Jamie Stern-Weiner | ukwatch.net

Supporting occupation - Gordon Brown in Israel

JamieSW — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 12:43:49 +0000

Whoever scheduled Gordon Brown’s recent visit to Israel is surely out of a job. Brown’s dreary, etiolated performance – appropriate for a political corpse – was rendered even flatter by its proximity to Barack Obama’s headline-hogging whirlwind tour of Europe and the Middle East. Despite the differences in style, however, both politicians took to the podium in Israel with a similar message: one of support for the latter’s rejectionist expansionism.

The political background to Brown’s trip was almost without exception one of misery and despair. The Israeli government, despite its flowery rhetoric, has continued to pursue long-held policies designed to fragment the West Bank and prevent the emergence of anything resembling a coherent Palestinian state. The West Bank today consists of a series of isolated cantons, surrounded on all sides by Israeli infrastructure and security forces, between which movement and economic activity is extremely difficult. The UN last year estimated that Israeli military and settlement infrastructure together make nearly 40% of the West Bank inaccessible to Palestinians. Freedom of movement is drastically curtailed through a vast network of checkpoints, roadblocks and Israeli-only roads that serve, to quote the World Bank, “to expand and protect settlement activity and the relatively unhindered movement of settlers and other Israelis in and out of the West Bank”[1] The humanitarian, social and economic consequences of this enforced cantonisation (.pdf), “intimately linked to maintaining settler access and … quality of life”, are “profound” – indeed, it is “at the root of the West Bank’s declining economy.” Unemployment in the West Bank between July and December 2007 reached 25%, double the average regional rate. Overall, levels of employment in the occupied territories were “amongst the highest in the world“, with refugees being hit even harder. The Palestinians “continued to have the worst performing economy in the Middle East-North Africa sub-region” – a state of affairs that, as discussed below, has been engineered deliberately by Israel and its international backers, including Britain.

Gaza, meanwhile, is undergoing a humanitarian crisis of “unprecedented” (.pdf) proportions. The Gazan economy has “collapsed”, its population intentionally reduced to a state of “abject destitution” through sustained economic and military siege. Although the Israeli blockade has eased somewhat since the ceasefire agreement with Hamas, conditions in Gaza remain grim (.pdf). 45% of the population is unemployed, 95% of factories have shut down and entire industries have been decimated (.pdf). Over half of Gazan households now subsist below the poverty line, while 35% of Gazans are surviving below the ‘deep poverty’ line of $457 a month for a family of six.[2] In December 2007 the World Bank warned of an “irreversible” economic collapse in Gaza, outlining a worst-case scenario of 44% unemployment – a scenario that, as noted, has already been exceeded.

Given the gravity of this situation, one might have expected Gordon Brown to confront the Israeli government with some harsh truths. If he did so, he certainly didn’t do it in public. His “historic” speech before the Knesset made no mention of the occupation, or indeed of Palestinian suffering at all. Instead Brown produced an unqualified paean to Israel’s magnificence, lauding it as the very embodiment of “democracy”, “liberty”, “justice”, “idealism”, “bravery” and “perseverance”. At times he reached for New-Age mysticism in the struggle to fully evoke his passion for the Israeli state, babbling to a no-doubt baffled Knesset of “liberty’s torch”, “justice’s mighty stream” and “tolerance’s foundation of equality”, before proceeding to outline a vast “conflict of ideas” in which Britain and Israel “stand together” on “the side of openness”. Brown referred to “the achievement of 1948: the centuries of exile ended”, failing to mention that the same year saw the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who, along with their descendants, continue to live in exile today. He spoke of “the age-long dream realised, the ancient promise redeemed – the promise that even amidst suffering, you will find your way home to the fields and shorelines where your ancestors walked”, apparently unaware of same yearning possessed by Palestinians living in squalid refugee camps just a few hours away.

Brown pledged to Israel Britain’s “true friend[ship]”, the two states sharing “an unbreakable partnership based on shared values of liberty, democracy and justice”. Leaving aside the absurdity of attributing these “values” to either the British or Israeli state, it is unclear who exactly Brown was speaking for. Surely not the 65% of Britons who view Israel’s influence in the world as “mainly negative”, or the 79% who want the UK to avoid taking sides in the conflict. Whereas Brown has praised Israel for bearing “burdens for peace in every generation”, 57% of the British public think that Israel is failing to do its part to resolve the conflict, thereby placing Britain’s population – though not its leadership – in line with world public opinion, the UN, the International Court of Justice and numerous independent, respected human rights organisations.

Virtually the only allusion Brown made throughout his whole trip to the horrific injustices being inflicted on the Palestinians was a reference to the wall following his meeting with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, describing it as “graphic evidence” of the need for justice for the Palestinians, a “secure” Israel and a viable Palestinian state. In fact the wall, declared illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004, is “graphic evidence” principally of Israel’s intention to annex a large portion of the West Bank, making a “viable and economically sustainable Palestinian state” an impossibility. Its route, which “cuts deep into the West Bank” (.pdf) to encircle the major settlement blocs, “was not based on security considerations, but to perpetuate and expand the settlements”.[3] It is difficult to see how Brown can reconcile this clear rejection of a two-state settlement with his praise for the Israeli government’s “vision of peace and reconciliation”.

‘Economic roadmap’

But enough with the fluff. What actual, concrete policy proposals did Brown suggest? Apart from repeating Britain’s official position on a final settlement, which is in accord with the international consensus[4], and making a vanishingly brief pro forma request for Israel to freeze construction in and begin withdrawing from the settlements, Brown’s main theme was his “economic roadmap”, which looks to be nearly as redundant as its political counterpart. The plan essentially appears to be to throw lots of money at the Palestinian Authority, encourage the reforms being carried out by Fayyad and stimulate investment in the West Bank by organising conferences, constructing business parks, and so forth. This is all fine as far as it goes. Improving the economic situation in the West Bank is both a humanitarian imperative and a necessary measure to increase the stability and effectiveness of Palestinian institutions. However, as the International Crisis Group points out (.pdf), there is “a natural ceiling” to potential economic and security development while the territory remains under occupation. Indeed, Fayyad may “already be bumping” against this ceiling, since the “political context” has failed to keep up with his economic reforms. Despite the large amount of donor aid and other measures that have been pursued in the past year to stimulate the Palestinian economy, the World Bank reports that economic indicators “have not changed considerably”, failing to reverse “the impacts of the aid boycott in 2006 and 2007”. “The contributing effects of the closures and movement restrictions” to the stifling of the Palestinian economy “cannot be overestimated”, with the result that PA reforms and international aid “remain necessary but insufficient preconditions for economic recovery”. This analysis is shared by the House of Commons International Development Committee, which concludes (.pdf) that,

“Increased donor assistance, while welcome, will not be sufficient to turn around the economic downturn which has pervaded the Palestinian economy since 2000 without significant and long-term removal of such restrictions.”[5]

In this light, it is noteworthy that Brown’s economic proposals were not accompanied by anything similar on the political front. He had nothing to say, for example, about the disastrous political division between Hamas, the de facto authority in Gaza, and Fatah, the de facto authority in the West Bank.[6] This apparent oversight can be understood in the context of Britain’s far from insignificant role in engineering the internal Palestinian conflict. After Hamas was elected in January 2006, Britain, along with the U.S. and the rest of the EU, subjected Palestinians to what the UN special rapporteur for human rights described as “possibly the most rigorous form of international sanctions imposed in modern times” – the “first time”, he noted, “that an occupied people has been so treated.”[7] This “collective punishment”, a clear attempt to “compel Hamas to change its ideological stance, or to bring about regime change”, had catastrophic social and economic consequences. The number of Palestinians living in ‘deep poverty’ soared by 64% in the first half of 2006, while by early 2007 nearly half of Palestinian households were malnourished, to give just two representative examples of the shocking suffering the British government helped to inflict on an occupied, civilian population.[8] The blockade helped drive (.pdf) the PA to “the edge of collapse”, reducing it to “an utterly broken pseudo-government” that had “virtually ceased to function”. This was all carried out with the expectation that it would increase the risk of internal Palestinian violence. When, despite the international sanctions and a brutal Israeli military assault,[9] Abbas formed a government of national unity with Hamas in a desperate attempt to end the slaughter, the Quartet, including Britain, moved quickly to avert the threat. The diplomatic and economic boycott was maintained and, inevitably, the government collapsed.[10] In parallel the U.S., and to a lesser extent Britain, were busy arming, financing and training an elite Fatah militia[11] with the goal of destroying Hamas. This attempted coup against the elected Hamas government was a principal cause of the internecine Palestinian violence that ultimately led to the forcible takeover of Gaza by Hamas in June 2007, in what the International Institute for Strategic Studies describes as “a pre-emptive coup”.[12]

Today, the British government continues to insist that Hamas be isolated until it satisfies the specious Quartet “principles”[13], accurately described by a former chief of Israeli military intelligence as “ridiculous, or an excuse not to negotiate”, despite the fact that “a new Fatah-Hamas power-sharing arrangement is a prerequisite for a sustainable” attempt at peace. The International Crisis Group expresses a near consensus among serious analysts of the conflict when it concludes that the “imperative of Palestinian national reconciliation remains as urgent as ever.”[14] British parliamentarians appear to agree, with the relevant select committees repeatedly urging the government to engage with Hamas and encourage Palestinian reconciliation. The Foreign Affairs Committee argues (.pdf) that “the decision not to speak to Hamas in 2007 following the Mecca agreement has been counterproductive”, recommending that the government “urgently consider ways of engaging politically with moderate elements within Hamas” and promoting efforts to reach “a negotiated settlement with Hamas with a view to re-establishing a national unity Government”. The International Development Committee similarly concludes that “it remains important to bring Hamas into dialogue and into the peace process”, since “without some kind of reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, and without international engagement of all stakeholders, the peace process will not succeed.” The Committee makes the obvious point that while Hamas’ acceptance of the Quartet conditions will plainly have to be part of any final settlement, to insist that they be met as preconditions to negotiations simply presents “an unnecessary obstacle to practical progress”.

Rather than promote Palestinian unity and engage constructively with the Palestinian leadership, the British government has, quoting Human Rights Watch, remained “tacitly or openly” complicit in “a policy of protracted collective punishment” instituted in response to Hamas’ electoral victory in early 2006 and intensified following the movement’s takeover of Gaza in June 2007. The siege of Gaza, officially condemned by the British government as a violation of international law, has caused “a marked and clear deterioration” (Amnesty International) in an already disastrous humanitarian situation, to the point where “life … is a daily struggle, even to get enough to eat.” To give just one illustration of the effects of the blockade, “[t]he proportion of deaths among hospitalised neonates at Gaza’s pediatric hospitals … increased from 5.6% during the period January-October 2006 to 6.9% during the corresponding period in 2007.” Interestingly, both the Department for International Development and the British government itself are of the view (.pdf) that the blockade, recognized by the International Development Committee as “amounting to collective punishment”, is “part of a political strategy to get Hamas to sign up to the Quartet principles”, with the border closures intended to further the “political objective” of “isolating Hamas”. That is, the British government freely acknowledges that Israel is guilty of deliberately targeting the civilian population of Gaza in the service of political goals, otherwise known as terrorism.[15] Such is the alliance of “liberty, democracy and justice”.

The Annapolis process

Presumably to justify his failure to propose any significant steps to advance the political process, Brown pointed to the “Annapolis process” as “a real opportunity” to progress towards a two-state settlement. The Secretary of State for International Development has similarly described Annapolis as “the only show in town”. In reality, Annapolis represents a continuation of a long-held strategy, described above, to weaken and isolate Hamas.[16] Israel’s view of Annapolis is made clear by its behaviour following the conference last November. This year has seen “an unprecedented escalation in human rights violations in the Gaza Strip” (.pdf). In the first quarter of 2008 more Palestinians were killed in Gaza than in the corresponding periods in the three previous years combined and then doubled. More Palestinians have been killed since the conference than were killed throughout the whole of 2007. Restrictions on movement in the West Bank have continued to increase, in violation of numerous promises and in the context of a more than 60% increase (.pdf) in checkpoints and closures since August 2005. Settlement activity, described by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan as “the single biggest impediment to realising a viable Palestinian state with territorial contiguity”, has increased dramatically, in violation of the Roadmap, the Annapolis declaration and international law. In the 11 months prior to the Annapolis summit, Israel published tenders for 100 housing units in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Since Annapolis it has sought bids for more than 1,700 homes, an increase of more than 1,600%. Last week an Israeli ministerial committee approved plans for the construction of 20 homes in the settlement of Maskiot, east of the annexation wall, while earlier this month the settlement of Ariel received final approval for the construction of 27 factories, a move that will triple the size of its industrial park. This is the reality of the “process” Brown hails as offering “a real opportunity to move forward”.

As noted, Brown did briefly condemn the settlements and urge Israel to begin withdrawing from them. However, when pressed to outline any concrete steps he would take to exert pressure on Israel to freeze its settlement activities, Brown refused to answer. The International Development Committee notes in this regard that the Quartet has not “exert[ed] sufficient pressure on Israel to open the crossings”, while the British government “often stops short of explicit condemnation of the closures and the restrictions.” Oxfam similarly condemns the international community’s response to the crisis in the West Bank and Gaza as “wholly inadequate”, adding that “the UK government should have acted more robustly, undertaking practical steps, to secure the opening of the Gaza crossing points and address settlement expansion in the West Bank.”

Were the British government genuinely interested in advancing prospects for a two-state settlement, there are clear steps it could take. It could use its position within the EU and its “considerable” influence over Fatah to promote Palestinian national reconciliation and initiate diplomatic engagement with Hamas. It could ban the import and export of settlement produce from the UK. Arms sales to Israel, totalling £14 million last year alone, could be conditioned on respect for international law.[17] Concrete measures could be taken to oppose Israel’s continuing construction of the annexation wall, in accordance with Britain’s legal obligations[18]. The EU-Israel Association Agreement, which gives preferential access to Israeli exports, could be suspended in the light of Israel’s gross human rights violations. Instead the EU recently upgraded its bilateral ties with Israel, a move supported by the British government despite Fayyad’s pleas to condition the upgrade on a freeze in settlement construction.[19]

As it is, the UK has not only failed to adequately oppose Israeli crimes in the West Bank and Gaza, but has actively taken part in and facilitated them. This represents a complete abdication of our legal and moral obligations, particularly disgraceful given Britain’s clear historical responsibility for the Palestinians’ plight, and amounts to complicity in the systematic destruction of any basis for a viable two-state settlement of the kind the British government affects to support.

[1] The Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem similarly concludes that “a substantial proportion” of the restrictions on Palestinian movement in the West Bank serve interests other than security, for example “to create a rapid and convenient road network for the settlers”. B’Tselem’s “inescapable” conclusion is that the restrictions constitute “collective punishment”, a violation of international law.

[2] This sharp increase in poverty, for those who care about such matters, appears to be having the entirely predictable effect of driving Palestinians towards Hamas.

[3] This obvious point was acknowledged by the then-leader of the Labor Party and current Israeli President Shimon Peres in 2003, when he noted that the route of the wall “is following a certain vision of the future”, constituting a “political fence” as opposed to a “security” one. The House of Commons International Development Committee similarly concludes (.pdf) that the wall’s “route into the West Bank appears to protect the presence of major settlement blocs in the West Bank rather than the security of Israel.” The UN OCHA has described the wall as a “de facto border” (.pdf), while Amnesty International views it as an “unlawful land grab” aimed at “facilitating the expansion and consolidation of unlawful Israeli settlements”.

[4] In Brown’s words, “an agreement based on the 1967 borders, with Jerusalem a capital for both states, and for fair and agreed arrangements with refugees”.

[5] The International Development Committee notes further that, “the economic forecasts remain poor without a fundamental change in the current restrictions on movement and access”. The Gazan economy has “collapsed since the June 2007 closures”, while the economic situation in the West Bank has improved “only marginally”. The World Bank similarly emphasises that “Palestinian economic revival is predicated on an integrated economic entity with freedom of movement between the West Bank and Gaza and within the West Bank”.

[6] Although Western politicians and media prefer to focus on the dubious legal legitimacy of the Hamas government in Gaza, the fact is that neither administration is ruling in accordance with Palestinian law – see, for example, the ICG report cited above p.1; footnotes 1-3.

[7] Recall that this vicious punishment was meted out to a population already suffering sub-Saharan levels of malnutrition and undergoing “the worst economic depression in modern history”.

[8] For more, see (for example) Oxfam International, which in February 2007 warned that “conditions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories [are] close to melt-down”. It continued:

“Since 2006 poverty has shot up … Two thirds of Palestinians now live in poverty, a rise of 30 per cent last year. The number of families unable to get enough food has risen by 14 per cent. More than half of all Palestinians are now are ‘food insecure’, unable to meet their families’ daily requirements without assistance. The health system is disintegrating.”

This horrific human suffering was, to repeat, a direct and predictable consequence of international actors, including Britain, using “international aid as a battering ram to force through political change” (Jeremy Hobbs, Director of Oxfam).

[9] In 2006 Israeli actions left 660 Palestinians dead, 141 of whom were children and at least 322 of whom were civilians uninvolved in the hostilities. Most of the civilian deaths were “the result of deliberate and reckless shooting and artillery shelling or air strikes by Israeli forces carried out in densely populated areas in the Gaza Strip.” The military assault, focused primarily on Gaza, was intended to weaken or topple the Hamas government by collectively punishing the Palestinian population. The UN special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied territories wrote at the time that, “[r]egime change, rather than security, probably explains Israel’s punishment of Gaza”.

[10] As the International Crisis Group reported last year,

“it would be disingenuous in the extreme to minimise the role of outside players [in the collapse of the national unity government], the U.S. and the European Union in particular.

By refusing to deal with the national unity government and only selectively engaging some of its non-Hamas members, by maintaining economic sanctions and providing security assistance to one of the parties in order to outmanoeuvre the other, they contributed mightily to the outcome they now publicly lament.”

The International Development Committee similarly reports that “the international community withheld support for the National Unity Government—itself an attempt to establish a stable and functioning government in the territories—and bolstered one side against the other which increased tension between Hamas and Fatah”, adding that, “if this National Unity Government had been given greater international support it could have provided a gateway for greater dialogue and negotiation and at the very least kept the Palestinians united”. Countering this diabolical threat of Palestinian unity was precisely the objective driving U.S./Israeli policy, supported fully by Britain and the rest of the EU. See footnote 12.

[11] Of note in this regard is Brown’s statement following his meeting with Fayyad that the British government is “expanding the offer that we have already made of training for Palestinian police and security forces”.

[12] The IISS explains the “debacle in Gaza” as a “direct result of the policies advocated by Fatah’s ‘old guard’ … [and] US officials in charge of Palestine policy”. The International Development Committee, noting “reports of a controversial US sponsored plot to oust Hamas from power”, likewise concludes that “the building-up of Fatah security forces with the assistance of donors led Hamas to take control of Gaza in June 2007”. See “The Gaza Bombshell”, David Rose, Vanity Fair, for the definitive account of the U.S./Israeli plans to topple Hamas. For further discussion see: “Document details ‘US’ plan to sink Hamas”, Mark Perry and Paul Woodward, Asia Times; “UN was pummelled into submission, says outgoing Middle East special envoy”, Rory McCarthy, The Guardian; “Our Second Biggest Mistake in the Middle East”, Alastair Crooke, London Review of Books; and my article, “Engineering a coup in Gaza”.

[13] The “principles” demand that Hamas 1) renounce violence, 2) recognise Israel’s “right to exist”, and 3) respect previous agreements. Illegitimate in themselves, these conditions can in any event be immediately dismissed on the grounds that Israel violates all three on a scale that dwarfs anything attributable to Hamas.

[14] This view is shared by, for example, Ephraim Halevy, former chief of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency; Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell; Palestine scholar and senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment Nathan J. Brown (.pdf); veteran diplomats and political analysts Robert Malley and Aaron David Miller; Zbigniew Brzezinski, Brent Scowcroft, Lee Hamilton and other mainstream, respected foreign policy analyists; and the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee (.pdf).

[15] It is no accident that the Fourth Geneva Convention groups “collective penalties” together with “measures of intimidation or terrorism” – the two are largely the same thing. The Israeli government is fairly open about its terrorist policy in Gaza, with Ehud Olmert stating:

“As far as I am concerned, all of Gaza’s resident can walk and have no fuel for their cars, as they live under a murderous regime … We won’t allow a situation in which people in Sderot walk around in fear day and night, while Gazans lead a completely normal life … We won’t allow for a humanitarian crisis, but have no intention of making their lives easier. And the harder their lives, excluding humanitarian damage, we will not allow them to lead a pleasant life. [my emph.]

Dov Weisglass, senior advisor to Ariel Sharon, summarised Israeli policy in late 2006: “We have to make them [the Palestinian people] much thinner, but not enough to die”. One Israeli border officer defined his mission in similar terms: “no development, no prosperity, only humanitarian dependency” (.pdf).

[16] Middle East expert Henry Siegman, describing the “peace process” as possibly “the most spectacular deception in modern diplomatic history”, notes that what became known as the ‘Annapolis peace process’ is in fact motivated by a U.S./Israeli “determination to bring down Hamas rather than to build up a Palestinian state”. See also “Gaza’s Future”, Henry Siegman, London Review of Books.

[17] The Campaign Against the Arms Trade reports:

“Israel has used F-16 fighter aircraft and Apache combat helicopters to bomb Lebanese and Palestinian towns and villages. These contain significant UK components including missile triggering systems for Apaches and Head-Up Displays for F-16s.”

For more information, see Stop Arming Israel.

[18] The ICJ ruled that every party to the Fourth Geneva Convention – including Britain – is legally obliged to “see to it that any impediment, resulting from the construction of the wall, to the exercise by the Palestinian people of its right to self determination is brought to an end” and to “ensure compliance by Israel with international humanitarian law”.

[19] The International Development Committee, which has repeatedly called for the Agreement to be suspended, expressed “surprise” that “the EU has decided to upgrade its relationship with Israel while it continues to flout international law”.

Distorting the IAEA Report on Iran

Tim Holmes — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 16:57:00 +0000

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) yesterday published its latest report (.pdf) into Iran’s nuclear activities. Interestingly, the U.S. has claimed that the report confirms what it has been saying all along – that it “makes clear that Iran seems uninterested in working with the rest of the world” – and is using it to justify a renewed push for further sanctions. Meanwhile, Israel has denounced the same report for “fail[ing] to expose Ahmadinejad’s intentions”. It seems the warmongers can’t get their story straight.

In a nutshell, the report concluded that:

“The Agency has been able to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran. Iran has provided the Agency with access to declared nuclear material, and has provided the required nuclear material accountancy reports in connection with declared nuclear material and activities.”

Iran was praised for its cooperation with the investigation:

“Iran has provided sufficient access to individuals and has responded in a timely manner to questions and provided clarifications and amplifications on issues raised in the context of the work plan.”

The IAEA further added that, whilst all declared nuclear materials have been verified, the organisation is not in a position to confidently confirm the absence of any undeclared nuclear material – not because there is any evidence that such material exists (on the contrary: the Agency has “no concrete information” to that effect), but simply because Iran is not currently operating under the optional Additional Protocol to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and so the IAEA’s access is limited. Of course, it is worth recalling that Iran had been implementing the Additional Protocol until the IAEA, under pressure from the U.S., referred it to the UN Security Council on extremely flimsy grounds.

The report also confirmed that Iran has continued to enrich uranium, in “defiance” of a UN Security Council resolution but in accordance with its legal rights under the NPT.

This last point is hardly a revelation – Iran hasn’t exactly been hiding its enrichment programme. On the contrary: it has very possibly been exaggerating it. Yet, this is the angle through which most newspapers seem to have approached the story.

Consider the Guardian’s take on the report – entitled “Decision time for US over Iran threat“, and subtitled “UN nuclear report heightens tension”, Julian Borger’s article begins:

“Iran has installed 3,000 centrifuges for enriching uranium – enough to begin industrial-scale production of nuclear fuel and build a warhead within a year, the UN’s nuclear watchdog reported last night.”

Now firstly, as other readers have noted, the IAEA report says nothing whatsoever about 3,000 centrifuges being “enough to…build a warhead within a year”. That seems to be Borger’s own contribution, though it is presented as if it came from the IAEA. Secondly, the whole tone of the article is one that implies increased threat and danger, suggesting that the IAEA report has somehow brought us closer to a war. In Borger’s words,

“The IAEA says the uranium being produced is only fuel grade (enriched to 4%) but the confirmation that Iran has reached the 3,000 centrifuge benchmark brings closer a moment of truth for the Bush administration, when it will have to choose between taking military action or abandoning its red line, and accepting Iran’s technical mastery of uranium enrichment.”

This is a ludicrous angle to take on a report that affirms, once again, that there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest the existence of an Iranian nuclear weapons programme. The entire piece is written from the perspective of the Bush administration, and is positively dripping with bias from start to finish – note, for example, how the British Foreign Office spokesman “said” and Gordon Brown “called for”, while President Ahmadinejad “seized on”.

The Times was no better, carrying the headline: “Iran could build atom bomb within one year, says watchdog“. The first paragraph is very similar to Julian Borger’s in the Guardian:

“Iran has expanded its capacity to enrich uranium and now has 3,000 centrifuges operating — enough potentially to produce an atom bomb within a year — the United Nations nuclear watchdog reported yesterday.”

Again, as noted above, the report says no such thing – the bit about it being “enough…to produce an atom bomb within a year” is an extrapolation made by The Times, yet presented as if it was contained within the IAEA report. Astonishingly, The Times article fails to even mention the IAEA’s most significant conclusion – that all declared nuclear material has been accounted for, and that no concrete evidence exists suggesting the presence of undeclared nuclear material. This suppression enables The Times to present the IAEA report as implicating Iran and pointing towards an Iranian nuclear bomb, thus turning the truth completely on its head.

The Independent was equally shambolic. In an article entitled “Iran nuclear report fails to convince the West” (why not: “The West fails to convince the IAEA”?), it maintained that,

“the document will do nothing to ease tensions between the West and Iran nor quell speculation of eventual military action. Rather, it will provide new ammunition to Western governments seeking to impose new sanctions on Iran, notably the United States, Britain and France.”

How, exactly? By affirming once again the total lack of evidence for an Iranian nuclear weapons programme, and thus utterly undermining the U.S.-led campaign of intimidation against Iran? Alas, The Independent does not explain – indeed, like The Times, it inexplicably fails to mention this aspect of the IAEA report at all.

The Associated Press managed to run a piece entitled, “IAEA: Iran Not Open About Nuke Program“, which was then immediately contradicted in the first paragraph, where it was acknowledged that the IAEA report in fact “said the Tehran regime has been generally truthful about key aspects of its past nuclear activities”. CNN published an article headlined “U.N. losing grip on Iran nuke plan” (’nuff said), while the Washington Post emphasised the IAEA’s “diminishing” information about Iran’s current nuclear activities (because, as explained above, Iran is no longer implementing the Additional Protocol), while failing to mention the report’s conclusion that all of Iran’s declared nuclear material has been verified and accounted for by the IAEA.

A recurring theme has been the idea that Iran is being “punished” by the West for its “defiance” – see, for example, this from Reuters. This conception relies upon two assumptions – a) that Iran is doing something wrong, and b) that “the West” has the right or is in some moral position to “punish” countries that disobey it. Neither premise is supported by the evidence, and the second in particular betrays the fundamental belief in the supremacy and benevolence of Western power that underpins so much of mainstream reporting.

As sampled above, most media coverage of the IAEA report has served to distort and, in many cases, totally invert the IAEA’s actual findings. Far from reporting the IAEA’s conclusion that there is no evidence of any Iranian nuclear weapons programme, the press have tended instead to portray the report as evidence of a growing Iranian nuclear threat. For the media to misrepresent the facts so thoroughly and to regurgitate Pentagon press releases so unquestioningly at a time when the U.S. is openly pushing for war with Iran is the height of irresponsibility. As with Iraq, it is precisely this kind of media propagandising for power that could enable an attack to take place. If it does, the press will surely bear significant responsibility for the disaster that ensues.

For a more reality-based take on the IAEA report and the facts about Iran’s nuclear programme, see here and here.

A Look In The Mirror

Tim Holmes — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 19:46:32 +0000

The past week has borne witness to that vanishingly rare event: a bout of media self-examination. We’ve seen major news outlets like the BBC and Channel Four step back and reflect on the quality and accuracy of their output, even going so far as to publicly apologise for mistakes that were made. Well, sort of.

The media have not acknowledged their consistent misreporting of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinians, in which they create a false symmetry between the two sides and strip the violence of the necessary context in which it becomes intelligible. The situation is so bad that when a BBC reporter accidentally lets slip something approximating reality, he is roundly condemned by fellow journalists for exhibiting an “unbelievable” and “poisonous” “degree of bias”.

They have not reflected upon their apparent compulsion to demonise and misrepresent ‘official enemies’, such as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez or the state of Iran, the likely target of President Bush’s next ‘adventure’ in the Middle East. As the UK media watchdog group Media Lens have pointed out, the media finds itself unable to mention Chavez without attaching to him a derogatory prefix: see “strongman” (Channel 4), “controversial left-wing president” (BBC TV News), “extreme left-winger” (BBC Radio 4), “controversial leader” (The Mirror), “outspoken” (The Independent on Sunday), “aggressively populist”(The Times), “left-wing firebrand” (The Independent), “international revolutionary firebrand” (The Observer), “maverick” (The Sunday Times), “virulently anti-American” (The Independent), and so on. The extent to which the mainstream British press is biased against Chavez is illustrated by the recent, manufactured “controversy” over his decision to not renew the public license of a TV channel (RCTV) that openly participated in an illegal coup against him. The typical media line was that Chavez “shut down“ RCTV because it was “critical” of his government, or because it was a voice of “dissent”. When the station’s involvement in the 2002 coup d’etat was mentioned, it was typically framed as an accusation made by Chavez and his government (who, as we have seen above, had already been thoroughly smeared by this point), rather than what it was: namely, an independently verifiable fact. In reality, RCTV was never “shut down” – its public license was simply not renewed, in full accordance with the law. The station could still broadcast over satellite and cable and, on Monday, it started doing so – Oil Wars has a video. Despite the hysterical (and politically convenient) level of media coverage Chavez’ decision not to renew RCTV’s license received, at the time of writing neither The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent or The Times have reported on the station’s reopening (the Financial Times, the AP and the BBC have done so, to their credit). The New Statesman recently published what may well be one of the most biased pieces of ‘journalism’ ever written, describing Chavez as a “power-crazed” “tyrant” who “shut down” RCTV for its “anti-government bias”. With this level of reporting, it’s no wonder Hélène Mulholland, the London delegate to the recent annual conference of the British National Union of Journalists (NUJ), characterised the majority of mainstream press coverage of Venezuela as “badly affected by deliberate attempts at spreading disinformation”.

The treatment of Iran has been even worse. Knowing full well that the U.S. government is preparing for a possible attack on the country, the mainstream media is once again propagandising for power, constantly hyping up the threat posed by Iran to the rest of the world whilst minimising or ignoring the far greater threat Iran itself faces from the aggressive, nuclear-armed world superpower and its regional client. In the mad rush to demonise the enemy, facts have, predictably, been left behind. Take, for example, what one analyst has called the “rumour of the century“ – a mistranslation of a speech by President Ahmadinejad to the effect that he wants to see Israel “wiped off the map”, widely interpreted in the media as a threat of military action against Israel. In fact, he said no such thing. It was a misquote, easily checkable, and yet (despite a gradual, partial climbdown) mainstream journalists continue to cite it despite the fact that it has long been thoroughly debunked. But even if the quote were accurate, what is almost never reported is that Iran couldn’t destroy Israel even if it wanted to and that Ahmadinejad, elected on promises of domestic reforms, has no authority over foreign policy whatsoever. The real power in that regard lies with the Ayatollah Khamenei, who has repeatedly stated that “all native Palestinians, whether they are Muslims, Christians or Jews, should be allowed to take part in a general referendum before the eyes of the world and decide on a Palestinian government”. The official Iranian position is anti-Zionist, but it does not call for an attack on Israel (the Saudis even claim to have secured Iran’s support for the Arab peace initiative, which calls for a two-state solution). Disgracefully, the many Iranian statements saying that Iran is not a threat to Israel have received far less collective coverage than a single misquote from a man with no authority over the matter anyway – needless to say, the many statements by U.S. and Israeli politicians threatening Iran far more explicitly and with far greater credibility have also received scant coverage. Such is the rush to demonise the enemy. I can’t recall reading in any mainstream newspaper that when British and American politicians refuse to take military action against Iran “off the table”, they are violating Art. 2(4) of the UN Charter. The Guardian stooped even lower recently, elevating to the front page what was essentially a Pentagon press release accusing Iran of preparing for open war on U.S. forces in Iraq, in what media analyst Edward Herman described as a relapse of the “Judy Miller syndrome”. Once again, the establishment press is performing the required function, softening the public up for war.

There has been no apology for the consistent minimising and downplaying of the horror we have inflicted upon the people of Iraq. A peer-reviewed, professionally conducted survey into Iraqi morality rates, published in the prestigious Lancet medical journal, last year put the excess deaths in Iraq since the 2003 invasion at 655,000 – that is, 655,000 Iraqis have been killed as a direct result of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation, on top of an already inflated mortality rate as a result of the pre-war “genocidal“ sanctions regime. The Ministry of Defence’s Chief Scientific Advisor described the study as “robust” and “close to best practice”. A more recent estimate, based on the Lancet survey, puts the number of Iraqis killed as a result of the invasion and occupation at close to a million. Despite this, the media have invariably opted for the much lower casualty figures of the Iraq Body Count website, which passively surveys those Iraqi deaths reported by at least two reputable media sources. As Iraq Body Count themselves admit (though not nearly prominently enough), they “rely on the combined, and self-correcting, professionalism of the world’s press to deliver meaningful maxima and minima for our count”. They continue,

“Our maximum therefore refers to reported deaths – which can only be a sample of true deaths unless one assumes that every civilian death has been reported. It is likely that many if not most civilian casualties will go unreported by the media. That is the sad nature of war.”

Despite this, journalists have continued to cite the IBC’s gross underestimate of civilian deaths, an outrageous dereliction of duty given the huge responsibility Britain bears for the carnage. As one editor bafflingly explained, “I’ve used the 35,000 figure [from Iraq Body Count] because that is the lowest number”. That the Lancet survey is cited at all is largely thanks to the tireless efforts of groups like Media Lens, who have relentlessly confronted journalists about their distortions. The media, itself http://www.ukwatch.net/node/add/story
Submit story | ukwatch.nethref=“http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/Plain_English_Summaries/knowledge_communication_learning/index115.aspx?ComponentId=17295&SourcePageId=11748”>heavily complicit in the invasion of Iraq, has continued to misrepresent the situation there, largely ignoring the massive Coalition air assault on the country (U.S. aircraft ‘dropped 437 bombs and missiles in Iraq in the first six months of 2007, a fivefold increase over the 86 used in the first half of 2006, and three times more than in the second half of 2006…In June, bombs dropped at a rate of more than five a day’) and generally portraying Coalition forces as innocent bystanders, merely trying to keep Iraqis from killing each other. To do this it has been necessary to downplay the strength and popular support of the Iraqi resistance and falsely equate it with al-Qaeda and “foreign fighters”, who in reality constitute only a tiny minority of the insurgency.

There has been no reflection on the media’s propensity to whitewash the crimes of the leaders of Western or client states, there’s been no look at the tendency to ridicule popular movements (if they’re reported at all) and there has certainly been no attempt to analyse the corporate structure of the media and examine the consequences of this on the accuracy and objectivity of mainstream reporting.

No, there’s been none of that. Instead, the BBC has apologised for making the Queen appear to have a tantrum when in fact she didn’t and has admitted to editing footage for the antiques show ‘Flog It!’ to make it seem like a woman was bidding on one auction when in fact she had been bidding on another, whilst Channel Four apologised for misleading viewers into thinking that Gordon Ramsay had caught some fish.

Hurrah for media accountability!

Jamie Stern-Weiner is a frequent contributor to UK Watch. He blogs at: http://heathlander.wordpress.com

Whitewashing Blair

Alex Doherty — Sun, 20 May 2007 18:01:22 +0000

The hagiographic re-writing of history after Reagan’s death, and more recently after Gerald Ford’s, should have prepared us for the inevitable whitewash of Blair’s historic crimes following the announcement last week of his upcoming resignation, but on this occasion I do believe the media has surpassed itself.

Trudging through the reams of commentary on Blair’s departure, several themes become apparent. Immediately obvious is the disdain and ridicule poured upon those principled enough to have opposed the invasion of Iraq, and to have continued to oppose the occupation and demand that Blair be held accountable ever since (the media fails on both counts). Thus, in The Guardian, Polly Toynbee described how the “protesting furies pursued [Blair] with klaxons and placards” (The Guardian, 11/5/07). Writing in the same paper, Timothy Garton Ash was similarly derisive:

“A fortnight ago I used this column to let Blair give, in his own words, his own balance sheet of his foreign policy over the last decade. To judge by some of the furious responses I received, even to offer the outgoing prime minister a courteous hearing is a kind of intellectual treason. The sole duty of any self-respecting commentator is to interrogate and then indict Blair – sorry, “Bliar” – as if he were a cross between Radovan Karadzic, Augusto Pinochet and Adolf Eichmann. That bloodied hand must never be shaken, that smile wiped off his face once and for all. As at many a London dinner table, one’s own superior virtue, and one’s belonging to the tribe, is demonstrated by the unbounded vehemence of one’s denunciation of him. “Not in my name” is all that needs to be said, or rather shouted.” (The Guardian, 10/5/07)

This kind of elitist scorn recalls The Observer’s September 2002 account of, as Media Lens describes it, “London’s greatest anti-war march in a generation”:

“It was back to the old days, too, in terms of types. All the oldies and goodies were there. The Socialist Workers’ Party, leafleting outside Temple Tube station by 11 am. (‘In this edition: Noam Chomsky in Socialist Worker!’). CND, and ex-Services CND. The Scottish Socialist Party. ‘Scarborough Against War and Globalisation’, which has a lovely ring of optimism to it, recalling the famous Irish provincial leader column in 1939: ‘Let Herr Hitler be warned, the eyes of the Skibereen Eagle are upon him.’ Many, many Muslim groups, and most containing women and children, although some uneasy thoughts pass through your mind when you see a line of pretty six-year-old black-clad Muslim toddlers walking ahead of the megaphone chanting ‘George Bush, we know you/Daddy was a killer too,’ and singing about Sharon and Hitler.” (The Observer, 29/11/02)

As Media Lens concluded, and as media coverage of Blair’s departure demonstrates yet again, “pouring scorn on popular movements is an absolute must for mainstream journalism”.

Another recurring theme evident in much of the coverage of Blair’s departure is the perverse focus on minor details like his talent for public speaking, or his political wizardry. In The Guardian, Jonathan Freedland describes as Blair as “the master of British politics”, “the best communicator to dominate British politics since Churchill”, an “electoral magician” who will be remembered for his “panache”. Blair was somehow “more than a mere politician. He was the leader of the nation.” This is just pure, unadulterated hagiography. Polly Toynbee is equally in thrall to Blair’s theatrics – “no other politician in living memory could deliver a performance like it”, she writes. For her, he is the “the supreme political interpreter of modern times”. Tony Blair’s final speech, she enthuses, showcased “the very quintessence of [his] political being”: “[e]motion at full throttle, sincerity and showmanship balanced on a knife-edge”, the “great political crooner” delivered a “tour de force”. Pravda would’ve been proud. In The Times, Alice Miles waxes lyrical about Blair’s “adept[ness] at enunciating the national mood” – he just has an “instinct” for what to say – whilst The Independent’s John Rentoul concludes,

“We will be sorry when Blair is gone, because we have forgotten what politics used to be like. On 27 June, welcome to the era of the second-rate.”

It is important to remember that we are here talking about a man who lied the nation into a war that was both illegal and immoral (oh no, says Rentoul, who is evidently vying with Polly Toynbee for the title of ‘Blair Apologist of the Year’ – Blair was merely “not entirely sincere or open”). We are talking about a major war criminal, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, and all the press can do is talk about Blair’s “political prowess”. Hitler made the trains run on time, but, strangely enough, that isn’t what he’s primarily remembered for. Similarly, you didn’t see Guardian journalists passionately arguing that Saddam Hussein’s “legacy” would be his excellent food distribution system. The sense of perspective mainstream journalists seem to have when official enemies perpetrate monstrous crimes is utterly lost when the criminals happen to be members of our own government (or, to lesser extent, the government of a client state). You certainly didn’t see The Guardian devote a whole article to analysing Saddam Hussein’s fashion sense (neither would The Times have offered an online slide-show of Saddam Hussein’s greatest “fashion faux pas”).

The invasion of Iraq was a crime against peace, defined at Nuremberg as the “supreme international crime” for which Nazis were hanged. That is not mere hyperbole. If history teaches us anything, it is that even the worst monsters cloak their crimes in flowery language about “humanitarian intervention”, “progress”, “civilization”, “spreading freedom”, and so on. The obvious conclusion is to simply ignore it and concentrate on the facts. That, sadly, is too much to ask from the corporate press. As Tony Blair made his farewell speech last week, a mixture of pathetic appeals to “belief” and “conviction” and outright BNP-style nationalism, he implored,

“I ask you to accept one thing. Hand on heart, I did what I thought was right.”

He needn’t have bothered – our “free press” is only too willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Thus, The Independent concludes that the invasion of Iraq was the result of “liberal interventionism…born, perhaps, of a sense that the West had failed Rwanda”, whilst in the same paper Steve Richards assures us that Blair was “a well-intentioned leader”. As usual, no evidence is provided – we are expected to assume it as a matter of faith. In The Guardian, Jonathan Freedland writes that Blair invaded Iraq out of the “conviction”, nay, the “self-belief verging on the messianic”, that foreign policy is an era of “moral purpose”. The Guardian’s editorial went further, declaring,

“The scope of his [Tony Blair’s] self-belief is unquestionable.”

Again, no evidence is provided to support the claim. It is, after all, “unquestionable”. In fact, not only is no evidence provided, but important evidence to the contrary is ignored. Surely the fact that in 1997, the very same year Robin Cook made his famous “ethical foreign policy” speech, Blair used the Official Secrets Act to approve 11 arms deals with Indonesia, which was involved in heavy repression and human rights abuses against the people of Aceh and West Papua, casts some doubt on this vision of a policy guided by morality? During the first three years of the Labour Government, 83% of Indonesia’s arms imports were from the UK. In 2003, the government approved a 20-fold increase in arms sales to Indonesia, despite guidelines preventing weapons sales to countries where they could be used for internal repression. Baroness Royall outlined Britain’s policy towards the people of West Papua in a recent House of Lords debate:

“the UK does not support independence for Papua. Like the vast majority of other international players, we respect Indonesia’s territorial integrity and have never supported Papuan independence.”

This consistent and sustained support for continued Indonesian occupation and repression of the West Papuans is surely at odds with Blair’s proclaimed concern for the right to democracy and freedom for Iraqis.

What about Blair’s support for and facilitation of Israel’s illegal and bloody aggression against Lebanon last year? In what way was allowing U.S.-made bombs to be delivered to Israel during the conflict through British airports consistent with these alleged “humanitarian values”?

The excellent British historian, Mark Curtis, summarised a few of Blair’s other “well-intentioned” efforts abroad in a letter to The Guardian:

“Britain illegally bombed Iraq in 1998, was the chief apologist for Russia’s bloody onslaught against Chechnya in 1999, increased the export of military equipment to Israel as it reinvaded the West Bank in 2001, armed Indonesia as it attacked Aceh province in 2003, took legal action to prevent the Chagossians returning to their homeland on Diego Garcia and continued to support some of the world’s most brutal governments in Colombia, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere – to name some of Labour’s shocking policies that could fill this page.”

In a recent interview for UK Watch, Curtis provided an honest answer to the question of Blair’s “legacy”:

“I’ve no doubt that Blair will be seen in the mainstream as a ‘liberal interventionist’ who started well (in Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan) and then overstepped the mark with Iraq, to the extent that he ‘mislead’ the British public, but who was genuinely committed to the cause of Africa. This view is totally absurd and therefore can be expected to dominate discussions in the mainstream. It doesn’t matter how much evidence emerges as to the reality of Kosovo in 1999 and the bombing of Yugoslavia to counter the mainstream view that Kosovo was all about defending human rights; I dealt with more plausible explanations in Web of Deceit and there are various other analyses.

Remember, though, we are dealing here with a very primitive mainstream political culture: it doesn’t and cannot recognize obvious policies such as the extraordinary British support provided to the brutal regime in Colombia, the total backing of Russia bloody onslaught against Chechnya (including the flattening of its capital city in 1999/2000) and of support for Indonesia’s attacks on Aceh and West Papua (with British arms), to name but some, while it remains incapable of recognizing British support under Blair (fairly unequivocal, actually) for Israel. One day, you never know, the BBC might mention Britain’s extraordinary abuse of the legal system to prevent the Chagos islanders returning to even the outlying islands in the archipelago, let alone Diego Garcia – but this is admittedly very unlikely. Or perhaps mention might be made that while Blair and Brown profess their support for ‘democracy’ in the Middle East, their closest ally is Oman – whose despot was installed in a British coup 37 years ago! The official theology has it that Zimbabwe is the only repressive regime in Africa – since it is an official enemy, it is the subject of endless media articles while Mugabe is (correctly) seen as a total despot. Nigeria, on the other hand, is a key ally and oil-rich state which our companies benefit from – therefore it wouldn’t be right to mention obvious facts such as that the military in Nigeria is complicit in far more deaths in recent years than even Zimbabwe’s.

Blair should be remembered as a war criminal who has made the world a more dangerous place. I can think of no other British prime minister who has been so contemptuous of human rights as Blair, the one possible exception being Harold Wilson’s government of 1964-70, which covertly supported the bloodbath in Indonesia in 1965, removed the Chagos islanders, provided a mountain of weaponry to the Nigerian government to wipe out three million people in Biafra, armed Baghdad as began major operations against the Kurds and offered significant private support to the US attack on Vietnam.”

It is, of course, correct to say that under Blair, Britain has become more socially liberal, particularly with respect to gay rights (although to what extent this should be attributed to Blair as opposed to societal pressure from below is debatable). Undoubtedly, too, he has achieved truly impressive things in Northern Ireland. But, as I say, there can surely be no debate whatsoever about the what his legacy will be: the answer, plain and simple, is Iraq, as 69% of the British public recognise. Today, as a direct consequence of our illegal invasion four years ago, Iraq is suffering the worst refugee crisis on the planet. According to the UN, the external and internal displacement of millions of Iraqis represents ‘the biggest population exodus since the displacement of the Palestinians following the creation of Israel in 1948’. It is a common sight now to see over 100 Iraqis killed in a single day. According to Dr. Jaffer Ali, a senior official and paediatrician in Iraq’s Ministry of Health, “[n]ever in Iraq’s history have so many children died because of diseases and violence.”

When Iraq is mentioned in the coverage of Blair’s ‘legacy’, two important features about the way it is presented can be discerned. Firstly, the invasion is never referred to as what it actually was: an illegal war of aggression, defined at Nuremberg as the supreme war crime. Instead, it was a “military intervention”, a “tragically needless war”, a “tragedy”, a “humanitarian intervention”, a “dark folly”, a “mistake”, a “blunder” and so on. Consequently, Blair is never branded what he is, a major war criminal, since without a crime there can be no criminal.

Secondly, the catastrophic humanitarian suffering now widespread throughout Iraq is described solely in terms of its political effects on Tony Blair. So, for example, Polly Toynbee writes that “Iraq was [Blair’s] nemesis, the reason why Labour’s great winner crashes out of the sky still in his prime”. “For Iraq” Toynbee concludes, “Tony Blair has paid with his political life”. Never mind all those Iraqis who have paid with their actual lives, eh?

Julian Borger, also writing in The Guardian, notes that “Blair’s legacy is being held hostage in Iraq.” Presumably, Saddam Hussein’s legacy was also being “held hostage” by his attempted genocide of the Kurds. For The Guardian’s editorial, the problem with the invasion of Iraq is that it “will poison” the way Blair is remembered. Peter Riddell comments in The Times that “[a]ssessments of the Blair years are dominated, even distorted, by Iraq. For many, it is the prism through which everything else is seen.” This is outrageous, naturally. Why can’t people just get over it already? (Oh yeah.)

In The Independent, John Rentoul lays prostrate before power once more, bemoaning the fact that “because the occupation of Iraq has gone so badly, Blair cannot shake off the unfair association which denies him the credit for the better, fairer country Britain now is”. The sheer audacity of these people, treating the mass killing of hundreds of thousands of people as a mere inconvenience standing in the way of recognition for Blair’s true legacy, is astonishing.

In another article for the same paper (Blair’s biographer has been very busy recently), Rentoul writes,

“The Iraq war is a tragedy, above all, because of the damage it is inflicting on that cause of liberal interventionism”.

One suspects that a reduced ability on the part of the UK or the U.S. to carry out future illegal aggressions against Third-World countries would probably not be at the top of most Iraqis’ lists of “tragedies” resulting from the invasion.

It is telling that, in The Independent’s list of “key figures” from the past ten years, the number ‘655,000’ is conspicuous by its absence.

As Mark Curtis notes, in terms of policy, we can expect more of the same under Gordon Brown:

“There have been no public signs that foreign policy is likely to change. Brown has been four-square behind Blair on foreign policy, including, of course, Iraq, which he has financed as Chancellor and publicly defended when required.”

The appalling media whitewash of Blair’s atrocities consequently serves two main purposes – it wipes from public consciousness the recent crimes of the establishment, and the media’s role in facilitating them, and it paves the way for Brown to continue down the same, bloody path (as per George Orwell’s famous warning).= With a possible war on Iran around the corner, preserving the truth about the past has never been so important.

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