiftly took to social media, led by MP and anti-war campaigner George Galloway, who tweeted: “Following the grotesque award to child-killer @TheBlairDoc Tony Blair by Save the Children all right thinking people should withdraw support.” He also demanded STC rescind the award.

Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, tweeted a picture of Blair with the words: “As this man defends any dictator who’ll pay him, @SaveTheChildrenUK inexplicably gives him award.” Roth later corrected this to STC US.

An online petition calling for STC to revoke the award said many saw Blair “as the cause of the deaths of countless children in the Middle East”. It had gathered more than 81,000 signatures by 1pm on Tuesday.

According to an email sent last week by Krista Armstrong, the charity’s global media manager, to senior colleagues, STC has received a “high volume of complaints and negative reactions regarding the award”.

The email acknowledged that Blair “is a hugely controversial and divisive figure in many parts of the world” and listed a number of questions that had been raised by STC staff, soliciting possible responses from her colleagues.

The first question was: “Why would Save the Children chose (sic) to provide one of its most prestigious award – ‘a global legacy award’ to a man accused of being a war criminal?”

In response, Eileen Burke, STC’s director of media and communications in the US, circulated “a line” explaining Blair was selected for the award for debt relief work and the Make Poverty History campaign.

“Otherwise we are not in a position to respond to some of the geopolitical questions below,” she wrote in a separate email.

In a statement, STC stressed that the award was given by the US arm of the charity, not by STC UK or Forsyth. It said the award was presented because of Blair’s work as prime minister on Africa and poverty.

In response to a question about the scale of internal anger and opposition, STC added: “In a global organisation like ours of thousands of people, our staff have strong views on a whole range of issues and people and we respect that diversity of views.”

A spokeswoman for Blair said the former prime minister was “deeply honoured and moved to receive the award in recognition of his work”. Asked about the wisdom of accepting an award from an organisation with two former Downing St employees within its leadership, Blair’s office pointed out that the award was made by STC US.

Since propelling Britain into the US-led war in Iraq in 2003, in the face of fierce opposition in parliament and among the public, Blair has regularly been accused of war crimes. He is expected to be strongly criticised in the report of the government-appointed Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war, which is due to be published next year.

On the day he stepped down as prime minister in 2007, Blair took up the post of special envoy to the Middle East Quartet, which mediates between Israel and the Palestinians. Palestinians and their supporters have frequently charged that, rather than a neutral interlocutor, Blair is strongly pro-Israel.

Three years ago Tony Blair Associates, the former prime minister’s consultancy firm, signed a multimillion-pound deal to advise the autocratic president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbeyev. Blair and his companies also have lucrative consultancy contracts with Kuwait, the UAE and Colombia.

Other areas of Blair’s post-Downing St work include African governance, faith, sport and climate change.

Powell did not respond to Guardian requests for comment on Blair’s award and his role as a board member of STC.

Forsyth’s salary at the Save the Children came under scrutiny last year when it was disclosed that he was paid £163,000 a year, including more than £22,000 in performance-related pay. He has since taken a pay cut to £140,000.

Unbelievable, Blair despite being complicit in deaths of 1000’s of Iraqi children wins “Save the Children” award

War Criminal Tony Blair Wins Save The Children’s “Global Legacy” Award

 

As reported in the November 20 issue of the Independent:

“Tony Blair was last night recognised for his humanitarian work at a glamorous gala to raise funds for a global children’s charity – in front of guests including Lassie the dog.  The controversial former Prime Minister received the Global Legacy Award at the Save the Children Illumination Gala 2014, which was held at The Plaza in New York City.”

And this isn’t some sick, satirical joke. The man who was to a huge extent responsible for killing, injuring, displacing and immiserating several hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children (among his many other crimes and misdemeanours) has been recognised ‘for his humanitarian work’ by one the ‘Western’ world’s foremost child welfare NGOs.

And me saying that he ‘is to huge extent responsible for the killing, injuring, displacement and immiseration of several hundreds of thousands of children in Iraq’ is not just rhetoric.

To that end, it’s worth looking in a bit more depth at the scale of the catastrophe inflicted on Iraq’s children by the war that Tony Blair launched and continues to defend.

In March 2013, the charity War Child released a report entitled ‘Mission Unaccomplished’. This report documented how:

• ’51% of 12-17 year olds do not attend secondary school’
• ‘One in four children has stunted physical and intellectual development due to under-nutrition’.
• ‘In 2011 a survey found up to 1 million children have lost one or both parents in the conflict’.
• ‘In 2010, 7 years after the conflict began, it was estimated that over a quarter of Iraqi children, or 3 million, suffered varying degrees of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder’.
• ‘Between December 2012 and April 2013, ‘An estimated 692 children and young people have been killed’ in conflict related violence, and more ‘than 1,976 children and young people have been injured’. These figures are almost certainly underestimates’.

http://cdn.warchild.org.uk/sites/default/files/Mission_Unaccomplished_%20Iraq_1_May_2013.pdf

The report also points out that the numbers presented above  ‘come to life when you realise the pain, trauma and suffering behind them.  Every number in the statistics above has a story to tell and a life attached to it’.

Going back further, the Iraqi Red Crescent had documented in 2008 how ‘children under 12 made up 58.7 percent of’ Internally Displaced Persons in the country.

The U.N. had documented how only 40% of Iraqi children had access to clean drinking water due to the effects of the war, and how they in general lacked ‘access to the most basic services and manifest a wide range of psychological symptoms from the violence in their everyday lives’.

While in 2003, The Guardian reported on how:

British and American forces were accused yesterday of breaking international rules of war after admitting that they were using cluster bombs against targets in Iraq.

The report went to explain how:

Alex Renton, overseeing Oxfam’s aid work from Jordan, said the cluster shells could cause “unnecessary harm”. The UN children’s fund, Unicef, expressed concern that Iraqi children might confuse the yellow food packets being handed out by American forces with the bomblets, which had identical colouring.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2003/apr/04/uk.iraq1

That Tony Blair’s policies helped to inflict immense and ongoing hardship on the children of Iraq is beyond question. While he may not have personally been firing the cannons and dropping the bombs, as one of the architects of the aggression against Iraq he is ultimately responsible for the ‘accumulated evil of the whole’, as per the Nuremberg judgements.

What, then, could possibly explain Save The Children’s decision to give a man who is widely reviled as an amoral war criminal, and rightly so, such an award?

Personally, I think one reason could be that their Chief Executive is a fellow named Justin Forsyth. According to his biography on the Save The Children website, Forsyth was in 2004:

  . . . recruited to Number 10 by Tony Blair where he led efforts on poverty and climate change . . . He was to stay on under Gordon Brown, becoming his Strategic Communications and Campaigns Director.

http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/about-us/people/executive-directors

So Forsyth was actaully an underling of Tony Blair (and then Gordon Brown) at precisely the time they were ravaging Iraq.

I’d hazard that he shares broadly the same pro-Establishment values and ideological assumptions as Blair, and has taken those pro-Establishment values and assumptions with him to Save The Children. And when you think of just how rotten the British Establishment is, that can’t be a good thing.

This isn’t the first time that Save The Children have demonstrated that they are unhealthily close to the British and U.S. Establishments, either.

In 2013, for example, they appointed Samantha Cameron, the partner of British Prime Minister David Cameron, as their ambassador to Syria.

It’s worth remembering that David Cameron’s government were (and still are) arming andtraining elements within the rebel opposition, and thus constituted one side in the conflict, at the very time Samantha Cameron was appointed.

And as a little thought experiment, what might the reaction have been had they instead appointed Lyudmila Putin, the partner of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, as their ambassador to Syria? I very much doubt that it would have gone almost totally unremarked upon, as Samantha Cameron’s appointment did.

To take another example, The Guardian had reported in 2003 on how Save The Children had been:

ordered to end criticism of military action in Iraq by its powerful US wing to avoid jeopardising financial support from Washington and corporate donors

And then how:

Senior figures at Save the Children US . . . demanded the withdrawal of the criticism and an effective veto on any future statements blaming the invasion for the plight of Iraqi civilians suffering malnourishment and shortages of medical supplies.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2003/nov/28/charities.usnews

An affair which surely needs no further commentary.

I’ve often thought that the bigger and more established humanitarian and human rights NGOs don’t come in for anywhere near as much scrutiny from the liberal-left as they should. They kop an awful lot of criticism from the right, but it seems to me that for a section of the liberal-left,  their research carries an air of unimpeachable neutrality and unquestionable moral probity.

And i’m not saying they don’t do some good work. But at the very least, their output helps to shape popular attitudes towards matters of war, peace and governance in general, and should be engaged with more critically for that reason.

I’ve also often thought that an analytical model similar to – if distinct from in some important respects – the one Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman applied to corporate media performance might be useful in assessing NGO performance. What role, if any, does funding, ideology, sourcing, management/ownership and flak play in shaping their output?

For a start, it might help to explain why former officials of the U.S. and U.K. government keep on ending up in positions of power in these organisations.

It would take a bigger brain than mine to undertake such a project – although activists like Keane Bhatt are doing great work in this area – but last night’s utter travesty shows why it would be useful.

Only When We See the War Criminals In Our Midst Will the Blood Begin to Dry

 

John Pilger on ISIS: Only When We See the War Criminals In Our Midst Will the Blood Begin to Dry

http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/from-pol-pot-to-isis-anything-that-flies-on-everything-that-moves/

 

By John Pilger / johnpilger.com

In transmitting President Richard Nixon’s orders for a “massive” bombing of Cambodia in 1969, Henry Kissinger said, “Anything that flies on everything that moves”.  As Barack Obama ignites his seventh war against the Muslim world since he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the orchestrated hysteria and lies make one almost nostalgic for Kissinger’s murderous honesty.

As a witness to the human consequences of aerial savagery – including the beheading of victims, their parts festooning trees and fields – I am not surprised by the disregard of memory and history, yet again. A telling example is the rise to power of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge, who had much in common with today’s Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). They, too, were ruthless medievalists who began as a small sect. They, too, were the product of an American-made apocalypse, this time in Asia.

According to Pol Pot, his movement had consisted of “fewer than 5,000 poorly armed guerrillas uncertain about their strategy, tactics, loyalty and leaders”. Once Nixon’s and Kissinger’s B52 bombers had gone to work as part of “Operation Menu”, the west’s ultimate demon could not believe his luck.

The Americans dropped the equivalent of five Hiroshimas on rural Cambodia during 1969-73. They levelled village after village, returning to bomb the rubble and corpses. The craters left monstrous necklaces of carnage, still visible from the air. The terror was unimaginable. A former Khmer Rouge official described how the survivors “froze up and they would wander around mute for three or four days. Terrified and half-crazy, the people were ready to believe what they were told… That was what made it so easy for the Khmer Rouge to win the people over.”

A Finnish Government Commission of Enquiry estimated that 600,000 Cambodians died in the ensuing civil war and described the bombing as the “first stage in a decade of genocide”. What Nixon and Kissinger began, Pol Pot, their beneficiary, completed. Under their bombs, the Khmer Rouge grew to a formidable army of 200,000.

ISIS has a similar past and present. By most scholarly measure, Bush and Blair’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 led to the deaths of some 700,000 people – in a country that had no history of jihadism. The Kurds had done territorial and political deals; Sunni and Shia had class and sectarian differences, but they were at peace; intermarriage was common. Three years before the invasion, I drove the length of Iraq without fear. On the way I met people proud, above all, to be Iraqis, the heirs of a civilization that seemed, for them, a presence.

Bush and Blair blew all this to bits. Iraq is now a nest of jihadism. Al-Qaeda – like Pol Pot’s “jihadists” – seized the opportunity provided by the onslaught of Shock and Awe and the civil war that followed. “Rebel” Syria offered even greater rewards, with CIA and Gulf state ratlines of weapons, logistics and money running through Turkey. The arrival of foreign recruits was inevitable. A former British ambassador, Oliver Miles, wrote recently, “The [Cameron] government seems to be following the example of Tony Blair, who ignored consistent advice from the Foreign Office, MI5 and MI6 that our Middle East policy – and in particular our Middle East wars – had been a principal driver in the recruitment of Muslims in Britain for terrorism here.”

ISIS is the progeny of those in Washington and London who, in destroying Iraq as both a state and a society, conspired to commit an epic crime against humanity. Like Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, ISIS are the mutations of a western state terror dispensed by a venal imperial elite undeterred by the consequences of actions taken at great remove in distance and culture. Their culpability is unmentionable in “our” societies.

It is 23 years since this holocaust enveloped Iraq, immediately after the first Gulf War, when the US and Britain hijacked the United Nations Security Council and imposed punitive “sanctions” on the Iraqi population – ironically, reinforcing the domestic authority of Saddam Hussein. It was like a medieval siege. Almost everything that sustained a modern state was, in the jargon, “blocked” – from chlorine for making the water supply safe to school pencils, parts for X-ray machines, common painkillers and drugs to combat previously unknown cancers carried in the dust from the southern battlefields contaminated with Depleted Uranium.

Just before Christmas 1999, the Department of Trade and Industry in London restricted the export of vaccines meant to protect Iraqi children against diphtheria and yellow fever. Kim Howells, parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Blair government, explained why. “The children’s vaccines”, he said, “were capable of being used in weapons of mass destruction”. The British Government could get away with such an outrage because media reporting of Iraq – much of it manipulated by the Foreign Office – blamed Saddam Hussein for everything.

Under a bogus “humanitarian” Oil for Food Programme, $100 was allotted for each Iraqi to live on for a year. This figure had to pay for the entire society’s infrastructure and essential services, such as power and water. “Imagine,” the UN Assistant Secretary General, Hans Von Sponeck, told me, “setting that pittance against the lack of clean water, and the fact that the majority of sick people cannot afford treatment, and the sheer trauma of getting from day to day, and you have a glimpse of the nightmare. And make no mistake, this is deliberate. I have not in the past wanted to use the word genocide, but now it is unavoidable.”

Disgusted, Von Sponeck resigned as UN Humanitarian Co-ordinator in Iraq. His predecessor, Denis Halliday, an equally distinguished senior UN official, had also resigned. “I was instructed,” Halliday said, “to implement a policy that satisfies the definition of genocide: a deliberate policy that has effectively killed well over a million individuals, children and adults.”

A study by the United Nations Children’s Fund, Unicef, found that between 1991 and 1998, the height of the blockade, there were 500,000 “excess” deaths of Iraqi infants under the age of five. An American TV reporter put this to Madeleine Albright, US Ambassador to the United Nations, asking her, “Is the price worth it?” Albright replied, “We think the price is worth it.”

In 2007, the senior British official responsible for the sanctions, Carne Ross, known as “Mr. Iraq”, told a parliamentary selection committee, “[The US and UK governments] effectively denied the entire population a means to live.”  When I interviewed Carne Ross three years later, he was consumed by regret and contrition. “I feel ashamed,” he said. He is today a rare truth-teller of how governments deceive and how a compliant media plays a critical role in disseminating and maintaining the deception. “We would feed [journalists] factoids of sanitised intelligence,” he said, “or we’d freeze them out.”

On 25 September, a headline in the Guardian read: “Faced with the horror of Isis we must act.” The “we must act” is a ghost risen, a warning of the suppression of informed memory, facts, lessons learned and regrets or shame. The author of the article was Peter Hain, the former Foreign Office minister responsible for Iraq under Blair. In 1998, when Denis Halliday revealed the extent of the suffering in Iraq for which the Blair Government shared primary responsibility, Hain abused him on the BBC’s Newsnight as an “apologist for Saddam”. In 2003, Hain backed Blair’s invasion of stricken Iraq on the basis of transparent lies. At a subsequent Labour Party conference, he dismissed the invasion as a “fringe issue”.

Now Hain is demanding “air strikes, drones, military equipment and other support” for those “facing genocide” in Iraq and Syria. This will further “the imperative of a political solution”. Obama has the same in mind as he lifts what he calls the “restrictions” on US bombing and drone attacks. This means that missiles and 500-pound bombs can smash the homes of peasant people, as they are doing without restriction in Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia – as they did in Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos. On 23 September, a Tomahawk cruise missile hit a village in Idlib Province in Syria, killing as many as a dozen civilians, including women and children. None waved a black flag.

The day Hain’s article appeared, Denis Halliday and Hans Von Sponeck happened to be in London and came to visit me. They were not shocked by the lethal hypocrisy of a politician, but lamented the enduring, almost inexplicable absence of intelligent diplomacy in negotiating a semblance of truce. Across the world, from Northern Ireland to Nepal, those regarding each other as terrorists and heretics have faced each other across a table. Why not now in Iraq and Syria.

Like Ebola from West Africa, a bacteria called “perpetual war” has crossed the Atlantic. Lord Richards, until recently head of the British military, wants “boots on the ground” now. There is a vapid, almost sociopathic verboseness from Cameron, Obama and their “coalition of the willing” – notably Australia’s aggressively weird Tony Abbott – as they prescribe more violence delivered from 30,000 feet on places where the blood of previous adventures never dried. They have never seen bombing and they apparently love it so much they want it to overthrow their one potentially valuable ally,  Syria. This is nothing new, as the following leaked UK-US intelligence file illustrates:

“In order to facilitate the action of liberative [sic] forces… a special effort should be made to eliminate certain key individuals [and] to proceed with internal disturbances in Syria. CIA is prepared, and SIS (MI6) will attempt to mount minor sabotage and coup de main [sic] incidents within Syria, working through contacts with individuals… a necessary degree of fear… frontier and [staged] border clashes [will] provide a pretext for intervention… the CIA and SIS should use… capabilities in both psychological and action fields to augment tension.”

That was written in 1957, though it could have been written yesterday. In the imperial world, nothing essentially changes. Last year, the former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas revealed that “two years before the Arab spring”, he was told in London that a war on Syria was planned. “I am going to tell you something,” he said in an interview with the French TV channel LPC, “I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business. I met top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria… Britain was organising an invasion of rebels into Syria. They even asked me, although I was no longer Minister for Foreign Affairs, if I would like to participate… This operation goes way back. It was prepared, preconceived and planned.”

The only effective opponents of ISIS are accredited demons of the west – Syria, Iran, Hezbollah. The obstacle is Turkey, an “ally” and a member of Nato, which has conspired with the CIA, MI6 and the Gulf medievalists to channel support to the Syrian “rebels”, including those now calling themselves ISIS. Supporting Turkey in its long-held ambition for regional dominance by overthrowing the Assad government beckons a major conventional war and the horrific dismemberment of the most ethnically diverse state in the Middle East.

A truce – however difficult to achieve – is the only way out of this imperial maze; otherwise, the beheadings will continue. That genuine negotiations with Syria should be seen as “morally questionable” (the Guardian) suggests that the assumptions of moral superiority among those who supported the war criminal Blair remain not only absurd, but dangerous.

Together with a truce, there should be an immediate cessation of all shipments of war materials to Israel and recognition of the State of Palestine. The issue of Palestine is the region’s most festering open wound, and the oft-stated justification for the rise of Islamic extremism. Osama bin Laden made that clear. Palestine also offers hope. Give justice to the Palestinians and you begin to change the world around them.

More than 40 years ago, the Nixon-Kissinger bombing of Cambodia unleashed a torrent of suffering from which that country has never recovered. The same is true of the Blair-Bush crime in Iraq. With impeccable timing, Henry Kissinger’s latest self-serving tome has just been released with its satirical title, “World Order”. In one fawning review, Kissinger is described as a “key shaper of a world order that remained stable for a quarter of a century”. Tell that to the people of Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Chile, East Timor and all the other victims of his “statecraft”.  Only when “we” recognise the war criminals in our midst will the blood begin to dry.