Stop Blair!

The outlines of a new reality in this crisis are beginning to take shape in the light of the events of this week. The War Party is now centred in London and the illusion that Tony Blair is merely Bush's lapdog has suddenly dissipated. Blair's Hampton court speech signals his emergence as the leader of the drive to attack Iran and thereby endeavour fulfil one of the longstanding aims aims of the War Party - the destruction of that country. As many commentators have noted his words amounted to nothing less than a threat of military action and one can only wonder at the relative equanamity with which they have been received such would be the consequences of such a reckless piece of folly.

Meanwhile,the Scottish Daily Express heads its Saturday edition with this extraordinary headline:-" Maniac Plots World War III". This is not a reference to Blair but to Ahmadinejad who according to a British Intelligence " expert"

"believes that anyone who dies for Islam goes to heaven and gets the 72 virgins that are due to all martyrs".

He goes on

"even without nuclear weapons"[ he] "could set off a Middle East war which we all get sucked into"

I would have thought that we were already embroiled in a Middle East war - the illegal, crimnal and disastrous Iraq venture that we chose and were certainly not sucked into. The question I have raised already on this blog is how we respond to this monumental cockup- by escalating or withdrawing. If there was ever much doubt about this surely it has now been dispelled- all we need now is the" threat" to Britain.

We have already heard how Iran is supposedly endangering our troops lives in Iraq but now through this same quality news sheet ( the Express) we have it that " spy agencies"

"believe Iran is soon to take delivery of North Korean missiles able to carry nuclear weapons over 2,200 miles, putting London near the fringe of Tehran's range"(of course, that's logical- another of the "Axis of Evil" countries!)

Iran don't have nuclear weapons and I would have thought it was a fair bit over 2,200 miles from London but these are mere details. What matters is that Ahmaninejad is a threat, a thoroughly unpleasant sort who has had posters of David Beckam torn down. And now he's going to launch a nuclear war just as we were thinking about lanching one ourselves.

And why does it have to be a World War- couldn't it just be a question of wiping another Islamic country off the map( without commiting the indelicacy of talking about it beforehand). Well, the Express has noticed that Russia and China are now close allies of Iran. This is the factually accurate part of the article: but the inference which it draws from this information is really off the beam and in a way gives the game away. Yes, if Britain, the US of Israel attacked Iran, Russia and China could well come to its aid plunging all into a possible nuclear armageddon(Blair/Cheney have made it clear that the use of nukes is envisaged). But this scenario would only apply if US/UK were the agressors. In the unlikely case of Iran attacking Britain ( with one of its non-existent nukes, for example) Iran would be left completely isolated and would no doubt be completely destroyed. But the Express envisages world war because it envisages a US or UK agression such as has been mooted for some time and about which so many people have tried to warn us.

So ,in summary of the Express article, Ahmadinejad's undiplomatic utterances are precisely the pretext we need to push ahead with an attack on Iran and the subsequent global war will be their fault.

These are dramatic and dangerous developments and I suspect they are related to equally dramatic evemts in Washington. A whole series of threads are coming together in a way which could spell the end for Cheney and the neocons. We may well be witnessing a carefully crafted counter coup which could knock out the War Party in Washington. This is not only a mortal threat to the now notorious neocons round Cheney but spells doom for Blair who has entirely thrown in his lot with them and would be left twisting in the wind were these extraordinarily malign forces to be finally purged from the body politic. His awareness of this is the driving force behind his personal crusade for a larger war. If the Americans are indeed stumbling along the path to Armageddon, his intervention can remedy matters- he can bounce them into it perhaps with the help of our trusty Israeli friends whose patience has been fraying for some time now.

In a sense the consequences of the last elections on both sides of the Atlantic are now making themselves felt. Bush was already burnt out and had to be replaced. However, things didn't work out- he got back with the help of substantial fraud. Blair, however, was still the War Party's choice , the sole legitimate representative of the neocons in Britain and was duly returned in a shocking testimony to the advanced senility of the Great British Nation. So nothing is more appropriate than that Blair take over the mantle of warmonger- in -chief. Reckless, half-insane, a liar without peer, its mad dog himself in the chariot of fire and its to us that has fallen the task of removing this menace to the peace of the world and his accomplices from power.

The signs are not good. The mainstay of the antiwar movement ,such as it is, the Socialist Worker's Party thinks that they are only going to bomb Iran because they are already overextended in Iraq. Well, I don't know about" only". They are going to bomb Iran and bomb them with nuclear weapons because they are overextended in Iraq. I'm puzzled as to why they draw consolation from this.

Certainly all is not well in Catatonia but surely there must be some living forces, people who still have the wherewithal to see danger and to have some notion of the legacy we risk leaving new generations. The events in Washington show that there is a flicker of light at the end of the tunnel. If only, we could have one last push to isolate and neutralise Blair and his gang.