Showing posts with label Jack Straw. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jack Straw. Show all posts

Monday, 3 August 2009

Iraq - in my beginning.....+ redaction

As it began, so it is ending. The famous secret Downing Street memo of 23rd July, 2002 made it clear that by then the Americans had already cooked up their conspiracy to attack Iraq and “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy”, and that at least Messrs Blair, Straw and Hoon knew it.

Then the imperative was to get into Iraq, now it’s the opposite – to get the hell out. (Note for all political leaders – history shows it is much easier to start a war than to end one.) But the tactics are the same.

Yesterday a car bomb killed at least six people in the market place at Haditha, on Friday the death toll was at least 29 from a series of explosions outside mosques in Baghdad, on Thursday seven were killed by a blast in Baquba, north-east of the capital. The spin machine is still on track, though. The line is unshaken - the security situation has improved “amazingly” and US troops may be able to leave earlier than expected.

Redacted….I had never heard the word until a few months ago. Now we get it all the time – it’s what Labour did with documents providing evidence of the security services' complicity in the torture of Binyam Mohamed. MP’s did lots of it when they published “details” of their expenses.

Let’s get rid of this word. There are perfectly decent alternatives – censored, concealed, suppressed, hidden from the prying eyes of the lower orders, for example. As Orwell saw – an attack on language is a vital element in the destruction of liberty.

Monday, 22 June 2009

Carry on covering up + a great fire of London

As Labour continues to try to hide the truth about Iraq (see my blog of June 16), in that unhappy country itself, the bombs go on exploding. The death toll from the latest – a huge truck bomb in Kirkuk – has now risen to at least 72. It went off as worshippers were leaving a Shia mosque, and there is speculation that it could be the work of al-Qaeda.

Meanwhile it’s been revealed that Tony Blair has been lobbying Gordon Brown to keep the Iraq inquiry secret. Apparently, he wasn’t very keen on being questioned in public and under oath about the decision to bomb, invade and occupy. I’ll bet he wasn’t. Not sure how much persuading was required, though. Do you think Mr Brown himself, not to mention Messrs Straw and Hoon would have been queuing up to tell us all?

On this day….148 years ago, what was then London’s worst fire since the Great Fire of 1666 broke out in the great line of warehouses that stretched between Tooley Street and the south bank of the Thames. The buildings were packed with inflammable goods – cotton, sugar, oil, tallow – and once they had got going, the flames spread mercilessly. The river itself caught fire as burning rum floated on its surface.

The Tooley Street inferno claimed the life of London’s first ever fire chief, James Braidwood – killed when a wall collapsed on him. The flames raged out of control for two days, and it was a whole month before they were put out completely. For more details, see The Disastrous History of London.

Saturday, 16 May 2009

A bonus for the taxpayer + decline and fall of Ronan Point

Maybe we, the people, are getting a bonus for a change. Yesterday Jack Straw, the alleged “Justice Secretary”, dropped his plans for secret inquests that might have allowed the government to suppress the truth about incidents like the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes.

Mr Straw, of course, is rather hobbled at present after it was revealed that he had charged us taxpayers double the amount of council tax he was actually paying on his second home. With so many of Mr Straw’s “Labour” colleagues under a cloud, let’s hope they’re all feeling a little abashed. After Iraq, years of systematic destruction of our civil liberties, the invention of 3,000 new crimes, 24 hour drinking, super-casinos etc, “a period of inactivity from you would be most welcome”, as Clement Attlee, a real Labour politician, might have put it.

On this day....41 years ago, a section of a brand new 23-storey block of flats called Ronan Point in East London collapsed. One couple in their sixties were awoken by a dreadful ripping sound as their bedroom wall fell away, and they found themselves lying in bed two feet from an 80 foot drop.

It was caused by a gas leak and explosion on the 18th floor. Miraculously, only five people were killed, but the accident raised severe doubts about the industrial building system used at Ronan Point. The block was repaired and people were moved back in, but in 1986, it was demolished. For the full story, see The Disastrous History of London.

Sunday, 1 March 2009

Genocidal priest + Iraq + Gaza

A former priest has been convicted of genocide in Rwanda. Emmanuel Rukundo, who had been an army chaplain, helped remove Tutsis who had taken refuge at a seminary. Many were then killed. Altogether 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in just 100 days of 1994 – the fastest mass slaughter in history.

Rukundo is the second Roman Catholic priest to have been convicted of genocide. Many victims were murdered in churches where they had been urged to shelter by government radio. Five thousand were killed in one at Ntarama, where one man hidden under a pile of bodies managed to escape and tell the tale. See A Disastrous History of the World.

Iraq. So it’s confirmed. Jack Straw’s grounds for vetoing the release of cabinet minutes on Iraq are just another piece of Labour’s spin and deception. He says it’s to protect the confidentiality of what people say in Cabinet, but Clare Short has now confirmed what so many of us suspected (see my blog of Feb 25) – that actually the cabinet were too cowardly to question Blair’s decision to go to war, and said nothing. And some of these people are still in power – Brown, Hoon, Straw, Darling, Beckett.

Stranger than fiction. When Blair had to step down as PM, he was appointed Middle East “peace” envoy by the Americans. Yes, I know the man who helped kill tens of thousands in Iraq, and obstructed a ceasefire in Lebanon so the Israelis could sow thousands of cluster bombs to blow the arms and legs off little children might seem an odd choice, but not to George Bush. But even I had to pinch myself when I saw this – the “peace” envoy has just made his first, yes his first, visit to Gaza – though, of course, he is refusing to meet representatives of Palestine’s democratically elected government. Don't want to get confused by listening to both sides, do you Tony?
FACT. In the 2006, Palestinian general election, Hamas won more than 44% of the vote. In the last UK general election, Labour won less than 36% of the vote.

Wednesday, 25 February 2009

The secret disaster

Outside the dwindling circle of fanatical Blair- and Brownites, it is now virtually universally recognised that the bombing, invasion and occupation of Iraq was Britain’s greatest foreign policy disaster for at least half a century, possibly longer. Predictably, Jack “Man of” Straw – one of the leading conspirators behind the war – has banned the release of the cabinet papers that would reveal how ministers took their disastrous decision.

Labour’s line is that it would damage the quality of our government (!) if it was revealed who said what during this momentous debate. In fact, it seems what we would actually have learned would have been just the opposite. All the indications are that far from there being a ding-dong argument, ministers nodded through the war in an astonishingly supine and casual manner.

This was not a decision on whether to spend more on schools, or how we should organise hospitals – important though those things are. This was a decision to bomb, invade and occupy another country in the sure knowledge that it would result in the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people who had never done us any harm. The actions of some of those sitting around that cabinet table may well have been criminal. Six years later we still do not know what went wrong, nor how we would avoid the same things going wrong again if we were asked to, say, bomb Iran.

To put it in terms Mr Blair might understand, Labour lost its soul the day it decided to bomb Iraq. Perhaps even worse, though, is what has followed – the party’s cold-blooded determination, over weeks, months and years, to ensure that none of those responsible for the disaster is called to account. It beggars belief that the only people who ever lost their jobs over Iraq were the chairman and director-general of the BBC, and the BBC reporter who dared to tell the truth.

Wake up Labour! No good will come of you until you call the warmongers to account. The only way for a once-great political party to regain its self-respect is to release the cabinet and all other relevant papers forthwith and to have a full INDEPENDENT inquiry with witnesses testifying on oath.