UPDATE 4: According to historian David Starkey, the riots have confirmed the prophecy of Enoch Powell as the whites have become black. Of course, the BBC allowed him to express his racist perspective about blacks and black culture unchallenged by the moderator, in marked contrast to the treatment of Darcus Howe when he attempted to explain the social context of the riots.

UPDATE 3: More, from Peter Oborne:

A great deal has been made over the past few days of the greed of the rioters for consumer goods, not least by Rotherham MP Denis MacShane who accurately remarked, What the looters wanted was for a few minutes to enter the world of Sloane Street consumption. This from a man who notoriously claimed £5,900 for eight laptops. Of course, as an MP he obtained these laptops legally through his expenses.

Yesterday, the veteran Labour MP Gerald Kaufman asked the Prime Minister to consider how these rioters can be reclaimed by society. Yes, this is indeed the same Gerald Kaufman who submitted a claim for three months’ expenses totalling £14,301.60, which included £8,865 for a Bang & Olufsen television.

Or take the Salford MP Hazel Blears, who has been loudly calling for draconian action against the looters. I find it very hard to make any kind of ethical distinction between Blears’s expense cheating and tax avoidance, and the straight robbery carried out by the looters.

What the looters wanted was for a few minutes to enter the world of Sloane Street consumption. Yes, this is why it is difficult to ascribe a leftist social ethos to many of the rioters. Instead, they participated in a populist embrace of the values by which they have been governed for decades. They did, however, collectively organize themselves in ways common among anti-authoritarians. Perhaps, this is a seed that can germinate into a rejection of the hierarchical world of commodity consumption that they sought to enter, however fleetingly, in the last few days.

UPDATE 2 Novelist Hari Kunzru gets it:

In a society that has abandoned or devalued most forms of mutual assistance in favour of a solipsistic entrepreneurialism, it's hardly surprising that, faced with the end of the good times, people help themselves. Fear and greed are our ruling passions. That's true of the kids smashing shop windows to steal trainers. It's also true of the MPs fiddling their expenses, the police officers taking backhanders, the journalists breaking into phones. Why wouldn't they? Why wouldn't any of us? The example has been set by our new masters, the one per cent for whom and by whom we're governed. The ability of powerful actors in the financial markets to socialise risk while privatising profit appears, to the financial peasantry, indistinguishable from organised crime. No reason for the rest of us to stand on ceremony.

Kunzu hits the nail on the head when he highlights the importance of the devaluation of mutual assistance. If the English unrest is to have any possibility of developing into a rejection of the existing social order, the rehabilitation of mutual assistance is a necessary precondition.

UPDATE 1: Oops, the Internal Police Complaints Commission make a mistake:

The police watchdog investigating the death of Mark Duggan, whose shooting by police sparked the first bout of rioting in London on Saturday, has said it may have inadvertently misled journalists into believing the Tottenham man had fired at police.

Responding to inquiries from the Guardian, the Independent Police Complaints Commission said in a statement: it seems possible that we may have verbally led journalists to believe that shots were exchanged.

Someone over at Lenin's Tomb described this process as lie immediately, recant at leisure, as manifested in other notorious episodes such as the killings of De Menezes and Tomlimson.

INITIAL POST: Prime Minister David Cameron rambled on and on about responsibility in relation to the London riots:

The prime minister revived his pre-election concerns about a broken society as he said that one of the main lessons from the riots was that too many children grew up not knowing the differences between right and wrong.

This is not about poverty, it's about culture. A culture that glorifies violence, shows disrespect to authority, and says everything about rights but nothing about responsibilities. In too many cases the parents of these children – if they are still around – don't care where their children are or who they are with, let alone what they are doing. The potential consequences of neglect and immorality on this scale have been clear for too long, without enough action being taken.

The fact that many children ended up in gangs would be the subject of renewed ministerial interest. The prime minister said: At the heart of all the violence sits the issue of the street gangs. Territorial, hierarchical and incredibly violent, they are mostly composed of young boys, mainly from dysfunctional homes. They earn money through crime, particularly drugs, and are bound together by an imposed loyalty to an authoritarian gang leader. They have blighted life on their estates with gang-on-gang murders and unprovoked attacks on innocent bystanders.

Much of the left response will probably be about the cause of the conditions condemned by Cameron, leaving aside the question as to whether he has exaggerated them. But there is another issue here that deserves more attention. For example, consider this statement: A culture that glorifies violence, shows disrespect to authority, and says everything about rights but nothing about responsibilities. And who are some of the avatars of this culture? Let's identify them.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair, former President George Bush, President Barack Obama and, yes, Prime Minister David Cameron, not to mention French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, among others. All of them have perpetually emphasized violence as a means of achieving their objectives, regardless of any legal, institutional or international impediments. Bush and Blair are, of course, notorious for their invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, wrapped in the cloak of human rights. Neither acknowledged any responsibility for the death and destruction that they inflicted upon Iraq and Afghanistan, except as a profit making opportunity for US and UK corporations supposedly involved in rebuilding the country.

Meanwhile, Obama has expanded US military operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, participated in airstrikes in Libya, and relied upon covert operations in Yemen. Sarkozy and Cameron have played leading roles in the Libyan debacle. As for Netanyahu, do will really need to chronicle his brutalities in the occupied territories? Barely a week passed when one of these leaders did not either engage in military attacks upon other countries or threaten them. In making these remarks, Cameron indicted himself as a cause of the riots.

Leaders like Bush, Blair, Cameron, Sarkozy and Obama have sent a clear message to young people: violence works. Or, to put it differently, might makes right, a message that has been most effectively reinforced by the conduct of the police in their neighborhoods. So, when the young people of north and south London discovered that the police could not prevent them from looting and burning businesses, they went for it. Just like Bush and Blair went for it in the fall of 2001 and the spring of 2003. A culture of imperialist state violence gave birth to a culture of collective violence against property. It remains to be seen whether this imperfect collective culture, a form of contemporary nihilism, is transitory, one that can be exploited by capital, as discussed yesterday, or one that has the potential to evolve into a challenge against the global capitalist order.

Labels: Barack Obama, Dubstep Rebellion, Europe, Neoliberalism, Political Violence, Tony Blair, United Kingdom

No wonder Richard Perle, Tony Blair and Silvio Berlusconi considered it important to establish a connection to Muammar Gaddafi:

Libya has proven oil reserves of 44 billion barrels, the largest in Africa, according to the International Energy Agency.

The country has used this burgeoning oil wealth to invest close to $100bn (£61.6bn) around the world since economic sanctions were lifted in 2004.

Libya's overseas investments include a portfolio of UK properties as well as a 3% stake in Pearson Group, which makes it one of the biggest shareholders in the owner of the Financial Times.

The Libyan Investment Authority is the country's main financial vehicle, with an estimated $70bn of assets, according to the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute. In June 2009 it paid £155m for Portman House, a 146,550 square foot shopping complex on Oxford Street which houses retailers including Boots and New Look. Five months later the LIA spent £120m on an office at 14 Cornhill – opposite the Bank of England – and in September 2010 Libya set up a joint venture to develop a hotel and retail complex in Maple Cross, Hertfordshire.

The LIA, set up in 2006, has also made a series of investments in Italy, where prime minister Silvio Berlusconi enjoys a close relationship with Gaddafi. Libya owns about 2% of Fiat, 7.5% of Juventus Football Club and has a 2% stake in – and joint venture with – Italian aerospace and defence group Finmeccanica. It owns 7.5% of UniCredit, one of Italy's largest banks, and is a shareholder in Fortis, the Belgian-Dutch bank.

Libya has also made investments through other state vehicles, such as the Libyan African Investment Portfolio, which was set up in 2006 and is worth an estimated $8bn, according to the Sovereign Wealth Institute. This entity is behind FM Capital Partners, a hedge fund set up last year in Knightsbridge to execute a range of investments.

Another Libyan fund, known as the Long Term Asset Portfolio, was set up in 1982 and has an estimated $10bn, which is mainly invested in property and investment funds operated by other banks.

In addition, Libya's ruling elite – led by Gaddafi – has untold billions of dollars of funds around the world, according to Alistair Newton, senior political analyst at Nomura, the Japanese bank. This is a country that is so un-transparent I couldn't even begin to guess just how much money the ruling elite has [but] I would be very surprised if it didn't run into billions, Newton said.

Given that Libya has, by and large, been ignored by both the commercial and alternative media in the US, the scope of the activities of the kleptocracy are truly amazing. It provides us with an insight as to the exponentially greater investment activities of Sunni kingdoms in the Gulf, and the fear that will envelop global financial markests if substantial protests erupt there. Meanwhile, as for Libya, if the populace prevails, then, perhaps, the country's tremendous oil wealth can be used to benefit them.

Labels: American Empire, Italy, Libya, Neoconservatives, Neoliberalism, Tony Blair

I came across this incident by accident, after encountering it in a post by Jason Ditz of antiwar.com:

A 21-year-old student has been jailed for life at the Old Bailey for trying to murder Labour MP Stephen Timms because he voted for the war in Iraq.

Roshonara Choudhry, of East Ham, stabbed the 55-year-old MP for East Ham twice in the stomach at a constituency surgery in Newham, east London, in May.

She was found guilty of attempted murder and two counts of possessing a knife on Tuesday.

Choudhry, of Central Park Road, was jailed for a minimum of 15 years.

Justice Cooke's condemnation of her actions was, shall we say, a bit peculiar:

Mr Justice Cooke told Choudhry: You said you ruined the rest of your life. You said it was worth it. You said you wanted to be a martyr.

You intended to kill in a political cause and to strike at those in government by doing so.

You did so as a matter of deliberate decision making, however skewed your reasons, from listening to those Muslims who incite such action on the internet.

I also hope that you will come to understand the distorted nature of your thinking, the evil that you have done and planned to do, and repent of it.

You do not suffer from any mental disease. You have simply committed evil acts coolly and deliberately.

During the trial the court heard Choudhry had made a list of MPs who had voted for the Iraq war. Choudhry would continue to be a danger to MPs, the judge added.

Of course, Tony Blair, George Bush and all of those in the Congress and House of Commons who authorized the invasion of Iraq intended to kill in a political cause. They also committed evil acts coolly and deliberately. Yet, in Blair's case, he's now a Catholic in good standing. Furthermore, Blair, like Choudhry, was also influenced by the Internet in regard to his decision to launch the war.

Beyond this, there are the additional facts, outside the record, so to speak, that the US and Israel frequently seek to assassinate people in the Middle East and Central Asia, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. In addition, they do so in circumstances that frequently result in the deaths of others who are misfortunate enough to be near the intended target. Choudhry, by contrast, attacked Timms in a setting that put the lives of no one else at risk.

So, we are left with a puzzler. What was it about Choudhry's attack that so angered Justice Cooke? As already implied here, it can't be because she sought to kill Timms for political reasons. Bush, Blair and those who supported their policies have done the same. Nor can it be because she did so coolly and deliberately. Bush, Blair and those who have supported their policies have done that, too. Rather, it appears that Justice Cooke was outraged because she wanted to be a martyr.

As noted elsewhere in the article:

Following the attack she told officers it was a punishment and to get revenge for the people of Iraq, the Old Bailey heard.

Choudhry, who had refused to appear in court, told her barrister Jeremy Dein QC she did not accept the court's jurisdiction and did not wish him to challenge the prosecution case.

Oh my, now that's not good. For if there is one thing we know about Bush and Blair, we are certain that they were not intending to martyr themselves when they invaded Iraq. Indeed, both, particularly Blair, have done quite well for themselves as a result. Killing for profit, killing for geopolitical advantage, killing for the purposes of political manipulation, that's acceptable, but seeking to kill someone for ideological reasons and taking responsibility for it, that's something not to be tolerated.

I go through all this not to make light of what happened to Timms. I'm sure that it has been a frightening and painful experience for him, although he has undoubtedly gotten better medical care for his injuries than most Iraqis wounded by US/UK weaponry. Nor do I do it to suggest that Choundhry's response to Timm's authorization for the war was legitimate. Instead, I do so to emphasize that those who live by violence should not be surprised when others decide to conduct themselves as violently as those who purport to exercise a monopoly over it.

Last year, I was having a discussion with my co-host on my KDVS public affairs program about gang violence. Not surprisingly, being the liberal sort that he is, he started complaining about the pervasive violent conduct described in a lot of hip hop songs. But, also rather predictably, he didn't mention the possibility that when young people frequently encounter the leadership of this country, including the President, perpetually using violence and the threat of it to achieve their objectives, that they, too, come to the conclusion that violence is an acceptable means to an end. If so, they rightly perceive violence as yet another form of privilege, like inherited wealth, social status and cultural reproduction, one that they therefore attempt to arrogate to themselves. Nor did he consider the potentially even more alarming possibility that life in our society is inescapably violent, rendered even more so by the attempted oligopolization of it by nation states and elites, and that the real challenge is how to transform it.

Labels: "War on Terror", American Empire, Iraq War, Israel, Neoliberalism, Political Violence, Tony Blair

(snip)

Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event––like a new Pearl Harbor.

(snip)

In A Journey: My Political Life, Blair depicts Cheney as believing the United States was at war not only with Islamic terrorists but with rogue states that supported them and that the only way of defeating [this threat] was head-on, with maximum American strength.

Cheney wanted forcible regime change in all Middle Eastern countries that he considered hostile to U.S. interests, according to Blair.

He would have worked through the whole lot, Iraq, Syria, Iran, dealing with all their surrogates in the course of it – Hezbollah, Hamas, etc., Blair wrote. In other words, he [Cheney] thought the world had to be made anew, and that after 11 September, it had to be done by force and with urgency. So he was for hard, hard power. No ifs, no buts, no maybes.”

(snip)

The majority concludes its opinion with a recommendation of alternative remedies. Not only are these remedies insufficient, but their suggestion understates the severity of the consequences to Plaintiffs from the denial of judicial relief. Suggesting, for example, that the Executive could “honor[ ] the fundamental principles of justice” by determining “whether plaintiffs’ claims have merit,” [see Maj. Op. at 13554] disregards the concept of checks and balances. Permitting the executive to police its own errors and determine the remedy dispensed would not only deprive the judiciary of its role, but also deprive Plaintiffs of a fair assessment of their claims by a neutral arbiter. The majority’s suggestion of payment of reparations to the victims of extraordinary rendition, such as those paid to Japanese Latin Americans for the injustices suffered under Internment during World War II, over fifty years after those injustices were suffered [Maj. Op. at 13554], elevates the impractical to the point of absurdity. of Similarly, a congressional investigation, private bill, or enacting of “remedial legislation,” [Maj. Op. at 13556], leaves to the legislative branch claims which the federal courts are better equipped to handle. See Kosak v. United States, 465 U.S. 848, 867 (1984) (Stevens, J., dissenting).

Arbitrary imprisonment and torture under any circumstance is a “ ‘gross and notorious . . . act of despotism.’ ” Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507, 556 (2004) (Scalia, J., dissenting) (quoting 1 Blackstone 131-33 (1765)). But “ ‘confinement [and abuse] of the person, by secretly hurrying him to [prison], where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten; is a less public, a less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government.’ ” Id. (Scalia, J., dissenting) (quoting 1 Blackstone 131-33 (1765)) (emphasis added).

(snip)

Yet nothing comes closer to Titus Andronicus than the insistent, terrible stories of gang rape by United States personnel in Abu Ghraib. You hear this repeatedly in Amman, and a very accurate source of mine in Washington – a man who deals with military personnel – tells me they are true. This, he says, is why Barack Obama changed his mind about releasing the photographs which George W Bush refused to make public. The pictures we saw – of the humiliation of men – were outrageous enough. But the ones we haven't seen show Americans raping Iraqi women.

Lima Nabil, a journalist who now runs a home for on-the-run girls, sips coffee as the boiling Jordanian sun frowns through the window at us. In Abu Ghraib, she says, women were tortured by the Americans much more than the men. One woman said she witnessed five girls being raped. Most of the women in the prison were raped – some of them left prison pregnant. Families killed some of these women – because of the shame.

Labels: 9/11, Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan, American Empire, Cheney, Occupation of Iraq, PNAC, Sadomasochism, Tony Blair, War with Iran, YouTube

More from Chris Brooke (again, best read from the bottom up):

Blair, p. 653: I met a very bouncy Sarkozy at the start of his Presidential campaign and told him that he sounded like Napoleon.

Blair, p. 645: And on social exclusion, you shd concentrate on dysfunctional families, not on poor people or young people in general.

Blair, p.644: in these speeches I gave lessons to my successors, eg that to deal with the criminal underclass you need draconian powers.

Blair, p. 634: Twice I thanked God for the independence of the British judiciary, over cash for honours and the Hutton inquiry.

Blair, p. 607: Putting campaign donors in the Lords is a murky business, but it is the system as it has operated for a long, long time.

Blair, p. 602: But it wasn't that I didn't get public opinion on Lebanon, nor that I cdn't have articulated it... I didn't agree with it.

Blair, p.600: If I condemned Israel, it wd be more than dishonest; it wd have undermined the worldview I had come to hold passionately.

Blair, p. 598: In Sept 2006 I visited Beirut... Unsurprisingly, I was not popular with many Lebanese people.

Blair, p.597: The occupation of Palestinian land may be an injustice, depending on yr viewpt, but this is a region w plenty of injustices.

Blair, p. 596: Israel is a government with a well-armed & well-trained army & air force. They do not target civilians.

Blair, p. 594, on the Israel / Lebanon war in 2006: That event, & my reaction to it, prob. did me more damage than anything since Iraq.

Blair throws around stupid metaphors, p. 592: the bazooka of outrage, the blowpipe of ridicule.

Blair, p. 591: Politicians shag around bc of the supreme self-control you have to exercise to be at the top.

Blair, p.585, thinks abt pensions, wanting a framework that over time wd...tilt the responsibility for provision from state to individual.

Blair, p. 577: Academies were great, because they were freed from extraordinarily debilitating & often politically correct interference.

After wading through these tweets, I have a number of observations. First, Blair's reflexive support for Israel, and, by extension, state violence generally, as expressed in similar remarks about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is remarkable. One gets the sense that there is no act of state violence that he would condemn, including the use of nuclear weapons. Although he apparently does not address it, Blair's perspective on the wars in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan suggest he believes that the US use of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was appropriate, and would probably support their use again, such as, for example, in an attempt to destroy Iran's nuclear research and power program.

Second, Blair reveals himself to be an autocratic figure in the tradition of late 19th Century and early 20th Century progressives as it relates to the working class and lower income people. He believes that workers should pay their own pensions with no state assistance, placing him squarely among those in the US who want to reduce Social Security and Medicare benefits, and consistently describes the lives of many low income people in pathological terms. Recall his comment, posted here yesterday: The right-wing phrase, underclass, was ugly, but it was accurate. People at the bottom had dysfunctional lives, full stop. Today, we get more elaboration: to deal with the criminal underclass you need draconian powers.

In this, Blair brings to mind the perpetual urban renewal efforts of the last century, most prominent in the 1930s and 1960s. Such efforts were usually justified by reference to the purported urgency of eliminating blight, an antiseptic term that identified lower middle income and low income communities as disease infested, crime ridden areas that must be destroyed so that they could be replaced by modern middle class neighborhoods. As a result, many vibrant lower middle income and lower income communities were forever lost, with their residents cast to the winds. Most recently, as noted by Yusef, the same sad transformation has taken place in post-Katrina New Orleans.

But Blair is more aggressive in his approach as he approved the installation of public surveillance equipment, greater police power and increased criminal penalties. In this, he again acted upon his adoration of the US, which has pioneered such measures as a solution to social disorder. Hence, he perceives the state as beset by threats from within and without, an international Islamic insurgency that will take decades to overcome, and an internal class of lumpenproletarians that invariably threaten to disrupt the lives of its citizens if not strictly controlled. While not explicit, he seems to perceive immigration as something that intensifies both threats, as he elsewhere states that the post-Holocaust asylum policy was no longer tenable. In effect, Blair possesses an extreme vision of a utopian, middle class consumer society, perhaps even more extreme than the one promoted by Thatcher and Reagan, as Blair lacks the residue of libertarian values, however slight, that motivated them. Of course, it can only be implemented by recourse to coercion and violence, which he readily embraces.

Labels: "War on Terror", American Empire, Iraq War, Iraqi Deaths, Islam, Neoconservatives, Neoliberalism, Police, Postmodernism, Racism, Religion, Tony Blair, United Kingdom

An amazing accomplishment by Chris Brooke, a page by page Twitter summarization of Blair's memoirs. The banality of Blair would be truly hysterical, if it hadn't contributed to the deaths of so many people.

Some excerpts (please note that they are best read from the bottom up):

Blair, p. 516: If Condi Rice has a fault, it is that she is probably too decent for the world of politics.

Yes, Blair really does call Ariel Sharon, p. 515, a big man in every sense.

Blair, p.513: Even Gitmo, a policy that was both understandable &, done in a different way, justifiable was seen as anti- the rule of law.

Blair, p, 501: Gerhard Schroeder was a really tough cookie.

Blair, p, 482: Top US universities were the best in the world plainly & inescapably due to their system of fees.

Blair, p. 467: on the pics from Abu Ghraib, no doubt they were exceptional incidents, and the offenders were prosecuted.

Blair, p. 458: The reception was ecstatic. They got up and applauded throughout, a total of thirty-five times.

Blair, pp.457-8, quotes at length from his speech to the US Congress, one of the most important and, in my judgement, best speeches I made"

Blair, p. 410: Even people who didn't like me or agree with me still admired the fact I counted, was a big player, was a world... leader.

Blair, p. 409: But Cheney's manner of doing it was incomplete. We needed to win the war at the level of ideas, by engaging Muslims.

Blair, p. 408: Cheney is the object of so much conspiracy theory that it's virtually impossible to have a rational discussion about him.

Blair visits Crawford, TX, April 2002, p. 399. It is pretty much in the middle of nowhere.

Blair, p. 394: George had immense simplicity in how he saw the world.

Blair, p. 387: the Middle East was urgently in need of modernisation.

Pre-9/11 terrorism, Blair calls, p. 343, the price that America paid for being America.

Blair, p.204: The right-wing phrase, underclass, was ugly, but it was accurate. People at the bottom had dysfunctional lives, full stop.

Blair, p. 116: I wanted to preserve, in terms of competitive tax rates, the essential Thatcher/Howe/Lawson legacy.

Blair says, p. 88, that it wd have been wickedly irresponsible to send his kids to an average state school.

For the full, rich experience, you have to read Brooke's dissection in its entirety. It has the riveting quality of a compelling work of experimental fiction. He has about 170 pages to go before completing the task that he has set for himself.

Labels: American Empire, Iraq War, Iraqi Deaths, Neoconservatives, Neoliberalism, Postmodernism, Religion, Tony Blair, United Kingdom

UPDATE: lenin reminds us of everything that was horrible about Blair, but who knew that one of his role models was . . . Princess Diana? Rarely has someone so openly exposed the vacuity of their thought and their relationships with others:

Blair's fat little compendium of pseudo-revelations, attacks on personal acquaintances and colleagues, self-justifying circumlocutions, political polemic, and narcissistic reflections, comes with its own self-destruct button. Comparing himself to the people's princess, he says: We were both in our ways manipulative people, perceiving quickly the emotions of others and able instinctively to play with them. Elsewhere, he informs astonished readers that sometimes politicians must conceal the full truth ... bend it and even distort it. This being the case, you might suspect that he is not always being honest with his readers, and that the impression he tries to give of opening up and being fully frank is as counterfeit as his intelligence on Iraq. You might wonder what is the point of your parting with a portion of your spending power even for one of the thousands of half price copies that your local WH Smith will be shoving in your direction, if all that's going to happen is that Tony Blair lies to you. Again. When all he's ever done is lie to you, at taxpayers' expense. Will there come a time, you might wonder, when we will stop paying Tony Blair to lie to us?

INITIAL POST: Today, the memoirs of Tony Blair went on sale in the United Kingdom. Needless to say, there has been a media frenzy. Given Blair's return to the spotlight, if only for a few days, I thought it appropriate to repost my film review of the 2007 movie, The Queen, in so far as it addresses Blair.

Please note that the reference to Frears is shorthand for the director, Stephen Frears, while the reference to Morgan alludes to the scriptwriter, Peter Morgan. Both of them fulfilled their responsibilities in stellar fashion in regard to the film generally and most particularly in their characterization of Blair, along with the actor who played the role, Michael Sheen:

. . . Another pleasant suprise was Michael Sheen's performance as Tony Blair. Indeed, the film is actually as much about Blair and his abandonment of his Labour idealism as it is about the crisis within the royal family after Diana's death. Blair had just been installed as Prime Minister when Diana died, and his closest advisors are startled by his increasing identification with the conservative royals as the media circus intensifies. Sheen, again assisted by Morgan's top drawer script, portrays Blair sympathetically, but accurately, as a middle class man who aspires to political power so that he can attain social acceptance by the elite. Through such a well rounded, empathetic presentation, Sheen (and Morgan) indict Blair as a cogenial little man who would cheerfully sell out anyone or anything for his self-aggrandizement, and it is an indictment far more compelling than any issued by the left.

In a telling scene near the end, a scene that highlights the allegorical aspect of this part of the story, the Queen, after having been subjected to the most brutal personal insults by her subjects, finds herself, to her dismay, being consoled by Blair. Never mind, he says, the bond between you and your subjects is now stronger than ever. The Queen, not so sure, demurs, and warns, someday, Mr. Blair, you may also find yourself equally reviled by the public. Blair, of course, ever supremely confident of his hold over the populace (and, at times, even the royals), expresses his disagreement through his body language. Frears and Morgan, with benefit of hindsight, recognized that such arrogance lead inevitably to the catastrophe in Iraq.

Not surprisingly, consistent with his attainment of his petty aspirations, he supports the ruthless budget cutting of the Tory/Liberal Democrat coalition, and urges an attack upon Iran if it continues to develop nuclear weapons.

For someone born and raised in the United Kingdom, it is rather odd to realize that Blair most closely resembles a small town social climber out of a Sinclair Lewis novel, like Babbitt or Elmer Gantry, with the absence of any capacity for self-reflection. Accordingly, he is more akin to the self-serving evangelist Gantry than the emotionally adrift real estate agent George Babbitt. Like Gantry, Blair exploited religion, but in the related field of politics, where there is also a demand for messiahs:

The strongest support for Bush's war came from Tony Blair, Britain's most religious leader since Gladstone. Like Bush, Blair prays. He keeps a Bible by his bed and says he will only answer to my maker for British deaths in Iraq. When David Frost asked if he and Bush prayed together on Iraq, Blair declined to answer.

Blair has been notoriously described by many as Bush's poodle, but, in fact, the relationship was the other way round, as recognized years ago by Richard Gott. Just as Joseph Lieberman can be accurately described as the person most responsible for the current orientation of the Democratic Party, Blair is the person who most effectively proselytized the neoconservative values of the war on terror, introducing them into the mainstream discourse, as it were, commencing his effort, as did the participants of the Project for a New American Century, before 9/11.

Labels: "War on Terror", American Empire, Iraq War, Iraqi Deaths, Neoconservatives, Neoliberalism, Religion, Tony Blair, United Kingdom

624 pages. Yet again, proof that he certainly like to hear himself talk.

Labels: American Empire, Labour Party, Neoliberalism, Tony Blair, United Kingdom

After his expensive Vancouver lunch time event for the corporate elite, an unannounced free mosque appearance by Tony Blair.

Labels: American Empire, Iraq War, Palestine, Tony Blair

Life is pretty good for Tony and Cherie Blair these days:

Snaking round the buffet tables of a corporate-looking ballroom at a Vancouver hotel on Tuesday, a queue of local businessmen and minor dignitaries chatted nervously among themselves in excited anticipation of meeting their celebrated guest of honour.

Waiting to greet this procession of the great and the good was Tony Blair, tight-grinned and expensively tanned, beaming fixedly in the manner of an American game-show host welcoming his latest starstruck contestant on stage.

As each of the 100 guests was ushered forward to meet the former Prime Minister, there was time only for the very briefest of handshakes, snapped by a waiting photographer, before they were quickly led away and another eager delegate stepped forward for their fleeting audience with our ex-leader.

As they filed out, each of those lucky enough to meet him was invited to place his or her business card on a tray so a photo of their lightning-fast encounter with Mr Blair could be dispatched in the post.

These days, even such snatched ‘face time’ with the former Labour PM comes at a price.

Each guest at the Canadian event was asked to stump up £180 just for the privilege of having their picture taken with the great man.

Facilitating the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqs in the service of the American Empire pays quite well, apparently, as the remainder of the article, well worth reading in its entirety, demonstrates. It is also a good career move, as it is rumored that the Presidency of the European Union awaits the Poodle.

Labels: American Empire, Iraq War, Tony Blair

From The Guardian:

A confidential record of a meeting between President Bush and Tony Blair before the invasion of Iraq, outlining their intention to go to war without a second United Nations resolution, will be an explosive issue for the official inquiry into the UK's role in toppling Saddam Hussein.

The memo, written on 31 January 2003, almost two months before the invasion and seen by the Observer, confirms that as the two men became increasingly aware UN inspectors would fail to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) they had to contemplate alternative scenarios that might trigger a second resolution legitimising military action.

Bush told Blair the US had drawn up a provocative plan "to fly U2 reconnaissance aircraft painted in UN colours over Iraq with fighter cover". Bush said that if Saddam fired at the planes this would put the Iraqi leader in breach of UN resolutions.

The president expressed hopes that an Iraqi defector would be "brought out" to give a public presentation on Saddam's WMD or that someone might assassinate the Iraqi leader. However, Bush confirmed even without a second resolution, the US was prepared for military action. The memo said Blair told Bush he was "solidly with the president".

The five-page document, written by Blair's foreign policy adviser, Sir David Manning, and copied to Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the UK ambassador to the UN, Jonathan Powell, Blair's chief of staff, the chief of the defence staff, Admiral Lord Boyce, and the UK's ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, outlines how Bush told Blair he had decided on a start date for the war.

We live in an age when such damning information can be released to the public without consequence.

Labels: American Empire, Bush, Iraq War, Tony Blair

Like the officials of the Bush admininstration, Tony Blair and his New Labour acolytes sought to make their own reality as well:

Government uncertainty about how to reply to a medical journal's article on the numbers killed in Iraq has been revealed in official documents.

In October 2004 the Lancet published estimates that 98,000 people died in the conflict's first 18 months.

Then-Prime Minister Tony Blair rejected the figure, but one official warned the government would be "ripped apart" if it questioned the Lancet's methodology.

The government tried to stop publication, but was over-ruled.

A subsequent Lancet article claimed that the number of deaths caused by the conflict up to 2006 was more than 650,000.

Of course, Blair was far too concerned about the situation. A complaisant media ignored the findings of the Lancet while relying upon the much lower, less credible figures developed by Iraq Body Count. And, even more, the people behind Iraq Body Count, the same people who estimated the number of dead Iraqis by primarily reading the foreign language media, enthusiastically stepped forward to malign the statistical methodology of the Lancet, even as Blair's science advisor found it all too credible. If you can't prevent the evidence from being released to the public, sound the alarm for assistance from your allies in the NGO world. Or, maybe, they come to the rescue without being asked.

Labels: Iraq Body Count, Iraq War, Iraqi Deaths, Tony Blair

An incisive piece by Tariq Ali in the Guardian Unlimited, a surgical political autopsy of the death of New Labour, that grand project whereby the British Labour Party would not only become electable again, but the dominant, unassailable political force in Britain:

The fact is that New Labour's time is up. When it came to power waving the Union Jack in 1997, the social landscape had already been wrecked by Thatcherism. The phallic architecture of the deregulated financial companies dominated the city, the old gents and their cozy networks were consigned to clubland. Silicon and pharmaceutical firms, funded by Japanese and American capital and immunised against a trade-union movement, neutered by the state, sprouted along the M4 corridor southwest from London and Reading.

The old textile towns were reduced to the status of cemetries; iron and steelworks had been ploughed to rubble. The old working class was dead. In the transference of class wealth and power, Thatcherism and its neocon New Labour worshippers were eminently successful. Wealth disparities had increased during the Blair/Brown years. The "modernisation" had fallen manifestly short as a solution to long-term problems of productivity and investment, leaving aside the archaic political structures of the British state. Many of the cash-starved utilities had foundered in private hands. Schools and hospitals continued to deteriorate. As railway privatisation proved a disaster, New Labour "radicals" were thinking of how the "revolution of choice" could privatise health and education.

From the start New Labour was pledged to consolidate the Thatcherite paradigm rather than offer anything different. Blair's model was to depoliticise Labour (and the electorate) by preaching against the sin of "ideology" (ie social democracy) in the name of a new, beyond left-and-right, trendy Starbucks-style capitalism. And so it was decreed that Labour should become little more than a British version of the US Democratic Party with cheerleaders and all, though it is more remiscent of the Republicans. Domestically, Brown would aim for fiscal-surplus levels usually only demanded of the Third World, to be ameliorated by a few low-cost anti-poverty measures. Globally, New Labour would, in its own words, station itself "up the arse of the White House and stay there". This was 10 Downing Street's instruction in 1997 to Her Majesty's new representative in the United States.

Of course, it is not difficult to find ascerbic eulogies about the death of New Labour. Consider, for example, this one by lenin over at Lenin's Tomb. Like mushrooms after a spring rain, they have been sprouting all over after the calamitous performance of Labour in local elections earlier this month. With the exception of Labour activist diehards, nearly everyone in Britain believes that the Tories will win the next parliamentary election.

As lenin emphasizes in his obituary, the right will be the beneficiaries of the collapse of centrist politics of neoliberalism in both the US and the UK unless the left responds to the crisis with urgency and imagination. I couldn't help thinking, though, as I read Ali's commentary, that I was actually reading something published in, say, 2013 or 2015, after the first term of President Barack Obama, an allegorical piece, if you will. Exuberant supporters recall the acolytes of New Labour in the mid-1990s.

Unlike the Democrats of the past, we are breathlessly told, Obama appeals to evangelicals because of the sincerity of his religious beliefs. He is pragmatic, willling to work with Republicans, Democrats and people of all kinds in a post-partisan political world devoid of ideological values. Just as Blair and Brown devised a political and economic strategy to persuade Middle England to vote Labour instead of Tory, Obama is going to shatter the red state/blue state paradigm, and possibly even rout the Republicans in parts of the old Confederacy.

Apparently, if elected, Obama is going to create a new governing coalition by withdrawing US forces from Iraq, and reinvesting the peace dividend in the US. But he remains a neoliberal free trader, anti-NAFTA rhetoric in Ohio and Pennsylvania to the contrary, and his intention to withdraw from Iraq is more tactical than strategic. He will inherit a Bush policy of regime change in Lebanon, Gaza and Iran, and has expressed no willingness to reverse it. And, of course, he considers Afghanistan a good war, and justifies the need to withdraw from Iraq partially on the basis of the need to provide more resources to fight the Taliban.

What will happen if President Obama discovers that Afghanistan is an even more intransigent conflict than Iraq, as explained recently by Ted Rall? What will happen if President Obama finds himself incapable of addressing increasingly sour economic conditions because of the constraints of neoliberal policies adopted over the last 30 to 40 years? Or will an Obama presidency be marked by a complete failure to significantly depart from an Bush policies, leaving us with hundreds of thousands of troops remaining in Iraq and Afghanistan, commodity price stagflation and the continuing shrinkage of home ownership among middle class Americans?

I guess that I shouldn't dismiss the prospect that the process of creative destruction associated with capitalism will result in another spin of the wheel of fortune, moving us out of the depths of economic distress into a brief new age of prosperity and contentment. But isn't it arrogant to assume that Americans will continue to benefit from it as we have done for over 200 years? So, I just have this feeling that 4 to 6 years from now, I'll look back at this Ali commentary, and recognize that one need only update it to incorporate the contemporary American context.

Labels: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Democrats, Elections, Iraq War, Labour Party, Neoliberalism, Tariq Ali, Tony Blair

I went to our local Sacramento arthouse theatre, The Tower Theatre on 16th and Broadway, to see this film with some trepidation. From the promotional campaign, it had all the earmarks of a movie produced to appeal to the crowd that eagerly awaits the ninth remake of Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice. But, as we all know, advertising campaigns aren't known for their fidelity to actual content, and fortunately, that was the case here.

Upon seeing that the director was Stephen Frears, known for making films with a subtle, acute social insight, I experienced the first hint of optimism, and I wasn't disappointed. Of course, Helen Mirren's performance as Queen Elizabeth II is astonishing, as one expects from this brilliant actress, but she is assisted by a strong script by Peter Morgan that places her traumatic experience after the death of Princess Diana within a contemporary context.

At the beginning, the audience is induced to accept the common stereotypes, Diana was an angel, the Queen and the rest of royals cold hearted and self-absorbed. But, over the course of the film, the Queen is humanized, portrayed as someone caught unawares by the power of the global media, stunned by the discovery that even the royal family stands helpless before it, while it is suggested that Diana, generationally well versed in the art of media manipulation, was seduced by it, and narcissitically used it to destroy the credibility of the royals. Quite appropriately, Diana never appears as a character, but, instead, periodically intrudes upon the narrative as a ghostly video image. Diana had, in effect, already been killed by the media, having lost her individuality, even before her tragic automobile accident.

Another pleasant suprise was Michael Sheen's performance as Tony Blair. Indeed, the film is actually as much about Blair and his abandonment of his Labour idealism as it is about the crisis within the royal family after Diana's death. Blair had just been installed as Prime Minister when Diana died, and his closest advisors are startled by his increasing identification with the conservative royals as the media circus intensifies. Sheen, again assisted by Morgan's top drawer script, portrays Blair sympathetically, but accurately, as a middle class man who aspires to political power so that he can attain social acceptance by the elite. Through such a well rounded, empathetic presentation, Sheen (and Morgan) indict Blair as a cogenial little man who would cheerfully sell out anyone or anything for his self-aggrandizement, and it is an indictment far more compelling than any issued by the left.

In a telling scene near the end, a scene that highlights the allegorical aspect of this part of the story, the Queen, after having been subjected to the most brutal personal insults by her subjects, finds herself, to her dismay, being consoled by Blair. Never mind, he says, the bond between you and your subjects is now stronger than ever. The Queen, not so sure, demurs, and warns, someday, Mr. Blair, you may also find yourself equally reviled by the public. Blair, of course, ever supremely confident of his hold over the populace (and, at times, even the royals), expresses his disagreement through his body language. Frears and Morgan, with benefit of hindsight, recognized that such arrogance lead inevitably to the catastrophe in Iraq.

Labels: Film Notes, Iraq War, Postmodernism, Tony Blair

In Part 1, I described how a transfer of power and social unrest resulted in a willingness to publicly discuss extreme income inequality within Chinese society. Now, there are indications that Hu Jintao, having consolidated the power of the party and the state in his hands, intends to implement policies to confront the problem. But can he do so without abandoning the neoliberal program by which Chinese economic development has proceeded since 1978?

Again, as observed in Part 1, it is difficult to differentiate between the personal and the political. As reported by Asia Times Online on September 1st:

Beijing is waging a whirlwind anti-corruption campaign in Shanghai to shake up the so-called Shanghai Club or Shanghai Gang, headed by former president Jiang Zemin. The group dominated China's political power scene for more than a decade until Jiang began to fade from active political life in late 2002.

The anti-graft campaign has been launched one year ahead of the all-important 17th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and thus is seen as President Hu Jintao's maneuver to gain full control by eliminating all Jiang's influence.

The latest target was Qin Yu, chief of Shanghai's Baoshan district, who has been linked to a severe breach of party discipline and laws and is now under investigation by the CCP's central commission for disciplinary inspection.

What is striking about Qin's arrest is that before taking up his present position, he had worked for years as the personal secretary of Shanghai Communist Party chief Chen Liangyu. Chen is a local-level affiliate of the Shanghai Gang and also a member of the all-powerful politburo in Beijing.

Qin's arrest clearly serves as a warning that Chen himself might be next on the hit-list. This would take the power rivalry between Jiang and Hu into its final stages, marked by the crackdown on corruption in Shanghai.

Unlike the rest of China, the Shanghai party leadership had successfully avoided the seasonal anti-corruption campaigns that have been so prominent since the adoption of neoliberal economic policies, and there was an explanation:

So what was it that allowed all those Shanghai officials to remain so clean in the face of so much temptation in the booming city? Was it because they were all saints, or that the municipality had created a perfect environment to immunize officials against graft-prone temptations? Neither, is the answer.

As with other parts of mainland China, Shanghai is ruled in the so-called socialistic system with Chinese characteristics under which bureaucrats wield vast power. The evidence points to their using this influence to line their pockets, and the pockets of business associates.

Two former Shanghai party chiefs were said to have been hand-in-glove with disgraced Shanghai property tycoon Zhou Zhengyi. That Zhou was able to obtain multibillion-yuan bank loans and valuable downtown land can only be attributed to close ties with municipal authorities.

Zhou, who was suspected of a huge loan swindle, was finally brought to justice in 2003, but he was only found guilty of "manipulating stock prices and misreporting registered capital", for which he received a three-year jail sentence. By contrast, the former president of the Bank of China (Hong Kong), Liu Jinbao, implicated in the same case, was eventually given a suspended death sentence by a court in Changchun, the provincial capital of Jilin province in northeastern China.

Quite simply, for many years Shanghai officials had been able to escape scot-free because of the protection given to them by the most powerful man in China - Jiang Zemin. This was especially true after 1989, when Jiang was promoted to CCP general secretary from his post as Shanghai's party chief.

Under the umbrella of Jiang's administration, corruption scandals involving the Shanghai Gang were swept under the carpet.

All that has changed. In recent months, the central government has mobilized more than 100 commissioners in Shanghai to rake out the filth.

Already they have found some. Zhu Junyi, chief of Shanghai's Labor and Social Security Bureau, was found to have been bribed into illegally lending 3.2 billion yuan (US$405 million) from the city's social-security funds to a private enterprise, China Fuxi Group. The Fuxi group had participated in the restructuring of Shanghai Electric Corp. As the snowball kept rolling, senior officials of many companies and government departments associated with the business of these companies were detained for investigation.

Most important, Baoshan district chief Qin has been implicated in the same case. As mentioned, Qin was Chen Liangyu's secretary and assistant. In February 2002, Chen was made Shanghai mayor. In October of that year, Chen took over the position as Shanghai's party chief, and Qin was promoted to deputy director of both the general offices of the Shanghai Communist Party Committee and the Shanghai municipal government.

The Qin case shows that Chen, a local shepherd of the Shanghai Gang, is no longer powerful enough to protect his cronies, nor can he depend on his chief mentor, Jiang Zemin.

The implication of the Asia Times Online article was clear: Chen Liangyu was a political corpse. On September 25, he was sacked, described as someone who had created malign political effects. One report described his removal as a classic instance of killing one to scare a hundred, except that Gan Yisheng, general secretary of the party's Discipline Inspection Commission, chillingly stated that the inquiry was far from concluded:

Eight auditing teams are looking for misconduct by senior government officials and leaders of large financial institutions in areas across the country, Gan said.

Inspections of officials in 30 provinces and cities as well as nine state banks have been carried out, and the insurance industry and major state companies are next, Gan said.

Is there a broader context beyond criminality? Invariably, as the resolution of political conflict and momentum towards a significant change in policy are inseparable. Last week, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party conducted it annual plenary policymaking session, and addressed social inequality for the first time in 25 years. On Thursday, October 12th, the Washington Post reported:

China's Communist Party on Wednesday formally endorsed a political doctrine laid out by President Hu Jintao that calls for the creation of a "harmonious society," a move that further signaled a shift in the party's focus from promoting all-out economic growth to solving worsening social tensions.

The endorsement, made at a closed-door plenary session held by the party's Central Committee, underlined Hu's increasing power. It effectively enshrined his doctrine in the same pantheon as those of Mao Zedong and other predecessors.

China's leaders have become concerned in recent years about problems tied to the country's blistering economic growth. Anger over a growing gap between rich and poor and an inadequate social security system is feared to threaten the party's stability. Retirees increasingly cannot live on their pensions, crime and divorce rates have escalated, and clashes have broken out between security forces and farmers whose fields and villages have been swallowed by development.

And, for once, the New York Times got it right:

Hand-in-hand with the “harmonious society” drive, Mr. Hu and Zeng Qinghong, the vice president and the leader of the party’s secretariat, have undertaken the most sustained crackdown on official corruption since the party first embraced market-oriented economic measures nearly three decades ago.

The anticorruption sweep has already resulted in the detention of Chen Liangyu, the powerful party boss of Shanghai, as well as senior officials in Beijing, Tianjin, Fujian, Hunan and other places.

On the following day, Friday, October 13th, China quickly began to put the theory into practice, as it announced plans to radically reform its labor laws:

China is planning to adopt a new law that seeks to crack down on sweatshops and protect workers’ rights by giving labor unions real power for the first time since it introduced market forces in the 1980’s.

The move, which underscores the government’s growing concern about the widening income gap and threats of social unrest, is setting off a battle with American and other foreign corporations that have lobbied against it by hinting that they may build fewer factories here.

Yes, foreign corporations are quite alarmed at the prospect that they can no longer ruthlessly exploit the Chinese workforce with the support of a Marxist-Leninist government:

“This is really two steps backward after three steps forward,” said Kenneth Tung, Asia-Pacific director of legal affairs at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in Hong Kong and a legal adviser to the American Chamber of Commerce here.

The proposed law is being debated after Wal-Mart Stores, the world’s biggest retailer, was forced to accept unions in its Chinese outlets.

State-controlled unions here have not wielded much power in the past, but after years of reports of worker abuse, the government seems determined to give its union new powers to negotiate worker contracts, safety protection and workplace ground rules.

Hoping to head off some of the rules, representatives of some American companies are waging an intense lobbying campaign to persuade the Chinese government to revise or abandon the proposed law.

The skirmish has pitted the American Chamber of Commerce — which represents corporations including Dell, Ford, General Electric, Microsoft and Nike — against labor activists and the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, the Communist Party’s official union organization

. . . If approved and strictly enforced, specialists say the new laws would strikingly alter the country’s vast labor market and significantly push up the wages of everyday workers.

“If you really abide by the Chinese labor laws,” said Anita Chan, an expert on labor issues in this country and a visiting fellow at the Australian National University, “migrant-worker wages would go up by 50 percent or more.”

Certainly, as the New York Times article notes, there is good reason to be skeptical about the extent to which the law will be enforced, as regional party figures have been adept at ignoring directives from Beijing when it suits them do so. But the anti-corruption campaign that brought down Chen Liangyu suggests, strangely enough, that this time, it will be different.

One of the primary features of this campaign is that it targets party and business figures (frequently indistinquishable from one another) that have exploited regional autonomy:

Although China's economy has become relatively market-oriented, many resources are still in the firm grip of the government. Hence for a private business person, the shortcut to becoming rich is to collude with officials. A private businessman in Shenzhen said: "If one relies on his own hard work, one may in practice make a living by running a small business, but if one wants to become rich, one must gang up with officials."

Therefore collusion between entrepreneurs and officials is running wild. One of the most notorious shortcuts for some to become rich quickly has been to collude with officials to speculate on land lots for construction. The parcels are taken away from farmers with minimal compensations and then sold at high prices. Land acquisition has become such a problem that most of the nearly 90,000 mass demonstrations (those involving more than 100 protesters) in 2004 were triggered by unjust land requisition.

Entrepreneur-official collusion has also been rampant in coal-mining. With the protection of local officials, private coal-mine owners simply ignored safety regulations to cut production costs. As a result, thousands of miners are killed in accidents.

If Deng Xiaping presided over the peculiar marriage of neoliberalism and a state governed according to the principles of democratic centralism, it now appears the Hu Jintao believes, unlike his predecessors, that it can be ameliorated to accomodate European style social welfare. But can it be done? I recall the recent remarks of another political figure, one who, interestingly enough, just visited China about a month and a half ago:

When I was released from prison [in 1994] and began my political life, I naively took as a reference point Tony Blair's proposal for a "third way" between capitalism and socialism--capitalism with a human face. Not anymore. After seeing the failure of Washington-backed capitalist reforms in Latin America, I no longer think a third way is possible. Capitalism is the way of the devil and exploitation, of the kind of misery and inequality that destroys social values. If you really look at things through the eyes of Jesus Christ--who I think was the first socialist--only socialism can really create a genuine society.

Perhaps, Hu Jintao and Hugo Chavez had an animated conversation on just this very subject in August.

Labels: China, Hu jintao, Hugo Chavez, Neoliberalism, Tony Blair, Unions

UPDATE 2: Naturally, in this day and age, it is necessary to intimidate and indoctrinate the students who participated in the protest against Blair yesterday at the Quintin Kynaston school in North London (see UPDATE 1 below). Someone over at Lenin's Tomb has posted a statement from the headteacher:

Many thanks for your email. I can assure you that this behaviour was not supported by anyone at the school. Indeed we were horrified that our children had been exploited and abused by a political organisation, members of which had been outside the school gates since 8am. Somehow details of the visit, though confidential, had been leaked through a website and a picket and demonstration had been organised without our knowledge or consent.

The school had not been closed specifically for the visit. We had a planned half day induction for students followed by staff training in the afternoon. Organisationally this had been in the school calendar since before the summer break.

Our students were put in serious danger physically and emotionally by the outrageous actions of these political 'rabble rousers' who had no concern for them as young people but simply used them as pawns for their own political ends.

I have today held a staff meeting and will be holding a whole school assembly later to explain to the students how the actions of 50 out of 1500 have been perceived and how it clearly reflects so poorly on the school.

We pride ourselves on being one of the most improved schools in the UK. Our students are always our pride and joy. It is completely out of character for them to behave in such an unruly, rude and disrespectful manner. However the role played by these activists was cleverly orchestrated and the children were merely fodder for a political campaign.

I personally remain a big supporter of Tony Blair whose policies I value and who I personally feel is a man of integrity and honesty.

Many thanks for taking the time to contact me. I hope that this will help to set the record straight.


Jo Shuter

Headteacher
QK School

I will leave it to discerning readers to identify the numerous absurdities in this statement, with one exception: . . . a picket and demonstration had been organized without our knowledge or consent . . .

Here is Blairism in a nutshell. It encourages people in all kinds of social institutions to act in the most supercilious, self-promotional, autocratic way imaginable. For Britons, the ruthless public humiliation of Tony Blair serves the purpose of repudiating the grip that people like him, and people like this headmaster, have over their lives. Someday, we might begin to emulate them here in America.

UPDATE 1: Blair can't even visit a school without being reviled by the students and their parents. A hilarious report from lenin at Lenin's Tomb:

Blair made his announcement about resigning 'within the next twelve months' at the Quintin Kynaston School in North London. It is one of his Specialist Schools, and it happens to get very flattering inspection reviews from Ofsted. He had been before in 2003, and presumably thought it would be a doss. It's one of those schools he hopes to hand over to the private sector and remove from local democratic control. Plus, Suggs went there, and it must appeal to his rock-star fantasies.

However, some of us got wind of this, and the protesters were right down there waiting for him. Now, the school headteachers had decided that since it was Blair's big day they would send most of the pupils home and keep only the exceptionally well-behaved ones behind. So, as we were setting up for our protest, the children were filing out in huge numbers. Guess what? Blair is extremely unpopular in this neck of the woods, and some of them wanted to take part in the protest. To be more precise, there was already a School Students Against the War movement in the school and I expect they had been ready for Blair's visit. This is not unusual - tonnes of young kids have been to the huge antiwar demonstrations in London. Some of the kids' parents were there too. Many of these children were Muslim. One kid explained that he was Lebanese; a lot of others simply hated Blair, as you'll discover from the footage.

Yes, that's right, there's more, much more, including pictures and video, and an account of how school teachers and administrators forcibly, but ineptly, failed to shut down the protest, which will no doubt be the source of hilarity among the students for the rest of the year. Don't be surprised if the Blairs permanently move to America after he leaves Downing Street. Here's the link again if you can't resist the lure of vicarious participation.

INITIAL POST: Finally, at long last:

An all-out power struggle between the chancellor and the prime minister, culminating with allegations of blackmail by Tony Blair and a ferocious shouting match between the two men, appeared last night to have forced Mr Blair to publicly declare as early as today that he will not be prime minister this time next year.

That may not be enough for Gordon Brown, who is understood to have demanded that Mr Blair quit by Christmas, with an effective joint premiership until a new leader is anointed by the party.

Now is not the time to hesitate, but, rather, the moment to put the stake through the vampire's heart. Of course, it is unlikely that Brown will be markedly different than Blair on foreign policy. Both supported the war in Iraq. Instead, it is about making a statement, a statement that those, like Blair, who accelerated the march to war, to the destruction of Iraq, should not only be held accountable, but personally humiliated.

As lenin over at Lenin's Tomb posted earlier today:

It would be a good idea if we made the September 23rd demonstration outside the Labour Party conference the biggest in ages. Activists all over the country are getting ready for this. No, Brown won't be any better: we know this. No one likely to succeed Blair as Prime Minister is going to be more principled, nor more left-wing, nor antiwar. But believe me - they'll know why Blair got kicked out, finishing his career as one of the most unpopular leaders we have ever had, and the whole country will know as well. Every MP will know the risk of pursuing Blair into oblivion. And it'll give us a shot in the arm as well. I suggest street celebrations on the night that this pious hypocrite with blood on his hands is finally driven out.

But even as Blair's narcissism compels him to endure otherwise intolerable public embarassment in a desperate, pathetic attempt to retain power, it is important to dispel some common misconceptions about him. First, as recognized by Richard Gott in an excellent, essential New Left Review article, Blair is not, and has never been, George Bush's poodle. Indeed, if anything, it has been the other way round:

Blair is wrongly characterized as the lapdog of George W. Bush. He has developed into a politician with a programme of his own, and he seeks to use the power of the United States to support it. During the second world war, in what was still the era of Franklin Roosevelt, us rhetoric was hostile to the empires of Europe, and the withholding of American money in the postwar period was instrumental in accelerating their collapse. Blair’s aim is to reverse that policy, and persuade the Americans to use their ‘blood and treasure’ to restore the old empires in a form suitable for the age of globalization. His Commission for Africa, and the neo-imperialist New Partnership for Africa’s Development (nepad), are designed to re-introduce strategies of colonial control with American support.

It is of course a pipe-dream. The clock cannot be turned back in such a way. Old empires cannot be recovered or reconstructed. The citizens of ‘Old’ Europe have no great taste for war, while the United States—when true to its historical record—remains isolationist at heart. Blair may seek to find fame as a professor of international relations, and maybe a retirement home could be found for him at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, but in office he has been found seriously wanting. Few British prime ministers have been so inadequately prepared for government, and few have been so arrogantly unaware of their failings.

Second, and consistent with such arrogance, Blair does not, as superficially appears, strike a more urbane, secular contrast to Bush. If anything, he has been equally religious, equally self-assured about being selected to perform a predestined historical role:

The strongest support for Bush's war came from Tony Blair, Britain's most religious leader since Gladstone. Like Bush, Blair prays. He keeps a Bible by his bed and says he will only answer to "my maker" for British deaths in Iraq. When David Frost asked if he and Bush prayed together on Iraq, Blair declined to answer.

Predictably, Blair has, with the passage of time, increasingly echoed Bush's hyperbolic rhetoric about the Middle East, as he did about a month ago:

Tony Blair has warned that an "arc of extremism" is stretching across the Middle East and said "an alliance of moderation" was needed to defeat it.

Mr Blair also told the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles that Syria and Iran had to stop supporting terrorism or they would "be confronted".

His speech was planned some weeks ago but he said the Lebanon crisis had "brought it into sharp relief".

He said there was now a war "of a completely unconventional kind".

The prime minister said: "There is an arc of extremism now stretching across the Middle East and touching countries far outside that region."

Patrick Cockburn directed his trenchant response personally to the Prime Minister:

I only hope al Qaeda, Hezbollah or Hamas do not translate your speech into Arabic since every paranoid paragraph confirms their claim that they are battling a western crusade against Islam.

Strangest of all, however, was the recently leaked memorandum describing an exit strategy for Blair's departure:

The retirement blueprint aims to promote the "triumph of Blairism" and allow the PM to quit on a wave of euphoria after 10 years in office.

The secret strategy - drawn up by a small group of loyalists - is well under way.

Mr Blair's "farewell tour" includes plans to appear on Blue Peter, Songs of Praise and Chris Evans' radio show.

The five-page memo, drawn up by a close-knit group around the leader including party guru Philip Gould, suggests the PM is nearer to stepping down than he publicly admits.

It warns: "Time is not an unlimited commodity."

And more concerned with his place in history than the success of his policies, the paper - seen by the Mirror - boasts: "His genuine legacy is not the delivery, important though that is, but the dominance of new Labour ideas...the triumph of Blairism.

"As TB enters his final phase he needs to be focusing way beyond the finishing line, not looking at it.

"He needs to go with the crowds wanting more. He should be the star who won't even play that last encore. In moving towards the end he must focus on the future."

As the Labour party leadership drags Blair out of No. 10, he is being exposed for what he has always been: a fantasist. My belief is that, at the end of day, 10 to 15 years from now, when all the personal memoirs have been published, the public will discover that Blair is the weird one, the strange one, more so than Bush, who, after all, presents a familiar masculine personality, at least to Americans. A psychotic, creepy Anthony Perkins to Bush's alcoholic, tempermental impersonation of John Wayne.

Gott, again:

Blair’s second unusual characteristic is his ability as an actor. Both at Fettes, the Scottish private school he attended in the 1960s, and at St John’s College, Oxford, where he was a mediocre law student, he was an accomplished thespian, appearing in the classics, in comedy revues, and fronting a band. His capacity to act and to put on an act, to perform his lines, and to diverge from a script when circumstances demand, has become the hallmark of his career as a politician, unequalled since Harold Macmillan, Britain’s last great showman prime minister.

What remains a mystery even today, and is not adequately explained in any of the Blair biographies, is how the Labour Party allowed a maverick right-winger to become their leader, a man who became a close intimate and political ally not only of a neo-conservative Republican like George W. Bush, but also of José María Aznar of Spain and Silvio Berlusconi of Italy—European right-wingers of a definably unpleasant slant. Blair is no Ramsay MacDonald, the Labour traitor of the 1930s who was seduced by the rich and famous. He is, and clearly always has been, a deep-dyed Tory, far further to the right than recent Conservative leaders like John Major or William Hague, who, as One Nation Tories, appear benign by comparison. So why did the Labour Party fall for Blair? Partly, of course, because of his surface charm and verbal felicity. In an indifferent field he made his way swiftly to the front, before anyone had had the time to penetrate beneath the veneer of competence and ideological neutrality. With the defenestration of the useless Neil Kinnock, the death of the dreary John Smith, and the lack of killer instinct in the gloomy Gordon Brown, the bland figure of Blair, youthful and glib, was seen as the only class act available.

Over 100,000 Iraqis died as a result.

Labels: Activism, Iraq War, Iraqi Deaths, Occupation of Iraq, Richard Gott, Tony Blair

Today is one year after the London bombings, and Britons observed the grim anniversary by paying tribute to the victims:

At Edgware Road, where six innocent people died, the station manager organised a floral tribute of irises and carnations for the bereaved families.

Susannah Pall, 25, a City broker who was on the Circle line train which had a number of carriages destroyed in the blast, said she returned to the scene as part of the healing process.

Ms Pall, who has not travelled on the Underground since the bombings, said: "I've been building up to this day. I was going to stay away but decided to come.

"You've got to do these things. Until I do it, I can't move on - it's all part of the catharsis process."

At Aldgate, poems and messages of support were added to a burgeoning floral tribute outside neighbouring St Botolph church.

A book of condolence was placed on a lectern by the gates for passers-by and those affected by the tragedy to sign.

Carrie Taylor, a 24-year-old finance officer at the Royal Society of Arts, was killed in the blast. She came from Billericay in Essex.

A message from her relatives read: "Carrie, we will never forget you, rest in peace. Anne, Danny, May, Dave and David."

At Russell Square the station fell silent as transport staff, police officers and passengers remembered the 26 people who lost their lives on the Piccadilly line train last year.

Relatives and survivors who gathered outside the station tearfully hugged one another as they laid floral tributes to their loved ones.

But why was London a target of such gruesome violence? Anti-terrorism specialists have briefed Scotland Yard officers in a way that points to the inescapable truth:

After the London bombings, British counter-terrorism officials intensified their efforts to understand why some Muslims turned to violence. The document, which has been seen by the Guardian, is the product of that work, and was completed within the past three months before being distributed to senior officers across London. The document says in a headline introducing one section: "Foreign policy and Iraq; Iraq HAS [its emphasis] had a huge impact."

It continues: "Iraq is cited many times in interviews with detained extremists but it is over-simplistic to describe terrorism as the result of foreign policy. What western foreign policy does provide is justification for violence ..."

It says changing jihadist attitudes is a long term issue: "Whatever preventative measures are taken or discussed around the world, none are comprehensive and early results are not expected. Many jihadists do not feel that 'winning' is important because God will see to that eventually - what is important is 'taking part'."

The report says the removal of grievances the jihadists use to justify violence will take time: "What will change them - gradually - is argument, the removal of justifying causes (Palestine, Iraq), the erosion of perverted beliefs and day-to-day frustrations."

Of course, it is beyond the pale of acceptable discourse to state that the invasion and occupation of Iraq has so angered Muslims around the world that they are now willing to act violently against the perpetrators of them. It is, as the report states, oversimplistic, evading the fact that terrorism in Britain, prior to the invasion, was not the province of Muslims. Conversely, Davey D. of Hard Knock Radio had no difficulty finding people in the crowd along Edgeware Road, during the afternoon after the bombings, who recognized that the bombings were a direct response to the war in Iraq.

So, the authors of the report rely upon a fiction to convey the more disturbing truth about Iraq to its Scotland Yard audience: Jihadists are relying upon hostility towards the war and occupation of Iraq to justify violence that they have already decided to inflict upon us. No doubt there are hard core jihadists committed to taking violent action against the United States and Britain, regardless of what has transpired in Iraq, although even here, even in the case of al-Qaeda, it is highly dubious, if not erroneous, to disassociate such violent intentions from political motivations, as Pat Buchanan has correctly observed on a number of occasions.

Furthermore, this fiction leads to questions that lack credible answers. For example, if the threat of future terror attacks in London has palpaply increased, as asserted by Metropolitan Police Chief Ian Blair, how can this be possible if the people motivated to carry out such attacks had a predisposition to do so prior to the war in Iraq? It would seem that the only plausible response to this question is an absurd one, namely that Great Britain has a significant number of Muslims bent upon violence who lacked the fortitude to follow through upon their convictions until the British participated in the invasion of Iraq. It all sounds very much like the stereotypical view of Arabs promoted by Zionists and other supporters of Israel. Arabs are violent, yet cowardly, until prompted to inflict violence upon others as a juvenile emotional response to external events.

Last year, the people in the Edgeware Road crowd knew better. The bombers responded to our violence with their violence, and there is something culturally demeaning in a perspective, as implied by the authors of the report, that Americans and Britains use violence in a calculated way to achieve allegedly acceptable ends, but that Arabs and Muslims merely exploit current events to justify it. In other words, they, unlike us, lack the human qualities of anger, thought and commitment, and indeed, transformation, such that some may have concluded that they only way to confront the perpetrators of the war and occupation, in both Iraq and Palestine, is through violence.

A lamentable, tragic decision, to be sure, but no less so than the ones by Britain and the United States to invade and, apparently, permanently occupy Iraq, and the insistence of Israel to permanently colonize the West Bank and Gaza. And, of course, the dead in Gaza, Ramadi, Haditha, Jenin, Fallujah . . . they are just numbers, if reported at all, and if there have been flowers laid and tears shed, as they justifiably have been for the victims of 7/7/05, it has failed to capture our imagination.

Labels: "War on Terror", 7/7/05, Al Qaeda, Iraq War, Islam, Occupation of Iraq, Tony Blair