Home » Posts tagged 'britain' (Page 9)

Tag Archives: britain

Olduvai
Click on image to purchase

Olduvai III: Catacylsm
Click on image to purchase

Post categories

Post Archives by Category

Imperial Arrogance: Tony Blair, Qaddafi and Torture

December 22, 2015

Imperial Arrogance: Tony Blair, Qaddafi and Torture

Jack-Straw-and-Tony-Blair-001

Tony Blair and Jack Straw.

That former British prime minister Tony Blair is a poster boy for corruption, mendacity, opportunism, and ruthless ambition is by now a received truth. The man who took Britain into the war in Iraq on the coattails of the Bush administration in 2003, did so imbued with a messianic desire to become a major international figure, basking in the embrace of a political establishment in Washington whose support and endorsement he valued more than that of the people in the UK who elected him and whose interests he was supposed to represent.

As he and others involved in engineering the facts to make the case of crashing into Iraq on the back of cruise missiles currently await the findings of the Chilcot Inquiry into the war, legal proceeding are underway in the UK Supreme Court to sue both Blair’s former foreign secretary Jack Straw and British intelligence agencies over their role in the rendition to Libya from London of anti-Gaddafi Libyan dissidents, where they were subsequently tortured.

Prime among those Libyan dissidents who are involved in the legal action is Abdel Hakim Belhaj, who went on to assume a key role as a military commander and official in the post Gaddafi Islamist regime based in Tripoli. Belhaj alleges that both he and his wife were rendered to Libya from the UK in 2004 and tortured in the presence of British MI6 operatives.

In the process the extent of the cooperation that existed between Blair and Gaddafi over the course of a relationship which officially began after Blair visited the Libyan leader, soon after he publicly renounced and ended Libya’s WMD program at the end of 2003 in the wake of the destruction of Iraq, has come to light.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

It Gets Ugly in the Toniest Parts of London

December 21, 2015

It Gets Ugly in the Toniest Parts of London

Those once “awash with cash don’t have as much to spend.”

It gets ugly for luxury homes in the toniest parts of London.

The combined value of homes that were sold in prime central London, which includes Belgravia and Chelsea, plunged 24.5% in 2015, year-over-year, to just under £3 billion, according to real-estate data provider LonRes. Prices edged down 1.4%, but transaction volume collapsed. It was even worse at the upper end: transactions of homes over £5 million ($7.5 million) plummeted 30.5%!

LonRes had already warned earlier in its third quarter report:

It was a London bubble that was threatening to undermine the UK economy, as identified by the Bank of England last year. The old argument of prevailing market conditions just being the natural forces of supply and demand doesn’t wash when the outlier, that is the massive influx of overseas investment, tips rising house prices into overdrive.

New taxes on homes over £938,000 ($1.4 million), based on changes to the Stamp Duty Land Tax system at the end of 2014, caught some of the blame. But it wasn’t the only reason, LonRes said. Other factors include the dearth of wealthy foreign buyers. Russians had been impacted by the collapse in oil prices, and Chinese had been hit by the turbulence in China. And for them, there were other uncertainties:

A popular topic at the moment is the authenticity and provenance of the money used to buy property in prime central London (PCL). To this end, HMRC [the UK government’s tax collection department] has discovered that it is entirely conceivable that some buyers may not have made their newly discovered fortunes in an entirely honest and legal manner. Only a year ago, The Times reported that London was the money laundering capital of the world, and Alexander Lebedev, owner of the Evening Standard, claimed then that £1 trillion had been stolen from Russia since 2000.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

European Dream Turns into Dystopian Nightmare

December 16, 2015

European Dream Turns into Dystopian Nightmare

Why We Brits Should Vote for Brexit.

As a Europhile British ex-pat who has spent most of his adult life living on “the continent,” as we Brits are fond of calling the non-British part of Europe, it might seem rather odd to be encouraging my fellow Brits to vote to leave the European Union.

Not so long ago — perhaps a decade or so — I believed that the interests of Britain would be best served if the country was a full-fledged member not only of the EU but of the euro zone. I was wrong, but it was a different time and I was a different, more innocent me.

Total Dependence

By the time the sovereign debt crisis hit Europe in 2010, the full extent of the EU’s ambitions was clear: to slowly, almost imperceptibly, weaken nation-state institutions to the point of total dependence on Brussels; and then have them supplanted with EU institutions. As I wrote in a 2014 article, it is the financial equivalent of death by a thousand cuts. The EU’s weapon of choice was the single currency.

Luckily for Britain, its government had not joined the euro. The Chancellor of the Exchequer at the turn of the century, Gordon Brown, knew that sacrificing the pound would have been electoral suicide. Preserving the national currency has provided the UK with some measure of economic independence and flexibility.

For many other European countries, their economic independence and flexibility died the day they joined the euro. As Spain’s economy minister Luis de Guindos recently put it, “the Eurozone is a club where you can check in but you cannot check out.” The main reason for this is that the euro is merely a means to a much more coveted end — political union, as Germany’s Finance Minister glibly admitted in a 2011 interview with Welt am Sontag:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Imperial Collapse Playbook

December 8, 2015

The Imperial Collapse Playbook

[This is a rerun, which seems timely given the recent American efforts to poison relations between Turkey and Russia. The shoot-down of the Russian jet was clearly a well-poisoning exercise either directly ordered or, at the very least, approved by the Pentagon. In a future blog post, I will explain why this same old strategy isn’t going to produce the same old results the Americans have come to expect.]

Some people enjoy having the Big Picture laid out in front of them—the biggest possible—on what is happening in the world at large, and I am happy to oblige. The largest development of 2014 is, very broadly, this: the Anglo-imperialists are finally being forced out of Eurasia. How can we tell? Well, here is the Big Picture—the biggest I could find. I found it thanks to Nikolai Starikov and a recent article of his.

Now, let’s first define our terms. By Anglo-imperialists I mean the combination of Britain and the United States. The latter took over for the former as it failed, turning it into a protectorate. Now the latter is failing too, and there are no new up-and-coming Anglo-imperialists to take over for it. But throughout this process their common playbook had remained the same: pseudoliberal pseudocapitalism for the insiders and military domination and economic exploitation for everyone else. Much more specifically, their playbook always called for a certain strategem to be executed whenever their plans to dominate and exploit any given country finally fail. On their way out, they do what they can to compromise and weaken the entity they leave behind, by inflicting a permanently oozing and festering political wound. “Poison all the wells” is the last thing on their pre-departure checklist.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Western firms plan to cash in on Syria’s oil and gas ‘frontier’

December 1, 2015

US-led coalition forces carry out a large-scale attack on Syria’s Omar oil field

Western firms plan to cash in on Syria’s oil and gas ‘frontier’

US, British, French, Israeli and other energy interests could be prime beneficiaries of military operations in Iraq and Syria designed to rollback the power of the ‘Islamic State’ (ISIS) and, potentially, the Bashar al-Assad regime.

A study for a global oil services company backed by the French government and linked to Britain’s Tory-led administration, published during the height of the Arab Spring, hailed the significant “hydrocarbon potential” of Syria’s offshore resources.

The 2011 study was printed in GeoArabia, a petroleum industry journal published by a Bahrain-based consultancy, GulfPetroLink, which is sponsored by some of the world’s biggest oil companies, including Chevron, ExxonMobil, Saudi Aramco, Shell, Total, and BP.

GeoArabia’s content has no open subscription system and is exclusively distributed to transnational energy corporations, corporate sponsors and related organisations, as well as some universities.

Authored by Steven A. Bowman, a Senior Geoscientist for the French energy company CGGVeritas, the study identified “three sedimentary basins, Levantine, Cyprus, and Latakia, located in offshore Syria” and highlighted “significant evidence for a working petroleum system in offshore Syria with numerous onshore oil and gas shows, DHIs (direct hydrocarbon indicators) observed on seismic, and oil seeps identified from satellite imagery.”

France’s secret affair with Assad’s Syria

At the time, when civil unrest was sweeping across Syria, CGGVeritas was contracted to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Sources.

The French company is one of the world’s largest seismic surveyors. Backed by the French government which owns 18% voting rights in the firm, CGGVeritas had acquired seismic data on offshore Syrian resources in 2005, and since then has been the main point of contact for geophysical and geological datasets on behalf of the Syrian regime.

How a secretive elite created the EU to build a world government

November 29, 2015

How a secretive elite created the EU to build a world government

Voters in Britain’s referendum need to understand that the European Union was about building a federal superstate from day one

As the debate over the forthcoming EU referendum gears up, it would be wise perhaps to remember how Britain was led into membership in the first place. It seems to me that most people have little idea why one of the victors of the Second World War should have become almost desperate to join this “club”. That’s a shame, because answering that question is key to understanding why the EU has gone so wrong.

Most students seem to think that Britain was in dire economic straits, and that the European Economic Community – as it was then called – provided an economic engine which could revitalise our economy. Others seem to believe that after the Second World War Britain needed to recast her geopolitical position away from empire, and towards a more realistic one at the heart of Europe. Neither of these arguments, however, makes any sense at all.

The EEC in the 1960s and 1970s was in no position to regenerate anyone’s economy. It spent most of its meagre resources on agriculture and fisheries and had no means or policies to generate economic growth.

“When we entered the EEC our annual growth rate was a record 7.4 per cent. The present Chancellor would die for such figures”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Carving up the Middle East

November 17, 2015

Carving up the Middle East

Britain-France-WW1

QUESTION: Why did ISIS target France rather than Germany? Someone said it was France who created Syria. Is that really true?

ANSWER: Germany is not actually a target in this chess game. It is one reason we selected Berlin for our conferences even compared to London since we had Panic Cycles in November. Germany has less than 62,000 in its army and being in the army in Germany was perhaps worse than a tax collector. The joke was the German army does not shoot. Germany is not in the view of ISIS as is France, Britain, and USA. Germany may be the biggest economy in Europe, but the people blamed their own military for the nation’s suffering as did Japan.

Partition-Middle EastIndeed, the Middle East, as we know it today, emerged from decisions made by the Allies during and after the World War I. It was Britain and France who took it upon themselves to transform what had been provinces of the old Ottoman Empire into the modern states we have come to know, This has created an international tinderbox that remains at the core of the current conflicts and politics in the Middle East.

The partitioning of the Middle East into the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire was set under the terms of a secret Sykes-Picot Agreement of April-May 1916. The agreement gave Mesopotamia (Iraq), the Gulf and the regions bordering Palestine to Britain, and Syria and most of the eastern part of the region to France.

War-Middle East

The Cairo Conference was a meeting of Britain’s Middle East experts which began formally on the morning of Saturday, March 12, 1921. The conference approved a plan for giving control over two large pieces of the former Turkish territories that Britain controlled to princes in the Hashemite family.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Brexit Balance Sheet

November 12, 2015

The Brexit Balance Sheet

Prime Minister David Cameron’s offer to British citizens to hold a referendum on whether to leave the European Union might have seemed like a reasonably safe gamble just a few years ago. Most people then probably would have voted to stay. That was before the Greek crisis created havoc in the eurozone, and the arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees caused the EU (although not the United Kingdom) to lose control of some of its borders.

Cameron might actually get other European leaders to agree to his demands for reform, without which he has said he would not campaign to keep his country in the EU. They are not extreme: a guarantee that non-eurozone members gain full access to the single market; less red tape at the EU level; a British exemption from “ever-closer union.” His last demand – fewer benefits for EU migrants – will be the hardest for EU leaders to accept.

Despite this reform push, some British Euroskeptics have criticized Cameron for being too soft. The temptation in Britain simply to abandon what appears to be a sinking ship and go it gloriously alone is growing stronger. This is understandable. The question is whether “Brexit” would be as glorious as its proponents like to imagine.

Unleashed from the rule of Brussels, the sirens of Brexit promise, Britain would once again be a beacon of freedom in the world, respected by China, tied to the United States in the bilateral “special relationship,” and all the while retaining friendly commercial ties with the European continent. Business would boom, the City of London would prosper, and Britons never would be slaves, not of the EU or anyone else.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Catalonia votes to Separate from Spain by 2017

November 10, 2015

Catalonia votes to Separate from Spain by 2017

Catalan-Independence

The regional parliament of Catalonia has now approved a plan to set up road map for independence from Spain by 2017. This is in direct defiance of the central Spanish government. The question will be, does this lead to civil war given the history of Spain. Additionally, this is a rejection of Brussels and the polls indicate that the British people will also make a decision to leave the EU.

The Charter is a Reactionary Document

October 20, 2015

The Charter is a Reactionary Document

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is sacrosanct in many circles, particularly among those who consider themselves “liberal.” Yet there is nothing “liberal’ in the classic, traditional sense of a code of laws claiming to be the supreme law of the land.

The history of liberalism denounces the idea that an individual’s rights come from a piece of paper created by the state. The whole point of liberalism is to be as anti-state as humanly possible. Thanks to the great work of Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard, it’s now conceivable how obvious anarchy is.

The history of Britain, Canada and the United States are extraordinary because these countries have been based on customary traditions and a unifying thread of common-law. It is only when governments started codifying common-law into legislation that problems arose and thus prompted governments to act further – to remedy a problem they themselves created.

In Canada, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was that remedy, but it was, and still is, the incorrect treatment.

Liberty and peaceful social order lay in the decentralized, heterogeneous law-making of precedent-setting common law (or any law based on voluntary human action).

That is, law that arises from actual conflicts will settle conflicts. Common-law arose from real conflicts and were non-political ways of resolving these conflicts.

Code law, on the other hand, is self-defeating.

Canadians assume that before the Charter, they had no rights or freedoms, but this simply isn’t true.

Canadians lived in a – relatively – free and prosperous society long before 1982. There were problems with the practice of parliamentary sovereignty, but prior to the state’s appropriation of basic rights and freedoms via the Charter, Canadians were by default free.

It was in the British liberty tradition that Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier declared, “Canada is free and freedom is its nationality.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Resisting Socialism in early 20th Century Britain

October 14, 2015

Resisting Socialism in early 20th Century Britain

“The foundations of economic freedom are weakening around the world, according to the 2013 Index of Economic Freedom published by the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal. Particularly concerning are the rise of populist ‘democratic’ movements that use the coercive power of government to redistribute income and control economic activity,” wrote Ambassador Terry Miller, in The Wall Street Journal of 9 January 2013. Earlier this year, an article in the Economist, ‘Venezuela: The revolution at bay’ (14 February 2015), confirmed the truthfulness of that warning issued by the Heritage Foundation two years ago.

“Sixteen years after Hugo Chavez took power in Venezuela, and two years after he died,” said the report in the Economist, “ his ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ faces the gravest threats yet to its survival. The regime is running out of money to import necessities and pay its debts. There are shortages of basic goods, from milk and flour to shampoo and disposable nappies. Queues, often of several hundred people, form each day outside supermarkets. Ten patients of the University Hospital in Caracas died over the Christmas period because of a shortage of heart valves.”

Despite being the beneficiary of the greatest oil boom in history, receiving around $800 billion in oil revenue between 2000 and 2012, “or two-and-a-half times as much in real terms as in the previous 13 years,” the report continued, “He [Chavez] spent the money on ‘21st century socialism’…As well as rewarding supporters with State jobs (the public payroll has more than doubled in 16 years), Chavez expropriated or nationalised 1,200 companies, from steelworks to a maker of cleaning products. Most now lose money or require government loans just to meet their payroll, according to Victor Alvarez, Chavez’s industry minister in 2005-06. The State subjugates the still large private sector through price controls, which discourage investment and production. The result is that Venezuela imports much of the food and consumer goods it used to produce, though not enough to meet demand.”
– See more at: http://www.cobdencentre.org/2015/10/resisting-socialism-in-early-20th-century-britain/#sthash.URAsbwLC.dpuf

Moscow Demands Britain Explain “Green Light To Shoot Down Russian Jets”

October 11, 2015

Moscow Demands Britain Explain “Green Light To Shoot Down Russian Jets”

The chances of escalation from a proxy war to outright war just went to 11 on the Spinal Tap amplifier of sabre-rattling. A day after British and NATO pilots were reportedly given the green light to take drastic action against Russian fighter jets if they come under threat during missions over Iraq, Interfax reports that the Russian Defense Ministry has demanded clarification. Senior defence sources say it is just a matter of time before our fighters are involved in a deadly confrontation with Russian jets.

The Chinese, it appears, are wholeheartedly behind Putin’s efforts, judging by the following puff-piece from Xinhua (unofficially China’s government mouthpiece)…

Russia’s recent military intervention in the Syrian war in the form of airstrikes and missile attacks aimed both at supporting the government of President Bashar Al-Assad in combatting the Islamic State (IS) has reaped initial gains.

Russia’s bombing campaign in Syria, which began on Sept. 30, has strengthened the Syrian government, laying the foundation for a dialogue with all countries concerned to come up with solutions that could drag Syria out of the internal conflict that has lasted for more than four years.

According to Russia Today, Russia started its bombing campaign in Syria with a goal to provide air support to the government troops in fighting various terrorist groups, primarily the IS.

Russian air strikes hit 55 Islamic State group targets in Syria in the past 24 hours, the defense ministry said Saturday, as Moscow ramped up its military campaign in the war-torn country.

Russia’s air force has attacked a total of 112 targets since the start of the military actions.

On Thursday, Syrian government troops launched large-scale ground offensives under the cover of Russia’s repeated air strikes. At the same time, Russia launched 26 cruise missiles from the Caspian Sea and destroyed 11 IS targets.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Democracy Has Departed The West

September 23, 2015

Democracy Has Departed The West

Before the West spreads democracy abroad maybe it could get some for itself. The US is an oligarchy in which government is answerable to six powerful private interest groups. In Europe governments are answerable to the EU, Washington, and private bankers and not to their peoples. In the UK the military brass has declared its hold on the reins of power.

Jeremy Corbyn is the first Labourite to lead the Labour Party in a long time. Considering the stupidity and immorality of the Tories, Corbyn could become prime minister of Britain. Should this occur, Corbyn would shift the budget priorities away from supporting Washington’s wars toward refurbishing the social welfare state that made life for ordinary Britishers more secure and less stressful.

A senior serving general of the British army said that the army would not allow the people to “put a maverick in charge of the country’s security. The Army just wouldn’t stand for it and would use whatever means possible, fair or foul, to prevent that.”

In other words, a democratic outcome unacceptable to the English military will be overthrown. Just like in Egypt.

Here we have the incongruity of Washington and London bringing democracy to others through what Vladimir Putin calls “airstrike democracy,” while tolerating a democracy deficit themselves. The safest conclusion is that democracy is a cloak for an aggressive agenda, not a value in itself to the US and UK elites, who rule and who intend to continue to rule these countries for their personal benefit.

Jonathan Cook reports that the use of “whatever means possible, fair or foul,” against Labour prime ministers who actually stood for the people rather than for the elites is not unique to Corbyn.
Labour Prime Minister Harald Wilson faced similar pressure and resigned. http://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2015-09-20/army-plots-against-british-pms-are-not-new/

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

British General Threatens Military Coup If Corbyn Elected

September 22, 2015

British General Threatens Military Coup If Corbyn Elected

Late last week we brought you a collection of vivid images from a military coup in the West African nation of Burkina Faso where forces aligned with former President Blaise Compaoré arrested the acting President and Prime Minister ahead of democratic elections planned for October.

To be sure, most observers would argue that the idea of military coups like the one described above occurring with any sort of regularity in the context of the developed world is far-fetched at best, but a growing disaffection with what many see as endemic corruption and ineptitude has not only served to catapult two dark horse presidential candidates to the top of the polls in the US but apparently has some Americans convinced that a military takeover might be preferable to the current system of governance as the following poll (which admittedly suffers from selection bias) from YouGov shows:

Well, don’t look now but the ascension of Jeremy Corbyn to the head of Britain’s Labour party has led at least one senior serving general to predict that a Corbyn government would face the very real possibility of a military “mutiny”. Here’s more from The Independent:

The unnamed general said members of the armed forces would begin directly and publicly challenging the labour leader if he tried to scrap Trident, pull out of Nato or announce “any plans to emasculate and shrink the size of the armed forces.”

He told the Sunday Times: “The Army just wouldn’t stand for it. The general staff would not allow a prime minister to jeopardise the security of this country and I think people would use whatever means possible, fair or foul to prevent that. You can’t put a maverick in charge of a country’s security.

“There would be mass resignations at all levels and you would face the very real prospect of an event which would effectively be a mutiny.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Secret files: British government courting Arab tyrants, fossil fuel interests

September 21, 2015

Secret files: British government courting Arab tyrants, fossil fuel interests

Official documents show how oil and business interests trump democracy

A range of official government documents released under Freedom of Information (FOI) expose how the British government is valiantly promoting democracy in the Middle East: by courting the region’s most vociferous opponents of democracy.

The approach reflects the consistent focus of Britain’s strategy in the region on promoting “stability” through energy investments and arms sales with authoritarian regimes and outright dictatorships.

Responding to an FOI request in February, the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) Middle East and North Africa Directorate provided a list of meetings hosted by other governments or companies attended by Edward Oaken, then the FCO’s Director for the Middle East.

According to the list, Oakden was hosted fifty-nine times during a period of just over a year, almost entirely by autocratic Arab regimes, fossil fuel companies, and corporate interests.

Oakden was FCO Middle East director from 2013 to 2015 before being appointed British Ambassador to Jordan in February,

From 18th September 2013 to 14th January 2015, Oakden had a total of 26 “hospitality” meetings with representatives of serial human rights abusers — Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Egypt, Oman and Morocco — and a further 15 with business groups, investors, and oil companies.

The rest were largely routine meetings with British and European political leaders.

The FCO conceded that the list of meetings provided was not exhaustive.

Blood for oil for cash

The Foreign Office meetings included three receptions hosted by British Petroleum (BP), including a “high level dinner” to discuss “global energy challenges”; a Genel Energy annual reception; and a lunch meeting with Centrica Energy “on business prospects in the Middle East.”

British firms BP and Genel are heavily invested in Iraq. BP is involved in the giant Rumailah oil field and the huge northern Kirkuk field in the Kurdish region, while Genel is invested primarily in Iraqi Kurdish fields of Taq Taq and Tawke.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Post navigation

← Older posts Newer posts →

Olduvai IV: Courage
Click on image to read excerpts

Olduvai II: Exodus
Click on image to purchase

Click on image to purchase @ FriesenPress