Anthony McIntyre's Blog, page 1150
April 23, 2018
Son Of A Dog
Uri Avnery discusses no-violence as a strategy Palestinians should consider.
Recently he spoke about Donald Trump and uttered the words "May your house be destroyed". In Arabic this is a common curse, and sounds less extreme than in English. But even in Arabic this is not a usual phrase when speaking about a head of state.
This week Abbas spoke about the US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, and called him a "Son of a Dog". This, too, sounds in Arabic slightly less offensive than in English, but is hardly diplomatic.
It is hard to say that Friedman does not deserve it, though I would have wished, as a dog-lover, that Abbas had chosen another animal.
Friedman is a kippah-wearing Jew, who identifies completely with the most extreme settlers in the occupied territories. He certainly would be more fitting as Israeli ambassador to the US than as US ambassador to Israel.
That would be problematic, too, because he has called liberal American Jews "worse than Capos" – "Capos" (short for "camp police") were the prisoners who assisted the Nazis in the concentration camps.
To appoint such a Jewish fascist ambassador to Israel is – well – chutzpah. This could not happen in a normal country, which does not send an ambassador to a country in which he or she has a personal involvement. But Trump does not care. Not for Israel and not for Palestine.
So What does Trump really care about? He cares about votes in US elections.
Sending a religious Jew to serve as his ambassador in Jerusalem may gain him some votes in the US Jewish community. American Jews generally vote for the Democrats. Why? Out of habit. Generations of new immigrants to the US have voted for the Democratic party - the Irish before the Jews, the Asians after the Jews.
But most American Jews will continue to vote for the Democrats, in spite of the kippah on the head of Friedman. There are voices in the Jewish community which accuse their leaders of neglecting their own concerns, such as rising anti-Semitism, and spending all their energies supporting Israel's extreme right-wing government.
But Trump has far more important supporters: the millions of evangelists. These peculiar Christian fanatics have a special vision: they believe that Jesus Christ will return once all the Jews congregate in the Holy Land. They do not like to mention what they expect to happen next: the Jews will convert to Christianity, and those who do not will perish.
Sounds strange? It sure is strange. But Trump needs these millions of votes, without which he would not have been elected in the first place. He acts according to the beliefs of this sect.
As a result, the President of the US totally ignores the rights of the Palestinian people and their aspirations. According to him, the Palestinians must accept what is offered to them, as a dog must accept what his master throws to him and wag his tail. What exactly? Trump's masterful Peace Plan is still wrapped in secrecy. But it is enough to know who is in charge of it: his Jewish son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
So it is natural for Abbas to despair. He knows that during his remaining days in office, nothing good will happen to the Palestinians.
Never Since the emergence of the modern Palestinian nation has its situation been as dire as it is now.
The inhabitants of Palestine began to feel like a nation at the end of World War I, when the Ottoman Empire broke down. Photos of demonstrations held at the time in Jerusalem show the new Palestinian flag – black, white, green and red. Until then, the Palestinians were generally considered "South Syrians". But when Syria was turned over to the French and Palestine to the British, this tie was broken.
Since then, the Palestinians have experienced many events: the Zionist influx, the Great Arab Rebellion of 1936, the United Nations partition resolution of 1947, the end of British rule, the war of 1948, the Naqbah (catastrophe), the several wars, the rise and murder of Yasser Arafat, and more. But never was their situation as desperate as now.
True, the heart of all the Arab peoples, and indeed all the Muslim peoples, has remained true to the Palestinians. But there is no Arab – or Muslim – government which is not ready to sell the Palestinian cause for its own interests.
Throughout the world there is a lot of sympathy for the Palestinians, but no government would lift a finger for them. And the most powerful country in the world is now their open enemy.
As If all this was not enough, the Palestinians themselves are deeply divided between the PLO in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. This is so much in the interest of the Israeli government that it is difficult not to suspect that it is involved.
Between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River there live now about 13 million people, about half of them Jews and the other half Arabs. The Arabs may have a slight majority, which will grow continuously because of their higher birth rate. That does frighten the Zionist demographers. But they "cut off" the Gaza Strip from the rest of the country, pretending that its 2 million inhabitants do not belong to Palestine. That makes the problem seem a little less frightening.
This is the situation now. There is a tacit agreement in Israel not to "count" the inhabitants of the Strip. They are not there. There is only the West Bank, which must be Judaized.
A Desperate situation has one advantage: it encourages the search for new solutions.
That is happening now on the Palestinian side. Without waiting for the stepping down of Abbas and the appointment of a new leader, new ideas are popping up.
Yasser Arafat once explained to me why he entered the path to Oslo. We tried everything, he said. We tried the armed struggle. We tried diplomacy. We tried full-scale wars. Everything failed. So we entered a new road: peace with Israel. (The first sign was Arafat's inviting me to a meeting in Beirut.)
It is clear now that Oslo has failed. Yitzhak Rabin was murdered. In Israel the extreme right is in power. It steals the land and puts settlers on it. Israel has a leader who hates the Palestinians, an annexationist from birth.
The path to peace is blocked. The generation of Mahmoud Abbas, the generation of Yasser Arafat, has reached the end of its road.
And here comes a new generation. In a few weeks, a new chapter in the Palestinian story may start.
There have always been voices in the Palestinian community who advocated non-violent struggle. They found no listeners, because in Arab tradition, struggles are generally violent. Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela were not Muslims.
Now the idea of the non-violent struggle is raising its head. Not because of its moral aspect, but because it promises results.
In a few weeks, the Palestinians will start a non-violent campaign. Its declared aim is the return of the refugees. Thousands of Palestinians are about to march to the borders with Israel, first in the Gaza Strip and then in other places. They will not confront the Israeli army, and not break through the fences. Instead they will put up tent camps on the Palestinian side of the fences and stay there for a long time.
This is a well-tried method. The sleepy Palestinian cause will suddenly return to life. From all over the world, journalists will come and see. The camps will become centers of world attention. Throughout Europe and the world, solidarity camps will spring up. In the Arab countries, the princes and Emirs will find it hard to suppress demonstrations of sympathy.
And what then? Allah is great.
In My eyes, this plan has one great defect: the official aim.
If the protest movement concentrated on the aim of Palestinian independence, the world would give its blessing. There is now a world-wide consensus in favor of Palestinian statehood and the end of the Israeli occupation. In Israel, too, this aim has a lot of supporters. "Two States" or one colonial state, independence or occupation – the choice is clear.
The refugee problem is quite different. During the war of 1948, some 650 thousand Palestinians were displaced, either in the turmoil of the fighting or as a deliberate Israeli policy. By now, their families have grown to 6 million.
Some live in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, some in the countries around Israel and throughout the world. Some have taken root and started a new life, some are still refugees, supported by the international community. All are longing for their ancestral homes.
Bringing them back would mean the end of Israel, the displacement of millions of Israelis. This would be possible only through war. The very idea frightens every Israeli.
Is there no solution? I believe there is. Once, after a very emotional meeting with Palestinian refugees in America, I told my wife: "You know what my impression is? That these people are less interested in an actual return than in moral compensation. They want Israel to confess and apologize."
When drawing up plans for peace, I proposed (a) to apologize officially, (b) to allow the return of a symbolic number of refugees, (c) to pay compensation to all others.
How many would be allowed to return? A number of 100 thousand has been mentioned. I believe that we can do much better. In a situation of peace and reconciliation, even the addition of half a million to Israel's present 1.5 million Palestinian citizens would be acceptable.
I discussed this solution with Yasser Arafat. My impression was that he agreed more or less, though he kept the refugee issue as a bargaining chip. Anyhow, this is no longer the main problem on the way of peace.
So why go back 70 years? In a major Palestinian campaign, as planned now, why not concentrate on the main point: an end to the occupation, a State of Palestine next to the State of Israel?
The Non-Violent struggle is an excellent idea.
It reminds me of a saying of the late Abba Even: "People and states always do the right thing – after all other possibilities have been exhausted."
Uri Avnery is a veteran Israeli peace activist. He writes @ Gush Shalom
Recently he spoke about Donald Trump and uttered the words "May your house be destroyed". In Arabic this is a common curse, and sounds less extreme than in English. But even in Arabic this is not a usual phrase when speaking about a head of state.
This week Abbas spoke about the US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, and called him a "Son of a Dog". This, too, sounds in Arabic slightly less offensive than in English, but is hardly diplomatic.
It is hard to say that Friedman does not deserve it, though I would have wished, as a dog-lover, that Abbas had chosen another animal.
Friedman is a kippah-wearing Jew, who identifies completely with the most extreme settlers in the occupied territories. He certainly would be more fitting as Israeli ambassador to the US than as US ambassador to Israel.
That would be problematic, too, because he has called liberal American Jews "worse than Capos" – "Capos" (short for "camp police") were the prisoners who assisted the Nazis in the concentration camps.
To appoint such a Jewish fascist ambassador to Israel is – well – chutzpah. This could not happen in a normal country, which does not send an ambassador to a country in which he or she has a personal involvement. But Trump does not care. Not for Israel and not for Palestine.
So What does Trump really care about? He cares about votes in US elections.
Sending a religious Jew to serve as his ambassador in Jerusalem may gain him some votes in the US Jewish community. American Jews generally vote for the Democrats. Why? Out of habit. Generations of new immigrants to the US have voted for the Democratic party - the Irish before the Jews, the Asians after the Jews.
But most American Jews will continue to vote for the Democrats, in spite of the kippah on the head of Friedman. There are voices in the Jewish community which accuse their leaders of neglecting their own concerns, such as rising anti-Semitism, and spending all their energies supporting Israel's extreme right-wing government.
But Trump has far more important supporters: the millions of evangelists. These peculiar Christian fanatics have a special vision: they believe that Jesus Christ will return once all the Jews congregate in the Holy Land. They do not like to mention what they expect to happen next: the Jews will convert to Christianity, and those who do not will perish.
Sounds strange? It sure is strange. But Trump needs these millions of votes, without which he would not have been elected in the first place. He acts according to the beliefs of this sect.
As a result, the President of the US totally ignores the rights of the Palestinian people and their aspirations. According to him, the Palestinians must accept what is offered to them, as a dog must accept what his master throws to him and wag his tail. What exactly? Trump's masterful Peace Plan is still wrapped in secrecy. But it is enough to know who is in charge of it: his Jewish son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
So it is natural for Abbas to despair. He knows that during his remaining days in office, nothing good will happen to the Palestinians.
Never Since the emergence of the modern Palestinian nation has its situation been as dire as it is now.
The inhabitants of Palestine began to feel like a nation at the end of World War I, when the Ottoman Empire broke down. Photos of demonstrations held at the time in Jerusalem show the new Palestinian flag – black, white, green and red. Until then, the Palestinians were generally considered "South Syrians". But when Syria was turned over to the French and Palestine to the British, this tie was broken.
Since then, the Palestinians have experienced many events: the Zionist influx, the Great Arab Rebellion of 1936, the United Nations partition resolution of 1947, the end of British rule, the war of 1948, the Naqbah (catastrophe), the several wars, the rise and murder of Yasser Arafat, and more. But never was their situation as desperate as now.
True, the heart of all the Arab peoples, and indeed all the Muslim peoples, has remained true to the Palestinians. But there is no Arab – or Muslim – government which is not ready to sell the Palestinian cause for its own interests.
Throughout the world there is a lot of sympathy for the Palestinians, but no government would lift a finger for them. And the most powerful country in the world is now their open enemy.
As If all this was not enough, the Palestinians themselves are deeply divided between the PLO in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. This is so much in the interest of the Israeli government that it is difficult not to suspect that it is involved.
Between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River there live now about 13 million people, about half of them Jews and the other half Arabs. The Arabs may have a slight majority, which will grow continuously because of their higher birth rate. That does frighten the Zionist demographers. But they "cut off" the Gaza Strip from the rest of the country, pretending that its 2 million inhabitants do not belong to Palestine. That makes the problem seem a little less frightening.
This is the situation now. There is a tacit agreement in Israel not to "count" the inhabitants of the Strip. They are not there. There is only the West Bank, which must be Judaized.
A Desperate situation has one advantage: it encourages the search for new solutions.
That is happening now on the Palestinian side. Without waiting for the stepping down of Abbas and the appointment of a new leader, new ideas are popping up.
Yasser Arafat once explained to me why he entered the path to Oslo. We tried everything, he said. We tried the armed struggle. We tried diplomacy. We tried full-scale wars. Everything failed. So we entered a new road: peace with Israel. (The first sign was Arafat's inviting me to a meeting in Beirut.)
It is clear now that Oslo has failed. Yitzhak Rabin was murdered. In Israel the extreme right is in power. It steals the land and puts settlers on it. Israel has a leader who hates the Palestinians, an annexationist from birth.
The path to peace is blocked. The generation of Mahmoud Abbas, the generation of Yasser Arafat, has reached the end of its road.
And here comes a new generation. In a few weeks, a new chapter in the Palestinian story may start.
There have always been voices in the Palestinian community who advocated non-violent struggle. They found no listeners, because in Arab tradition, struggles are generally violent. Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela were not Muslims.
Now the idea of the non-violent struggle is raising its head. Not because of its moral aspect, but because it promises results.
In a few weeks, the Palestinians will start a non-violent campaign. Its declared aim is the return of the refugees. Thousands of Palestinians are about to march to the borders with Israel, first in the Gaza Strip and then in other places. They will not confront the Israeli army, and not break through the fences. Instead they will put up tent camps on the Palestinian side of the fences and stay there for a long time.
This is a well-tried method. The sleepy Palestinian cause will suddenly return to life. From all over the world, journalists will come and see. The camps will become centers of world attention. Throughout Europe and the world, solidarity camps will spring up. In the Arab countries, the princes and Emirs will find it hard to suppress demonstrations of sympathy.
And what then? Allah is great.
In My eyes, this plan has one great defect: the official aim.
If the protest movement concentrated on the aim of Palestinian independence, the world would give its blessing. There is now a world-wide consensus in favor of Palestinian statehood and the end of the Israeli occupation. In Israel, too, this aim has a lot of supporters. "Two States" or one colonial state, independence or occupation – the choice is clear.
The refugee problem is quite different. During the war of 1948, some 650 thousand Palestinians were displaced, either in the turmoil of the fighting or as a deliberate Israeli policy. By now, their families have grown to 6 million.
Some live in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, some in the countries around Israel and throughout the world. Some have taken root and started a new life, some are still refugees, supported by the international community. All are longing for their ancestral homes.
Bringing them back would mean the end of Israel, the displacement of millions of Israelis. This would be possible only through war. The very idea frightens every Israeli.
Is there no solution? I believe there is. Once, after a very emotional meeting with Palestinian refugees in America, I told my wife: "You know what my impression is? That these people are less interested in an actual return than in moral compensation. They want Israel to confess and apologize."
When drawing up plans for peace, I proposed (a) to apologize officially, (b) to allow the return of a symbolic number of refugees, (c) to pay compensation to all others.
How many would be allowed to return? A number of 100 thousand has been mentioned. I believe that we can do much better. In a situation of peace and reconciliation, even the addition of half a million to Israel's present 1.5 million Palestinian citizens would be acceptable.
I discussed this solution with Yasser Arafat. My impression was that he agreed more or less, though he kept the refugee issue as a bargaining chip. Anyhow, this is no longer the main problem on the way of peace.
So why go back 70 years? In a major Palestinian campaign, as planned now, why not concentrate on the main point: an end to the occupation, a State of Palestine next to the State of Israel?
The Non-Violent struggle is an excellent idea.
It reminds me of a saying of the late Abba Even: "People and states always do the right thing – after all other possibilities have been exhausted."
Uri Avnery is a veteran Israeli peace activist. He writes @ Gush Shalom
A Unique Customs Union
A unique Customs Union between Northern Ireland and the European Union - that’s the solution to the Irish border question and Brexit which controversial commentator Dr John Coulter is proposing in his latest Fearless Flying Column today.
Ireland, north and south, along with the European Union needs its own unique Customs Union to avoid the economic nightmare of a hard border as the Brexit clock ticks towards March 2019.
The EU is clearly adamant about the need for Northern Ireland to remain in its Customs Union after Brexit, and the DUP’s dogmatic stance over an Irish Language Act which saw the latest Ulster peace talks flop, British Prime Minister Theresa May could be forgiven for thinking she has no way through the Customs Union impasse.
However, there is a compromise which is both achievable and workable - a special new Customs Union between Northern Ireland and the European Union post Brexit could well be the solution which the staunchly euro skeptic DUP could compromise on.
As the situation currently exists, the DUP will not agree to Northern Ireland remaining in the present Customs Union after March 2019, but if past experiences of DUP compromises during the Irish peace process are taken as a benchmark, a completely new – and unique – Customs Union could be on the cards.
The political wild card which must be factored in at this stage is the collapse of the negotiations between Sinn Fein and the DUP which could have seen the devolved power-sharing Executive at Stormont fully restored. It has been collapsed since January 2017.
With no agreement on restoring devolution, Direct Rule from Westminster seems the likely option.
The DUP has already negotiated a cash boost for Northern Ireland – estimated to be around one billion pounds – in exchange for the votes of its 10 MPs to keep Theresa May’s Government in power, especially given the fallout of the recent air strikes in Syria.
In spite of the DUP’s public euro skeptism, given the party’s substantial support among the pro-Union farming community, the question could be posed - how many DUP farming voters actually voted ‘remain’ in the membership referendum because of the EU subsidies to the agricultural sector?
While the DUP is staunchly opposed to Northern Ireland remaining in the Customs Union as it presently exists, the party could compromise on a new deal which would see the creation of a special one-off Customs Union between Northern Ireland and the EU.
What is at stake here in dictating which format any proposed new Customs Union could take will be the type of Direct Rule over Northern Ireland.
Traditionally and historically, Direct Rule from Westminster has involved the Government of the day appointing MPs from British mainland constituencies to run the various political departments in the Northern Ireland Office.
However, given the unique arrangement which the DUP now has with the Tories, could the DUP be in a position to negotiate which MPs are appointed to the NIO? Even better for the DUP, could the party actually demand that the NIO ministerial team be staffed by MPs elected from Northern Ireland?
The current tally of 18 MPs from Northern Ireland comprise 10 DUP, one Independent Unionist (Lady Sylvia Hermon, the widow of a former police chief constable) and seven abstentionist Sinn Fein MPs, who still refuse to take their Commons seats.
Given that Sinn Fein and the Dublin government oppose Direct Rule, for Theresa May to appoint a team of DUP MPs to run the NIO could be a step too far and destabilise the entire peace process established by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
The compromise which the DUP could agree to is that it could negotiate with the Prime Minister which Conservative MPs are appointed to run the NIO. This would allow Mrs May to select Tories from the euro skeptic Right of the party who would be favourable towards the DUP – even through Northern Ireland overall voted ‘remain’ in the referendum.
The Dublin government, likewise, would naturally prefer the existing Customs Union to be in place after March 2019 to avoid the economic nightmare of the so-called ‘hard border’, which would make cross-border trade between Northern Ireland and the Republic very cumbersome.
While euro skeptics in the DUP point to the fact that Northern Ireland does more trade with mainland Britain than with the Republic, the DUP will have to adopt an economic all-island – as opposed to a political all-Ireland – compromise to secure the financial stability of both states on the geographical island of Ireland.
The key question – with some form of Direct Rule inevitable – is who would negotiate this unique Customs Union between the EU and Northern Ireland? Would this be done as part of the overall UK negotiating team, or could an NIO – staffed by either Tory or DUP MPs, or a combination of both – be given special negotiating rights to agree an EU/NI Customs Union compromise?
London and Dublin must also keep uppermost in their minds that the DUP2018 is not the same political beast as the DUP1988 led then by the late Rev Ian Paisley.
While Paisley senior – later Lord Bannside – is perhaps best known for his ‘Never, never, never’ speech against the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, he did compromise and negotiate the St Andrews Agreement of 2006 which heralded in the power-sharing Stormont Executive between the DUP and Sinn Fein. The bottom line is – in spite of the DUP’s perceived Hard Right image, it can be pragmatic enough to compromise when called upon.
On paper, a unique EU/NI Customs Union is the obvious solution to guarantee the required ‘soft border’ option between Northern Ireland and the Republic. It is the clear compromise which could politically palatable for EU negotiator Michel Barnier, the UK Brexit team – and especially the DUP.
But this all comes with a severe health warning. If Northern Ireland gets a unique Customs Union deal, the Scottish nationalists will equally demand one given that Scotland also voted ‘remain’. Could this see the formation of a Celtic Alliance between Ireland and Scotland?
Then what happens if Westminster compromises on Dublin and Sinn Fein’s demands that a peace deal be negotiated for Northern Ireland using the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference?
The Conference is currently only a recommendation-making body. What happens if it is upgraded to a decision-taking forum? That could leave a unique EU/NI Customs Union looking like an exact mirror image of the current structure.
Dr John Coulter has been a journalist working in Ireland for the past 40 years.
His ebook, An Sais Glas (The Green Sash) The Road to National Republicanism is published on Amazon Kindle.
Dr Coulter is on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter
Ireland, north and south, along with the European Union needs its own unique Customs Union to avoid the economic nightmare of a hard border as the Brexit clock ticks towards March 2019.
The EU is clearly adamant about the need for Northern Ireland to remain in its Customs Union after Brexit, and the DUP’s dogmatic stance over an Irish Language Act which saw the latest Ulster peace talks flop, British Prime Minister Theresa May could be forgiven for thinking she has no way through the Customs Union impasse.
However, there is a compromise which is both achievable and workable - a special new Customs Union between Northern Ireland and the European Union post Brexit could well be the solution which the staunchly euro skeptic DUP could compromise on.
As the situation currently exists, the DUP will not agree to Northern Ireland remaining in the present Customs Union after March 2019, but if past experiences of DUP compromises during the Irish peace process are taken as a benchmark, a completely new – and unique – Customs Union could be on the cards.
The political wild card which must be factored in at this stage is the collapse of the negotiations between Sinn Fein and the DUP which could have seen the devolved power-sharing Executive at Stormont fully restored. It has been collapsed since January 2017.
With no agreement on restoring devolution, Direct Rule from Westminster seems the likely option.
The DUP has already negotiated a cash boost for Northern Ireland – estimated to be around one billion pounds – in exchange for the votes of its 10 MPs to keep Theresa May’s Government in power, especially given the fallout of the recent air strikes in Syria.
In spite of the DUP’s public euro skeptism, given the party’s substantial support among the pro-Union farming community, the question could be posed - how many DUP farming voters actually voted ‘remain’ in the membership referendum because of the EU subsidies to the agricultural sector?
While the DUP is staunchly opposed to Northern Ireland remaining in the Customs Union as it presently exists, the party could compromise on a new deal which would see the creation of a special one-off Customs Union between Northern Ireland and the EU.
What is at stake here in dictating which format any proposed new Customs Union could take will be the type of Direct Rule over Northern Ireland.
Traditionally and historically, Direct Rule from Westminster has involved the Government of the day appointing MPs from British mainland constituencies to run the various political departments in the Northern Ireland Office.
However, given the unique arrangement which the DUP now has with the Tories, could the DUP be in a position to negotiate which MPs are appointed to the NIO? Even better for the DUP, could the party actually demand that the NIO ministerial team be staffed by MPs elected from Northern Ireland?
The current tally of 18 MPs from Northern Ireland comprise 10 DUP, one Independent Unionist (Lady Sylvia Hermon, the widow of a former police chief constable) and seven abstentionist Sinn Fein MPs, who still refuse to take their Commons seats.
Given that Sinn Fein and the Dublin government oppose Direct Rule, for Theresa May to appoint a team of DUP MPs to run the NIO could be a step too far and destabilise the entire peace process established by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
The compromise which the DUP could agree to is that it could negotiate with the Prime Minister which Conservative MPs are appointed to run the NIO. This would allow Mrs May to select Tories from the euro skeptic Right of the party who would be favourable towards the DUP – even through Northern Ireland overall voted ‘remain’ in the referendum.
The Dublin government, likewise, would naturally prefer the existing Customs Union to be in place after March 2019 to avoid the economic nightmare of the so-called ‘hard border’, which would make cross-border trade between Northern Ireland and the Republic very cumbersome.
While euro skeptics in the DUP point to the fact that Northern Ireland does more trade with mainland Britain than with the Republic, the DUP will have to adopt an economic all-island – as opposed to a political all-Ireland – compromise to secure the financial stability of both states on the geographical island of Ireland.
The key question – with some form of Direct Rule inevitable – is who would negotiate this unique Customs Union between the EU and Northern Ireland? Would this be done as part of the overall UK negotiating team, or could an NIO – staffed by either Tory or DUP MPs, or a combination of both – be given special negotiating rights to agree an EU/NI Customs Union compromise?
London and Dublin must also keep uppermost in their minds that the DUP2018 is not the same political beast as the DUP1988 led then by the late Rev Ian Paisley.
While Paisley senior – later Lord Bannside – is perhaps best known for his ‘Never, never, never’ speech against the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, he did compromise and negotiate the St Andrews Agreement of 2006 which heralded in the power-sharing Stormont Executive between the DUP and Sinn Fein. The bottom line is – in spite of the DUP’s perceived Hard Right image, it can be pragmatic enough to compromise when called upon.
On paper, a unique EU/NI Customs Union is the obvious solution to guarantee the required ‘soft border’ option between Northern Ireland and the Republic. It is the clear compromise which could politically palatable for EU negotiator Michel Barnier, the UK Brexit team – and especially the DUP.
But this all comes with a severe health warning. If Northern Ireland gets a unique Customs Union deal, the Scottish nationalists will equally demand one given that Scotland also voted ‘remain’. Could this see the formation of a Celtic Alliance between Ireland and Scotland?
Then what happens if Westminster compromises on Dublin and Sinn Fein’s demands that a peace deal be negotiated for Northern Ireland using the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference?
The Conference is currently only a recommendation-making body. What happens if it is upgraded to a decision-taking forum? That could leave a unique EU/NI Customs Union looking like an exact mirror image of the current structure.
Dr John Coulter has been a journalist working in Ireland for the past 40 years. His ebook, An Sais Glas (The Green Sash) The Road to National Republicanism is published on Amazon Kindle.
Dr Coulter is on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter
April 22, 2018
When Zionism Rubs Up Against Reality
Stanley Cohen writing in Counterpunch on Israeli war crimes.
Photo by Jordi Bernabeu Farrús | CC BY 2.0
With these commanding words, Robert H. Jackson, Chief Counsel for the United States, opened the War Crimes Tribunals at Nuremberg, Germany not long after the conclusion of World War II.
Empanelled to hold accountable military, political and judicial leaders for violations of international law… including war crimes, crimes against humanity and the law of war… the tribunals imposed personal accountability for genocide directed at Jews and others marked by the German state as a challenge to its declared racial, religious and political supremacy.
Although these offenses took many forms, at their core, each derived their evil from a common intersect that those targeted by the state for eradication were not just inferior, but unworthy of life itself… men, women and children, young and old, reduced to little more than objects of surreal derision whose mere existence contaminated the state’s supremacist lens.
There is no secret about the campaign of terror unleashed by the Third Reich as it swallowed states and triggered international violence unseen before or since. Nor are its tools of open warfare against military and civilians, alike, subject to any serious debate. While some choose to contest the number of victims or recast the precise instruments of persecution, no serious observer of history doubts the role that box cars, ghettos, siege, and ovens played in a conscious effort to silence the diversity of life while much of the world looked away.
The assault on humanity did not unfold overnight, or in a vacuum, with a sudden roundup. It followed a well calculated and implemented historical rewrite… a slow, but steady, recast of entire peoples… stripping them of their history, culture and collective purpose and decency.
What began with the burn of books and silence of press soon moved on to a successful reach of propaganda that cast a dark pall across millions whose wrong was to speak a different language, embrace another faith or to demand justice. Once there, it was a short walk to assault and worse.
The Repeat of History
With conscience, and vision as an outsider looking in, today, it is simply impossible not to feel an overwhelming sense of sheer revulsion when, if one is a caring being, an honest scan comes across Israel.
Forget about humanity and compassion or any broad notion of enlightened collective purpose. By now, Israel has reduced these cornerstones of fundamental decency to fabled fiction… a successful narrative of perverse existence that crushes truth and justice as little more than tedious impediments to its own, now decade’s old, ethnic and racial pogrom against others.
Israel is good at what it does. Damn good. No, not its slaughter, torture and endless detention and land theft; these are givens. A dark, very public, almost proud record of “achievement” that stands essentially unparalleled when it comes to recent contempt for international norm and law.
Like those before, what it really excels at is the grand lie… the convenient historical rewrite; the excuse; the ability to recast yesterday, today and surely tomorrow as so much a duty-bound journey in which no outrage is beyond the pale, no crime too extreme, no offense too offensive. Always, of course, cast in the talisman of survival. It’s a skill … a dodgy political art-form that converts inconvenient truth into self serving dogma with all too predictable deadly consequence.
Unlike that rare explosive autocrat or passing despotic regime, Israel has perfected its crafted control of selective reality in time-tested ways nothing short of masterful. Long before U.N. anthropologists discovered a European state in the midst of an Arab history, Zionists mastered the skill of expedient deception.
Thus, almost a hundred years ago, European terrorists became celebrated freedom fighters as they slaughtered Palestinians asleep in their beds and cribs. The Nakba, a forced stampede of almost a million Palestinians sparked by mass rape and murder, recast with historical ease to become a voluntary transition… a move by restive villagers to find a better time in a better place.
Kibbutzim, those enlightened socialist communes that, with magic-like remake, blossomed from long barren deserts. Could that be the rubble of age-old villages and decomposed remains just below the veneer of the sand?
Settlements, an employment opportunity for a troubled work force in need of purpose and discipline. The siege of Gaza… not at all a premeditated embargo of food, medicine, water, electricity and movement to break the will of its two million people, but rather a generous helping hand to liberate them from the limitations of their primitive vision and Hamas terror.
Advancing itself as a democracy under siege, Israel has long since abandoned any pretense of equality and justice in its limitless thirst to seize what little remains of Palestine as it exalts a racist de jure Jewish state in its quest.
This supremacist drive has been occasioned not merely with the passage of time or through a loss of interest by the world community alone. Along the way, to be sure, by design, Israel has successfully exploited the ignorance and fear of Arab and Muslim communities by the West. Of late, it has found willing companion among some Arab states anxious to move on from proxy to full on partner as they’ve tired of the “dilemma” that is Palestine.
In Israel and the occupied territories, the catalog of ersatz narrative is endless. With a slap… a stab, a book… a bomb; a prayer… a provocation, the Zionist tale has long since swallowed any semblance of relevance, let alone reality. Yet, from time immemorial, much of the world has blinked, frozen in place, fixated by a steady broadcast of propaganda, both home spun in Israel and in echo abroad.
Yet, over the last ten days, that faux moral perch has begun to collapse as the winds of truth have blown away the mask of hate that is very much Israel. During this time, tens of thousands of peaceful unarmed demonstrators marched on the barricades of their Gaza prison only to be met by carnage.
It is unnecessary to repeat, in full, the tales of slaughter that ensued as hundreds of snipers, drones and tanks announced with deadly precision that all were fair game for nothing more than voice. When the tear gas cleared , “fortunate” young men, women and children, elderly and journalists, alike, lay paralyzed by a strain of chemical assault, similar to sporadic reported uses since 2001, which soon gave way to uncontrolled vomiting and trembles.
For others, less fortunate, thousands lay bloodied by explosive high velocity munitions designed to rip apart flesh and destroy organs. Some thirty-one were murdered. Almost all casualties shot in the back of their head or torso.
What is there about a peaceful march, the national flag, and a Dakbe song and dance that so enrages an occupation force as to drive its snipers to unleash deadly targeted fire as if surrounded by well armed enemy combatants?
The Law
Under international law, crimes against humanity include “murder and other inhumane acts carried out against any civilian population… when such acts are done or such persecutions carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.”
A war crime is an act that constitutes a “serious violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility and include intentionally killing civilians… destroying civilian property… and serious violations of the principles of distinction and proportionality, such as strategic bombing of civilian populations.”
Under the law of war, military necessity is governed by several constraints: an attack or action must be intended to help in the defeat of the enemy; it must be an attack on a legitimate military objective, and the harm caused to civilians or civilian property must be proportional and not excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.
Under international humanitarian law, proportionality is a principle that governs the legal use of force in an armed conflict, whereby belligerents must make sure that the harm caused to civilians or civilian property is not excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage expected by an attack on a legitimate military objective.
Finally, “the fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him”.
That is to say it is not an acceptable defense to simply say “I was just following my superior’s orders.”
For years, as some have debated the reach of international law, much of the world has stood in silence and, accordingly, very much complicit as Israel has carried out unspeakable offenses against a largely civilian population in Palestine.
Although often nuanced, if not complex, the application of law to facts is not magic. At times a plain read of well settled legal covenants in the light of events at hand can lead even an unpracticed but principled eye to conclude that violations of law have in fact occurred.
Not before has Israel’s indifference to international law been so clear, so visible, so compelling as it has been through the lens of its repeated slaughter, over the last ten days in Gaza, as thousands of civilians have simply marched and marched in peace to say “enough”.
Today, more than 70 years after the judgments at Nuremberg, we are witness to an undeniable paradox as those victimized long ago by notions of racial, religious and political superiority have themselves become willing accomplished adherents of that same evil doctrine.
In words that shook the silence of the courtroom with the majesty of the moment war crimes prosecutor Robert H. Jackson passed, to generations to come, a reminder of the obligation companion to humanity:
Stanley L Cohen is a lawyer and human rights
activist in New York City.
He has done extensive work in the Middle Eastand Africa.
Photo by Jordi Bernabeu Farrús | CC BY 2.0 The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated.
With these commanding words, Robert H. Jackson, Chief Counsel for the United States, opened the War Crimes Tribunals at Nuremberg, Germany not long after the conclusion of World War II.
Empanelled to hold accountable military, political and judicial leaders for violations of international law… including war crimes, crimes against humanity and the law of war… the tribunals imposed personal accountability for genocide directed at Jews and others marked by the German state as a challenge to its declared racial, religious and political supremacy.
Although these offenses took many forms, at their core, each derived their evil from a common intersect that those targeted by the state for eradication were not just inferior, but unworthy of life itself… men, women and children, young and old, reduced to little more than objects of surreal derision whose mere existence contaminated the state’s supremacist lens.
There is no secret about the campaign of terror unleashed by the Third Reich as it swallowed states and triggered international violence unseen before or since. Nor are its tools of open warfare against military and civilians, alike, subject to any serious debate. While some choose to contest the number of victims or recast the precise instruments of persecution, no serious observer of history doubts the role that box cars, ghettos, siege, and ovens played in a conscious effort to silence the diversity of life while much of the world looked away.
The assault on humanity did not unfold overnight, or in a vacuum, with a sudden roundup. It followed a well calculated and implemented historical rewrite… a slow, but steady, recast of entire peoples… stripping them of their history, culture and collective purpose and decency.
What began with the burn of books and silence of press soon moved on to a successful reach of propaganda that cast a dark pall across millions whose wrong was to speak a different language, embrace another faith or to demand justice. Once there, it was a short walk to assault and worse.
The Repeat of History
With conscience, and vision as an outsider looking in, today, it is simply impossible not to feel an overwhelming sense of sheer revulsion when, if one is a caring being, an honest scan comes across Israel.
Forget about humanity and compassion or any broad notion of enlightened collective purpose. By now, Israel has reduced these cornerstones of fundamental decency to fabled fiction… a successful narrative of perverse existence that crushes truth and justice as little more than tedious impediments to its own, now decade’s old, ethnic and racial pogrom against others.
Israel is good at what it does. Damn good. No, not its slaughter, torture and endless detention and land theft; these are givens. A dark, very public, almost proud record of “achievement” that stands essentially unparalleled when it comes to recent contempt for international norm and law.
Like those before, what it really excels at is the grand lie… the convenient historical rewrite; the excuse; the ability to recast yesterday, today and surely tomorrow as so much a duty-bound journey in which no outrage is beyond the pale, no crime too extreme, no offense too offensive. Always, of course, cast in the talisman of survival. It’s a skill … a dodgy political art-form that converts inconvenient truth into self serving dogma with all too predictable deadly consequence.
Unlike that rare explosive autocrat or passing despotic regime, Israel has perfected its crafted control of selective reality in time-tested ways nothing short of masterful. Long before U.N. anthropologists discovered a European state in the midst of an Arab history, Zionists mastered the skill of expedient deception.
Thus, almost a hundred years ago, European terrorists became celebrated freedom fighters as they slaughtered Palestinians asleep in their beds and cribs. The Nakba, a forced stampede of almost a million Palestinians sparked by mass rape and murder, recast with historical ease to become a voluntary transition… a move by restive villagers to find a better time in a better place.
Kibbutzim, those enlightened socialist communes that, with magic-like remake, blossomed from long barren deserts. Could that be the rubble of age-old villages and decomposed remains just below the veneer of the sand?
Settlements, an employment opportunity for a troubled work force in need of purpose and discipline. The siege of Gaza… not at all a premeditated embargo of food, medicine, water, electricity and movement to break the will of its two million people, but rather a generous helping hand to liberate them from the limitations of their primitive vision and Hamas terror.
Advancing itself as a democracy under siege, Israel has long since abandoned any pretense of equality and justice in its limitless thirst to seize what little remains of Palestine as it exalts a racist de jure Jewish state in its quest.
This supremacist drive has been occasioned not merely with the passage of time or through a loss of interest by the world community alone. Along the way, to be sure, by design, Israel has successfully exploited the ignorance and fear of Arab and Muslim communities by the West. Of late, it has found willing companion among some Arab states anxious to move on from proxy to full on partner as they’ve tired of the “dilemma” that is Palestine.
In Israel and the occupied territories, the catalog of ersatz narrative is endless. With a slap… a stab, a book… a bomb; a prayer… a provocation, the Zionist tale has long since swallowed any semblance of relevance, let alone reality. Yet, from time immemorial, much of the world has blinked, frozen in place, fixated by a steady broadcast of propaganda, both home spun in Israel and in echo abroad.
Yet, over the last ten days, that faux moral perch has begun to collapse as the winds of truth have blown away the mask of hate that is very much Israel. During this time, tens of thousands of peaceful unarmed demonstrators marched on the barricades of their Gaza prison only to be met by carnage.
It is unnecessary to repeat, in full, the tales of slaughter that ensued as hundreds of snipers, drones and tanks announced with deadly precision that all were fair game for nothing more than voice. When the tear gas cleared , “fortunate” young men, women and children, elderly and journalists, alike, lay paralyzed by a strain of chemical assault, similar to sporadic reported uses since 2001, which soon gave way to uncontrolled vomiting and trembles.
For others, less fortunate, thousands lay bloodied by explosive high velocity munitions designed to rip apart flesh and destroy organs. Some thirty-one were murdered. Almost all casualties shot in the back of their head or torso.
What is there about a peaceful march, the national flag, and a Dakbe song and dance that so enrages an occupation force as to drive its snipers to unleash deadly targeted fire as if surrounded by well armed enemy combatants?
The Law
Under international law, crimes against humanity include “murder and other inhumane acts carried out against any civilian population… when such acts are done or such persecutions carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.”
A war crime is an act that constitutes a “serious violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility and include intentionally killing civilians… destroying civilian property… and serious violations of the principles of distinction and proportionality, such as strategic bombing of civilian populations.”
Under the law of war, military necessity is governed by several constraints: an attack or action must be intended to help in the defeat of the enemy; it must be an attack on a legitimate military objective, and the harm caused to civilians or civilian property must be proportional and not excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.
Under international humanitarian law, proportionality is a principle that governs the legal use of force in an armed conflict, whereby belligerents must make sure that the harm caused to civilians or civilian property is not excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage expected by an attack on a legitimate military objective.
Finally, “the fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him”.
That is to say it is not an acceptable defense to simply say “I was just following my superior’s orders.”
For years, as some have debated the reach of international law, much of the world has stood in silence and, accordingly, very much complicit as Israel has carried out unspeakable offenses against a largely civilian population in Palestine.
Although often nuanced, if not complex, the application of law to facts is not magic. At times a plain read of well settled legal covenants in the light of events at hand can lead even an unpracticed but principled eye to conclude that violations of law have in fact occurred.
Not before has Israel’s indifference to international law been so clear, so visible, so compelling as it has been through the lens of its repeated slaughter, over the last ten days in Gaza, as thousands of civilians have simply marched and marched in peace to say “enough”.
Today, more than 70 years after the judgments at Nuremberg, we are witness to an undeniable paradox as those victimized long ago by notions of racial, religious and political superiority have themselves become willing accomplished adherents of that same evil doctrine.
In words that shook the silence of the courtroom with the majesty of the moment war crimes prosecutor Robert H. Jackson passed, to generations to come, a reminder of the obligation companion to humanity:
We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow.
Stanley L Cohen is a lawyer and human rights
activist in New York City.
He has done extensive work in the Middle Eastand Africa.
A Catholic Monsignor Arrested By Vatican Police
Lena M writing in Atheist Republic flags up yet another clerical sex abuse scandal.
Photo Credits:
Wikimedia
The Vatican police arrested Monsignor Carlo Alberto Capella — who was one of the church's diplomats accredited to Washington — on suspicion of possessing child pornography. Monsignor Capella was recalled from the Vatican Embassy in August and at that time the police in Windsor, Canada, said they had issued an arrest warrant for him on suspicion of possessing and distributing images of child abuse on the internet. After an investigation, which led to a warrant issued by the Holy See’s chief magistrate, Capella was arrested in the Vatican. The accusation is based on articles of the law signed by Pope Francis in 2013 which are related to images of child sexual abuse.
But this is not the first time Capella was accused of child porn abuse, and the Vatican tried to protect him at first. The Holy See was notified of a possible violation of laws by a member of their diplomatic corps accredited in Washington by the State Department, and the Vatican denied the United States’ request to waive diplomatic immunity. If the Vatican accepted this request, the offender could have been charged in the United States. At that time, the Vatican refused to identify the diplomat, but there were strong indications that it was Monsignor Capella.
According to The Guardian, Capella’s case is the worst involving a diplomat since 2013 when former Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski faced charges of paying boys for sexual acts, downloading and buying pedophile material while he was the Vatican’s ambassador in the Dominican Republic. He was recalled to Rome by the Vatican, arrested and stripped of his duties after an investigation by Dominican magistrates. He died at the hospital in 2015 at the age of 67 before his trial at a Vatican court could begin.
If convicted after his trial at the Vatican, Monsignor Capella could possibly face up to 12 years in prison. But this may not be likely since, in 2011, the Vatican held a trial for a priest who was a “notorious sex abuser” decades earlier, — he was found guilty of sexual abuse — but was only forced to retire and sentenced to a lifetime of "penance and prayer". Also, this inappropriate sentence came 27 years after the first complaints about him were made.
Although the Pontiff declared zero tolerance for the abuse that occurs in churches, it looks like the Vatican is not doing enough to prevent misconduct. This case may look like a step forward, but still the question remains why the Vatican refused to waive Capella's diplomatic immunity in the USA; then they arrest him and hold him for trial. If a man is guilty he should be adequately sentenced —and "penance and prayer" is not that type of sentence.
Follow Atheist Republic on Twitter @AtheistRepublic
Photo Credits:
Wikimedia
The Vatican police arrested Monsignor Carlo Alberto Capella — who was one of the church's diplomats accredited to Washington — on suspicion of possessing child pornography. Monsignor Capella was recalled from the Vatican Embassy in August and at that time the police in Windsor, Canada, said they had issued an arrest warrant for him on suspicion of possessing and distributing images of child abuse on the internet. After an investigation, which led to a warrant issued by the Holy See’s chief magistrate, Capella was arrested in the Vatican. The accusation is based on articles of the law signed by Pope Francis in 2013 which are related to images of child sexual abuse.
But this is not the first time Capella was accused of child porn abuse, and the Vatican tried to protect him at first. The Holy See was notified of a possible violation of laws by a member of their diplomatic corps accredited in Washington by the State Department, and the Vatican denied the United States’ request to waive diplomatic immunity. If the Vatican accepted this request, the offender could have been charged in the United States. At that time, the Vatican refused to identify the diplomat, but there were strong indications that it was Monsignor Capella.
According to The Guardian, Capella’s case is the worst involving a diplomat since 2013 when former Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski faced charges of paying boys for sexual acts, downloading and buying pedophile material while he was the Vatican’s ambassador in the Dominican Republic. He was recalled to Rome by the Vatican, arrested and stripped of his duties after an investigation by Dominican magistrates. He died at the hospital in 2015 at the age of 67 before his trial at a Vatican court could begin.
If convicted after his trial at the Vatican, Monsignor Capella could possibly face up to 12 years in prison. But this may not be likely since, in 2011, the Vatican held a trial for a priest who was a “notorious sex abuser” decades earlier, — he was found guilty of sexual abuse — but was only forced to retire and sentenced to a lifetime of "penance and prayer". Also, this inappropriate sentence came 27 years after the first complaints about him were made.
Although the Pontiff declared zero tolerance for the abuse that occurs in churches, it looks like the Vatican is not doing enough to prevent misconduct. This case may look like a step forward, but still the question remains why the Vatican refused to waive Capella's diplomatic immunity in the USA; then they arrest him and hold him for trial. If a man is guilty he should be adequately sentenced —and "penance and prayer" is not that type of sentence.
Follow Atheist Republic on Twitter @AtheistRepublic
April 21, 2018
Strange Little Girl, Where Are You Going?
Sean Mallory shares his thoughts on some latest twists in the world of international relations.
– The Stranglers, Strange Little Girl – 1988
I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses: gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected. - Winston S. Churchill: departmental minute (Churchill papers: 16/16) 12 May 1919 War Office
The UK sold several chemical weapons ingredients to Syria, back in 2012/13 – with explicit approval from then-prime minister David Cameron.
Air strikes in Syria were about saying "enough is enough" over the use of chemical weapons, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson – BBC – 15/04/2018.
Making the first defence of this claim since Porton Down scientists said they could only describe the agent as novichok, but not ascertain its country of origin, Johnson implied he had never said Porton Down told him Russia was responsible. – The Guardian - 15/04/2018
Ignoring their own crude hypocrisy to recent approval of the use of chemical weapons and building upon the Skripal attack, May and Macron and under the directorship of Agent Orange – US President Donald Trump, continue to heap more accusations of using banned chemical weapons on the Russians through Bashir Assad's regime’s alleged use of gas to attack the people of Douma. Both incidents, backed by strong Russian denial, lack clarity of evidence and especially rational motives, but both do raise more questions than they answer.
The Skripal offense once the darling of the British tabloid front page and which slavishly and repeatedly printed unsubstantiated British Government press releases, echoed around the world the immoral and unethical aspects of such an attack – an affront to humanity!
But as the hysteria began to settle and more probing questions began to be raised, the Skripal case as first explained by the British Government began to unravel. Johnston, the British Foreign Secretary, began to flounder in his responses and earlier claims and comments came back to publicly deride and ridicule him.
Although initially portrayed by May as a crime against Europe, another clumsy attempt at seeking favour while trying to sow division among the 27 members, and the extended world (let us not leave out the USA) didn’t warrant attack on Russia's chemical weapons facilities but mere diplomatic expulsions. It's better to leave the Russian bear with some form of chemical relief for its foreign policy headaches than have it rampaging around Finchley.
Leo Varadkar, not one to be left out of the public eye and since Brexit has taken a back seat joined in the affray and expelled a Russian fruit seller from Moore Street market in Dublin.
Unable to state as to the exact nature of the diplomat’s expulsion or whether the diplomat was somehow involved in the Skripal affair or was involved in some form of illegal activity, Leo expelled him anyway basing his decision on EU support for Britain which in turn is based on Britain's evidence or lack there off.
However, Syria, not being a world nuclear power, allied to Russia and Assad's regime having won the war much to the Wests angst, having been accused of once again using chemical weapons in the Douma gas attack, did warrant such an attack, as Syria was incapable to respond in kind.
The UK, France and USA dutifully obliged with over 100 missile launches. But without the British public's approval through parliament and which indicates Britain's decline towards a dictatorship since dictators tend to rule by command while generally democracies rule by deliberation, arbitration and end with a vote.
Russian supplied defence systems reportedly shot down the vast majority thus reducing the potential effect of their concerted effort and greatly reducing the amount of destruction.
Destroyed in the bombing raid was what they described as Assad's chemical weapons laboratories. Russia vociferously complained and repeated the threats that it had issued before the raid.
But let us consider
The Skripals, father and daughter, Sergei and Yulia, and nothing to do with meerkats, having jumped back from the precipice of impending death and miraculously survived a deadly Novichok nerve gas attack, are improving every day and are recuperating in a secured environment. They are still as yet unseen by the public eye....an eye that these days seems to have a patch over it!
Assad and his regime have suffered no military setback whatsoever and are on route to full military success.
Russia, well Russia and her oligarch's are still here and so are the greater number of Her diplomats and Her bearish language. But one thing She has learned, based on the Skripal case is that Her much tabooed Novichoks are certainly nowhere near as virulent as they originally thought....Sergei and his daughter's survival prove this.
But we need to ask, did May and her chums agree to a ‘deconfliction’ notice being served on Russia and Syria before the most recent attack as had happened with the US bombing of the al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs last April 2017?
Corbyn once castigated as a traitor for questioning the validity of the evidence of the Skripal attack now finds himself vindicated and free to return to sort out the much hyped government pro Israeli driven media reports of antisemitism within the Labour ranks....
Perhaps we should set aside the irrelevant question of where is Theresa May going with this since no-one including May has the answer but more relevantly we should be asking where is Roman Abromovich?
Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich having proven in the past how little he suffers fools for managers has somehow allowed Conti unrestrained management of his precious Chelsea football club. A manager who would have the gall to declare to Abramovich that they were fighting for a possible 4th place but looking more realistically at Thursday night European football next season would have been quickly dispatched to the cold and hostile Steppes.
No, not this time for Conti who has ruled unchallenged. Abramovich, once courted by the press, has now seemingly resigned himself to a reclusive lifestyle and is rarely seen in public and this behaviour beginning long before the Skripal debacle.
Was Roman made aware by his Oligarch masters of what was about to befall the Skripals and the possible fallout from this action and subsequently ordered to get their money out as soon as possible leading on to May's empty threat of freezing the Oligarchs assets in London. Did the oligarchs, aware of what was coming down, suddenly appear on Roman's London doorstep and order him home.........with their money!!!!!!
Staying on football and despite the team's resurgence, Mike Ashley's sale of Newcastle also looks set to be dampened down ever so slightly as funding may prove problematic.
As the oligarchs flee back across the North Sea and as Saudi Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman has locked up all his wealthy rivalries and relatives and confiscated their assets, as he has laid siege to Qatar and in doing so split the Emirates and is in financial difficulties over his war crime actions in Yemen, Ashley may have to look west to USA...but what Yank wants to spend hundreds of millions in north east England!!!!!!!
One final thought
Based on current events and their crude Western hypocrisy isn’t it amazing what wins an Oscar these days!
Sean Mallory is a Tyrone republican and TPQ columnist
– The Stranglers, Strange Little Girl – 1988
I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses: gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected. - Winston S. Churchill: departmental minute (Churchill papers: 16/16) 12 May 1919 War Office
The UK sold several chemical weapons ingredients to Syria, back in 2012/13 – with explicit approval from then-prime minister David Cameron.
Air strikes in Syria were about saying "enough is enough" over the use of chemical weapons, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson – BBC – 15/04/2018.
Making the first defence of this claim since Porton Down scientists said they could only describe the agent as novichok, but not ascertain its country of origin, Johnson implied he had never said Porton Down told him Russia was responsible. – The Guardian - 15/04/2018
.....the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has confirmed the British finding that the nerve agent was that described by British scientists, but again did not say the agent could only have been made in Russia. – The Guardian – 15/04/2018
“I was with my family in the basement of my home three hundred metres from here on the night but all the doctors know what happened. There was a lot of shelling [by government forces] and aircraft were always over Douma at night – but on this night, there was wind and huge dust clouds began to come into the basements and cellars where people lived. People began to arrive here suffering from hypoxia, oxygen loss. Then someone at the door, a “White Helmet”, shouted “Gas!”, and a panic began. People started throwing water over each other. Yes, the video was filmed here, it is genuine, but what you see are people suffering from hypoxia – not gas poisoning. ... Before we go any further, readers should be aware that this is not the only story in Douma. There are the many people I talked to amid the ruins of the town who said they had “never believed in” gas stories – which were usually put about, they claimed, by the armed Islamist groups. - Robert Fisk – Independent – 17/04/2018.
Ignoring their own crude hypocrisy to recent approval of the use of chemical weapons and building upon the Skripal attack, May and Macron and under the directorship of Agent Orange – US President Donald Trump, continue to heap more accusations of using banned chemical weapons on the Russians through Bashir Assad's regime’s alleged use of gas to attack the people of Douma. Both incidents, backed by strong Russian denial, lack clarity of evidence and especially rational motives, but both do raise more questions than they answer.
The Skripal offense once the darling of the British tabloid front page and which slavishly and repeatedly printed unsubstantiated British Government press releases, echoed around the world the immoral and unethical aspects of such an attack – an affront to humanity!
But as the hysteria began to settle and more probing questions began to be raised, the Skripal case as first explained by the British Government began to unravel. Johnston, the British Foreign Secretary, began to flounder in his responses and earlier claims and comments came back to publicly deride and ridicule him.
Although initially portrayed by May as a crime against Europe, another clumsy attempt at seeking favour while trying to sow division among the 27 members, and the extended world (let us not leave out the USA) didn’t warrant attack on Russia's chemical weapons facilities but mere diplomatic expulsions. It's better to leave the Russian bear with some form of chemical relief for its foreign policy headaches than have it rampaging around Finchley.
Leo Varadkar, not one to be left out of the public eye and since Brexit has taken a back seat joined in the affray and expelled a Russian fruit seller from Moore Street market in Dublin.
Unable to state as to the exact nature of the diplomat’s expulsion or whether the diplomat was somehow involved in the Skripal affair or was involved in some form of illegal activity, Leo expelled him anyway basing his decision on EU support for Britain which in turn is based on Britain's evidence or lack there off.
However, Syria, not being a world nuclear power, allied to Russia and Assad's regime having won the war much to the Wests angst, having been accused of once again using chemical weapons in the Douma gas attack, did warrant such an attack, as Syria was incapable to respond in kind.
The UK, France and USA dutifully obliged with over 100 missile launches. But without the British public's approval through parliament and which indicates Britain's decline towards a dictatorship since dictators tend to rule by command while generally democracies rule by deliberation, arbitration and end with a vote.
Russian supplied defence systems reportedly shot down the vast majority thus reducing the potential effect of their concerted effort and greatly reducing the amount of destruction.
Destroyed in the bombing raid was what they described as Assad's chemical weapons laboratories. Russia vociferously complained and repeated the threats that it had issued before the raid.
But let us consider
The Skripals, father and daughter, Sergei and Yulia, and nothing to do with meerkats, having jumped back from the precipice of impending death and miraculously survived a deadly Novichok nerve gas attack, are improving every day and are recuperating in a secured environment. They are still as yet unseen by the public eye....an eye that these days seems to have a patch over it!
Assad and his regime have suffered no military setback whatsoever and are on route to full military success.
Russia, well Russia and her oligarch's are still here and so are the greater number of Her diplomats and Her bearish language. But one thing She has learned, based on the Skripal case is that Her much tabooed Novichoks are certainly nowhere near as virulent as they originally thought....Sergei and his daughter's survival prove this.
But we need to ask, did May and her chums agree to a ‘deconfliction’ notice being served on Russia and Syria before the most recent attack as had happened with the US bombing of the al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs last April 2017?
Corbyn once castigated as a traitor for questioning the validity of the evidence of the Skripal attack now finds himself vindicated and free to return to sort out the much hyped government pro Israeli driven media reports of antisemitism within the Labour ranks....
120. Despite significant press and public attention on the Labour Party, and a number of revelations regarding inappropriate social media content, there exists no reliable, empirical evidence to support the notion that there is a higher prevalence of antisemitic attitudes within the Labour Party than any other political party - House of Commons Home Affairs Committee: Antisemitism in the UK, Tenth Report of Session 2016–17.
Perhaps we should set aside the irrelevant question of where is Theresa May going with this since no-one including May has the answer but more relevantly we should be asking where is Roman Abromovich?
Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich having proven in the past how little he suffers fools for managers has somehow allowed Conti unrestrained management of his precious Chelsea football club. A manager who would have the gall to declare to Abramovich that they were fighting for a possible 4th place but looking more realistically at Thursday night European football next season would have been quickly dispatched to the cold and hostile Steppes.
No, not this time for Conti who has ruled unchallenged. Abramovich, once courted by the press, has now seemingly resigned himself to a reclusive lifestyle and is rarely seen in public and this behaviour beginning long before the Skripal debacle.
Was Roman made aware by his Oligarch masters of what was about to befall the Skripals and the possible fallout from this action and subsequently ordered to get their money out as soon as possible leading on to May's empty threat of freezing the Oligarchs assets in London. Did the oligarchs, aware of what was coming down, suddenly appear on Roman's London doorstep and order him home.........with their money!!!!!!
Staying on football and despite the team's resurgence, Mike Ashley's sale of Newcastle also looks set to be dampened down ever so slightly as funding may prove problematic.
As the oligarchs flee back across the North Sea and as Saudi Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman has locked up all his wealthy rivalries and relatives and confiscated their assets, as he has laid siege to Qatar and in doing so split the Emirates and is in financial difficulties over his war crime actions in Yemen, Ashley may have to look west to USA...but what Yank wants to spend hundreds of millions in north east England!!!!!!!
One final thought
Based on current events and their crude Western hypocrisy isn’t it amazing what wins an Oscar these days!
Sean Mallory is a Tyrone republican and TPQ columnist
Radio Free Eireann Broadcasting 21 April 2018
Martin Galvin
with details of this weekend's broadcast from
Radio Free Eireann.
Mark Thompson of Relatives for Justice will discuss a new bipartisan initiative in Congress backing families of legacy victims killed by British or their paid agents, in their fight to get truth and justice from the crown.
Cormac O'Malley , will report on the Belfast launch of the new book The Men Will Talk To Me: Ernie O'Malley's Interviews with the Northern Divisions , a collection of interviews conducted and recorded by his father, famed Irish Republican Ernie O'Malley, of interviews with IRA Volunteers who fought during the War of Independence and Civil War.
We will have a special report on Mayor Di Blasio's latest moves against New York's famed Horse drawn Carriages in Central Park.
We will have a final update on April 24th in Albany, which will now include formal resolutions in the New York State Senate and Assembly honoring the centennial of Ireland's 1918 Vote for Freedom which gave a democratic mandate to the Easter Rising and Proclamation as well as information about the Irish Freedom's Easter Commemoration on Sunday April 22nd.
John McDonagh and Martin Galvin co- host.
Radio Free Eireann is heard Saturdays at 12 Noon New York time on wbai 99.5 FM and wbai.org.
It can be heard at wbai.org in Ireland from 5pm to 6pm or anytime after the program concludes on wbai.org/archives.
Mark Thompson of Relatives for Justice will discuss a new bipartisan initiative in Congress backing families of legacy victims killed by British or their paid agents, in their fight to get truth and justice from the crown.
Cormac O'Malley , will report on the Belfast launch of the new book The Men Will Talk To Me: Ernie O'Malley's Interviews with the Northern Divisions , a collection of interviews conducted and recorded by his father, famed Irish Republican Ernie O'Malley, of interviews with IRA Volunteers who fought during the War of Independence and Civil War.
We will have a special report on Mayor Di Blasio's latest moves against New York's famed Horse drawn Carriages in Central Park.
We will have a final update on April 24th in Albany, which will now include formal resolutions in the New York State Senate and Assembly honoring the centennial of Ireland's 1918 Vote for Freedom which gave a democratic mandate to the Easter Rising and Proclamation as well as information about the Irish Freedom's Easter Commemoration on Sunday April 22nd.
John McDonagh and Martin Galvin co- host.
Radio Free Eireann is heard Saturdays at 12 Noon New York time on wbai 99.5 FM and wbai.org.
It can be heard at wbai.org in Ireland from 5pm to 6pm or anytime after the program concludes on wbai.org/archives.
April 20, 2018
Belfast Noir
Christopher Owens reviews a collection of short stories.
Add caption
A good short story collection should be something that can be dipped into at leisure and enjoyed in isolation. The best ones, however, have a flow and rhyme to them that connect all the stories, no matter how disparate the writing style, and make the reader feel they're reading a proper novel.
There are examples of such a thing: The Informers by Bret Easton Ellis, War All the Time by Charles Bukowski, Dubliners, Metamorphosis and Other Stories . It's an art form in itself, and a highly underrated one.
So this collection, first published in 2014, has the capability of joining the illustrious ranks of the ones above, because each story is set in a different part of the city. Going from the historical battlefield of the Falls Road, through to the leafy suburbs of Dundonald and the grim, decaying streets of the Shore Road, there is a lot of scope here for the writers to explore.
On top of that, you have the term 'noir' and all the usual connotations. A lot of people just think it means 'dark', but it's so much more than that. The best noir conjures up an amoral world where supposed heroes are more corrupt than the supposed bad guys and cynicism runs through every page.
The introduction sets the tone pretty well:
Fertile ground for the creative mind, certainly. But does Belfast Noir stand up to this hyperbole?
Truthfully, it does and it doesn't.
When it does, it's less about the plots and more about the atmosphere on display. Take Lucy Caldwell's brilliantly twisted 'Poison', where a young woman has a chance sighting in a bar that triggers memories of past liaisons as a school girl. When you're reading it, you find yourself sucked into the listless suburbs that remained untouched by the violence, but always had a certain tension regardless.
The perfect example is the legendary Eoin McNamee's inclusion, 'Corpse Flowers', the most enjoyable and striking piece in this collection. Written in the form of a report, switching from CCTV camera to press conferences, it's an engrossing search for a murderer written in that distinctive McNamee style. A mix of the gritty, the esoteric and an awareness of how the past suffocates the present. It's intoxicating.
Take this for example:
Retreading hallowed ground does that to the mind, and McNamee's ability to tap into this section of our subconscious marks him out as a genuinely unique Irish writer.
Gerard Brennan's 'Ligature' is an ambitious attempt to tell a tale from the perspective of a teenage girl in Hydebank Young Offenders Centre. It doesn't work in places, due to the narrative being a bit too linear for this sort of person, but it manages to pull together for the chilling denouement.
Other stories do a decent job, but don't connect in the same way. Garbhan Downey's 'Die Like a Rat', if included in another anthology, could be considered an amusing and persuasive piece about the power that woman can exude over men. Here, it feels like an outtake from a Guy Ritchie movie.
Likewise, 'Rosie Grant's Fingers' (written by Claire McGowan). Maybe if expanded into a longer tale and included elsewhere, it could be seen as enjoyable pot boiler material. Here, it feels incongruous and the local references quite laboured.
The most puzzling inclusion (and certainly the weakest story) is Ruth Dudley Edwards' tale 'Taking it Serious.' On it's own merit, it's a well crafted story with an ending that somehow reminded me of the ending for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. However, despite it having virtually nothing to do with noir, what really irritates is her heavy handed metaphors (an autistic teenager involved in dissident republicanism and an "in the closet" former Provo who can't bring himself to admit his former organisation were defeated).
Of course, anyone who is aware of her writings will know of her political leanings, and it's certainly not uncommon for a writer crafting a story (be it a short one or a novel) to include some of these views in the plot. But metaphors of this ilk should be subtle, not bludgeoning.
In conclusion, it's a good collection that threatens to be great but falls short. Someone needs to take this format and write the ultimate short story collection about Belfast. We live in a fascinating time, always in a state of becoming but never actually being. Imagine someone taking that setting, throwing in the clipped prose of James M. Cain and the arcane worldview of Neil Gaiman.
That would be the greatest short story collection ever.
Belfast Noir edited by Adrian McKinty and Stuart Neville. Akashic. ISBN-13: 978-1617752919
Christopher Owens reviews for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland.Follow Christopher Owens on Twitter @MrOwens212
Add captionA good short story collection should be something that can be dipped into at leisure and enjoyed in isolation. The best ones, however, have a flow and rhyme to them that connect all the stories, no matter how disparate the writing style, and make the reader feel they're reading a proper novel.
There are examples of such a thing: The Informers by Bret Easton Ellis, War All the Time by Charles Bukowski, Dubliners, Metamorphosis and Other Stories . It's an art form in itself, and a highly underrated one.
So this collection, first published in 2014, has the capability of joining the illustrious ranks of the ones above, because each story is set in a different part of the city. Going from the historical battlefield of the Falls Road, through to the leafy suburbs of Dundonald and the grim, decaying streets of the Shore Road, there is a lot of scope here for the writers to explore.
On top of that, you have the term 'noir' and all the usual connotations. A lot of people just think it means 'dark', but it's so much more than that. The best noir conjures up an amoral world where supposed heroes are more corrupt than the supposed bad guys and cynicism runs through every page.
The introduction sets the tone pretty well:
Few European cities have had as disturbed and violent a history as Belfast over the last half-century. For much of that time the Troubles (1968-1998) dominated life in Ireland's second largest city, and during the darkest days of the conflict - in the 1970s and 1980s - riots, bombings and indiscriminate shootings were tragically commonplace. Reflecting a city still divided, 'Belfast Noir' serves as a record of a city transitioning to normalcy, or perhaps as a warning that underneath the fragile peace darker forces still lurk.
Fertile ground for the creative mind, certainly. But does Belfast Noir stand up to this hyperbole?
Truthfully, it does and it doesn't.
When it does, it's less about the plots and more about the atmosphere on display. Take Lucy Caldwell's brilliantly twisted 'Poison', where a young woman has a chance sighting in a bar that triggers memories of past liaisons as a school girl. When you're reading it, you find yourself sucked into the listless suburbs that remained untouched by the violence, but always had a certain tension regardless.
The perfect example is the legendary Eoin McNamee's inclusion, 'Corpse Flowers', the most enjoyable and striking piece in this collection. Written in the form of a report, switching from CCTV camera to press conferences, it's an engrossing search for a murderer written in that distinctive McNamee style. A mix of the gritty, the esoteric and an awareness of how the past suffocates the present. It's intoxicating.
Take this for example:
You could see tramlines in the car park surface. The grid lines of long-gone streets. Men in belted coats standing at intersections, drab-suited kapos. Cold War phantoms. Letting you know you'd come under their remit. Their ghost authority.
Retreading hallowed ground does that to the mind, and McNamee's ability to tap into this section of our subconscious marks him out as a genuinely unique Irish writer.
Gerard Brennan's 'Ligature' is an ambitious attempt to tell a tale from the perspective of a teenage girl in Hydebank Young Offenders Centre. It doesn't work in places, due to the narrative being a bit too linear for this sort of person, but it manages to pull together for the chilling denouement.
Other stories do a decent job, but don't connect in the same way. Garbhan Downey's 'Die Like a Rat', if included in another anthology, could be considered an amusing and persuasive piece about the power that woman can exude over men. Here, it feels like an outtake from a Guy Ritchie movie.
Likewise, 'Rosie Grant's Fingers' (written by Claire McGowan). Maybe if expanded into a longer tale and included elsewhere, it could be seen as enjoyable pot boiler material. Here, it feels incongruous and the local references quite laboured.
The most puzzling inclusion (and certainly the weakest story) is Ruth Dudley Edwards' tale 'Taking it Serious.' On it's own merit, it's a well crafted story with an ending that somehow reminded me of the ending for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. However, despite it having virtually nothing to do with noir, what really irritates is her heavy handed metaphors (an autistic teenager involved in dissident republicanism and an "in the closet" former Provo who can't bring himself to admit his former organisation were defeated).
Of course, anyone who is aware of her writings will know of her political leanings, and it's certainly not uncommon for a writer crafting a story (be it a short one or a novel) to include some of these views in the plot. But metaphors of this ilk should be subtle, not bludgeoning.
In conclusion, it's a good collection that threatens to be great but falls short. Someone needs to take this format and write the ultimate short story collection about Belfast. We live in a fascinating time, always in a state of becoming but never actually being. Imagine someone taking that setting, throwing in the clipped prose of James M. Cain and the arcane worldview of Neil Gaiman.
That would be the greatest short story collection ever.
Belfast Noir edited by Adrian McKinty and Stuart Neville. Akashic. ISBN-13: 978-1617752919
Christopher Owens reviews for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland.Follow Christopher Owens on Twitter @MrOwens212
April 19, 2018
Liar And Nincompoop
Mick Hall pours scorn on Boris Johnson. Once again Boris Johnson has been exposed as a liar, and a nincompoop not fit for high office and Mrs May is little better leaving him in place.
When the Tory government cries jump it’s not the job of the leader of the opposition to reply how high prime minister. One of their jobs is to winkle out the facts and if they find them wanting to demand complete governmental transparency, so the British people can make up their own minds about the issue involved.
When the brouhaha exploded after Sergei and Yulia Skripal were poisoned in Salisbury, instead of ascertaining the facts clearly and then exposing the perpetrators of this crime, the British government responded in a knee jerk ideological manner. May and Johnson immediately hit the phones and the TV news studios armed with only circumstantial evidence to help put Putin and Russia in the frame.
Acting as if they hadn't learnt a damn thing from the mistakes of the Blair led Labour government which with the collusion of the British security services produced a dodgy dossier which claimed Saddam had WMD which could target British facilities within 45 minutes. Not only was this total bunkum it turned out the Iraqi dictator was telling the truth when he said Iraq had destroyed it's weapons of mass destruction.
It's become increasingly clear like the government, the MSM have no idea who poisoned the Skripal's, but this did not stop them aping their Tory masters, claiming Putin was behind this dastardly deed and Mrs May must act against Russia.
Not giving a thought to the simply fact if there were cast-iron evidence the Russian state was behind the attack,' Theresa May would have made it public and rightly so, but instead they published the type of drivel which at the time could be heard in any Salisbury tavern.
There was a voice of sanity, Jeremy Corbyn suggested we should not jump to conclusions until the facts are known with certainty. Rather than recognising a voice of reason, after all there was no need to rush. The Skripals were not dead or dying. We now know instead of clinging to life by a single thread, they were in recovery in a Salisbury hospital.
The police, the security services and Portland Down were all on the case, why did the government not wait until their investigations were completed and then make a decisions about how to act.
But no, instead of pondering on his words in parliament Jeremy was howled down by the Tories and the turncoats on his own side. Keen to get in on the act two bit politicians and the British media accused him of all sorts of ignominy, he was a traitor, a Kremlin stooge a commie lover, a national disgrace, need I go on.
But as Mary Dejevsky wrote in the Independent on Sunday:
Boris Johnson has once again been exposed as a liar, and a nincompoop not fit for high office, after it came to light he lied in an interview broadcast on Deutsche Welle. In the clip which emerged he is blustering and bullshiting, eventually claiming he had been personally assured by the ministry of defence establishment at Portland Down that the novichok nerve agent had definitely come from Russia.
A separate foreign office tweet now removed suggested similar confidence on the part of the UK ambassador to Russia.
Is there an outcry from Tory MP's demanding Johnson is sacked? Far from it, they rally around him. Good old Boris they cry, never mind he has a long history of telling lies and being found out. He lied about his affairs when he betrayed his wife, he lied to his employers when a journalist in Brussels, he lied during the EU referendum, and as Foreign secretary his crass stupidity has left a young mother locked up in a Tehran jail.
Yet knowing all this what does the Murdoch press do, they give Johnson a column in the Sunday Times, not to apologise and beg forgiveness, nor to announce his resignation but to further smear Jeremy Corbyn.
Mary Dejevsky who is far from a Corbyn supporter sums up:
More sleight of hand?
As if on cue, we now have Johnson at the UN attempting to form a war coalition to attack Syria after unsubstantiated allegations which have not been independently verified about a chemical weapons attack in the town of Douma.
It's worth noting no western journalists are reporting from the Syrian town of Douma, they write and send their copy from eastern Turkey, Beirut, or Damascus; which is controlled by the Syrian government. Why? because they fear Jaish al-Islam, the Islamic militia which controls the town of Douma will kidnap them or chop their heads off, yet if you read the articles of the majority of these hacks, they seem to believe every word these terrorists say.
Think what you will but it seems to me there is a direct link between the rush to explain the poisoning of the Skripal's and the rush to find the Syrian government guilty of attacking the town of Douma with chemical weapons.
I have no idea who was responsible for either, but I do recognises a post imperialists when they are stoking the flames of war.
Mick Hall blogs @ Organized Rage.
Follow Mick Hall on Twitter @organizedrage
When the Tory government cries jump it’s not the job of the leader of the opposition to reply how high prime minister. One of their jobs is to winkle out the facts and if they find them wanting to demand complete governmental transparency, so the British people can make up their own minds about the issue involved.
When the brouhaha exploded after Sergei and Yulia Skripal were poisoned in Salisbury, instead of ascertaining the facts clearly and then exposing the perpetrators of this crime, the British government responded in a knee jerk ideological manner. May and Johnson immediately hit the phones and the TV news studios armed with only circumstantial evidence to help put Putin and Russia in the frame.
Acting as if they hadn't learnt a damn thing from the mistakes of the Blair led Labour government which with the collusion of the British security services produced a dodgy dossier which claimed Saddam had WMD which could target British facilities within 45 minutes. Not only was this total bunkum it turned out the Iraqi dictator was telling the truth when he said Iraq had destroyed it's weapons of mass destruction.
It's become increasingly clear like the government, the MSM have no idea who poisoned the Skripal's, but this did not stop them aping their Tory masters, claiming Putin was behind this dastardly deed and Mrs May must act against Russia.
Not giving a thought to the simply fact if there were cast-iron evidence the Russian state was behind the attack,' Theresa May would have made it public and rightly so, but instead they published the type of drivel which at the time could be heard in any Salisbury tavern.
There was a voice of sanity, Jeremy Corbyn suggested we should not jump to conclusions until the facts are known with certainty. Rather than recognising a voice of reason, after all there was no need to rush. The Skripals were not dead or dying. We now know instead of clinging to life by a single thread, they were in recovery in a Salisbury hospital.
The police, the security services and Portland Down were all on the case, why did the government not wait until their investigations were completed and then make a decisions about how to act.
But no, instead of pondering on his words in parliament Jeremy was howled down by the Tories and the turncoats on his own side. Keen to get in on the act two bit politicians and the British media accused him of all sorts of ignominy, he was a traitor, a Kremlin stooge a commie lover, a national disgrace, need I go on.
But as Mary Dejevsky wrote in the Independent on Sunday:
The air of utter certainty which has distinguished the approach of the prime minister, the foreign secretary and the defence secretary from the start, and persuaded the vast majority of EU countries and a host of other useful idiots to join a collective expulsion of Russian diplomats, might have been – how shall we say? – a tad premature.
Boris Johnson has once again been exposed as a liar, and a nincompoop not fit for high office, after it came to light he lied in an interview broadcast on Deutsche Welle. In the clip which emerged he is blustering and bullshiting, eventually claiming he had been personally assured by the ministry of defence establishment at Portland Down that the novichok nerve agent had definitely come from Russia.
A separate foreign office tweet now removed suggested similar confidence on the part of the UK ambassador to Russia.
Is there an outcry from Tory MP's demanding Johnson is sacked? Far from it, they rally around him. Good old Boris they cry, never mind he has a long history of telling lies and being found out. He lied about his affairs when he betrayed his wife, he lied to his employers when a journalist in Brussels, he lied during the EU referendum, and as Foreign secretary his crass stupidity has left a young mother locked up in a Tehran jail.
Yet knowing all this what does the Murdoch press do, they give Johnson a column in the Sunday Times, not to apologise and beg forgiveness, nor to announce his resignation but to further smear Jeremy Corbyn.
Mary Dejevsky who is far from a Corbyn supporter sums up:
It is hard not to remember other elements of this saga, such as the UK’s certainty that the nerve agent was from the novichok family – to which was then added, or something similar. The now happily disproved confidence that such an attack was almost bound to be fatal, and the fact that Russia offered to cooperate and that it was Russia that first proposed the involvement of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. This move was most recently called “perverse”, in a UK statement on the eve of its meeting.
All in all, it is hard with hindsight not to regard Jeremy Corbyn’s caution against rushing to judgement as wise, and an approach that would have strengthened the current position of HM opposition if only his MPs had united behind it.
A senior government minister and his department have been caught out in falsehoods, and those falsehoods have underpinned a foreign policy track that pulled dozens of other countries in behind us. This would seem to me to be a resigning matter for the foreign secretary – especially as it entails a fault – the fault of truth-bending – on which he has form. If the claims made by the UK about Russia and the Skripal's show more signs of unravelling, then more heads must roll. The heads of the two intelligence services – MI5 and MI6 – whose predecessors should have had to resign over Iraq – and who come under the auspices of the Foreign Office.
All that would then protect the prime minister would be the perils of Brexit and the reluctance of anyone else at such a time to want the job. Meanwhile there is relief in the Kremlin – believe it or not, the professionalism of Russia’s own communications has come in for domestic criticism over the Skripal case – and Vladimir Putin is expected before too long at the White House.
More sleight of hand?
As if on cue, we now have Johnson at the UN attempting to form a war coalition to attack Syria after unsubstantiated allegations which have not been independently verified about a chemical weapons attack in the town of Douma.
It's worth noting no western journalists are reporting from the Syrian town of Douma, they write and send their copy from eastern Turkey, Beirut, or Damascus; which is controlled by the Syrian government. Why? because they fear Jaish al-Islam, the Islamic militia which controls the town of Douma will kidnap them or chop their heads off, yet if you read the articles of the majority of these hacks, they seem to believe every word these terrorists say.
Think what you will but it seems to me there is a direct link between the rush to explain the poisoning of the Skripal's and the rush to find the Syrian government guilty of attacking the town of Douma with chemical weapons.
I have no idea who was responsible for either, but I do recognises a post imperialists when they are stoking the flames of war.
Mick Hall blogs @ Organized Rage.Follow Mick Hall on Twitter @organizedrage
Anthony McIntyre's Blog
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