Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Well could it be ... ?

Yes it could
Something's coming
Something good


Let's just say my views have changed in the last ten years.

28 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is the most dangerous time, he has one EU conference left to screw us with before he jumps ship.
If he wants a possible EU role in the future which I think he does this is a good time to show his pro EU credentials.

Anonymous said...

O/T - another story for your "We're not having babies" thread.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2075388,00.html

Anonymous said...

LT: ¨Lets just say my views have changed in the last ten years.¨

I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.

:-)

Ross said...

Personally I've detested Blair since he first became leader of the Labour Party back in 1994. He was always dishonest and two faced. He is less of a demagogue nowadays but that's only because no one trusts him anymore.

Anonymous said...

Henry's link rendered with html.

AntiCitizenOne said...

I clocked Blair as shady the first time I set eyes on him.

It took 10 years for everyone else to catch up.

How long will it take to convince people they've right royally fucked up the economy (and covered it up).

Anonymous said...

Anticitizen One and Ross - I had come home to Britain to visit my mother a few months before the 1997 election, and Blair came on TV. It was the first time I had ever seen him and I was instantly repulsed. There was such a heavy sense of evil about him.

I said to my mother, "That is an evil man." And my mother said, "Yes, he is. And he'll get in."

Blair and NuLabour's victory was like an inescapable curse. It is as though it was written. There was an air of inevitability about it. This unsettling, wicked man was, for some cosmic reason, going to be imposed on our ancient islands and he was going wreak great destruction. It sounds mad, but I foresaw it all.

Look at the quality of the people surrounding him. No previous prime minister would have contemplated stuffing a cabinet with such dross and plate scrapings.

Of course, he would not have appointed anyone intelligent with a will of their own, because he intended to run the entire government by himself. And this he has done. Including running a parallel MoD out of Downing St.

There is no purpose to Tony Blair except as the instrument of great evil.

Anonymous said...

Wow I thought I didn't like Blair but they really going for him on BBC HYS.

His leaving speach showed why he was so bad, as any dictator would say "I always did what I thought was right".

The only positive comment about Blair was talking about section 28 and civil partenerships..
Thats Blair, good for gays, no one else.

Anonymous said...

Dave,if you think HYS is good, go over to the Daily Mail. No one is holding back. No "typically British" understatement.

Anonymous said...

While entirely agreeing with much of the comments here about Blair what I still don't understand about him is his behaviour over the War on Terror and Iraq.
Whether you agree with it or not his attitude and policy has not wavered even under the most extreme pressure.
It would have been so easy and typical of him to have withdrawn troops etc and become the great hero. But he didn't.

Was he taken to one side by the Whitehall mandarins and told the facts of life?
That is the only thing that makes sense.
It can't be that he really thought it was the best thing to do can it?

paul ilc said...

Blair is not evil, though he is ignorant and stupid. I think his tenure has not seen "great destruction", but it has seen great damage (grotesque over-regulation, PC attitudes, higher taxes, constitutional tinkering, spin etc) and waste (vast sums injected into the NHS and education with little discernible benefit). And, as ACO rightly says, Blair has managed to obscure the economic damage his Government has done.

Anonymous said...

The greatest liar this country has ever produced. Others have told bigger lies, and others have lied more consistently. However, only Mr Blair has been able to lie with impunity and convince at the same time. That was his great genius.

Shame he was Prime Minister and not the Director of Sales for a FTSE-100 country.

Still, out of the frying pan and into the fire - it's the dour Scottish socialist 'Josef' Brown taking over...will we soon be pining for the golden days of Mr Blair?

Anonymous said...

FTSE-100 company, hah freudian globalisation slip there...

Laban said...

My grubby pawprints are already all over the Guardian thread .. I quote Lionel Shriver at them.

Anonymous said...

anon, Blair cannot be celebrated for his stance on the 'war on terror', if he was serious about solving the problem he would have controlled immigration, there is no point sending our troops all over the world to fight Muslim extremists when he is so weak in regard to the most dangerous ones that are living in Britain.

Anonymous said...

Just for the record - Blair was born in Edinburgh on 6 May 1953.....Edinburgh is in Scotland

Anonymous said...

The War on Terror was conducted much like any other big government socialist program - identify the problems and make 'em worse.

FACT 1: Muslims are angry at the West for our alleged neo-colonialist meddling in their affairs. That's why Bin Laden ordered 7/11. That's what all the two-bit radicals say about their own grievances.

FACT 2: This anger is relevant because we not only let them into our homelands, but even ban people from taking any precautions in view of the newcomers' excitable tendencies.

CONCLUSION: We must invade their countries, thus proving their beliefs mentioned in FACT 1, while letting 'em in and kowtowing in all manners of way to make up for our imperialism. Thus we exarcerbate FACT 2.

Bravo, defendors of human rights! Such a shame there's no neocon Pope (well, there is, but he's senile by now), and so no one to crown you latter day 'Fidei Defensor's.

Anonymous said...

Alex Zeka - I would never offer up a comment on nuclear physics or Rennaissance art because, knowing nothing about them, my thoughts would be ill-founded. Even though my heart was in the right place, I wouldn't have the factual basis for an argument.

You write: "FACT 1: Muslims are angry at the West for our alleged neo-colonialist meddling in their affairs. That's why Bin Laden ordered 7/11. That's what all the two-bit radicals say about their own grievances."

This has absolutely nothing to do with islamic terrorism. Please, peeps, read something about islam before drawing conclusions with no basis in fact.

One more time, as pared down as I can make it: the point of islam is to convert the entire world to submit to allah. That is the be all and end all. It should be done by persuasion if possible and if not, the barrel of a gun.

You were born a muslim. Oh, yes you were! According to them, this is the natural state of being, like the sun coming up in the West, etc. You left islam, thereby becoming an apostate. (This is why converts to islam are referred to, in islam, as "reverts".) You must be brought back into the fold.

We all know the mandate for dealing with apostates.

This has nothing to do with "colonial meddling". No one meddled in Iran, and the current round of jihad was kicked off with the taking of the US Embassy and personnel in Teheran in 1979. This was followed by many other outrages, including the first effort on the WTC, the taking of the Achille Lauro, the killing of over a hundred marines as they slept in their barracks in Beirut.

Et cetera. Then the "successful" attack on the WTC. Then Madrid, Bali,London and many other places that we don't hear too much about, like the Philippines and south Thailand. Oh, and who can forget the militant cartoon rage?

Islam is on the rampage and has been so for almost 30 years. There is no appeasing islam. It is a primitive Dark Ages unreformed religion, or us.

Please, let us not talk about causes and effect. The unalloyed cause of the problem is islam.

Anonymous said...

Dave, I don't ask that Bliar be celebrated for his stance on the WOT I just want to understand it.
There were so much more easy votes and good headlines to be had by not being seen as Bush's 'poodle' etc.
Yet he never wavered.

Anonymous said...

Verity,

I do not deny that some Muslim radicals consider us all apostates, just as some are just in the terrorism gig to satisfy their martyr complexes. But the point is that they can't present that as a public explanation of their actions and maintain FACT 2 (the Western public's acquiescence in the face of their actions). Would even the most deluded liberal still mouth the religion of peace meme if adherents of said religion had said: 'yep, we did just commit mass murder, and it's 'cose you don't recognise our God'?

Our interventions in the ME give Muslim radicals a smoke screen to hide their real intentions from the general public, thus not jeopardising FACT 2. Let's be clear, the two facts only present a terrorist threat together: w/o FACT 2(our accomodations with Muslims) FACT 1 would just lead them to fuming in their own lands; w/o FACT 1 (us furnishing Muslim radicals with an excsue to be angry at us)FACT 2 would be quickly overturned.

So, yes, we are retarding the fight to de-fang militarised Islam by invading their lands and thus giving a moral force to their complaints. No amount of blustering about bringing democracy to the ME will change that.

Anonymous said...

Alex - I do take your point and we may not be that far apart - but the first attempt on the WTC was in February 1993, long before Afghanistan or Iraq. The US Marines were bombed,while they slept in their barracks in Lebanon in the early 80s. The US Embassy was seized in Teheran in 1979. Etc.

There is absolutely no connection - no cause and effect - and we should not be allowing the islamics and the promoters of the mythical "moderate islam" to get away with it because it is confusing the picture. And weakening the position of the West.

What has to be faced is, this current jihad kicked off in 1979 and, unless dealt with decisively, will run for another 50 or more years. Think about it: it has already run for almost 30.

They are burrowing in, pushing for an inch, and they colonise every single inch we concede.

There are a few - very, very few - brave muslims who want a reformation of Islam, and we should be befriending and encouraging these people instead of that scumbbag in charge of the Muslim Council and all the other unelected "spokesmen" and self-appointed community leaders. And we should be deporting violent imams wholesale - as indeed, we should be deporting their violent supporters.

Canadian Sunni Irshad Manji - she has a website - is a clever, articulate and witty voice for moderate, reformed islam. Aayan Hirsi Ali is another one, although she is an apostate. Her thinking on islam is lucid and knowledgable. There's a man whose name, to my shame, I've got on the tip of my tongue and cannot recall just at this moment.

But they are far, far between the hundreds of millions who think islam is the only true religion and it is their duty to make everyone worship their allah.

I understand why we freed Iraq of Sadaam (I never believed the 45 minute deal) but I am now of the mind that we should just leave the region alone. I enjoyed your post.

Anonymous said...

What we are in fact witnessing is an upsurge in >Islamic Imperialism

It was Islam that swept from the Hejaz and conquered Christian North Africa, Christian Syria, Zoastrian Persia, Buddhist and Hindu India and Afghanistan; it was Islam which invaded Christian asia Minor and Byzantium, Islam which invaded Christian Spain and France, Islam which swept to the Gates of Vienna


We now watch the battle between Sunni Islamic Imperialism trying to resurrect the Caliphate and Shia Islam attempting to recreate the Persian Empire of Cyrus

What we are seeing is old-fashioned Imperialism - Islamic Imperialism and we in the West and in India are the obstavles on the road to conquest

Anonymous said...

Voyager - Yes. Agreed. But take issue with your final sentence: "we in the West and in India are the obstavles on the road to conquest".

We are not the obstacles. We're the point.

Anonymous said...

Voyager - were the words Islamic Imperialism in bold supposed to be a link? If so, no workee.

Anonymous said...

Verity,

Western intervention in the MR did not start with Afghanistan. Quite apart from nineteenth century colonialism - and using that as an excuse is starting to sound ludicrous with the intervening years - we might also look at what Bin Laden presented as his complaints against the West.

First, our bases in the Saudi Arabia and cosy relationship with the monarchy. Secondly, our sending money and assistance to Arab progressive revolutionaries. Finally, most the 'favoured nation' status of Israel, and the fact that, when it comes to nukes, there's one rule for Israela nd another for the rest of the ME.

Earlier, Arabs had seen our Cold War bases as expressions of a Western reluctance to relinquish our expansionist miens of the nineteenth century. This allowed the Iran revolutionaries to gain sufficient sympathy from Western malcontents to distract the West, and work their own youth into a revolutionary frenzy.

It's true enough that many, many Muslims don't hate us for anything in particular, but just hate us full stop. However, they can't say that and hope to maintin the comfy (for them) status quo.

Suppossing there were no ME bases, no soldiers in the Saudi kingdom, that Israel was treated no differently to any other ME country.

How hollow would the radical Muslim blather then sound?

Would Joe Public not then wake up and realise that political Muslims just are themselves expansionist and parasitically-inclined?

Would this not end in the cessation of special priveleges (immunity from criticism via 'hate' laws, preferential treatment in the labour market via affirmative action, etc.) for Muslims in the West?

The answers are: very, yes, and yes, unless the governing party fancies a long soujourn in opposition.

The way to fight the war against Islamically-motivated Terror is to protect us from terrorists - and that can be best achieved through the sorts of measures which are now be prevented by Muslim bleating about imperialism. Remove that excuse from their arsenal and half the job is done.

Anonymous said...

Alex - I still don't buy that these people are fussed about us "meddling" in the ME. For one thing because the vast majority of them didn't know. It's only very recently that the populations have had access to TV - and when a lot of our "meddling" was going on, most of them couldn't read and didn't real have much sense of national identity anyway. This is new.

Don't buy it. It's a handy hook for them but it's codswallop. And our politicians - sorry, had to get up off the floor from laughing at the thought - are going to have to call them on their lies and excuses. Obviously, no one, especially Dave and Gordon, would be either brave enough or politically incorrect enough. It's not nice to point out that your enemy is lying through his teeth.

I doubt whether Dave or Gordo know that the particular format of lying to infidels is actually taught. It's a formal course of learning. Taqyya and kitman.

That's OK, Dave, you just close your eyes to new,inconvenient facts and twizzle off to do a photo op gazing admiringly at a mosque. I don't have the words to express my contempt for Dave.

(BTW,I have a feeling Mr Bush has a firmer grasp on what islam is all about - as did his father - and so does Mr Cheyney. Dr Rice is a bit iffy.)

You are right, Alex, in that islam is not only expansionist, but is nightmareishly so, the intention being to take over the world for allah. We need, but don't have, leaders who will set rules. Muslims cringe easily.

Anonymous said...

Verity,

The actual intentions and motivations of Muslim leaders aren't really what's relevant here. Many might well want to make havoc for the sake of making havoc or because we refuse to participate in their caliphate, but they can't say that and keep Joe Public even faintly onside.

Our actions in the ME give Muslims a smokescreen, allowing them to present their actions as motivated by a hatred of our imperialist aggrandisements. This sounds alot more reasonable, and indeed in the fine tradition of guerrillas giving up their lives to liberate their people.

It's quite simple: with bases, 'most favoured nation', etc Muslim aggression can be seen as a justified responce to our aggression. W/o, Muslim aggression can only be explained as Muslims being aggressive.

Are the vast majority of Muslims fussed about us being in the ME? Maybe not, but it sure makes for a good excuse, no?

Anonymous said...

I agree that this smokescreen was wrought by the left, but not soley to hide the real intention of islam. It is also a rod for the back of the hated West. Why the left hates its own culture so much is an absolute mystery, but they do.