New Statesman - Blair must be arrested

New Statesman - Blair must be arrested:

Now consider the Proceeds of Crime Act. Blair conspired in and executed an unprovoked war of aggression against a defenceless country, of a kind the Nuremberg judges in 1946 described as the 'paramount war crime'. This has caused, according to scholarly studies, the deaths of more than a million people, a figure that exceeds the Fordham University estimate of deaths in the Rwandan genocide.

In addition, four million Iraqis have been forced to flee their homes and a majority of children have descended into malnutrition and trauma. Cancer rates near the cities of Fallujah, Najaf and Basra (the latter 'liberated' by the British) are now higher than those at Hiroshima. 'UK forces used about 1.9 metric tonnes of depleted uranium ammunition in the Iraq war in 2003,' the Defence Secretary, Liam Fox, told parliament on 22 July. A range of toxic 'anti-personnel' weapons, such as cluster bombs, was employed by British and US forces.

Hat-tip to Neil Clark: who notes

Let’s just hope that when Blair is finally in the dock, he doesn’t come up against a judge like Judge Griffith-Jones.'Started an illegal war which led to the deaths of 1m people'? 'Took part in the illegal bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia as well?'
Well, you have a rather respectable background and you're not a lower-class yobbo so I'll only give you three months in jail.'

In May 1999 someone set off nail bombs in various places in London, and Tony Blair went on record as denouncing this as "barbaric". And at the same time there were news reports that Father Milivoje Ciric, who left a special service in his church to help victims of a Nato bombing, has been decapitated by a follow-up blast. This is a typical terrorist tactic -- set off a bomb, and when a crowd gathers to help the injured, kill even more people with a second blast. You can read about the incident here, and see pictures here.

The nail bombs, of course, were barbaric. They were designed to cause the maximum injuries. But Natos cluster bombs were designed to do exactly the same thing, only far more efficiently. Look at the pictures, and see Tony Blair's handiwork. Yes, it is truly barbaric.

As the playwright Harold Pinter noted on his web site, quoting the Socialist Review, www.haroldpinter.org - Serbia and Kosovo:

When the bomb went off in Old Compton Street, Mr Blair described it as a barbaric act. When cluster bombs go off in Serbian marketplaces, cutting children into pieces, we are told that such an act is being taken on behalf of 'civilisation against barbarism'. Mr Blair is clearly having a wonderful time. But if Britain remains America's poodle, she is now a vicious and demented poodle. The Nato action is in breach of its own charter and outside all recognised parameters of international law. Nato is destroying the infrastructure of a sovereign state, murdering hundreds of civilians, creating widespread misery and desolation, and doing immeasurable damage to the environment.

Barbaric? Yes. But as the prophet Nathan said to King David, "Thou art the man." (I Sam 12).

But there is one crucial difference, for it is recorded that King David repented, but Tony Blair has not.

Tony Blair pushed Gordon Brown to hold Iraq war inquiry in private

Tony Blair pushed Gordon Brown to hold Iraq war inquiry in private: The Observer:

Tony Blair urged Gordon Brown to hold the independent inquiry into the Iraq war in secret because he feared that he would be subjected to a 'show trial' if it were opened to the public the Observer can reveal.

The revelation that the former prime minister - who led Britain to war in March 2003 - had intervened will fuel the anger of MPs peers military leaders and former civil servants who were appalled by Brown's decision last week to order the investigation to be conducted behind closed doors.

Could this be the same Tony Blair? Blair Threatens Milosevic With War Crimes Trial

Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic will be held accountable for any further war crimes in Kosovo British Prime Minister Tony Blair said yesterday. Blair s threat was the first time any Western leader has singled out Milosevic for possible war crimes committed by forces under his command. Blair 'President Milosevic and his commanders must ... understand that NATO will not stand by in the face of renewed repression in Kosovoor atrocities like the one we witnessed in Racak. Nor can the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague' Michael Evens London Times 9 Mar .

Could it be that the man who wanted others held accountable for their alleged warmongering is shying away from accountability himself? And remember that the "Racak atrocity" was shown to be a fabrication, unlike Tony Blair's very real involvement in the invasion of Iraq.

It seems that the belligerent Mr Blair made a habit of lying to take his country into war.

The Western Confucian: M�nster and Nagasaki

The Western Confucian reminds us that more Japanese Christians were killed by US bombing in one day that were killed in four centuries of persecution by the Japanese government

'At 11:02 AM, two-thirds of Japan's Catholics were annihilated,' wrote yours truly last year about today's grim anniversary in a brief history of Japan's historic center of Catholicism — The Holy City of Nagasaki. 'On that day that will live in infamy, more Japanese Christians were slaughtered than had been martyred in four centuries of brutal persecution.' Urakami Cathedral, the largest Christian church in Asia, was the siting target.

Karadzic Arrest: A Boost for Serbia - TIME

Karadzic Arrest: A Boost for Serbia - TIME:

Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic's latest lair wasn't a cave or a safe house; no hidden compartments or special security details shielded him. Instead, it turns out that one of the world's most wanted men was hiding in plain view in the drab, anonymous housing blocks of Novo Belgrade, a suburb of the Serbian capital. He was nabbed not by NATO, whose forces had spent 13 years in a vain and sometimes desultory search for him, but by the security forces of Serbia, the country whose fantastic designs for grandeur he had once so ardently tried to further. Now Karadzic, 63, faces a trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for genocide and crimes against humanity committed during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

And we now wait with bated breath for the USA to get a similar boost by arresting and handing over Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright for war crimes in Yugoslavia; and George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld for war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. And for Britain to get a similar boost by arresting and handing over Tony Blair for war crimes in all three -- he's probably the biggest war criminal in recent times.

Compared with these, Karadzic is a relatively small fish. But of course the big fish usually get away. If Tony Blair were occupying a cell next to Karadzic I might believe that the Hague Tribunal is not a kangaroo court. As it is, it's nothing more than a Nato propaganda organ.

And when I read the propaganda (including the Time article above, still churning it out after all these years), I begin to wonder if Radovan Karadzic isn't Bosnia's Bram Fischer. I don't know enough about him, of course, to make such a judgement, but I wonder. Perhaps the truth will emerge at the Hague, or perhaps, like Slobodan Milosevic, he will conveniently die before it does. And then we'll be left wondering just whose convenience was served.