Smile Don't Frown

In yesterday’s Independent (29/7/10) I read the following comments about Gordon Brown from letter writers in response to an interview with the former PM published in the paper on 26^th July:

‘…Despite his flawed character, temper or political failings, he was still a better human being – and socialist – than Blair ever was.’

‘For the first time, I could see him in a more rounded way than the usual caricatures of him as either a ranting ogre or a warm and witty friend.’

‘It showed Gordon Brown in a different light and we can only hope that, away from the spotlight, he can continue to do brilliant work, locally, nationally and internationally.’

Brown ensured that funds were available for the illegal war in Iraq – over a million people have been killed there, and thousands maimed, orphaned or widowed. Its horrific consequences are still being visited upon Iraqis, such as the mothers who are delivering deformed babies because of the chemical weapons used by the invading forces. Brown shouldn’t have the freedom to give interviews to allegedly ‘independent’ newspapers and he certainly shouldn’t have the freedom to do more ‘brilliant work’.

Honestly, it’s like finding out that your Granddad – the one who always got you nice presents and took you to cool places – has buried the rest of the family under the patio, then saying, “It’s alright Granddad. You’re a really kind person…”

It’s the war that won’t stop being mentioned: Iraq.

Last week Carne Ross told the Chilcot Inquiry that the Iraq war was based on lies, and now Nick Clegg has told Jack Straw and the rest of The House that the war was “illegal”. Jo Coburn on The Daily Politics said: “Downing Street has sought to explain that the Deputy Prime Minister was speaking in a personal capacity and that his comments do not constitute official government policy. Leading lawyers, though, have suggested Mr Clegg’s statement might open the way to charges against Britain in international courts.” [1]  If only… Coburn said that Clegg made a “mistake” by expressing his ‘personal view’, as did Carole Walker on BBC News, following a report by John Simpson on the effects of uranium-coated missiles rained on Fallujah in November 2004. A study has shown that dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Iraqi doctors in Fallujah have complained since 2005 of being overwhelmed by the number of babies with serious birth defects, ranging from a girl born with two heads to paralysis of the lower limbs. Researchers have found a 38-fold increase in leukaemia, a ten-fold increase in female breast cancer and significant increases in lymphoma and brain tumours in adults. [2]

So, the Iraq war is based on lies, illegal, and has resulted in death and sickness beyond your worst nightmares. Alastair Campbell and Tony Blair want us to “move on”. Shall we?

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6ZyV9v4NR4

[2] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/toxic-legacy-of-us-assault-on-fallujah-worse-than-hiroshima-2034065.html

The Guardian is a funny paper. Last Monday it reported that Carne Ross, a British diplomat who used to work at the UN, said that the threat allegedly posed by Iraq was “intentionally and substantially exaggerated in public government documents… This process led to highly misleading statements about the UK assessment of the Iraqi threat that were, in their totality, lies.” [1]

Was there a front page with the headline ‘LIES! Two million people were right and over one million are dead’? No.

In yesterday’s paper Marina Hyde was allowed to say of the man who collated the lies: ‘…Alastair Campbell! The man a high court judge notoriously dismissed as an unreliable witness, whose famously fastidious attention to detail was such that when it came to making the case for the most serious foreign policy decision since Suez, he was perfectly content to sling out some 12-year-old guff he’d lifted straight off the internet.’ [2]  In the ‘Review’ section Caroline Lucas MP gets away with quoting a cheeky line from a book (A View from the Foothills by Chris Mullin): “…the spooks are livid about the sixth-form essay on Saddam’s chemical arsenal cooked up by No 10”. [3]  But…Alastair Campbell – yes, the man whose lies led to the deaths of over a million people – is allowed space in The Guardian to talk about books he likes too! Joseph O’Connor recommends The Alastair Campbell Diaries, and his comment that it is an ‘acclaimed masterwork’ by a ‘leading English storyteller’ is amusing, but like Marina Hyde’s piece, frustratingly toothless. Yes, yes, I know it’s just a book recommendation, and I know Hyde’s is a jaunty opinion piece, but wouldn’t it be refreshing if people in the media were as honest and direct as Carne Ross? Alastair Campbell is a liar responsible for mass murder. Send him to The Hague. And Blair and Brown and Straw and…breathe…All this anger can make one ill.

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/12/carne-ross-chilcot-inquiry

[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/16/peter-mandelson-memoirs-new-labour

[3] http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/17/summer-reading-coalition-books

So the Tories have declared war on the people by planning to slash government departments’ budgets by up to 40 per cent, and my MP, Robin Walker, tells me that ‘it is the case that costs need to be reduced across the public services in order to allow us to deal with the fiscal deficit we have inherited’. I disagree with him and agree with Caroline Lucas MP, who says:
 
’Cuts are not an economic inevitability. They are an ideological choice. Politicians of all parties are now sharpening their axes to slash public spending, forcing those on lower incomes, who depend on public services the most, to pay the highest price for the recent excesses of the bankers.
 
’There is a choice. We should ask those best able to pay to foot the bill through fairer taxation. That’s the challenge I’m issuing: for that political choice to be made. It must be clearly asserted that we are not all in this together: that some had more responsibility for this crisis than others, and some benefited more from the boom that preceded it. Those who enjoyed the largest benefits must pay up now. For that to happen, fair taxes, not cuts, must become the new big idea to replace today’s callous and uncaring cuts fanaticism.’

George Osborne plans to cut £11 billion from the budget for welfare services – that is the funding to support the unemployed, disabled, homeless, very young and elderly – the services for the poorest and most vulnerable in society. £11 billion is the official figure released recently for the cost, over the last nine years, of the futile and unwinnable war in Afghanistan. But the Tories don’t want to bring the troops home or scrap Trident or make those responsible for the deficit pay for it. Surely things are going to get very ugly very soon…

In a recent BBC News Online report, laughably titled ‘US chief Petraeus vows to protect Afghan civilians’ (bit late to make that vow, 9 years and thousands of innocent dead people later), John Simpson is quoted as saying the following:

‘Gen Petraeus will no doubt try to replicate his remarkable Iraqi success in Afghanistan. Yet it will be harder, and doubts about the value of the operation are already growing in every Nato country.’ [1]

I have emailed John Simpson to ask him to explain what he means by ‘remarkable Iraqi success’, given that the Iraq war has led to the deaths of over a million people, four million refugees, and a country decimated. I anticipate no reply and reckon that even if he were to reply, he would say something along the lines of “I have been to Iraq and you have not. The Americans did not mean to deprive all those people of life. They are there to protect the people against terrorists. Please don’t bother me, as I am an experienced BBC journalist who knows much more than you.” 

John Pilger said a couple of days ago in an interview with Democracy Now!:

‘The reason we don’t see the war on civilians, the war that has caused the most extraordinary devastation, human and cultural and structural devastation in both Iraq and Afghanistan, is because of what is almost laughingly called the mainstream media…

…There is a war on journalism. There’s long been a war on journalism…If you read, let’s say, General Petraeus’s counterinsurgency manual, which he put his name to in 2006, he makes it very clear. He said we’re fighting wars of perception…’ [2]

Is John Simpson fighting a ‘war of perception’ or does he actually believe that an illegal war that has led to the deaths of over a million people is a ‘remarkable success’? I reckon he actually believes what he is saying. He is that steeped in the belief that ‘we’ can do no wrong, despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary. Unbelievable.

And if John Simpson’s comments weren’t enough to turn my stomach, I learned today that Tony Blair has won the 2010 Liberty Medal award for his “relentless pursuit” of peace in Northern Ireland and the Middle East. [3] Sometimes I wonder whether there’s any point in carrying on…

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/10472555.stm

[2] http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/29/john_pilger_there_is_a_war

[3] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/richard-adams-blog/2010/jun/30/tony-blair-liberty-medal-award-2010