Our Glorious Leader

This Labour government, which includes Gordon Brown as much as it does Tony Blair, is party to a war crime of monstrous proportions. Yet our political consensus prevents any judicial or civil society response. Britain is paralysed by its own indifference.

At a time when we are celebrating our enlightened abolition of slavery 200 years ago, we are continuing to commit one of the worst international abuses of human rights of the past half-century. It is inexplicable how we allowed this to happen. It is inexplicable why we are not demanding this government’s mass resignation.

Two hundred years from now, the Iraq war will be mourned as the moment when Britain violated its delicate democratic constitution and joined the ranks of nations that use extreme pre-emptive killing as a tactic of foreign policy. Some anniversary that will be.
· Richard Horton is a doctor and the editor of the Lancet
(Source: The Guardian)

Today is a beautiful, sunny day. The top news story at the moment is the 15 British soldiers being held by Iran. Blair has already lodged a complaint. Apparently, he doesn’t like it when Iran kidnaps British citizens and holds them ilegally. When the US does the same, he doesn’t say a word.

I have a feeling of un-reality. For the past four years I’ve been writing and marching, protesting against what I feel is the single most evil act the British government has carried out in my lifetime. I’ve been part of a movement that includes millions of other Britons.

And yet… our mass media consistently under reports this huge political protest at the same time as it hushes up the mass murder that we have carried out in Iraq.

I often get emails complaining about my branding of Blair and his cohort as war criminals. I’m exaggerating, these writers claim, we haven’t killed thousands of Iraqis. Why do I keep calling the leader of our nation Butcher Blair? Things like this happen:

On Sept. 27, the Guardian published a front-page photograph of Tony Blair, a prima facie war criminal, his arms outstretched, his grin fixed. Beside this was a headline, “Charm and eloquence. But a missed chance.” Beneath this, Polly Toynbee wrote: “There were some damp eyes dabbed with hankies and men blowing noses. ‘Don’t go,’ someone said.”
(Source: Antiwar.com)

Polly Toynbee appears to be in love with Blair. The man can pre-emptively attack a non-aggressor nation, can lie to Parliament and connive in the slaughter of 655,000 innocent people and she still swoons when he makes a cracking speech.

Surely this is the same level of insanity as the worship of Hitler? Maybe back then people just ignored their suspicions about where their Jewish neighbours had disappeared to and thanked Adolf for a great economy? Did life just carry on for the average, non-Jewish German much as we carry on today, distracted by a media full of footballers and reality TV fodder, never tackling the crime we’re a party to?

The rubbishing of the Lancet report, the best scientific estimate we have so far of how many Iraqis we’ve killed, is part of a systematic program instigated by Blair and New Labour to deny and hide their war crimes.

The fact that we have a war criminal in Number 10 should be the top news story today and every single day until he is removed from office and put on trial.