Tony Blair

Arrest Blair

Tony Blair, War on Iraq
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George Monbiot has a modest proposal for everybody disgusted by and mistrustful of the Chilcot inquiry. If they won’t prosecute Blair and his cronies for the War on Iraq, we will:

All those who believe in justice should campaign for their governments to stop messing about and allow the international criminal court to start prosecuting the crime of aggression. We should also press for its adoption into national law. But I believe that the people of this nation, who re-elected a government that had launched an illegal war, have a duty to do more than that. We must show that we have not, as Blair requested, “moved on” from Iraq, that we are not prepared to allow his crime to remain unpunished, or to allow future leaders to believe that they can safely repeat it.

But how? As I found when I tried to apprehend John Bolton, one of the architects of the war in George Bush’s government, at the Hay festival in 2008, and as Peter Tatchell found when he tried to detain Robert Mugabe, nothing focuses attention on these issues more than an attempted citizen’s arrest. In October I mooted the idea of a bounty to which the public could contribute, payable to anyone who tried to arrest Tony Blair if he became president of the European Union. He didn’t of course, but I asked those who had pledged money whether we should go ahead anyway. The response was overwhelmingly positive.

So today I am launching a website – www.arrestblair.org – whose purpose is to raise money as a reward for people attempting a peaceful citizen’s arrest of the former prime minister. I have put up the first £100, and I encourage you to match it. Anyone meeting the rules I’ve laid down will be entitled to one quarter of the total pot: the bounties will remain available until Blair faces a court of law. The higher the reward, the greater the number of people who are likely to try.

At this stage the arrests will be largely symbolic, though they are likely to have great political resonance. But I hope that as pressure builds up and the crime of aggression is adopted by the courts, these attempts will help to press governments to prosecute. There must be no hiding place for those who have committed crimes against peace. No civilised country can allow mass murderers to move on.

Crime Does Not Pay (but Warcrime Does)

Corruption, Life under Capitalism, Tony Blair
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It’s nice that The Guardian has opened up a contest to look into the web of front companies Tony Blair has set up to manage his wealth and income, but the true outrage remains how much money he has “earned” in the first place:

Blair is estimated to be in the process of receiving up to £14m, making him one of Britain’s wealthiest ex-prime ministers. This includes a £4.6m memoirs deal with Random House.

He is also receiving a series of US fees from the Washington Speakers Bureau for making speeches estimated to include a £600,000 signing-on fee; consultancies with the US bank, JP Morgan and with Swiss insurers Zurich Financial Services; and commercial consultancy deals through his private firm, Tony Blair Associates, with regimes in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates among others.

The growth in Blair’s personal wealth was illustrated in May 2008, when he agreed to pay £5.75m for the late actor John Gielgud’s Buckinghamshire residence, described as “a small stately home”.

This was in addition to the £4.45m paid earlier for a London home in Connaught Square, together with an adjoining mews house.

All quite legal and above board, the rewards of years of hard work doing favours for the Americans and international business. He may be despised and hated the world over, but those who fancy they rule it appreciate their faithfully servant and have rewarded him accordingly.

Which other British politician was Berlusconi friends with again?

New Labour, Tony Blair, UK politics
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Even lend him his villa in Tuscany, wasn’t it? Anyway, David Mills, Tessa Jowell’s estranged husband (ha!) is convicted for taking bribes:

David Mills, the estranged husband of Tessa Jowell, the Olympics Minister, was given a jail sentence today for accepting a bribe of $600,000 (at the time £350,000) from Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, to give false evidence on his behalf in corruption trials.

[…]

Mills was accused of accepting the bribe from Mr Berlusconi for testimony that he gave as a tax lawyer in two corruption trials in 1997 and 1998. In a letter in 2004, Mills told his accountant, Bob Drennan: “I turned some very tricky corners, to put it mildly, and so kept Mr B out of a great deal of trouble he would have been in had I said all I knew.”

Mills, in a statement to the court last month, insisted that he had “never been corrupted by anyone” and apologised to Mr Berlusconi for causing him “trouble”. However, Gabriella Vanadia, a lawyer for the Prime Minister’s office, but not Mr Berlusconi personally, sided with the prosecution and told the court that the State accepted the allegation that Mr Mills had accepted the bribe.

Don’t worry, he’s unlikely to go to jail until the appeals process is exhausted, by which time the statue of limitations will have been reached. Can’t have the great and powerful go to jail like a common shoplifter, no can we?

The only thing Blair deserves costs 30 cents

Tony Blair, Uh? WTF?, War on Iraq
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But since this is a fundamentally unjust world, he’ll get one million dollars for his “global leadership”:

Tony Blair has won a prestigious million-dollar (£697,000) prize for his leadership on the world stage, it was announced today.

The former prime minister, now a Middle East peace envoy, will receive the Dan David prize for “his exceptional leadership and steadfast determination in helping to engineer agreements and forge lasting solutions to areas in conflict”.

The award is presented by the Dan David Foundation, based at Tel Aviv University, and a spokesman for Blair said the money would be donated to the former Labour leader’s charity for religious understanding, the Tony Blair Faith Foundation.

It sounds absurd to give Blair this prize — and you’ll notice the word “Iraq” doesn’t occur in the announcement — until you realise who‘s giving this award. Dan David is an avowed zionist and his foundation is located at Tel Aviv University; zionist usually have little problems with mountains of corpses, if they’re Arab corpses. Furthermore, Blair was very helpful to Israel not just with Iraq, but also with the War on Lebanon, helping delay the ceasefireto give the IDF more time to kill civilians.

It would of course be impolite to mention Blair gets this money for helping get rid of an enemy of Israel or perpetuating mass murder, hence the blather about “asking the important questions” and “morally courageous leadership”.

Note that the Israelis aren’t theonly ones to thank Blair for delivered services; he’s made a very nice living hovering up sinecure jobs after he left office.