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Blair: The stench of hypocrisy
By Mike Cobley
09/08/05 "ICH" -- -- The latest authoritarian drivel to come out of Tony Blair`s mouth beggars belief. A BBC Online report today said the following:
Turning to his controversial planned laws at home, he said he expected them to be challenged in the courts but was not about to back down.
"We are not stopping any freedom of speech. But with freedom comes responsibility and you have to draw a line.
"If you do not draw the line people get very frustrated and angry and think their tolerance is being abused "You have to make a judgement in the end about what is right and what is wrong.
"We have to take that clear line and we have to see it through.
"I set the process out very deliberately. We are going to take these measures. They will be tested in the courts and let us see what happens," he
said.
Why is that whenever a problem arises in the socio-political arena, Blair and Co always reach for an authoritarian solution? Why is it that a supposedly Labour government has turned out so anti-liberal, so willing to kick over the civil and human rights traces? - witness Charles Clarke`s shameful performance at the European parliament.
What consistently makes my blood boil is Blair`s two-faced approach towards the killing of the innocent, otherwise known as `murder`. When pseudo-pious zealots do it, either here or in Iraq and elsewhere, he calls it terrorism driven by a violent ideology; when this country helped America invade Iraq and kill thousands of its citizens, as well as wreck its infrastructure, that`s called liberation. Who has killed more? - insurgents and suicide terrorists, or the armies of America and Britain? Well, any rational appraisal of the unlawfully killed in Iraq and Afghanistan will quickly show that Britain and America (and hey, we can always throw in Israel`s record) have killed far, far more people than any gang of terrorists.
One of the cornerstones of modern law is the principle that you are morally responsible for your actions. Thus, if the London bombers of July 7th are morally responsible for their vile actions, then Blair and Bush are also morally responsible for the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation and the mass murder of its people. Just writing and thinking about this makes me sick to my stomach, to know that the country that is my home is culpable for such an abominable act forces me to state that I am ashamed to be British. I cannot be proud of anything we do while our troops remain in that wrecked country; I cannot look upon anything good that the Blair government does for the British people because everything they do is tainted and poisoned. If Blair, Straw, Clarke, Prescott, Brown, all the rest of that guilty gang, were somehow able to provide us with a cornucopia of goodies, tax cuts and wonderful policies, it would still be meaningless and corrupt….for as long as our troops remain in that heartbreakingly ruined country.
And, of course, with his new clutch of laws restricting free speech, Blair is attempting to ruin this country as well. I mean, the Thatcher gang had a good go at undermining the bedrock strengths and freedoms of British society, but what Blair is doing is actually more dangerous. Two reasons: one, because he still gets the benefit of the doubt from core Labour voters who cannot believe that that nice Mr Blair would ever do anything to harm our liberties; and two, because in opting for this kind of public speech clampdown, he has in effect admitted that he has lost the public debate.
Bob Geldof told a story once about when he a youngster at a catholic school in Ireland, and how his atheist views brought one of his teachers to his house to complaining to his father. His father`s reply was (I'm paraphrasing) `Your faith in Christ and God cannot be very strong if the views of one schoolboy present a disturbing danger to you.`
Which is the point: Blair has lost the public debate with the terrorists and the bombers because he lost the moral high ground by invading Iraq and killing innocent Iraqis in the first place. If Blair and his government were in a morally secure place (ie not having invaded Iraq) then the arguments about the value of British democracy and freedoms and liberties would have real weight. If Blair had listened to the millions of protesters and pulled back from the brink, young British muslims - yes, even easily led ones - would have had no reason to carry bombs onto the underground and kill and maim hundreds.
And we wouldn't be facing an authoritarian crackdown on free speech by a morally and intellectually bankrupt Labour government.
Mike Cobley Is a writer living in Scotland. Visit his website -
http://michaelcobley.com/
Copyright: Mike Cobley
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