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Following the Chilcot Report, time for a proper reckoning

By Neil Clark | RT | July 6, 2016

Although Chilcot was not the Establishment cover-up which many feared, it’s also true that it doesn’t tell us much that we didn’t already know.

The long-awaited and much-delayed Chilcot report, published today, provides a damning indictment of the New Labour government of Tony Blair and the lies that were told in the lead-up to the disastrous Iraq war.

The Iraq war was ‘not a last resort’ but in fact a war of choice. ‘Peaceful options’ were not exhausted.

In 2003, there was “no imminent threat from Saddam Hussein” – contrary to what Blair and the neocons told us. Intelligence had “not established beyond doubt” that Iraq had continued to produce chemical and biological weapons, despite us being told it was a sure thing that Saddam had WMDs.

While supporters claimed the war was “legal”, and haughtily dismissed those of us who called it a “war crime”, Chilcot found that the circumstances in which it was decided that there was a legal basis for war were “far from satisfactory”.

We knew that the Iraq war was not a ‘last resort’ as UN weapons inspectors in Iraq were not allowed to finish their job. We know that the war was illegal- as it had no UN sanction- and was a war of aggression and not a war of self-defense.

The Nuremberg judgement, following World War Two, was quite unequivocal on the subject:

War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

And although Chilcot does not directly accuse Blair of ‘deceit’ (that would be a step too far for the Establishment figures on the panel), common sense and logic also tells us that if Blair and Bush had genuinely believed Iraq had WMDs that could be launched within 45 minutes they would not have invaded. The very fact that the US and the UK did attack Iraq, proves that the leadership of those two countries knew the WMD claims to be false.

Saddam was attacked not because he had WMDs, but because the war lobby knew he didn’t have any. To hold otherwise is to expect us to believe, that just for this one occasion, the rules of deterrence did not apply. By the same people, incidentally, who tell us we need our own WMDs to deter attack!

As to what happened post-invasion, we really don’t need Sir John Chilcot to tell us that the “planning and preparations for Iraq after Saddam Hussein were wholly inadequate” – we saw with our own eyes how the country imploded after the events of March 2003.

Iraq had no history of suicide bombings before the illegal invasion – it’s had over 2,000 since then.
Well done, Bush and Blair! You really ‘liberated’ the Iraq people all right. From their bodies.

The question now that Chilcot has finally been published is: What happens next?

Tony Blair was damaged goods before today: he’s now reached the point of no return. A few weeks ago I wrote about attempts to impeach Blair for lying to Parliament – those moves are now likely to intensify.

Labour’s anti-war leader Jeremy Corbyn – who’s been fighting off a Blairite-led coup against his own leadership – called the Iraq war “an act of military aggression launched on a false pretext”. He also said the war “fueled and spread terrorism across the region” – making reference to the suicide bombings in Baghdad this weekend which killed over 200 people.

Meanwhile, a woman who lost her brother in the Iraq war said that Tony Blair was “the world’s worst terrorist”.

“There is one terrorist in this world that the world needs to be aware of, and his name is Tony Blair”, said Sarah O’Connor.

But while Blair must take the lion’s share of the blame for Britain’s involvement in the Iraq war, this is not just about one man. His willing accomplices in the British Establishment must be held to account too. We not allow these people evade responsibility for the death and destruction they helped unleash throughout the Middle East.

Alistair Campbell, Blair’s spin doctor, cited Oxford University academic Vernon Bogdanor, in his defense today.

“My conclusion,” said Bogdanor (as quoted by Campbell) “is that there are no easy answers, that Bush and Blair were faced with an almost impossible dilemma, and that all of us should be very grateful that we were not in their shoes and did not have to make their difficult decisions.”

But Campbell doesn’t mention that Bognador was a signatory to the Statement of Principles of the uber neocon pro-war Henry Jackson Society.

In fact, Bush and Blair did not face an “impossible dilemma”, but chose to launch a war of aggression against an independent state which posed no threat to either Britain or America.

With the Middle East in turmoil and terrorism spawned by the Iraq invasion, killing civilians in the west and elsewhere in the world, it’s now time for a proper reckoning.

Politicians who voted for the Iraq war and who voted against an inquiry into it need to be publicly named and shamed and de-selected by their local parties.

Labour patrons of the Henry Jackson Society and other pro-war organizations need to be expelled without further delay and the anti-war George Galloway, who predicted accurately everything that would happen if Iraq were invaded, needs to have his expulsion from the Labour party rescinded.

We should also not forget the pernicious role played in the lead-up to the invasion by a clique of pro-war journalists (more accurately described as neocon propagandists) who regurgitated Establishment lies and who demonized anti-war protestors as “Saddam apologists” who had “blood on their hands” and who were “betraying the Iraqi people”.

These laptop bombardiers must be held to account too for what they did – with the Nuremberg tribunals’ indictment of pro-war Nazi propagandists arguably providing the precedent if/when there is an Iraq war crimes trial. Until that happy day, no one should ever believe a single thing they read by these individuals ever again. They deserve to be treated as total pariahs and certainly not invited into television studios to impart their ‘wisdom’ on foreign policy.

What’s made things worse and which explains why there is so much public anger, is that the Iraq war lobby, far from showing any contrition over what they did, have simply ‘moved on’ from Iraq to push for more wars. As the bombs continue to go off in Baghdad, Tony Blair himself has become a multimillionaire with a huge property portfolio.

The same rancid crew of politicians and journalists who supported the Iraq war were also – it needs pointing out – cheerleaders for the military intervention against Libya in 2011 (which as well as destroying the country with the highest living standards in Africa, also precipitated the current migrant crisis), and for military action against a secular Syrian government battling ISIS and Al-Qaeda in 2013. These people are also, incidentally, bellicose supporters of “tougher action” against Russia and – as Glenn Greenwald has noted – some of them are also at the forefront of the campaign against RT.

The endless war lobby (surprise, surprise), don’t want us to ‘Question More’ – but merely accept, like sheep, the WMD-style lies we’re fed by our ‘superiors’.

While we rightly castigate Blair and call for him to be put on trial for war crimes, we shouldn’t let David Cameron and Conservative Party foreign policy hawks off the hook either. ‘Call Me Dave’ consistently voted for the Iraq war and in office he’s carried on Blair’s disastrous ‘Divide and Destroy’ foreign policies.

While the word ‘Iraq’ should be engraved on Blair’s tombstone, ‘Libya’ should be on Cameron’s. The British Prime Minister has also played a malevolent and highly destructive role in relation to the crisis in Syria. If Cameron had got his way in 2013 and got Parliamentary approval for bombing the Syrian government, then it’s likely that ISIS and al-Qaeda affiliates would now be in charge of the whole of the country. That’s what the Blairites and neocons- who claim to be fighting ‘a war on terror’ appear to have wanted.

Significantly, Cameron was keen to stress in Parliament today that the Chilcot report doesn’t mean that we should rule out future military interventions.

“We should not conclude that intervention is always wrong. There are unquestionably times when it’s right”, he said.

Even now, after all the death and destruction their polices have caused, the war lobby and supporters of ‘liberal interventionism’ are trying to ensure that it’s still ‘business as usual’.

It’s up to the British people – whose taxes go to pay for these ‘military interventions’ – and whose children (unlike those of the political/media elite) are more likely to die in them, to say ‘Enough is Enough’.

Out with the serial warmongers, the serial liars and the war propagandists who never go anywhere near a war-zone, and in with those – like Jeremy Corbyn – who support international law, oppose wars of aggression and who have respect for the sovereign rights of independent nations in a genuine world of equals. If we meekly allow the architects and enablers of the Iraq war and their accomplices to get away with it scot-free, it will be a stain on our collective conscience. We can’t let it happen if we’re to retain our humanity. Or if we want to prevent more wars of aggression in the future.

The Chilcot report is around 2.6m words long- but the essence of what happened in 2003 can be summed up in just eight: The British government lied. One million people died.

Follow Neil Clark on Twitter @NeilClark66

July 6, 2016 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Hillary Clinton’s Emails and the Crisis of Legitimacy

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford | July 6, 2016

GLEN_END-IMPUNITYHillary Clinton has escaped indictment – as almost universally expected – for commingling her email communications as secretary of state with her personal business, including the global money laundering, bribery and extortion racket called the Clinton Foundation. The Clintons are capable of infinite corruption. That’s why they’re in politics: to protect the criminal enterprises of the truly rich people they serve, and to become rich, themselves. That is the nature of the system – and the system works; it provides impunity to the powerful.

FBI Director James Comey essentially admitted as much when he acknowledged that there was “evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information.” A reasonable person in Clinton’s position “should have known” that what she was doing was violating the law. But, he said, the FBI’s “judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.” The public knows perfectly well that what Comey really means is that there’s no way he was going to keep the rulers of the United States from getting the president they want.

So, Hillary gets off, as did the warlord General David Petraeus and other insiders who were not fully prosecuted for clearly breaking the law. Yet, President Obama has shattered all historical records in treating whistleblowers as spies. Obama pushed for and got the power to detain people indefinitely without trial or charge, but is so tolerant of systemic criminality among Wall Street bankers that his own attorney general had to briefly admit that the Lords of Capital are “too big to jail.” So, on the one hand, the fundamental right to due process under the law has ceased to exist – yet, for the rich impunity has become all but absolute.

The rulers are caught in a crisis of legitimacy. Obscenely concentrated wealth has turned U.S. society into a Constitution-free zone for the wealthy, who behave as if they are a separate species. They have exhausted the tolerance even of white Americans, descendants of Europeans who came here hoping to become rich, but now despair of keeping their heads above water and are growing to despise the 1%.

Black folks are waking up – angry! – after two generations of relative quietude, pushing back against a police state that is coddled by Congress, upheld by the Supreme Court, and unchallenged by the executive branch. The system is leaking legitimacy like a sieve.

Donald Trump is seen as illegitimate by probably a majority of Americans, but so is Hillary Clinton. In some ways, Clinton is even more revolting. Most people that hate Trump can point to one or more of his specific policies or statements. However, people are just plain repulsed by Hillary Clinton. If pressed on why they find her so distasteful, folks say she is dishonest, not to be trusted – but usually offer no particulars. What they really feel, is that she is corrupt to the bone; that she personifies the Lie that the top of society tells to the bottom.

The crisis of legitimacy becomes acute when enough people say, “Who are you to hold power over me?”

Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

July 6, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception | , | 1 Comment

Post-Brexit, Is the EU Flaunting Its Undemocratic Tendencies?

By Joyce Nelson | CounterPunch | July 6, 2016

Stung by Brexit, the EU bureaucrats seem intent on showing just how undemocratic they can be. Here are two examples just in the last seven days.

The Glyphosate License

On June 24, EU member states again refused (for a third time this year) to approve a renewal of the license for the weed-killer glyphosate manufactured by Monsanto and other corporations involved in GMO crop cultivation. That should have meant that the license would expire by the end of June, and Monsanto’s Roundup and other glyphosate weed-killers would have to be withdrawn from Europe by the end of this year.

Instead, on June 29 the European Commission (EC) decided “unilaterally” to extend the glyphosate license for another 18 months. [1]

The decision “drew heavy criticism from the Greens in the European Parliament, who said the decision showed the Commission’s ‘disdain’ for the opposition by the public and EU governments to the controversial toxic herbicide.” [2] Belgian Green Member of the European Parliament Bart Staes said, “As perhaps the first EU decision after the UK referendum, it shows the [EC] executive is failing to learn the clear lesson that the EU needs to finally start listening to its citizens again.” [3]

Many were simply shocked that an unelected body of bureaucrats would cater so blatantly to the corporate sector’s last-minute lobbying.

The EC claims that, because of member nations’ indecision on the matter, its own decision about glyphosate was based on assessments made by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), prolonging the authorisation until a new scientific review is concluded before the end of 2017, but Greenpeace has called the EFSA study “a whitewash.” [4]

Lawrence Woodward, co-director of Beyond GM, has called the EC’s unilateral decision “reckless.” [5] It comes at the same time that dozens of individuals and organizations have signed an open “Letter from America,” urging European citizens, politicians and regulators to not adopt a “failing agricultural technology” and sharing examples of glyphosate and GMO repercussions across North America. [6]

CETA Ratification

At virtually the same time that the EC made this controversial decision on glyphosate, it made another that is even more undemocratic.

On June 28, a German news agency reported that European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told EU leaders the Commission is planning to push through a controversial free trade agreement between Canada and the EU – known as CETA, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement – without giving national parliaments any say in it. [7] According to the German press, Juncker argued that allowing national parliaments to vote on the agreement would “paralyze the process” and raise questions about the EU’s “credibility.” Juncker claimed that CETA “would fall within the exclusive competence of the EU executive” and therefore doesn’t need to be ratified by national parliaments within the 28-nation bloc, sources in Brussels told the Germany news agency DPA. [8]

Most EU members, however, view CETA as a “mixed” agreement, meaning “that each country would have to push the deal through their parliaments.” [9]

In late June 2016, the EC’s Juncker was reported as saying that he “personally couldn’t care less” whether lawmakers get to vote on CETA. [10]

Millions of Canadians and Europeans have fought against CETA for the past six years. Like the TPP and TTIP, it is a draconian agreement that would hand multinational corporations immense power to overrule elected local governments on numerous fronts. In Canada, CETA was supposed to be voted on by every Canadian provincial and territorial government before any ratification could take place, but in September 2014 (during the reign of Stephen Harper) the CETA deal was signed without there having been any public consultation whatsoever in Canada. The 2014 announcement was also the first time people in Canada and Europe were allowed to see the official text, which had been kept secret during the years of negotiations.

Unfortunately, Canada’s International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland is enthused about what the EU is doing. According to The Globe and Mail newspaper (July 3), “The British vote to exit the European Union has refocused

Europe’s attention on the need to send a message to the world that liberalized trade is the path to greater prosperity, Ms. Freeland said.” [11]

She also explained that once the European Parliament approves CETA, “a great deal of the agreement would come into force immediately, more than 90 per cent,” she said, “those portions deemed to be within the European Union’s jurisdiction, those go into force right away.” [12]

Freeland told The Globe and Mail that concerns about CETA’s investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism – which allows multinational corporations to sue governments over regulations that harm their future profits – had been addressed by a rewrite of the treaty’s investment chapter. [13] But according to Council of Canadians, those changes “actually make [the provisions] worse. The reforms enshrine extra rights for foreign investors that everyone else – including domestic investors – don’t have. They allow foreign corporations to circumvent a country’s own courts, giving them special status to challenge laws that apply equally to everyone through a [private] court system exclusively for their use.” [14]

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will be in Europe this week for a NATO summit, and officials “say he will lobby hard for other European leaders not to stand in the way of [CETA’s] ratification.” [15]

The Pushback

Reportedly, the pushback in Europe has been immediate, with Germany and France wanting “their national parliaments to be involved” in CETA ratification. On July 5, Deutsche Welle reported that “Juncker appears to be backtracking,” and would propose at a July 5 EC meeting that CETA would require “both the approval of the European parliament and national legislatures.” [16]

The Globe and Mail reported on July 5 that Juncker’s “new recommendation… could call for applying those EU parts of the treaty while the ratification process [by national legislatures] is under way.” [17] That would mean (as Canada’s Chrystia Freeland had earlier explained) more than 90% of CETA could be approved by the EU as part of its “jurisdiction” and needing no national legislative approvals. Such a process would make a mockery of democratic rights on both sides of the Atlantic.

That appears to be what is happening.

Following the July 5 EC meeting in Strasbourg, France, the CBC reported: “Legal opinions advanced by the commission suggest that most of the agreement – perhaps as much as 95 per cent – falls comfortably with the European Union’s jurisdiction… ‘This is an agreement that Europe needs,’ EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said in a statement. ‘The open issue of competence for such trade agreements will be for the European Court of Justice to clarify, in the near future. From a strict legal standpoint, the commission considers this agreement to fall under exclusive EU competence. However, the political situation in the council is clear, and we understand the need for proposing it as a ‘mixed’ agreement, in order to allow for a speedy signature’.” [18]

But as nations gear up to wrangle with the EU (in the European Court of Justice) over what parts of the CETA treaty fall within their jurisdiction, and what parts “fall under exclusive EU competence,” the EC could approve 95% of CETA before elected legislatures even vote.

The Council of Canadians warns on its website (July 5): “One important concern to note, ‘The commission may recommend provisionally applying the EU-parts of the Canada deal while full ratification is pending.’ The French newspaper Le Monde has previously reported that even if CETA is deemed to be a ‘mixed’ agreement, the deal could enter into force ‘provisionally’ even before EU member state parliaments vote on it. It notes, ‘If EU ministers agreed at the signing of the CETA on its provisional application, it could come into effect the following month. Such a decision would have serious implications. Symbolically, first because it would send the message that European governments finally [have] little regard for the views of parliamentarians and thus of European citizens strongly against the agreement’.” [19]

Council of Canadians National Chairperson Maude Barlow stated after the EC meeting in Strasbourg, “Like many Canadians, Europeans are worried about CETA’s attacks on democracy, its weakening of social and safety standards, its contribution to privatization and attacks on public services. After the Brexit vote, policy makers on both sides of the Atlantic would be better counseled to listen to voters, rather than pushing discredited [trade] solutions down people’s throats.” [20]

Global Justice Now director Nick Dearden has called CETA a “toxic deal” and says that the way the EC is acting “reinforces the widely held suspicion that the EU makes big decisions with harmful consequences for ordinary people with very little in the way of democratic process,” he said. “Rather than take a step back and question why there is hostility to the EU, they try to speed up this awful trade deal.” [21]

Union members, environmentalists, social activists and “fair trade” groups say CETA is just as dangerous as the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) deal between the EU and the U.S., which hands massive power to multinationals and is a direct threat to democracy on both sides of the Atlantic. The way the EC is handling CETA is a stark clue to what’s in store for TTIP.

Footnotes:
[1] “European Commission Extends Glyphosate License without Real Restrictions,” Sustainable Pulse, June 29, 2016.

[2] Frederic Simon, “EU muddling on glyphosate fuelled Brexit populism,” EurActiv.com, July 1, 2016.

[3] Quoted in ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Katie Pohlman, “Neil Young: Say No to GMOs on ‘Behalf of All Living Things’,” EcoWatch, July 1, 2016.

[6] Quoted in ibid.

[7] “EU Commission Seeks to Push Through Free Trade Agreement with Canada (CETA) without Parliamentary Approval,” Deutsche Welle, June 28, 2016.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Reuters, “EU Commission to opt for simple approval for Canada deal: EU official,” June 28, 2016.

[10] “EU Commission: CETA should be approved by national parliaments,” Deutsche Welle, July 5, 2016.

[11] Robert Fife, “Despite Brexit vote, key EU powers vow to ratify CETA deal,” The Globe and Mail, July 3, 2016.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Council of Canadians, “CETA changes make investor-state provisions worse,” February 3, 2016.

[15] Fife, op cit.

[16] “EU Commission: CETA should be approved by national parliaments,” Deutsche Welle, July 5, 2016.

[17] “EC set to scrap plans to fast-track CETA deal: report,” The Globe and Mail, July 5, 2016.

[18] “Canada gets clarity on how Europe will ratify trade deal,” CBC, July 5, 2016.

[19] Council of Canadians, “CETA to be considered a ‘mixed’ agreement, now more vulnerable to defeat,” July 5, 2016.

[20] Council of Canadians, “CETA vulnerable to defeat: Council of Canadians,” July 5, 2016.

[21] Lamiat Sabin “Brexit ‘Might Not Stop Awful Ceta’,” Morning Star, July 5, 2016.

Joyce Nelson is an award-winning Canadian freelance writer/researcher working on her sixth book.

July 6, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Bakari Sellers: Hitman for Israel, Hillary and Wall Street

By Glen Ford | Black Agenda Report | July 6, 2016

Bakari Sellers, the 31 year-old former South Carolina state lawmaker who became a paid CNN shill for Hillary Clinton in 2015, following the Charleston massacre, is also a longtime operative for AIPAC, the deep-pocketted, cutthroat lobby for Israel. In a letter to Democratic Party officials, last month, Sellers claimed to have gathered the signatures of 60 “lifelong” Black Democrats urging rejection of any changes to the party’s slavishly pro-Israel 2012 platform positions, denouncing as “anti-Semitic” the global movement against Israeli oppression of Arabs in Palestine and the nearly 50-year-long occupation of the West Bank. “Since the last platform was approved, anti-Semitism has been on the rise and it has taken a new form – the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement known as BDS,” said the letter, much of which consisted of quotes from Hillary Clinton, including, “In Israel’s story, we see our own.” Clinton’s vision is clear, in one respect: the U.S. was once the largest of the world’s apartheid states; today, Israel is the last one standing.

Clinton’s minions on the platform committee brushed aside Bernie Sanders delegates’ planks on Israel, as well as the TPP pro-corporate trade deal, single payer healthcare, a carbon tax, and linking a $15 an hour minimum wage to inflation.

The names on Sellers’ list have not yet been made public, but there is no shortage of Black apologists for Israel. In 2014, the entire Congressional Black Caucus joined in a unanimous U.S. House resolution affirming the Zionist state’s right to “defend itself” – even as Israeli bombs were slaughtering over 2,100 men, women and children in Gaza.

Despite his relative youth, Bakari Sellers is a veteran operative for AIPAC, the American Israel Political Action Committee, Israel’s strong-arm lobby. According to the web site Electronic Intifada, Sellers was recruited back in 2004, when AIPAC had just begun a massive campaign at historically Black colleges and among even younger students of color, nationwide. Sellers was a real catch for AIPAC; not only had he just been elected student body president, he is also the son of Cleveland Sellers, a former leader of SNCC, the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee, who was wounded in the 1968 Orangeburg Massacre when state police killed three Black college students protesting segregation. The elder Sellers is now president of Voorhees College. SNCC’s stand in solidarity with Palestinians in 1967, the year of Israel’s Six Day War and its seizure of Arab East Jerusalem and the West Bank, is widely believed to mark the beginning of the deepening between Black political activists and Zionism.

Bakari Sellers’ service to AIPAC is a repudiation and perversion of SNCC’s internationalist and humanitarian values. He has eagerly deployed himself as one of Zionism’s Black up-and-coming political stars. In return, AIPAC has helped bankroll his political career. “The way I’m able to communicate, the exposure, the people that I’ve met – a lot of people I’ve met at the AIPAC policy conference became a huge part of my fundraising base,” Sellers told an AIPAC leadership seminar for college students, in 2008.

Sellers has found that AIPAC money and Wall Street funding go hand in hand – and he’s in it up to his elbows. “Looking forward to giving the address tonight ‪@Aipac Annual Wall Street Dinner in Manhattan,” he tweeted, mentally scooping up cash with both hands.

A prime duty of white people’s – or Zionist’s – Black surrogates, is to act as torpedoes against troublesome Black activists. Sellers’ assignment is to be a counterpoint to anti-corporate, anti-imperialist critics of Israeli policy, like Dr. Cornel West, one of Bernie Sanders’ delegates on the platform committee. When CNN trotted Sellers out to defend Clinton’s 1990s record of spreading racist hysteria against Black male “super-predators,” West admonished him to remember “the legacy of your blessed father… look at his example. He was not just fighting against racism – he was fighting against a class system as well,” said West. “You can’t do that as a Wall Street Democrat.”

Sellers looked beaten, but he could not be shamed, because he and the rest of his Black Misleadership Class are utterly shameless in their relentless pursuit of favor from the rich and powerful. As Dr. West told Sellers, the Black political elite “confuses the gravy train with the freedom train.”

Back in the early 2000s, when the BAR team was working at The Black Commentator, we toyed with the idea of creating a Trojan Horse Watch to keep track of the growing number of Black politicians that were succumbing to the siren song of the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party, the Democratic Leadership Council. The flood of corporate money into grassroots Black electoral politics – a new phenomenon – had not yet turned into a tsunami. One guy stood out above the rest: Cory Booker, the 31 year-old, one-term Newark, New Jersey, city councilman who was mounting his first challenge to Mayor Sharpe James. Booker made his national debut at a power luncheon of the Manhattan Institute, a star think tank in the right-wing, corporate constellation. He would sometimes arrive at campaign stops in a caravan of Hasidic Jews, although there was no significant Hasidic community in Newark. On deeper examination, it became clear that Booker was not your ordinary Black politician, grubbing for money as best he could, from whoever was giving it. Booker was a true zealot for Zionism, and a hard core corporate ideologue. The decades of leadership by a Black political class that chose the “gravy train” over the “freedom train” had produced a new breed of Black political striver that is totally at home with corporatism, imperialism and Zionism, and is eager to be deployed by his masters as a political weapon.

Bakari Sellers is part of this crop: fruit of the poisoned tree.

Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

July 6, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Jeff Halper vs Criticising Israel

By Barbara McKenzie | July 6, 2016

Jeff Halper is an Israeli, based in Israel, and an activist for Palestinian rights, being head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. On 29 June he posted an article on Facebook, without title, on some issues facing the pro-Palestine movement. The connection between the issues is tenuous: it’s hard to see how Mahmoud Abbas can influence anti-Zionist groups in the US, but this is afterall Facebook, and in its way the article is groundbreaking.

The Problem of Mahmoud Abbas

Halper rightly sees Mahmoud Abbas as a hurdle in terms of obtaining a just solution for Palestine. ‘Say what you will about Israel, justice for Palestinians will be achieved only after the ineffectual, downright collaborationist regime of Abbas falls, once and for all…. But we who actively support the Palestinian cause … desperately need direction from our Palestinian partners.’

I have sympathy with anyone who criticises Mahmoud Abbas, and I view with trepidation the idea of Abbas negotiating a settlement for Palestine at Camp David with Netanyahu and Hillary Clinton. However Halper appears to be overlooking the fact that Abbas is supported by the American and Israeli government: he represents those parties, not Palestine. He has to be viewed as one of many problems imposed on Palestinians, not as a symptom of Palestinian ‘failure’. As one William James Martin replied to Halper’s post, ‘It is easy to take out one’s frustrations on Abbas. But the problem is Israel and the US, not the Palestinians’.

It is perhaps worth noting that Halper finishes his article by suggesting, ‘For all the success of BDS, unless we begin advocating a vision and program of our own, we will lose’. Which invites the question, who is ‘we’?

Conspiracy theories and antisemitism

Throughout the Palestine movement there pervades a belief that a special concern of Palestinians and pro-Palestine activists should be the fight against antisemitism. Jeff Halper clearly subscribes to this belief, and indeed the bulk of this article is devoted to just this issue. Halper is concerned that without strong leadership ‘the Palestinian issue will deteriorate into crazy and, yes, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories’. Bizarrely, he points to Gilad Atzmon as guilty in this regard. As Atzmon replied to Halper’s post, ‘I argue that there are NO Jewish conspiracies. You people do it all in the open whether it is Goldman Sachs wiping out Greece or Jeff Halper attempting to kosherise the discourse of the oppressed’. And in truth, Atzmon has never concerned himself with the theories that traditionally cause the ire of protectors of Jewish sensibilities, relating to the JFK assassination for example, or 9/11. Nor has he written about the type of ‘conspiracy theories’ that Halper is concerned with here, and which are discussed below.

Atzmon’s sins lie elsewhere. The traditional position of Jewish and Israeli organisations promoting Palestinian rights and ‘the left’ in general is that criticising Israel is not antisemitic, while criticising Jewish elites, or Jewish communities for their support of Israel, or analysing why they do, is exactly that. This is the primary reason for labelling Gilad Atzmon, an Israeli Jew who writes about Jewish power, as an antisemite.

Investigating conspiracy theories which implicate Israel in criminal activities abroad, such as 9/11, is also deemed to be antisemitic, even though this contradicts the professed view that ‘criticising Israel is not antisemitic’. One extrapolates from this that, in the view of the gatekeeping faux left, one may criticise Israel, but only in respect of its treatment of Palestinians, not for its wider activities.

In his article Halper extends the traditional notion of what constitutes an antisemitic conspiracy theory. He cites a recent claim that a settler rabbi endorsed poisoning the wells of West Bank Palestinians. The veracity of the claim is under question, and Richard Silverstein, for one, has written in Tikun Olam that he believes it to be a hoax. Halper is inspired by this story to suggest that it constitutes an ‘antisemitic conspiracy theory’. He goes on to address the problem of the increasing number of ‘conspiracy-peddling hate groups’. Halper is not talking about hate against Jews, but hate against Israel, and his example is an organisation with the self-explanatory and fairly precise title ‘Americans Against Genocide in Gaza’.

Now, there is substantial evidence that supports the perception that the Israeli government and sections of Israeli society are intent on eliminating Palestinians from their homeland, and if that involves physically exterminating them so be it. The actions of the government in bombing Gaza in 2014, the ongoing blockade of goods that would allow, for example, repair of the sewage system, and therefore safe drinking water, and the large number of extrajudicial shootings of young people all show a breathtaking indifference to Palestinian life. Whether or not this is technically genocide, to refer to it as such is hardly some off the wall antisemitic conspiracy theory.

In the case of the discredited story of the genocidal rabbi mentioned above, Silverstein explains that ‘there is ample past evidence of settlers poisoning Palestinian wells by throwing dead animals and soiled diapers into them’. That one claim may be false does not prove bad faith in those who react, or overreact, to such a story – as Silverstein comments ‘If true, this would be yet another outrageous, racist, even genocidal statement in a long line from such settler rabbis.’ A search on Google will show that such views are commonly expressed by senior Israeli rabbis, and not just on the West Bank. Given that Palestinian concerns are valid in principle, Halper’s approach has to be seen as an attempt to stifle criticism of Israeli treatment of Palestinians.

Another convention popular with the liberal left is that although to refer to ‘Jews’, or even to ‘the Jewish lobby’ may be considered racist, it is acceptable to speak of Zionists or Zionist Jews – ‘anti-Zionism is not antisemitism’ (the mission statement of Jewish Voices for Peace stresses that being Jewish is not synonymous with Zionism). This is another assumption that Halper throws out the window. Halper takes exception to a video entitled What Do Famous People Think of Zionist Jews? I had as much interest in watching this as I had in watching the equivalent produced for the NO side of the Scottish independence referendum, but I trawled through it nonetheless. It turned out to be a fairly substantial production, not without interest – I was particularly moved by Louis Farrakhan’s spirited defense of Kanye West (1:21:07). While most statements were focused on the crimes of Israel, there were indeed one or two which struck me as racist, ie they could be read as implying that all Jews are innately bad. A number of segments would fit the standard faux left definition of antisemitism, in that the speaker talked about Jewish power, such as the influence Jews have in Hollywood, or questioned the facts of the holocaust.

It appears, however, that Halper himself had watched little or nothing of the video – it is difficult to understand otherwise why he sneers at the description of the participants, who include people like Nelson Mandela, Norman Finkelstein, Mel Gibson, Jeremy Corbyn and Malcom X, as ‘famous’. The inescapable deduction therefore is that Halper is not so much concerned with antisemitism as usually defined by the left, but by the very idea of campaigning so specifically against Zionism, and feels no need to inquire further. The view that it is acceptable to criticise Zionists and Zionism is no longer valid. Anti-Zionism is now antisemitic.

Halper exemplifies the ‘soft’ or ‘anti-Zionist’ Zionist, in that he is involved in the Palestinian cause but puts a limit on criticism of Israel and/or the Jewish lobby, and to that end openly declares eradicating antisemitism as a top priority. The effect of this is to suppress criticism of external supporters of Israel. Halper’s outlook is shared by certain non-Jewish organisations and individuals in the Palestine movement, who are unkindly referred to by Gilad Atzmon as sabbos goyim (a sabbas goy being someone who does the work of a Jew on the Jewish Sabbath).

Not content with prioritising the suppression of antisemitism themselves, anti-Zionist Zionists and sabbas goys use their position in the Palestine movement to ensure that Palestine activists and Palestinians do so as well, ignoring the outrage expressed by some Palestinians. Palestinians, despite themselves, find themselves complicit in the campaign to prioritise Jewish sensibilities and to prevent criticism of the external forces dedicated to supporting and furthering the Zionist occupation of their land.

What is more, Halper is taking his gatekeeping to a new level. Forget the mantra, so beloved of anti-Zionist Zionists and the faux left, that ‘criticising Israel is not antisemitic’. Not only is it forbidden to question the activities of Israel and its intelligence services outside of Israel, but it is now apparently unacceptable to use the word Zionist negatively, and even to question the actions of Israel against Palestinians, within Palestine itself, is antisemitic. Halper has closed further the narrow gap between the relative positions of hardline Zionists and the ‘soft’ Zionists of the Palestine movement – criticising Israel is antisemitic.

July 6, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , | 3 Comments

Elie Wiesel: Poseur for Peace

By Joseph Grosso | CounterPunch | July 6, 2016

An obvious and oft-sighted criticism of the Nobel Peace Prize is just how many of its recipients have virtually no connection to the cause of peace or its advancement. If anything often it seems a reward for its negation. Henry Kissinger, recipient in 1973, would have to be the gold standard here. That very year saw Kissinger orchestrate the destruction of democracy in Chile and that was only after the secret bombing of Cambodia was concluded. Of Course stretch it forward and backward a couple of years and Kissinger’s trail of destruction extends from Bangladesh to East Timor.

A few years later Mother Theresa made an odd choice given the extra pain deliberately inflicted on the poor in her clinics and her support for Indira Gandhi’s suspension of civil liberties and in 1994 the triumvirate of Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, and Yitzhak Rabin can hardly be deemed inspiring. Barack Obama got the nod less than a year into his presidency. It’s a good bet there are many in Pakistan, Yemen, and Honduras that would question the wisdom of that selection.

The year 1986 saw the Nobel go to recently deceased Elie Wiesel. Wiesel was famous for his novel/memoir Night and for being, according to the Nobel Prize’s webpage, ‘the leading spokesman on the Holocaust’, therefore seemingly by definition an alleged spokesman on human rights. A quick scan through many of the obituaries written for Wiesel the past couple of days show this quote from his Nobel acceptance speech given prominent status:

I swore never to be silent whenever human beings

Endure suffering and humiliation. We must always

Take side. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.

Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

A noble sentiment indeed but not one that seemed to inspire Wiesel to live up to his peace prize, in fact evidence suggests Wiesel had a soft spot for war, at least war in the Middle East. Four years before giving his acceptance speech of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, where even an Israel commission found the Israeli military indirectly responsible for the Sabra and Shatila massacre, “I support Israel-period. I identify with Israel-period.” When asked to comment of the massacre: ‘I don’t think we should even comment’, then commenting he felt ‘sadness with Israel, not against Israel’ with nary a peep about the actual victims. Some years later Wiesel would be wheeled into the spotlight by the Bush administration to endorse the forthcoming invasion of Iraq. His statement at the time read: ‘Isn’t war forever cruel, the ultimate form of violence…. And yet, this time I support President Bush’s policy of intervention when, as is this case because of Hussein’s equivocations and procrastinations, no other option remains’.

In the midst of another Israeli operation in Lebanon, this one in 2006, Wiesel stood in front of a crowd in Manhattan (along with then Senator Hillary Clinton) and declared “Israel defends herself, and we must say to Israel ‘Go on defending yourself.’” His final years didn’t slow him down. Wiesel took out a full page ad in newspapers across the country during the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict fully supporting Israel’s effort (Human Rights Watch went on to document several instances of war crimes by the Israeli military) without a syllable about diplomacy except that ‘before diplomats can begin in earnest the crucial business of rebuilding dialogue… the Hamas death cult must be confronted for what it is’. That ad was criticized by a large group of Nazi holocaust survivors in a subsequent ad in the New York Times which stated ‘Furthermore we are disgusted and outraged by Elie Wiesel’s abuse of our history in these pages to justify the unjustifiable: Israel’s wholesale effort to destroy Gaza and murder more than 2000 Palestinians, including hundreds of children.’

If being consistently hawkish on matters in the Middle East wasn’t enough for the press and governing elites to question Wiesel’s peace credentials, after all there aren’t too many wars the estates don’t get behind, it is hard to believe Wiesel wasn’t pushing his luck with some of his pieces in the Times over the years. Consider his 2001 piece Jerusalem in My Heart. Wiesel began with the following:

As a Jew living in the United States, I have long denied myself the right to intervene in Israel’s internal debates. I consider Israel’s destiny as mine as well, since my memory is bound up with its history. But the politics of Israel concern me only indirectly.

Strange as it was to be claiming neutrality not only in the face of his constant support for wars involving Israel and in light of his famous stand of neutrality as evil, Wiesel goes on in the same essay to renounce any such neutrality on the question of Jerusalem.

Now, though the topic is Jerusalem. Its fate affects not only Israelis, but also Diaspora Jews like myself. The fact that I do not live in Jerusalem is secondary; Jerusalem lives in me… That Muslims might wish to maintain close ties with this city unlike any other is understandable.

But for Jews it remains the first. Not just the first; the only.

This ode to fundamentalist thought, enhanced further by Wiesel pointing out that Jerusalem is mentioned more than 600 times in the Bible (a statement that ignores the fact that up to a fifth of Palestinians are Christians, and it’s worth asking how many times Jerusalem is mentioned in the Torah if this line of thought is to be pursued), is followed by the blatant lie, long universally known to be false, that “incited by their leaders 600,000 Palestinians left the country (in 1948) convinced that, once Israel was vanquished, they would be able to return home”.

Wiesel then ended with a call to defer the question of Jerusalem until all other pending questions are resolved, perhaps for 20 years to allow “human bridges” to be built between the two communities- which would figure to leave the city completely in Israeli hands until these bridges are built or at least until the rest of the world accepts that it belonged there all along.

About five years later (August 21, 2005) Wiesel was at it again with a bizarre piece titled The Dispossessed. It was another putrid effort that spoke of peace while covertly praising the worst of Zionist mythology. The title referred to the last holdouts of Israeli settlements in Gaza and reading between the lines Wiesel hints that the evacuation, where the settlers received generous compensation packages from the government, had the aura of a pogrom.

The images of the evacuation itself are heart-rending.  Some of them unbearable. Angry men, crying women. Children led away on foot or in the arms of soldiers who are sobbing themselves.

Those “dispossessed” by Israeli soldiers were the hardcore remnant of a Greater Israel ideology more committed to fleeting territorial dreams than individual homes- most of the Gaza settlers saw the writing on the wall and left prior to the events Wiesel describes with such anguish. Of course Israel has long subsidized its settlements that have been declared illegal by the international community (including the U.S.). But of this remnant Wiesel reminds his readers: “Let’s not forget: these men and woman lived in Gaza for 38 years in the eyes of their families they were pioneers, whose idealism was to be celebrated”. Given the complete lack of interest Wiesel displays to Palestinian feelings on the same issue can it be reasonably assumed that Wiesel shares that same sentiment?

And here they are, obliged to uproot themselves, to take their holy and precious belongings, their memories and their prayers, their dreams and their dead, to go off in search of a bed to sleep in, a table to eat on, a new home, a future among strangers.

When Wiesel does turn to the Palestinians it is to criticize a lack of gratefulness in the face of noble Israeli concessions:

And here I am obliged to step back. In the tradition I claim,  the Jew is ordered by King Solomon “not to rejoice when the enemy falls”.  I don’t know whether the Koran suggests the same… I will  perhaps be told that when the Palestinians cried at the loss of their homes, few Israelis were moved. That’s possible. But how many Israelis rejoiced?

After this demonization, ‘perhaps be told’ of ‘possible’ Palestinian suffering (and King Solomon may have been correct about not rejoicing when enemies fall but that isn’t quite how one recalls the conquering of the Canaanites as recorded by scripture), Wiesel again ends his essay with a call for a “lull” to allow “wounds to heal”- during which time Israel can presumably redraw the borders of the West Bank making a functional Palestinian state impossible. Again, like in the previous, essay he mentions the sadness he feels over Palestinian hatred of Jews; so much for neutrality.

All this reactionary thought, the worst of which would find few defenders outside the extreme Zionist right, didn’t make its way into Obama’s statement on Wiesel’s death (‘He raised his voice, not just against anti-Semitism, but against hatred, bigotry, and intolerance in all its forms’), nor did the fact that Wiesel opposed Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran (again with a full page ad in the Times). The Times itself conveniently overlooked the words Wiesel wrote for the paper in its very long obituary. If it is a timeless truism that the greatest gift modern marketing can bestow on anyone in its graces is the luxury of being judged by reputation and not by actual words and deeds, is it ever truer than for another Nobel ‘Peace’ prize winner?

July 6, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Germany May Wait Over a Hundred Years to Bury Nuclear Waste

Sputnik — 06.07.2016

It may take Germany over a hundred years to bury its mounting pile of nuclear waste in a spot it is yet to secure, a special parliamentary commission has concluded.

After two years of research, the repository commission presented its 682-page report to the parliament on Tuesday where it called into question an on-time solution to the problem of radioactive storage.

“The German Bundestag is due, according to current estimates, to start searching for an optimal secure place in 2017. Decades will pass before the waste can be buried and possibly more than a century before this process ends,” the report predicted.

The German government announced in 2011 it was going to phase out all eight nuclear reactors by 2022, following the Fukushima disaster. The initial plan was to find a suitable place by 2031 where to store highly-radioactive spent nuclear fuel, with the dump scheduled to open in 2050.

July 6, 2016 Posted by | Environmentalism, Nuclear Power, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

New Report Exposes EU’s Security Links to Refugee-Creating Arms Dealers

Sputnik | July 6, 2016

Like peace itself, the military-industrial complex sees internal stability as bad for business. A new report has exposed the activities of military and security companies that are profiting from the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa, which have also successfully lobbied the EU to react by buying their security equipment.

The joint report by the European NGO Stop Wapenhandel and the Transnational Institute (TNI), called “Border Wars: The Arms Dealers Profiting from Europe’s Refugee Tragedy,” reveals the most prominent winners of security contracts which were issued in Europe as a result of the migrant crisis, and Europe’s acquiescent response to their lobbying.

“Some of the beneficiaries of border security contracts are some of the biggest arms sellers to the Middle-East and North-African region, fuelling the conflicts that are the cause of many of the refugees. In other words, the companies creating the crisis are then profiting from it.”

The big players in Europe’s border security complex include arms companies Airbus, Finmeccanica and Thales, which are also three of the top four European arms traders and have been particularly prominent winners of EU contracts aimed at strengthening borders.

Other companies to benefit from the EU’s policy response to Middle Eastern conflict are French defense and aerospace company Safran, the Spanish IT and defense systems firm Indra Sistemas, and some Israeli companies like BTec Electronic Security Systems, which promote their expertise based on equipment installed at the Israeli-Palestinian border.

French companies Airbus and Thales, and Italian Finmeccanica, are part of the European Organisation for Security (EOS), which has been most active in lobbying the EU for increased border security. The report notes that many of its proposals, such as its push to set up a cross European border security agency, have eventually ended up as policy.

According to the report, the booming border security market was worth an estimated 15 billion euros ($16.5 billion) in 2015, and is predicted to rise to over 29 billion euros ($32 billion) annually in 2022.

New EU member states have been required to strengthen borders as a condition of membership, creating additional markets for profit.

“The arms business, in particular sales to the Middle-East and North-Africa, where most of the refugees are fleeing from, is also booming. Global arms exports to the Middle-East actually increased by 61 per cent between 2006–10 and 2011–15. Between 2005 and 2014, EU member states granted arms exports licenses to the Middle East and North Africa worth over 82 billion euros ($91 billion).”

On Tuesday, the German newspaper Tagesspiegel newspaper revealed that the arms industry could benefit even further from a new direction in the EU’s African policy.

According to the report, the EU Commission intends to direct some funds from its Instrument contributing to Stability and Peace towards equipping African militaries.

The fund was established in March 2014 and has a 2.3 billion euro ($2.5 billion) budget, to be disbursed between 2014 and 2020.

“Development without security and stability is not possible,” a source in the Commission told the newspaper.

“The Commission is therefore considering increasing its support for security actors,” and “in some very special cases,” this will include security forces.

The proposal to spend African development funds on security forces was criticized by the German Green Party MEP Reinhard Butikofer, who described it as “breaking a taboo.”

Die Linke MEP Sabine Losing called the idea “scandalous,” and criticized the “misuse of aid.”

She said the proposal is one of a series of “steps in the militarization of EU foreign policy.”

July 6, 2016 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, War Crimes | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Truth About Chilcot

By Craig Murray | July 6, 2016

The death toll from the horrific recent Iraq bombings has risen over 250. If Blair had not been absolutely determined to attack Iraq on the basis of a knowing lie about WMD, they would be alive now, along with millions of other dead. ISIS would never have taken control of territory in Iraq and Syria. Al Qaeda would never have grown from an organisation of a few hundred to one of tens of thousands. We would not have a completely destabilised Middle East and a massive refugee crisis.

Do not expect a full truth and a full accounting from the Chilcot panel of establishment trusties today. Remember who they are.

Sir John Chilcot

Member of the Butler Inquiry which whitewashed the fabrication of evidence of Iraqi WMD. The fact is that, beyond doubt, the FCO and SIS knew there were no Iraqi WMD. In the early 1990’s I had headed the FCO Section of the Embargo Surveillance Centre, tasked with monitoring and preventing Iraqi attempts at weapons procurement. In 2002 I was on a course for newly appointed Ambassadors alongside Bill Patey, who was Head of the FCO Department dealing with Iraq. Bill is a fellow Dundee University graduate and is one of the witnesses before the Iraq Inquiry this morning.

I suggested to him that the stories we were spreading about Iraqi WMD could not be true. He laughed and said “Of course not Craig, it’s bollocks”. I had too many other conversations to mention over the next few months, with FCO colleagues who knew the WMD scare to be false.

Yet Chilcot was party to a Butler Inquiry conclusion that the Iraqi WMD scare was an “Honest mistake”. That a man involved in a notorious whitewash is assuring us that this will not be one, is bullshit.

Sir Roderick Lyne

A good friend and former jogging partner of Alastair Campbell.

Last time I actually spoke to him we were both Ambassadors and on a British frigate moored on the Neva in St Petersburg. Colleagues may have many words to describe Rod Lyne, some of them complimentary, but “open-minded” is not one of them.

If the Committee were to feel that the Iraq War was a war crime, then Rod Lyne would be accusing himself. As Ambassador to Moscow he was active in trying to mitigate Russian opposition to the War. He personally outlined to the Russian foreign minister the lies on Iraqi WMD. There was never the slightest private indication that Lyne had any misgivings about the war.

From Uzbekistan we always copied Moscow in on our reporting telegrams, for obvious reasons. Lyne responded to my telegrams protesting at the CIA’s use of intelligence from the Uzbek torture chambers, by requesting not to be sent such telegrams.

Sir Lawrence Freedman

Lawrence Freedman is the most appalling choice of all. The patron saint of “Justified” wars of aggression, and exponent of “Wars of Choice” and “Humanitarian Intervention”. He is 100% parti pris.

Here is part of his evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution on 18 January 2006:

The basic idea here is that our armed forces prepared for what we might call wars of necessity, that the country was under an existential threat so if you did not respond to that threat then in some very basic way our vital interests, our way of life, would be threatened, and when you are looking at certain such situations, these are great national occasions. The difficulty we are now facing with wars of choice is that these are discretionary and the government is weighing a number of factors against each other. I mentioned Sierra Leone but Rwanda passed us by, which many people would think was an occasion when it would have been worth getting involved. There was Sudan and a lot of things have been said about Darfur but not much has happened…

… Iraq was a very unusual situation where it was not an ongoing conflict. If we had waited things would not have been that much different in two or three months’ time and so, instead of responding either to aggression by somebody else, as with the Falklands, or to developing humanitarian distress, as in the Balkans, we decided that security considerations for the future demanded immediate action.”

Sir Martin Gilbert (died in course of Inquiry)

Very right wing historian whose biography of Churchill focussed on Gilbert’s relish for war and was otherwise dull. (Roy Jenkins’ Churchill biography is infinitely better). Gilbert was not only rabidly pro-Iraq War, he actually saw Blair as Churchill.

Although it can easily be argued that George W Bush and Tony Blair face a far lesser challenge than Roosevelt and Churchill did – that the war on terror is not a third world war – they may well, with the passage of time and the opening of the archives, join the ranks of Roosevelt and Churchill. Their societies are too divided today to deliver a calm judgment, and many of their achievements may be in the future: when Iraq has a stable democracy, with al-Qaeda neutralised, and when Israel and the Palestinian Authority are independent democracies, living side by side in constructive economic cooperation.

Baroness Prashar

A governor of the FCO institution the Ditchley Foundation – of which the Director is Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the UK Ambassador to the UN who presented the lies about Iraqi WMD and was intimately involved in the lead in to war. So very much another cosy foreign policy insider.

So, in short, the committee – all hand-picked by Gordon Brown – could not have been better picked to ensure a whitewash.

Over 50% of the British population were against the Iraq War, including for example many scores of distinguished ex-Ambassadors, many military men and many academics. Yet Brown chose nobody on the Inquiry who had been against the Iraq War, while three out of five were active and open supporters of the war.

Do not expect to see this truth reflected in any of the mainstream media coverage.

July 6, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | 2 Comments