Invading Iraq is what we did instead of tackling climate change

Original article well said by Adam Ramsay republished from openDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

OPINION: Instead of launching a war, the US and UK could have weaned us off the fossil fuels that pay for the brutal regimes of dictators

Traitor Tony Blair receives the Congressional Gold Medal of Honour from George 'Dubya' Bush
Traitor Tony Blair receives the Congressional Gold Medal of Honour from George ‘Dubya’ Bush

Twenty years ago today, [20 March] war was once again unleashed on Baghdad. In the UK – and much of the rest of the world – people sat in front of their TVs watching the skies above the ancient city flash with flame as buildings were rendered to rubble, the limbs and lives inside crushed.

The real victims of George Bush and Tony Blair’s shock and awe were, of course, the people of Iraq. Estimates of violent deaths range from a hundred thousand to a million. That doesn’t include the arms and legs that were lost, the families devastated, the melted minds and broken souls, trauma that will shatter down generations. It doesn’t include anyone killed in the conflict since then: there are still British and US troops in the country. It doesn’t include the poverty resulting from crushed infrastructure, the hopes abandoned and the potential immolated.

And that’s just the 2003 war: Britain has bombed Iraq in seven of the last 11 decades.

But in far gentler ways, the war was to shape the lives of those watching through their TVs, too. The invasion of Iraq – along with the other post-9/11 wars – was a road our governments chose irrevocably to drive us down. And we, too, have been changed by the journey.

The financial cost of the Iraq war to the US government, up to 2020, is estimated at $2trn. The post-9/11 wars together cost the US around $8trn, a quarter of its debt of $31trn. Much of the money was borrowed from foreign governments, in a debt boom which, some economists have argued, played a key role in the 2008 crash.

It was in this period, in particular, that China bought up billions of dollars of US government debt. Just before Barack Obama was elected in 2008, Beijing had overtaken Tokyo as the world’s largest holder of US Treasury bonds. Today, America’s neoconservatives are obsessed with China’s power over the US. What they rarely mention is that this was delivered by their wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Britain’s financial contribution was more meagre – in 2015 the UK government estimated it had spent £8.1bn on the invasion of Iraq, and around £21bn on Afghanistan. But these are hardly figures to be sniffed at.

Also significant, in both cases, is where this money went: the Iraq war saw a revolution in the outsourcing of violence. In 2003, when the war began, the UK foreign office spent £12.6m on private security firms. By 2015, just one contract – paying G4S to guard Britain’s embassy in Afghanistan – was worth £100m.

Over the course of the wars, the UK became the world centre for private military contractors – or, to use the old fashioned word, mercenaries. While many of these are private army units, others offer more specialist skills: retired senior British spooks now offer intelligence advice to central-Asian dictators and, as we found out with Cambridge Analytica during the Brexit vote, psychological operations teams who honed their skills in Iraq soon realised how much money they could make trialling their wares on the domestic population.

This vast expansion of the military industrial complex in both the US and UK hasn’t just done direct damage to our politics and economy – affecting the living standards of hundreds of millions of people across the world. It has also distorted our society, steered investment into militarised technology when research is desperately needed to address the climate and biodiversity crises.

Similarly, the war changed British politics. First, and perhaps most profoundly, because it was waged on a lie, perhaps the most notorious lie in modern Britain, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

Acres of text have been written about the rapid decline in public trust in politicians in the UK in recent years. Very few grapple with the basic point – that, within the memory of most voters, a prime minister looked us in the eye, and told us that he had to lead us into war, based on a threat that turned out to be fictional. There are lots of reasons people increasingly don’t trust politicians – and therefore trust democracy less and less. But the Iraq war is a long way up the list.

Obama – who had opposed the war – managed to rally some of that breakdown of trust into a positive movement (whatever you think of his presidency, the movement behind it was positive). So did the SNP in Scotland.

But often, it went the other way. If the war hadn’t happened, would Cleggmania have swung the 2010 election from Gordon Brown to David Cameron? Probably not. And this, of course, led to the second great lie of modern British politics, the one about tuition fees and austerity.

Without the invasion, would Donald Trump have won in 2016? Would Brexit have happened?

There is a generation of us – now approaching our 40s – who were coming into political consciousness as Iraq was bombed. Many of us marched against the war, many more were horrified by it. The generation before us – Gen X – were amazingly unpolitical. Coming of age in the 1990s, at the end of history, very few got involved in social movements or joined political parties.

When I was involved in student politics in the years following Bush and Blair’s invasion, student unions across the UK were smashing turnout records. Soon, those enraged by the war found Make Poverty History, the climate crisis, the financial crisis and austerity. A generation of political organisers grew up through climate camps and Occupy and became a leading force behind Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, helping organise a magnificent younger cohort of Gen-Zers which arrived after us.

But I shouldn’t end on a positive note. The disaster predicted by the millions across the world who marched against the war has played out. Hundreds of thousands have died. The Middle East continues to be dominated by dictators.

This war was justified on the grounds that Saddam was a threat to the world. But while his weapons of mass destruction were invented, scientists were already warning us about a very real risk; already telling us that we had a few short decades to address the climate crisis.

Rather than launching a war that would give the West access to some of the world’s largest oil reserves, the US and UK could have channelled their vast resources into weaning us off the fossil fuels that pay for the brutal regimes of dictators. Instead, we incinerated that money, and the world, with it.

Original article well said by Adam Ramsay republished from openDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Continue ReadingInvading Iraq is what we did instead of tackling climate change

Corbyn: We need to stand up for the future of our NHS

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/corbyn-we-need-to-stand-up-for-the-future-of-our-nhs

Image of Jeremy Corbyn and Hugo Chavez
Image of Jeremy Corbyn and Hugo Chavez

Labour’s former leader spoke to the Morning Star’s CEREN SAGIR this weekend on the party’s current trajectory on the NHS, during a huge demonstration against further privatisation of the health service

WHEN Peace and Justice Project founder and Islington North MP Jeremy Corbyn warned the public by revealing evidence of the Tory government’s secret dealings with US companies selling off the NHS, the media labelled it “a Russian conspiracy.”

But it seems that Labour’s current leadership is determined to follow in the Tories’ footsteps, with Keir Starmer declaring that nothing is “off limits” when it comes to the NHS.

When asked if the NHS would be safe in the hands of the opposition if it were to win the next general election, Corbyn said: “I’d like to think so, but I’m very worried — because our NHS is a very precious institution: healthcare, universal and free at the point of need.

“If we go into an election pledged to continue the private operation within the NHS and farming services out to the private sector, then that is a form of privatisation.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/corbyn-we-need-to-stand-up-for-the-future-of-our-nhs

Continue ReadingCorbyn: We need to stand up for the future of our NHS

Starmer’s Labour abstains on vote to protect journalists from state persecution, allowing Tory win

Original article republished from the Skwawkbox for non-Commercial use.

Yet another shameful episode from ‘long-time servant of the security state’ Starmer

Image of Keir Starmer, thanks to The Skwawkbox

The UK’s lurch toward fascism continued last night with yet another shameful – and shamefully unsurprising – episode of cowardice and betrayal by Keir Starmer and the shell of the Labour party under his control.

With the Tories’ repressive ‘National Security Bill’ in the Lords last night, the Green party tried to rally support to protect journalists – and investigative journalism and therefore the interests of the UK people – from persecution under a bill widely recognised to be a measure to give the government freedom to act without scrutiny or accountability, turning the UK into a mini-US in its treatment of journalists for doing their job.

Even a handful of Tories in Parliament have pointed out that such vital revelations as the ‘Panama papers’ would not have been possible under the new bill and that the rights of women, minority groups and the wellbeing of citizens are under severe threat from the proposed new law.

So the Greens in the Lords called a vote to protect journalists – for the sake of all this country’s people. It was defeated, because Keir Starmer whipped Labour peers to abstain.

Keir Starmer has been called a ‘long-time servant of the British security state’ and his affiliations have been expressed in votes to protect state agents from even such crimes as rape and murder, his attacks on environmental and human rights protesters, his support for immunity for soldiers who murdered civilians in Northern Ireland and more. So his action in the Lords vote last night should surprise no one, but his decision to whip for abstention and engineer the defeat of the motion rather vote against it directly is another manifestation of his fundamental spinelessness.

He is avidly helping push this country along the road to fascism, but doesn’t have the moral courage even to nail his colours to the mast, instead hoping that telling Labour representatives not to vote at all will lessen the backlash against his betrayal.

Original article republished from the Skwawkbox for non-Commercial use.

Continue ReadingStarmer’s Labour abstains on vote to protect journalists from state persecution, allowing Tory win

Selection AND executive committees of Broxtowe Labour resign over candidate stitch-up (yet another one)

Original article republished from the Skwawkbox for non-Commercial use.

Starmeroids block another popular local candidate – in favour of parachuted Blairites

Original article republished from the Skwawkbox for non-Commercial use.

Two entire Labour committees have resigned after yet another candidate selection stitch-up by Keir Starmer and his drones in the Labour party.

Local favourite Greg Marshall – backed by figures from a wide spectrum of the party – tweeted news that the party had blocked him from the shortlist:

https://twitter.com/Greg4Broxtowe/status/1630584801651576833?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1630584801651576833%7Ctwgr%5E6d5a211f691a00d078f3d8dd9d68508f2d26931e%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fskwawkbox.org%2F2023%2F02%2F28%2Fselection-and-executive-committees-of-broxtowe-labour-resign-over-candidate-stitch-up-yet-another-one%2F

In response to the shameless rigging, the local party (CLP) selection committee resigned and issued a withering statement about London officials overriding local democracy:

Shortly afterward, the entire CLP executive resigned too over the ‘undemocratic’ behaviour of the party and its national executive (NEC):

https://twitter.com/broxtowelabour/status/1630635411558023182?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1630635411558023182%7Ctwgr%5E6d5a211f691a00d078f3d8dd9d68508f2d26931e%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fskwawkbox.org%2F2023%2F02%2F28%2Fselection-and-executive-committees-of-broxtowe-labour-resign-over-candidate-stitch-up-yet-another-one%2F

Meanwhile, Anna Joy Rickard – a literal Blairite – was tweeting her joy at being shortlisted and was admonished by a local figure for her claim, when no shortlist had even been announced:

https://twitter.com/SuePaterson72/status/1630685168032776195?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1630685168032776195%7Ctwgr%5E6d5a211f691a00d078f3d8dd9d68508f2d26931e%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fskwawkbox.org%2F2023%2F02%2F28%2Fselection-and-executive-committees-of-broxtowe-labour-resign-over-candidate-stitch-up-yet-another-one%2F

Broxtowe is just the latest in a series of shamelessly-rigged selections as the Labour right tries to eradicate the left, both in seats that Labour does not hold and in those it does – and a repeat of Labour’s routine tactic of fixing selections by making sure members can only choose from a shortlist of approved Blairites.

SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.

Continue ReadingSelection AND executive committees of Broxtowe Labour resign over candidate stitch-up (yet another one)

Labour members pass motion demanding party stop rigging candidate selections

Original article republished form the Skwawkbox for non-Commercial use.

Motion condemns Starmer party’s attack on democracy

‘Democracy’ in Labour – often rigged before members even start to vote

Members of a Labour front-bencher’s local party passed a motion last week condemning the regime’s shameless rigging of party democracy and demanding to be allowed to select their candidates without interference.

Hornsey and Wood Green members voted strongly for the following emergency motion:

Selection of Candidates

HWG CLP notes the Labour Party’s assertion that it is a ‘democratic socialist party’ (Clause IV). HWG CLP further notes that Keir Starmer stated in February 2020:

‘The selections for Labour candidates needs to be more democratic, and we should end NEC impositions of candidates. Local party members should select their candidates for every election.’

HWG CLP agrees with this statement, and strongly believes that it should be the democratic right of constituency members to choose their prospective candidates and regrets that this is not being acted upon.

Keir Starmer’s statement on 15th February 2023 regarding Islington North [where Starmer is blocking former leader Jeremy Corbyn from standing as a Labour candidate], the imposition of shortlists in Wakefield, Bolton North East, and other constituencies, and the suspension or expulsion of very good potential candidates prior to selection processes commencing are all contrary to this democratic principle.

HWG CLP calls on the NEC to confirm that the selection of candidates is the democratic right of local Labour Party members and must be upheld. In Solidarity.

The motion, no doubt cautiously worded because of the regime’s readiness to punish members for speaking out against its misdeeds, triggered ludicrous responses from a few right-wingers – including the husband of one key Starmer adviser, who tried to argue that it was ‘anti-democratic’ for the ‘CLP’ to follow its own standing orders and hold a vote on whether the motion was in order before a vote on the motion itself was held.

Starmer’s lackeys have routinely been put in direct charge of selection processes in areas considered to be likely to select a candidate who isn’t a Starmer clone – and in many cases have rigged longlists to exclude the candidates local members prefer, leaving them with no choice but to choose which of the approved drones will stand for election.

Keir Starmer expects the country to believe that he will push power away from himself and out to the regions – but he won’t even allow Labour members to exercise the democracy to which the party’s rules entitle them.

SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.

Original article republished form the Skwawkbox for non-Commercial use.

Continue ReadingLabour members pass motion demanding party stop rigging candidate selections

Tony Blair snubbed by DCU for peace process honour due to his role over Iraq war

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/politics/tony-blair-snubbed-by-dcu-for-peace-process-honour-due-to-his-role-over-iraq-war-42359792.html

Traitor Tony Blair receives the Congressional Gold Medal of Honour from George 'Dubya' Bush
Traitor Tony Blair receives the Congressional Gold Medal of Honour from George ‘Dubya’ Bush

Dublin City University (DCU) has rejected a proposal to award Tony Blair an honorary doctorate for his work on the Good Friday Agreement.

The former British prime minister had been proposed for the honour alongside Bertie Ahern.

However, the Sunday Independent understands the university’s governing authority rejected the nomination over fears it would lead to a backlash due to Mr Blair’s role over the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

“The decision was made that Mr Blair would be too controversial. They felt the Iraq war would bring too much negative attention to the university,” a source said.

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/politics/tony-blair-snubbed-by-dcu-for-peace-process-honour-due-to-his-role-over-iraq-war-42359792.html

Continue ReadingTony Blair snubbed by DCU for peace process honour due to his role over Iraq war

Labour bans CLPs from links with string of human rights/peace/health groups incl PSC, JVL, Corbyn’s PJP

Original article and image republished from The Swawkbox for non-Commerical use.

Email to CLPs warns them that any existing affiliations with groups campaigning for abortion rights, minority human rights, disarmament and a fully public NHS are cancelled

Image thanks to The Skwawkbox

The Labour party has banned local parties (CLPs) from affiliating with an array of groups supporting the human rights of ethnic minorities or campaigning for a public NHS, in yet another Stalinist move to limit members’ freedom of expression.

And local parties are being notified by email that any affiliations they already have in place are unilaterally cancelled – and that if a right-wing group is affiliated with the party nationally, they have no say over whether that group affiliates with them locally.

One such email reads:

Organisations that are nationally affiliated to the party are eligible to affiliate to any CLP provided they pay the appropriate fee and the CLP cannot debate or decide on their affiliations.

…The following affiliations are therefore no longer valid and the CLP may not renew its affiliation without approval from the NEC. To do so would breach party rules. These are:

Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Labour Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Stop the War Coalition, Republic, London Irish Abortion Rights Campaign, Jewish Voice for Labour, Somalis for Labour, Sikhs for Labour, All African Women’s Group, Health Campaigns Together, The Campaign against Climate Change Trades Union, Peace & Justice Project.

Yes, you read that right: a group campaigning for peace, human rights, women’s rights, disarmament and to protect the environment are not welcome in Keir Starmer’s Labour party and party member groups risk disciplinary action if they try to associate with them.

The news should come as no surprise in Starmer’s racist, pro-privatisation, pro-apartheid party where his promises to renationalise the NHS and public utilitiesprotect the climate and empower member rights and democracy were binned almost the instant he got his backside into Corbyn’s office and his claim to be on the side of domestic violence victims masks a shameless cover-up of abuse of them.

And of course, given recent appalling comments by the leadership and its agents, Jews who believe in the human rights of Palestinians are particularly unwelcome – and indeed are being disproportionately targeted by the regime in a campaign of blatant (but ignored by the media) antisemitism and discrimination.

Original article and image republished from The Swawkbox for non-Commerical use.

Continue ReadingLabour bans CLPs from links with string of human rights/peace/health groups incl PSC, JVL, Corbyn’s PJP

Keith Starmer speech: Labour left hits out at leader over dropped pledges as he sets out ‘five missions’

https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/keir-starmer-speech-labour-leader-dropped-pledges-five-missions-2167583

Keir Starmer has faced criticism from the left of the Labour party for backtracking on many of the pledges he made during his 2020 leadership campaign.

The intervention came ahead of a speech in Manchester, in which Sir Keir will set out the five missions his party would pursue in government covering the economy, the NHS, crime, the climate crisis and education.

Momentum, a grassroots organisation representing the left wing of the party, said in a statement on Thursday that Sir Keir’s five missions showed that the pledges made when he ran to succeed Jeremy Corbyn were in “tatters”, despite many of them being “more vital and popular now than ever”.

The 10 pledges Sir Keir made during his leadership campaign included backing public ownership of industries such as railways and energy, increasing taxation on the highest earners and advancing a Green New Deal to tackle climate change.

“Given the scale of the crises and inequality facing Britain, these policies are more vital and popular now than ever,” a Momentum spokesperson said.

https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/keir-starmer-speech-labour-leader-dropped-pledges-five-missions-2167583

Continue ReadingKeith Starmer speech: Labour left hits out at leader over dropped pledges as he sets out ‘five missions’

About Starmer following Blair and Corbyn

https://johnwight1.medium.com/jeremy-corbyn-is-a-better-man-than-starmer-and-starmer-a-lesser-man-than-blair-a300c7ba116b

Image of Keir Starmer sucking up to the rich and powerful at the World Economic Forum, Davos
Image of Keir Starmer sucking up to the rich and powerful at the World Economic Forum, Davos

Shakespeare himself could not conceive of the dramatic fall from grace experienced by Jeremy Corbyn, under whose leadership between 2015 and 2019 the UK Labour Party could boast a mass membership of 600,000 to make it the largest political party in Europe, and under whose leadership Labour came within just under 2500 votes of winning the 2017 general election on a transformational programme of wealth redistribution, meaningful policies to end homelessness and poverty, and a foreign policy placing a priority on peace over war and hope over fear.

That his outstanding performance in 2017 came in the face of a concerted attempt by Labour Party officials to undermine his leadership and election campaign, and despite a treacherous PLP of unreconstructed bastards, this only makes the question of ‘What if?’ all the more salient and also tragic.

His successor, Starmer, went out of his way to court Corbyn’s supporters in order to get himself elected as leader, while announcing with the sincerity of a mafia boss that “Jeremy is a friend as well as a colleague.”

The issue of antisemitism has again been weaponised to demonise the most principled anti-racist politician in Britain, again at the behest of an establishment of bastards in the eyes of which the Palestinian people are deemed children of a lesser God.

The issue within a Parliamentary Labour Party stacked full of apologists for apartheid and white supremacist Zionist ideology that underpins it, has never been antipathy towards Jewish people; it has and continues to be the thoroughly dishonest smearing of those who dare stand in solidarity with the Palestinians and their just struggle against occupation, siege, and the most sustained apparatus of injustice in modern history.

https://johnwight1.medium.com/jeremy-corbyn-is-a-better-man-than-starmer-and-starmer-a-lesser-man-than-blair-a300c7ba116b

23/2/23 The quote “Jeremy is a friend as well as a colleague.” appears not quite correct. Unless it’s quoting a different occasion it should be “I want to pay tribute to Jeremy Corbyn, who led our party through some really difficult times, who energised our movement, & who’s a friend as well as a colleague”. I wouldn’t truncate it like that without making it clear, that’s your academic rigour eh? Can be watched here

Apologies, this one

Continue ReadingAbout Starmer following Blair and Corbyn

That Nasty Neo-Con Starmer :: Why?

There is huge aversion to the Conservative (Tory) Party in UK meaning that Keith Starmer’s Labour Party is likely to be elected at the next general election. This aversion to the Tories is partly due to successive worse than useless Tory Prime Ministers, Boris’s criminality, lying and cronyism, Brexit which has been catastrophic, trashing of the UK economy (partly due to Liz Truss’s catastrophic bonkers short term as Prime Minister and ill-judged budget), huge inflation and crippling fuel poverty caused by hugely increased energy prices. It is a growing recognition and acknowledgement that the Tories are shits destroying public services including the Health Service.

There is a real danger that Keir Starmer will get elected to government on a false prospectus. For exaample, the UK electorate understands the Labour Party to support the National Health Service (NHS) while Starmer and Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting are opposed to a publicly-owned NHS instead preferring the Tory policy of privatisation. Similarly, the Labour Party’s proposed GB Energy company is likely to be confused with nationalising energy companies which has huge popular support. But it’s not that.

Looking at Keir Starmer’s performance as Director of Public Prosecutions and as Leader of the Opposition can inform us how he’s likely to perform as Prime Minister. It looks as though it should be avoided.

later edit: To Labour Party members: There is an historic opportunity now to move away from Neo-Liberal politics. Why would you want to elect the Tory Keir Starmer as Prime Minister and does that achieve anything?

Continue ReadingThat Nasty Neo-Con Starmer :: Why?