A Bad Case of the Trots and Stop the War: current anti-feminism has VERY deep roots in the left

I'm reposting my article, A Bad Case of the Trots, which was published in Tribune magazine, September 2003 following my time establishing and running the Socialist Alliance (SA) and Stop The War Coalition (STWC) press offices. (Also on What Next? Journal.)

In the light of the recent rape allegations and attacks on feminism in the far left, it's not surprising to learn that working-class non-white women who are also bright sparks, aren't allowed to have their input acknowledged on the left and in the histories. Indeed, any pioneering work is airbrushed out or relegated to background maid status, serving the dull white folk who, quite frankly in this instance, hadn't made any public impact before a methodical and robust engagement with the gatekeepers of the mainstream media took place.

Ian Sinclair, author of The march that shook Blair, the history that isn't written by STWC, and the second to contain interviews from "press officers" who weren't the ones who fought the battle at the media coalface, says:
"I was not aware of Anna’s contribution or testimony until after my book was published. No one I spoke to - over 70 face-to-face interviews and 50 written interviews - mentioned her. I do not recall seeing her name mentioned in any of the written documents or articles I read in my research."

Wow. At least maids get paid. Butterfly McQueen in Gone With the Wind received better billing than me.

For the record, I worked from 8am till gone midnight for no wages, going deep into debt to ensure the STWC anti-war movement had a press office. Both my physical and intellectual labour was appropriated and expropriated by the white middle-class males who dominate the far left organisations ... and their lady friends.

It's clear that my practise of not propelling myself to the forefront (like certain Princess Pushies) but making sure that others had their names emblazoned all over my press releases, was far from wise. So I'm making sure that an accurate representation of events are on the record and safe from airbrushing mitts.

Anyone who only wants the "official" version had better look away now ...

Paul Foot called me the "best press officer in the country".

Mike Marqusee, who wrote most of the press releases for the SA and STWC and worked closely with me on both campaigns, stated that, for the Socialist Alliance, I’d done single-handedly the equivalent of the Countryside Alliance’s 6 full-time paid press officers and their support with “flair and imagination”. So I was pleased to repeat the teamwork for STWC — with him writing most of the releases and me battling on the media frontline to get us heard.

Weekly Worker called my unprecedented press successes “uncanny”.

John Rees described my task as being like turning a tanker around mid-ocean, or mining for diamonds.

Charles Shaar Murray has commented that he saw me work: "... on a day-to-day basis from the start, and observed the effect it had as the media slowly responded and swung around from a position of hostility; witnessed how pleased many of your [Ian Sinclair] interviewees were with the results — notably John Rees and especially Mike Marqusee who got the starring role in all the press releases she sent out — I’m shocked with the way she has been Stalinised out of existence in your accounts."

Apart from the Amazing Disappearing Act, this was what I was up against when it came to fighting against war with Iraq: read The BBC and Iraq ten years on

I was pleased to spearhead the anti Iraq War press campaign (more details of what that entailed here) and delighted to get it relatively coasting — at which point various parties saw there was something up for grabs and have claimed credit for themselves — not very socialist, you might think.

I've now dug out my emails from the 2000-2003 period, which have been an effective refresher for me.

I'd forgotten that I got Ken Loach on board the STWC in October 2001, and won him interviews in the media right up until the huge million-strong demo in February 2003. I have a written eyewitness account, from writer and broadcaster Dale Reynolds, of the Football Match for Peace the weekend before the big demo, in which Americans Against the War played a team of Iraqi students in north London and which I turned into a national media even and warm-up event for the Feb 15th March. I'll be posting that soon.

Another example of the sort of work I was doing: in the course of my work as the STWC press officer (when no-one else apart from Mike Marqusee thought this important, as it was only the “bourgeois press” and “they never take any notice of us”) I tackled the problem of the BBC's under-reporting of demo attendance. After 2001, as well as regularly sending our press releases to Richard Sambrook,head of BBC news, I also wrote to him whenever we had a march (including pre-9/11 demos), challenging the figures they gave, which were invariably the same as the police’s 15,000. Equally invariably, he ignored them.

When, after one Media Workers Against the War (MWAW) meeting, I and one other person drafted a letter then signed by Lindsey and Pilger among others, the BBC’s response was to not only ignore us, but to report an even lower 10,000 for the next demo, which I thought was pretty dirty pool.

Because I then pursued other avenues (Rees always did say he liked my creative and lateral thinking), I finally got Sambrook on the back foot and received my first reply from him, a defensive missive showing that he was stung. After being belligerent for so long, it was a huge turnaround. He even wrote: “The relevant pages on BBC News Online were also updated. I accept we ought to have known your higher figure a little earlier.”

And so on, in the same vein.

I forwarded this email to Lindsey German and other esteemed leaders, asking them who would like to respond. No answer.

I then wrote to them again asking whether they wanted me to pursue this or if they would prefer to deal with it themselves. Again, nothing. Which is when I realised that all their bleating about the awful way the media and BBC in particular was covering the anti-war movement was nothing more than hot air.

This particular brand of "left" is too stupid to look after their assets and our achievements. The blokey blokes who write the histories of the movement [excluding Ian Sinclair 'cause he didn't do it deliberately] only skate on the surface, reluctant to dig deeper. In other words, a complete shower. With serious consequences.

MORE TO COME ...

The Left's Invisibility Bomb

The People's Assembly led by the same characters who destroyed the Socialist Alliance (People's Assembly MkI) when it suited them, and Respect.

More SWP rape accusations: "a dangerous place for a woman"

SWP Sex Implosion

Iraq war 10 years on: betrayal of a generation's political beliefs

Tony and Cherie celebrate the Year of the Snake

Last night's Iraq War debate at Goldsmith's — sponsored by Huffington Post and featuring Claire Short, Owen Jones, Mehdi Hassan and David Aaronovitch among others — asked "Was it worth it"", generating many outraged tweets and some interesting debate.

Tweeted quotes include:

Mehdi Hassan — "I approached 60 well known hawks and invited them to participate and a lot of hair was being washed tonight. They've worked out that here is not much to defend in the bloody war." and "What we are directly responsible for is the hundreds of thousands of people that have lost their lives."

Shiraz Maher says
"Yes human rights abuses still exist and yes the infrastructure is devastated, and if it means I don't have electricity 24 hours a day to replace Saddam, I think it's a small price to pay."

20:40 – 7/02/2013
Owen Jones closes to loud applause
"Iraq is 150th in the world freedom index and one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists.

"They were wrong about the WMDs, they were wrong about the human cost. And they were wrong about Iraq becoming a flourishing democracy

"Only 30% of Iraqis say they're better off.

"Tens of thousands of Iraqis died, 4,500 US soldiers - for what, to disarm a country that had already been disarmed?

"Ten years on I will say this: We have to learn the lessons and we have to make sure this will never happen again."

20:25 – 7/02/2013
Aaronovitch is quoting the late Dr David Kelly about his comments on weapons on mass destruction in Iraq.

He's interjected by Mehdi Hasan who goes back to a quote Aaronovitch said at the time: "If nothing is eventually found, I... will never believe another thing that I am told by our government"

David says he later admitted that wasn't the right thing to say.

Today, Sam Parker writes at the Huffpo "How Tony Blair and Iraq robbed a generation of their faith in politics":

Up until 2001, I think most of my generation still believed, in an abstract way, that Tony Blair was a decent man. ... But now suddenly, Blair was siding with Bush at every turn. When the president launched his War On Terror, Blair said he'd back it. When the president said he believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, Blair said he believed it too. The press presented him as Bush's poodle, and we winced in acknowledgement.

Then came Resolution 1441 and Hans Blix. Blix swept into the darkening saga like a comforting beam from a lighthouse. The arrival of the peaceful Swede, with his glasses and nervous smile, seemed to my young mind like democracy at work. All Iraq had to do was open to doors to the weapon inspectors, show they had nothing to hide and war would be avoided. Like Piggy from Lord Of The Flies, Blix was supposed to be the rational voice of intelligence. But like Piggy he was taken out of action by an unstoppable boulder: an American government that had made its mind up to go to war long ago.

Blix didn't find a thing, because there were no WMDs to find. By 31 December 2002, his team had reached the same conclusion as an Iraqi dossier presented to the UN during the same period: they were in the clear. It should have ended right there. Instead, two years later, Blix would tell the BBC what by then we all already knew - Bush and Blair ignored him and dramatised a threat in order to start a war. ...

... Guardian/ICM polls at the time put support for the war at just 29% of the public, with 52% opposing. But Blair heard about polls all day long. Naively, I thought a million people marching past his window would be impossible to ignore.

A little over a month later, at 9.34pm on Wednesday 19 March, we watched on television as the first bomb fell on Baghdad. 28 British soldiers would die before the month was out. ...

... The worst legacies of the Iraq War belong to the families of the soldiers and civilians from Iraq, Britain, America and everywhere else forced to make sacrifices for an illegal occupation. But another legacy, one harder to measure than body bags, is the way Tony Blair's hubris robbed a generation of their faith in politics.

In the latest New Statesman, Laurie Penny writes similarly of her generation's betrayal over the Iraq war, not only by Blair's government, but by infighting within the left leadership that squandered the chance to harness the energy of between 1 and 2 million people who attended the mega-march against the war in February 2003.

"It was the first time I remember being part of something larger than myself. It was ony later, after the war and the next six years of progressive assault on cilvil liberties had broken any faith I or my schoolmates might have had in the Labour Party, that I learned about the endless arguments that went on behind the scenes. At the time I had no idea of the factional squabbling that prevented the march from becoming the powerful people's movement it might have been. ... My generation's lack of faith in the political process has often been mistaken for apathy. It is only now, with ordinary people across the world putting their energies into movements that bypass mainstream politics, that the betrayal of Bush and Blair's war is beginning to be understood. We have kn own since we were at school that it's not enough simply to have our voices heard. We have to make sure that we are listened to — and we're still working out how to do that."

It is tragic and positively criminal to see what Bush and Blair did to our democracy and to this generation in particular. But the left's dereliction in abandoning them to a political vacuum while they play at toytown bolshevism is positively revolting and not in the desired meaning of the word.

The SWP (and this includes the leaders of the Counterfire splinter who were part of this themselves) and their dehumanising style of politics is doing more harm than good and is closer to the Morlocks in The Time Machine herding the Eloi underground to be eaten than any serious bid to make a better world. The world burns, the left fiddles and the rest is ashes.

How the left squanders its good will: A Bad Case of the Trots.

Steve Bell on Tony Blair and rendition

Heh! This is pretty much how I see Blair after he helped start the Iraq war using the dodgy dossier and other untruths to initiate a conflagration that still cripples that country today, not to mention the cost in money and lives to Britain.

The bank that gained most out of the Iraq war was JP Morgan in its role as co-ordinating the institutions syphoning loot out of the country. Guess which bank pays Blair £2 million a year? Then there were all the other little tips and stipends, such as the million quid from the Israeli university. Interesting how American imperialist interests find all sorts of channels to pay their man.

And guess who, along with his lovely wife, is preparing their companies for the carve-up of the NHS? No, surely not the former leader of the Labour Party? Health clinics in Sainsbury's and Tesco, anyone?

Tony Blair at Chilcot: pants on fire 2

Video: a telling moment when Blair admits 'inconsistency'

This time it's personal.

Watching live feed of Tony Blair at Chilcot. Anyone else noticed how, when he's on the spot he glottal stops for England (presumably seeking orfenticity) but adopts posh when he's seeking high status? (One Tweeter noted 'gaing' instead of 'going', f'rinstance). Tweeters inside the inquiry have observed the shaking hand as he reaches for his notes. The slipperiness is on show for all to see.

Blair dismisses his own contradictions with sophistry. Hence, Sir Rodders Lyne's question quoting Blair's 'unreasonable veto' comment is brushed off as not counting because he was only making 'a political point'. So the appearance that they were going to bulldoze through any inconvenient UN vetos regardless is only gloss. So says Tone.

EDIT: Channel 4 News video of Blair's 'political point' and his admission of 'inconsistency' here.

"I was making basically a political point - however I accept entirely that there was an inconsistency between what he [Peter Goldsmith] was saying and what I was saying..."

His constant reference to 9/11 remains unchallenged. Yet the events of September 11th are and always were an irrelevance.

Did you know that our attorney general is supposed to take instructions from the US to determine the legality of UK policy? No? Neither did I. Neither did the UK electorate. Blair regarded Goldsmith's advice as 'provisional' (Guardian).

Blair admits that Saddam might have obeyed the resolution — it looks like there was a race against time and they had to pre-empt Saddam's brinkmanship by not waiting for the second resolution as SH might well have complied and thereby taken the boys' toys away.

The Guardian blog points out:

Freedman says this is not necessarily the case. In March, Hans Blix, the UN's chief weapons inspector, said that Iraq was allowing people to be interviewed. There was "progressively more cooperation", Freedman says.

Meanwhile, Sky and BBC News allow Andy Coulson's resignation to knock Blair off the front page.

I'll be updating this throughout. It beats chucking something heavy at the telly.

UPDATE 12.18: One pic of the (tiny) demo shows a banner reading, "Saddam was ready to go into exile". Of course, this would have meant no bangy war-games for the lads.

UPDATE 12.22: Channel 4 News #iraqinquiryblog tweets:

Blair: Iraq started to give out a little bit more in the last few weeks but it was nothing like full, immediate & unconditional cooperation.

UPDATE 12.30: Chilcot takes a break. Steve M Facebooks me: Tony has been getting in some practice.

UPDATE 12.45: IraqInquiryBlog Iraq:
Prashar: Why didn't enough post-conflict planning take place? Blair: Planning DID take place. Should we have focused on different things?

Shocking. Prashar quotes Blair saying that was the responsibility of the Americans. Blair just denied he was going to leave it to the Americans. Words mean whatever he wants them to mean. Psychoboy!

UPDATE 13.00: IraqInquiryBlog:

Blair: Gordon & I honoured our commitment with resources required. Money really wasn't the problem. If people had problems I wanted to know

Indeed, money was hardly a problem when Blair's favourite JP Morgan (Blair 'earned' millions in fees from them) won pole position co-ordinating the pillage of Iraq.

UPDATE: Craig Murray writes:

The Chilcot Inquiry was summed up for me ten minutes ago, when Tony Blair quoted an extraordinary passage - I believe from George Bush, but didn't catch his attribution. The quote said that WMD were not things that had a physical existence, but rather existed in the minds of scientists who could create them, other than nuclear weapons, at very short notice. This absurd expedition into metaphysical justification was greeted by Sir Roderic Lyne's much vaunted forensic brain. MORE

HARPY MARX made the protest at Chilcot today and posts pix here.

THE CASE AGAINST BLAIR: 15 charges that have yet to be answered in The Independent.

Tony Blair dug his own hole in the Chilcot inquiry — Guardian

Blair at Chilcot this Friday: pants on fire

Tony Blair returns to the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war this Friday following certain, ahem, 'inconsistencies' in his earlier testimony, contradicted by former attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, and former head of MI6, Sir John Scarlett. Ooh, there's embarrassing. I wonder who's been economical with the actualité.

John Wight has written a scorching account at Socialist Unity which everyone should read for background to Blair's appearance.

Since [summer 2009] a veritable parade of witnesses have appeared, the vast majority assorted ex-government flunkies, civil servants and bureaucrats, along with the usual suspects whose names and reputations will forever be associated with Iraq. How could it be otherwise given that it was one of the most egregious and overt imperialist military adventures ever undertaken by any western country, one that has impacted on society at home in the shape of increased racial, ethnic and religious tensions, attacks on civil liberties and an increasingly corrupt body politic. ...

But it is not just Iraq that Tony Blair will be remembered for. He will also go down as the most right wing, anti trade union and anti working class Labour leader in the history of the Labour Party. Indeed, the amputation of the Labour Party’s founding ethos was performed by Blair with the skill and precision of a surgeon. Where former Labour leader Neil ‘Lord’ Kinnock took tentative steps in a rightward direction, Blair sprinted headlong to jump on the bus marked Thatcherism when it came to his embrace of the free market and the City. Piecemeal reforms were parcelled out to the poor and low paid during the boom years - years in which the richest layer of society saw their wealth go up exponentially while wages for the majority went down in real terms, offset by the easy availability of personal credit. ...

Meritocracy replaced solidarity as the core value of Labour, along with the importation of that old American chestnut of social mobility to justify crippling inequality. His adherence to the Clintonite rightward shift doctrine of social democracy, known as triangulation, turned Britain into a free market paradise for billionaires, corporate executives and financial institutions. Blair’s genius was in presentation, utilising his evident talents as a PR man to sell the process as progressive politics.

But an example of how Blair was given an easy ride last time around was revealed last February by David Hencke in Tribune, where he wrote that, '... Tony Blair was let off the hook during his session because vital documents given to the Iraq inquiry are not being made public'.

Let's hope Blair gets the warm welcome he deserves when he turns up at the Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre at Westminster, London SW1P 3EE on Friday, 8am-2pm.

UPDATE: Tuesday afternoon, Sir John Chilcot announces that the government has blocked the release of a note from Tony Blair to George W Bush, evidence crucial to the examination of a narrow but significant area in the build-up to the allied invasion of Iraq. It must be pretty explosive for the Tories to protect the former Labour prime minister. After all, a former PM dragged into the Hague probably wouldn't look good for anyone.

UPDATE 2: The Daily Mail — 'But it is Mr Blair, of course, who emerges in even darker colours, because he was the man who railroaded this country into war — invoking weapons of mass destruction which did not exist (and which he should have known did not exist) and, unless Lord Goldsmith’s testimony is to be dismissed by him as mendacious, misleading Parliament and the public. ... This time, with Lord Goldsmith’s evidence in front of them, they have the material with which to unseat even a customer as slippery and evasive as Tony Blair. ... when a former Attorney General accuses a former Prime Minister of misleading Parliament over so vital a matter, we have entered an important new phase. Sooner or later the seriousness of what Lord Goldsmith has said will sink in.'

Blair War Crimes Foundation: aims to Bring Tony Blair to trial.

Secret video of Iraq massacre released by Wikileaks

Welcome to the true face of war.

When you start something as nightmarish as war, you open up the inevitability of atrocities, dead on all sides, the murder of innocents and the death of the souls of the perpetrators.

Wikileaks has just released video of the massacre of a dozen Iraqi civilians that shows the US military shooting civilians as sport. It is truly horrific. What sort of people can carry out such an insane cowardly act from the safety of their little cockpit screens?

The murdered men in this case include two men working for Reuters: a talented young war photographer, Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and his driver, Saeed Chmagh, 40. Two children were injured when rescuers tried to help the victims.

The Apache pilot's excuse is that the group were carrying weapons and were shooting. Yet Namir's bag, identified as weaponry, was actually his camera kit. Besides, possessing weapons is legal in Iraq. If you shot up all Americans with weapons in their home country you'd decimate the population.

The Pentagon fought to suppress the video but Wikileaks have now spread this far and wide.

The real criminals, of course, are the politicians, the arms industry and the banks that set this illegal war in motion and have made their money. It's no wonder that former Prime Minister Tony Blair tried to keep secret the fact that he's taken Iraqi oil money, and that's on top of the £2 million a year he's been given by the bank organising the pillaging of Iraq, J P Morgan. For me, this far exceeds the expenses scandal. Look on your handiwork and despair, Tony and Dubya.

For the media cheerleaders who supported the Iraq war, I'll let George Orwell have the last word:

Bullets hurt, corpses stink, men under fire are often so frightened that they wet their trousers ... A louse is a louse and a bomb is a bomb, even though the cause you are fighting for happens to be just ... If there was one thing that the British intelligentsia were committed to, it was the debunking version of war; the theory that war is all corpses and latrines and never leads to any good result. Well, the same people who in 1933 sniggered pityingly if you said that in certain circumstances you would fight for your country, in 1937 were denouncing you as a Trotsky-Fascist if you suggested that the stories in New Masses about freshly wounded men clamouring to get hack into the fighting might he exaggerated. And the Left intelligentsia made their swing over from "War is hell" to "War is glorious" not only with no sense of incongruity but almost without any intervening stage.

More at the Guardian and Independent. Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com (hat tip Nevin for the Greenwald link).

Secret video of Iraq massacre released by Wikileaks

Welcome to the true face of war.

When you start something as nightmarish as war, you open up the inevitability of atrocities, dead on all sides, the murder of innocents and the death of the souls of the perpetrators.

Wikileaks has just released video of the massacre of a dozen Iraqi civilians that shows the US military shooting civilians as sport. It is truly horrific. What sort of people can carry out such an insane cowardly act from the safety of their little cockpit screens?

The murdered men in this case include two men working for Reuters: a talented young war photographer, Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and his driver, Saeed Chmagh, 40. Two children were injured when rescuers tried to help the victims.

The Apache pilot's excuse is that the group were carrying weapons and were shooting. Yet Namir's bag, identified as weaponry, was actually his camera kit. Besides, possessing weapons is legal in Iraq. If you shot up all Americans with weapons in their home country you'd decimate the population.

The Pentagon fought to suppress the video but Wikileaks have now spread this far and wide.

The real criminals, of course, are the politicians, the arms industry and the banks that set this illegal war in motion and have made their money. It's no wonder that former Prime Minister Tony Blair tried to keep secret the fact that he's taken Iraqi oil money, and that's on top of the £2 million a year he's been given by the bank organising the pillaging of Iraq, J P Morgan. For me, this far exceeds the expenses scandal. Look on your handiwork and despair, Tony and Dubya.

For the media cheerleaders who supported the Iraq war, I'll let George Orwell have the last word:

Bullets hurt, corpses stink, men under fire are often so frightened that they wet their trousers ... A louse is a louse and a bomb is a bomb, even though the cause you are fighting for happens to be just ... If there was one thing that the British intelligentsia were committed to, it was the debunking version of war; the theory that war is all corpses and latrines and never leads to any good result. Well, the same people who in 1933 sniggered pityingly if you said that in certain circumstances you would fight for your country, in 1937 were denouncing you as a Trotsky-Fascist if you suggested that the stories in New Masses about freshly wounded men clamouring to get hack into the fighting might he exaggerated. And the Left intelligentsia made their swing over from "War is hell" to "War is glorious" not only with no sense of incongruity but almost without any intervening stage.

More at the Guardian and Independent. Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com (hat tip Nevin for the Greenwald link).

Tony Blair's secret Iraq oil cash deal

Has this man no shame? Yeah, stupid question. What price human lives lost on all sides in an illegal war in Iraq? About £20 million since Tony Blair left office.

The Daily Mail reports:

Tony Blair waged an extraordinary two-year battle to keep secret a lucrative deal with a multinational oil giant which has extensive interests in Iraq. ... also went to great efforts to keep hidden a £1million deal advising the ruling royal family in Iraq's neighbour Kuwait. ... They will increase concerns that Mr Blair is using his role as the West's Middle East envoy for personal gain. ... Critics also point out that a large proportion of his earnings comes from patrons in America and the Middle East - a clear benefit from forging a close alliance with George Bush during his invasion of Iraq. ... Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker said: 'These revelations show that our former Prime Minister is for sale - he is driven by making as much money as possible."

We haven't forgotten, though, that David Cameron's Tories voted for this war. And John Major isn't exactly poor off the back of his Middle East skirmishes as Prime Minister.

How about Inspector Knacker whisking Blair off to the Hague for war crimes? And make sure he has to spend his blood money on his defence.

Tony Blair's secret Iraq oil cash deal

Has this man no shame? Yeah, stupid question. What price human lives lost on all sides in an illegal war in Iraq? About £20 million since Tony Blair left office.

The Daily Mail reports:

Tony Blair waged an extraordinary two-year battle to keep secret a lucrative deal with a multinational oil giant which has extensive interests in Iraq. ... also went to great efforts to keep hidden a £1million deal advising the ruling royal family in Iraq's neighbour Kuwait. ... They will increase concerns that Mr Blair is using his role as the West's Middle East envoy for personal gain. ... Critics also point out that a large proportion of his earnings comes from patrons in America and the Middle East - a clear benefit from forging a close alliance with George Bush during his invasion of Iraq. ... Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker said: 'These revelations show that our former Prime Minister is for sale - he is driven by making as much money as possible."

We haven't forgotten, though, that David Cameron's Tories voted for this war. And John Major isn't exactly poor off the back of his Middle East skirmishes as Prime Minister.

How about Inspector Knacker whisking Blair off to the Hague for war crimes? And make sure he has to spend his blood money on his defence.

Alastair Campbell breaks down in tears on TV over Tony Blair

A distressed Alastair Campbell broke down in tears during a TV interview with Andrew Marr when quizzed about Tony Blair and his new relationship with the British public.

"It's so unfair, why does everyone hate him?", sobbed Campbell when probed by BBC's Marr about the role the public would play in his crumbling reputation.

My Little Tony
Choking back tears he declared, "All us pretty fan-boys are heart-broken. Richard "Dick" Madeley even went on YouTube to defend Tony. Everybody hurts and Simon Cowell may step in with a record to raise funds for any court case he may have to face after the devastation that Iraq has wreaked on him. Did I mention this was unfair?"

Campbell is also thought to be under pressure due to screwing up at Chilcot despite his smugness and a friendly panel. In a second bite at the cherry, he said:

... he had "misunderstood" a question and in a memo to the inquiry said he feared he had given the wrong impression that the then prime minister could have claimed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction "beyond doubt" even if intelligence chiefs disagreed.

When pressed with a cup of tea from Marr, he replied," He did not sleep with that woman. I mean, he did not mislead Parliament. Look, I've been to hell and back over this so I get confused. Have you read my latest work of fiction? "

Tony Blair is an honourable man.



Satire on life-support. Paul Routledge replies

More on Blair's eccentric take on corruption and BAE:

Ms Short's complaint that the sale of military radar to poverty-stricken Tanzania "stank" of corruption did not prevent from Mr Blair forcing the deal through. ... Britain is too lax in dealing with corporate corruption and bribery ...

Tony Blair is a wealthy man.

Alastair Campbell breaks down in tears on TV over Tony Blair

A distressed Alastair Campbell broke down in tears during a TV interview with Andrew Marr when quizzed about Tony Blair and his new relationship with the British public.

"It's so unfair, why does everyone hate him?", sobbed Campbell when probed by BBC's Marr about the role the public would play in his crumbling reputation.

My Little Tony
Choking back tears he declared, "All us pretty fan-boys are heart-broken. Richard "Dick" Madeley even went on YouTube to defend Tony. Everybody hurts and Simon Cowell may step in with a record to raise funds for any court case he may have to face after the devastation that Iraq has wreaked on him. Did I mention this was unfair?"

Campbell is also thought to be under pressure due to screwing up at Chilcot despite his smugness and a friendly panel. In a second bite at the cherry, he said:

... he had "misunderstood" a question and in a memo to the inquiry said he feared he had given the wrong impression that the then prime minister could have claimed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction "beyond doubt" even if intelligence chiefs disagreed.

When pressed with a cup of tea from Marr, he replied," He did not sleep with that woman. I mean, he did not mislead Parliament. Look, I've been to hell and back over this so I get confused. Have you read my latest work of fiction? "

Tony Blair is an honourable man.



Satire on life-support. Paul Routledge replies

More on Blair's eccentric take on corruption and BAE:

Ms Short's complaint that the sale of military radar to poverty-stricken Tanzania "stank" of corruption did not prevent from Mr Blair forcing the deal through. ... Britain is too lax in dealing with corporate corruption and bribery ...

Tony Blair is a wealthy man.

Je Ne Regrette Rien: Tony Blair at the Chilcot Inquiry, Pt Deux

Afternoon session at Chilcot.

So it all went wrong when those pesky Iran and Al Qaeda outsiders got involved. Even though there was a 911 issue. But Al Qaeda? And the criminality! Who'd have guessed the blighters would have fought back? Blow me down, is that what happens when a country's infrastructure is allowed to collapse?

"The purpose of the people we were fighting was to wreck the reconstruction. Deliberately!" shock horror. "Nobody, but NOBODY, thought that Iran would end up supporting Al Qaeda because they both wanted to destabilise Iraq."

Blair's ingenue schtick continues to appall. It's like when he said he hadn't understood that the 45 minute mobilisation only applied to battlefield armaments and not long-range weapons, and simpered, "I wasn't watching closely". Even though the whole country was being whipped up into a pro-war mood by the threat of imminent attacks at the time?

You would have thought that would have been a good case for negligence and manslaughter at least. Chilcot broke for a tea-break with the blasé, "It might have been an expensive lesson, but one very necessary to learn." Blimey. I could have told you all that at the time. In fact I do believe many of us did.

The voice is huskier this afternoon. Repetition of BS will do that. Blair keeps insisting that "It's pretty clear" that the "spirit" of UN Resolution 1441 gave them the right to go to war. Au contraire, as the Dutch found the other week, 1441 pertains only to disarming, demanded proportionality, and never included the key phrase, "by all means necessary" allowing military force.

The afternoon session focuses on the legality of war and yet the only lawyer present is Blair. That's one reason the panel doesn't challenge him on whether UN resolution 1441 was about removing Saddam, which is what he's slipping in, or the actual subject which was disarmament.

But it doesn't matter what Blair believed in his head, or the "spirit" of lawyerly document, it's about the letter of the law and whether the government contravened or followed it.

There are still so many more issues. However much they bang on about Saddam's atrocities — torture chambers, killing his own people and the like — no-one raises the fact that most of them were committed while he was our boy. Who supplied the chemicals and arms? That's right, we still have the receipts. The papers exchanged between Bush and Blair at Crawford have still not been released despite promises that they would be. Blair had to concede he's "used the wrong words" to Parliament when he said preparations for war weren't yet in place. They were.

There were a few sparks from the panel. One member asked if with such a cavalier attitude to planning wasn't this a heavy price to pay? But Blair insists that Iraqis today have never had it so good, especially since 2002, although one of his questioners said that from Iraqis he's spoken to, that's doubtful. Chilcot concluded with asking what he's learnt. Blair claims if they hadn't got him then they would have had to have dealt with him when he was stronger. If democracy takes hold then we'll look back with pride.
The one audible expression of disgust from the audience (and on exit in the room, boos and a cry of "murderer" and "liar") came when Blair insisted je ne regrette rien despite it being one big FAIL. He says he'd do it all again and I reckon he'd do it all over you.

UPDATE: Protester tried to perform a citizen's arrest of Blair as he left the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in London this evening. More here. Arrest Blair. Canadian lawyers give thumbs up to Arrest Blair campaign.

What was it all about? Guardian journalists find fiasco and incompetence.

Harpymarx was at the demo in the freezing rain and has some great pix.

Minority Report: Tony Blair at the Chilcot Iraq Inquiry, Part 1.

"The voices in my head told me to do it"

Thanks to The Lavatory Reader for the Blair pic.

UPDATE: 1st Feb 2010 Iraq inquiry may recall Tony Blair over conflicting evidence

Je Ne Regrette Rien: Tony Blair at the Chilcot Inquiry, Pt Deux

Afternoon session at Chilcot.

So it all went wrong when those pesky Iran and Al Qaeda outsiders got involved. Even though there was a 911 issue. But Al Qaeda? And the criminality! Who'd have guessed the blighters would have fought back? Blow me down, is that what happens when a country's infrastructure is allowed to collapse?

"The purpose of the people we were fighting was to wreck the reconstruction. Deliberately!" shock horror. "Nobody, but NOBODY, thought that Iran would end up supporting Al Qaeda because they both wanted to destabilise Iraq."

Blair's ingenue schtick continues to appall. It's like when he said he hadn't understood that the 45 minute mobilisation only applied to battlefield armaments and not long-range weapons, and simpered, "I wasn't watching closely". Even though the whole country was being whipped up into a pro-war mood by the threat of imminent attacks at the time?

You would have thought that would have been a good case for negligence and manslaughter at least. Chilcot broke for a tea-break with the blasé, "It might have been an expensive lesson, but one very necessary to learn." Blimey. I could have told you all that at the time. In fact I do believe many of us did.

The voice is huskier this afternoon. Repetition of BS will do that. Blair keeps insisting that "It's pretty clear" that the "spirit" of UN Resolution 1441 gave them the right to go to war. Au contraire, as the Dutch found the other week, 1441 pertains only to disarming, demanded proportionality, and never included the key phrase, "by all means necessary" allowing military force.

The afternoon session focuses on the legality of war and yet the only lawyer present is Blair. That's one reason the panel doesn't challenge him on whether UN resolution 1441 was about removing Saddam, which is what he's slipping in, or the actual subject which was disarmament.

But it doesn't matter what Blair believed in his head, or the "spirit" of lawyerly document, it's about the letter of the law and whether the government contravened or followed it.

There are still so many more issues. However much they bang on about Saddam's atrocities — torture chambers, killing his own people and the like — no-one raises the fact that most of them were committed while he was our boy. Who supplied the chemicals and arms? That's right, we still have the receipts. The papers exchanged between Bush and Blair at Crawford have still not been released despite promises that they would be. Blair had to concede he's "used the wrong words" to Parliament when he said preparations for war weren't yet in place. They were.

There were a few sparks from the panel. One member asked if with such a cavalier attitude to planning wasn't this a heavy price to pay? But Blair insists that Iraqis today have never had it so good, especially since 2002, although one of his questioners said that from Iraqis he's spoken to, that's doubtful. Chilcot concluded with asking what he's learnt. Blair claims if they hadn't got him then they would have had to have dealt with him when he was stronger. If democracy takes hold then we'll look back with pride.
The one audible expression of disgust from the audience (and on exit in the room, boos and a cry of "murderer" and "liar") came when Blair insisted je ne regrette rien despite it being one big FAIL. He says he'd do it all again and I reckon he'd do it all over you.

UPDATE: Protester tried to perform a citizen's arrest of Blair as he left the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in London this evening. More here. Arrest Blair. Canadian lawyers give thumbs up to Arrest Blair campaign.

What was it all about? Guardian journalists find fiasco and incompetence.

Harpymarx was at the demo in the freezing rain and has some great pix.

Minority Report: Tony Blair at the Chilcot Iraq Inquiry, Part 1.

"The voices in my head told me to do it"

Thanks to The Lavatory Reader for the Blair pic.

UPDATE: 1st Feb 2010 Iraq inquiry may recall Tony Blair over conflicting evidence

Minority Report: Tony Blair at the Chilcot Iraq Inquiry Pt I

Lunchtime. A slippery and unapologetic Tony Blair defended his right to smite at the Iraq Inquiry this morning with his well-rehearsed Minority Report line: we knew Saddam was a bad man and would have done bad things. So you can now be done for pre-crime and Blair is the man to decide.

"It was all about risk" and not an actual threat, he smarmed. "I made the decision based on RISK of renewed WMDs." You may do well in a poker game, Tony, but as a Prime Minister your JUDGEMENT (a word he kept repeating ad nauseam) sucked. He couldn't even extract anything from the Americans in exchange for services rendered (not including whatever it is that Blair may have gained personally). Lyne asked why he couldn't get Bush to give him a reach-around and offer anything on the Middle East and Israel. Oh, that's because Bush didn't think Israel was a fundamental issue.

The biggest stunna of the morning was his insistence on linking 911 with Iraq. Even Fox News no longer returns to this bowl of sick. But Blair kept pressing this as if it was possessed of magic properties and, because there is no lawyer on the panel, he was never pressed to justify and present evidence. It was a point left dangling like a bloody great big elephant on a string.. "The calculus of risk had changed." Force was always an option because he said so. It was his personal JUDGEMENT and he had to make that decision.

Blair didn't want his Amurkin buddies, who had officially been seeking regime change since 1998, to be alone. Ah! Murderous foreign policy determined by an act of chivalry.

Blair also humbly claimed to have been the party to persuade President Clinton to put Serbia under heavy manners over Kosovo and get mediaeval on their behinds. In the same way, he said he was telling Bush to go for it in Iraq. I'd always pictured this as a runt egging on the schoolyard bully. But my father had always maintained that people have it wrong: that because British imperialism is the oldest in the world and they are very good at this, it's not America manipulating us; it's the British Foreign Office dog wagging the US tail. And from Blair's account, Dad was right.

The word "oil" finally surfaced with another Mystic Meg moment. Let's not think about what actually happened in 2003, let's think ahead to 2010 with oil "no longer $25 per barrel, but $100 per barrel". Uh, I think oil had occurred to us at the time.

He weaseled out of the infamous BBC Fern Brittan interview where spoke of "removing" Saddam Hussein but now asserts that because he didn't use the actual words "regime change" he's home and dry.

What we do know is that the UN's Article Two states that you can't use military action to effect a regime change, and there's also a matter or proportionality which Shock And Awe most certainly was not. Resolution 1441 was only about disarmament and any action would have had to have been proportionate to that end. But in order to use military action, the phrase "by all necessary means" (diplomacy-speak for war) would have had to have been included. Which it wasn't.

Hah! 14:45 Blair just lied about 1441. He says "It's pretty obvious ... in spirit" it gave us the right to say, "that's it. This Saddam's last chance. For our armed forces that was sufficient". Smite, smite! Not that he uses words to specifically mean violence. He's very carfeful to let the casual listener draw that conclusion. So next time you're up in front of the law, plead "in spirit". His questioner knows no detail of 1441 and can't challenge him.

The panel were helpful, with Sir Rodders Lyne helping out at a weak moment in the performance with the cue, "So you were pressing for the UN route". An OK amdram actor, Blair picked up the cue which I was beginning to wish was a sawn-off snooker cue and that someone would whack him round his big arrogant homicidal head with it.

Sadly, the protest was a washout with STW leadership managing to mass-mobilise only about 250 people. Timed to start at 8am, Honest Tone had slipped into a back door half an hour earlier and caught the organisers napping.

Depressing to see the line-up of commentators in the media consisting of Westminster Village hawks and lackeys. The strongest detractor was Sir Menzies Campbell on BBC R4 lunchtime news. Where's George Galloway, Bob Marshall Andrews and Craig Murray, f'rinstance? Sharp accounts from Craig Murray here and here

Je ne regrette rien Tony Blair Part Deux

Minority Report: Tony Blair at the Chilcot Iraq Inquiry Pt I

Lunchtime. A slippery and unapologetic Tony Blair defended his right to smite at the Iraq Inquiry this morning with his well-rehearsed Minority Report line: we knew Saddam was a bad man and would have done bad things. So you can now be done for pre-crime and Blair is the man to decide.

"It was all about risk" and not an actual threat, he smarmed. "I made the decision based on RISK of renewed WMDs." You may do well in a poker game, Tony, but as a Prime Minister your JUDGEMENT (a word he kept repeating ad nauseam) sucked. He couldn't even extract anything from the Americans in exchange for services rendered (not including whatever it is that Blair may have gained personally). Lyne asked why he couldn't get Bush to give him a reach-around and offer anything on the Middle East and Israel. Oh, that's because Bush didn't think Israel was a fundamental issue.

The biggest stunna of the morning was his insistence on linking 911 with Iraq. Even Fox News no longer returns to this bowl of sick. But Blair kept pressing this as if it was possessed of magic properties and, because there is no lawyer on the panel, he was never pressed to justify and present evidence. It was a point left dangling like a bloody great big elephant on a string.. "The calculus of risk had changed." Force was always an option because he said so. It was his personal JUDGEMENT and he had to make that decision.

Blair didn't want his Amurkin buddies, who had officially been seeking regime change since 1998, to be alone. Ah! Murderous foreign policy determined by an act of chivalry.

Blair also humbly claimed to have been the party to persuade President Clinton to put Serbia under heavy manners over Kosovo and get mediaeval on their behinds. In the same way, he said he was telling Bush to go for it in Iraq. I'd always pictured this as a runt egging on the schoolyard bully. But my father had always maintained that people have it wrong: that because British imperialism is the oldest in the world and they are very good at this, it's not America manipulating us; it's the British Foreign Office dog wagging the US tail. And from Blair's account, Dad was right.

The word "oil" finally surfaced with another Mystic Meg moment. Let's not think about what actually happened in 2003, let's think ahead to 2010 with oil "no longer $25 per barrel, but $100 per barrel". Uh, I think oil had occurred to us at the time.

He weaseled out of the infamous BBC Fern Brittan interview where spoke of "removing" Saddam Hussein but now asserts that because he didn't use the actual words "regime change" he's home and dry.

What we do know is that the UN's Article Two states that you can't use military action to effect a regime change, and there's also a matter or proportionality which Shock And Awe most certainly was not. Resolution 1441 was only about disarmament and any action would have had to have been proportionate to that end. But in order to use military action, the phrase "by all necessary means" (diplomacy-speak for war) would have had to have been included. Which it wasn't.

Hah! 14:45 Blair just lied about 1441. He says "It's pretty obvious ... in spirit" it gave us the right to say, "that's it. This Saddam's last chance. For our armed forces that was sufficient". Smite, smite! Not that he uses words to specifically mean violence. He's very carfeful to let the casual listener draw that conclusion. So next time you're up in front of the law, plead "in spirit". His questioner knows no detail of 1441 and can't challenge him.

The panel were helpful, with Sir Rodders Lyne helping out at a weak moment in the performance with the cue, "So you were pressing for the UN route". An OK amdram actor, Blair picked up the cue which I was beginning to wish was a sawn-off snooker cue and that someone would whack him round his big arrogant homicidal head with it.

Sadly, the protest was a washout with STW leadership managing to mass-mobilise only about 250 people. Timed to start at 8am, Honest Tone had slipped into a back door half an hour earlier and caught the organisers napping.

Depressing to see the line-up of commentators in the media consisting of Westminster Village hawks and lackeys. The strongest detractor was Sir Menzies Campbell on BBC R4 lunchtime news. Where's George Galloway, Bob Marshall Andrews and Craig Murray, f'rinstance? Sharp accounts from Craig Murray here and here

Je ne regrette rien Tony Blair Part Deux

Chilcot chums: who are the inquisitors?

What's the chance of the Chilcott Iraq Inquiry arriving at a satisfactory objective conclusion?

Andy Beckett asks in The Guardian if the inquiry can do a better job than past whitewashes.

Then there are the inquisitors themselves. None of them is a lawyer, despite the Iraq war being a minefield of legal issues. All are peers, and four out of the five are men; the sole woman is Baroness Usha Prashar. What is more, all four men seem to have pro-government elements in their biographies.

The chairman, Sir John Chilcot, a former senior civil servant, was part of the Butler inquiry panel which, in the eyes of most observers, was robust in its detailed judgments but too charitable in its conclusions. Sir Martin Gilbert is the official biographer of Winston Churchill; in 2004 he wrote in the Observer, "George W Bush and Tony Blair . . . may well, with the passage of time . . . join the ranks of [Franklin] Roosevelt and Churchill [as war leaders] when Iraq has a stable democracy."

Sir Lawrence Freedman is another grand British historian – professor of war studies at King's College London since 1982 – with less than neutral past views on Iraq. In the lead-up to war, he repeatedly wrote hawkish articles for British newspapers about the strategic threat allegedly posed by Saddam Hussein. In 1999, he contributed heavily to a famous Blair speech in Chicago that set out the arguments for military action against repressive and dangerous regimes.

Finally there is Sir Roderic Lyne, a former British ambassador to Russia. In Alastair Campbell's diaries he is referred to fondly as "Rod". In June 2003, a few weeks after the invasion of Iraq, the Times reported that during an international summit in St Petersburg, "Campbell took time out to race Sir Roderic Lyne through six miles of city streets. This was the third in a series of three races that the pair have run."

Watch Blair's testimony live on Friday at the Chilcot Iraq Inquiry website.

UPDATE: Applause for Flying Rodent's splendid rant, Lefties – stop chasing the Chilcot farce at Liberal Conspiracy on what the real narrative actually is and why everything else is smoke and mirrors. Good comment at No 9, as well.

Chilcot chums: who are the inquisitors?

What's the chance of the Chilcott Iraq Inquiry arriving at a satisfactory objective conclusion?

Andy Beckett asks in The Guardian if the inquiry can do a better job than past whitewashes.

Then there are the inquisitors themselves. None of them is a lawyer, despite the Iraq war being a minefield of legal issues. All are peers, and four out of the five are men; the sole woman is Baroness Usha Prashar. What is more, all four men seem to have pro-government elements in their biographies.

The chairman, Sir John Chilcot, a former senior civil servant, was part of the Butler inquiry panel which, in the eyes of most observers, was robust in its detailed judgments but too charitable in its conclusions. Sir Martin Gilbert is the official biographer of Winston Churchill; in 2004 he wrote in the Observer, "George W Bush and Tony Blair . . . may well, with the passage of time . . . join the ranks of [Franklin] Roosevelt and Churchill [as war leaders] when Iraq has a stable democracy."

Sir Lawrence Freedman is another grand British historian – professor of war studies at King's College London since 1982 – with less than neutral past views on Iraq. In the lead-up to war, he repeatedly wrote hawkish articles for British newspapers about the strategic threat allegedly posed by Saddam Hussein. In 1999, he contributed heavily to a famous Blair speech in Chicago that set out the arguments for military action against repressive and dangerous regimes.

Finally there is Sir Roderic Lyne, a former British ambassador to Russia. In Alastair Campbell's diaries he is referred to fondly as "Rod". In June 2003, a few weeks after the invasion of Iraq, the Times reported that during an international summit in St Petersburg, "Campbell took time out to race Sir Roderic Lyne through six miles of city streets. This was the third in a series of three races that the pair have run."

Watch Blair's testimony live on Friday at the Chilcot Iraq Inquiry website.

UPDATE: Applause for Flying Rodent's splendid rant, Lefties – stop chasing the Chilcot farce at Liberal Conspiracy on what the real narrative actually is and why everything else is smoke and mirrors. Good comment at No 9, as well.

Tony Blair advises shady hedge fund: reward for citizens arrest on war-crime charges

Has this man no shame? Just when you think he can't get any worse, Tony Blair hits rock bottom and breaks through to a whole new bottom no-one knew anything about. Our former British Prime Minister dons fishnets and high heels and makes yet another tranche of loot, this time hundreds of thousands from giving lectures to a shady hedge fund that made millions betting on the failure of our banks.

This is the person who makes £2.5 million per year from JP Morgan, the bank that profits most from co-ordinating the pillage of Iraq, from the war that he helped start. Conflict of interest, much? Here's hoping he gets his just deserts when he appears at Chilcot Iraq Inquiry on Friday and realises how reviled he is. Not that I expect he'll care. Money has a funny way of easing the conscience.

Former defence minister Peter Kilfoyle said:

'I never cease to be amazed by Mr Blair's money-making activities. It goes to show that as far as Mr Blair is concerned, his political and public life is behind him and he appears to have no sense of responsibility to those who have been left behind. His entire lifestyle is an ongoing source of embarrassment to everyone in the Labour Party.'

Bob Marshall-Andrews, another Labour MP, said:

'Nothing that this man does surprises me any more after watching him in the run-up to the Iraq invasion.'

Integrity? Propriety? Principles? Going (not so) cheap.

Oh to see him have to spend his ill-gotten gains on lawyers at a war-crimes trial at the Hague. George Monbiot says arrest him and claim your reward:

... was the war with Iraq illegal? If the answer is yes, everything changes. The war is no longer a political matter, but a criminal one, and those who commissioned it should be committed for trial for what the Nuremberg tribunal called "the supreme international crime": the crime of aggression. ... Without legal justification, the war with Iraq was an act of mass murder: those who died were unlawfully killed by the people who commissioned it.

Monbiot has started a pot for anyone willing to bring Blair to book and make a citizens arrest. So far there's £1534.00 up for grabs and rising.

UPDATE: A fascinating-sounding BBC Radio 4 play based on Craig Murray's book, Saturday Feb 20th, 2:30pm — put this in your diaries. World Premiere of Murder in Samarkand by Sir David Hare based on the memoir by the former ambassador about his brush with Bush and Blair as the Iraq invasion became inevitable. David Tennant stars as Craig Murray.

Matthew Norman on Blair the pariah at Chilcot.

Andy Beckett, The Guardian, on how cosy the Chilcot inquisitors are with the Blair posse and the hawks.

Tony Blair advises shady hedge fund: reward for citizens arrest on war-crime charges

Has this man no shame? Just when you think he can't get any worse, Tony Blair hits rock bottom and breaks through to a whole new bottom no-one knew anything about. Our former British Prime Minister dons fishnets and high heels and makes yet another tranche of loot, this time hundreds of thousands from giving lectures to a shady hedge fund that made millions betting on the failure of our banks.

This is the person who makes £2.5 million per year from JP Morgan, the bank that profits most from co-ordinating the pillage of Iraq, from the war that he helped start. Conflict of interest, much? Here's hoping he gets his just deserts when he appears at Chilcot Iraq Inquiry on Friday and realises how reviled he is. Not that I expect he'll care. Money has a funny way of easing the conscience.

Former defence minister Peter Kilfoyle said:

'I never cease to be amazed by Mr Blair's money-making activities. It goes to show that as far as Mr Blair is concerned, his political and public life is behind him and he appears to have no sense of responsibility to those who have been left behind. His entire lifestyle is an ongoing source of embarrassment to everyone in the Labour Party.'

Bob Marshall-Andrews, another Labour MP, said:

'Nothing that this man does surprises me any more after watching him in the run-up to the Iraq invasion.'

Integrity? Propriety? Principles? Going (not so) cheap.

Oh to see him have to spend his ill-gotten gains on lawyers at a war-crimes trial at the Hague. George Monbiot says arrest him and claim your reward:

... was the war with Iraq illegal? If the answer is yes, everything changes. The war is no longer a political matter, but a criminal one, and those who commissioned it should be committed for trial for what the Nuremberg tribunal called "the supreme international crime": the crime of aggression. ... Without legal justification, the war with Iraq was an act of mass murder: those who died were unlawfully killed by the people who commissioned it.

Monbiot has started a pot for anyone willing to bring Blair to book and make a citizens arrest. So far there's £1534.00 up for grabs and rising.

UPDATE: A fascinating-sounding BBC Radio 4 play based on Craig Murray's book, Saturday Feb 20th, 2:30pm — put this in your diaries. World Premiere of Murder in Samarkand by Sir David Hare based on the memoir by the former ambassador about his brush with Bush and Blair as the Iraq invasion became inevitable. David Tennant stars as Craig Murray.

Matthew Norman on Blair the pariah at Chilcot.

Andy Beckett, The Guardian, on how cosy the Chilcot inquisitors are with the Blair posse and the hawks.

Top lawyer damns Blair as Bush sycophant over war

Today's Times carries a powerful article by Sir Ken Macdonald, director of public prosecutions between 2003 and 2008, that says Blair was drunk on power when it came to dragging us into the Iraq war, engaging in "an alarming subterfuge with his partner George Bush" and going on to "mislead and cajole the British people into a deadly war they had made perfectly clear they didn’t want".

"In this sense he was weak and, as we can see, he remains so. Since those sorry days we have frequently heard him repeating the self-regarding mantra that 'hand on heart, I only did what I thought was right'. But this is a narcissist's defence, and self-belief is no answer to misjudgment: it is certainly no answer to death."

But he warns that the Chilcot inquiry may turn out to be a whitewash.

"In British public life, loyalty and service to power can sometimes count for more to insiders than any tricky questions of wider reputation. It's the regard you are held in by your peers that really counts, so that steadfastness in the face of attack and threatened exposure brings its own rich hierarchy of honour and reward."

We all knew Blair had a weak character. Why couldn't his own party see it?

See Blair admits war lies