Tag International relations

Entries 20 Total

Blair loses, audible sigh of relief heard around world

Nov 20, ’09 8:16 AM

For those of you sub­jec­ted to the unfor­tu­nate idea of hav­ing Tony Blair as first pres­id­ent of the EU you’ll pleased to know the war crim­inal never came close.

No Right Turn:

The European Union has its first per­man­ent coun­cil pres­id­ent — and its not Tony Blair. Instead, EU lead­ers have chosen Bel­gian Prime Min­is­ter Her­man van Rompuy for the top job. His chief vir­tues? He’s from a small state actu­ally com­mit­ted to the European pro­ject (unlike the UK), and he’s a con­sensus politi­cian, rather than a divis­ive auto­crat (unlike Blair). Plus of course he’s not a war crim­inal — always a bonus when you’re try­ing to run a state com­mit­ted to peace and inter­na­tional law.

Comments (1)

Jacqui Janes is wrong about why her son is dead

Nov 10, ’09 8:37 PM

Jac­qui Janes believes her son is dead because the war in Afgh­anistan is under-resourced.

He’s not. He’s dead because he was fight­ing an unjust war.

The stated aim of the inva­sion of Afgh­anistan was to find Osama bin Laden and other high-ranking Al-Qaeda mem­bers. On 14 Octo­ber, 2001, the Taliban pub­licly offered to hand over Osama bin Laden to a third coun­try, provided the U.S. hal­ted the illegal bomb­ing of Afgh­anistan and pro­duced the neces­sary evid­ence about involve­ment of bin Laden or any of his asso­ci­ates in the 11 Septem­ber attacks.

George Bush junior dis­missed this offer and con­tin­ued with the offens­ive, put­ting an end to any pos­sib­il­ity of a poten­tially peace­ful, legal res­ol­u­tion to the events of 11 Septem­ber 2001.

The United Nations Secur­ity Coun­cil never author­ised the inva­sion of Afgh­anistan and it cer­tainly wasn’t an act of self-defence. It was an act of aggres­sion, the supreme inter­na­tional crime.

Neither George Bush nor Gor­don Brown had to go off to war, but Jac­qui Janes’ son did, and now he’s dead.

Comments (0)

Iran should tell the West to fuck off

Nov 2, ’09 7:37 PM

As part of nego­ti­ations with Iran over nuc­lear fuel Mohamed ElBaradei of the Inter­na­tional Atomic Energy Agency recently pro­posed that Iran trans­fer about 70 per­cent of its low-enriched uranium to Rus­sia for fur­ther enrich­ment by the end of this year, then to France for con­ver­sion into fuel plates for med­ical use, effect­ively neg­at­ing its use in alleged poten­tial nuc­lear weapons.

Iran has appar­ently made the per­fectly jus­ti­fi­able sug­ges­tion that rather than send their fuel off, and cross their fin­gers that it comes back, they instead do a dir­ect swap of their low-enriched uranium for fuel plates. This makes even more sense when you real­ise that the U.S. and France have reneged on com­mer­cial deals in the past to sup­ply Iran with nuc­lear fuel.

Accord­ing to this Reu­ters report (typ­ic­ally vague on sources) this sug­ges­tion is “unac­cept­able” to “West­ern diplomats.”

If you wanted evid­ence that these nego­ti­ations are not being car­ried out in good faith then here you have it. What does it mat­ter to the West if a dir­ect swap is made? The only reason it could mat­ter is that peace is not the West’s aim.

Comments (0)

Top Things you Think You Know about Iran that are not True

Oct 2, ’09 6:19 AM

With cur­rent events this is a must read for any Westerner.

Comments (0)

‘No credible evidence’ of Iranian nuclear weapons

Sep 30, ’09 7:50 PM

‘No cred­ible evid­ence’ of Ira­nian nuc­lear weapons, says UN inspector:

The UN’s chief weapons inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei, said today he had seen “no cred­ible evid­ence” that Iran is devel­op­ing nuc­lear weapons, reject­ing Brit­ish intel­li­gence alleg­a­tions that a weapons pro­gramme has been going on for at least four years.

Any­one sur­prised by this is just a fuck­ing plonker.

Comments (0)

NZ National/ACT government wants option to commit war crimes

Sep 9, ’09 7:13 AM

No Right Turn on the NZ National/ACT government’s oppos­i­tion to a new bill that would make it a national crim­inal offence for any New Zea­l­and polit­ical leader to “plan, pre­pare, ini­ti­ate or execute an act of aggres­sion” in viol­a­tion of the UN Charter.

… when Wayne Mapp says he doesn’t want our for­eign policy to be sub­ject to a UN veto, what he is really say­ing is that he wants to wage war in con­tra­ven­tion of inter­na­tional law and the UN charter — in other words, he wants us to be a rogue nation, just like the US…

Which seems to me to be a per­fect example of why we must pass the bill.

Comments (0)

Iran may not want the bomb

May 24, ’09 9:25 PM

Fareed Zakaria writ­ing for New­s­week:

… over the last five years, senior Ira­nian offi­cials at every level have repeatedly asser­ted that they do not intend to build nuc­lear weapons. Pres­id­ent Mah­moud Ahmad­ine­jad has quoted the regime’s found­ing father, Ayatol­lah Ruhol­lah Khomeini, who asser­ted that such weapons were “un-Islamic.” The country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatol­lah Ali Khame­nei, issued a fatwa in 2004 describ­ing the use of nuc­lear weapons as immoral. In a sub­sequent ser­mon, he declared that “devel­op­ing, pro­du­cing or stock­pil­ing nuc­lear weapons is for­bid­den under Islam.” Last year Khame­nei reit­er­ated all these points after meet­ing with the head of the Inter­na­tional Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei. Now, of course, they could all be lying. But it seems odd for a regime that derives its legit­im­acy from its fidel­ity to Islam to declare con­stantly that these weapons are un-Islamic if it intends to develop them. It would be far shrewder to stop remind­ing people of Khomeini’s state­ments and stop issu­ing new fat­was against nukes.

Comments (0)

I can’t believe he said that

Apr 22, ’09 8:40 PM

Groups of people all over the world call­ing them­selves “news organ­isa­tions,” such as The Times, con­tinue to spread myths about Mah­moud Ahmad­ine­jad, such as that he called for Israel to be “wiped off the map” or that he denies the Nazi Holocaust.

In the mean time the Israeli Deputy Prime Min­is­ter has been quoted as say­ing “What Iran is try­ing to do right now is not far away at all from what Hitler did to the Jew­ish people just 65 years ago.”

Sorry, what the fuck?

So on one hand you have an oil-rich nation — Iran — that has never attacked another, let alone with nuc­lear weapons, and has just had its oil-rich neigh­bour invaded and occupied.

On the other you have a nation that has invaded and occu­pied Iran’s neigh­bour and is the only nation in the world to have attacked another with ther­mo­nuc­lear weapons, along with another nuclear-armed quasi-nation — Israel — which can’t stop get­ting into wars with its neigh­bours, bru­tally represses those in its midst who don’t belong to the right race or reli­gion, and openly dis­cusses attack­ing Iran, along with its part­ners in the crime the U.S. and a group of European nations, all of whom helped cre­ate the racist state in the first place.

If you believe Iran is the bel­li­ger­ent party in all of this and is about to pull an Adolf Hitler on us, then you are a stu­pid fuck.

Comments (0)

Tony Blair gets payoff from Zionists

Feb 18, ’09 2:09 PM

War Crim Tony Blair has been awar­ded a prize from Zion­ist organ­isa­tion Dan David Found­a­tion, amount­ing to $1 million.

Pre­sum­ably for his efforts to ensure Israel can con­tinue its eth­nic cleans­ing of Palestinians.

Comments (0)

People lose their moral compass over Israel

Jan 26, ’09 9:57 AM

It sur­prises me to the degree that many people lose their moral com­pass over Israel. We’ve come to expect it from Israelis; cur­rently they’re prom­ising to pro­tect their war crim­in­als from inter­na­tional pro­sec­u­tion over their recent mas­sacre of Gazans.

But, then there’s people like Mark Thompson, the BBC’s dir­ector gen­eral, who has been instru­mental in the BBC’s recent refusal to broad­cast an appeal for the cit­izens of Gaza. How does one man­age to become so detached from the plight of other human beings? How is it that the per­son who heads the BBC is com­pletely duped by the idi­otic “war on ter­ror” pro­pa­ganda that so dehu­man­ises people like the Palestinians?

Comments (1)