| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2005 7:37 pm Post subject: Lest We Forget; These Were Blair's Bombs |
| Lest We Forget; These Were Blair's Bombs
By John Pilger
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Sunday 10 July 2005
In all the coverage of last week's bombing of London, a basic truth is struggling to be heard. It is this: no one doubts the atrocious inhumanity of those who planted the bombs, but no one should also doubt that this has been coming since the day Tony Blair joined George Bush in their bloody invasion and occupation of Iraq. They are "Blair's bombs", and he ought not be allowed to evade culpability with yet another unctuous speech about "our way of life", which his own rapacious violence in other countries has despoiled.
Indeed, the only reliable warning from British intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq was that which predicted a sharp increase in terrorism "with Britain and Britons a target". A House of Commons committee has since verified this warning. Had Blair heeded it instead of conspiring to deceive the nation that Iraq offered a threat the Londoners who died on Thursday might be alive today, along with tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis.
Three weeks ago, a classified CIA report revealed that the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq had turned that country into a focal point of terrorism. None of the intelligence agencies regarded Iraq as such a flashpoint before the invasion, however tyrannical the regime. On the contrary, in 2003, the CIA reported that Iraq "exported no terrorist threat to his neighbours" and that Saddam Hussein was "implacably hostile to Al-Qaeda".
Blair's and Bush's invasion changed all that. In invading a stricken and defenceless country at the heart of the Islamic and Arab world, their adventure became self-fulfilling; Blair's epic irresponsibility has brought the daily horrors of Iraq home to Britain. For more than a year, he has urged the British to "move on" from Iraq, and last week it seemed that his spinmeisters and good fortune had joined hands. The awarding of the 2012 Olympics to London created the fleeting illusion that all was well, regardless of messy events in a faraway country.
Moreover, the G8 meeting in Scotland and its accompanying "Make Poverty History" campaign and circus of celebrities served as a temporary cover for what is arguably the greatest political scandal of modern times: an illegal, brutal and craven invasion conceived in lies and which, under the system of international law established at Nuremberg, represented a "paramount war crime".
Over the past two weeks, the contrast between the coverage of the G8, its marches and pop concerts, and another "global" event has been striking. The World Tribunal on Iraq in Istanbul has had virtually no coverage, yet the evidence it has produced, the most damning to date, has been the silent spectre at the Geldoff extravaganzas.
The tribunal is a serious international public inquiry into the invasion and occupation, the kind governments dare not hold. Its expert, eyewitness testimonies, said the author Arundathi Roy, a tribunal jury member, "demonstrate that even those of us who have tried to follow the war closely are not aware of a fraction of the horrors that have been unleashed in Iraq." The most shocking was given by Dahr Jamail, one of the best un-embedded reporters working in Iraq. He described how the hospitals of besieged Fallujah had been subjected to an American tactic of collective punishment, with US marines assaulting staff and stopping the wounded entering, and American snipers firing at the doors and windows, and medicines and emergency blood prevented from reaching them. Children, the elderly, were shot dead in front of their families, in cold blood.
Imagine for a moment the same appalling state of affairs imposed on the London hospitals that received the victims of Thursday's bombing. Unimaginable? Well, it happens, in our name, regardless of whether the BBC reports it, which is rare. When will someone ask about this at one of the staged "press conferences" at which Blair is allowed to emote for the cameras stuff about "our values outlast [ing] theirs"? Silence is not journalism. In Fallujah, they know "our values" only too well.
While the two men responsible for the carnage in Iraq, Bush and Blair, were side by side at Gleneagles, why wasn't the connection of their fraudulent "war on terror" made with the bombing in London? And when will someone in the political class say that Blair's smoke-and-mirrors "debt cancellation" at best amounts to less than the money the government spent in a week brutalising Iraq, where British and American violence is the cause of the doubling of child poverty and malnutrition since Saddam Hussein was overthrown (Unicef).
The truth is that the debt relief the G8 is offering is lethal because its ruthless "conditionalities" of captive economies far outweigh any tenuous benefit. This was taboo during the G8 week, whose theme was not so much making poverty history as the silencing and pacifying and co-opting dissent and truth. The mawkish images on giant screens behind the pop stars in Hyde Park included no pictures of murdered Iraqi doctors with the blood streaming from their heads, cut down by Bush's snipers. Real life became more satirical than satire could ever be.
There was Bob Geldoff on the front pages resting his smiling face on smiling Blair's shoulder, the war criminal and his knighted jester. There was an heroically silhouetted Bono, who celebrates men like Jeffrey Sachs as saviours of the world's poor while lauding "compassionate" George Bush's "war on terror" as one of his generation's greatest achievements; and there was Paul Wolfowitz, beaming and promising to make poverty history: this is the man who, before he was handed control of the World Bank, was an apologist for Suharto's genocidal regime in Indonesia, who was one of the architects of Bush's "neo-con" putsch and of the bloodfest in Iraq and the notion of "endless war".For the politicians and pop stars and church leaders and polite people who believed Blair and Gordon Brown when they declared their "great moral crusade" against poverty, Iraq was an embarrassment. The killing of more than 100,000 Iraqis mostly by American gunfire and bombs -- a figure reported in a comprehensive peer-reviewed study in The Lancet -- was airbrushed from mainstream debate.
In our free societies, the unmentionable is that "the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people", as Arthur Miller once wrote, "and so the evidence has to be internally denied." Not only denied, but distracted by an entire court: Geldoff, Bono, Madonna, McCartney et al, whose "Live 8" was the very antithesis of 15 February 2003 when two million people brought their hearts and brains and anger to the streets of London. Blair will almost certainly use last week's atrocity and tragedy to further deplete basic human rights in Britain, as Bush has done in America. The goal is not security, but greater control. Above all this, the memory of their victims, "our" victims, in Iraq demands the return of our anger. And nothing less is owed to those who died and suffered in London last week, unnecessarily. | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2005 12:38 am Post subject: Summaries of 4 New Articles on London |
| Subject: Summaries of 4 New Articles on London
Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2005 17:09:54 -0700
Hello All
These cover the London Bombings from various perspectives...a veteran, a satirist, a Londoner and myself. Great links and facts in all.
1) http://www.couplescompany.com/Features/Frontlines/VFP/Frustration.htm
OUT OF COMPLETE FRUSTRATION: By Mike Ferner
A Veterans look at London's Bombing
Excerpt:
....Perhaps it will get some people thinking. But dear god…did we NEED the DSM to know that:
On September 12, 2001, the very next day after what would become Bush’s justification for war, the peace movement said "War is not the answer?"
In January, 2002 after Bush's insane "axis of evil" State of the Union address, the peace movement said: "War is not the answer?"
In April, 2002, when Blair met Bush at his pseudo-ranch in Texas, and the press was agog at how war was THE topic of conversation, the peace movement said: "War is not the answer?" ....
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2) Seconds Apart, Worlds Apart
http://www.couplescompany.com/Features/Politics/2005/london3.htm
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3) London Bawling: Six Things to Consider Immediately (Satire)
http://www.couplescompany.com/Features/Politics/2005/london3.htm#bawl
Both by Richard Oxman
Excerpt...Seconds apart? What happened to the other timeframes that were posted all over the world earlier, one of which -- the temporary official one, I guess -- emphatically declared that the blasts were 26 minutes apart?
Excuse me, but doesn't this change beg for an explanation respecting the difference in change here? Sans deep conspiracy talk. Sans the Netanyahu connection....
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http://www.couplescompany.com/Features/Politics/london.htm
Unasked Questions about the London Bombings
By Laura Dawn Lewis (out take by Gilad Atzmon, London resident)
Excerpt:....QUESTIONS LONDONERS
AND THE BRITISH PEOPLE should ASK
Cutting through the propaganda, a few questions come to mind.
1) Why warn the Israeli Embassy and only the Israeli Embassy and not warn the transit authority, London police or even the mayor?
2) If this was a set bomb versus a human bomb, those who died may have been saved with this notice. It takes less than 5 minutes to empty a subway train thanks to the numerous doors. Why only warn Israel when British lives could have been saved?
3) Shouldn't Scotland Yard be protecting British citizens first before visiting dignitaries? Why didn't they?... | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2005 9:45 am Post subject: London Bombers Were Angered by War in Iraq |
| London Bombers Were Angered by War in Iraq
By SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZI, Associated Press Writer
Fri Jul 15, 5:32 AM ET
Shahzad Tanweer, the 22-year-old son of a Pakistani-born affluent businessman, turned to Islam, the religion of his birth, a few years ago. The transformation was gradual, but then his relentless reading of the Quran and daily prayers became almost an obsession, his friends told The Associated Press. He became withdrawn and increasingly angry over the war in Iraq, according to those who knew him best.
The U.S.-led war was what likely drove him to blow himself up on a subway train last week, said his friends.
"He was a Muslim and he had to fight for Islam. This is called jihad," or holy war, said Asif Iqbal, 20, who said he was Tanweer's childhood friend.
Another friend, Adnan Samir, 21, nodded in agreement.
"They're crying over 50 people while 100 people are dying every day in Iraq and Palestine," said Iqbal. "If they are indeed the ones who did it, it's because they believed it was right. They're in Heaven.
"Have you ever been inspired in life?" he asked.
Tanweer and three other bombers detonated their backpacks on a bus and three subway trains in London on July 7, killing at least 53 people, themselves included, and injuring more than 700.
Tanweer turned to religion before the war in Iraq began in 2003. His friends don't know the reason, but said they didn't see anything wrong or unusual about it.
"He always told me to read the Quran and said Islam is the way (of life)," recalls Iqbal.
Everyone interviewed in his neighborhood — those who knew him well like Iqbal and Samir, who were schoolmates, or those who saw him in passing — described Tanweer as pleasant and kind.
"He was a nice lad. I don't know how many times he served me fish and chips," said Peter Douchworth, 58, a Beeston resident for over 30 years. "He went out of his way to help."
Tanweer sometimes worked at his father's fish and chips shop, but an employee there said he hadn't worked there for a while.
The family's white house — which has been cordoned off by police since Monday — stands in stark contrast to the surrounding gritty red-brick Victorian row houses. Two fancy cars are parked in the parking lot at the back.
A devoted athlete, Tanweer studied sports science at Leeds Metropolitan University and planned to get involved in sports professionally. He showed up twice a week for pickup soccer games, said a teammate who gave his name only as Saj.
He had a younger brother and two sisters and always lived in the working-class multiethnic Beeston area of the city of Leeds in northern England.
Media reports said he was arrested once for shoplifting.
His uncle, Bashir Ahmed, said Tanweer traveled to Lahore, Pakistan, this year to study Islamic religion. He said his family believed he was attending "some religious function" on the day of the bombings.
Forensic evidence has linked Tanweer to the blast on the Underground train near Aldgate.
Friends Iqbal and Samir claimed ignorance as to how their friend became involved in Islamic militancy and how he became a prey to terrorist recruiters.
"All Muslims are connected," Iqbal said.
The friends said they had never been approached by anyone trying to indoctrinate them into militant Islam.
Where would Tanweer and his co-activists meet or plan their attacks?
"How do football fans get together and talk about football? It's the same thing," said Iqbal.
Tanweer's friend, Hasib Hussain, is another of the bombers identified by police. At 18, the handsome, 6-foot-tall soccer player was the youngest of the bombers. He was also the youngest of four children, two sisters and a brother. Like Tanweer, his family came from Pakistan.
Hussain, suspected of carrying out the suicide attack that claimed 13 lives on a double-decker bus, was known for his sense of humor and style. He sometimes wore blue contact lenses and long hair parted in the middle, according to a friend.
Some people said Hussain became more religious two years ago but never abandoned his boyhood friends for radicals. Mohammed Sidique Khan, 30, born in Pakistan and another of the suicide bombers, is known in his neighborhood as an exemplary community worker.
A father of an 8-month-old baby girl, Khan was a popular former teacher of children with learning disabilities.
Documents belonging to Khan were found in the debris of the Edgware Road subway blast.
Former students at the Hillside Primary School said Khan left for Pakistan last December to look after his ailing father. It was not clear when he returned to Britain.
"I liked him. He was nice," said Billy Sandersen, 13. He and other former pupils said they were shocked when they saw his picture in the papers as one of the suspects.
However, they said they still liked him.
"Just a little bit, but not for what he's done — killing innocent people," Sandersen said.
"I still like him," said Sean Woodham, 13, another former pupil, "because he always helped me with my homework."
Maroof Latif, an unemployed Beeston resident, said he knew Khan since he was a child and believes if he took part in the terrorist bombings of the subways it was because of his anger over the war in Iraq and the U.S.-British occupation. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
