An appalling man?
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi said the former prime minister has secured a consultancy role with a state fund that manages the country's £65billion of oil wealth.
In an exclusive interview, Saif described Mr Blair as a 'personal family friend' of the Libyan leader and said he had visited the country 'many, many times' since leaving Downing Street three years ago...
... Since becoming a part-time Middle East peace envoy on leaving office in 2007, Mr Blair has exploited his contacts to amass a personal fortune in excess of £20million.
He has a lucrative contract to advise JP Morgan, which pays him £2million a year. Part of his job for them is to develop banking opportunities in Libya. It is understood that British firms Mr Blair is linked to are also being given contracts to tap Libya's massive natural resources, and to help rebuild the country's outdated infrastructure.
The details are sketchy because he has built a labyrinthine business empire of interlocking partnerships designed, it seems, to conceal the sources and scale of his income. (and much more here).
If you google Blair and Gaddafi, they never seemed to be able to get enough of each other's company in recent years - Tony Blair met Colonel Gaddafi in Libya last month is just one sampler from 2010 of the passionate affair.
But then I suppose Bob Hawke did the dance with the Myanmar dictators back in 1995, searching for a way to make a buck out of human misery while dressing it up as a humanitarian venture.
Senator BOURNE —My question is addressed to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Did the Australian government officially sanction the recent visit to Burma by former Prime Minister Mr Bob Hawke? Does the minister believe it was appropriate for Mr Hawke to lead a business delegation to Burma with the aim of encouraging greater foreign investment, given that country's appalling human rights record? Is the minister aware of the major military offensive currently being conducted by the Burmese State Law and Order Restoration Council against the Karen and other minorities? Finally, given these disturbing new developments, will the government now consider methods of coordinating an international regime of economic and trade sanctions against the SLORC? (here).
You can read Gareth "the beard" Evans' attempt to gild the lily in his answer if you like by heading off to the Hansard record. But why bother. Some gild, some lily ...
Why all in all, it seems there's almost a chance of reaching common ground with the dingbat anonymous editorialist at The Australian, who suddenly, in a fit of remorse and conscience, seems to have discovered that Gaddafi was something of a bad chappie (The terrible lessons of Libya):
The loathing being heaped by Libyans on Muammar Gaddafi, the despicable tyrant who has dominated their lives for 42 years, has a sharp lesson for those international leaders who brought him in from the cold, incredibly embracing him as an ally in the battle against al-Qa'ida and signing huge contracts to buy his oil. As they watch graphic coverage of courageous Libyans being brutally massacred by forces loyal to the man Ronald Reagan labelled the Mad Dog of the Middle East, the likes of Tony Blair, who seven years ago did his controversial Deal in the Desert with Gaddafi, must wonder about the wisdom of what they did.
Yes, and let's not forget the likes of George Bush, in it up to his neck, and the French and the Italians and even hapless Nelson Mandela, and anyone else who had a sweet tooth with a taste for oil ...
But then - it being the jackass anonymous editorialist at The Australian - there comes the sting in the tail:
This is a moment of truth for those on the Left who were prepared to tolerate the tyrannical regime of Saddam Hussein rather than support the American intervention that brought democracy to Iraq. The moral corruption of this position is writ large in the extraordinary events now unfolding across the region.
Say what? Brought democracy to Iraq? Is that what democracy looks like? A decade bringing a country to its knees, and to a half baked electoral and regime which lacks legitimacy, and which has left the Kurds to their own devices. Maybe the United States should have consulted Arabs who seem to be managing regime change a little more quickly and with way less firepower ...
And anyway, speaking of regime change, was it the left or the CIA that helped Saddam Hussein into power?
The coup that brought the Ba'ath Party to power in 1963 was celebrated by the United States.
The CIA had a hand in it. They had funded the Ba'ath Party - of which Saddam Hussein was a young member - when it was in opposition.
US diplomat James Akins served in the Baghdad Embassy at the time.
"I knew all the Ba'ath Party leaders and I liked them," he told me.
"The CIA were definitely involved in that coup. We saw the rise of the Ba'athists as a way of replacing a pro-Soviet government with a pro-American one and you don't get that chance very often.
"Sure, some people were rounded up and shot but these were mostly communists so that didn't bother us".
This happy co-existence lasted right through the 1980s. (here, but be careful neo cons, it's the BBC).
The CIA had a hand in it. They had funded the Ba'ath Party - of which Saddam Hussein was a young member - when it was in opposition.
US diplomat James Akins served in the Baghdad Embassy at the time.
"I knew all the Ba'ath Party leaders and I liked them," he told me.
"The CIA were definitely involved in that coup. We saw the rise of the Ba'athists as a way of replacing a pro-Soviet government with a pro-American one and you don't get that chance very often.
"Sure, some people were rounded up and shot but these were mostly communists so that didn't bother us".
This happy co-existence lasted right through the 1980s. (here, but be careful neo cons, it's the BBC).
Yes, and then the puppet got antsy and went into Kuwait, and things got tricky. But to dress up the slaughter of thousands of civilians as a noble humanitarian gesture, with a positive outcome, all mounted on the basis of relentless lies - fabrications, distortions, and deceptions heavily featured by the minions of Murdoch in the media, both as an excuse to start the war, and then to assess the outcomes - and portray opposition to the war as some kind of leftist conspiracy is typical of the nonsense spouted by the anonymous editorialist.
It got me to wondering if the editorial was some kind of rebuttal or response to Guy Rundle's piece Why the silence on Libya?
Now the nightmare scenario has occurred. The Libyan UN delegation has quit the government en masse and asked the international community to intervene and help ordinary Libyans. Goddamit — after all that talk about the West having a mission for international solidarity and the defence of universal values, somebody actually believed it.
Listen to the sound of the pro-war party rushing to demand that their governments respond to the Libyans’ call.
(*Tumbleweeds*).
Listen to the sound of the pro-war party rushing to demand that their governments respond to the Libyans’ call.
(*Tumbleweeds*).
Go on, anonymous editorialist, since you think the Iraq war was a jolly good thing, run an editorial explaining how we must immediately intervene in Libya. Militarily. With maximum force.
Poor Rundle:
Can anyone not say that military humanitarianism is finally, utterly dead?
No, no, it all worked tremendously well in Iraq, positively spiffing. Just ask the anonymous editorialist, and his ravings about the conspiratorial left.
And as for Afghanistan?
Well the post being what it is in Australia, it's taken me awhile to catch up with Dexter Filkins' piece for The New Yorker, The Afghan Bank Heist, but handily for the moment it's outside the paywall:
A few random statistics to emerge in the read:
Losses that emerged after central bank takeover of Kabul bank: three hundred million dollars
Money lost at Kabul bank: nine hundred million dollars, guesstimate and counting
Afghanistan GDP: approximately twelve billion dollars.
Transparency International ranking for Afghanistan:
the world's 176th most corrupt country out of 178 countries.
Yes, it's ahead of Somalia and Myanmar. (Guess Bob Hawke didn't help sort it out).
There's more, much more, all depressing as get out, but we look forward to reading the anonymous editorialist at The Australian extolling the virtues of military humanitarianism in relation to that wretched country in a few years time:
This is a moment of truth for those on the Left who were prepared to tolerate the tyrannical regime of the Taliban rather than support the American intervention that brought democracy and blessed Hamid Karzai and his brothers to power in Afghanistan . The moral corruption of this position is writ large in the extraordinary events now unfolding across the region.
Don't hold your breath.
There's moral corruption, and then there's fatuous repetitive stupidity, which once saw Bush and Blair praised to the skies by minions of Murdoch, and now turned (well at least Blair is for turning) into whipping boys for the current middle east situation.
What a pity we couldn't flog the minions of Murdoch chanting their right wing mantras at the same time. What a fine and gratifying sight it would be.
Instead perhaps we should just read the thoughts of the anonymous editorialist back in 2007 (here):
Tony Blair's legacy
Part Churchill, part JFK, but wholly a man of his times
TONY Blair is an internationalist driven by a strong moral conviction who, more than anybody else, was able to articulate the reasons why the war on terror had to be fought and must be won. In his valedictory speech to his constituents on Thursday he demonstrated all the qualities that have made him such an effective statesman, chief among which is his irrepressible optimism. "Politics may be the art of the possible," he said, "but at least in life, give the impossible a go."
Part Churchill, part JFK, but wholly a man of his times
TONY Blair is an internationalist driven by a strong moral conviction who, more than anybody else, was able to articulate the reasons why the war on terror had to be fought and must be won. In his valedictory speech to his constituents on Thursday he demonstrated all the qualities that have made him such an effective statesman, chief among which is his irrepressible optimism. "Politics may be the art of the possible," he said, "but at least in life, give the impossible a go."
Part Churchill, part JFK? Well at least we know the anonymous editorialist is one hundred per cent wanker ...
Perhaps we're better left with ...
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