Blair is spot on.

[Donut]

Originally posted by Yorick: They were protesting the war. Why don't they buy a ticket to Kabul and protest there? It takes two sides to have a war, but only one to strike first.

Because the war is being prosecuted in their name, by their government and they don't agree with it. Nobody asked them if we should go to war and no vote has been taken in Parliament (until yesterday). They therefore exercised their democratic right to protest peacefully. I don't agree with them but I don't want to live in a country where people are not allowed to voice their opinions.

As for Tony Blair - he is preachy, slimey and false. He was made to look a fool in Syria and has been snubbed by Saudi Arabia and Israel. He needs to be reminded how insignificant Britain is in the world view.

Now Yorick you need to sleep, and while you sleep dream about the fact that it it's 11/9 and not 9/11, cricket not baseball and that humour is spelt with a 'u'.
EDIT;Sorry that's two 'u's
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Save Chip - Don't let Sarah win!
Official Titterer of the Laughing Hyenas
Don't mention the score - I mentioned it once but I think I got away with it!

[This message has been edited by Donut (edited 11-02-2001).]

[Epona]

Originally posted by Donut: Because the war is being prosecuted in their name, by their government and they don't agree with it. Nobody asked them if we should go to war and no vote has been taken in Parliament (until yesterday). They therefore exercised their democratic right to protest peacefully. I don't agree with them but I don't want to live in a country where people are not allowed to voice their opinions. As for Tony Blair - he is preachy, slimey and false. He was made to look a fool in Syria and has been snubbed by Saudi Arabia and Israel. He needs to be reminded how insignificant Britain is in the world view. Now Yorick you need to sleep, and while you sleep dream about the fact that it it's 11/9 and not 9/11, cricket not baseball and that humour is spelt with a 'u'. EDIT;Sorry that's two 'u's

Good post Donut - I agree with you about Blair.

As far as the anti-war protests are concerned, I AM an antiwar protestor. This war is being carried out in my name, but I don't want it. I live in a democracy (allegedly) and I have the right to peacefully tell my government 'not in my name'.

Incidentally, the tide of popular opinion really seems to be turning here in England. More and more people are turning against the idea that the war is justified. Peace campaigners are getting interviewed on daytime TV. John Pilger got a front page antiwar article on one of the better tabloids.

Things are really looking up

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Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

Epona of The Laughing Hyenas
Proud winner of the 'Most Useless Post 250 Has Ever Seen' Award 2001. "I'd just like to thank my friends and family, without whom none of this would have been possible..."

[skywalker]

Epona. I think this is the article by John Pilger about Blair that you mentioned...very powerful stuff I must say!

Blair has made Britain a target

The prime minister's belligerence is dangerously irresponsible. We want an end to terrorism, not a new war

Special report: terrorism in the US

John Pilger
Friday September 21, 2001
The Guardian

The prime minister's "we are at war" statements are irresponsible in the extreme. It is said that some of his senior officials understand this, as do many MPs: thus the messages of "restraint" now being whispered to journalists.

Tony Blair is endangering the people of this country as well as Britons abroad. His willingness to join Bush's "crusade" and use military force will neither avenge nor bring justice to nor honour the memory of the ordinary people who died so terribly in America last week because this will almost certainly lead to a gratuitous slaughter of more innocents in Afghanistan, Iraq or elsewhere. It also risks nurturing a new generation of suicidal killers. Two years ago, Denis Halliday, the assistant secretary general of the United Nations who resigned over the Anglo-American-imposed embargo of Iraq, told me: "We are likely to see the emergence of those who may well regard Saddam Hussein as too moderate and too willing to listen to the west. Such is the desperation of people whose children are dying in their thousands and who are bombed almost every day by American and British planes."

Blair's wanton disregard of this threat has been demonstrated in recent years. On a bogus pretext, he joined America's all-out assault on Iraq in 1998 and backed Clinton's missile attack on a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan. The following year, his "moral crusade" with Clinton against Yugoslavia killed hundreds of innocent civilians. This summer, the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported the Bush and Blair governments had privately "given Sharon a green light" to invade Palestinian territories. With each of these actions, and now his bellicose declarations, Blair increases the risk of terrorist attack against British citizens.

Blair's being "shoulder to shoulder" with Bush means allying this country to a willingness to kill large numbers of non-Americans in pursuit of uncertain immediate goals that has long been a feature of US policy. This list is long. Remember, if you can, the "free fire zones", including the use of chemical weapons, that killed as many as 50,000 civilians every year in Vietnam; the bombing of Cambodia that killed 600,000 people; the unnecessary slaughter of tens of thousands of Iraqis during the 1991 Gulf war, the beginning of a silent holocaust that has since claimed half a million children, according to the UN. For Blair and Bush to say that war has been declared upon America is rich.

During my lifetime, America has been constantly waging war against much of humanity: impoverished people mostly, in stricken places. Moreover, far from being the main perpetrators of terrorism, Islamic peoples have been its victims - more often than not of an American fundamentalism and its proxies.

Blair is acting like a schoolboy who has never seen war and what cluster bombs do to human beings. He and the Queen shed tears for the victims in America; they have yet to shed tears for his - yes, his - victims in Iraq. Nor will St Paul's cathedral be reconvened to mourn the innocents who will die when he and Bush attack the shadows of Osama bin Laden.

In these surreal days, there is one truth. Nothing justified the killing of innocent people in America last week and nothing justifies the killing of innocent people anywhere else.

For the prime minister to behave responsibly, he would have to speak out with a very different voice. He could say: "Our response must not be to sink to the level of this criminal outrage and kill for the sake of killing." He could seize this extraordinary historic moment and call for the redirection of western politics away from war and towards peace - specifically peace in those regions of the world where one type of terrorism is the product largely of imperialism, old and new. Britain is deeply implicated. As John Cooley writes in Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism: "It was only Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's British government which supported the jihad with full enthusiasm." The CIA passed responsibility for backing mojahedin terrorism to the British - much of it coordinated by an MI6 officer in Islamabad. Osama bin Laden was given "free rein" in Afghanistan.

After more than a century of invasion, plunder and bombing (since the 20s by the RAF), we in the west owe the people of Afghanistan and the Middle East peace. The start of peace would be the establishment of a Palestinian homeland, as laid down in international law by a 34-year-old UN resolution; the lifting of the horrific embargo on the civilian population of Iraq; and the careful, negotiated ending of Afghanistan's isolation.

A tall order, yes. But these are the root causes of a grievance and rage we can barely imagine, and there is no other enduring solution than peace with justice. Unless real politics replaces the autocratic impositions of power, the understudies of those who murdered so many in America will appear and act; nothing is surer. They cannot be bombed into oblivion. Only justice for the millions of ordinary people, who are not murderers, will bring the peace and security that is, after all, a universal right.

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Still The Most Humbly Prideful (?) Member Of The Illuminati!

Mark



[This message has been edited by skywalker (edited 11-02-2001).]

[Epona]

Skywalker - I won't quote your post as it's a long one, but actually that wasn't the article I was referring to. (Although it serves to demonstrate my point that there is more than one national daily paper in England which publishes antiwar articles - this is a big change from 2 weeks ago).

The Guardian is a broadsheet (ie. sensible, in depth) newspaper which has been mostly prowar and is fairly Blairite. It is good to see that they have an article from Pilger. The paper I was referring to was the Daily Mirror which is a tabloid (ie. sensationalist, skimming the facts, prefers gossip to news - although is not the worst of the tabloid papers) which put a Pilger article on its front page earlier this week. Absolutely incredible.

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Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

Epona of The Laughing Hyenas
Proud winner of the 'Most Useless Post 250 Has Ever Seen' Award 2001. "I'd just like to thank my friends and family, without whom none of this would have been possible..."

[Yorick]

Really? Pilger got front page did he? Wow. I wonder how much money that will make him. He's not a sensationalist gold digger at all is he.... This backs up my assertion in Horatios thread.

I'd be taking Mr. Pilgers populist speculative assertions with a grain of salt if he's making the front page.

Fred, we'll have to discuss this over a cider when I go through again. Couldn't stay long yesterday. I think Briatin are in a pivotal position, and Blair, however 'slimey' he is, is performing an extra-ordinary role. Rather than being 'humiliated' by Syria - as the press love to label expressions of honesty that disagrees with someone - he earned Kudos in my book for wearing it and keeping on going rather than hightailing back to his home like the Saudi Prince who was similarly 'humiliated' in New York last month.

It's interesting that the press ignored Syrias dubious human rights record in the process. Things such as the massacre of it's own civilians in a violent repression. A dressing down from a British educated ruler of a nation with a poor record in that area is really rich. The pot calling the kettle black.

It's like an Australian criticising British for 'cultural cringeing' and the tall poppy syndrome of cutting down their leader(s).

Have a good one Fred.

Hugh

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[Yorick]

Originally written by John Pilger: Blair has made Britain a target

Really? Last I checked Britain was fairly democratic, and one man couldn't do anything without the support of parliament.

Secondly Britain were a target long before Blair. In world war two the British were the colonialist Nazis to the Arabs. Any anti-western feeling in the middle east has been as much Britains doing as Americas, perhaps more so. It's just that America are bigger, richer and has more Jews than Britain.

Kuwait and Bahrain were created by Britain. Palestine was a British 'protectorate'.


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[Yorick]

Originally written by John Pliger: In these surreal days, there is one truth. Nothing justified the killing of innocent people in America last week and nothing justifies the killing of innocent people anywhere else.

I agree with this. Killing is evil. No-one said what the coalition were doing was good. War is an atrocity. It is an evil committed to prevent further evil. Pragmatism. The end justifying the means.

The key word in this sentance is "innocent". Harbourers, trainers and finaciers of terrorism are not innocent.

It's a pity Pilger doesn't offer any alternate solutions to the problem seeing he is so wise and informed. Why don't we ask him to protect British citizens in America and go and get Osama himself?

It's so easy to attack and destroy a course of action rather than formulating policy ones self.

I would ask John:

"What do you propose we do?"

And then watch as other sensationalist journalists tear his ideas and attempts to forge a way through the mess, down in a burning cynical heap of word-flames.


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[This message has been edited by Yorick (edited 11-02-2001).]

[skywalker]

Just so you all know I posted Pilger's column as a public service and I haven't said whether I agree or disagree with his views! I never heard of him until today.

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Still The Most Humbly Prideful (?) Member Of The Illuminati!

Mark

[Ronn_Bman]

Originally posted by Yorick: It's so easy to attack and destroy a course of action rather than formulating policy ones self. I would ask John: "What do you propose we do?" And then watch as other sensationalist journalists tear his ideas and attempts to forge a way through the mess, down in a burning cynical heap of word-flames.

This is a point I've tried to make throughout many threads here. Don't just say, "this is wrong", provide a more peaceful, feasible alternative. Everyone's full of ideas, like stop the bombing and feed the Afghan's, but how does that achieve the goal? It doesn't.

Destroying terrorists and the taliban, using international efforts to empower a civilized government, and then trying to feed the Afghan's and give them power over their own lives is a plan that can work. History has proven it can work on a grand scale. But just feeding the innocent isn't really a plan at all.

If we lived in a world where feeding the innocent solved problems, this would be a much nicer world. I would be all for groceries instead of bombs, if someone could come explain how to make it work.



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"Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins."

[Barry the Sprout]

What is most amazing about the Mirror publishing the Pilger article is that the editor of the Mirror is currently under review by the Department of Trade and Industry for insider dealing allegations. Since the investigation started the Mirror has been suprisingly pro-goverment... wonder why... But now they have done this completely out of the blue. I tried to get John Pilger to speak at our University but he is on holiday at present. I don't view him as some kind of spiritual god I just think it might get people thinking instead of just beleiving everything they read.

As for Yoricks point that one man can do nothing without Parliament - you really need to look at the UK constitution, or lack of it. Because the rules are so flexible the ways for Executive to avoid Parliament are many and varied. At present no vote has been given to Parliament as none is required constitutionally and Blair does not want to expose himself as leading a shaky party. When a labour MP recently asked the speaker if MP's would be given a vote on the issue he was laughed down by the House. I am not exxagerating - they laughed at him. This is our brilliant Western democracy in action folks - if you disagree with the leaders then you must be wrong, therefore no vote is required. Also it should be pointed out that this government has the biggest majority since WW2 yet has only 1/4 of the vote behind it. Even if the vote were given to Parliament on the issue there is no way it could be called representative of the public.

On a bit of a tangent did you know that the current Speaker of the House is the only one in the history of the UK parliament to have expressed support for a government ever? The fact that until he was elected speaker he was a member of the labour party had nothing to do with his election I am sure. (2 can play at the sarcasm game Yorick me ol' mate). Parliament in general is a joke and the idea of Blair needing its support in order to do what he wants is frankly laughable as a person studying british politics at present.

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Life is like a piece of cheese. Mice only enjoy it in cartoons and it is better with toast.