Curiouser and Curiouser! on tony-blair

Tax and waste

Tue, 30 Mar 2004 13:05:41 +0100

Florida is a battleground state in the US presidential election this fall. Lots of Bush-Cheney ads on the radio on the drive here from Orlando. They paint Kerry as a taxer. They have an ad with a supposed Bostoner (he makes fun of his own accent) talking about how Kerry likes to tax, tax, tax. Made me think I should move to Florida until November, so I can vote for Kerry in the fall in a place where my vote means something. Bush makes me totally sick. Bush decided to create a huge deficit. Kind of like a tax. [Scripting News]

As I understand it, a very actual tax. Just not till after the election.

As far as I known there are 3 kinds of government borrowing:

Borrowing to cover capital investment
Borrowing to cover day-to-day spending
Borrowing to waste on overseas adventurism

The first kind can be good because the investments hopefully lead to a growth in the economy which leads to higher tax revenues. The other kinds are bad because they do not increase the capacity of the economy. In all cases you have to pay back the principal but also fund the interest charges on what you've borrowed.

So, if you're pissing that borrowed cash away on bombing foreign countries and filling the pockets of your friends in the oil & arms industries... well likely you'll be the kind of person that will find a way to avoid the taxes anyway.

Have a nice day!

Lead me not into disaster

Tue, 25 May 2004 08:14:51 +0100

"Dangerous rhetoric" [Salon.com]

One the quotes I especially liked from that piece was:

Conservative columnist George F. Will: "This administration cannot be trusted to govern if it cannot be counted on to think and, having thought, to have second thoughts."

Why are politicians so incapable of admitting error? It's going to lead us into disaster after disaster. This, blind, "no turning back!", "damn the torpedos full steam ahead!" mentality is so full of shit and I'm sick of it.

Impeach your president (and ours too)

Fri, 01 Jul 2005 16:41:06 +0100

Lew Rockwell is looking past the death throes of the lame duck, but do you really have to wait three years?

So there we have it: three more years of a lame duck president who is stuck in two losing, bloody, terrorist-recruiting wars, and has presided over one of the great domestic flops in American history. All he needs is a good recession to complement soaring gas prices, and his fall will be complete.

Surely there has never been a better time to try out that impeachment process? Perhaps on the back of a public trial America can clean house a little? Redress the balance a little? Maybe force your government to obey it's own laws (after you've put them back of course). As an added measure maybe every senator and congressperson who supported the war should resign in acknowledgement that they didn't do their homework? That would be a nice gesture I think.

Oh, and whilst we're about it, how on earth do we impeach Blair? Is there even a way to do that? Anyone know the UK legal position? If it's possible, what would it take?

I'll try harder from now on

Wed, 13 Jul 2005 13:14:05 +0100

Or if they had considered the American intervention in Lebanon, they would easily have found the following evaluation by their own military of a situation much like that of Iraq. Of the involvement in Lebanon in 19821983, Lieutenant Commander Westra states:
"American policy was formulated without adequate consideration of the complexity of the Lebanese conflict or its political and religious antecedents. Additionally, our policy was pursued from a purely American perspective without consideration of the goals and motivations of numerous factions involved in the fighting. As a consequence of these policy shortcomings, American military forces were mistakenly committed as a first resort before all diplomatic and other means had been exhausted."
"The key problem of our involvement in Lebanon was that American military forces were mistakenly committed in order to solve a complex set of political problems that had no military solution. By submitting future regional conflicts to a "Lebanon Test," policymakers will have an in-depth model delineating the multitude of considerations and pitfalls affecting policy formulation and the use of military force to secure the objectives of policy in regional conflicts."
If many in the military knew better, wouldnt this information reach the President? Mightnt it even seep out to the bloodthirsty editorial writers and thence to the gung-ho public? [ Bushs Folly - Michael S. Rozeff]

How much more of this imperial folly from the US and British governments are we going to stand for? I think it's a shame more people in the UK didn't reflect on what Blair (and to be fair a raft of previous UK governments) have done and choose to vote against extending his time in office.

I think we needed a breather and an opportunity to reflect upon what kind of country we want to be and where our interests lie. I don't believe they lie in interfering with Middle Eastern politics, propping up the Saudi regime, etc...

It may be that ceasing to intervene in this area is going to cause us economic turbulence but I think that's inevitable anyway with the policy we are persuing. I also think that all the money being funnelled into Iraq and the War on Terror could be better used.

I've heard what I think is a lot of nonsense about why the London bombings occurred. Especially people talking about why they aren't related to the war on Iraq. The usual claim being that 9/11 happened before the war on Iraq so it can't be related. I find it hard to believe that even the people peddling this nonsense really believe it.

Question: Why didnt the terrorists strike Switzerland instead of England? After all, the two countries share the same freedom and values, dont they?
Answer: The Swiss government didnt attack Iraq. It doesnt meddle in the Middle East. It didnt participate in the brutal sanctions against the Iraqi people. It doesnt maintain an empire of overseas bases. It doesnt go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. The Swiss government minds its own business.
Thats why the terrorists did not strike Switzerland.
Of course, the same cannot be said of England, whose foreign policy in the Middle East can be summed up as follows: Whatever the U.S. government does, the British government supports and joins. Thus, the British government participated in President Bushs recent war on Iraq a war against a sovereign and independent country that never attacked the United States or England or even threatened to do so. It is a war that has produced the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people not just American and British soldiers, but also Iraqi soldiers and civilians none of whom had anything to do with the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the United States.
Thats why the terrorists struck in London instead of Bern.
Thats also why the terrorists struck in New York, both in 1993 and 2001, and at the Pentagon.
The terrorist retaliations are rooted in anger and hatred not for American and English freedom and values, as President Bush and Prime Minister Blair maintain, but instead in anger and hatred for U.S. and British foreign policy.
Why would it be otherwise? Why should foreigners especially radical, violent ones react any differently to the killings and maiming of their family, friends, and countrymen than Westerners do when their family, friends, and countrymen are killed or maimed by foreigners?
Consider the torture, rape, sex abuse, and murder scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Why wouldnt Middle Easterners react in much the same way that Americans would react if American men were treated in a similar manner in some foreign prison?
What will be the response of government officials to the terrorist strikes in London? You guessed it: more severe government crackdowns on civil liberties to protect us from the terrorists, which not surprisingly was the same position that they were taking before the terrorist strikes in London. [Terrorism Comes With Empire - Jacob G. Hornberger]

As citizens I think we fail to be interested in what our government really does and the effects it has. The world is so interconnected, how can be believe that invading other countries and killing their people, however justified we feel, will not provoke reactions from them and those that empathise with them?

On the day of the London attacks I couldn't escape the feeling that if I lived in Iraq I'd probably be so numbed to the concept of bombs going off and people being killed that, unless it was one of my own dead or missing, that I'd shrug and, maybe, hope for a quieter tomorrow. We think we are safe here, so it's obviously shocking to be targeted for an attack.

People being killed is terrible but let's seek perspective. Our military, on the orders of our elected government, have been killing people en masse for some time now and, despite the rhetoric about minimizing civillian casualties, there are a lot of dead men, women, and children who didn't sign up for a war in their homeland.

I am sorry to the people who have died, here and abroad, that I haven't done more to bring my government to account for it's actions. All I can do is try harder from now on.

Today I am a very angry man.

Thu, 28 Jul 2005 19:32:11 +0100

So, I made the mistake of turning on the news today and hearing all about the wonderful things our security forces are doing to make the world a better place. And all the pundits, talking heads, and common folk with their reactions.

So, I'm supposed to get used to armed police on the streets of London for the next 2 decades? I'm supposed to be happy to pay an extra £0.5m, and upwards, per day to pay for this privilege? Oh and more for the mayors armed, plain clothes, policemen on the tube? This is on top of our chunk of the $700 billion the sham liberation of Iraq is costing by the way.

I'd like us to consider an alternative. How about we start by throwing Blair to the International Criminal Court in the Hague and make an apology to the sovereign nation of Iraq for illegally invading their country, killing many thousands of their people, and allowing their national treasures and resources to be looted and destroyed. How about that?

I'd also like to see any proof anyone has that this enhanced police presence makes us one iota safer? I'm not talking about whether the rubes the BBC interviewed today "feel reassured." I mean really, actually, less likely to be killed in a bombing or other attack.

I'm sick of this.

The poodle dialogues

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 10:35:56 +0100

I just read a funny piece by Jeremy Irwin about Bush & Blairs on-camera performance recently which reminded me I hadn't mentioned it here. If anything Irwin is too kind in comparing Bush and Blair to a couple of drunks who sneaked past security at the G8.

What great missives does our dear leader have to impart to the most powerful man in the world?

"Well ... it's only if I mean ... you know. If she's got a ... or if she needs the ground prepared as it were ... Because obviously if she goes out, she's got to succeed, if it were, whereas I can go out and just talk."

What was he looking for? A pat on the head and a biscuit?

If this is the quality of dialogue between my Prime Minister and the President of the United States of America then I think I would be happier if they had been a couple of bums who wandered in by accident.

This illuminating epsiode brings into the open the depths to which Blair has sunk. His feet under the table strategy compromised him from the beginning and the sunk costs have mounted to the point where he has no face-saving exit strategy and, fearing lest his place in history be further compromised, he lacks the spine to make a principled exit.

We are now left to imagine the great dialogues that will take place when ~~Fifi~~Blair ~~goes for walkies~~visits with ~~her Master~~Bush in Washington.