Why the Stop the War Coalition in Britain is Orwellian.

'The terrible plight of the Yazidis, trapped by Isis and fearing a terrible fate if captured, is heart-rending but will not be helped by further military intervention in Iraq. The occupation of Iraq broke the infrastructure of Iraqi society. Sectarian tensions were encouraged and exacerbated by the occupying forces, and some of those now supporting Isis formed the opposition to this occupation'.

So opines Lindsey German, head and chief propagandist of Britain's Stop the War Coalition. Of course, if the war being waged by ISIS in Iraq at present is considered a continuation of the war the US and Britain started in 2003 by invading Iraq then there is not really much more to say on it. Only there is.

Some of those now aligning with ISIS were indeed part of the 'opposition' to the US and UK occupation. Former Baathists and Sunni jihadists whose 'opposition' was not called so but termed 'the resistance' by luminaries of the Stop the War Coalition such as Tariq Ali and John Pilger.

The hypocrisy of this is not surprising but it is no less fundamentally repellent to the deepest core possible. Back in 2003, the 'Stop the War Coalition' continually ( and artificially ) yoked the fate of Palestine to Iraq when the line was the witless placard slogan 'Don't Attack Iraq: Freedom for Palestine'. 

Now after eleven years when a pyschotic jihadist movement called ISIS is murdering Christians and the Yazidis in northern Iraq, Lindsey German merely claims that is the fault of 'the west' for having invaded Iraq in the first place ( as if this was radical subversive knowledge we did not know ).

But German bemoans the fact too that 'the west' and Turkey and Saudi Arabia 'armed the rebels'. The 'rebels', in any case, are not one homogenous group and the failure of the Western powers to try to strongly advise Saudi Arabia and Qatar enough not to fund Sunni fundamentalist fanatics is an abject failure.

The Free Syria Army is connected with the Muslim Brotherhood backed by Qatar and which also supports and gives funds to that noble 'resistance' movement known as Hamas which is extolled by leading members of the absurdly entitled 'Stop the War Coalition'.

But, of course, German knows that, which is why, in accordance with doublethink, she omits to mention Qatar at all as a factor in the regional power politics of the Middle East. It's obvious that the US and Britain's 'intervention' in the Middle East has largely had negative consequences in Syria and Iraq.

However, to say there is plenty that could be 'done' to 'stop' Israel committing war crimes in Gaza while insinuating absolutely nothing could be 'done' to stop ISIS killing thousands of Christians and Yazidis does not add up. Any truly humane 'anti-war' activist would, at least try to outline what could be done.

Adding to that the sneering and embittered comment that if the 'Stop the War' movement is to be accused of double standards for not having anything to say about that then those concerned are 'Tory bloggers, shock jocks and neocons', it could be made plain that the leadership of the StWC is actually little better.

The STWC leadership consists of a miserable array of failed Trotskyist revolutionaries and sour malcontents whose insistence in hijacking the cause of being 'anti-war' is a total fraud and a con. If Galloway could not be described as a ranting shock jock , then it would be difficult to see who else could be.

There is a need for a principled opposition to Britain's foreign policy that is seldom there in Parliament any more. Unfortunately, the StWC cannot provide it because it sits there as a sort of established anti-establishment consisting of the same dreary faces and self important hack propaganists.

Maybe it's time for an alternative alternative ? One based on true principles and, above all, a real knowledge of the Middle East and not the same empahasis on pure political expediency and hypocrisy that defined Tony Blair's approach and that has, in part, been carried on by the British government since.

Isis and Crisis in Iraq: Plots, Paranoia and Radical Conspiracies.

As I write this, the US is launching air strikes against the Islamic State group in northern Iraq and dropping humanitarian relief parcels to the Yezidis who have been foreced from their villages and towns by the militant group who regard them as "Devil worshippers' fit for conversion or extermination.

ISIS have killed and slaughtered civilans in their attempt to carve out their Caliphate in Syria and Iraq, decapitating Iraqi state soldiers and policemen, crucifying Christians, and surging deep into Iraq to within striking distance of the capital, Baghdad.

They have attracted Sunni allies and even jihadists from the West to join in attacking a fragile state created by the US and Britain after the invasion 2003 and prone to sectarian and ethnic conflicts ever since, a consequence Blair was warned about prior to the invasion but ignored because 'Saddam is evil'.

No matter whether one was opposed to the invasion, not even the most ferocious 'anti-imperialist' could regard ISIS as anything other than barbaric and as a force that had better be defeated. The question, of course, is how and for some, more importantly, by whom.

Even so, despite the need for scepticism about whether air strikes could actually prove to make a bad situation worse, the usual and predictable armchair 'anti-war' ideologues have been out in force trying to oppose anything that could be termed 'intervention', even of a non-military sort.

The worst example comes from Sami Ramadai, an 'anti-war' sociologist based in London, who claims the intervention is neither humanitarian nor would it protect 'the people of Iraq'. The fact that the air strikes are specifically mean to protect some Iraqis such as the Yezidis and the Christians is considered largely unimportant,

Ramadani bats off with this weary set of claims about how hypocritical US foreign policy appears to be,

'Here we go again, the US is using a humanitarian catastrophe to implement imperialist objectives and pour petrol on fire.

It is sickening to see Obama and the Western media shedding crocodile tears for the Iraqi people, after the US-led occupation pulverised Iraq as a society and killed a million of its people. It is obscene to now suggest that the US will fight terrorism and protect the Iraqi people, when the rise of terrorism was the direct result of the US-led invasion of the country. 

Emergency humanitarian help to Yezidi, Christian, Shia communities and all victims of ISIS is essential. But this has to be done through genuine humanitarian organisations and the UN (like in Gaza)'

The first thing to notice about the propaganda is that it does not even start off with mentioning the fact there is a humanitarian crisis. Ramadani's main gripe, put forth in sulky adolescent language, is that the effort, even in fact as regards dropping humanitarian supplies by aircraft , is that it is 'imperialist'.

In fact the entire polemic and many others like it could be translated according to the following translation:

'The first thing to remember in any situation where the US is involved is to hate the US unconditionally while affecting decent scepticism about previous interventions. However, no matter what case could ever be made and for whatever reasons for humanitarian intervention, we would oppose it anyway. 

So this intervention is not humanitarian but, just in case it could be intended as such, it won't be effective ( just in case you had illusions about that ).In order to pretend I care about those Yezidi, Christian, Shia communities who could be slaughtered by ISIS, I need to make windy comments about the UN intervening in a 'genuine' humanitarian way. 

Then , I will explain why the Kurds are stupid to accept US help because of their the superpower's sinister imperial motives. Then, in the safety of my cocoon here in Western Europe I can feel satisfied I have taken the correct line. The important thing is to use the crisis to ramp up the resistance to imperialism. Nothing much else matters.'

It is difficult to think how dropping humanitarian parcels, as the British RAF is doing at present, could make things worse. How the UN would be able to get near the conflict zone without being themselves exterminated is not something Ramadani has given much thought to and for a simple reason: he does not care.

Instead, Ramadani is not even prepared to accept that the Kurdish region is autonomous because the Pashmerga have decided to cooperate with the US in order to drive ISIS back and accept US arms and assistance. As a consequence, they are in league with the imperialists and that's more damning that fighting ISIS.

'The actions of the Kurdish leaders run against the interests of the Kurdish people.' Says Ramadani. Why ? Because he says so. Note he wants to tell the Kurdish leaders what they should do while criticising 'imperialism'.If the Kurdish leaders are prepared to align with the US for whatever tactical reasons they are mere 'tools'.

The actions of the Kurdish leaders run against the interests of the Kurdish people. A similar policy was followed by the Kurdish leaders in the 1960's and 1970's. They, like today, relied heavily on US and Israeli backing. They became so dependent on the US, and its ally the Shah of Iran, that they had to abandon the Kurdish people when the US decided to ditch them. 

Only this is not the 1960s and 1970s. Back then there was a strong state, albeit one lead by the tyrant Saddam Hussein by the 1970s. No doubt there are realpolitik strategies at work with the US. But the Kurdish region is strong, relatively safe and autonomous at present and would have an interest in checking ISIS.

But ISIS is also serving Israel and US interests, apparently. Only this genius has the visionary ability to glean patterns and trends not nearly always associated with other more humble mortals,

'It is clear to me that ISIS is serving Israeli and US economic, political and military objectives in the region. The US is also using ISIS terrorism as a stick to impose conditions on Baghdad, i.e. to cut links with Iran and Syria'.

So not only the Kurdish leaders but also ISIS are 'objectively' in the grand scheme of things 'tools of imperial dominance'. Evidently, that Washington aims at defeating and rolling back ISIS as a means to save the Iraqi state ( the one Ramadani wants preserved ) and trying to put pressure on Baghdad to create a 'unity government'.

Ramadani, however, then put foward the paranoid idea that ISIS serves both the US and Israeli interests. This is despite the fact Israel and the US have been at odds over Israel having wanted to see Kurdistan as an independent republic and the US insistence that the Iraqi state should stay together and not fragment. He opines,

It was noticeable that the ISIS "Caliph" and Israeli war criminal Netanyahu declared the death of Sykes-Picot borders between Iraq and Syria on almost the same day. The Caliph did not mention Israel or its war crimes in Palestine and the region, while Netanyahu declared that the Jordan river will be where Israel will "defend" itself. He also declared his support for an independent Kurdish state. 

There is no 'plot'. Ramadani is paranoid. The fact that the Sykes-Picot borders are breaking down is simply a standard observation of fact with regards northern Syria and Iraq, not some sort of sinister statement of the intent to 'detabilise' the region. Moreover, it is flat out untrue that the Caliph has not condemned Israel.

On July 31st 2014, some eight days before Ramadani's miserable and feeble polemic appeared on the 'Stop the War Coalition' site, it was reported that the Caliph declared it was "only a matter of time" before they got to Palestine to join the fight against "barbaric Jews".

"As for the massacres taking place in Gaza against the Muslim men, women and children, then the Islamic State will do everything within its means to continue striking down every apostate who stands as an obstacle on its paths towards Palestine".

This sort of statement would tend to deflate Ramadani's assertion-'It is clear to me that ISIS is serving Israeli and US economic, political and military objectives in the region.' By aiming to murder everyone in the Middle East, including the Jews, it is difficult to see how that advances Israeli strategy.

In fact, Israel under PM Netanyahu was again at odds with President Obama because he supported Assad in Syria as a lesser evil than having a Muslim Brotherhood government backed by Turkey and Qatar in its place or, perhaps, even more radical Sunni fundamentalists in power in Damascus.

That makes Ramadani's next claim even more bizarre,

 'Similarly, the US is using ISIS terrorism to make Iran halt supplies to the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance movements and to cut its aid to Syria. Generally, the aim is to make Iran more amenable to US objectives in the region.'...

That is why ISIS started fighting the Free Syria Army backed by Qatar and Turkey-and the West and against Assad, Iran's main ally in Syria along with the Shi'ite Lebanese Hizbollah. If this is a plot, then it would be a plot by the the US and Western powers against themelves for some bizarre reason yet to be revealed.

And this is what is supposed to be 'cutting edge' commentary revealing the true yet 'concealed' reasons for US intervention in northern Iraq.

Gaza, Stop the War Protests, George Galloway and Anti-Semitism.

Owen Jones means well but he comes across as a studenty sort who is trying to stake out the politically correct position in such a way that would ensure the anti-war protests remain nice and inclusive instead of polarising Muslims and Jews on the issue of opposition to Israel's conduct of the war in Gaza.

As a consequence, Jones produces a series of high sounding generalisations which do not address the specific content of the utterances made by those opposing Israel or why they could be construed as veering towards a dislike of Israelis because of who and what they are.

'..antisemitism needs to be treated very seriously indeed. Attempts to belittle it are dangerous, allowing the tumour to spread unchecked. But...Israel’s assault on Gaza has highlighted another danger too  It has often been debated whether the charge of antisemitism is concocted against anyone who supports Palestinian justice or criticises the actions of the Israeli state'.

Evidently, there are vested interests at stake in defending Israel no matter what it does. There are arms contracts, large volumes of trade and Britain and Israel cooperate on security projects whereby they can learn how to use sophisticated technology to contain the threat of terrorism.

As a consequence, it is convenient to accuse those criticising Israel as 'anti-semtitic'. But, then again, the word 'Islamophobia' is deployed in a similar way to mean a critic of an Islamist political movement, a person critical of Islam as a religion, or somebody who does not like Muslims.

Words and their meanings matter. To be against Israel's policy is to be anti-Israeli or, better, against Israel's policy on Gaza'. The danger of using words such as 'anti-Zionist' is that they could be taken to mean being against far right Israeli nationalism or against the existence of a Israel as a country.

The fact is that it is sometimes difficult to work out whether those 'taking a stance' against Israel are not rationalising darker motives not necessarily related to the actual situation in Gaza: a brutal but regional conflict but not the site of some cosmic battle between world historical forces.

Leaders of the Stop the War Coalition themselves are hardly paragons of peace. George Galloway's rhetoric is often violent and intemperate. His defence of Gaza and refusal to 'accept Israel' is not about anti-semitism but he likes to give his Bradford West electors the impression he rejects its right to existence.

With Galloway ( whom Jones never criticises due to the need to retain 'solidarity' no doubt ) the Gaza conflict provides an opportunity to advance a career in the doldrums after the Soviet Union fell and his attachment to Hamas and Hizbollah comes from their opposition to the US Imperialists.

This is a form of solidarity that works negatively. Hamas and Hizbollah are only aligned in opposition to Israel and so is Galloway. In fact, neither movement has much time for each other in the context of the Sunni-Shia sectarian division that have opened up over the conflict in Syria.

One reason Israelis and their Jewish supporters feel 'picked on' is that while Muslims across the Middle East are in the process of murdering one another on a large scale, there is a perception that most Muslims in the West unite on loathing Israel and that there must be a sinister agenda against them in Europe.

'One retort repeatedly offered is that Israel is itself the source of antisemitism; that its brutality towards the Palestinian people encourages hatred against the Jewish people. This is a nonsense, like rationalising anti-Muslim prejudice as the inevitable consequence of Islamist fundamentalist terror; responsibility for prejudice lies with the prejudiced. Most of us are quite capable of opposing brutality without turning into bigots. Racism needs to be eliminated, not excused'

It may well be a nonsense but it is nevertheless a rationalisation that is implicit in the sort of placard that is often held up by Islamists on anti-war marches. Jones refers to the infinite world of idealistic 'oughts' without looking at the grubby reality of what 'is' to be found on the 'anti-war left'.

One example would be the placard that reads 'Stop the Genocide of Gazan children'. The implication could be ( beyond mere hyperbole ) that if Israel is committing the genocide of the children, then maybe some genocides are better than others because they do not target only children.

Genocide talk as regards Israel, as opposed to the more obvious and provable accusation of war crimes, tends to have a sinister edge to it. If Israel is held to committing genocide, especially of children ( forget the adults then ), then, perhaps, Hitler should have finished off all Jews.

So there are no grounds for the assertion 'most of us' are able to oppose brutality without turning to racial hatred. The historical record nowhere bears that out as an absolute certainty. And if racism is considered a form of evil, then evil is an ineradicable part of human existence.

Wherever, one group so defined on the basis of ethnicity, creed, religion or race has leaders playing on unique victimhood the better to advance one set of power claims against an 'existential' rival or enemy, then aggressive instincts of hatred can, indeed, be rationalised.

So there is little purpose in mentioning the real effects of anti-semitism by pointing to the Jobbik in Hungary and by ignoring the sort of irresponsible propaganda that does inflame feelings against Israelis in Britain as opposed to their government ( not least as a great majority support it over Gaza )

So Jones focuses ( rightly) on the need of a British anti-war movement over Gaza to put pressure on the British government on arms exports and so on. But he goes on to provide his own form of deflecting attention away from intolerant forms of activism within Britain by pointing to anti-semitism elsewhere.

Hungary is a convenient choice because Jones knows that there are very few Muslims living in this Central European nation. So he can position himself as anti anti-semitic without needing to deal with its existence within Britain, even if it is bound to be exaggerated by uncritical apologists for the Israeli state

So Douglas Murray was no doubt trying to smear the entire protest march against Israel's war on Gaza as being 'anti-semitic'. The problem is unless the anti-war movement ( such as it is ) rejects intemperate demagogues such as Galloway, amongst others, it is always going to play into the hands of established interests.

The problem is that 'anti-war protest' really often means an ideological siding with Islamist forces as opposed to the more obvious point of a protest which should be focused on trying to advocate Britain is not complicit in what Israel is doing in pursuing war not diplomacy.

The 'anti-war movement' contains leading figures who, even if they may not peddle anti-semitism, do come out with absurd conspiracist ideas on geopolitics and the Middle East whether on Gaza ( or even on ISIS as being backed by Israel ) that feed a paranoid world view.

The existing 'Stop the War Coalition' is simply headed by a coterie consisting of the dregs of the communist left whose tendency to rationalise totalitarianism ( Galloway and journalist Seumas Milne being the supreme examples ) discredits anti-war causes and puts off sane conscientious people.

It is possible to be against the war crimes committed by Israel and against the insane suicidal strategy of Hamas. But in the 'Stop the War Coalition' this sort of nuance is not permitted and only those propaganda slogans that boost outrage and hatred are promoted.

It's depressing but the reality is that there is never going to be a sensible open discussion of Israel and Palestine that does not lurch into accusations of complete collective guilt and innocence on one side and counter accusations, spiralling paranoia, outrage and pyschopathological venom :i.e. pure hatred.

The real question is :Who benefits ? Clearly, those making a career from demagogy such as Galloway on Iranian funded Press TV, neurotic ex-revolutionary leftists who need a cause to glom on to in order to raise them from otherwise wholly deserved obscurity as leaders of sectarian revolutionary utopian cults.

Yet the impossibility of a sensible debate without platform posturing and soundbites from the self appointed 'anti-war' types benefits those defending Israel unconditionally as they can point to the opposition to Israel as Hamas supporting maniacs and 'extremists'.

The Persecution of Christians, the British Left and the "War on Muslims"

The plight of Christians being persecuted is something that should be of as much interest to 'progressives' whom journalist Owen Jones believes are wary of taking up their plight through 'fear' of being seen to be on the side of 'Muslim bashers' on the far right, something that would indicate that they are somewhat craven.

Jones, however, seems blithely unaware that the dominant propaganda thrust of the anti-war activists he associates with through the Stop the War Coalition is that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were, as George Galloway claims, part of a 'war on Muslims'. 

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were, of course, no more a 'war on Muslims' than the NATO attack on Serbia in 1999 was part of a war on Orthodox Christians. The Afghanistan and Iraq Wars were wars to gain geopolitical advantages mingled with fervent hopes of installing democracy.

So the reason why Christians are largely of no concern is that their persecution cannot be said to fit into the crude propaganda narrative that 'Western Imperialism' is pitted against all Muslims everywhere both at home and abroad, one that seeks to harness 'Muslim outrage' to boost anti-government sentiments.

'It is, unsurprisingly, the Middle East where the situation for Christians has dramatically deteriorated in recent years. One of the legacies of the invasion of Iraq has been the purging of a Christian community that has lived there for up to two millennia'.

True, but in Syria it is the legacy of Saudi Arabia and Qatar funding and backing Sunni jihadists as a way of overthrow Assad that has done much to assist groups dedicated to persecuting and murdering Christians to flourish and gain ground as part of a proxy war against Shi'ite Iran.

Anti-war activists have not had a 'consistent line' on the Middle East since sectarian wars have spread across the Middle East as the violence has shifted across the Syria-Iraq border and and put Iran and Presidents Maliki and Assad in direct confrontation with Sunni Islamist insurgents.

Consequently, the propaganda line, as put forth by Seumas Milne for example, has changed into the idea that the invasion and occupation of Iraq itself caused sectarian divisions because it was the intention of the US and Britain to set Sunni against Shia in order to maintain control, colonial 'divide and rule' as a plan.

In fact, the invasion removed a secular dictator and the occupation authorities did not put into effect any plan to use Shi'ite miltias against Sunni ones opposed to Baghdad until the civil war stage of the insurgency broke out after the 2005 elections.

The invasion of Iraq was a catastrophic decision without which the sectarian conflicts could not have broken out and Christians would not have been persecuted. But as Syria after 2011 shows, those sectarian tensions exist and could end in violence irrespective of Western intervention.

In Syria, it is true the US and Britain's alliance with Qatar and Saudi Arabia has meant aligning with regional powers intent on backing and bankrolling Sunni jihadists against Assad who is supported by the Allawi Shia and by many Christians only through fear they would be killed if Assad was removed.

But its a propaganda myth that the US somehow is the 'imperial master' in the Middle East along with Britain. In reality the US has tended to back off from involving itself in the Middle East after 2011 and tends to give tacit backing to Saudi Arabia because of its oil.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar follow their regional interests against Iran by whatever means they think 'effective'. Britain and France have been far more aggressive in wanting the US to involve itself in removing Assad because of their dependence upon Qatar and its liquefied natural gas.

In Britain anti-war activists would be better off understanding that the killing and mayhem in Iraq and Syria, and the threat of ISIS, is partly the cost of Britain being overdependent upon Qatar for energy and the use of its petrodollars to invest in propping up its ailing rentier economy.

Unless Britain finds alternatives to fossil fuels, then there is going to be no end to the prospect of it being dragged into conflicts or effectively backing unsavoury jihadists because ultimately the stability of its high octane consumer economy depends heavily on access to oil and gas.

This is something the left often shirks confronting. Wars for oil or about oil are considered to be about corporate profits and the political elites benefitting. While that's true, the unpleasant fact remains that the living standards of the majority of citizens are heavily tied to cheap oil and gas.

The Iraq War : Predicting Bloody Chaos.

'The catastrophic results of the Iraq invasion are often portrayed as having been impossible to predict, and only inevitable with the benefit of hindsight. If only to prevent future calamities from happening, this is a myth that needs to be dispelled. The very fact that the demonstration on that chilly February day in 2003 was the biggest Britain had ever seen, is testament to the fact that disaster seemed inevitable to so many people.'( Owen Jones, We anti-war protesters were right: the Iraq invasion has led to bloody chaos, Owen Jones, Guardian June 10 2014)

The problem, however, is that the demonstration in February 2003 did not prove many foresaw how the invasion would become the disaster it did. Obviously, there were informed experts on the Middle East who foresaw that an invasion could fragment the nation along sectarian lines and so were against it.

Yet few leading anti-war activists trying to ramp up opposition to Tony Blair mentioned this at the time. Tariq Ali made no mention of a resurgence of sectarian warfare. Nor did John Rees, George Galloway, Lindsey German or Andrew Murray foresee that or write about it.

The reason was because they were not interested. The war was by definition wrong because all wars launched by the imperialist US and Britain would be wrong because all state violence for them is wrong unless it is being used by revolutionaries to terrorise enemies into submission.

So the reason people marched against the war may have been ideological , taking a stance against an 'imperialist' war. For others, the invasion was just an attack on a Muslim nation. Others believed it was wrong because they thought the official justifications hid other more obvious motives.

There were many who saw George Bush's administration were intent on invading Iraq without having first proved Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and, rightly, that this provided the pretext for removing the dictator and securing US and British control over Iraqi oil.

But for leading members of the Stop the War Coalition, such as Ali, the war was a 'threat to peace', a blitheringly obvious statement as a war by definition means the end of peace, unless the argument is that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was less a threat to peace than the US. As he put it,

'The pretext not only failed to convince but served rather to fuel a broad-based opposition as millions now saw the greatest threat to peace coming, not from the depleted armouries of decaying dictatorships, but from the rotten heart of the American empire and its satrapies, Israel and Britain'.

Even so, the invasion of Iraq removed Saddam fairly quickly and it only became clear a year later that Iraq would, in fact, fragment into a religiously sectarian forms of warfare aimed not only at the occupation forces but at others vying for control over Iraq and its oil wealth.

Ali was, in fact, extolling some largely mythical Iraqi national 'resistance' force, 'the Iraqi Army did not disintegrate at the first shot; there was little sign of widespread popular gratitude for the invasion but rather more of guerrilla resistance and....increasing anger in the Arab world'.

Evidently, the reality in Iraq has been far worse than anti-war activists had imagined in 2003.Yet few, if any of them-as opposed to Middle East experts who warned Blair about the probability of sectarian warfare and were ignored-knew or cared about Iraq's sectarian divisions back then.

On the contrary, many anti-war activists seemed more concerned the US and Britain might have been successful in invading Iraq and fervently wanted it to be defeated by 'the guerilla resistance' and for collaborators to 'meet the fate of Nuri Said' i.e. to be murdered and the corpse dug up, burnt and mutilated.

The demonstrations of 2003 acheived nothing nor has the 'anti-war movement' and one reason for that is that the STWC was dominated by sinister ideologues in the Socialist Workers Party and creepy apologists for dictatorships such as Galloway who discredit what should have been a good cause.

Blair's Speech on Islamism: On the Reaction.

The response to Blair's speech consists of the usual dreary political bores and hack journalists trying to muscle in so as to gain credibility from lauding it as either sage wisdom and a fundamental moral stance or else as the utterings of an evil demonic warmongerer.

On the pro-Blair side, Denis McShane is wholly mendacious when he claims 'Just read Blair speech. Ignore headlines. This is Fulton Mark 2. Bien pensant left then refused to challenge Stalinism. Orwell knew better'. Well, if it's read correctly, the speech is clearly Orwellian in the negative sense.

For example, Blair refers to 'extremist Islamism' when he supports the Egyptian military government's coup against the Muslim Brotherhood and omits to mention the way it massacred protesters in the streets of Cairo. At the same time he refers to the Islamists opposing Assad in Syria as 'Opposition'.

The use of euphemism and clipped soundbite statements makes what was a bloody coup sound as though part of a mere political transition, with no mention of the killings, arbitrary imprisonments, use of torture; that is, the actual reality of events in Egypt in August 2013 to the present.

'The revolt of 30 June 2013 was not an ordinary protest. It was the absolutely necessary rescue of a nation. We should support the new Government and help. None of this means that where there are things we disagree strongly with – such as the death sentence on the 500 – that we do not speak out'.

The use of two negatives in one sentence is used to insinuate that Western governments have, in fact, spoken out about the political murders carried out by a government backed by western governments when the US and EU have refused even to call the coup in Egypt a coup.

Orwell defined doublethink in 1984 as 'Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them'. In Blair's case, Islamism is 'extreme' when it threatens western backed regimes but Opposition needing support when that benefits power interests.

In Syria, Blair makes it clear that even if people are aware the enemies of Assad contain a lot of the vicious jihadists that would be opposed as part of a global force for evil if theyy were not fighting on the side dedicated to removing an ally of Iran and Lebanon's Hizbollah.

'We are now in a position where both Assad staying and the Opposition taking over seem bad options. The former is responsible for creating this situation. But the truth is that there are so many fissures and problems around elements within the Opposition that people are rightly wary now of any solution that is an outright victory for either side'

This entire paragraph is written with lots of abstract nouns in a deliberately vague way so as to obscure the fact that the 'extreme Islamists' Blair sees as a global menace elsewhere are an important part of the armed insurgency at war with Assad's forces in Syria.

As a consequence, Blair calls for an agreement with Assad that would 'see him stay on for a period', after which he would be called on to go, as if that would somehow solve the Syrian civil war and that the entire conflict hinges on the malign will of one leader.

'Should even this not be acceptable to him, we should consider active measures to help the Opposition and force him to the negotiating table, including no fly zones whilst making it clear that the extremist groups should receive no support from any of the surrounding nations'.

Note again, the abstract language that concentrates on what western powers can do to get rid of Assad and only adds in the essential fact later that jihadists in Syria are part of the Opposition and are backed by Turkey ( a NATO power ), Qatar, a major Gulf ally and investor in London, and Saudi Arabia.

To grasp the very dangerous nature of global power politics and the race to control resources, of which the Second Iraq war was a prime example, requires understanding first if the sort of insane geopolitical agenda and propaganda deployed by Blair can stand any chance of being opposed.

For just as preposterous are those posing as 'anti-war' and principled by drawing attention to Blair's hypocrisy instead of to the fundamental reality behind the reason why Blair supports the Egyptian military against the Muslim Brotherhood and, like the rest of the political class, Islamists against Assad in Syria.

That reason is clearly oil and gas for reasons spelt out by Blair himself,

 'the Middle East remains of central importance...it is still where a large part of the world’s energy supplies are generated, and whatever the long term implications of the USA energy revolution, the world’s dependence on the Middle East is not going to disappear any time soon. In any event, it has a determining effect on the price of oil; and thus on the stability and working of the global economy'.

 However, George Galloway, the Bradford MP for RESPECT, claims via Twitter,

'Under pressure @TheBlairDoc the war criminal Tony Blair has finally lost it. And in the heart of "the City" for which he sacrificed us all'.

The fact that Blair chose to give the speech in London in Bloomberg's HQ hardly amounts to evidence that Blair invaded Iraq to benefit the City or financial interests. That could sit well with those keen on conpiracy theories and who watch his shows on Iran's Press TV but it's a mendacious claim.

Ben White calls for protest against Blair,,

'After yet another much publicised op-ed by a man who should be scribbling his musings in a prison cell, it is time we sent a message to Tony Blair. A petition is, perhaps, a strange choice of protest form given Blair's track record in laughing off popular opinion. But at the very least, it will remind him that for every corporation and foreign government willing to top up his bank account, there are many more people wishing he would simply Shut Up and Go Away'.

Until Blair is put in a prison cell or formally indicted as a war criminal, Blair is not going to go away and he simply is not going to care what a group of nonentities think or write on a petition calling on him never to speak in public again. Britain has free speech and is a democracy. He can say what he likes.

Few on the 'anti-war' left or those protesting against Blair really want him to shut up as they enjoy the sensation of outrage, wearing bloodied Blair masks, yelling 'Bliar' and feeling themselves morally superior to Him ( as if this somehow needed continual in group affirmation ).

Such protests ignore the fact that Blair joined the US invasion in 2003 so as to guarantee Britain's energy security, to safeguard the supply of cheap and plentiful oil that underpins the high octane consumer society many protesters and most British citizens enjoy.

The conversion of Blair into a sort of Emmanuel Goldstein figure is a convenient one that diverts attention away from the fact that the political class backed the war in Iraq or that the interest Britain has in the Middle East is closely bound up with energy interests and investment in the UK economy.

The most important thing to recognise if Britain is going to repudiate the sort of politics represented by Blair is that it needs to aim at energy independence and not to depend so much on states such as Qatar for liquified natural gas and petrodollars to boost London's property market.

Even so, the easy explanation for Blair's involvement in Iraq or calls for intervention ( 'it's all about profit for corporations and the super rich' etc ) are so stupid that they play into the hands of those such as Blair who can laugh off that form of 'public opinion' as mere 'conspiracy theorising'.

A Note on Global Military Expenditure and the Quest for Natural Resources.

One of the peculiarities of radical 'anti-war' critics, who regard war as the inevitable outgrowth of 'capitalism' and 'imperialism', is how they seem more obsessed on using evidence of increased military expenditure and actual armed conflicts in the post Cold War world as proof of the validity that their ideological obessions are true.

Richard Seymour, a staunch critic of western military intervention in the previous decade and author of The Liberal Defence of Murder writes in The Guardian

'there is no inherent reason why geo-economic competition should lead to defence spending consuming trillions of dollars of value each year'.

Actually, there is. Modern geopolitical competition and the potential for conflict in the post Cold war world is mostly about rival power blocks competiting control over supplies of resources,such as oil and gas, that are diminishing relative to the huge demand for them caused by global industrialisation.
As Seymour is a militant progressive and a sort of ideological Marxist, with a nostalgia for some mythical idea of global communist revolution, he has to see increased militarism across the world as the function of the USA's military-industrial complex spurring on economic growth and 'state building strategies'.

Obviously, there is a military industrial complex. Yet , apart from that and the colossal profits it makes and the research and development it stimulates, the reason for increased global military spending lies in 'extractive states' using oil and gas revenue to build up their military capacity.

Hard facts rather than the sort of windy ideological platitudes on offer by Seymour confirm that. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)’s Year Book 2013 is packed with necessary facts and figures needed to comprehend global arms expenditure. It notes,

“rising military spending for the USA, as the only superpower, and for other major or intermediate powers, such as Brazil, China, Russia and India, ( that ) appears to represent a strategic choice in their long-term quest for global and regional influence; one that they may be loath to go without, even in hard economic times”,

Seymour ignores the evidence that connects increased global military expenditure on the quest for control over resources as he is confined to tired ideological contructs about 'western imperialism' that can be 'unmasked' and, therefore, state power on a global scale can be 'challenged'.

It is very comforting to believe that only the west is responsible for driving on military expenditure, with the US being focused on. If 'US Imperialism' and its 'hegemonic project' is defeated somehow ( by Islamist or Marxist revolutionaries for example ), the world will be necessarily transformed for better.

These preoccupations are largely parochial. Even if 40% of all global military expenditure still comes from the US, the startling increases are to be found elsewhere in states such as Russia, Brazil, China and India which have ambitions as regional superpowers. Seymour is not, however, much bothered by them

More intelligent critics of militarism who are prepared to do actual research offer a far more interesting perspective on the very real potential for conflicts and proxy wars over regions though integral to the continued security of energy supplies to developed and developing nations.

One such example in Michael T Klare whose chilling books on resource wars such as Blood and Oil, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet and The Race for What is Left detail what is really at stake in the post Cold War age. Anyone ignoring the race for resources is not worth taking seriously.

“With energy demand on the rise and sources of supply dwindling, we are, in fact, entering a new epoch — the Geo-Energy Era — in which disputes over vital resources will dominate world affairs. In 2012 and beyond, energy and conflict will be bound ever more tightly together, lending increasing importance to the key geographical flashpoints in our resource-constrained world.'

The odd thing about radical critics of capitalism is how their 'explanations' for the Iraq War only tend to mention US Imperial projects, 'hegemony', the need for profits and, in relation to that, the control of oil in order to benefit large energy corporations.

The truth is that the possibility of war and conflict has become greater in the 21st century because of a massive increase in global energy consumption and the fact that access to those resources from diverse regions, and in areas riven with sectarian and ethnic tensions, is regarded as part of national security.

How to Rationalise Violence in the Name of a Peace Movement.

As malign as Blair is, he has been given a "peace making" role in the Middle East as the Quartet Representative, and so the BBC is bound to ask him his opinion. This, in itself, is too much for Lindsey German, a leading member of the SWP, StWC and RESPECT.

German proves why extra-parliamentary opposition to the political elite fails so miserably. An article for the Guardian,(  Why is the deluded, self-justifying Tony Blair given airtime? ), German has nothing to offer apart from trying to rationalise the often violent protests against the idiotic 'The Innocence of Muslims' film

The man who has done more than most to contribute to anti-western feeling among Muslims in the Middle East and Asia is called upon to tell us why Muslims shouldn't be angry about anything.

Well, since the StWC believes its mission is to harness the resentment of British Muslims against British foreign policy-as Muslims singled out for fiendish treatment both abroad and at home-the fact Blair has spoken about the halfwits protesting about a stupid amateur film made about Mohammed is good.

It means that the propaganda can be ramped up about how persecuted all Muslims are both at home and abroad in a dastardly process of "demonisation",

So while Blair dismissed the film as "laughable", he claimed that those who reacted against it by demonstrating were "very dangerous and wrong". He seems to think that the film can be judged by the standards of the Cannes film festival and, once found wanting, can be dismissed by all right-minded people.

This is the ad hominem fallacy. The fact that Blair has said the film is 'laughable' does not mean it is not. It is. It was posted on Youtube and now deranged mobs seem intent on degrading the image of their religion around the world.

Why are Muslims so sensitive on this question? Maybe the answer comes not just from one crude and racist film, but from long years of hurt caused by wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, imprisonment without trial by western-backed dictators, extraordinary rendition and torture

This crude lumping together of what are often aggressive mobs with "Muslims" is an insult to to Muslims. If one said of the deranged US Christian fundamentalists bombing abortion clinics as "Christians", this would be an insult to all decent sincere Christians or those from a Christian background.

..the objection to the film is not about its quality, but its intent of slandering and insulting Muslims across the world.

But Blair said the film was appalling. The question is why politicians are latching on to this to exploit the hysteria for their own ends ( including some in the British "anti-war" movement ) who crave outrage and fan it out to upgrade their own power hunger.

German proves that by trying to elide the protests in majority Muslim capitals with those in Britain,

Many of those opposing US and British policies in the Middle East are young and well educated. They are not religious fanatics but object to the being treated as inferior, and object to the richest countries in the world exploiting their resources and occupying their countries.

Well, some of them are and some of them are not. It is curious that the StWC has no coherent position on Syria at the moment. Many intelligent Muslims and those of other faiths or no faith oppose US and British policies without buying in to the idea that "Muslim countries" are being attacked because Muslim.

After all, when Sunni jihadists ( back by the West ) are trying to overthrow a secular Arab nationalist dictatorship it throws up a dilemma for an anti-war movement led by apologists for totalitarianism. Which is a pity, as a strong movement opposed to interventionist wars is needed.

They see unmanned US drone aircraft killing people in Pakistan and Yemen and wonder what kind of civilisation they are being offered.

They may well do. But "they" are not all one. And any reasonable Pakistani will understand that there as many in the West that oppose their own governments but cannot do much about them. Unless he thinks "the West" is just one Evil Enemy in total from Hollywood, Youtube, Drone Bombs and Irreligion.

Blair opined that "the great debate in the world at the moment is between the open-minded and the closed-minded". As usual, here Blair casts himself in the role of decent liberal. But some of his closest allies in these wars have been the US neocons, known for their narrow conservatism.

Blair is a neoconservative in foreign policy but the neoconservatives are not actually very conservative. Many conservatives opposed both the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars. And their were liberals who opposed "liberal interventionism". The world is complex. And admitting that is a problem for a propagandist.

Blair himself has refused to ever acknowledge that he has done anything wrong over the invasion of Iraq. His "open-mindedness" never extended to taking on board public opinion, which from that time has been consistently anti-war.

That is made more difficult by the fact that intelligent opposition to these wars is drowned out by those like Galloway and those who oppose the wars partly as a means to vent anti-Western hatred in general. That puts off most British people and means the elites can dismiss it as mere background noise.

Blair also claimed that most of those killed in Afghanistan and Iraq were the victims not of western intervention but of sectarian killings. This is simply not true. Hundreds of thousands have been killed in those wars, large numbers by air strikes, many in sieges such as Fallujah, and millions have been displaced.

Blair started the war and one that was not necessary. It was of dubious legality. That is known. Even so, a tremendous number were killed in Iraq by sectarian killing and murders. The perpetrators did not need to do that. They did not have to muder one another. But it was an inevitable consequence of invading such a state.

Where there are sectarian killings, as in Iraq today, they date from the war and occupation and the policies that helped divide and rule.

Partly the US tacitly allowed Shia militias to carry out ethnic cleansing. Yet the US was not only the sole cause of that-unless it bears the responsibility for invading and causing the mess in the first place. This article denies any sense that Islamist movements have any moral agency.

Tell that to the Iraqi Christians.

History versus Propaganda: The Uselessness of Seumas Milne.

One of the most depressing trends in British domestic politics is how extra-parliamentary opposition to the dangerous and destabilising foreign policies pursued by the USA ( and ,therefore, by the UK ) consist of the dregs of movements that were largely sympathetic to Global Communism of the Leninist type.

In the shape of the former RESPECT Party until 2007, when it was an alliance of atheist militants of the "Socialist Workers Party" and Islamists, and the "Stop the War Coalition", former advocates of totalitarian style politics continue to offer the leading voices against the "interventions" in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya.

One of the worst is Seumas Milne. In The Guardian, he starts off from the premise that he hates the USA as the embodiment of Global Capitalist Evil with the fervour of the more cliched kind of activist who seems to get off on ramping up outrage and offering little constructive about what could be done.

That is demonstrated in the very nature of an article today where Milne writes, with reference to the riots and protests by some angry Muslims towards the idiotic portrayal of Mohammed in a low bugdet film shot in the US,

...the only surprise is that there aren't more violent anti-US and anti-western protests in the region.

This merely crude and boringly predictable anti-US sentiment, which Milne shares in Britain on behalf of those Muslims outraged by US foreign policies, is considered to be about decades of intervention, meddling, supporting coups and the more recent direct invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
The issue Milne evades is the one of whether the "blowback" from the US and UK policy of sponsoring terroristic Islamist movements as proxies is responsible for the protests across what is simplistically termed "The Muslim World" ( ignoring the nature of the vast differences amongst 1.4 billion people ) .

Do the protests in various cities across North africa and the Middle East and Asia reflect spontaneous eruptions of outrage against the tacky Mohammed film made in the USA ? Or do they come from the carefully co-ordinated manipulation by political actors in these areas?

Milne, still embittered by the victory of the USA in the Cold War against the USSR that he portrays as a positive check on US Imperialist power, dates the Islamist terror threat ( as opposed to the wider Islamist movements against the US e.g. the Muslim Brotherhood ) back to the Western support for the mujahadeen against the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

Irrespective of the issues at stake in the NATO occupation of Afghanistan and its failures, Milne has consistently exhibited a certain amount of schadenfreude that the West is being biffed by what he regards as the same forces that inflicted defeat on the Soviet Union.

The US decision to suspend joint Afghan-Nato operations in response to a wave of attacks by Afghan soldiers and police on Nato troops cuts the ground from beneath the centrepiece of western strategy

Yet the attacks on NATO troops are mainly from the Taliban who are Afghans in so far as they live in Afghanistan. But , in reality, they are Pashtuns, one ethnic group amongst the many that live in Afghanistan. This is not a nationalist revolt. This is a factual error.

The US-British invasion of Afghanistan was of course launched in response to the 9/11 attacks: the poison fruit of US-led support for the Afghan mujahideen war against the Soviet Union. Why do they hate us, many Americans asked at the time, oblivious to their country's role in decades of coups, tyranny, sanctions regimes and occupations across the Middle East

The 9/11 attacks came from Al Qaida who were a small minority of the former mujahadeen who fought against the Soviet Union. Most of the mujahadeen fought because they detested the Soviet Union for its atheism and for the PDPA's draconian modernisation policies.
True, President Carter's National Security Adviser Brzezinski did in 1979 exploit the situation to help funnel arms and funds to the USA but most of the money and foreign recruits came from Islamic charities such as the Muslim Brotherhood, the Sunni movements opposed to the secular Arab nationalist regimes.

The idea the USA singlehandedly destabilised a "promising" Communist regime in Kabul ( and it was only strong in Kabul ) and induced the Soviet invasion is a myth. It was part of the decision to invade but the responsibility for the chaos in Afghanistan belongs to the Communists.

... just as the mujahideen the US backed in Afghanistan later turned their guns on their imperial sponsor in the form of the Taliban and al-Qaida, so many of the Islamists and jihadists who fought against Gaddafi with Nato air cover have their own ideas for the future of their country..

The mujahadeen did not do that as it fragmented into rival factions after the USSR withdrew from Afghanistan. The early 1990s saw warlordism and the Taliban was created by Pakistan to advance its interests in the neighbouring state. Another factual error nailed.
There was no "the" mujahadeen in the 1990s. They turned their guns on one another and Al Qaida was able to find a base there amidst the chaos of a collapsed state. In 2001, the USA backed former factions of the mujahadeen in the Northern Alliance to overthrow the Taliban.

The reason was that the Taliban, by not expelling Al Qaida, were no longer useful in furthering the strategy to build the Trans-Afghan Pipeline from Turkmenistan down through to India, thus blocking off Iranian regional ambitions and diversifying the supply of gas away from Russian control.

The 9/11 Attacks gave the US and NATO a pretext to go into Afghanistan in order to advance its interests and, by extension, build a functioning state. It was an absurdly foolish foreign policy doomed to failure. Yet Milne's grasp of the history of Afghanistan is as shaky as the left wing interventionists he opposes.

Then again, the purpose is not hitorical accuracy or understanding. It is to ramp up pathological hatred.

Western war in the Muslim world has also fed a toxic tide of Islamophobia in Europe and the US. What is it about Muslims that makes them so easily offended, Europeans and Americans commonly demand to know – while Muslims point to cases such as the British 19-year-old who was convicted in Yorkshire last week of posting a "grossly offensive" Facebook message that British soldiers in Afghanistan "should die and go to hell", and ask why they're not afforded that protection.

The police are continually charging people for Twitter comments where no threat or harm to life is present. There is no attempt by British governments to "demonise" Muslims. If anything, they have sought to bend and twist free speech laws to please "the Muslim community".

The fact is, without hyperbole, that the wars in Afghanistan are wars fought to advance strategic interests and control oil and gas supplies. As in the Kosovo War in 1999, the Western Powers will bomb traditional Christian lands to advance their geopolitical interests.

The fact that these wars are interpreted as "anti-Muslim" is only for propaganda purposes and to agitate the Muslim British population in to forming pressure groups to try to change British foreign policy. It should change but not because of pressure, the threat of violence or intimidation in this country.

It should be done by reasoned argument and drawing attention to the dangers in getting dragged into conflicts in the Middle East just in order to engineer the outcome in such a way as benefit our oil interests. Energy independence would avert these hazards and dangers.

Milne never mentions these realities because his ideal is not peaceful co-existence but in sowing antagonistic hatreds of the sort that ideologues on the hard left feed off. It also helps this hack establish his "credibility" , he thinks, amongst British Muslims.

Supporting Arab Revolution in Libya Defeats The Arab Revolution.

The facts are that in any Arab Revolution, Libya or elsewhere, the West has had and retains vital geostrategic interests primarily concerning the stability of the supply of oil. Even so, Seumas Milne, Guardian columnist and Stop the War Coalition activist believes NATO)'s backing of The Libyan rebels is an imperialist hijack".

With devastating logic Milne writes,

"Nato's intervention in Libya is a threat to the Arab revolution, but the forces that have been unleashed in the region won't be turned back so easily"

By intervening in Libya to hold back Gaddafi from "turning back the forces that have been unleashed in the region", NATO has in fact 'turned back' the revolution. By preventing the uprising from from being wiped out, any NATO backed government now threatens to be destroyed by the they revolution backed.

If NATO had let Gaddafi wipe out the rebels, then the anti-Gaddafi forces would have succeeded. But Milne is clear this was not the case,

In Libya, the basis for foreign military intervention has been the claim that Muammar Gaddafi's forces were about to carry out a massacre of civilians in Benghazi after he threatened to hunt down armed rebels "house to house". Violent repression was certainly meted out against a popular uprising, but once insurrection had morphed into war there's little evidence that the regime's troops were in a position to overrun an armed and hostile city of 700,000 people.

Yet according to Milne, there was, therefore, no real way Gaddafi could have crushed the rebels in any case, meaning that either that no bloodshed would have happened or that it would and it is of no business of the West if it had.

Yet what evidence is there that Gaddafi was not in a position six months ago to cause a bloodbath in Benghazi before the insurrection mysteriously "morphed" into a civil war that predated NATO intervention ?

Western oil interests had been served fairly well by Gaddafi prior to the outbreak of violence, though there had been increasing concern that Russia and China had been making inroads with Gaddafi's regime in gaining new oil concessions.

The truth is that once Gaddafi lost de facto control over Libya a civil war would have ensued irrespective of the West. Certainly Gaddafi could not have overrun Benghazi in the way that rebel militias are doing now courtesy of the involvement of NATO and the CIA and MI6.

From the perspective of energy hungry Western states, something was needed to have been done to ensure the world's supply of the best crude oil was not left in limbo, precisely after the debacle following the invasion of Iraq made it all the more important to secure the supply from Libya.

Even if Milne's predictable loathing of the intervention in Libya is a result of his Leninist 'anti-imperialist' stance, as opposed to any interest in the predicament of the Libyan's who wanted an end to dictatorship, his idea that the NTC elites will sell out to Western interests over that of most Libyans is not unfounded.

Libya, like all Arab states wil oil wealth, has a huge burgeoning population consisting of young people, often angry men who want to be rid of unaccountable power often supported by the West as a means of ensuring "stability" and the flow of cheap oil.

Yet new governments beholden to the NATO investment in overthrowing Gaddafi will have a problem with creating a new order that will ensure enough oil revenue will be used to invest in providing work for those who will not be fast tracked into well paid jobs in a revived oil sector.

The situation is as it is now and if the new NTC does not preside over a smooth transition in which not only the emigres and former members of Gaddafi's regime benefit, then the period of transition could well see new infighting and violence.

If the Libyans who fought for the TNC fail to see any benefits from Libyan oil somewhat quickly then resentment will follow. As a Guardian report stated just today that Global Witness campaign group has emphasised,

"Any deals at this time could raise concerns within Libya that international support for the NTC is driven by a desire for access to oil rather than for the benefit of the Libyan people. The NTC is likely to have to honour Gaddafi-era contracts in order to get oil revenues flowing. But no new deals for the exploration or exploitation of oilfields should be considered until an elected government can review existing rules and laws to ensure robust transparency and accountability."

Brendan O'Donnell, senior oil campaigner at Global Witness stated,

"By drawing a line under Gaddafi-era corruption and the mismanagement of public wealth, the NTC could champion resource justice in the transitional constitution and set a great precedent for Libya's future."

The group called for transparency provisions to be written into the transitional constitution that require public disclosure of how Libya manages its oil sector, and disclosure of all revenues associated with it. It also said terms of existing oil contracts should be disclosed, and details of agreements made by the NTC with governments and companies involving sovereign funds or the exchange of cash, crude oil or "IOUs" secured against frozen assets should be made public – and open to scrutiny.

"A transparently managed oil sector could prove the catalyst for much-needed development and stability in the country," said Global Witness. "But any perception that the rebels or Nato countries have their own designs on Libya's oil could stir further division and conflict."

The danger is the NTC fail to do this due to unrestrained greed and ethnic and tribal factions seeking to put their interests before the common good of Libya, which is hardly a nation state but an artificial unity cobbled out of provinces out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.

As much as supporters of 'liberal intervention' might see Milne as a cynical commentator who opposes the Western states as "imperialist" from an ideological perspective, the unpleasant reality is that his gloom laden apocalyptic view of further violence could well prove true.

Sane people do not hold to the Leninist position of "the worse, the better" as so-called 'anti-war' fanatics who have hijacked the mood of unease over these wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Libya hold to, those who are more concerned with their post-Soviet hatred of the USA for having won the Cold War than anything else.

However, the West needs to invest far more money in alternatives to being overdependent upon the oil that fuels Western consumerism. The Sun was more candid about the stakes as far as Britons are concerned when it claimed that the Mad Dog's overthrow meant 4p off petrol prices.

As the Western economies falter on the brink of a double dip recession, access to diverse oll supplies have become of more importance. Yet populist anti-war types never point out the fact that even the poorer members of a consumer society as Britain depend on cheap oil to maintain their living standards.

Another day, Another Attack. Another Attempt to Outrage Rather than Explain.

The cliches of 'war without end' and 'endless war' are staples of populist hacks who want to carve out a living for themselves by exploiting distrust, anger, annoyance, incomphrehension, puzzlement at the British and American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mehdi Hasan, a leading journalist who writes for The New Statesman and The Guardian writes ( Barack Obama's Wars without End August 19 2011),

Another day, another attack. On Friday, the Taliban celebrated Afghanistan's independence day with an audacious assault on the British Council office in Kabul, which killed nine people. The day before, insurgents killed at least 25 people after a roadside bomb ripped through a minibus in the western province of Herat and a suicide car bomb exploded at a US-run base in the eastern province of Paktia.

A decade on from 9/11, bloodshed and chaos continue to plague Afghanistan and Iraq. A US state department report published on Thursday revealed that the number of terrorist attacks in Afghanistan had jumped by 55% last year; in Iraq, attacks were up 9%.

The US-led invasions and occupations of both countries have been a dismal failure – thousands of lives lost and trillions of dollars squandered. The presence of western troops in Muslim lands has provoked more terrorism than it has prevented.

Why does an intelligent politician such as Barack Obama have such difficulty understanding this?

Putting more boots on the ground was a gross misjudgment. More US troops have died fighting in Afghanistan during Obama's two and a half years in the White House than in Bush's two terms in office – and, despite the recent decision to start bringing troops home, there will be more US military personnel fighting the Taliban at the end of Obama's first term in office than at the start.

It is clear that the war in Afghanistan is not actually supposed to be a war without end as the US and UK have claimed that troops will be withdrawn by 2014. It seems a war without any conclusive end. But Mehdi does nothing to outline what he thinks the endgame is.

In Afghanistan it is the key remaining war objective to ensure the security environment that will allow the TAPI pipeline to be built. A transit route for gas from Turkmenistan that will give the Western powers a strong stake in the New Great Game for the oil and gas of Central Asia.

The plan is to link Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India together economically in a community of regional interest that will ensure the rival IPI pipeline that would bypass Afghanistan completely does not result in the West failing to have a toehold from which it can determine Central Asian supplies of oil and gas.

The TAPI pipeline is scheduled to be completed by 2014. Curiously this is the date when UK and US troops are timetables to withdraw. The pipeline is an essential part of Western geopolitics and it does journalism a great disservice that this obvious fact is seldom mentioned in discussions of what is at stake in this war.

The strand of anti-war opinion in England often fails to take into account the fact that supplies of oil and gas are diminishing and that both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are resource wars intended to secure the energy future that underpins the material wellbeing of presumably even the less wealthy in Western lands.

The idea that the war in Afghanistan is about corporate profits and the military industrial complex is simply erroneous. "Liberal intervention" is about what is considered "enlightened self interest". Should TAPI become a reality, then Afghanistan will be integrated into the global economy.

This war aim is believed to benefit the Afghan people who will gain from the transit fees and the investment of corporations in exploiting the copious supplies of lithium which are valuable for producing high tech goods. One reason China is negotiated with Karzai's government for acres to these resources.

The problem is that the Taliban know the strategic value of TAPI and that it has to go through Helmland as most of the land to the east is consists of impassable mountain territory. This is why the conflict has yielded so many casualties for Britain in that region.

Generalised commentaries that consist just in mentioning the scale of Afghan deaths from drones, or else maudlin ones that emphasise British soldiers sacrifices only, both fail to actually deal with the most pressing question: what is all this death and destruction supposed to be for ?

Hasan does no more to enlighten the British public in this regard than ITV's increasingly sinister use of it's news channel to amplify official war propaganda that Afghanistan is a sacrifice of the troops for the home country. Obviously the war it has nothing to do with defence from dangerous enemies but with energy security and geopolitics.

Perhaps, it is thought that the British public is too stupid to understand this. More likely, their could be a lot of anger if it was thought that the war was about a pipeline, one that British far right leader Nick Griffin of the BNP has been keen to exploit in his propaganda about "Bringing Our Boys Home".

However, the idea of evil imperial elites and corporations being alone wholly responsible for unleashing carnage for pure profit only lends credence to the idea that to explain the reason for the continuing war in terms of a pipeline is a 'conspiracy theory'.

The idea that Afghanistan is about what Pilger calls, with repetitive insistence, "rapacious power" is as much a tedious and obsolete propaganda trope as the Establishment propaganda about a war to defend our streets from terror.

Exchange the word 'imperial elites' with 'metropolitan liberal-elites' and the idea of sinister profiteers and callous, unresponsive, and malign sysstem and 'regime' can become a form of propaganda that bolsters the far right in Britain, a left wing war for saving Muslims who are bound to detest Britain anyway and which this foreign policy makes worse.

This is the problem when the media buys in to the official PR spin about a 'liberal intervention' or 'humanitarian war' or what Obama and Cameron 'should', 'must' or 'ought' to do in Afghanistan to ensure peace and a workable settlement without understanding what is the reason for being in Afghanistan

And that the auxiliary objectives ( hospitals, clinics, rights for women, education etc ) are secondary in importance to the geopolitical struggle to get the TAPI pipeline constructed. Without even mentioning the reality behind the war strategy, public discussion is stifled into 'what about the benefits to the Afghans? ' or ' it's all one hypocritical sham'.

The stark fact, the few seem to grasp,, is that the legitimacy of governments such as Britain's depends on the ability of the political class to ensure economic growth and rising consumer prosperity. This is as true of ailing democracies as Britain's as it is of one party systems such as energy hungry China.

Face facts: Afghanistan, no less than Iraq, is a war to promote the future supply of fossil fuels that consumers feel they have a right to expect. Party political popularity and legitimacy in a democratic system are upheld by their ability to supply cheap oil and thus diversify supplies.

Some Objections Considered.

"Although you are right to mention the pipeline as key to understanding the mass murder undertaken by Obomber and Co you seem a little confused as to the underlying intentions of the western intervention in Afghanistan. corporations invest to get profits mate. Sorry it's all about greed and good old fashioned colonialism. Your post is confusing and only serves to obfuscate"

No, I said that the war is not crucially about corporate profits as the driving force, though profits are certainly to be made. But billions of dollars spent on Afghanistan have yielded a paltry return so far. So the war effort is hardly "worth it". The question is who is meant to benefit from the war ?

The idea Afghanistan is only about enriching corporations ( note the word "only" ) is facile. It is more complicated than that, something that does not amount to "obfuscation"but more to the fact that global economies depend upon oil and gas to maintain living standards.

That does not mean that it is ethically right. But distinguishing what 'is' the actual case for competition over fossil fuels is different to claiming this 'ought' to be so.

Governments are not merely only the servants of corporations. The US government actually thwarted US corporate oil interests in Iran as it contradicted their policy. Corporations do not determine foreign policy, though they can be influential and certainly seek to profit from it.

In Afghanistan corporations are set to make profits from mining resources. But the main aim is about hegemony in Central Asia and about the construction of the TAPI pipeline for the geopolitical reasons I have outlined. So silly propaganda about selfless humanitarian intervention is designed to obfuscate.

As regards Pilger, he just sees Afghanistan as about sinister elites doing this only for profit and power. Yet as with Iraq, it is easy to claim this and pretend that western consumer prosperity, that is the interests of the vast masses of consumers, is not also tied up with continued access to cheap oil and gas.

Investing in alternatives to fossil fuels is the clear way out of this and not spending money on futile wars. But to pretend that resource wars are simply about profits is, well, just simplistic. My criticism of Pilger is that he trades in propaganda by just inverting official propaganda on it's head.

In other words, Afghanistan is not about a heroic crusade for democracy ( obviously ) nor about pure profit and power. Both views are wrong and evident untruth put forth by the government are not countered by failing to understand the gravity of the crisis caused by over dependence on fossil fuels.

......."there are strategic interests, but I don't buy the argument that Afghanistan is now primarily about securing real estate for a pipeline".

The pipeline is central to US/NATO interests more for geopolitical reasons than profit as it is about uniting the regional powers under the auspices of Western military force and also about containing and encircling Iran from both the west ( Iraq ) and Afghanistan to the east.

By blocking off the IPI alternative, the West will be able to retain a military and diplomatic stake in determining the supply of fossil fuels from Central Asia and the Middle East. Control over energy supplies is precisely power politics and retaining the capacity to remain a regional and global player where it matters.

'An interesting new factor with regard to the US securing all that fossil fuel is that we don't really need to. Turns out the US has vast supplies of natural gas and production is ratcheting up at a furious pace. (I live in Pennsylvania.) New technology gives access to vast oil deposits in Canada. North America has the potential to once again become a major exporter of fossil fuels".

The US has stockpiled vast reserves of oil and gas, of course. But it still will not be enough and the point is that the US and the European states need diversity of supply. In a world of increasing instability, where fossil fuel producing states are riven with ethnic and sectarian divisions, diversification is the goal.

Moreover, Europe has by far not enough oil and gas and more pro-US states such as Poland see diversification as as means of reducing dependence upon Russia which has shown it wants to use the supply of oil and gas as a tool of diplomacy: annoy Russia and expect a slowdown in gas supply.

The TAPI pipeline will primarily and directly benefit the states through which it runs as regards supply of gas. That fact is often used by certain mendacious commentators to claim that the idea that TAPI is about Western economic interests only is a 'conspiracy theory'.

If it was so, it would be a kind of mere 'conspiracy theory'as the reasoning goes that we could have cut a deal with the Taliban just as Blair said he could have cut a deal with Saddam if the war in Iraq was only about taking the oil.

This is, of course, what the governments of Western nations involved in Afghanistan want their publics to believe. When TAPI is reported in the Western media, it is curiously confined to the economic and financial sections of newspapers as if it were somehow wholly unrelated to the political and military news.

Yet the fact remains that NATO's political and military effort is geared towards securing the pipeline route and it is their blood and treasure that is paying towards this geostrategical gambit of putting the West in a strong bargaining position to determine the future of global energy supplies.

I do believe that in the final analysis, it is all about 'profits', be it financial, political and/or strategic profits. With changing geopolitical and economic conditions, a country might well intervene into another country for one or more reasons, then find other reasons for continuing their intervention.

....it is not inconceivable that some dishonest and devious politicians will intervene on a 'leap from' basis, citing one reason for intervening but intending to be able to make a stronger case for wider intervention once the have intervened and 'created facts on the ground.'

Afghanistan was invaded because the Bush administration believed in 2001 that Al Qaida was a hierarchical organisation akin to something like SPECTRE from James Bond with Bin Laden as the evil No 1 and that by getting rid of the Taliban they could defeat Al Qaida.

This also provided a pretext for getting the pipeline constructed as this had been a long term aim of the US as part of it's strategy for Central Asia throughout the 1990s. The Taliban were after 2001 believed to be unreliable as clients given their role in harbouring Al Qaida.

The idea of 'mission creep' is less convinciing in a sense. Regarding the 'war on terror' and 'war on drugs' and other reasons for 'staying the course' are also attempts to rationalise a conflict that the US and NATO blundered into and for which abstract utopian aims were advanced by 'liberal interventionist' crusaders.

One of the problems now for democratic governments is the 'endgame'. As regards Britain, the loss of 379 soldiers and reports of Afghan villagers being blow up, has in some ultimate sense to have been 'worth it'. If not, the whole decade long war would be seen as futile without gaining something.

The construction of the TAPI pipeline remains the one sole aim that it is believed can make the expense and casualties all part of a successful exercise in 'nation building'. No pipeline and Afghanistan will have little worth investing, no New Silk Route as Hilary Clinton terms it will develop and nothing will have been gained.

If the TAPI pipeline is constructed, this gives the pro-Western Afghan elites the chance to use the hefty transit fees to strengthen the power of the state. Though the reality is that it could just lead to more corruption and squabbling. That can even be seen in other pipeline transit states such as Georgia.

Moreover, the Taliban ( and warlords ) financed by opium profits have money to continue insurgent actions. The drugs follow New Silk routes into Europe for recreational consumers no less than the oil and gas that Western states are likewise addicted to.

Staking Out a Position on Libya: The Illusions of the Left.

Brian Whitaker has written in The Guardian about the divided opinion amongst the Western "liberal left" on the Western intervention in Libya ( The liberal-left are at odds on Libya, Thursday 5 May 2011 )

Military intervention in Libya, like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is dividing public opinion. Many critics see all three as part of the same neo-imperialist project – to install puppet governments and assert western domination over oil supplies.

That certainly seems to be the view of Tariq Ali and many who post in the Guardian's comment threads. A constant refrain is that the conflict in Libya is "all about oil".

But the dividing lines over Libya are not exactly what they were with Iraq. Significant voices that opposed the invasion of Iraq are more equivocal about intervention in Libya or even support it.

Professor Juan Cole, one of the most prominent American critics of the Iraq war – and who still calls it illegal – takes an entirely different line on Libya. At the end of March, he wrote on his blog:

"The Libya intervention is legal and was necessary to prevent further massacres and to forestall a threat to democratisation in Tunisia and Egypt, and if it succeeds in getting rid of Qaddafi's murderous regime and allowing Libyans to have a normal life, it will be worth the sacrifices in life and treasure. If NATO needs me, I'm there."

In 2002, Hussein Ibish, of the American task force on Palestine, described war in Iraq as unnecessary, dangerous and completely unjustified. Last week, in contrast, he was robustly defending "Obama's limited engagement in Libya".

Intervention in Iraq was also widely opposed by the Arab public (as well as some of their leaders) and there were serious legal questions as to whether the UN security council had actually authorised war.

In Libya, the humanitarian aspect was more clear-cut and less complicated by other factors. The Gaddafi regime had made explict threats against its population and there were reasonable grounds for believing a bloodbath would ensue.

Also, between the outbreak of the conflicts in Iraq and Libya, the UN had adopted the principle of "responsibility to protect" (supported by various humanitarian organisations) and, in effect, Libya was the major first test of its effectiveness.

Another difference in the case of Libya is that the balance of Arab opinion favoured intervention and the security council clearly authorised it (by "all necessary means"), even if there are disagreements as to whether that includes targeting the Gaddafi regime.

Unlike the runup to the war in Iraq, the Libyan crisis blew up suddenly – which weakens the idea that intervention was part of some preconceived western strategy (despite many claims to the contrary). Unlike George Bush, Barack Obama was initially reluctant to get involved.

Chris Doyle of CAABU acknowledges that oil may have been a background factor, but doesn't see it as the main one. "If Libya has no oil there would be very little interest, but I'm not convinced it's about an oil grab," he said.

The problem with "liberal-left" responses to the civil war in Libya and the NATO intervention is that attempts to explain why the war is happening and why the Western powers are involved always involves looking at the "motivation" of the Great Powers as if its either "all about oil" or a genuine humanitarian response.

The truth is that the far left ( that is those who espouse the StWC line such as Galloway, Pilger, Milne, Ali etc ) have reduced the military intervention in Libya on the side of the rebels only to some form of atavistic oil grab, one that will benefit oil corporations, the elites and the politicians. i.e "rapacious power" as Pilger calls it.

Aside from the fact that the Western powers did not directly cause the crisis in Libya, though Blair had decided to re-establish relations with Gaddafi in 2004 with lucrative oil and arms deals negotiated, the far left fail to grasp the fact that if all conflicts are about oil, then what alternatives to oil can be found.

The decision to invade Iraq in 2003 as David Strahan documents in his Last Oil Shock was undertaken mostly due to "geostrategic desperation", the fact North Sea oil production peaked in 1999, the high price of petrol causing the road haulier strike of 2000 and the public backing the oil tank drivers.

The contradiction is clear: most people who might even declare themselves anti-war are in their lifestyles dependent upon diminishing supplies of oil and gas. Seeing only guilty corporations and foolish politicians as the reason for blundering into wars from Iraq to Afghanistan and now Libya is facile.

Paradoxically, the radical criticism that the decision to get "regime change" Libya or Iraq is "all about oil" is not just obvious but it is also re-assuring and comforting. The myth is by getting rid of these corrupt politicians and "warmongers" and challenging corporate power "we" can change the world.

This line of reasoning appeals to infantile consumers of radical theories and evades the obvious fact that in the boring consumer wastelands of lands such as Britain, with its motorway towns, demand for supermarket produce all year round and low petrol prices, cheap oil must flow.

So wars such as Iraq and being drawn further into the Libyan quagmire ( "mission creep" ) are essentially conflicts over the oil needed to preserve the consumer lifestyles even anti-war activists take for granted ( unless as individuals they have stopped driving, never fly EasyJet and refuse to buy out of season fruit ).

The stark fact is that unless the West reduces its dependence upon oil , then there will be more military interventions to secure oil supplies and, the logic of strategists in the West is that if the West does not secure the oil, then China will without even the pretence of trying to promote democracy.

The reason the Western powers have not tried to push "regime change" in Bahrain is that though the regime has murdered protesters demanding democracy, if it is seen to back them too much then the Saudi regime will feel threatened too and this could effect oil supplies.

A large oil price shock would hit the already faltering economic recovery happening in the wake of the global economic crash of 2008 and no Western government, which serves both the powerful and has to take into account democratic popular opinion, is likely to call for regime change in the Arabian Peninsula.

Libya is not a "oil grab" as the invasion of Iraq was if by "grab" there is the sense of trying to get rid of Gaddafi just to control it all, which would be impossible anyway given Russian and Chinese stakes in the oil field blocks. It is an intervention to secure one of the most important oil supplies to Europe.

Partly, this is about energy diversification and the fact that Gaddafi had lost control of Libya and besides his armies seeming set to create bloodshed in Benghazi, the calculation no doubt was prior to intervention that this would in any case lead to a major source of the world best quality low sulphur oil being disrupted.

"Democratic Geopolitics" is formulated according to the idea of enlightened self interest, though whether it is "enlightened" is one that has to be judged according to the facts in each case and the record from Kosovo, to Afghanistan , Iraq and now Libya shows one of consistent failure.

Those on the left need to stop providing rationalisations for being "anti-war" or "pro-liberation", refrain from what Orwell termed being a "cocksure partisan" who believes that they can shift the world their way by espousing the correct line or framing the way world events must be seen.

Facing unpleasant facts is difficult. Yet unless what is really at stake in wars such as that in Afghanistan are understood ( and it is about the geopolitical benefits of the TAPI pipeline and hegemony in Central Asia-the New Great Game ) then the future looks increasingly bleak.

To avoid being necessarily embroiled and dragged into conflicts such as Libya, then alternatives to oil need to be found and where possible democracy promoted in Arab nations tactfully and diplomatically. The problem with Western foreign policy towards the Arab states is contradictory.

On the one hand the need to maintain secure oil supplies leads to the notion of accepting despots and dictators and, in Britain and the USA's case especially, in arming them and on the other to try to promote democracy by force or by intervention when its seems possible.

The reason is that democratic Arab states would actually be better partners for the West as China tends to prefer to reinforce dictatorships in oil and resource rich regions without bothering even hypocritically to raise notions of human rights or not using force to repress dissent.

In that sense, China has a competitive advantage over the West as it does not get a bad press for having double standards because it holds to no standards other than getting the resources it wants and not even pretending to be interested at all in whether the regime will be "open" or "transparent".

The invasion of Iraq was an oil grab intended to outflank China by installing a democracy that would be more amenable to Western interests and to lead to the sort of domino effect toppling Arab dictatorships in the Middle East and to reduce dependence upon a dysfunctional Saudi Arabian regime.

Now that has happened as a result of the Arab peoples rising up against corrupt autocratic regimes without Western backing, apart from Libya, the West is taking a "wait and see" posture. Western governments cannot take risks with the oil supply by backing democrats who might fail.

This would only lead to autocratic regimes in the Middle East being courted by China and Russia. Another paradox of the liberal left or many leftists, no less than staunch neo-imperialists, is the illusion that Europe and the USA is still the centre of global policy making and can determine the future of the world.

The left in the West, indeed all those who want a future without resource wars, emergency states, increased terrorism and global proxy conflicts over oil and gas, even the possibility of global war, need to look at pragmatic measures in the longer term to reduce dependence upon oil.