September 11th 2001- “Reichstag
Fire” of the 21st Century????
There is growing scientific evidence accumulated over the past five years that seriously undermines the “official” US Government explanations for the events of September 11th, 2001 terrorist atrocities in New York World Trade Centre and elsewhere. Evidence that cannot be dismissed as mere “conspiracy theory” rantings of internet posters but, serious scientific evidence, the result of years of study by professional scientists in leading institutes of the USA and other countries, who have taken an interest in the physics and logistic parameters of these events, and have come to conclusions radically different from those offered by the Washington War regime as justification for its aggressive response and world-wide bullying and intimidation.
Ordinary Fascism USA
The naïve assumption that “democracy” is somehow proof against Evil getting into the White House is belied every day by the actions of the illegitimate Buckfush regime as it systematically undermines the Constitution it was sworn to uphold on inauguration day. Not only is the Buckfush regime the one which has damaged the US constitution more than any terrorist group could ever hope to achieve but, it’s many dubious links to the alleged perpetrators of the Sept. 11th 2001 attacks on New York, which it conveniently uses as a pretext for it’s so-called “War on Terror”, have never been properly investigated since that tragic event and such investigations are now prohibited under the regime’s draconian legislation cynically styled the “Patriot Act”.
Shamocracy, Washington Style:
This legislation was presented to the Congress on 27th October 2001, by arms dealer Cheneyshite, with the injunction that it be passed without any member reading it or else they would be blamed for the next terrorist attack, an act of intimidation unprecedented in any country calling itself a democracy. The so-called “Patriot” Act negates the rights established by the first, third, fourth, fifth, seventh and tenth Amendments of the US constitution and was, in effect, a political coup against American democracy by the regime. There are grounds here for impeachment of the regime and a few brave individuals are taking it on.
To further consolidate their illegal power-grab, the regime then secretly introduced the “Domestic Security Enhancement Act 2003” which is 87 pages of the most totalitarian tyranny since the Third Reich. It was meant to be kept secret and passed without debate like the first Act but was leaked by a source within the Washington government. This disgraceful Act clearly exposes the totalitarian mentality of the illegitimate Buckfush regime and its undiminished threat to American democracy and civil liberties. This later legislation provided for secret courts held in secret locations with secret judges and gives immunity to government agents carrying out searches without any court approval ( Sec.109).
Sec 103 allows the Buckfush regime to use martial law powers domestically and internationally without Congress declaring that a state of war exists. Sec. 205 allows Federal officials to keep all their financial dealings secret and anyone attempting to investigate them can be declared a “terrorist”, thus preventing any investigation of Buckfush, Cheneyshite or Bumsfeld’s past connections with Osama Bin Laden or Saddsack Hussein.
Sec. 322 allows the Department of “Homeland Security” to secretly kidnap individuals in foreign countries and take them to secret destinations. Any attempt by anyone to seek information on these matters is deemed a “terrorist” act and subject to secret arrest and incarceration (Sec. 201). Sec. 128 disallows any attempts by organizations or individuals to quash a Federal sub-poena which is deemed also to be a “terrorist” action. Carrying a copy of the USA Constitution, therefore, in attempting to identify your civil rights against a Federal warrant could be deemed a “terrorist” act under this legislation.
These are the people Ahern, Harney and McDowell have aligned us with and want us to co-sign the death warrant for thousands of innocent Iraqi and Afghan civilians with, without any debate or question.
FearFeasa Mac Léinn
Áth Cliath/Dublin, 27 Feabhra/February 2007.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
TWO AHERNS LIED TO EUROPE!
Taoiseach (prime minister) Bertie Ahern and his foreign Minister, Dermot Ahern, both lied to Europe regarding the access to Shannon Airport by so-called “rendition” flights organised by the American CIA to illegally transfer prisoners and kidnap victims of the Agency and its cohorts to the Guantanamo Torture Camp which the USA has established in its enclave on the south-east coast of Cuba and also possible other transfers from Guantanamo through Shannon to crony regimes in the Middle East and Pakistan where it is known that torture of prisoners is routine.
Failing in their obligations under International Law and UN and European Human Rights Conventions, they have tried to brazen out a damning indictment by a special committee of the European Parliament which documented such flights and proved, from air traffic control and transport ministry files from several EU countries that such flights have landed here without challenge or any inspection by the Irish Government or its law enforcement agencies, An Garda Síochána, Irish Customs Service, Airport Police, Immigration or anyone else.
Not alone have they failed to challenge the illegal transfer of illegally held detainees by the US Military and CIA but, they have also endangered the health and safety of the Irish people by failing to investigate or inspect the freight contents of these American transport aircraft allowed free use of Irish airports and airspace. The question has now arisen of the possibility of these aircraft carrying munitions containing depleted uranium, a dangerous and death-dealing radioactive substance, which could be released to the atmosphere in the event of any of these aircraft crashing on Irish territory.
In their obsequious and fawning submission to the Buckfush regime in Washington and its so-called “War on Terror”, by allowing these landings and facilities, these two have ignored their Oaths of Office of loyalty and service to the welfare of the Irish people under our Constitution (Bunreacht na hÉireann) in a most disgraceful fashion and deserve no more than to be driven from office, with opprobrium, in the forthcoming General Election.
FearFeasa Mac Léinn
Áth Cliath/Dublin, 27 Feabhra/February 2007.
Taoiseach (prime minister) Bertie Ahern and his foreign Minister, Dermot Ahern, both lied to Europe regarding the access to Shannon Airport by so-called “rendition” flights organised by the American CIA to illegally transfer prisoners and kidnap victims of the Agency and its cohorts to the Guantanamo Torture Camp which the USA has established in its enclave on the south-east coast of Cuba and also possible other transfers from Guantanamo through Shannon to crony regimes in the Middle East and Pakistan where it is known that torture of prisoners is routine.
Failing in their obligations under International Law and UN and European Human Rights Conventions, they have tried to brazen out a damning indictment by a special committee of the European Parliament which documented such flights and proved, from air traffic control and transport ministry files from several EU countries that such flights have landed here without challenge or any inspection by the Irish Government or its law enforcement agencies, An Garda Síochána, Irish Customs Service, Airport Police, Immigration or anyone else.
Not alone have they failed to challenge the illegal transfer of illegally held detainees by the US Military and CIA but, they have also endangered the health and safety of the Irish people by failing to investigate or inspect the freight contents of these American transport aircraft allowed free use of Irish airports and airspace. The question has now arisen of the possibility of these aircraft carrying munitions containing depleted uranium, a dangerous and death-dealing radioactive substance, which could be released to the atmosphere in the event of any of these aircraft crashing on Irish territory.
In their obsequious and fawning submission to the Buckfush regime in Washington and its so-called “War on Terror”, by allowing these landings and facilities, these two have ignored their Oaths of Office of loyalty and service to the welfare of the Irish people under our Constitution (Bunreacht na hÉireann) in a most disgraceful fashion and deserve no more than to be driven from office, with opprobrium, in the forthcoming General Election.
FearFeasa Mac Léinn
Áth Cliath/Dublin, 27 Feabhra/February 2007.
THE PIRATEERS OF THE CABEENS:
The brazen attempt by Corporate Vulture Micheal O’Leery (permanent grin affixed to face), crude and vulgar boss of cut-price human freight-carrier “Ryanair” to take over Aer Lingus, the former state airline of the Irish Republic, within days of it being privatised last November, crashlanded early on when O’Leery was forced to admit to his shareholders’ meeting that they were unlikely to obtain the 50% shareholding he required to gain control. But, the malign influence of O’Leery and his ilk has quickly penetrated the privatised management of the airline as their current attempt to tear up existing agreements with the Trade Unions proves.
The imminent strike action at the airline in response to this piratical and aggressive attack on the norms of industrial relations in this country has only been avoided, for the moment, by the intervention of the Labour Court. But, this intervention will be farcical and useless if the Aer Lingus management are allowed to get away with unilateral tearing up of any agreements subsequently reached at the Court. It must be made quite clear to the Aer Lingus management and the wretched and spineless Ahern Government that such cavelier and dictatorial notions will be resisted by the totality of the Trade Union Movement and will bring about a peremptory and swift end to the so-called “partnership” arrangements which the Government and Employers have enjoyed hitherto while they bask in the glory of their so-called “Celtic Tiger” which wouldn’t exist without the co-operation of the Trade Unions in these endeavours.
Cut-price human freight-carriers like “Ryanair” are a notorious excrescence of the Thatcher-Reagan buccaneer capitalism of the 1980’s and are based on internal structures of maximum exploitation of the workforce with minimum conditions of employment; short-term contracts, no job tenure, ban on trade unions (if they can get away with it) enforced long hours of duty with minimum rest periods.
For passengers, who are not human beings when they step on board O’Leery’s minimum maintenance fleet, but, mere “freight”, the low prices, only available if you book your flight weeks or months in advance, is the only advantage offered. “Ryanair” only flies to secondary airports sometimes more than 50 miles from the major city it is supposed to be serving, because O’Leery can force these airport managements to accept his terms of trade in order to get the traffic which otherwise wouldn’t go there. Cramped seats with less legroom than others, no meals service, charges for hold-luggage. All very well if you are young fit and carefree but, useless if you are older, ill or handicapped. A technical discrimination, if not strictly illegal.
Low-prices are a temptation especially for those on low incomes, but, if they chose to support these carriers they should realize that they do so at the expense of others in the transport industry, perhaps members of their own families whose jobs are put under threat by these pirates and they are only perpetuating the system of low-wage exploitation which allows O’Leery and his fellow buccaneers to become billionaires. In effect, they are cutting their own throats.
No surrender to Corporate Diktat! Boycott slave-labour airlines!
FearFeasa Mac Léinn
Áth Cliath/Dublin, 27 Feabhra/February 2007.
The brazen attempt by Corporate Vulture Micheal O’Leery (permanent grin affixed to face), crude and vulgar boss of cut-price human freight-carrier “Ryanair” to take over Aer Lingus, the former state airline of the Irish Republic, within days of it being privatised last November, crashlanded early on when O’Leery was forced to admit to his shareholders’ meeting that they were unlikely to obtain the 50% shareholding he required to gain control. But, the malign influence of O’Leery and his ilk has quickly penetrated the privatised management of the airline as their current attempt to tear up existing agreements with the Trade Unions proves.
The imminent strike action at the airline in response to this piratical and aggressive attack on the norms of industrial relations in this country has only been avoided, for the moment, by the intervention of the Labour Court. But, this intervention will be farcical and useless if the Aer Lingus management are allowed to get away with unilateral tearing up of any agreements subsequently reached at the Court. It must be made quite clear to the Aer Lingus management and the wretched and spineless Ahern Government that such cavelier and dictatorial notions will be resisted by the totality of the Trade Union Movement and will bring about a peremptory and swift end to the so-called “partnership” arrangements which the Government and Employers have enjoyed hitherto while they bask in the glory of their so-called “Celtic Tiger” which wouldn’t exist without the co-operation of the Trade Unions in these endeavours.
Cut-price human freight-carriers like “Ryanair” are a notorious excrescence of the Thatcher-Reagan buccaneer capitalism of the 1980’s and are based on internal structures of maximum exploitation of the workforce with minimum conditions of employment; short-term contracts, no job tenure, ban on trade unions (if they can get away with it) enforced long hours of duty with minimum rest periods.
For passengers, who are not human beings when they step on board O’Leery’s minimum maintenance fleet, but, mere “freight”, the low prices, only available if you book your flight weeks or months in advance, is the only advantage offered. “Ryanair” only flies to secondary airports sometimes more than 50 miles from the major city it is supposed to be serving, because O’Leery can force these airport managements to accept his terms of trade in order to get the traffic which otherwise wouldn’t go there. Cramped seats with less legroom than others, no meals service, charges for hold-luggage. All very well if you are young fit and carefree but, useless if you are older, ill or handicapped. A technical discrimination, if not strictly illegal.
Low-prices are a temptation especially for those on low incomes, but, if they chose to support these carriers they should realize that they do so at the expense of others in the transport industry, perhaps members of their own families whose jobs are put under threat by these pirates and they are only perpetuating the system of low-wage exploitation which allows O’Leery and his fellow buccaneers to become billionaires. In effect, they are cutting their own throats.
No surrender to Corporate Diktat! Boycott slave-labour airlines!
FearFeasa Mac Léinn
Áth Cliath/Dublin, 27 Feabhra/February 2007.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Blagarún
Introducing a new socio-political and cultural blog from the Republic of Ireland. The basic political stance will be left-of-centre, but we (other members of the team will join later) are interested in debating issues of importance, so oppositional views will not be excluded.
The intended title was, as above, an Irish language composite of “Blag”, pronounced as English “blog” with equivalent meaning, and “rún” Irish/Gaelic for “secret” with both political meaning and colloquially, as in “ a rún” used romantically to denote lover/sweetheart; lit. “secret of my heart”. But, the silly server wouldn’t accept an Irish language title and eventually only “Blagaroon” was accepted.
Topics will cover Irish, EU and International Politics; Art & Culture in all varieties; science; technology; philosophy; history and economics.
The tone will be humorous, but with serious intent. Comments are welcome, but, those which are merely abusive and don’t have a debating point will be deleted. We are not priggish in the use of language but racist or sexist remarks intended to degrade or discriminate will not be tolerated. You have been warned.
FearFeasa Mac Léinn,
Moltóir/Moderator
Introducing a new socio-political and cultural blog from the Republic of Ireland. The basic political stance will be left-of-centre, but we (other members of the team will join later) are interested in debating issues of importance, so oppositional views will not be excluded.
The intended title was, as above, an Irish language composite of “Blag”, pronounced as English “blog” with equivalent meaning, and “rún” Irish/Gaelic for “secret” with both political meaning and colloquially, as in “ a rún” used romantically to denote lover/sweetheart; lit. “secret of my heart”. But, the silly server wouldn’t accept an Irish language title and eventually only “Blagaroon” was accepted.
Topics will cover Irish, EU and International Politics; Art & Culture in all varieties; science; technology; philosophy; history and economics.
The tone will be humorous, but with serious intent. Comments are welcome, but, those which are merely abusive and don’t have a debating point will be deleted. We are not priggish in the use of language but racist or sexist remarks intended to degrade or discriminate will not be tolerated. You have been warned.
FearFeasa Mac Léinn,
Moltóir/Moderator
IRAQ: SADDSACK TOPPED: BUCKFUSH SURGES: WHO GAINS?
Certainly not the Iraqi people who continue to suffer horrendous sectarian violence alongside attacks and killings by the brutalised Anglo-American occupation forces. The hanging of the former dictator, which was supposed to be a propaganda victory for the Washington Warlords, backfired when it was turned into an abhorrent “snuff movie” on the internet by intransigent sectarian partisans within the Iraqi puppet regime which hides out in the so-called “Green Zone” in Baghdad pretending to be the government of Iraq. Civilised people all over the world were shocked by the gangster like “lynching” of Hussein after a mock show-trial which was supposed to be the start of “justice” in the so-called “new democracy” in occupied Iraq. The real gain for the Washington Warlords was the removal of the principal witness to their long-time collusion with the Iraqi dictatorship going back to the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980’s. This has particular significance for Bumsfeld, recently sacked as Secretary of Defence by Buckfush and who has been charged with war crimes in a case being proposed for prosecution in Germany this year. Bumsfeld’s murky dealings in supplying the Iraqi dictatorship with chemical supplies will come under scrutiny but, conveniently, the main witness is now disposed of.
The intervention in Iraq is such a disaster for world peace and especially for the Iraqi people who once again find themselves being ordered about, shot and killed by foreign armies reckless of their lives and property and ignorant of their history and culture. The idea that American proconsuls can now impose “democracy” on Iraq is laughable considering the recent history of that country and the part played by the USA in events there. The odious dictator Saddsack Hussein was a hireling of the CIA who was used to squash attempts to establish genuine independence for Iraq after the fall of the British imposed Hashemite monarchy in 1958. The Revolution of July, 1958, led by progressive army General Abdul Karim Qassem which deposed the Hashemite monarchy, rapidly introduced social, economic and political reforms long demanded by the Iraqi people but suppressed by the British and their stooges in Baghdad. Within a month, freedom of the press had been established with 40 newspapers being published which had been closed by the pro-British regime. A sweeping land reform which sidelined the British established local landlord system and distributed land to thousands of dispossessed peasants was implemented. Women’s rights, freedom for political parties and trade unions, new social services and labour law reform were all codified in a new Constitution which also recognised freedom of religion and equality of citizenship for all the ethnic groups in Iraq including the Kurds. The Iraqis didn’t need any tutoring from either the USA or Britain in how to organise their own democracy, but their efforts were cruelly squashed by the bloody hands of imperialism within a few years and Hussein was their chief agent in the conspiracy against Democratic Iraq.
The immediate antagonism of the British and Americans to this revolution in oil-rich Iraq led to an American invasion of Lebanon and a British invasion of Jordan in order to prevent sympathetic revolutions breaking out in these countries as well. An attempt to assassinate Qassem was mounted in 1959 by the CIA, with Saddam Hussein as the principal hit-man, which failed and Hussein was smuggled out to Cairo where he continued plotting with Baathist exiles there. In 1961, Qassem, having failed to gain any concessions from the British Petroleum Company for a larger share of oil revenues to go to Iraq, nationalised the entirety of undeveloped oil bearing lands for the State and set up the Iraq Petroleum Company to develop these independently of the British and American oil companies. Fearful of their assets being taken by further nationalisation, the British and Americans stepped up their organisation of opposition to Qassem’s government by colluding with the Baath Party and their leading thug Saddam Hussein and a successful coup took place in 1963. Qassem was murdered and reforms stopped.
The Baathists pursued a bloody purge against their opponents similar to what occurred in Indonesia in 1975. Thousands of political activists and trade unionists were murdered and thousands more imprisoned. The 1963 coup brought in a succession of military officers from the Al Sadr and Al Bakr families until Hussein organised a complete takeover for himself in 1979. He was continuously supplied with British and American arms and materials and political support and was given the nudge to go ahead with his brutal war against Iran in 1980. US and British support continued until 1991 when he invaded Kuwait, apparently under the impression from James Baker that the USA would not intervene. It’s a bit of a mystery also why, in 1967 and again in 1973 that the Iraqi military failed to come to the aid of their fellow Arabs when they were fighting Israel in those years despite the usual ferocious rhetoric from Radio Baghdad. If the West was worried about democracy in Iraq why did they undermine it in the 1960’s and then wait until 2003 before “discovering” that their agent Saddsack Hussein was a brutal dictator?
Democracy
The truth is, it never was a question of democracy in the Middle East as far as the colonialists were concerned. The piecemeal dismemberment of the failing Ottoman Empire, with France seizing the Maghreb (Algeria & Morocco), and Britain; Egypt and Sudan in the late 19th Century; followed, in the wake of the imperialist World War 1, by Syria, Iraq, Palestine and Saudi Arabia, was pure colonialism. Britain and France both aligned themselves with the most reactionary elements in these territories. The French separated Lebanon from Syria and set up a puppet state there. Britain grabbed a slice of Syria too, the oil-rich area around the city of Mosul, which they had already surveyed before the French got there and added it to their new puppet state of Iraq made up of the former Turkish provinces of Mesopotamia and Basra. Britain also cut off oil-rich Kuwait from Basra and set up another puppet state there. At this time, the 1920’s, the full extent of Iraq’s oil resources were not yet explored.
The Arab countries never had a chance of instituting progressive regimes. It suited the colonialists very well that the oil resources were situated in land occupied by the most reactionary feudal tribal chieftains and they moved immediately to set up alliances with them. The British set up the Saudis in their kingdom and moved the Hashemites from Hejaz, on the Red Sea, to Jordan and Iraq where separate monarchies were set up there. After WW2, when the Arab states gained political independence, the colonialists continued to interfere in the internal affairs of these countries. The addition, in 1948, of a Zionist colony in Palestine antagonistic to Arab aspirations and which eventually became Israel, the principal surrogate of the USA in countering moves for genuine independence for the Arab countries, was a fatal and dire consequence of Western neo-colonial policy which is still the cause of conflict and seeming never-ending cycle of violence and hatred typical of the colonialist “divide and conquer” strategy. This conflict will continue as the Arabs will never accept a permanent Zionist state in their midst. The only solution for those Jewish people who want to live in peace with the Arabs is to accept a non-racial, secular and democratic Palestine where they can have equal citizenship and let the fanatics and others who want to be Americans go and live in the USA, where a lot of them were born anyway. There is certainly enough room for them in the under-populated Midwestern states which are advertising on the internet for immigrants.
Consequences
Denigrating the Arab countries generally as “failed states” and trying to justify the invasion of Iraq on a basis of paternalistic “bringing democracy” to these countries is sheer hypocrisy. The consequences of these neo colonial policies for the people of the USA is an intolerable burden of military expenditure, which is unsustainable in the longer term, despite the insatiable greed of the military-industrial complex, as warned against by President Eisenhower in his valedictory speech as he left office in 1960. The Buckfush regime has been shamelessly plundering the US Treasury on behalf of its Defence Industry cronies such as the Cheneyshite-linked Halliburton since it rigged its way into the White House in 2001.
The prevailing myth which seems to dominate politics in the USA; that their view of “freedom” and their view of “liberty” is the “correct” view and may therefore be imposed by force majeure as and when they like, is unacceptable to the other 6 billion people on the planet and the sooner US politicians and people generally realise that the better it will be for their relations with the rest of us. In a democracy the people elect the government and therefore each individual has a responsibility to hold the government to account for what it does, the more so if you are opposed to the party in power and want a change of policy.
One thing which is positive about Iraq is that it has ruined the strategy of the American Right for world domination after the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The careers of many of them have crashed in the flames and bloodshed of Iraq; Bumsfeld, Bremerprick, Eagleburgercrap, Wolfspit and the rest. It has not gone unnoticed in the Arab World that all of these have been longtime pro-Zionist figures on the American political scene. Condasleeza gets away with it because of her pseudo-intellectual posing but, the end is not far off for her too as her employer, Buckfush, stumbles and bumbles to the end of his term in the White House.
Relentless
Meanwhile, the relentless Iraqi Insurgency continues its deadly war of attrition against the occupying forces and their collaborators as the total of US military fatalities exceeds 3000, more than 60,000 maimed and wounded and appalling civilian losses of the Iraqi population estimated to be at least 650,000 from the activities of the occupying forces attempted “pacification” of the country. Buckfush is now trying to play a political game with the lives of his troops in Iraq. With any chance of a peaceful, dignified exit now gone he is manoeuvring to exit office but passing the blame for his failures on to the incoming presidency, likely a Democrat and more likely, Hilary Clinton.
By proposing funding for additional troops in Iraq, which the Democrats will vote down, he can then say he couldn’t finish the job because the mean ol’ Democrats wouldn’t vote him the money. Of course, the strategy depends on achieving some sort of pacification in Baghdad which is well-nigh impossible at this stage. In signs of increasing desperation, the Buckfush regime is deliberately increasing tension in the area by a completely unwarranted bombing of villages in Somalia under the cloak of “fighting terrorists” and Cheneyshite’s and Israeli sabre-rattling against Iran. The fact that this is occurring now is a sure sign of the weakness and desperation of the American Right in its war against the rest of the world but, it also makes it more prone to dangerous acts of provocation and aggression with untold consequences. This makes the world-wide Anti-War movement more important than ever and the need is urgent to increase the democratic pressure everywhere to counter the aggressive tendencies of the Washington War-lords.
This appalling war, accompanied by some of the most brutalised savagery ever seen in conflict, is entirely the creation of Buckfush and his insane neo-con cronies, Bumsfeld, Cheneyshite, Bremerprick, Condasleeza and the rest. They are the ones who should be held to account for its consequences along with their close partner-in arms Tony (Don’t Care) Blairschmuck.
The Peoples’ Princess?
Princess Tony, a pathetic figure, now ensnared in his own scandals and under investigation for cash-for-favours sleaze in handing out lordships and knighthoods, is in a state of deep denial over his responsibility for the chaos and mayhem of Iraq. Desperately trying to re-write recent history in the face of massive public odium he has more-or-less abandoned his premiership and left the running of the government to his Finance Minister and heir apparent, Gordon Brown. Unwilling to admit that the insane colonialist adventure alongside Buckfush and his neo-cons has created even more terrorism and instability in the world than was there previously, Blairschmuck continues to advocate so-called “War on Terror” which has to be the most incompetent, misdirected and misguided project in the history of conflict.
The worst effects of this war have been the massive civilian casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan and recently, Somalia, accompanied by serious assaults on democratic rights of citizens in Britain and the USA in the name of national security and the most brazen breaches of international law since Hitler’s Third Reich. Secret torture chambers; shuttling by air of illegally held-detainees to torture centres world-wide on the soil of despicable crony regimes who deny democracy to their own citizens; the outrageous torture camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; a US enclave occupied against the will of the Cuban people and government.
Blairschmuck absented himself from the House of Commons for the first substantial debate there since the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003, showing once again his utter contempt for the democratic will and the suffering of the many families whose children he sent to die in Iraq. A moral reprobate, and a discredited politician like Blairschmuck is unfit to be head of any democratic country.
fearfeasamacleinn
Certainly not the Iraqi people who continue to suffer horrendous sectarian violence alongside attacks and killings by the brutalised Anglo-American occupation forces. The hanging of the former dictator, which was supposed to be a propaganda victory for the Washington Warlords, backfired when it was turned into an abhorrent “snuff movie” on the internet by intransigent sectarian partisans within the Iraqi puppet regime which hides out in the so-called “Green Zone” in Baghdad pretending to be the government of Iraq. Civilised people all over the world were shocked by the gangster like “lynching” of Hussein after a mock show-trial which was supposed to be the start of “justice” in the so-called “new democracy” in occupied Iraq. The real gain for the Washington Warlords was the removal of the principal witness to their long-time collusion with the Iraqi dictatorship going back to the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980’s. This has particular significance for Bumsfeld, recently sacked as Secretary of Defence by Buckfush and who has been charged with war crimes in a case being proposed for prosecution in Germany this year. Bumsfeld’s murky dealings in supplying the Iraqi dictatorship with chemical supplies will come under scrutiny but, conveniently, the main witness is now disposed of.
The intervention in Iraq is such a disaster for world peace and especially for the Iraqi people who once again find themselves being ordered about, shot and killed by foreign armies reckless of their lives and property and ignorant of their history and culture. The idea that American proconsuls can now impose “democracy” on Iraq is laughable considering the recent history of that country and the part played by the USA in events there. The odious dictator Saddsack Hussein was a hireling of the CIA who was used to squash attempts to establish genuine independence for Iraq after the fall of the British imposed Hashemite monarchy in 1958. The Revolution of July, 1958, led by progressive army General Abdul Karim Qassem which deposed the Hashemite monarchy, rapidly introduced social, economic and political reforms long demanded by the Iraqi people but suppressed by the British and their stooges in Baghdad. Within a month, freedom of the press had been established with 40 newspapers being published which had been closed by the pro-British regime. A sweeping land reform which sidelined the British established local landlord system and distributed land to thousands of dispossessed peasants was implemented. Women’s rights, freedom for political parties and trade unions, new social services and labour law reform were all codified in a new Constitution which also recognised freedom of religion and equality of citizenship for all the ethnic groups in Iraq including the Kurds. The Iraqis didn’t need any tutoring from either the USA or Britain in how to organise their own democracy, but their efforts were cruelly squashed by the bloody hands of imperialism within a few years and Hussein was their chief agent in the conspiracy against Democratic Iraq.
The immediate antagonism of the British and Americans to this revolution in oil-rich Iraq led to an American invasion of Lebanon and a British invasion of Jordan in order to prevent sympathetic revolutions breaking out in these countries as well. An attempt to assassinate Qassem was mounted in 1959 by the CIA, with Saddam Hussein as the principal hit-man, which failed and Hussein was smuggled out to Cairo where he continued plotting with Baathist exiles there. In 1961, Qassem, having failed to gain any concessions from the British Petroleum Company for a larger share of oil revenues to go to Iraq, nationalised the entirety of undeveloped oil bearing lands for the State and set up the Iraq Petroleum Company to develop these independently of the British and American oil companies. Fearful of their assets being taken by further nationalisation, the British and Americans stepped up their organisation of opposition to Qassem’s government by colluding with the Baath Party and their leading thug Saddam Hussein and a successful coup took place in 1963. Qassem was murdered and reforms stopped.
The Baathists pursued a bloody purge against their opponents similar to what occurred in Indonesia in 1975. Thousands of political activists and trade unionists were murdered and thousands more imprisoned. The 1963 coup brought in a succession of military officers from the Al Sadr and Al Bakr families until Hussein organised a complete takeover for himself in 1979. He was continuously supplied with British and American arms and materials and political support and was given the nudge to go ahead with his brutal war against Iran in 1980. US and British support continued until 1991 when he invaded Kuwait, apparently under the impression from James Baker that the USA would not intervene. It’s a bit of a mystery also why, in 1967 and again in 1973 that the Iraqi military failed to come to the aid of their fellow Arabs when they were fighting Israel in those years despite the usual ferocious rhetoric from Radio Baghdad. If the West was worried about democracy in Iraq why did they undermine it in the 1960’s and then wait until 2003 before “discovering” that their agent Saddsack Hussein was a brutal dictator?
Democracy
The truth is, it never was a question of democracy in the Middle East as far as the colonialists were concerned. The piecemeal dismemberment of the failing Ottoman Empire, with France seizing the Maghreb (Algeria & Morocco), and Britain; Egypt and Sudan in the late 19th Century; followed, in the wake of the imperialist World War 1, by Syria, Iraq, Palestine and Saudi Arabia, was pure colonialism. Britain and France both aligned themselves with the most reactionary elements in these territories. The French separated Lebanon from Syria and set up a puppet state there. Britain grabbed a slice of Syria too, the oil-rich area around the city of Mosul, which they had already surveyed before the French got there and added it to their new puppet state of Iraq made up of the former Turkish provinces of Mesopotamia and Basra. Britain also cut off oil-rich Kuwait from Basra and set up another puppet state there. At this time, the 1920’s, the full extent of Iraq’s oil resources were not yet explored.
The Arab countries never had a chance of instituting progressive regimes. It suited the colonialists very well that the oil resources were situated in land occupied by the most reactionary feudal tribal chieftains and they moved immediately to set up alliances with them. The British set up the Saudis in their kingdom and moved the Hashemites from Hejaz, on the Red Sea, to Jordan and Iraq where separate monarchies were set up there. After WW2, when the Arab states gained political independence, the colonialists continued to interfere in the internal affairs of these countries. The addition, in 1948, of a Zionist colony in Palestine antagonistic to Arab aspirations and which eventually became Israel, the principal surrogate of the USA in countering moves for genuine independence for the Arab countries, was a fatal and dire consequence of Western neo-colonial policy which is still the cause of conflict and seeming never-ending cycle of violence and hatred typical of the colonialist “divide and conquer” strategy. This conflict will continue as the Arabs will never accept a permanent Zionist state in their midst. The only solution for those Jewish people who want to live in peace with the Arabs is to accept a non-racial, secular and democratic Palestine where they can have equal citizenship and let the fanatics and others who want to be Americans go and live in the USA, where a lot of them were born anyway. There is certainly enough room for them in the under-populated Midwestern states which are advertising on the internet for immigrants.
Consequences
Denigrating the Arab countries generally as “failed states” and trying to justify the invasion of Iraq on a basis of paternalistic “bringing democracy” to these countries is sheer hypocrisy. The consequences of these neo colonial policies for the people of the USA is an intolerable burden of military expenditure, which is unsustainable in the longer term, despite the insatiable greed of the military-industrial complex, as warned against by President Eisenhower in his valedictory speech as he left office in 1960. The Buckfush regime has been shamelessly plundering the US Treasury on behalf of its Defence Industry cronies such as the Cheneyshite-linked Halliburton since it rigged its way into the White House in 2001.
The prevailing myth which seems to dominate politics in the USA; that their view of “freedom” and their view of “liberty” is the “correct” view and may therefore be imposed by force majeure as and when they like, is unacceptable to the other 6 billion people on the planet and the sooner US politicians and people generally realise that the better it will be for their relations with the rest of us. In a democracy the people elect the government and therefore each individual has a responsibility to hold the government to account for what it does, the more so if you are opposed to the party in power and want a change of policy.
One thing which is positive about Iraq is that it has ruined the strategy of the American Right for world domination after the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The careers of many of them have crashed in the flames and bloodshed of Iraq; Bumsfeld, Bremerprick, Eagleburgercrap, Wolfspit and the rest. It has not gone unnoticed in the Arab World that all of these have been longtime pro-Zionist figures on the American political scene. Condasleeza gets away with it because of her pseudo-intellectual posing but, the end is not far off for her too as her employer, Buckfush, stumbles and bumbles to the end of his term in the White House.
Relentless
Meanwhile, the relentless Iraqi Insurgency continues its deadly war of attrition against the occupying forces and their collaborators as the total of US military fatalities exceeds 3000, more than 60,000 maimed and wounded and appalling civilian losses of the Iraqi population estimated to be at least 650,000 from the activities of the occupying forces attempted “pacification” of the country. Buckfush is now trying to play a political game with the lives of his troops in Iraq. With any chance of a peaceful, dignified exit now gone he is manoeuvring to exit office but passing the blame for his failures on to the incoming presidency, likely a Democrat and more likely, Hilary Clinton.
By proposing funding for additional troops in Iraq, which the Democrats will vote down, he can then say he couldn’t finish the job because the mean ol’ Democrats wouldn’t vote him the money. Of course, the strategy depends on achieving some sort of pacification in Baghdad which is well-nigh impossible at this stage. In signs of increasing desperation, the Buckfush regime is deliberately increasing tension in the area by a completely unwarranted bombing of villages in Somalia under the cloak of “fighting terrorists” and Cheneyshite’s and Israeli sabre-rattling against Iran. The fact that this is occurring now is a sure sign of the weakness and desperation of the American Right in its war against the rest of the world but, it also makes it more prone to dangerous acts of provocation and aggression with untold consequences. This makes the world-wide Anti-War movement more important than ever and the need is urgent to increase the democratic pressure everywhere to counter the aggressive tendencies of the Washington War-lords.
This appalling war, accompanied by some of the most brutalised savagery ever seen in conflict, is entirely the creation of Buckfush and his insane neo-con cronies, Bumsfeld, Cheneyshite, Bremerprick, Condasleeza and the rest. They are the ones who should be held to account for its consequences along with their close partner-in arms Tony (Don’t Care) Blairschmuck.
The Peoples’ Princess?
Princess Tony, a pathetic figure, now ensnared in his own scandals and under investigation for cash-for-favours sleaze in handing out lordships and knighthoods, is in a state of deep denial over his responsibility for the chaos and mayhem of Iraq. Desperately trying to re-write recent history in the face of massive public odium he has more-or-less abandoned his premiership and left the running of the government to his Finance Minister and heir apparent, Gordon Brown. Unwilling to admit that the insane colonialist adventure alongside Buckfush and his neo-cons has created even more terrorism and instability in the world than was there previously, Blairschmuck continues to advocate so-called “War on Terror” which has to be the most incompetent, misdirected and misguided project in the history of conflict.
The worst effects of this war have been the massive civilian casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan and recently, Somalia, accompanied by serious assaults on democratic rights of citizens in Britain and the USA in the name of national security and the most brazen breaches of international law since Hitler’s Third Reich. Secret torture chambers; shuttling by air of illegally held-detainees to torture centres world-wide on the soil of despicable crony regimes who deny democracy to their own citizens; the outrageous torture camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; a US enclave occupied against the will of the Cuban people and government.
Blairschmuck absented himself from the House of Commons for the first substantial debate there since the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003, showing once again his utter contempt for the democratic will and the suffering of the many families whose children he sent to die in Iraq. A moral reprobate, and a discredited politician like Blairschmuck is unfit to be head of any democratic country.
fearfeasamacleinn
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)