Tony Blair Continues to Instruct and Reform the World for the Better.

'In a letter to Nursultan Nazarbeyev, Blair told the autocratic ruler that the December 2011 deaths, "tragic though they were, should not obscure the enormous progress that Kazakhstan has made". Blair advised Nazarbeyev that when dealing with the western media, he should tackle the events in Zhanaozen, when police opened fire on protesters, including oil workers demanding higher wages, "head-on".

In the letter, obtained by the Sunday Telegraph he also suggested passages to be inserted into a speech the president was giving at the University of Cambridge aimed at counteracting any bad publicity. One read: "By all means make your points and I assure you we're listening. But give us credit for the huge change of a positive nature we have brought about".

The former Labour leader's consultancy, Tony Blair Associates, set up in the capital, Astana, in October 2011, signing a multi- million pound deal to advise Kazakhstan's leadership on good governance, just months after Nazarbeyev was controversially re-elected with 96% of the vote and weeks before the massacre' .Tony Blair advises Kazakh president on publicity after killing of protesters, The Guardian August 26 2014

Blair means well. Platforms for stability must be built first, even by dictatorship if necessary. That's realism. In Iraq, it was realism to invade and depose the dictator because he posed a threat. Other dictators do not pose threats. They promise reforms and Blair wants to facilitate them and mutually beneficial partnerships.

To be frank, people in Britain need to realise it's time to move on from the Iraq war. There is a vital need to engage in global reform processes that create wealth that raise the people up, not to destroy wealth and create horrendous uprisings from the bottom. There is a need to focus on the bigger picture.

The idea Blair is advising strong leaderships across the world for financial gain is absurd. Those who strive to succeed, those who were chosen by the people for the people are, so to speak, the chosen ones who accrue to themselves wealth through the grace of God.

The TonyBlairFaithFoundation has noble goals of stressing what true faiths, like Tony Blair's, have in common with one another. From Gaza to Glasgow, from Accrington to Afghanistan we are more together than ever before and, frankly, its perverted religion that thwarts noble causes such as democratic reform in Iraq.

Take Kazakhstan. It could be said that doing nothing is an option. It would be. But not engaging with Nursultan Nazarbeyev is a choice too that could result in people misunderstanding the real benefits of reforms that yield wealth in a widening cricle, not just for a few but for many other dynamic individuals too.

Blair is a gifted communicator who understands what it is like to be a reformer beset with carping critics who focus on the style rather than the substance. Blair's natural gift of empathy allows him to get strong leaders to think about how events in Zhanaozen could affect his image before the people.

Now where it is possible to get the strong leader to understands and identify in part with the audience, it is possible too to get the leadership and the state apparatus to start to empathise with those in the firing line and start to identify with them. So there would be far fewer tragedies in future.

Blair grasps that a blend of empathy and psychopathy could enable dictators across the globe understand that you've just got to focus on the sort of bad PR image you are going to give if the people are going to view on television those unpleasant signs of instability.

From Islamist protests in Cairo to the striking oil workers of Zhanaozen, the images those associated with being machine gunned down dead in the streets are going to be found to be offensive. Those associated with being crushed under tanks, for example, could well find these images somewhat oppressive.

What Blair could bring to regions where instability is a real media management problem is that he could advise strong leaders on how to make the people understand its difficult to take bold decisions and carry the people along with the reform process, as some, no doubt, shall fall by the wayside....

Blair's Speech and the New Great Game.

Tony Blair's speech, as with everything this man utters, is a carefully calibrated public diplomacy missive better called a propaganda offensive. The timing is instructive; Blair is upgrading his profile in the Middle East because the crisis in Ukraine is set to lead to EU states searching for alternative energy sources.

It was interesting that Blair claimed the Ukraine Crisis would distract attention away from the Middle East. And why his fellow strategist and sinister operative John McTernan is 'on message' to explain just what Blair meant to those who could regard him as an important critic of Western foreign policy.

As is standard with propaganda, words and meaning must be prized apart from their conventional uses

'Libya and Syria are at the heart of Blair's argument: action started by this government but left incomplete. The passage on Syria is a direct attack on Cameron and Nick Clegg, and their inaction'.

Firstly, the Coalition government were not 'inactive' over Syria. They continually called for Assad 'to go'. Sarkozy set up the Friends of Syria group in Istanbul in 2012 to create a unified opposition with the intention of ousting Assad and installing a client state.

Secondly, Britain and France in particular were highly active in agitating for a missile strike on Syria, far more so even than a more energy independent 'post shale revolution 'USA. Their main client in the Middle East is Qatar which is in rivalry to build a pipeline from the South Pars gasfield which it shares with Iran.

Britain and France have increasingly sought to diversify the gas supply away from dependence upon Russia. One reason why Qatar's copious production of liquefied natural gas is a lucrative opportunity whereby its petrodollars from selling it get invested in the London and Paris property market and arms.

'Not a defence of liberal intervention, but a scrupulous account of the costs of doing nothing – particularly where the coalition has called for regime change. And, typically, looking at the bigger picture. The Middle East matters.. It matters because of oil and gas and our economic dependence on them'.

That statement matters. Essentially, with Russia and the US in a dangerous stand off over Ukraine, like Syria another pipeline transit route between east and west, Blair is trying to revive the idea that democratising the Middle East could provide EU states with better energy security.

Yet 'liberal intervention' was what was on offer when NATO facilitated the victory over the Gaddafi regime in Libya and what was on offer with the West's humanitarian concern over the East Ghouta gas attack in Syria. The reason no action was taken in Syria was increased concern over Al Qaida's presence.

The Libyan intervention made a bad situation worse. It enabled Gadaffi to be removed only for immediate ( and highly predictable ) squabbles over Libya's oil production capacity to divide the rebels ensuring another failed attempt at regime change backfired.

Now jihadists from Libya are known to have gone to Syria. The danger is, should Egypt fall into increased chaos, that the entire Maghreb could become a zone of carnage and bloodshed. Al Qaida affiliates are already operating in the Sinai Peninsula and fighting the Egyptian military.

As in Syria, the reality in Egypt was that the US and US tacitly accepted a military coup, even if the Muslim Brotherhood's bungling policies and attempts at institutional takeover has divided Egypt and led it even further towards economic and political collapse.

The Western Powers need to stop pretending that they can control events in the Middle East. Energy security has to be attained by decisive policies to move away from the great car economy and to find alternatives to oil and gas as well as dealing cautiously with Russia over Ukraine.

Blair's understanding on the Middle East is both simplistic and deranged. But his siren calls for radical and decisive action and drawing up of cosmic battle lines between Good and Evil remain potentially lethal if politicians and the media hail it as delivering a solution to an a looming energy security crisis.

Reflections on the 2013 Uprising in Egypt and the Reaction in Britain.

Journalists in Britain are already attempting to view the mass protests in Egypt, Brazil and Turkey as part of a wider global trend towards revolution against the 'neoliberal world order'. Each uprising has its own particular dynamic but Seumas Milne is already offering his version of these events.

As in 2011, the opposition is a middle-class-dominated alliance of left and right. But this time the Islamists are on the other side while supporters of the Mubarak regime are in the thick of it. The police, who beat and killed protesters two years ago, this week stood aside as demonstrators torched Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood offices. And the army, which backed the dictatorship until the last moment before forming a junta in 2011, has now thrown its weight behind the opposition.

Whether its ultimatum to the president turns into a full-blown coup or a managed change of government, the army – lavishly funded and trained by the US government and in control of extensive commercial interests – is back in the saddle. And many self-proclaimed revolutionaries who previously denounced Morsi for kowtowing to the military are now cheering it on. On past experience, they'll come to regret it.

Milne's interpretation is aptly titled Egypt, Brazil, Turkey: without politics, protest is at the mercy of the elites. Milne does not believe in spontaneous protests. Real democracy means the Jacobin-Bolshevik model whereby tightly organised vanguard elites channel protest into the politically correct direction.

So he knows a lot indeed about how organisation is essential in order to hijack revolutions.

Milne's sole criteria , however, for judging protests is whether they fit into his Manichean worldview of being objectively pro or anti-US. As a consequence, Milne's outlook , as always, seems to be based on the luxury of having things both ways so as to be 'right' no matter what the outcome of the mass protests.

Clearly, given that he has tended to back Islamists in the past, in so far as they were against US backed authoritarian regimes, he cannot now deny the failures of Morsi's regime nor does he bother to mention the fact many do not like its Islamisation of Egypt nor the attacks on the Coptic Christians.

Instead he chooses to use weasel language like this, 

The protesters have no shortage of grievances against Morsi's year-old government, of course: from the dire state of the economy, constitutional Islamisation and institutional power grabs to its failure to break with Mubarak's neoliberal policies and appeasement of US and Israeli power.

To get around these inconvenient facts he uses jargon such 'constitutional Islamisation'. Milne claims there are 'no shortage of greivances' but 'appeasement' of the US is not really up there as a main one: many protesters just seem to not want the US to back Morsi.

Milne's main concern is not that of the protesters, though he affects to be partly on their side, and it boild down to only one thing-whether the new government will be anti-US or not before it has even been constituted.

..the reality is, however incompetent Morsi's administration, many key levers of power – from the judiciary and police to the military and media – are effectively still in the hands of the old regime elites. They openly regard the Muslim Brotherhood as illegitimate interlopers, whose leaders should be returned to prison as soon as possible.

Yet these are the people now in alliance with opposition forces who genuinely want to see Egypt's revolution brought at least to a democratic conclusion.

There is no evidence that undefined 'opposition forces' are 'in alliance' with the army or Mubarak era elites as Milne insinuates . On the streets there is simply the hope that the army, which remains largely secular, will guard against any attempt by the Islamists to mobilise their supporters should Morsi actually be forced out.

That hope may well prove to be naive. But it is what the protesters demanding the revolution to be pushed towards its democratic conclusion actually want as well as an end to Morsi's retention of the structures of dictatorship and attempt to control the state for the exclusive benefit of his party of God.

Milne, by contrast, seems to care more about any revolutionary purity not being sullied by any relationship with the US despite the fact it's aid to Egypt is minute compared with the billions of dollars that oil rich Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar are investing under Morsi ( some $10bn so far )

If Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood are forced from office, it's hard to see such people breaking with neoliberal orthodoxy or asserting national independence, as most Egyptians want.

By 'such people' Milne means any future government that isn't explicitly anti-American. That concern takes priority over any form of economic recovery to benefit Egyptian people no matter what their particular political allegiances are or mere 'formal' middle class ( i.e "bourgeois" ) democracy.

If Egyptians are split into two rival camps between those who support the Muslim Brotherhood and illiberal general will conceptions of democracy, with the prospect of majoritarian tyrannies, and those who oppose that for various reasons then there is obviously no consensus on what 'most Egyptians' want.

In accordance with doublethink, Milne both accepts that Egyptians want to bring the revolution to a democratic conclusion and denies it. If any new government-even a transitional ' managed change of government'-has the potential to move  towards the US for whatever reason, it isn't what 'most Egyptians' want.

Hence,

Instead, the likelihood is that the Islamists, also with mass support, will resist being denied their democratic mandate, plunging Egypt into deeper conflict.

In other words, if Morsi's pro-US Muslim Brotherhood government is replaced by a more openly democratic Eygptian government that is favourable to the US and does not break with neoliberal policies then that will entail necessary resistance from the Islamists.

The fact is that the Egyptians in Tahrir Square seem to want a proper representational democracy first which protects minorities, is open and not full of cronies and corruption and does not try to impose one version of a Godly regime on all of them the better to enhance the power of the state over society.

Milne,however,  is only interested in 'framing' the perception of the Egyptian revolution for radicals in the West with a veneer of objectivity that can be easily peeled away by looking forensically at Milne's logic and language. He tends to fit the facts into a a rigid propaganda screed.

The Egyptian revolution is far more complicated than Milne is intentionally portraying it. There are two broad currents of popular opinion in Egypt.The first are those who believe in pushing Egypt towards becoming a more Islamic republic under Morsi.

Those who support Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood are usually poorer and more uneducated with little understandind of what the procedures of a functioning democracy are beyond imposing the will of the 'Godly' people against those forces that are not.

The second consists of a broad coalition of the educated and more secular minded Egyptians, Coptic Christians and anti-Islamist Muslims who resent the Muslim Brotherhood because its puritanism and incompetence is bad for the economy and the tourist industry.

For years before the 2011 revolution, Egypt was trapped in a cycle of fanatical Islamist revolt and state repression. When terrorists murdered tourists in Luxor in 1997 there was mass revulsion against Islamists who reacted with a ceasefire against Mubarak.

Subsequently, the more moderate Islamists represented by Morsi built up a rival power base and were dedicated to working their way to power through a democratic mandate as a means to impose their brand of state power on society in a way that cannot be other than polarising and divisive.

The problem has been, set against the background of a collapsing economy, that the Morsi regime has been seen to be allowing radicalised Islamists some freedom to persecute minorities such as the Christians in order to retain a populist power base, a strategy that shows continuity with Mubarak's dictatorship.

The opposition to Morsi is based upon those politically minded Egyptians with a memory of constitutional rule for thirty years before Colonel Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak ended the free expression of opinion, imposed military rule and dictatorship.

Needless to say, Nasser is feted by Milne and Galloway and those in the farcical "anti-war" left in Britain which is only against imperialist wars and not revolutionary guerrilla wars that are lauded on the sole basis of "resistance" to any force not utterly hostile to the US.

The Egyptians who want a functioning democracy are being pragmatic and are not focusing their attention on the US. Only embittered monomaniacal ideologues such as Milne and Galloway see every event connected with the Arab Spring in relation to some vast geopolitical struggle against the US.

The point is not that the US has not played a part in shoring up corrupt authoritarian regimes in the Gulf to protect its oil and strategic interests. It is that in Egypt there is a social and cultural unity absent in other Arab lands and the first demand in Cairo is a proper democracy.

Milne is less interested in that than in whether any new government will be anti-US or not. It's his sole criteria for assessing whether a revolution is good or bad. The aspirations of the people on the ground are only as important as ciphers in his messianic geopolitical calculations.

In that sense, ironically, the 'hard left' in Britain follows closely the sort of thinking pursued by fanatical neoconservatives who actually did try to promote choreographed 'Colour Revolutions' from Serbia to Ukraine and Belarus, from Lebanon to Georgia ,that were to benefit pro-US elites.

Milne, however, is trying to impose a vulgar Marxist-Leninist class based analysis on events in Egypt. The reference to the 1848 revolutions in Europe hints at the idea that revolutions must be permanent to achieve true freedom or else they will be co-opted by state power.

Essentially Milne is cunningly setting up his propaganda so that if the military take control in Egypt or oversee a transition to the new state is pro-US, whether democratic or not, it is a 'betrayal'. Then he can say as journalists like to 'I Told You So'.

Thought this may not seem very important, Milne is a leading propagandist for the self appointed extra-parliamentary opposition to Anglo-American foreign policy in Britain.  He is a leading figure on Stop the War Coalition platforms and a supporter of George Galloway whom radical journalist John Pilger regards a man of principle.

Criticism of US foreign policies is one thing but the problem with ideological Anti-Americanism is that-a is clear with Milne-is that the reality on the ground in places such as Eygpt and Turkey is distorted to fit an agenda pleasing to many radical leftists in the West.

Not only does this lead to disinformation, it actually retards any ability to criticise what is actually wrong about Anglo-US foreign policy. Contrary to what many on the radical left believe, the US does not have some almost supernatural ability to manipulate events globally.

This paranoid worldview comes close to conspiracy theorising as what evidence does Milne actually have that the 'middle class' protesters are somehow in league with the army and the remnants of the Mubarak regime ? Milne has none and simply inserts an ideological template for interpreting any future development in place of actual evidence.

Milne wants to portray the Egyptian revolution in class warfare terms, the masses against the 'pro-US state'. He simply ignores the division between the Islamist conception of democracy and the constitutional democratic one supported by many protesters.

The US has interests in the balance of power in the Middle East but it simply cannot control events in the way Milne wants his fans to believe. It's necessary to maintain this fiction so that if or when things go wrong it will be wholly the fault of the US.

No doubt the US will respond to events in Egypt if things spin out of control and that reaction will be judged on whether it is beneficial to Egypt or not. The Anglo-US response to Syria has been largely been malign and based on a form of messianic Cold War thinking towards Iran as an 'existential threat'.

The irony is that the radical left opposition to Anglo-US foreign policies is equally based on a form of Cold War thinking given that "anti-war" groups are full of ex-communists who cannot get over the fact that the Soviet Union collapsed and no longer acts as a "systemic alternative".

There are, in my opinion, many in Britain who oppose Anglo-US foreign policies on constructive grounds and would like to put pressure on the government not to totally ignore public opinion in being prepared to play dangerous power games in the Middle East.

But these voices of sanity are drowned out by noisy rabid fanatics who hijack that opposition to espouse positions that rationalise jihadi Islamist terrorism, see the US as a unique and cosmically Evil Empire and often support just any regime on the sole grounds it is anti-US.

It is Orwellian and makes intelligent discussion of events in the Middle East impossible, not least when the British government itself resorts routinely to justifying decisions by oily 'public diplomacy' and there are no confrontational or real debates over foreign policy in Parliament.

Political Lying and Syria.

The only conclusion to be drawn from William Hague's consistent 'public diplomacy', on the British government being able to safely supply the 'right rebels' with weapons that won't fall into the 'wrong' hands, is that he is either divorced from reality or is willingly taking colossal risks.

"We are currently sending equipment that saves lives and who are we sending that to? Well, we are sending it to those more moderate, more sensible elements of the opposition. Obviously, we're not sending it to extremist groups, to groups that we're very concerned about, that could become a terrorist threat.

"The equipment we have supplied so far is not arms, but we have no evidence that that has fallen into the wrong hands in any sense and we have been supplying it for some time, so bear that in mind,"

Hague may well have 'no evidence' that so-called ''non lethal aid' has not fallen into the 'wrong hands' in Syria because , as with the allegations that rebel factions used sarin gas neither he nor the US administration is interested in looking for it.

This is what is so dangerous about the mindset that Hague seems to be trapped in. The rigid and abstract geopolitical thinking is clearly in continuity with the US neoconservatives and that was based on the faith based idea that with will power and 'resolve' the 'West' can win through.

In that sense, 'public diplomacy' is essentially the requisite propaganda based on a mendacious use of oil spin and words. In a brutal civil war, there is no guarantee that arms will not be traded to financially well backed 'extremists' by those receiving arms from Britain and the US.

The CIA, as numerous New York Times reports going back into 2012 prove, have been funnelling 'lethal aid' to insurgents in Syria-including second hand ex-Yugoslavian arms from Croatia. Satellite information has been used to guide the insurgents.

Given that arms from the ex-Soviet Union and Yugoslavia have been traded globally since the 1990s, it is utterly madness to assume that in the chaos in Syria both some of Assad's stock of weapons and any weapons from the West would not be sold by those wanting to make money.

Hague's stance is based clearly adhering to what he anticipates the Washington line was going to be and acting as an advocate in the UK for a full' shoulder to shoulder' stance with the US. There seems little independence in British foreign policy.

Yet there have been no real political warnings yet nor debate which mentions the facts about why arms have and will inevitably fall into the 'wrong' hands if they are supplied. No criticism from politicians looking at logical flaws in the case for intervention.

The useless Nick Clegg is not opposed to sending arms to Syria as it clear from what he actually states,

"At this point we're not providing arms. If we wanted to, we would do it. We clearly don't think it is the right thing to do now or else we would have decided to do it....We need to work in concert with our allies but we do not need to do the identical thing."

Nothing Clegg said rules out the fact that if the US decides it will arms the insurgents that Clegg would not 'work in concert' while pretending Britain was making independent decisions. Something ruled out when he says "the idea that we can provide a unilateral British solution to this is fanciful.

 Well, obviously it isn't a 'solution' and Clegg knows it's not an option anyway which is why he can say what he is saying because it amounts to nothing specific. He just wants to pretend that he supports an independent line on Syria while not criticising the action outright or really opposing it.

Political opponents ought to have had Cameron and Hague on the ropes, attacking their logic and questioning their use of language. Instead what we have is mere grandstanding, posturing and positioning of views simply to try and use the concern over intervention of Syria to promote themselves.

Hague, however, remains the most seasoned practitioner of political lying when he states,

"It's also not easy to take a decision to allow people to be killed who are faced by much superior arms and who may be driven to radicalism and extremism by being placed in the situation, so it's a classic dilemma."

The logic here is that if Britain does not supply arms to the unspecified 'good rebels' to use against the superior arms of Assad, then they will be driven to radicalisation and "extremism" This is an admission that the 'rebels' he would be prepared to arm will turn against us if we do not back them.

"There certainly are extremists. The complexity of this situation is there's more than two sides and there is an opposition.

There is no need for the word 'and' after admitting there is 'more than two sides' because many that are fighting as part of the opposition to Assad are 'extremists' if by that it is mean Sunni fundamentalist fanatics who want outright domination and victory and no peaceful solution.

Hague keeps arbitrarily using the word 'extremist' in a Humpty Dumpty way to mean what he wants them to mean. The word is used in the meaningless manner described by Orwell in Politics and the English Language.As is clear when he insinuates he has met leaders who are not 'extremists'

'I've had many meetings with opposition leaders who are not that type of opposition leader, who are sincere – in my view and the view of John Kerry and many other western foreign ministers – about their commitment to a future democracy in Syria, to dealing with the stockpiles of chemical weapons, to making sure that minorities are properly represented and not persecuted in Syria...Their commitment to that is sincere so we shouldn't fall into the trap of thinking everybody on every side is an extremist. There are a lot of good Syrians, I can assure you."

The fact is that 'extremists' can be sincere to the point of being fanatical and can say what they want Hague to hear. Hague needs to reveal which opposition leaders he has met and which he thinks are the 'sincere' leaders. Otherwise, the public has to take his word for it. And they cannot.

Given that Hague has repeatedly acted in bad faith about negotiations at Geneva being dependent upon the ability of the 'good rebels' to win militarily, it is clear that the leaders he has in mind are those such as General Idriss who rejected talks and called for the US to provide weapons to his forces.

Idriss of the Supreme Military Commandhas admitted several times that he cannot create a unified force despite numerous attempts to do so as only a small part of the 'rebel forces' are trained soldiers. So Al Qaida and radical Sunni fundamentalist forces can easily take control on the ground.

The only solution is to start negotiations at a Geneva Conference with Russia and Iran included to avoid the war developing any further. The fighting is now a grudge match with sectarian overtones and only fanatical jihadists will exploit the chaos. This is the only realistic option.

Thoughts on the Danger History as History as Propaganda.

Novelist AK Kennedy has written in relation to government plans to commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War that she does not believe it will be free from being used to bolster current government policies,

One of the world's major arms exporters would find it tricky, for example, to really discuss the implications of basing one's economy on equipment that requires war. Meanwhile,the dead become Glorious, the Cenotaph a clean and noble monument. This happens with any war: initially those who can remember may not wish to, witnesses slowly die, politicians love to appropriate the bravery of others. I also know our political classes now take pride in being faith – and not reality-based. In the absence of those who served, they can appropriate a historical event during which (among many other things) under-educated public schoolboys led the suitably enthused masses into harm's way and rebrand it, at public expense, into a degrading force multiplier for armed forces still used as political and economic pawns.

....I have no reason to believe that my current leaders will not do the same next year. It's too late to give the veterans the £10m and they didn't get their land fit for heroes – something approaching that was finally won by the generation who came through the second world war. The last of that inheritance is being sold at bargain rates and citizens are increasingly being offered simplistic spectacle in the place of good governance and public service.

This is what disturbs those who fear this commemoration will become a way of creating some seamless continuity between World War One and Afghanistan with subliminal propaganda messages ( the heroism, dedication of "our boys", etc ) in the very year Britain stages a faked "withdrawal" from Afghanistan.

The fact is that in 2014, Britain is not withdrawing from Afghanistan. The new Orwellian cant term is "drawdown" used by Defence Minister Hammond and others 'on message'. The fact that this is going to be a government sponsored cultural event is also slightly sinister.

"Liberal interventionists" have a history of calling some wars , as World War Two 'the Good War' and comparing that to the Afghanistan War after 2001, at least before such voices advocating it suddenly fell peculiarly silent as the war has dragged on.

In so far as World War Two finished off Hitler it had to be good. Yet history-as-propaganda in an age of continued Blair-like spin and mendacity is something that all British citizens will need to be aware of as Cameron's regime is essentially the same as Blair's and Brown's regime.

The phrase the 'Good War' for World War Two came from A J P Taylor who distinguished it in that sense from the futility of the what was until the Second World War, termed , quite obviously, The Great War. This war could be repackaged to suggest that Afghanistan is in a great tradition of wars we won.

The Conservative columnist Peter Hitchens has already, correctly in my view spoken of the 'religion of World War Two' in British history as it is continually invoked by politicians who know that calling Saddam Hussein a "new Hitler" will resonate with those as a heroic battle of 'us' , that is the always Good, versus the forces of Evil.

Britain is taking from the USA all those aspects of it's imperial history that have been strongly spun into simplistic narratives ( this is one of the few parts of Noam Chomsky's thought that does have credence in regards to the USA and "noble causes", like Vietnam, and it is an important one that should be heeded ).

The rise of public relations and oily spin has now polluted every aspect of Britain's public life. Where once there were real debates over foreign policy in Parliament, Britain has three political parties with virtually no dissent on foreign policy within it's ranks.

A J P Taylor wrote of The Troublemakers who dissented on Britain's foreign policy. The British political system has virtually no dissent now either in Parliament, apart from those who cannot be taken that seriously such as George Galloway who trades on the fact he is not like them and so hardly bothers going in to Parliament.

Groups outside Parliament ( such as the so-called 'Stop The War Coalition' ) who dissent are often dominated by apologists for totalitarian systems and Jihadi Islamism. This means that many in the British public , especially the young, are getting not history lessons-or training in the ability to think independently-but propaganda.

It is a thouroughly depressing situation when events that we are not allowed to talk about this week may have something to do with the fact so many, including politicians in the New Establishment do not care for history or think that it's valuable in schools, are merely pumping out propaganda instead of objective information on wars past and present.

The Dark Art of Spinning,

It's difficult to not have contempt for Lord Peter Mandelson who introduced the dark art of political spin into British political life and created the Tony Blair product. There is no point buying the memoirs of this self-important fool now he's got his boring memoirs published.

In the dying days of New Labour after the debt fuelled consumer boom his regime engineered, Peter Mandelson returned in 2008 to power without even being elected and found again the Third Way. It was as much drivel then just as it is now. In his Hugo Young lecture he opined,

...the inherent rationalism of markets makes any role for the state in industrial policy unwise.

It is important that Britain continues to make a vigorous case for an open industrial activism that engages with globalisation and competition rather than trying to shut them out.

How it is possible to engage with abstract nouns and what 'open industrial activism' can mean in practice is curious. For if markets are rational and the state cannot have a role, then where the 'activism' comes from is mysterious.

Markets are extraordinary tools, but they are not possessed of unique or infallible wisdom. Innovative businesses, especially in technology and manufacturing, can require substantial investment.

So this could mean that the government does have a role to play when Mandelson wants NuLab to take credit for debt fuelled consumer booms but not when the markets go wrong as they have during the recent slump.

That's basically what Mandelson means in plain English. The rest is simply a warbling Orwellian corporate version of the Newspeak in 1984. When people rebranded New Labour as NuLab they knew their Orwell with English Socialism reduced to Ingsoc.

What Madelson's brand of banal waffle also proves that politicians resort to jargon because they aren't that important other than as obfuscating intermediaries between the global money markets and a bewildered public.

Government itself has simply become part of an 'enabling state' in which large scale corporate capitalism dominates every aspect of people's lives and designer revolutionaries fake enthusiasm for impersonal transactions.

Democracy is exercised merely through what brands a consumer buys and this propaganda is merely in the marketplace for cliches lapped up by those who want buzzwords to do the thinking for them.