OT: For Tony Blair, No Backing Down
maff
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64394-2005Mar1.html
By Jim Hoagland, Page A17
LONDON -- The political price that Tony Blair pays at home for his
enthusiastic partnership with President Bush in Iraq is made clear to a
visitor who asks a London cabbie about the impending national election.
"Oh, Vice President Blair will get back in," comes the sardonic reply.
Poodle
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.atheism/msg/76bcda01385c4cff
JPG
>For Tony Blair, No Backing Down
>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64394-2005Mar1.html
>
>By Jim Hoagland, Page A17
>LONDON -- The political price that Tony Blair pays at home for his
>enthusiastic partnership with President Bush in Iraq is made clear to a
>visitor who asks a London cabbie about the impending national election.
>"Oh, Vice President Blair will get back in," comes the sardonic reply.
>
Given that VP Blair has vice-presided over the most prosperous period in British
history, there is no doubt that he will be re-elected, helped by the inadequacy
of the opposition.
>Poodle
>http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.atheism/msg/76bcda01385c4cff
Secular Fundamentalist
--
David Silverman F.L.A.H.N.
aa #2208
Fred Stone
news:ijeb21pdl7l0ru5c0...@4ax.com:
> On 2 Mar 2005 03:20:37 -0800, "maff" <maf...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>For Tony Blair, No Backing Down
>>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64394-2005Mar1.html
>>
>>By Jim Hoagland, Page A17
>>LONDON -- The political price that Tony Blair pays at home for his
>>enthusiastic partnership with President Bush in Iraq is made clear to
>>a visitor who asks a London cabbie about the impending national
>>election. "Oh, Vice President Blair will get back in," comes the
>>sardonic reply.
>>
>
> Given that VP Blair has vice-presided over the most prosperous period
> in British history, there is no doubt that he will be re-elected,
> helped by the inadequacy of the opposition.
>
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1428372,00.html
The war's silver lining
We need to face up to the fact that the Iraq invasion has intensified
pressure for democracy in the Middle East
Jonathan Freedland
Wednesday March 2, 2005
The Guardian
Tony Blair is not gloating. He could - but he prefers to appear
magnanimous in what he hopes is victory. In our Guardian interview
yesterday, he was handed a perfect opportunity to crow. He was talking
about what he called "the ripple of change" now spreading through the
Middle East, the slow, but noticeable movement towards democracy in a
region where that commodity has long been in short supply. I asked him
whether the stone in the water that had caused this ripple was the
regime change in Iraq.
He could have said yes, insisting that events had therefore proved him
right and the opponents of the 2003 war badly wrong. But he did not.
Instead he sidestepped the whole Iraq business.
Perhaps he was simply reluctant to reopen a debate that came to define,
if not paralyse, much of his second term. Or maybe he calculated that it
was best to keep the current democratic shift in the region separate
from the Iraq war, so that people who opposed the latter might still
rally to support the former.
But if he had wanted to brag and claim credit - boasting that the
toppling of Saddam Hussein had set off a benign chain reaction - he
would have had plenty of evidence to call on...
--
Fred Stone
aa# 1369
"You know you're over the target when you start receiving flak."
Jez
For Tony Blair, No Backing Down
By Jim Hoagland
Wednesday, March 2, 2005; Page A17
LONDON -- The political price that Tony Blair pays at home for his
enthusiastic partnership with President Bush in Iraq is made clear to a
visitor who asks a London cabbie about the impending national election.
"Oh, Vice President Blair will get back in," comes the sardonic reply.
Even the British prime minister's critics take it for granted that he
will win a third term in the vote he is soon expected to call for May 5.
But they add with satisfaction that his support for Bush, Iraq's chaotic
conditions and multiplying missteps at home will slash Blair's bulging
New Labor majority in Parliament. In the media here, Blair is portrayed
as an exhausted, besieged and rattled politician who is running scared.
If so, he hides it well. He was in good spirits and still buoyant during
an interview late yesterday afternoon at 10 Downing Street. At the end
of a long day of chairing an international conference on providing help
to the Palestinian Authority, a shirt-sleeved Blair did not back away an
inch from his unlikely partnership with the conservative Republican
president. He praised "an evolution of American policy" more sympathetic
toward Palestinian interests that surfaced in Bush's trip to Europe this
month.
But Blair believes that the administration's "hardheaded realism" on
Israel's security is being taken up more by Europeans now. The London
conference, negotiated into being through months of talks between Blair
and Americans, Europeans, Palestinians, Arab states and even Israel,
which did not participate, was an important step in developing a common
vocabulary for a new peace effort.
"We are on the same page now because of this shared description of what
an independent, viable Palestinian state means," the British leader
said. Americans accept the importance of the territorial integrity of a
Palestinian state, while Europeans have given recognition to America's
insistence that such a state "has to be democratic and stable."
The conference produced "an agreed script," Blair added. "But we still
have to make the movie." He achieved a procedural advance by getting all
participants to accept a series of mechanisms for monitoring future
progress on two sets of commitments: the political, economic and
security reforms promised by the Palestinians, and the economic and
technical help promised to them by Europe and the United States.
Israel had hoped that the meeting would be a one-time expression of
support for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. But with
administration backing, Blair used it to create, in effect, a road map
for getting back to the "road map" peace plan that is supposed to result
in a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Blair has played a major role in moving Bush on Middle East peace
efforts, I am told, but the prime minister declined what I had hoped was
an artful invitation to confirm that in our conversation. In Blair's
opening remarks to the conference, I nonetheless heard echoes of what he
has reportedly told the president in private.
Blair described the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as "the cause most used
or abused by those who try to rally support for extremism." And he
suggested indirectly that all of Bush's goals in the global war on
terrorism and his push for democracy in the Middle East will be affected
by whether or not the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is contained. He
predicted that the security of all nations would be enhanced if the
international community backed and then saw implemented security reforms
by and for the Palestinians.
This conference was, to be crude about it, the first substantial return
for his domestic audience that Blair has harvested from his investment
in Bush and the war in Iraq. Still ahead are differences with Washington
over Blair's priorities of aid to Africa and on climate change. When I
asked if he expected to be able to move Bush on these issues as well,
the British leader maintained an optimistic air but did not minimize the
problems.
"The Americans are prepared to have a dialogue that takes into account
their concerns, about the economy on climate change, and about good
governance" as a condition for aid to Africa, he said. "That is the kind
of hardheaded realism we often see in the administration's positions."
Since Churchill, British prime ministers have supported "the special
relationship" with Washington. Blair, who says he is about to start his
final run for that office, has done much more than that in the
polarizing time of Bush and Sept. 11. Blair has endured the special
relationship, and by the looks of things, he has survived it.
____________________________________________________________________
HAND !
--
Jez
'Realism is seductive because once you have accepted the reasonable
notion that you should base your actions on reality, you are too often
led to accept, without much questioning, someone else's version of what
that reality is. It is a crucial act of independent thinking to be
skeptical of someone else's description of reality.'-
Howard Zinn
NFS Underground2, Americas Army And MOH-PA
Jez
> On 2 Mar 2005 03:20:37 -0800, "maff" <maf...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>For Tony Blair, No Backing Down
>>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64394-2005Mar1.html
>>
>>By Jim Hoagland, Page A17
>>LONDON -- The political price that Tony Blair pays at home for his
>>enthusiastic partnership with President Bush in Iraq is made clear to a
>>visitor who asks a London cabbie about the impending national election.
>>"Oh, Vice President Blair will get back in," comes the sardonic reply.
>>
>
>
> Given that VP Blair has vice-presided over the most prosperous period in British
> history, there is no doubt that he will be re-elected, helped by the inadequacy
> of the opposition.
>
Why are schools still unable to afford enough teachers ?
Why do local councils still have to cut-back on their spending?
Why can't first-time buyers afford a decent house ?
Oh, and WHERE'S OUR FUCKING GOLD GORDON ???
Fred Stone
news:5qKdnaodxtN...@pipex.net:
> JPG wrote:
>> On 2 Mar 2005 03:20:37 -0800, "maff" <maf...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>For Tony Blair, No Backing Down
>>>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64394-2005Mar1.html
>>>
>>>By Jim Hoagland, Page A17
>>>LONDON -- The political price that Tony Blair pays at home for his
>>>enthusiastic partnership with President Bush in Iraq is made clear to
>>>a visitor who asks a London cabbie about the impending national
>>>election. "Oh, Vice President Blair will get back in," comes the
>>>sardonic reply.
>>>
>>
>>
>> Given that VP Blair has vice-presided over the most prosperous period
>> in British history, there is no doubt that he will be re-elected,
>> helped by the inadequacy of the opposition.
>>
> If Britain is so prosperous, why is the Health service still fucked?
Because socialized medicine is fucked no matter how much money you throw
at it.
> Why are schools still unable to afford enough teachers ?
>
How many is enough, and what do they teach?
> Why do local councils still have to cut-back on their spending?
>
If they're anything like American city councils, they have shrinking tax
bases and increasingly old infrastructure that needs rebuilding.
> Why can't first-time buyers afford a decent house ?
>
Define "decent house".
> Oh, and WHERE'S OUR FUCKING GOLD GORDON ???
Who is Gordon and why is it your fucking gold?
JPG
<iced_...@NODAMNSPAMpipex.com> wrote:
>JPG wrote:
>> On 2 Mar 2005 03:20:37 -0800, "maff" <maf...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>For Tony Blair, No Backing Down
>>>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64394-2005Mar1.html
>>>
>>>By Jim Hoagland, Page A17
>>>LONDON -- The political price that Tony Blair pays at home for his
>>>enthusiastic partnership with President Bush in Iraq is made clear to a
>>>visitor who asks a London cabbie about the impending national election.
>>>"Oh, Vice President Blair will get back in," comes the sardonic reply.
>>>
>>
>>
>> Given that VP Blair has vice-presided over the most prosperous period in British
>> history, there is no doubt that he will be re-elected, helped by the inadequacy
>> of the opposition.
>>
>If Britain is so prosperous, why is the Health service still fucked?
They treat me and my family alright. A free system that is still the
envy of many other countries.
>Why are schools still unable to afford enough teachers ?
Explains why we have record university numbers.
>
>Why do local councils still have to cut-back on their spending?
So that we don't have large council-tax bills.
>
>Why can't first-time buyers afford a decent house ?
Because interest rates are low, more people bought houses, their price
went up. I spent my first 10 years in a bed-sit followed by a rented
flat and house before I bought my first house - people are just too
impatient these days.
>
>Oh, and WHERE'S OUR FUCKING GOLD GORDON ???
Most British people have more of it than they ever had. Thank you
Gordon, Britain's best Chancellor for many a year. And also for the
lowest unemployment rate in the western world.
So it was all much better under John Major, Margaret Thatcher, Jim
Callaghan? Glad to see that optimism is alive and well.
JPG
wrote:
>Jez <iced_...@NODAMNSPAMpipex.com> wrote in
>news:5qKdnaodxtN...@pipex.net:
>
>> JPG wrote:
>>> On 2 Mar 2005 03:20:37 -0800, "maff" <maf...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>For Tony Blair, No Backing Down
>>>>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64394-2005Mar1.html
>>>>
>>>>By Jim Hoagland, Page A17
>>>>LONDON -- The political price that Tony Blair pays at home for his
>>>>enthusiastic partnership with President Bush in Iraq is made clear to
>>>>a visitor who asks a London cabbie about the impending national
>>>>election. "Oh, Vice President Blair will get back in," comes the
>>>>sardonic reply.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Given that VP Blair has vice-presided over the most prosperous period
>>> in British history, there is no doubt that he will be re-elected,
>>> helped by the inadequacy of the opposition.
>>>
>> If Britain is so prosperous, why is the Health service still fucked?
>
>Because socialized medicine is fucked no matter how much money you throw
>at it.
>
All medical systems that rely on insurance are underfunded, even
private ones. You only get decent treatment if you pay for it
outright, in other words, you need to be rich.
Fred Stone
news:g7fc219k1cjlos47i...@4ax.com:
That's not entirely true. Well-funded properly underwritten private
insurance has no problem supplying decent treatment. But it *is*
expensive, and somebody has to pay the premiums. Socialized medicine
simply transfers the premiums to the taxpayer and then limits costs by
limiting supply.
Jez
> On Wed, 02 Mar 2005 16:46:43 +0000, Jez
> <iced_...@NODAMNSPAMpipex.com> wrote:
>
>
>>JPG wrote:
>>
>>>On 2 Mar 2005 03:20:37 -0800, "maff" <maf...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>For Tony Blair, No Backing Down
>>>>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64394-2005Mar1.html
>>>>
>>>>By Jim Hoagland, Page A17
>>>>LONDON -- The political price that Tony Blair pays at home for his
>>>>enthusiastic partnership with President Bush in Iraq is made clear to a
>>>>visitor who asks a London cabbie about the impending national election.
>>>>"Oh, Vice President Blair will get back in," comes the sardonic reply.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>Given that VP Blair has vice-presided over the most prosperous period in British
>>>history, there is no doubt that he will be re-elected, helped by the inadequacy
>>>of the opposition.
>>>
>>
>>If Britain is so prosperous, why is the Health service still fucked?
>
>
> They treat me and my family alright. A free system that is still the
> envy of many other countries.
>
>
>>Why are schools still unable to afford enough teachers ?
>
>
> Explains why we have record university numbers.
And mass student debts.
>
>
>>Why do local councils still have to cut-back on their spending?
>
>
> So that we don't have large council-tax bills.
But we do.
>
>
>>Why can't first-time buyers afford a decent house ?
>
>
> Because interest rates are low, more people bought houses, their price
> went up. I spent my first 10 years in a bed-sit followed by a rented
> flat and house before I bought my first house - people are just too
> impatient these days.
>
>
>>Oh, and WHERE'S OUR FUCKING GOLD GORDON ???
>
>
> Most British people have more of it than they ever had. Thank you
> Gordon, Britain's best Chancellor for many a year.
No, he's useless.
And also for the
> lowest unemployment rate in the western world.
Yeah...low-paid call-center crappy jobs.
>
> So it was all much better under John Major, Margaret Thatcher, Jim
> Callaghan? Glad to see that optimism is alive and well.
Don't like my country being run by a war-criminal.
Jez
> On Wed, 02 Mar 2005 16:46:43 +0000, Jez
> <iced_...@NODAMNSPAMpipex.com> wrote:
>
>
>>JPG wrote:
>>
>>>On 2 Mar 2005 03:20:37 -0800, "maff" <maf...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>For Tony Blair, No Backing Down
>>>>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64394-2005Mar1.html
>>>>
>>>>By Jim Hoagland, Page A17
>>>>LONDON -- The political price that Tony Blair pays at home for his
>>>>enthusiastic partnership with President Bush in Iraq is made clear to a
>>>>visitor who asks a London cabbie about the impending national election.
>>>>"Oh, Vice President Blair will get back in," comes the sardonic reply.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>Given that VP Blair has vice-presided over the most prosperous period in British
>>>history, there is no doubt that he will be re-elected, helped by the inadequacy
>>>of the opposition.
Think John Pilger sums things up a bit......
John Pilger kebabs the Tonier-than-thou club
http://www.newstatesman.com/200503070013
Monday 7th March 2005
Those who regard themselves as commissars of the respectable, moral,
liberal class do not convey to us the enormity of what happened in Iraq.
Their silence is quite disgusting. By John Pilger
Almost eight years ago, the choir of British liberalism celebrated a new
age. Tony Blair, wrote 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 fossilised 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." 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 post-election 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 defenceless 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 terrorised 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 pre-eminence 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 per cent - 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 Defence
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 (24 February), 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 US 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 defenceless 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 US
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 programme, 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
website, 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 programme James Naughtie have been over
to 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.
Brian E. Clark
> If Britain is so prosperous, why is the Health service still fucked?
> Why are schools still unable to afford enough teachers ?
>
> Why do local councils still have to cut-back on their spending?
>
> Why can't first-time buyers afford a decent house ?
"Prosperous" must be understood to mean "prosperous for those
who matter." If prosperity for those who matter is gained by
plundering those who don't, so much the better.
--
-----------
Brian E. Clark
Jez
:)