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Paul Merrell

George Galloway badly injured in street attack | Politics | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...y-injured-london-street-attack

war & peace UK Galloway injury Zionists assaul

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • Respect MP George Galloway was taken to hospital with a suspected broken jaw on Friday night after being attacked in the street.Police arrested a British man over the incident, which is believed to have been prompted by comments Galloway has made about Israel in past weeks.The 60-year-old was posing for pictures in Notting Hill, London, on Friday evening when a man lashed out at him, his spokesman said. Galloway gave a statement to police after a man aged 39 was arrested."George was posing for pictures with people and this guy just attacked him, leapt on him and started punching him," his spokesman said."It appears to be connected with his comments about Israel because the guy was shouting about the Holocaust. George is badly bruised but OK. He has bruising to his head and face and is in pretty bad shape."
  • Last week, the MP was interviewed by police under caution after he was accused of inciting racial hatred by declaring his constituency, Bradford West, an "Israel-free zone".In a speech he gave in Leeds on 2 August he said: "We don't want any Israeli goods; we don't want any Israeli services; we don't want any Israeli academics coming to the university or the college; we don't even want any Israeli tourists to come to Bradford, even if any of them had thought of doing so."Galloway called the police investigation into him a "monumental – and monumentally expensive – waste of police time".
  • In 2008, Galloway was injured after a man threw a rubber stress ball at his head while he was campaigning. A 32-year-old man was cautioned by police over that incident.
  • Paul Merrell on 30 Aug 14
     
    Zionists are getting a bit touchy these days about Israel being subject to a rapidly growing global Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment ("BSD") movement. Galloway is a UK leader in that movement and a well-spoken critic of Israel's treatment of Palestinians.
Paul Merrell

Tony Blair should be sacked as Middle East envoy, say former ambassadors | Politics | T... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ddle-east-envoy-quartet-sacked

war & peace Blair-impeachment UK banksters JPMorgan

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • A group of former British ambassadors have joined a campaign calling for Tony Blair to be removed from his role as Middle East envoy after his recent attempt to "absolve himself" of responsibility for the crisis in Iraq.The letter, organised by the makers of George Galloway's film The Killing of Tony Blair, says the 2003 invasion of Iraq was to blame for the rise of "fundamentalist terrorism in a land where none existed previously".The signatories, led by Blair's former ambassador to Iran Sir Richard Dalton, describe the former prime minister's achievements as Middle East envoy as "negligible".
  • The letter says: "We, like many, are appalled by Iraq's descent into a sectarian conflict that threatens its very existence as a nation, as well as the security of its neighbours. We are also dismayed, however, at Tony Blair's recent attempts to absolve himself of any responsibility for the current crisis by isolating it from the legacy of the Iraq war."In reality, the invasion and occupation of Iraq had been a disaster long before the recent gains made by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis). The sectarian conflict responsible for much of the war's reprehensible human cost was caused in part by the occupying forces' division of the country's political system along sectarian lines."It added: "In order to justify the invasion, Tony Blair misled the British people by claiming that Saddam had links to al-Qaida. In the wake of recent events it is a cruel irony for the people of Iraq that perhaps the invasion's most enduring legacy has been the rise of fundamentalist terrorism in a land where none existed previously. We believe that Mr Blair, as a vociferous advocate of the invasion, must accept a degree of responsibility for its consequences."
  • The signatories say that Blair has failed to achieve any breakthrough as the quartet's representative, though they acknowledge his limited mandate that involves building the governance of the Palestinian Authority.The letter says: "It is our view that, after seven years, Mr Blair's achievements as Envoy are negligible, even within his narrow mandate of promoting Palestinian economic development. Furthermore, the impression of activity created by his high-profile appointment has hindered genuine progress towards a lasting peace."Seven years on there are still over 500 checkpoints and roadblocks in the West Bank. The Gaza Strip, severely damaged by Israel's 2009 bombing, remains in a humanitarian crisis, with 80% of its population reliant on foreign aid for survival. Israel continues to build settlements that are illegal under international law. According to the Palestinian Authority's former Chief Negotiator, Nabil Shaath, Tony Blair has "achieved so very little because of his gross efforts to please the Israelis".
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  • The letter is also critical of Blair's business interests. "Tony Blair's conduct in his private pursuits also calls into question his suitability for the role. Mr Blair has been widely criticised for a lack of transparency in the way he organises his business dealings and personal finances, and for blurring the lines between his public position as Envoy and his private roles at Tony Blair Associates and the investment bank JPMorgan Chase."The letter is addressed to John Kerry, the US secretary of state; Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister; Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general; and Cathy Ashton, the EU's foreign policy chief.
  • George Galloway said: "I have begun the process of parliamentary impeachment of Tony Blair. The House of Commons will vote on that later this year. His position is collapsing along with the state of Iraq he helped destroy. His tenure as Quartet envoy is now untenable"
  • The spokesperson said of the criticisms of Blair's business interests: "Mr Blair has done no work for JP Morgan in the Middle East – he is the chair of their International Advisory Council – where he provides advice on global political issues."
Paul Merrell

Media 'Staged' Syria Chemical Attack - 0 views

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article38047.htm

war & peace Syria propaganda CNN CIA BBC

shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Video BBC 'total fabrication from beginning to end' of Syria 'atrocity. CIA caught infiltrating CNN, and Operation Mockingbird is back. The Truthseeker interviews, UK Member of Parliament George Galloway; Illinois University Professor of International Law Francis Boyle; investigative reporter John Helmer and ordinary Syrians.
Paul Merrell

Maybe Obama's Sanctions on Venezuela are Not Really About His "Deep Concern" Over Suppr... - 0 views

firstlook.org/...ep-concern-human-rights-abuses

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Venezuela coup-attempts sanctions

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • The White House on Monday announced the imposition of new sanctions on various Venezuelan officials, pronouncing itself “deeply concerned by the Venezuelan government’s efforts to escalate intimidation of its political opponents”: deeply concerned. President Obama also, reportedly with a straight face, officially declared that Venezuela poses “an extraordinary threat to the national security” of the U.S. — a declaration necessary to legally justify the sanctions. Today, one of the Obama administration’s closest allies on the planet, Saudi Arabia, sentenced one of that country’s few independent human rights activists, Mohammed al-Bajad, to 10 years in prison on “terrorism” charges. That is completely consistent with that regime’s systematic and extreme repression, which includes gruesome state beheadings at a record-setting rate, floggings and long prison terms for anti-regime bloggers, executions of those with minority religious views, and exploitation of terror laws to imprison even the mildest regime critics. Absolutely nobody expects the “deeply concerned” President Obama to impose sanctions on the Saudis — nor on any of the other loyal U.S. allies from Egypt to the UAE whose repression is far worse than Venezuela’s. Perhaps those who actually believe U.S. proclamations about imposing sanctions on Venezuela in objection to suppression of political opposition might spend some time thinking about what accounts for that disparity.
  • That nothing is more insincere than purported U.S. concerns over political repression is too self-evident to debate. Supporting the most repressive regimes on the planet in order to suppress and control their populations is and long has been a staple of U.S. (and British) foreign policy. “Human rights” is the weapon invoked by the U.S. Government and its loyal media to cynically demonize regimes that refuse to follow U.S. dictates, while far worse tyranny is steadfastly overlooked, or expressly cheered, when undertaken by compliant regimes, such as those in Riyadh and Cairo (see this USA Today article, one of many, recently hailing the Saudis as one of the “moderate” countries in the region). This is exactly the tactic that leads neocons to feign concern for Afghan women or the plight of Iranian gays when doing so helps to gin up war-rage against those regimes, while they snuggle up to far worse but far more compliant regimes. Any rational person who watched the entire top echelon of the U.S. government drop what they were doing to make a pilgrimage to Riyadh to pay homage to the Saudi monarchs (Obama cut short a state visit to India to do so), or who watches the mountain of arms and money flow to the regime in Cairo, would do nothing other than cackle when hearing U.S. officials announce that they are imposing sanctions to punish repression of political opposition. And indeed, that’s what most of the world outside of the U.S. and Europe do when they hear such claims. But from the perspective of U.S. officials, that’s fine, because such pretenses to noble intentions are primarily intended for domestic consumption.
  • As for Obama’s decree that Venezuela now poses an “extraordinary threat to the national security” of the United States, is there anyone, anywhere, that wants to defend the reasonability of that claim? Think about what it says about our discourse that Obama officials know they can issue such insultingly false tripe with no consequences. But what’s not too obvious to point out is what the U.S is actually doing in Venezuela. It’s truly remarkable how the very same people who demand U.S. actions against the democratically elected government in Caracas are the ones who most aggressively mock Venezuelan leaders when they point out that the U.S. is working to undermine their government. The worst media offender in this regard is The New York Times, which explicitly celebrated the 2002 U.S.-supported coup of Hugo Chavez as a victory for democracy, but which now regularly derides the notion that the U.S. would ever do something as untoward as undermine the Venezuelan government. Watch this short video from Monday where the always-excellent Matt Lee of Associated Press questions a State Department spokesperson this week after she said it was “ludicrous” to think that the U.S. would ever do such a thing:
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  • The real question is this: if concern over suppression of political rights is not the real reason the U.S. is imposing new sanctions on Venezuela (perish the thought!), what is? Among the most insightful commentators on U.S. policy in Latin America is Mark Weisbrot of Just Foreign Policy. Read his excellent article for Al Jazeera on the recent Obama decree on Venezuela. In essence, Venezuela is one of the very few countries with significant oil reserves which does not submit to U.S. dictates, and this simply cannot be permitted (such countries are always at the top of the U.S. government and media list of Countries To Be Demonized). Beyond that, the popularity of Chavez and the relative improvement of Venezuela’s poor under his redistributionist policies petrifies neoliberal institutions for its ability to serve as an example; just as the Cuban economy was choked by decades of U.S. sanctions and then held up by the U.S. as a failure of Communism, subverting the Venezuelan economy is crucial to destroying this success. As Weisbrot notes, every country in the hemisphere except for the U.S. and Canada have united to oppose U.S. sanctions on Venezuela. The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) issued a statement in February in response to the prior round of U.S. sanctions on Venezuela that “reiterates its strong repudiation of the application of unilateral coercive measures that are contrary to international law.” This week, the chief of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) issued a statement announcing that “UNASUR rejects any external or internal attempt at interference that seeks to disrupt the democratic process in Venezuela.” Weisbrot compares Obama’s decree this week on Venezuela to President Reagan’s quite similar 1985 decree that Nicaragua was a national security threat to the U.S., and notes: “The Obama administration is more isolated today in Latin America than even George W. Bush’s administration was.”
  • If Obama and supporters want the government of Venezuela to be punished and/or toppled because they refuse to comply with U.S. dictates, they should at least be honest about their beliefs so that their true character can be seen. Pretending that any of this has to do with the U.S. Government’s anger over suppression of political opponents — when their closest allies are the world champions at that — should be too insulting of everyone’s intelligence to even be an option.
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