Good luck with that

Apparently Tony Blair wants to re-enter politics to save the UK from Jeremy Corbyn:

Tony Blair has indicated that he is preparing to return to British politics to prevent the "tragedy" of Britain becoming a "one-party state".

The former Prime Minister warned that the rise of the hard-left in Labour means that "the centre ground is in retreat" as he urged moderate politicians to "rise to the challenge".

[...]

He accused Jeremy Corbyn of taking the Labour Party "back to the sixties", warning that Mr Corbyn's views are "very, very remote from the way that the broad mass of people really think".

He said: "In the UK at the moment you’ve got a one party state. When you put it all together [taking into account that the Conservative leader wasn’t elected], there’s something seriously wrong.

Of course, one of the reasons the UK effectively has a one-party state is because Blair decided to continue Thatcher's policies rather than repudiate them, resulting in two parties with no real differences between them. But I suspect that's not what he was thinking of.

The good news is that the UK Labour Party elects its leaders now - and if recent leadership elections are anything to go by, Blair doesn't have a hope in hell of winning. If he's returning to politics, he'll have to build his own party, rather than cuckooing his way into UK Labour as he did before.

Holding Blair accountable for his crimes

Last week, the Chilcot report was released, with an official finding that Blair lied to get the UK Parliament to back an American war of aggression against Iraq. Foot-dragging by the UK means he will never face prosecution before the ICC for that crime (though there is still the hope of a special UN tribunal). But there is a way the UK Parliament can hold him accountable for his crimes against them: by finding him in contempt:

A cross-party alliance of MPs is pushing for Tony Blair to be declared guilty of “contempt” towards Parliament over the Iraq War – as calls for legal action against the former Prime Minister grow. A parliamentary motion, being tabled this week subject to approval by the Speaker, will declare that Mr Blair used “deceit” in the run-up to the invasion. Its proponents say it could see him barred from public office and stripped of his privy council position.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn today signalled his backing for the motion, urging MPs to examine evidence suggesting that Mr Blair had misled Parliament over the invasion. The parliamentary device, to be formally proposed by outspoken Conservative MP David Davis, has attracted the backing of MPs from Labour, the Tories, Scottish National Party, Green Party and Plaid Cymru.

A formal finding that he misled parliament isn't much. But its some justice, and that's better than no justice at all.

It does however raise interesting constitutional questions about whether Parliament has the power to discipline a former member for grave crimes committed while in office. In New Zealand, I think there would be no chance of doing this - allegations of misleading the House must be raised at the earliest opportunity, and I don't really think the allegation here is new (though the formal finding of its truth is). But the UK does things differently, and this path might be open to them.

New Fisk

I’m already tired of the ‘lessons’ of Chilcot. What can we learn from a report that ignores Iraqis?

New Fisk

I read the Chilcot report as I travelled across Syria this week and saw for myself what Blair's actions caused

Blair lied

The Chilcot report has been published, and its official: Blair lied. He lied about WMD. He lied about the necessity of going to war. He lied about the consequences.

His lies cost at least 150,000 Iraqi lives and created at least a million Iraqi refugees. And he and his co-conspirators - Foreign Secretary jack Straw, JIC Chief John Scarlett, MI6 head Richard Dearlove, plus George W Bush and all his wretched little NeoCon minions - must be held to account for them.

Chilcot said he had not made any conclusions about the legality of the war, saying that it was the place of a properly constituted international tribunal. It is now time for such a Tribunal. Aggression has always been a crime under international law, and it is only foot-dragging by states parties which prevents the ICC from exercising jurisdiction over it. But if the ICC can't, then the UN and the international community must - just as they did for Yugoslavia, just as they did for Rwanda, and just as they did for the Nazis.

it is not enough for the establishment to disown Blair and his co-conspirators, to say that they were wrong. They must actually be held to account for their crimes. Because if they're not punished, if they have impunity form justice, then their successors will simply commit more such crimes.

Finally, if there's one overwhelming lesson to be learned from Chilcot, it is this: Do not invade anyone, ever. Sadly, the British establishment, raised on nostalgia for imperial glory and a toxic "special relationship" with the US, is unlikely to learn it. Which is why they need to be driven out, permanently. Their replacement will probably be just as shit, but they'll at least be shit in a different, and hopefully less destructive way.

New Fisk

After the Chilcot report, we'll hear the New Testament – the gospel according to Saint Tony
Of course Germany refused to deny the Armenian genocide

Accountability for Iraq?

Six years after it was established, the Chilcot Inquiry into the UK's involvement in the Iraq war is finally about to report back. And from the sound of it, its going to pin the blame squarely where it belongs: on Tony Blair:

The long-awaited Chilcot report into the Iraq war is reportedly set to savage Tony Blair and other former government officials in an “absolutely brutal” verdict on the failings of the occupation.

The former Prime Minister “won’t be let off the hook” over claims he offered military assistance to the former American President George W Bush, a year before the invasion of Iraq, a source told the Sunday Times.

[...]

The source added that the harshest criticism will be reserved for the former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. “It will be absolutely brutal for [Mr] Straw,” they told the Sunday Times. “The build-up to war is very crucial. It will damage the reputations of a number of people, Richard Dearlove as well as Tony Blair and others.

But being officially blamed by a public inquiry is one thing, accountability is another. And the latter won't happen until Blair and his co-conspirators are where they belong: in the dock in The Hague and on trial for war crimes and the crime of aggression.

New Fisk

Tony Blair didn't see the people, he saw the policies – which is why he chose war

Blair's smoking gun

Over in the UK, John Chilcot is still dragging his feet on publishing the report of his whitewash "inquiry" into the Iraq war. Meanwhile, the evidence that his "inquiry" sought to suppress has suddenly become public:

A bombshell White House memo has revealed for the first time details of the ‘deal in blood’ forged by Tony Blair and George Bush over the Iraq War.

The sensational leak shows that Blair had given an unqualified pledge to sign up to the conflict a year before the invasion started.

It flies in the face of the Prime Minister’s public claims at the time that he was seeking a diplomatic solution to the crisis.

He told voters: ‘We’re not proposing military action’ – in direct contrast to what the secret email now reveals.

The damning memo, from Secretary of State Colin Powell to President George Bush, was written on March 28, 2002, a week before Bush’s famous summit with Blair at his Crawford ranch in Texas.

In it, Powell tells Bush that Blair ‘will be with us’ on military action. Powell assures the President: ‘The UK will follow our lead’.

And it talks about the price: Blair's desire to be seen to be treated as an "equal partner" to the US, rather than the subservient poodle he really was. And for that, a little ego rub, he invaded Iraq and helped kill over half a million people - and people are still dying in the aftermath of that crime.

He should be sent to the Hague to stand trial.

"I agree with Jeremy"

Another reason why Jeremy Corbyn should lead the UK Labour Party: he thinks Tony Blair should be charged with war crimes:

Tony Blair could be made to stand trial for war crimes, according to the current Labour leadership contender Jeremy Corbyn.

The veteran left winger said the former prime minister was reaching the point when he was going to have to deal with the consequences of his actions with the coming Chilcot inquiry report.

“I think it was an illegal war,” he said in an interview with BBC2's Newsnight adding that former UN secretary general had confirmed that. “Therefore he (Blair) has to explain that,” Corbyn said.

“We went into a war that was catastrophic, that was illegal, that cost us a lot of money, that lost a lot of lives,” he added. “The consequences are still played out with migrant deaths in the Mediterranean, refugees all over the region,” he said.

Pressed on whether Mr Blair should be charged with war crimes, he said: “If he's committed a war crime, yes. Everyone who's committed a war crime should be.”

That ought to go down well with Labour's base.

Meanwhile, panicked by the thought that left-wing people might want to reconnect with the party that abandoned them and vote for a leader who espouses their values, the Labour heirarchy is desperately scrutinising new memberships to cull out potential Corbyn supporters. Which just shows how establishment they've become - democratic in name, but not in substance...

New Fisk

Blundering Tony Blair quits as Middle East peace envoy – only Israel will miss him

Ending the UK's biggest tax rort

The UK is going to the polls next month, and Labour's Ed Miliband has finally offered a genuinely left-wing policy among all the promises of even harsher austerity and harder kicking of the poor: eliminating the UK's biggest tax rort: "non-dom" tax status:

Ed Miliband will promise to end a colonial-era symbol of inequity in the tax system by announcing that, if he wins the election, he will abolish the non-domicile rule that allows many of Britain’s richest permanent residents to avoid paying tax in the UK on their worldwide income.

Labour will say the rule, introduced by William Pitt the Younger in the late 18th century, has been wide open to abuse and offends the moral basis of taxation. Everyone who has made the UK their permanent home should pay full UK tax on all their income and gains, he will argue.

In a speech in Warwick on Wednesday, Miliband is expected to say the non-dom rule, believed to be used by more than 110,000 wealthy people in a system unique to the UK, is born of a discredited belief that “anything goes for those at the top and that what is good for the rich is always good for Britain”.

Non-doms pay UK income tax and capital gains tax on their UK sources of income and gains, and whatever income generated overseas they choose to remit to the UK. By contrast, UK domiciles have to pay tax on all of their income and gains, wherever in the world they are made – Britain or overseas.

This isn't about immigrants or permanent residents, but about people born in the UK who pretend to live overseas for tax purposes, based on "links" as tenuous as a foreign newspaper subscription or a grave plot (which can of course simply be purchased). They use this to dodge their taxes while the money piles up, enjoying all the benefits of living in the UK, but none of the costs.

Naturally, the tories are screaming that these people who aren't paying tax in the UK will all flee and not pay tax somewhere else, to which any sensible person would say "good riddance". After all, they're not paying tax, so what's the supposed loss? Their good company? They're sociopathic parasites, and the UK is better off without them.

Meanwhile, on the same day Miliband announces this, he gets endorsed by tax-cheating war criminal Tony Blair. I wonder how many more seats the SNP will get out of that?

Gagging Chilcot

What a surprise - the Chilcot Report into how Tony Blair lied the UK into Iraq will be suppressed until after the UK election:

The six-year long British inquiry into the 2003 Iraq invasion and its aftermath will not be published before the general election, prompting an outcry from those demanding that the long overdue reckoning should be put before the voters.

Sir John Chilcot, the chairman of the inquiry, will set out his reasons for the further postponement in an exchange of letters with David Cameron on Wednesday. The inquiry was set up in 2009 and took public evidence from its last witness in 2011.

[...]

Tony Blair, the prime minister at the time of the war, has insisted he is not the culprit behind the delay in publication; his allies have suggested the blame lies with the civil service and sensitivities about the relations between the UK and US intelligence agencies.

Blair is a self-serving little weasel and could be lying - but the alternative explanation is plausible. And so accountability is delayed and the public kept in the dark (not to mention denied the opportunity to hold involved politicians responsible at the ballot box), all in the name of a "special relationship" which looks increasingly subservient and boot-licking.

And the British Establishment wonders who no-one has any faith in their inquiries: its because their manipulation and whitewashing is so obvious.

New Fisk

Using ‘generic’ illustrations in news stories dishonours the dead and distorts the truth
If only Tony Blair could grasp the truth about Field Marshal Sisi

Tony Blair: Tax cheat?

Back when he was campaigning to be British Prime Minister, Tony Blair was harsh about tax cheats, saying:

For those who can employ the right accountants, the tax system is a haven of scams, perks, City deals and profits.

"We should reward people who work hard and do well. We should not make our tax rules a playground for revenue avoiders and tax abusers who pay little or nothing while others pay more than their share."

Now that he's a former Prime Minister paid millions of pounds a year as a "consultant" for bankers and autocrats, its a different story:

When you have already spent half a million pounds on rent, £300,000 on furniture and £2.3m paying your staff, an extra £8m on unexplained “administrative expenses” might seem to be stretching credulity, but that is what Tony Blair has told Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, which as a consequence has received a rather smaller cheque from the former Prime Minister than it might have expected.

Records sent to Companies House reveal a substantial leap in Tony Blair's income in the year ending March 2011, but such a rise has not been passed on to the taxman. One of his many companies and partnerships, Windrush Ventures, declared a turnover of £12m, up from £8.5m the year before. But Mr Blair's accounts claim that just over £1m of this is profit, the rest written off as "administrative expenses", with no further explanation given for some £7.74m of the total. With the corporate tax rate at 28 per cent, this left Mr Blair with a tax liability of only £315,000.

It seems that Blair is now engaging in exactly the sort of dishonest cheating he once criticised - all of course while receiving a massive state pension and armed bodyguards for life courtesy of the UK taxpayer. Sadly, given Blair's past displays of hypocrisy and insincerity, its not exactly surprising.

Guilty

Since their invasion of Iraq in 2003, former US President George W Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair have been dogged by allegations of war crimes. Sadly, the United Nations and the International Criminal Court have refused to act on complaints, so in their absence former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad established the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission, modelled on the Russel Tribunal which investigated the Vietnam war. Today, that Tribunal handed down its verdicts: guilty:

Former US president George W Bush and British ex-prime minister Tony Blair were Tuesday found guilty at a mock tribunal in Malaysia for committing "crimes against peace" during the Iraq war.

[...]

"The Tribunal deliberated over the case and decided unanimously that the first accused George Bush and second accused Blair have been found guilty of crimes against peace," the tribunal said in a statement.

"Unlawful use of force threatens the world to return to a state of lawlessness. The acts of the accused were unlawful."

This isn't a formal body, so Bush and Blair won't face any formal punishment. But it highlights their crime and the fact that they have not been punished, and adds to the verdict of history. And hopefully, one day, we'll see that verdict made official in the ICC, rather than having to do it ourselves.

Will the police investigate Blair's war crimes?

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair touches down in Auckland today on his speaking tour. Meanwhile, Global Peace and Justice Auckland has laid a complaint with the New Zealand police, asking that they detain Blair for war crimes. The crimes in question - grave breaches of the Geneva Convention including the indiscriminate use of force against civilians - are clearly illegal under New Zealand law. So will the police investigate? Sadly, I'm not holding my breath. In incidents like this in the past, they have shown that they are more interested in protecting the powerful than enforcing the law. And I expect them to do exactly the same for Tony Blair. But the cost of this is to undermine respect for the law, encourage the view that it is simply a tool of the powerful against the powerless. As someone who thinks the law should be more than this, that it is there to protect all of us, not just those the rapists-in-blue deem worthy of protection, I find this highly disappointing.

Meanwhile, protestors have already gathered at the venue for Blair's speech, and while I expect him to be hustled in a back door (so as to protect his delicate sensibilities from public opinion), it will at least remind his sociopathic audience (including blogger DPF, who'da thunk it?) of the sort of man they're paying to hear. And the article makes it clear that there's at least one person there going after the bounty for a peaceful citizen's arrest of Blair. I wish them luck.

Protest against Tony Blair

War criminal Tony Blair is visiting New Zealand later this month on a speaking tour (our business class apparently being sociopathic enough to pay big money to listen to a war criminal - though maybe they just want his tips on lying). Global Peace And Justice Auckland are organising a welcoming committee:

When: 11:00 am, Thursday 28th July
Where: Eden Park (Walters Road Entrance), Auckland

And remember, the current bounty for a peaceful citizen's arrest of Blair is £2,400. I wonder if anyone will take a crack at it?

An unwelcome visitor

Guess who's coming to New Zealand this month? Tony Blair:

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has revealed he will appear at Eden Park as part of a lucrative mid-winter public speaking tour.

[...]

Britain's Sunday Times said the cheapest ticket for the tour was was [sic] $1354, offering a "full sit-down banquet meal" and pre-event cocktail party, while the VIP ticket, at $2031 includes a photograph with Mr Blair.

I'm left wondering: what sort of person pays $1350 to hear a speech from a war criminal? What sort of person pays $2000 to be photographed with one? Do we really have this many sociopaths in our country?

Still, this is an opportunity. The current bounty for attempting a peaceful citizen's arrest of Tony Blair is running at £2,400 (or about NZ$4,800 at today's exchange rate). Hopefully, someone will take a crack at it.

It was all about the oil II

Another day, another revelation about the Blair government's dishonesty over oil and Iraq:

The British Government saw Iraqi oil as "vital" to the UK's long-term energy security, and the effective privatisation of its oil industry was central to the post-invasion plan for the country, according to previously unseen Whitehall documents.

The UK was already working behind the scenes to ensure British companies did not lose out to competitors in the region, reveal strategy papers that were discussed at the highest level across Whitehall just days after President George W Bush declared "mission accomplished" in May 2003.

Despite Tony Blair and his ministers' public insistence that Iraq's vast oil reserves – then estimated at 112 billion barrels – were a matter for the Iraqis alone, officials warned a meeting of the "inter-departmental Oil Sector Liaison Group (OSLG)" that appearing "gratuitously exploitative" in its policy goals – which included the aim to "maximise benefit to British industry and thus British employment/economy" – could "backfire politically".

Again, this is telling us what we already knew: the Blair government were a lying pack of shits, film at eleven. But then, it also makes you wonder whether there aren't identical discussions happening in Whitehall over Libya right this minute.