In the Name of Allah,
Most Beneficent, Most Merciful
Blair's
Bloody Hands
by John Pilger
http://www.antiwar.com/
March 4, 2005
Almost eight years ago, the choir of British liberalism celebrated a new
age. Tony Blair, wrote the liberal thinker Hugo Young, "wants to create a
world none of us have known," a world which "ideology has surrendered
entirely to 'values' [and where] there are no sacred cows … no fossilized
limits to the ground over which the mind might range in search of a better Britain."
Besotted minds ranged far. In a Tonier-than-thou piece for the Guardian, Martin
Kettle hilariously declared Blair an honorary Australian. "He is not in
awe of the past," he wrote. "He is not intimidated by class. He is a
meritocrat, a doer. … He is simply happy making his own history. …
It would be nice to think that one day these would be thought of as British
characteristics, too." Former Labour Party deputy leader Roy Hattersley
described one of the most ideological regimes in modern British history as
"untainted by dogma"; Blair was "taking the politics out of
politics.""Goodbye, xenophobia," was the Observer's postelection front page, and
"The Foreign Office says, 'Hello world, remember us?'" The Blair
government, said the paper, would push for "new worldwide rules on human
rights" and implement "tough new limits on arms sales."
Let's pause to consider the truth. When Blair demonstrably lied about weapons
of mass destruction in order to help an extremist regime launch an unprovoked
attack on Iraq,
a defenseless country, the Foreign Office's deputy legal adviser Elizabeth
Wilmshurst resigned, calling it, correctly, a "crime of aggression."
The blood shed by more than 100,000 civilians killed and 300,000 injured is her
and our witness. Now consider the "tough new limits on arms sales." A
study by ActionAid reveals that the Blair government has sold weapons to 14
impoverished African countries where there is internal conflict. The people of
Aceh, stricken by last year's tsunami, have been terrorized by British-supplied
Hawk fighter jets, machine guns, and ammunition. Britain
is a world leader in the export of small arms, even depleted uranium.
Almost everything about a Blair regime was known before it was elected. Blair's
Vichy-like devotion to Washington
was known: read his speeches about a new order led by America
. His devotion to Rupert Murdoch, who flew him and Cherie Booth around the
world first class, was known. His devotion to an extreme neoliberal Thatcherite
economics was known, spelled out in Peter Mandelson's and Roger Liddle's The Blair Revolution: Can New Labour Deliver?,
in which Britain's
"economic strengths" are listed as multinational corporations, the
"aerospace" (arms) industry and "the preeminence of the City of London."
His class contempt for the poor was known; his pre-election attacks on single
mothers passed quickly into law, assisted by the majority of his new,
opportunistic female MPs.
Those trying to cover for Blair and "move on" from Iraq
refer to the reduction of poverty as one of his "achievements." In
fact, relative poverty in childless households in the UK
has reached record levels under Blair, up to 13 percent – and a greater
number than under Margaret Thatcher or John Major. A certain PC-ism, such as
the sound and fury over dropping the gay age of consent, adds to the illusion
of a Labour government that, had it not fallen in with the awful Bush, would be
celebrated as "progressive." Tell that to the people of a faraway
country, more than half of whom are children, whose lives have been devastated
by the fanatical Blair and his court of apologists. Read the robotic Hoon's
statement on the use of cluster bombs – how Iraqi mothers would one day
be "grateful" for the use of weapons that killed their children
– and Ministry of Defense letters to the public that lie about depleted
uranium and its Hiroshima
effect. The silence of those who regard themselves as commissars of this
country's and Europe's respectable, moral, liberal class
is quite disgusting.
In a superb piece in the Guardian
on Feb. 24, Victoria
Brittain asked: "How can it be that not one mainstream public figure
in Europe has denounced
[Bush's systematic torture regime]?" She points out that The
Torture Papers – more than 1,200 pages of government memos
and reports, edited at New
York University
– shows systematic torture, approved and directed from on high. Such is
the regime of a man with whom Blair "shares values." I thought of
this when I noted the current debate in the Church of England about the
"rift" caused by the "issue" of gay marriage. Compare that
with the "issue" of the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent
people, about which not a word is heard from those who claim moral courage as a
deity. Read the searing account of Dr. Salam Ismael, who took aid to Fallujah
in January. He describes the
ordeal of a 17-year-old girl, Hudda Fawzi. Her father opened the door to U.S.
Marines who shot him and a friend dead, then shot her elder sister, having
beaten her senseless, then destroyed the family's furniture. Wounded people
were dragged from their homes and run over by tanks; a clinic was destroyed by
missiles. "It became clear to us," Ismael wrote, "that we were
witnessing the aftermath of a massacre, the cold-blooded butchery of helpless
and defenseless civilians."
It is not surprising that the Blair government has refused Ismael fresh
permission to visit and speak out in Britain.
His testimony, and that of many other reliable witnesses, is known and feared.
Last April, the U.S.
command agreed that it may well have slaughtered as many as 600 people in
Fallujah. When a listener asked Judy Swallow, presenter of the BBC World
Service Newshour program, why the
BBC continued to suppress this truth, Swallow sent this e-mail to a colleague:
"Oh God, Mike – do you take care of these sorts of things, or do we
ignore them?" On the BBC Web site, she describes Newshour as "exposing injustice and
challenging lies." The silence is almost never broken by those paid to
"expose injustice and challenge lies," let alone set the record
straight. On Channel 5, a member of the public, Neil Coppendale from
Shoreham-by-Sea, confronted Blair with this question: "Bearing in mind
that tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children have died as a
result of the invasion of Iraq,
how do you sleep at night, Mr. Blair?" When did a journalist, one with
privileged access to Blair, ever ask that? For their part, the BBC's Downing
Street man Andrew Marr (apparently together with his wife) and his colleague
from the Today program James
Naughtie have been over to the prime minister's country home,Chequers, to sup
with the killer Blair. It was Marr who, at the fall of Baghdad,
told viewers that Blair had "said they would be able to take Baghdad
without a bloodbath, and in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating, and on
both these points he has been proved conclusively right." And it is
Naughtie who has played a leading role in the British American Project, set up
by Ronald Reagan to find a "successor generation" to those who
propagated the Cold War on America's
behalf.
If shame has no place in what is called "public life," then the rest
of us should break their silence for them. The Guardian
says the electorate is "cross" with Blair. Cross? Such a genteel
word. Supporting Blair, in his propaganda and his contemptuous need for another
term of office, is supporting mass murder.
Party for Islamic Renewal
PIR
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{Invite (mankind, O Muhammad ) to the Way of your Lord (i.e. Islam) with wisdom (i.e. with the Divine Inspiration and the Qur'an) and fair preaching, and argue with them in a way that is better. Truly, your Lord knows best who has gone astray from His Path, and He is the Best Aware of those who are guided.}
(Holy Quran-16:125)
{And who is better in speech than he who [says: "My Lord is Allah (believes in His Oneness)," and then stands straight (acts upon His Order), and] invites (men) to Allah's (Islamic Monotheism), and does righteous deeds, and says: "I am one of the Muslims."} (Holy Quran-41:33)
The prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: "By Allah, if Allah guides one person by you, it is better for you than the best types of camels." [al-Bukhaaree, Muslim]
The prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) also said, "Whoever calls to guidance will have a reward similar to the reward of the one who follows him, without the reward of either of them being lessened at all."
[Muslim, Ahmad, Aboo Daawood, an-Nasaa'ee, at-Tirmidhee, Ibn Maajah]
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