Bliar

If, as the media and certain politicians seem to want us to believe, we have a "broken society " (whatever on earth that might actually mean), surely it is just reflecting how "broken" its leadership, government, has become. And I don't mean just the current Labour government. I mean government as an institution, even our democracy itself, if you will.

The state and its agents and those who act with its protection have routinely perpetrated force, violence and coercion, against their own citizens, against other countries, for aeons. The whole model is based on us surrendering some of our personal sovereignty. Some would no doubt rather say "pool" than "surrender" but look around you; "pooling" implies much more of a consensual relationship than reality attests to.

From cradle to grave, as they once promised, the state imposes itself on our lives and choices by more or less coercion. From compulsion in education, via criminalizing consensual or victimless behaviour (even thoughts and opinions) and right through to prosecuting wars "in our name", commanding our young men and women to kill or be killed. And most of all perhaps through taxation - it never hurts as hard as on the pocket!

In turns the state seems to infantilise and nanny us, to absolve us of personal responsibilities, and then, moralizing, blame us for all our own ills. Those who would rule us cynically play on our fears and talk up our aspirations according to their need to gain and retain power. And a tiny minority of us in our broken system can make or break that power for them, so have disproportionate influence over our fellow citizens.

That this has always gone on need hardly be stated. The biggest mystery, as Milton Friedman said, is why human-kind seems collectively to submit to authority - especially remarkable really when you consider that every step of human advance has actually arisen from someone stepping beyond the current conventions, bending the rules, exceeding the norm.

Supposedly benign regimes create instruments to comfort us, to fool us into thinking they are prepared to limit their own authority, whether we call them Geneva Conventions, Human Rights Acts or Data Protection, and then seem to break their own principles when it suits them, call it Guantanamo, pre-charge detention and control orders or ID cards and state databases.

It is often said that ("successful") politicians display many characteristics of psychopathy. How much more "broken" can we get than to submit ourselves to being ruled and represented by smooth talking, self centered, pathological liars? How much more scary than that such people have their hands on both our wallets and on the nuclear triggers? Is it any wonder that life on some of our streets can be vicious?

Utter madness! Bliar for Europe?

Dear God, please, no! Or rmaybe, just perhaps, France wants Britain out? Alternatively, Sarkozy recognizes that Blair failed to do anything of any use during the last British rotating presidency that the best way to hamstring the whole organization would be to put the useless, lying, egomaniacal shit in charge permanently.

Tony Blair could be EU President - Telegraph:
By Toby Helm and Bruno Waterfield in Lisbon
Last Updated: 5:47pm BST 19/10/2007

Tony Blair has been placed in the frame to become the first permanent President of the EU after France launched a campaign to install him in the powerful new Brussels job.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, touted the former Prime Minister as his preferred candidate after Gordon Brown and fellow leaders agreed the EU Reform Treaty, which establishes the new post from January 2009.

Do they still have "army surplus stores"? All the ones in Oxford were priced out of the retail property market years ago. Or maybe their stock was raided to send to our boys in Iraq.

Anyway, the reason I ask is that there's this assumption going about that Bliar will this week get his commission to go sort out the middle east, and, whilst the Guardian is here talking about "popular anger" in the middle east itself, I'm afraid that to my mind such is the inappropriateness of sending the man who has colluded shoulder to shoulder with George Bush in the continuing murder of so many in the Arab world that maybe now is the time to get prepared for WWIII.

I despair for the world when the global old-boys clubs of ex-leaders think Bliar is a suitable envoy to piss on the fire he helped stoke. Actually, it makes me feel physically sick. I was only just warming to the idea of some time without his smarmy spin-wracked cynical grin peering out at me from newspapers or television screens. If Bliar wants to do some community service I'd suggest limiting him to working with President Carter and Habitat for Humanity. Though the state he's left the UK affordable housing scene in probably means he'd have to start right here anyway.

Mind you, I'd hope the new Attorney General would see sense to appeal such a light sentence. Maybe a stint as an "internally displaced person" will instill some humility in him?

Technorati Tags: tony blair, iraq, middle east envoy

If you are already a Christian baptised in a trinitarian tradition, all you really need to do to be "converted" to Rome, is to undergo the Sacrament of Reconciliation ("confession"). Now, of course, it's perfectly possible that in a twenty-five minute private audience this morning with the Pope, Tony Blair may have already done so.

Part of the Sacrament is to perform a penance which is intended to help you reflect on the sinfulness of what you have just confessed and consider how you will avoid doing such things again.

What should brother Tony's penance be I wonder? For me, with some pretty venial sins to confess, it was to meditate on certain Psalms. But I hadn't gone against all the exhortations of the highest authorities in the church and sent men to kill and die in a far off land on a false prospectus in arrogant disregard of evidence collected by servants of the international community on the ground.

So maybe his penance should be to hold a proper inquiry into the decision to go to war and, when it is completed, apologise and face the consequences of his decisions like a man.

Technorati Tags: iraq, catholicism, penance, tony blair

Oh dear!

The Guardian on Thursday presages a Downing Street Press-fest at which Tony Blair will apparently claim that we've all "misunderstood me over the Middle East".

Apparently...he will "face down his critics today over his controversial handling of the Middle East crisis by insisting that he has been working throughout for a ceasefire in Lebanon and that his position has been misunderstood. He will argue at a Downing Street press conference that he wanted a ceasefire, but only if it was coupled with a clear understanding that the Hizbullah militia would be disarmed."

So that'll be a "no" then Tony, we've understood you perfectly well. You don't actually give a stuff about the real people whose lives have been cut short and homes and livelihoods torn apart by what's been happening (actually on both sides but since Israel has all the responsibilities and moral capacity of a democratic nation state they bear most of the blame).

You're happiest with your seven good buddies tucked up in some posh hotel like prep schoolers playing that great game of Diplomacy or like the crowned heads posturing in the pier ballroom on "Oh what a lovely war!". You want a ceasefire but only once 20% of a country has been displaced or left utterly destitute. Can you imagine not wanting a ceasefire until after London and the South East region had been evacuated, bulldozed and occupied? No.

The "rules of war" and human rights were established to prevent a recurrence of razing villages, treating civilian areas as battle grounds to target your artillery at. I actually have more respect for what Israel are now doing - starting on the eyeball to eyeball anti-guerilla fighting on the ground - than the softening up and remote control village clearances by artillery and bombing (now acknowledged by Israel to have been completely intentional all along as some of us predicted).

You'd rather condone human rights abuses and war crimes when they're being carried out by the lot on "our side" (apparently) than stick up for what is right - the defense of the innocents (also on both sides). Presumably your party is worried that they'll never be allowed into International Labour Organization meetings ever again having surrendered any claim to being the champions of ordinary people.

I don't believe anyone can really talk properly about what happens in the future until the guns have fallen silent. The difference between that happening two weeks ago and next week will only have been that "our ally" achieved most of its illegal and immoral military aims before you made them stop with hundreds dead and hundreds of thousands displaced. And I have no doubt Hezbullah is now stronger by a few village butchers, bankers and undertakers because nobody else was going to help them fight for their homes, lands and livelihoods.

While governments are pushing options round tables thousands of miles away, hundreds of thousands of lives are being uprooted and devastated. The poor and excluded are always the victims of war.