Author: Mick Hartley

Ther Thinker has a post about Tony’s current standing:

Labour Party leaders are never very popular with Labour Party members. Party members give grudging acceptance at best, or at worst visceral loathing towards the men they elect to lead them. If you want to hear Tony Blair’s most outspoken critics, the people prepared to call him a liar and a murderer, then pop along to your local Labour Party branch meeting.

Thanks to the internet, that visit to your local branch meeting is no longer necessary. Gerard Killoran comments:

One big hole in your argument – Tony Blair is a liar and a murderer. If that’s the sort of leader you want and admire then perhaps you should examine your conscience.

In case we hadn’t got the point, Killoran elaborates in a later comment:

If the killing of thousands of Iraqiis is not murder, then maybe we should release Harold Shipman. What an amateur compared to Saint Tony. I notice that the issue of Blair’s honesty doesn’t seem worth debating – even his supporters defend him as telling lies in a good cause. By the way have you like me noticed Bliar’s uncanny political resemblance to Charles I?

And again:

Deliberate and unnecessary killing is murder and thus Blair is the moral equivalent of Shipman. The thousands of dead in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq deserve justice and I hope to see their killer put on trial.

Yes, that’s visceral loathing alright.

What is it with playwrights? We’ve had Harold Pinter’s anti-US rants, and David Hare’s deeply felt – and deeply flawed – pronouncements. Now we have “writer and satirist” Alistair Beaton, who’s written a musical comedy expressing his “outrage at the way Britain was pitched into the war against Iraq”. It opens in Birmingham in April, before transferring to Hampstead, where I imagine it’ll have a ready-made audience of Margaret Drabble think-alikes.

It seems to me likely that Blair relishes his role as war leader. His tone is increasingly Churchillian, his language increasingly biblical. Clothed in the shining armour of his faith, he leads us into battle. Act I of Follow My Leader finishes with Bush and Blair on their knees, sweetly singing, “We’re sending you a cluster bomb from Jesus”.

Some may take offence, though I hope not, because it is not religion that is being attacked here, it is the hijacking of religion for the purposes of war.

Yep, didn’t you just hate the way Bush and Blair attacked Iraq in the name of Christianity. And all these bombings by Christian fundamentalist groups…..

Update: I see Scott Burgess has already commented on Beaton’s masterpiece….

Observer reader Christopher Leadbeater knows what Al Qaeda really want:

After 9/11, al-Qaeda did spell out their aims. They wanted to stop the killing and abuse of the Palestinian people by Israel with US support, in defiance of international law for more than 50 years. They wanted to stop the sanctions on Iraq, imposed by pretending Iraq represented a threat. A million Iraqis had been killed by sanctions. They wanted US troops out of Saudi Arabia. They wanted justice for the native peoples of Chechnya and Kashmir.

Can it be long before someone nominates Bin Laden for the Nobel Peace prize?

ears critical scholarship has declined, leading to strong resistance to modernity.”

Dr Carey said that moderate Muslims must “resist strongly” the taking over of Islam by radical activists “and to express strongly, on behalf of the many millions of their co-religionists, their abhorrence of violence done in the name of Allah.”

He said: “We look to them to condemn suicide bombers and terrorists who use Islam as a weapon to destabilise and destroy innocent lives. Sadly, apart from a few courageous examples, very few Muslim leaders condemn, clearly and unconditionally, the evil of suicide bombers who kill innocent people.

“We need to hear outright condemnation of theologies that state that suicide bombers are martyrs and enter a martyr’s reward. We need to hear Muslims expressing their outrage and condemning such evil.”

Christians, who shared many admirable moral values with Muslims, such as respect for the family, must speak out against the persecution they often encountered in Muslim countries.

“During my time as archbishop, this was my constant refrain: that the welcome we have given to Muslims in the West, with the accompanying freedom to worship freely and build their mosques, should be reciprocated in Muslim lands,” he said.

Yet the response has been one of outrage:

Muslim leaders in Britain accused the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey of Clifton, of “bigotry” and “religious prejudice” after he accused Islamic societies of being authoritarian and committed to power and privilege.

They called on the present Archbishop, Rowan Williams, to condemn his predecessor’s views, expressed in a public lecture at the Gregorian University in Rome. […]

Iqbal Sacranie, the Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain, said that Lord Carey’s comments were “unhelpful to dialogue”. He said: “In his myopic vision of the Middle East, Lord Carey seems also to show little understanding of the role played by Western powers in propping up many of the regimes all over the world.”

Syed Aziz Pasha, of the Union of Muslim Organisations, said the address was “very shocking”. He said: “He is not only bigoted, he is frustrated and a victim of Islamophobia.”

Zaki Badawi, the principal of the Muslim College in London, said: “This was just the wrong time to make such statements. I have great affection for him and consider him a personal friend. I cannot understand it. It showed a very narrow outlook and parts of his speech were nonsense and untrue. It is very unfortunate.”

Lord Ahmed, a Labour life peer, said: “I’m surprised that Lord Carey has been so insensitive. At a time when the Muslims and Islam are criticised and there’s a growing Islamophobia, Lord Carey’s remarks don’t help the situation for European Muslims.”

“A victim of Islamophobia” – ah yes, there does seem to be a lot of it about nowadays. Why could this be, I wonder?

Meanwhile I’ve heard nothing more about the Muslim anti-terrorism rally planned by the Muslim Council of Britain, and wonder if it wasn’t so much hot air. I hope I’m wrong. The MCB website makes no mention of it, concerning itself instead with condemnation of Carey and of the assassination of Sheikh Yassin “the renowned Islamic scholar”. Hassen Rasool also shares with us the lyrics of his song “Don’t Cry Palestine, Don’t Cry”, in remembrance of all those who have lost their lives “in this tragic modern-day genocide”. [No, don’t bother to check it out.] Something a little distasteful about referring to a genocide in this context? Mmm, must be my Islamophobia showing again.

you like that sort of thing. The Beatles are No.1, followed by Dylan, Elvis and the Stones. The problem as always with Rock, Rock’n’Roll etc. is definitions, and particularly what to do with, ahem, the colored folks.

James Brown is in there at #7, Ray Charles at #10, Bob Marley at #11, Muddy Waters at #17, Marvin Gaye at #18…. These people aren’t Rock or Rock’n’Roll by any definition, but if you restrict it to what is commonly seen as Rock music, you’ll get an all-white list (apart from Jimi Hendrix). Mmm, looks bad….especially considering the crucial role that black music’s always played in the development of Rock. Only Dylan out of the top four didn’t start out by covering black artists.

The truth is that because all vital popular music has its roots in the US in the early/middle years of the last century, it reflects the racial divide in that country. Yes there are exceptions (Jimi Hendrix, Charley Pride, Eminem), but Blues and Soul and R’n’B and Rap are black, Country and Rock are white. That’s the way it is. So including these black artists is really not much better than tokenism.

Interestingly the one genre which could claim to be multi-racial is Rock’n’Roll. The Rock’n’Roll greats were mainly black (Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino) but there were plenty of serious white Rock’n’Rollers like Bill Haley, Carl Perkins, Gene Vincent, and of course the King himself. As a first approximation, Rock’n’Roll was what happened when black R’n’B met white Country. Ace Records’ excellent “The Golden Age of American Rock’n’Roll” series covers everything from that late fifties/early sixties era, from doowop to white girl groups to novelty songs to straight R’n’B to Italian teen idols. It’s all Rock’n’Roll. The subtitle to the Ace series – “US hits before the British invasion” – is spot on. Rock’n’Roll died sometime round the early sixties, and Rock music was born, created in the first instance by the Beatles and Dylan. And Rock music, like it or not, has always been white music.

So Rolling Stone call their list “the greatest rock & roll artists of all time” in the hope of justifying their racial inclusiveness, and start with Elvis and “That’s All Right” as the point where black and white came together. But it doesn’t really work. Any list which compares Bob Dylan with James Brown is always going to be silly.

g any less in their daily life now, what order there was – even under a dictator – is gone. Whatever we see now is no fundamental improvement.

So Steyn is right: this man – a former UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq – really does believe that things were better under Saddam.

Beijing towards dissidents, and any softening of its rhetoric towards Taiwan, are most likely only tactical moves aimed at reasserting the Communist Party’s grip, rather than heralding a genuine move towards liberalisation.

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What an amazing way to run a war on terror. The Libyans have a leader who genuinely has a record as long as your arm in sponsoring terror; and he gets the kiss from Blair, because Libya has signalled that it is willing to do business with the West.

In Iraq, by contrast, we had a man who positively rejected the al-Qa’eda network, and who was rejected by them, and who was not associated – in spite of all the nudge-and-wink suggestions of the Bush administration – with any particular group of terrorists or terrorist outrages. And what do we do? We whack him, at considerable cost, and remove his regime; and to be frank I am delighted that we have got rid of Saddam.

That last sentence….clearly Boris had it in mind to write that we should have left Saddam and gone for Gaddafi, but then realised he was heading up his arse with this one, so quickly tacked on that last phrase – which unfortunately makes the whole paragraph incoherent, as well as being rubbish.

He finishes with this touching tale:

The other day a group of schoolchildren came to see me here in Westminster, and a 10-year-old girl stuck up her hand and said, please, she was worried about being blown up in the House of Commons. Was I worried?

I told her very firmly not to worry, and that everything would almost certainly be all right, and that she had less chance of being blown up than she had of being blinded by a champagne cork or decapitated by a Frisbee.

But, afterwards, I must confess that I felt slightly angry that this child should be so troubled, and I blame the grown-ups, and in particular Tony Blair. He made a speech in Sedgefield recently that was quite absurd from a public figure who is meant to be providing reassurance, and encouraging people to go about their businesses as normal.

He said that we were all in “mortal peril” and painted an apocalyptic picture of the threat. Even as I write, his scaremongering is being acted upon by the architects at Westminster. A great pontoon is apparently to be constructed in the river, so that we may not be attacked by al-Qa’eda speedboats. […]

Yes, there is a threat, but we have had terrorist threats for years in this country. We have had bombs in London and Birmingham and Manchester, but we never said we were “at war”.

There is only one reason why the Prime Minister uses this rhetoric, and tries to keep us on a “war footing”, and that is his guilty conscience over a different war, where there turned out to be no threat to us at all.

This is the voice of a man who hasn’t got a clue.

I’d be amazed if the new blog “Turning the Tide” was actually written by Chomsky. The style just isn’t him. There’s not that sense of easy moral superiority which is Chomsky’s trademark (“it is obvious that…”). I imagine it’s put together by an acolyte. Chomsky wouldn’t introduce his own blog like this:

This blog will include brief comments on diverse topics of concern in our time. They will sometimes come from the ZNet sustainer forum system where Noam interacts through a forum of his own, sometimes from direct submissions, sometimes culled from mail and other outlets — always from Noam Chomsky.

Oh dear. Michael Howard thinks he’s on to a winner by attacking Tony Blair for his proposed visit to Libya:

Tory leader Michael Howard claimed the meeting would cause “considerable distress” to the families of the 270 people killed at Lockerbie in 1988. Mr Howard questioned the timing of the meeting so soon after Mr Blair today attended a memorial service for the victims of the Madrid bombings. Mr Howard said: “It is quite odd timing to go from a service which commemorates the victims of the biggest terrorist attack on Europe since Lockerbie, to go straight from there to Libya.”

But the families of the Lockerbie victims failed to express the necessary outrage:

He was promptly contradicted, however, by the spokesman for the Flight 103 families, Jim Swire, who declared his wholehearted support for the talks and praised Mr Blair for striving to turn a former sponsor of terrorism towards peace.

Jim Swire, in fact, is not at all persuaded that Libya was responsible for Lockerbie. Here he talks of the Scottish trial:

“Our group and myself fought like fury for that trial to happen,” says Swire. But when the Scottish government presented its case in court—a case investigators had portrayed for years as iron clad—it looked more like papier maché. A star witness was not even vaguely credible. “By the end of the trial my doubts had been reinforced, not relieved,” says Swire. The defense bungled badly, too. Finally, one of the suspects was convicted in 2001: Abdel Baset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi, who’s serving a life sentence in Glasgow. “I don’t think that man should be in prison,” says Swire. “Our search was always for truth and justice. What’s going on now is a purely political process.” Swire believes the bomb was the kind found with Jibril’s group. He believes “the Iranians had the strongest and freshest motive.” He wants to see those avenues of inquiry opened up again.

See here for some background.