Tag War crimes

Entries 34 Total

God these people are loathsome

Jun 3, ’09 1:12 PM

In a dev­ast­at­ing inter­view with George Mon­biot Hazel Blears pulls this lovely com­ment out of the bag, regard­ing the decision to invade Iraq:

Des­pite the fact that hun­dreds of thou­sands of people have died — and that is a tragedy — I still believe that it was the right thing to do.

If there was a hell Hazel Blears would surely burn in it.

The whole inter­view is worth watch­ing. She’s a good example of the kind of spine­less per­son who makes their way into the major polit­ical parties simply to be in power.

Her state­ment on Iraq reminds me of Madeleine Albright, who in 1996, then the U.S. Sec­ret­ary of State, was asked by Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes what she felt about the fact that half a mil­lion Iraqi chil­dren had died as a res­ult of U.S.-led eco­nomic sanc­tions. Albright replied, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it.”

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This doesn’t sound good

May 24, ’09 10:50 PM

Cath­er­ine Philp, report­ing for The Times:

… 200,000 Tamil civil­ians [are] being held against their will behind the razor-wire coils that sur­round Manik Farm, the largest dis­place­ment camp in Sri Lanka — one of the largest in the world.

At Manik Farm, the boys — and some girls — of fight­ing age were sep­ar­ated for screen­ing and have not been seen since.

Photos of Tamils at Menik farm

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The train wreck that was Donald Rumsfeld

May 18, ’09 8:01 AM

Fas­cin­at­ing art­icle on Don­ald Rums­feld in GQ magazine that will make you cringe.

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The evil legacy of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and New Labour

May 9, ’09 10:51 AM

Two things stand out as New Labour’s leg­acy: war of aggres­sion (the “supreme” war crime) and the worst inequal­ity of incomes since records began (another supreme crime con­sid­er­ing the dam­age it inflicts on every­body).

Tony Blair, Gor­don Brown and their con­spir­at­ors are little more than wolves in sheep’s cloth­ing and they’ve had much of the Labour Party and its sup­port­ers hood­winked for all these years.

Polly Toyn­bee — one of the hood­winked—may stamp her feet now but all she ends up doing is lay­ing bare how dys­func­tional Britain’s quasi-democracy is.

Because the UK is still stuck in the dark ages of plur­al­ity vot­ing (and New Labour broke its mani­festo pledge of elect­oral reform) con­trol of Bri­tain will simply pass from one wolf to another.

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The war crims are running scared

Apr 30, ’09 9:42 PM

Check out this video of war crim­inal Con­doleezza Rice passing the buck when ques­tioned by some stu­dents about torture.

Stu­dent: Water­board­ing. Is water­board­ing torture?

War crim: Er, the Pres­id­ent instruc­ted us that noth­ing we would do would be out­side of our oblig­a­tions, legal oblig­a­tions, under the Con­ven­tion Against Tor­ture. So that’s … and by the way, I didn’t author­ise any­thing. I con­veyed the author­isa­tion of the admin­is­tra­tion to the agency, that they had policy author­isa­tion, sub­ject to the Justice Department’s clear­ance. That’s what I did.

So, first, denial but it gets bet­ter. I couldn’t quite get the next ques­tion but this is her answer:

War crim: … and, I just said, the United States was told, we were told, noth­ing that viol­ates our oblig­a­tions under the Con­ven­tion Against Tor­ture, and so by defin­i­tion, if it was author­ised by the pres­id­ent, it did not viol­ate our oblig­a­tions under the Con­ven­tion Against Torture.

That old chest­nut. “Well he told me to do it, and fur­ther­more, he’s above the law.” We’ll see Condi, we’ll see.

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Funny little world we live in

Mar 12, ’09 2:08 PM

George Bush over­sees tor­ture and com­mits the “supreme war crime” of aggres­sion, caus­ing suf­fer­ing and death for mil­lions. Gets to go back to his ranch.

One of the vic­tims of these crimes throws a shoe at the per­pet­rator. Gets 3 years in jail.

The Guard­ian did get one thing wrong in their report. Mun­tazar al-Zaidi is not just a hero in the Arab world.

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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.

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UK government covers up torture

Feb 15, ’09 10:05 PM

For­eign Office link to tor­ture cover-up

How do these people sleep at night?

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Must-read from George Monbiot

Feb 11, ’09 9:15 AM

hezel_blearsIf you read noth­ing else about polit­ics today read this:

George Mon­biot: Just what exactly do you stand for, Hazel Blears — except election?

For some con­text in the lead up to this piece check out No Right Turn’s links on the mat­ter.

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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?

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