Tony Blair

Last time Blair was humanitarian, a million Iraqis died

Tony Blair, War on Iraq
Published on Leave a comment on Last time Blair was humanitarian, a million Iraqis died

Tony Blair - save some of the children

Pseudocharity Save the Children presented Tony Blair with an humanitarian award. Their staff is not happy:

Amid widespread criticism on social media, many of the charity’s staff have complained that the presentation of the award has discredited Save the Children (STC). An internal letter, which gathered almost 200 signatures – including senior regional staff – in the first six hours of dissemination, said the award was not only “morally reprehensible, but also endangers our credibility globally”, and called for it to be withdrawn.

It said that staff wished to distance themselves from the award and demanded a review of the charity’s decision-making process.

“We consider this award inappropriate and a betrayal to Save the Children’s founding principles and values. Management staff in the region were not communicated with nor consulted about the award and were caught by surprise with this decision,” it said.

The move has also raised questions about Save the Children’s (STC) integrity and independence because of close links between the former British prime minister and key figures at the charity’s helm.

You do wonder about people still sucking up to Blair years after he left power, this sycopanthic pandering to the illusion of power that was also behind e.g. Obama’s Nobel Prize before he even was in office. It neatly shows how little organisations like this have to do with actual charity or wanting to make the world a better place and how much it is there to salve the egos of monsters wanting to think of themselves as “liberal”.

Blair Disease

Life under Capitalism, Tony Blair, War on Iraq
Published on Leave a comment on Blair Disease

In the Financial Times of all places, Simon Kuper writes about the most serious malady afflicting ex-leaders, Blair Disease:

If you are super-rich, you probably have an ex-leader working for you, like an overpaid tennis coach. Blair, for instance, has shilled for JPMorgan Chase, Qatar and Kazakhstan’s cuddly regime. Then there’s the modern ex-leader’s staple: giving paid speeches to rich people. Blair’s Queen Anne mansion outside London differs from the “museum of corruption” recently vacated by Ukraine’s ex-president Viktor Yanukovich chiefly in degree, taste and the period when the money was made. Both men got rich through running countries. It’s just that Blair’s version was legal.

The Blair premiership was when it became clear that in the new capitalism none of the parties with a shot at power were actually there to listen to the people, all shot through with people who see politics either as a handy advertisment for their real career fellating the rich afterwards, or as a way to keep their own wealth safe. It was the War on Iraq and the way it was pushed through against the wishes of most of the UK, that made it clear to anybody not paying attention. Blair’s reward came after he left Number 10; he’s a millionaire now, in no danger of ever being prosecuted for warcrimes.

Tony Blair’s worried

Tony Blair, UK politics
Published on Leave a comment on Tony Blair’s worried

Tony Blair has criticised people who held parties to “celebrate” the death of Baroness Thatcher, saying they were in “pretty poor taste”.

The former Labour prime minister urged critics of his Conservative predecessor to “show some respect”.

Don’t worry Tony, your time will come. Once you die there will be parties too. And don’t fucking talk about respect, when you’re the architect of an illegal, immoral, unnecessary war that killed well over a million peoples, you wanker.

Mr Blair goes to Tripoli

Forward March of Decentism, Real Life Revolutions, Tony Blair
Published on

Tony and Khadaffi in better days

Jamie reads the close ties between Blair and Khadaffi back in the record:

Libyan sources insist, however, that Blair has visited Libya half a dozen times since stepping down as P.M. (Doyle declines to comment on this assertion, but does say that Blair visited Libya once in the 18-month period ending November 2010.) But Blair’s employer, J.P. Morgan, does have commercial relationships with Libya. Three senior British officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, say that Blair has made numerous trips to Libya since leaving Downing Street, at least partly on behalf of the bank. “The Blair magic still works with Qaddafi,” one of these officials observes. “Qaddafi will drop everything to see Blair.” Saif al-Islam, Qaddafi’s probable heir, said last summer that Blair was “a personal family friend” and added that Blair had visited Libya “many, many times” since leaving office.

One such visit took place in June 2010. “His plane landed at Mitiga airport”—a few miles east of Tripoli and used by V.I.P.’s—“and a car took him straight to a minister with whom he had private business,” according to a well-placed source. “Then he went straight to Qaddafi.” There he briefed the dictator about what to expect from the new British coalition government led by David Cameron. Afterward, he spent the night at the British ambassador’s residence.

Neither Blair nor the bank will say anything about what he does to justify his salary, either in Libya or elsewhere. Executives at other banks with Libyan interests say that J.P. Morgan now handles much of the Libyan Investment Authority’s cash, and some of the Libyan central bank’s reserves.

Original article here.

The symbosis between Mubarak and the Muslim Brotherhood

Real Life Revolutions, Tony Blair
Published on

Jack Shenker in the Guardian on how Mubarak and the Muslim Brotherhood have entered into symbiosis, each needing the other to legitimise itself:

The group was formed in 1928 and is still officially outlawed. Hundreds of Brotherhood members have been jailed in periodic crackdowns, yet it is from the existence of the Brotherhood, and the regime’s perceived ability to suppress its influence, that Mubarak has derived much of his legitimacy in international circles.

This, combined with the fact that the Brotherhood’s current leadership has often devoted more of its energies to “dawa”, or social evangelism, than overtly political projects, has led many analysts to accuse it of a symbiotic relationship with the government it claims to resist. At crucial moments of popular public tension with the Mubarak regime in recent years, such as the killing of three people in the Delta town of El Mahalla El Kubra in April 2008, and during an attempted general strike one year later, the Brotherhood has opted to take a relatively non-combative stand towards the authorities.

“The Mubarak regime was adept at inflating the influence of the Brotherhood and painting them as a threat to Egyptian society and to the west,” said Anani. “It was the pretext for Mubarak’s rule, and it was a lie. I think that if Egypt held free and fair elections tomorrow the Brotherhood would not get a majority; it would enjoy a significant presence in parliament, but the overall makeup of seats would be pluralistic.”

Alex takes speculation a bit further and wonders who exactly managed to flood Cairo with Mubarak supporters when his own party couldn’t:

This does, by the way, make you – or me, at least – wonder exactly which organisation was able to put a significant mob on the streets at the drop of a hat, when the NDP had spectacularly failed to mobilise any sign of mass support for days on end. Military dictatorships with religious stylings are far from unknown – that was, after all, the fix Jaruzelski tried to impose on Poland after 1981, mixing more Catholicism and nationalism in with his communism but keeping the security state more in place than ever. And I can well imagine someone – someone, quintessentially, like Tony Blair – hailing cooperation between an Islamist movement and Central Security as being just the kind of faith-based initiative that contributes, helpfully, to shared norms for the new reality. As usual with Blair, it’s the secular left that is his real enemy.