Chicken Yoghurt » Blair

Since we last spoke

Justin — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 12:42:55 +0000

Hello you. How are things? What have I missed?

I didn’t see much news in the last couple of weeks but the headlines from the Chilcot Inquiry managed to waft their way to my holiday bolthole. Claire Short and former Foreign Office lawyer Elizabeth Wilmhurst may have got the applause but for me the stars of the inquiry so far have been two other faces from the squalid past, namely Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell.

The word that sprang to mind when seeing the pair is reduced. Look at Tony Blair, his tan skin pulled tight like the soiled sheets of a deathbed, the tear of his mouth revealing the bones underneath. With his invisible, inept, and ineffectual peace mission to the Middle East going nowhere fast, Tony has been reduced to whoring handbags for Louis Vuitton.

Now, I know he’s paid a shedload of cash for what he does but does he look happy to you? Intellectually hollow speeches to an endless parade of nodding dogs. The moody accounting. The handbags. Does the money make up for all the crappy, empty jobs he has? Speaking as someone who was once paid quite well for a job I loathed and which made me utterly miserable, I hope not. It would be some small punishment.

But then, as we saw from his evidence to Chilcot, Blair is a man of cast iron certainties. He’s not one for expressing regret or remorse or for reconsidering (‘I’d do it again,’ he declared). He could probably shovel manure for a living and convince himself he’s king of the world. He’s to be envied in a way.

Then there’s Campbell. One thing that Campbell’s evidence to Chilcot revealed was the true nature of what he did (and still does) for Tony Blair. He was a turd polisher. They may have been Tony Blair’s turds (or high-level government government announcements if you want to mask the smell of what Blair squeezed out between 1994 and 2005) but turds they remain. Each morning Blair would drop another steaming load (or initiatives and back-of-a-fag-packet ideas, if you prefer) onto Alastair’s desk who would then get to buffing them.

And with hindsight he wasn’t actually that good at it, as the likes of the transparently awful presentation of the so-called evidence of Saddam’s WMD shows. Look at the automatic scepticism that policiticians’ utterances are met with now and tell me Campbell doesn’t bear a huge responsibility for it. It’s a measure of Gordon Brown’s desperation and impotence that he would put himself under Campbell’s influence. Once a confidante of presidents and kings, Campbell’s now reduced to bragging about all the work he does for charidee on his blog. His blog!

Is Alastair happy? Possibly not. There he is reduced to near tears on the Andrew Marr show. Was his emotional display (if that’s what it was) triggered by the deaths and maiming of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children and hundreds of British troops? Not a bit of it. Campbell welled up over some perceived slight over his ‘latest work of fiction’, the precious, precious little love.

The delicate flower thought Marr was linking his latest novel to the piss poor Iraq dossiers. I might be a bit slow but I didn’t make the connection. I imagine most people merely thought, ‘Oh God, Campbell’s bashed out another awful book. He’s going to be unavoidable while he whores it’, rather than laughing at Marr’s supposed chutzpah. Still, it’s good to see that Campbell has a softer side. He isn’t just the strutting, jutting, hardman bully of popular legend but also a thin-skinned, whining little prat who can be brought to a breathless stop by Andrew bloody Marr. Campbell’s now trying to cover himself by quibbling over the number of civilian casualties as quoted by Marr. As if there is any number that shows him and his former boss in any favourable light whatsoever.

Campbell should be grateful. In a universe where morality worked properly he wouldn’t be able to walk down the street without being subjected to a thick hail of sputum. Instead there he is, going wobbly over some gentle questioning from an establishment bum-kisser. Still, it won’t have done the book sales any harm.

Anyway. Back.

Tony Blair does it again

Justin — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 08:48:21 +0000

Good to see that Tony Blair is still worth every penny* he receives for being Middle East peace envoy. I reckon he might be on to something here when it comes to a solution to the problem that has dogged the world since biblical times…

…if people really want to sort it out, they’ll sort it out…

Rejoice everybody, it’s all over bar the hanging of the bunting. It’s his laser-guided precision – thick with practical detail – that gets me every time. It’s how he managed to leave the likes of Iraq and Afghanistan strong and prepared to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

* He doesn’t get any.

Time to polish the CV

Justin — Wed, 27 May 2009 14:13:11 +0000

Tony Blair is recruiting. Good luck, everybody.

(Ta to Mr E for the heads-up)

The Devil claims Tony Blair

Justin — Wed, 20 May 2009 10:50:33 +0000

A visitor trying to follow the link to Tony Blair’s website in this blog post at the educational establishment where they work found the site blocked by the London Grid for Learning’s URL Filtering and Reporting service which…

…helps to ensure e-Safety for your pupils whilst Internet browsing and content viewing by filtering undesirable content.

The reason for Tony Blair’s site being blocked to protect Britain’s youth?

Dark forces. It looks like Tim Ireland was right all along…

(Thanks to James)

Iraq’s Marsh Arabs: a reversal of a reversal of fortune

Justin — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:55:55 +0000

Iraq’s Marsh Arabs suffered long under Saddam Hussein. In punishment for the failed Shia uprising incited and then betrayed by the Western powers after the first Gulf War, Saddam diverted water away from the marshes. This destroyed food sources and the Marsh Arabs, the Ma’dan, were forced to flee.

After the second Gulf War in 2003, the marshes were re-irrigated. The Ma’dan could return. On February 21 2007, Tony Blair proudly told the House of Commons…

In an extraordinary development, the Marsh Arabs, driven from one of the world’s foremost ecological sites by Saddam, have been able to resettle there.

So, two years later, how are the Ma’dan faring, now that their homelands have been liberated from drought and despotism?

Experts say the rivers that flood the marshes today are too brackish and polluted to support life.

[A resident of the marshes, Ali Jassim al-] Battat sees the “undrinkable” water as a symptom of the official failure to rehabilitate the Marsh Arabs. As a father to 13 children, he says he wants better road and electricity links and improved access to education, healthcare and clean water.

“Water is the source of all our suffering,” he shouted angrily. “The water tankers do not get to us, we have no electricity. Our young men are crushed by destitution and our children grow up like savages, without schooling.”

[...]

Satellite images taken in 2006, three years after the overthrow of Saddam, showed the marshes had been restored to 70 per cent of their size in the early 1970s, before the major drainage projects began.

In 2009, environmental officials said the marshes were shrinking again, and now covered only 30 per cent of their spread in the 1970s. Dams built upstream in Iraq, Syria, Iran and Turkey are blamed for reducing the volume of water feeding the wetlands. A prolonged drought in Iraq has only made matters worse.

According to Alaa al-Badran, head of the union of agricultural engineers in Basra, the marshlands will continue to shrink, reversing recent gains. “Salinity rates will keep rising,” he added. “Once absorbed by the soil, salts are very hard to eradicate.”

There’s currently no message of support for the Marsh Arabs on Tony Blair’s official website, a state of affairs that will no doubt be rectified as soon as he’s back from collecting his $1 million prize for leadership.

Tony Blair: The Shocking Doctrine

Justin — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 13:18:38 +0000

Renowned military strategist and humanitarian interventionist Tony Blair is in the news again. In a not-at-all-self-serving speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, to mark the 10th anniversary of the formal coagulation of his oh-so-successful ‘Blair Doctrine‘, he said if at first you don’t succeed, kill, kill again:

Tony Blair has said the case for using military force to topple oppressive regimes is as strong as it ever was – despite events in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He said intervention was needed to tackle the growing “menace” of Islamic “extremism” across the Middle East.

But he also stressed the need for engagement with “progressive” Muslims.

‘Back in April 1999,’ said God’s Comic, ‘I thought that removal of a despotic regime was almost sufficient in itself to create the conditions for progress.’ Well, you know what ‘thought’ did, Tony? It followed a muck cart and thought it was a wedding. But hey, what can you do? Hundreds of thousands of people died but Tony’s doctrine was ‘almost’ sufficient. ‘But this battle cannot so easily be won,’ he said. No shit? Took you a while Tony but it’s good you finally realised.

Really though, it’s the basis of any experimentation. Your theory not fitting the results? Revisit it and make changes. Blair’s refined his and wants someone else to have another crack with it now he’s not allowed to kill people any more.

Then again, maybe he knows something we don’t. Maybe at this very moment, on a secret weapons testing range somewhere, they’re putting the final touches to a bomb that can distinguish between progressive and extremist Muslims…

Blame my headmaster, says Tony Blair

Justin — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 08:33:31 +0000

We’ll pass quickly over Blair’s latest iteration in fashioning of a get-out-of-Hell free card for himself (‘I do not pass a single day in which I do not reflect on this and think of the responsibility’ – define ‘responsibility’, Tony). Instead have a look at this story I’ve heard him tell more than once:

Blair also revealed his first spiritual experience, as he remembered praying with his headmaster at school when he was 10 years old.

His father – “a kind of militant atheist” – had just had a stroke and was rushed to hospital.

Blair said: “I remember actually praying with the headmaster of the school. I said to him: ‘Before we pray, I should tell you that my father, he doesn’t believe in God.’

“And I always remember the headmaster saying to me: ‘Well that doesn’t matter, because God believes in him.’

“I was in a great state of emotion, and then at the end of the day my father was clear, he was going to live. But what I know is it made a – as it would, on a 10-year-old child – tremendous impact on me.”

If I was lying in a hospital bed, my children not knowing whether I was going to live or die, and a teacher took it upon him or herself to take advantage of impressionable children in ‘a great state of emotion’ in order to push their own strand of belief, I’d have some very harsh words to say upon my recovery.

As the adult Blair looks back at his ten year-old self, it’s as if he sees an escape route for his soul being opened almost at that precise moment. He certainly regards it as a pivotal event in his life.

In the end you accept there is a higher power than yourself and that is both something that should make you fearful, but something that also is a source of comfort.

Well bully for you, Bomber. Someone should tell him that faith is a way of life not a warm-but-slightly-scary blanket. Who does he think he is, St Linus van Pelt?

Tony, I know you’re a busy man with all your money to count and everything but couldn’t you spare five minutes to pass on some of this comfort to the mothers of children with two heads or the men on death row, some there for the ‘crime’ of being homosexual? It’s shame you’re not a little more fearful of and a little less comforted by your spiritual duvet.

Blessed are the peacemakers…

Justin — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:50:35 +0000

…for they shall be generously reimbursed:

[I]t falls to us to follow the various adventures of Mr Tony. Last week your utility world statesman was in the Philippines offering to assist President Arroyo with the peace process in Mindanao province. Ever the expert, the great triangulator delivered two lectures on his success “in dealing with Britain’s secessionist movement in Northern Ireland”. All faithfully reported in the Philippine Star (motto: Truth shall prevail). But what was missing was Blair’s fee for the half-hour lectures: £750,000, we hear, plus expenses. Tickets, it is said, were £400.

And why not? Got a skill for brokering peace? Then sell your ability to save people lives. Contract out your altruism. Sorry Sri Lanka, you can keep killing each other until I see 750 big ones. Here’s my business card and bank details.

Gandhi was an idiot. A bit of business acumen and he could have been out of that loin cloth and into a bespoke Italian suit toot sweet. That Jesus fella? A no-good, financially illiterate chump. No bloke ever got anywhere in sandals and a dress. Except Demis Roussos.

Blair War Crimes Foundation

Justin — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 09:17:29 +0000

Anyone for justice?

It is necessary to make leaders hesitate before indulging in “the paramount war crime” to quote the judges of Nuremberg, of “unprovoked aggression against a defenceless country”. Unless leaders fear that they might be tried for their war crimes, we will live in an increasingly violent world, where The Geneva Conventions are treated as a joke, the UN is of no account, and death, destruction, torture, and repressive policing are commonplace. At the moment such leaders enjoy more and more trappings of power, and retire with vast sums of money, houses, medals and lucrative contracts. A group of UK Citizens have therefore set up an organisation, “The Blair War Crimes Foundation”, to initially bring one such leader to justice as an example.

Read the letter and become a signatory.

(Via RickB)

Blair does God. God should sue.

Justin — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 17:12:46 +0000

While Tony Blair was Prime Minister, Alastair Campbell once said that ‘we don’t do God’. Well, now he’s free of the shackles of high office, Blair has finally found the courage of his convictions. He’s now doing God. Lot’s of God. It’s a bit showy, to be honest. Ostentatious, over-compensating. He’s obviously forgotten his Matthew 6:1-6.

It’s a shame he’s still not doing nuance. It never was his strong point…

Here’s what he said to the National Prayer Breakfast in the US this week…

Today, religion is under attack from without and from within. From within, it is corroded by extremists who use their faith as a means of excluding the other. I am what I am in opposition to you. If you do not believe as I believe, you are a lesser human being.

From without, religious faith is assailed by an increasingly aggressive secularism, which derides faith as contrary to reason and defines faith by conflict. Thus do the extreme believers and the aggressive non-believers come together in unholy alliance.

Unholy alliance, Batman! How did I miss the news report about Richard Dawkins getting together with Osama bin Laden to form a team of supervillains? What’s that? There wasn’t one? It’s all in Blair’s head? You don’t say.

And I’m not sure you can describe religious extremists as ‘unholy’ either, can you? I’m pretty sure they’re famous for being the complete opposite. It’s the surplus of holiness that’s the problem with those chaps, isn’t it?

How about this:

It is that humbling of man’s vanity, that stirring of conscience through God’s prompting, that recognition of our limitations, that faith alone can bestow.

Where was the humbling of vanity and the stirring of conscience and the recognition of limitations in March 2003? Bound and gagged in the basement to stop them getting near a bible, presumably.

Did you know we let Tony Blair be the Prime Minister of Britain for ten years? I can scarcely believe it either.