Jeremy Taylor was the chaplain of King Charles I and the rector of Uppingham. After the royalists were defeated in the British Civil War, he fled to Carmarthenshire in Wales, where he wrote his book arguing for religious freedom, The Liberty of Prophesying. After the Restoration he was appointed bishop of Down and Connor. He was also the author of a number of devotional works and sermons, but it’s his defence of religious freedom that I find particularly interesting. He said ‘they were excellent words which St. Ambrose said in attestation of this great truth, that the civil authority has no right to interdict the liberty of speaking, nor the sacerdotal to prevent speaking what you think.’
See the article on him in John Bowker, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (Oxford: OUP 1997) 958.
I’m very much aware that throughout Christian history there has been very little freedom of religion and conscience, and that the Anglican church’s toleration of Dissenters was very limited until the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in the 19th century. Until then Protestant nonconformists were excluded from the grammar schools, universities and government, and could only hold their services five miles away from towns. Atheism and Roman Catholicism were illegal again until the 19th century. But it was clergymen like Taylor and his fellows in the Nonconformist churches, like the Quaker William Penn and a number of Presbyterian ministers, who laid the foundations for the British and American tradition of religious tolerance. The most famous of the works calling for religious freedom from this period is Milton’s Areopagitica.
Despite the passage of the centuries, their message is still acutely relevant. Many countries still don’t have freedom of conscious or religious liberty in the 20th century. The Communists attempted to destroy religious and viciously persecuted people of faith, while the Nazis, apart from trying to exterminate the Jews, also sent their other religious opponents, especially Jehovah’s Witnesses, to the concentration camps.
We have recently seen a French teacher murdered for showing schoolchildren the Charlie Hebdo cartoons of Mohammed in a class about free speech, and mass demonstrations against France for permitting the cartoons in Muslim countries. To many people, their calls for legislation against such disrespect seem like demands for Muslim blasphemy laws. Christians and members of other religious minorities, such as Shia and Ahmadiyya Muslims have been murdered in Pakistan as well as orthodox Sunni Muslims because of supposed blasphemy. This is banned in Pakistan and punishable with the death penalty. The only permitted religion in Saudi Arabia is Wahhabi Islam, and a few years ago the Saudis declared that atheism was terrorism. This was just atheist unbelief itself, regardless of any act of genuine terror, such as killing people or destroying property.
I’m sympathetic to Muslims regarding the Charlie Hebdo cartoons. I don’t like the way Christianity and Christ are mocked by certain sections of the media and the entertainment business either. I’ve also heard the argument that Charlie Hebdo is a nasty rag. It’s not left-wing, but right, apparently, and its targets also include Roman Catholicism and immigrants.
But there’s a greater principle of free speech and the sanctity of human life here. All religions and ideologies, including atheism, should be up for debate, with people free to choose as they will. They’re fundamental human rights, the violation of which either leads or is part of tyranny.
On Friday, Mike published a very enlightening article showing just how concerned the Tories are about human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia: they aren’t. They actually apologized to them about it. It seems that after BoJob announced sanctions against particular Saudi individuals for their crimes against humanity, the Defence Secretary Ben Wallace phoned up the Saudi prince serving as their defence minister and apologized. This wasn’t publicized over here, but it was loudly trumpeted in the Saudi state press, and only reported in Blighty by the Independent.
We’ve got absolutely no business selling arms to Saudi Arabia in the first place. A few years ago a Nigerian academic appeared on Radio 4 recommending a change of allies in the Middle East. Instead of supporting Israel and Saudi Arabia, we should support and ally ourselves instead with Turkey and Iran. It’s a radical plan that has absolutely no hope of success, but it would be better than those two highly draconian and intolerant regimes. Turkey, until the accession of President Ergoyan, aspired to be a modern, western-looking, secular state. That was the programme of the founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Attaturk. Turkey has also has its problems with human rights abuses, such as its ethnic cleansing of the Kurds and official denial of the Armenian massacres. Iran is also a theocracy, but despite the Shah’s regime, which turned it into an absolute monarchy, and then the Islamic Revolution of the Ayatollah Khomeini, it does have a democratic component. They have a parliament – the majlis – whose members are elected, as is its president, although progress to a genuine, western-style democracy is blocked through an elected Supreme Leader, another ayatollah, and the Pasdaran, the Revolutionary Guards. But even with these anti-democratic institutions, both countries are more tolerant and democratic than Saudi Arabia.
Iran officially recognizes in its constitution the country’s religious minorities – the Zoroastrians, descendants of the original monotheist faith of the Persian Empire, Armenian Christians and Jews. Four seats are reserved for them in the majlis. And despite American and Israeli propaganda to the contrary, Iranian Jews are tolerated and treated quite well. Possibly this is because some of the country’s great patriots of the 20th century, who were determined to resist its annexation by the imperial powers, were Jews.
This is in stark contrast to Saudi Arabia, which is an absolute, theocratic monarchy. The only tolerated religion is Wahhabi Islam. All other faiths, even they are varieties of Islam, are strictly proscribed. The Shi’a minority live in villages without electricity or running water. Their religious books may be seized and destroyed. And as the west has made grief-stricken overtures of sorrow and contrition for its racial intolerance and slavery, the Saudis have made no such gestures on their part. A few years ago one of the country’s leading clerics – I think it was the Grand Mufti, rather than the Sherif of Mecca, declared that the Shi’a were ‘heretics’ and ‘worthy of death’. It’s a declaration of genocide, an exact counterpart of the slogan ‘Baptism or extermination’ of the German crusading orders in their campaigns against the pagan Slavs in eastern Europe. Saudi Arabia only outlawed slavery in 1964, but it still occurs today in the appalling exploitation of migrant labourers under the countries’ sponsorship system. Domestic servants are also kept in conditions no different from real slavery, including those taken to Britain and Europe by their masters.
And it explains precisely why the Saudis are indiscriminately bombing and killing civilians, women and children, and mosques, hospitals and schools in Yemen.
We went to war in 1939 against a regime that was determined to the same to the Jews, as well as the Gypsies, Poles and the other Slavonic peoples of eastern Europe. If you want to hear some real horror stories, talk to Poles, Ukrainian and Russians about what happened when the Nazis and the SS moved in and occupied their countries, as well as the horrors Jews, Gypsies and the disabled went through.
Why should we be arming a similar regime?
And the Saudis are spreading this intolerance. Many Muslim countries were traditionally much more tolerant and pluralistic. One of Mike’s photos he brought back from his time in Bosnia showed a church and a mosque that were right next to each other. It’s a very clear demonstration that in that part of the country, Christians and Muslims had been friends and definitely not at each others throats. But I’ve read comments again and over again in books and articles from more moderate Muslims from different nations lamenting the increasing fanaticism in their countries. And they state that those responsible for it went to study in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Bosnian Islam, thanks to these influences, has become more rigid and austere. In the Balkans Islam was spread by the Sufi mystical orders that served that Turkish troops as chaplains. These forms of Islamic piety also absorbed elements from Christianity. But these are being purged as Wahhabism is exported to Bosnia. A few years ago the government was sending in bulldozers to destroy the traditional Muslim gravestones in its cemeteries.
And we shouldn’t sell the arms for simply self-preservation.
The Saudis have also exported their religious intolerance by funding and arming terrorist groups. Forget the stuff about Iran being responsible for most of the world’s terrorist groups. Muslim terrorism only ever counted for a fraction of global terrorism. Most of the terrorist groups around the world are either nationalists or Marxists. But it seems to me very strongly that the Saudis surpassed Iran long ago as the suppliers of Muslim terror. They matched the Americans in funding and supplying the Islamist guerrillas against the Russians in Afghanistan. The suppressed passages in the official report about 9/11 made it clear that atrocity was funded and led by the Saudis. It was impossible to follow the trail all the way, but the evidence pointed all the way to the top. And the reports on al-Qaeda’s campaigns in Iraq and Syria published in the volume Unmasking Terror: A Global Review of Terrorist Activities, edited by Christopher Heffelfinger and published by the Jamestown Foundation in 2005 state very clearly that al-Qaeda in those nations was being funded and supplied by the current head of Saudi intelligence. The Saudis were favourably disposed to Daesh, and only turned against them when ISIS declared the jihad against them.
If we sell them armaments, there is a very real chance that they will make their way to terrorists who will use them against our brave boys and girls and our allies.
The argument for selling what David Cameron called ‘this wonderful kit’ to Saudi Arabia and other nations is that this supposedly opens these countries up to other British products. It doesn’t. They don’t purchase more ordinary, peaceful British goods. They just concentrate on weapons. Weapons that they don’t actually need. We sold them, or one of the other Arab states, a whole batch of jet fighters a few years ago, despite the fact that the Saudis had no need for them, nowhere to put them, and no maintenance infrastructure.
But it all makes the arms companies richer. And they, no doubt, are also donating very handsomely to Tory party coffers.
I found this Quaker declaration of the freedom of religion in Documents of the Christian Church, selected and edited by Henry Bettenson, 2nd edition (Oxford: OUP 1963). It’s taken from The Chief Principles of the Christian Religion, as professed by the people called the Quakers, drawn up by Robert Barclay in 1678, and published in his Apology for the Quakers. Proposition XIV, Concerning the Power of the Civil Magistrate in Matters purely Religious and Pertaining to Conscience, runs
‘Since God hath assumed to himself the power and dominion of the conscience, who alone can rightly instruct and govern it, therefore it is not lawful for any whatsoever, by virtue of any authority or principality they bear in the government of this world, to force the conscience of others;… provided always, that no man, under the pretence of conscience, prejudice his neighbour in his life or estate; or do anything destructive to, or inconsistent with, human society; in which case the law is for the transgressor, and justice to be administered upon all, without respect of persons.’
(p. 256).
It’s almost incredible to think that this was written in the 17th century, and that nearly 3 1/2 centuries later there are still countries in this world that don’t recognise it. Countries like Saudi Arabia, North Korea, China and Russia. In Saudi Arabia only Wahhabi Islam is permitted, and Shi’a Muslims viciously persecuted. A few years ago they also passed a law declaring that atheism was terrorism even without any violence or threats of violence being made. Russia is far more tolerant of religion than it was under Communism, when it was a persecuting atheist state. But even now, some religions are declared to be illegal. This includes not only extremist sects and beliefs, like Islamism, but also the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I admit they can be a pain when they come knocking on your door sometimes in their zeal to spread their version of Christianity, but a dangerous, radical extremist group? When, and to whom? The Nazis also persecuted them, because they wouldn’t accept Hitler as a secular Messiah.
It’s a disgrace that in the 21st century, freedom of religion and conscience still needs defending from persecutors across the world.
Yesterday I put up a piece commenting on Secular Talk’s video about the drone strikes on the Saudi oilfields. The host, Kyle Kulinski, stated that he believed the media would start lying and claim that these attacks were completely unprovoked. The reality is that they were committed by the Houthis in Yemen in retaliation for the genocidal war the Saudis are waging against their country. Kulinski also predicted that the media, including the Beeb, would tell us all that Iran, and only Iran, was responsible. He states that it’s possible that the Iranians have helped them, and that elements in Iran do support and celebrate it. But he fears a push for war, and doesn’t trust any of the actors – Trump, Netanyahu or the Saudis – to draw back.
I share his fears. And so, I believe, do very many other people. On my YouTube page the other day I found the video below from that old rocker, Neil Young. It’s of him playing ‘Rocking in the Free World’. I think its from the Michael Moore documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11. In it the Capped Crusader showed how George Dubya, the American-Saudi oil interests and the military industrial complex pushed for war in the Middle East following the terror attack on 9/11. Wars that they were very careful not to let their sons or daughters become physically involved, while actively recruiting the working class, and particularly the Black working class, to be their cannon fodder.
The film ends with Neil Young’s ‘Rocking in the Free World’.
I know people, who don’t like the song because they think it’s actually a celebration of the capitalist west. So did the late Radio 1 DJ John Peel. He chose it as one of his favourite tracks in an interview on Radio 4 I can remember listening to in the ’90s. He didn’t like it for the same reason, until he listened to it properly. It’s an angry, bitter song, and as flag-wavingly patriotic as Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the USA’. They’re both about how America gives working people nothing but poverty while sending them to fight wars.
Consider the lyrics to Young’s song:
There are warning signs on the road ahead
Some people are saying that we’re better off dead….
That’s another kid,
Who’ll never go to school,
Never fall in love,
Never get to be cool….
We got a thousand points of light
for the homeless man.
We got a kinder, gentler machine gun ham.
The tunes played over footage of demonstrations in America against Bush, Young and his band in concert, recruiting sergeants going round Black neighbourhoods, and the chaos, grief and warfare in Iraq and the Middle East.
The clip begins with Dubya stumbling his way through the saying ‘Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.’ But he couldn’t remember it properly, and so ends with stating the saying’s message ‘Don’t get fooled again’. To which Moore adds, ‘For once, we agree’. Then into the song.
Moore’s absolutely right, as has been corroborated by the former Guardian journo, Greg Palast, in his book, Armed Madhouse. In it he provides copious proof that the Iraq invasion was started, not because Saddam Hussein backed Osama bin Laden, or to liberate the Iraqi people from his dictatorship, but because the Saudi and American oil interests wanted the Iraqi oil reserves. The multinationals wanted to get their grubby hands on Iraqi state enterprises, the Neocons wanted to remove another source of support for the Palestinians, and create the low tax, free market utopia of the kind they want to introduce in the US. The result was absolute chaos. Apart from the carnage of the war, the Iraqi economy was decimated under the impact of foreign imports. Iraqi domestic firms couldn’t compete and collapsed. There was 60 per cent unemployment.
This is what will happen to Iran if we get fooled by the right-wing political elite, the oil industry and the military-industrial complex. It won’t be to liberate the Iranian people from their despotic government, nor to defend an innocent Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are Wahhabis – militant Sunnis – who despise and fear the Shi’a. That’s why they invaded Yemen: the Shi’a Houthi had overthrown the Sunni government. A few years ago one high-ranking Saudi cleric, the Sharif of Mecca or Grand Mufti, declared that Shi’a Muslims were ‘heretics and worthy of death’. Iran supports the Shi’a nations in the Middle East, hence Saudi determination to destroy the country’s regime. Israel and its supporters here also wants the Iranian government overthrown, because they are intensely hostile to Israel, expressing their hate in genocidal language, and support the Palestinians. Western oil interests want to get their hands on the Iranian oil industry, because we used to own it before Prime Minister Mossadeq nationalised it briefly in the 1950s before we had him overthrown, and it was nationalised against during the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Our multinationals want to seize Iranian industries, as under current Iranian legislation they cannot be invested in or owned by foreign companies. And this includes the 51 per cent of the economy held by the state or the bonyads, the Islamic charitable funds. In fact, Forbes was whining about how unfree Iranian industry was, meaning that westerners couldn’t get their mitts on it, a few years ago.
These are the forces pressing for war with Iran.
They fooled many people 18 years ago after 9/11. But not everyone. One million people in Britain marched against the invasion of Iraq, including our local priest. Since then, I’ve no doubt more people know how spurious the cause for war was. More people realise that the two chiefly responsible for the war, George Dubya Bush and Tony Blair, are liars and war criminals.
Don’t let them fool our people again!
Not one courageous squaddie should be sent to his or her death killing ordinary Iranians, just to make the oil industry and the multinationals rich!
I don’t share Secular Talk’s religious views. I’m neither a secularist nor an atheist, but when host Kyle Kulinski talks about politics, I believe he’s correct. In this video from the 16th September 2019, he talks about the attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil fields, and predicts the media’s and American government’s response.
He believes that, although the Houthi rebels in Yemen have claimed responsibility, Trump and the media, and even the Democrats, will claim that the strikes are solely the responsibility of Iran. And they will not supply any context for the attacks. Like actually telling them it’s in response to the Saudi war against them. Saudi Arabia attacked Yemen after the Houthis overthrew the Sunni Muslim government and installed a Shi’a regime. Saudi Arabia is Wahhabi, and militantly anti-Shi’a. They responded by invading and waging a genocidal war. They have deliberately targeted schools, hospitals and mosques. Thanks to them, the country is gripped by a famine and cholera epidemic. One has affected 85,000, the other perhaps a million. But despite the fact that the Houthis have claimed responsibility, all the lamestream news channels, Kulinski predicts, will claim that the strikes were unprovoked. And those lying news agencies include the Beeb.
He also notes that some in the Iranian regime have also claimed responsibility for the attacks and celebrated them. He doesn’t deny that it is entirely possible that the Iranians did give the Yemenis weapons and assistance. But the media, he claims, and Trump’s government will claim that the Iranians are solely responsible and a demand a war with Iran. Netanyahu wants a war with Iran. Saudi Arabia wants a war with Iran. Trump’s adviser, John Bolton, wants war with Iran. Even though he’s now gone, it looks like he’ll get his wish. The Democrats have said they’ll back a war with Iran. And Trump will want a war with Iran, because he doesn’t want to look weak. He’s said previously that Saudi Arabia should fight its own wars and that they were responsible for 9/11, but this won’t matter after these attacks. Kulinski concludes that we are the closest to war with Iran as we have ever been, but he doesn’t trust any of the actors to deescalate.
I don’t know if he’s right about the mainstream media not providing any context for this or not. I’ve been avoiding the mainstream news recently because I don’t trust them to report anything objectively. It could be that they have provided some context. But there are powerful forces at work demanding that we go in and attack Iran. Iran’s been on the Neocons’ list of countries, whose governments they want overthrown since 1995. I don’t know what’ll happen in Israel, because of the way the elections resulted in a tie between Netanyahu’s murderous coalition and their equally nationalistic rivals. But Netanyahu and the Israeli right have also pushed for war with Iran, because Iran backs the Palestinians and wants to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth. And America backs Israel, despite opposition from pro-Palestinian groups, including a sizable and growing number of Jewish Americans.
An Iranian gent, Reza Cage, left this comment pleading for peace on the YouTube page for this video. Here it is.
I am an Iranian living in Tehran, this terrifies me. For you guys it’a not big deal because your families and children will be safe not our.. most iranian just want peace we are not that different from you.. Edit: thank you my brothers and sisters for your support, I am overwhelmed by your (mostly) kind messages it gives me a tiny bit of hope in this time of chaos.I know our government in Iran is not good they are a minority with guns and weapons controlling a country mostly youth who are pro west and liberal to stay in power. That being said everything was peaceful under the nuclear agreement even American navy members were captured and immediately released this Trump has ruined this and our already right wing government has become aggressive. I want change in our country but it must happen from the inside not through war and killing this will only make majority of youth on your side despise you because no doubt their lives will be ruined.
His thanks to the other commenters for their replies is due to them having posted something like 355 replies when last I looked, mostly supporting him. And I don’t doubt that Agha Cage is right. There are right-wing hawks in the Iranian government, who’d love to push the country even further to the right by engaging in a war with America and the West. And of course, if we did invade, most of the Iranian young people would hate us. Because however much they hate their government, they, like everyone else, loves their country. The late Corinne Souza, whose father was an Iraqi dissident, said pretty much the same about our invasion of her father’s country. Before we invaded, there were Iraqis willing to work with us to bring down Saddam Hussein’s regime. But this stopped after we invaded, because we were the aggressors. And it’ll happen again if we invade Iran, along with all the other horrors we’ve seen in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East.
I’ve made it very clear that I have little time or sympathy for the Iranian government. They are oppressive theocrats, impoverishing their people and plundering their country to enrich themselves. But the Islamic revolution which installed the current regime came about because we oppressed and exploited them. We overthrew the last of the Qajar shahs in the early 20th century and installed the Pahlavis as the Qajars couldn’t repay the loans we’d given them to modernise the country. When Mossadeq nationalised the Iranian oil industry in the 1950s, we arranged a coup to overthrow him as Prime Minister. This led to the Shah’s ‘White Revolution’ in which the monarchy seized absolute power, ruling through torture and fear. I’ve met Iranians over here, whose friends vanished, thanks to the Shah’s murderous secret police. Florence, one of the great commenters on this blog, was active in the British protests in the 1970s against Britain’s support for murderous Fascistic tyrants like the Shah. If we join the Americans in an invasion of Iran, it won’t be to liberate the Iranian people. It’ll just be like the Gulf War over again – done so that the Saudis can seize their oil reserves, the Neocons can remove another enemy of Israel, and western multinationals can loot the country and its state enterprises.
We got no business sending our courageous young women and men to lose life and limb in the Middle East again, murdering people who’ve never invaded us, simply to make the likes of Boris, Trump and the Bush family even more obscene amounts of money.
Today is Good Friday, the day when Christians across the world remember Christ’s trial by Pontius Pilate, His crucifixion and death, and look forward to His glorious resurrection three days later on Easter Sunday. St. Paul calls Christ ‘the Firstborn of the dead’, as Christians since the earliest days of the church have seen His resurrection as the precursor of what will happen to everyone at the end of time. And this belief in a general resurrection came to Christianity from Judaism, where, I believe, it is called the Olam Ha-Ba, or the World To Come. And as another Abrahamic faith, this belief in the ultimate resurrection of all humanity by the Almighty is one of the fundamental tenets of Islam.
I also feel at this time we should remember prisoners of conscience across the world, regardless of the political or religious views we hold. Like the crackdown on various dissenting religious groups, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Putin’s Russia, and atheists and the other non-Wahhabi religions and philosophies in Saudi Arabia. It’s grotesque that people belonging to either of these groups should be called ‘terrorists’ simply for holding the views they do, without harming anyone.
On a more positive note, I just wish all the readers of this blog a great and happy Easter weekend, whether they are religious or otherwise.
In this clip from RT, Going Underground’s host Afshin Rattansi speaks to Vanessa Beeley, a British journalist, who has covered the war in Syria. He asks her about Theresa May’s condemnation of the blockade against Yemen, which is resulting in a terrible famine that is starving about half of the population or so. Surely this shows that Britain has good intentions in the Middle East.
In reply, Beeley states very clearly that she cannot agree that Britain has any good intentions in the Middle East. Britain tried to undermine the UN Resolution 2216, which condemned the blockade. Britain’s military industrial complex has profited immensely from arms sales to Saudi Barbaria, and British specialists were in the command and control centre in Riyadh helping select targets. She openly describes May’s gesture as ‘faux humanitarianism’.
I think this is part of a rather longer interview, which I intend to put up, in which she talks about how the British and western media is deliberately presenting a false image of the corruption in the NGOs operating in Syria. One of them, the Adam Smith something-or-other, was the subject of a Panorama documentary. This revealed that massive sums of money were being taken out of the organisation by Islamist terrorist groups, through the use of payments to fictional people on the payroll, and even people, who’d died.
Beeley described this as ‘a controlled explosion’. The media and political establishment couldn’t keep it secret, and so did a limited expose of what was going on in order to divert attention from corruption and atrocities committed elsewhere. Like in the White Helmets, who are lauded as non-partisan heroes, but in fact are as partisan as everyone else. They have saved people, who aren’t members of their organisation, but this is just occasional, if they happen to be there. They don’t put themselves out of the way to do it, as is claimed on mainstream TV. Moreover, a number of their members put up posts and Tweets praising the Islamists. So definitely not the whiter-than-the-driven-snow heroes we’ve all been told. Beely made the case in that longer video that this cover up is because the White Helmets are becoming a global brand. They’re branching out in South America, Brazil and the Hispanic nations.
As for the Adam Smith whatever, I’ve had suspicions of any organisation that puts up his name ever since the Adam Smith Institute emerged under the Thatcher. These were manic privatisers, who wanted the health service sold off and the welfare state destroyed. This Adam Smith organisation isn’t connected with them, but still, I’m suspicious. It looks far too much like another wretched free enterprise group come to implement western privatisation under the guise of humanitarianism. In which case, you can expect the same results free enterprise has had on Iraq, Libya, Algeria and the rest of the Arab world. And indeed the world as a whole. I think the government of Algeria, or one of the Arab states in the Maghreb had been pursuing a socialist economy, before the recession of the 70s/80. They then followed the trend and started privatising industry. This made matters even worse, poverty grew, and people started looking to the Islamists for aid. The American-mandated free enterprise policy in Iraq after the invasion resulted in 60 per cent unemployment. This is in a poor country. Ordinary Iraqis were actually better off materially under Saddam Hussein. Hussein was a monster, without question. But they had access to free healthcare, free education, and relatively secular society in which women enjoyed a high status. They could go out to work, and felt safe going home at night.
The invasion destroyed all that. Instead you had sectarian violence, which did not exist in Baghdad previously, or if it did, it was at a much lower level than under the western occupation. You had General MacChrystal running death squads against the Sunnis. Valuable state assets were privatised and sold to American multinationals, and tariff barriers torn down so that the world and especially the Chinese dumped all the stuff they couldn’t sell on the country, driving native Iraqi firms out of business.
You can find the same wretch story in Libya. Gaddafi was a monster, but as I’ve pointed out ad nauseam he did some good things for his country. They were the most prosperous country in Africa. Gaddafi gave his people free education and healthcare. Women had high status. He was not racist, and supported Black Africans from further south. He saw himself as an African leader, and did was he thought was best for the continent. This involved using the Islamists to knock off his rivals, both in Africa and the Arab world. But they were never allowed to recruit or attack his own country.
Now there are something like two parliaments in the country, the free education and healthcare is gone, and the Islamists are running riot. The women connected with his party have been raped, and Black Africans are savagely persecuted by the Islamists. Slavery has returned, with these barbarians selling them at auctions. And this is partly motivated by hatred of Blacks for benefiting from Gaddafi’s rule.
All the claims that these military interventions are for humanitarian reasons are a lie. They’re so western industry can get its grubby, blood-stained mitts on these countries’ precious industries and natural resources. Oh yes, and they’re to help the Saudis spread their own, viciously intolerant version of Islam, and Israel to destroy possible Arab rivals and threats in the region. Plus the fact that the American military-industrial complex loathes Arab nationalism, secularism and socialism with a passion as the next worst thing to Communism. And our European leaders, Cameron, Blair, Sarko and now Theresa May have been enthusiastic accomplices, even the ringleaders, of these assaults on independent, sovereign states.
For the sake of global peace, we need to kick May out and put Corbyn in. His work for disarmament and peace was recognised last week when the International Peace Bureau in Geneva awarded him the Sean McBride Peace Prize, along with Noam Chomsky and the All-Okinawa Committee against Henoko New Bridge. But this received almost zero coverage in the lamestream media.
General Smedley Butler was right was right: War is a racket. Or to put it another way, was is business, and under neoliberalism, business is good.
I’m sick of it. Brits of all faiths and none, of all races and varieties thereof are sick of it. Americans are sick of it. But it means big bucks to the arms manufacturers and the military-industrial complex. And so Obama, who now describes himself as a ‘moderate Republican’, increased the wars in the Middle East to seven. Trump, following the demands of AIPAC and the Christian Zionist lobby, wants to start a war with Iran, if Killary and the Democrats don’t push him into a military confrontation with Putin and the Chinese first.
The people fighting and dying in these wars are working and lower-middle class young men and women. Service people of immense courage and professionalism, whose lives should not be squandered for such squalid profiteering. Old-school Conservatives in the American armed forces despised the neocons around George Dubya as Chickenhawks. They were more than happy to send American forces into countries that had never directly threatened the US. But when it came to fighting themselves, they lacked the courage they expected in others. Bush and the others had all scarpered abroad during the Vietnam War. Generalissimo Trumpo had three exemption from national service during the Vietnam War. He claimed that he had growth in one of his feet that made walking difficult. Still didn’t stop him playing college basketball though.
During the Middle Ages, kings led their armies from the front. In ancient Germanic society, that was the prime function of kings. The Romans noted there were two types of kings in the barbarian tribes that later overran them. There were hereditary religious leaders, who acted as judges. And then there were elected kings, who took charge of the tribe’s armies. They were often elected only for a single campaign. And the Roman Empire itself basically arose through the seizure of supreme power by military dictators, like Julius Caesar and then Augustus. I think the last British general, who physically led his army into battle was in the 19th century.
Would our leaders be so keen on sending good, brave men and women to their deaths and mutilation, if they had to stand there and personally lead them into battle. Shouting like Henry IV, ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends!’ If they personally had to put on the heavy, cumbersome battle armour, or wear hot and unpleasant chem suits in case of a gas attack. If they themselves had to feel some of the squaddies’ natural fear of suffering a hit, of seeing their friends and comrades die, or lose limbs and other organs. If they personally saw the civilian casualties, the ordinary men, women and children driven out of their homes, or killed as ‘collateral damage’. Dying and suffering from wounds, famine, disease. If they had to face the horrors that have scarred decent, strong women and men, leaving them mental wrecks. Sights no civilised person, whether in Britain, Damascus, Cairo, New York or wherever, should ever see.
No, of course they wouldn’t. They’d run screaming to their offices to get their spin doctors to find some bullsh*t excuse why they were too valuable to fight, er, things need doing back home, terribly sorry and so forth.
Saint Augustine said in his City of God that kingdoms without justice are giant robberies. It was true when he wrote in the 5th century AD, and it’s true now. Whatever the gloss put on it by the corporatists and the religious right.
There’s been some coverage here in the west of the underground Christian church in China. China’s a Communist state, and although religion has been allowed to re-emerge after its ferocious persecution under Mao, it is heavily regulated. There’s an official church, which has to agree to and abide by the various conditions set down by the Communist authorities. Alongside this is a growing underground church, that meets in secret and is heavily persecuted because it is outside the control of the Communist party.
Fewer people, however, are aware that there’s also a growing underground church in Iran. The Anglican church in Tehran, which is recognised and tolerated, is remarkable for a Christian church in a Middle Eastern, Islamic country, in that most of its members are indigenous Iranians. About three per cent of the Iranian population is composed of Armenian Christians, who have their own churches. But outside these official, tolerated churches, there is a secret church of indigenous Iranians, who are turning from Islam to Christ. Apostasy is banned under Islamic, sharia law. The penalty has traditionally been death, although some law schools were of the opinion that the death penalty could only be imposed if the apostate then blasphemed against Islam. Other legal scholars stated that the apostate from Islam should be imprisoned for three days so that they could reconsider their decision to abandon Islam. If they repented during this time, they would be spared. This means that those Iranians converting to Christianity do so at the risk of their own lives. They are savagely persecuted and imprisoned. At the same time, the Iranian authorities surround the Armenian churches with armed police to make sure that only Armenians go there to worship. The Armenians have adopted a series of tactics to help their Iranian co-religionists avoid the police. One of these is teaching them a few words or phrases of Armenian, so that they can pass themselves off as Armenian Christians, and so avoid arrest, imprisonment and torture.
This isn’t widely known in the West, and I don’t think this is an accident. America is a profoundly religious country, but I think the support of religious freedom by the American military-industrial complex is, and has always been, cynically utilitarian. There was a massive campaign of Christian evangelism and preaching in America itself during the Cold War. You think of all the extreme right-wing Christian movements that emerged in the 50s, like Moral Re-Armament, and so on, that were dedicated not just to spreading Christianity, but also combatting Communism. Or, for that matter, just about any other left-wing, progressive movement. Even if it was led by other Christians. Communism is an aggressively materialistic political system. Marx actually wrote little about religion, beyond his famous words that it was ‘the opium of the people’, but he certainly believed his system was an extension of the materialist doctrines of the ancient world and the Enlightenment philosophes. He took over their critique of religion and that of Ludwig Feuerbach, which viewed religion as a projection of humanity’s own alienated essence, and extended it. Lenin himself was bitterly anti-religious, and the persecution of religious believers – Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Taoists, the followers of indigenous shamanic religions and so on – was state policy in many Communist countries.
Hence the promotion of Christianity and the defence of religious freedom against a persecuting, literally Satanic, evil empire was a useful ideological tool for the capitalist leaders of society during the Cold War. Thus much of the religious literature published during the Cold War stressed the anti-Christian nature of Communism to the point where this overshadowed the other atrocities and crimes against human rights committed by these regimes. Such as the artificial famines Stalin created during the collectivisation of agriculture, the deportation of ethnic minorities to Siberia and the persecution of dissenting socialist and Communist intellectuals.
But very little is said about the persecution of the underground Iranian church. And I don’t think this is an accident. I think it’s because it doesn’t serve American geopolitical interests, and those of its allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia. China’s a Communist country, and so atheism is the official state dogma, even if it is not as rigorously enforced as it has been. But Iran and the other Middle Eastern countries are religious states to a greater or lesser degree. And American foreign policy in the Middle East has consisted of supporting theocratic and Islamic fundamentalist regimes and movements against secular Arab nationalism or socialism, as these are seen as too close to Communism. Hence the hostility to Gamal Nasser’s Egypt, which was socialist, but not Communist. In the case of Saudi Arabia, America and the West forged an alliance that goes back to the 1920s. In return for the right to exploit the country’s oil, America and the West pledged themselves to support the country and its rulers. Saudi Arabia is an extremely intolerant state, where the only permitted religion is Wahhabi Islam. No other religions are tolerated. There are indigenous Shi’a Muslims, but they are also savagely persecuted. Their villages do not have running water or electricity, and their religious literature and holy books will be confiscated if they are discovered by the authorities. A few years ago the Grand Mufti, the religious head of Saudi Arabia, declared that the Shi’a were heretics ‘worthy of death’, a chilling endorsement of religious genocide. And the Shi’a aren’t the only non-Wahhabi community to be subjected to his prayers for pious violence. The other year he also led prayers calling on Allah to destroy Jews and Christians.
Saudi Arabia is one of the main sponsors of Islamist terrorism. It is not Iran, nor Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11. 17 out of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, and the trail from them goes all the way to the top of Saudi society. They were active sponsors of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, which became the Taliban. The current Saudi king and his head of intelligence were also responsible for funding and aiding al-Qaeda and ISIS in their attacks on the other Islamic nations of the region. In continuing to support Saudi Arabia, America, Britain and the other western countries are supporting a viciously intolerant state that persecutes other religions, including Christians.
The other pillar of western interests and foreign policy in the Middle East is Israel. Israel is a White, European/American settler state, and it looks towards Europe and America rather than the Middle East. And it’s also religiously intolerant. The official state religion is Orthodox Judaism. Israel defines itself as the Jewish state, and the Law of Return stipulates that only Jews may become citizens. The Israeli government has also repeatedly refused calls to allow the Palestinians, who fled the country in 1948 fearing massacre by the Israelis to return, as this would upset the ethnic composition of the country. At the same time the Israeli state has pursued a policy of ethnic cleansing, expelling and massacring the indigenous Palestinian population. And this includes Christians.
Before the foundation of Israel in 1948, 25 per cent of the population of Palestine was Christian. Now it’s only one per cent. The literature on the dwindling Christian community states that this is because of pressure from both Israel and Islam. The Christian community has suffered persecution from Muslims, as they are seen as traitors, even though many Palestinian Christians are as bitterly opposed to the Israeli occupation as their compatriots. However, other historians have also pointed out that traditionally, Muslims and Christians coexisted peacefully in Palestine. In one of the papers on Israel and Palestine in Albert Hourani’s book, The Modern Middle East, it is stated that Muslim Palestinians traditionally regarded Christian churches as mawsin, an Arabic term which means holy, sacrosanct, and were thus treated with respect. Palestinian Christians, however, have complained about their treatment by the Israeli authorities. Special permits are required before new churches may be built, and the authorities are not keen to give them.
And like Muslims, Christians have also been attacked by Israeli racist extremists. A little while ago a Christian monastery in Israel was the subject of a price-tag attack by Israeli extremists. The price-tag attacks are acts of destruction in retaliation for Palestinian attacks on Jews or Jewish property. They’re called ‘price-tag’ because the attackers leave a mock price-tag behind giving some cost for the damage done. The Israeli authorities were keen to distance their country from the attack, and tried to present it as somehow unique. But I got the distinct impression that this is far from the case. About ten or so years ago Channel 4 screened a programme by a Black presenter, in which he went to Israel and covered the maltreatment of Christians there. This included an attempt by a group of Orthodox Jews to terrorise the members of a church of Messianic Jews. In fact, the Messianic Jews were saved by the Muslim doorman, who effectively blocked the Orthodox posse from coming in. And the programme gave the impression that this was actually quite common, and that it was frequently Muslims, who saved Christians from violence at the hands of Jewish settlers.
This is all kept very hidden from the American Christian public. The tours of Israel arranged by right-wing Christian Zionist groups in America and the Israeli authorities will not allow American or western Christians to meet their Palestinian co-religionists. And while there’s a considerable amount of information on the web about Israeli intolerance and persecution of Christians, in the mainstream western media it is always presented as the fault of Muslims. And the right-wing press, such as the Times and Telegraph, have published any number of articles presenting Israel as the protector of the region’s Christians, often with quotes from a Christian Arab to that effect. Thus the Christian Zionist right in America are supporting a state, which has expelled the majority of its indigenous Christians from its borders and continues to limit their freedom of worship. Just as it does Muslims.
Some of the motivation behind this Christian Zionism is based in apocalyptic theology. Christian Zionism started in the 19th century, when some Christians decided that they wanted to refound the ancient state of Israel in order to bring about Christ’s Second Coming. This now includes a final battle between good and evil. This used to be between the forces of capitalism and Communism, but has now morphed into the forces of the Christian West and Israel versus Islam. At the same time, the American Conservatives started supporting Israel in compensation for the defeats America had suffered in the Vietnam War, so that American Christian leaders declared that the Israelis shared their values.
I also think there’s an element of religious imperialism here as well. In the 19th century British explorers to other parts of the Christian world, including Greece when it was dominated by the Ottoman Empire, and Abyssinia, declared that these nations’ traditional churches were backwards and obstacles to their peoples’ advancement. They therefore recommended that they should be destroyed, and the Greeks, Ethiopians or whoever should embrace one of the western forms of Christianity instead. it wouldn’t surprise me if the same attitude permeated American Zionist Christian attitudes towards Middle Eastern Christians. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the same kind of Christian fundamentalist pastors, who rant about how ‘Satanic’ Roman Catholicism is, also don’t believe that the ancient churches of the Middle East – the Syriac and Coptic Churches – are also not really Christian.
Thus American imperialism, and the Christian Zionists in the case of Israel, are supporting states dedicated to removing the indigenous Christian communities from their parts of the Middle East.
And American Christians are more fervent in their Zionism than American Jews. Norman Finkelstein has repeatedly stated and demonstrated how American Jews were traditionally uninterested in Israel. And Tony Greenstein, a Jewish British critic of Zionism, has also shown that the majority of Jews around the world wished to remain in the Diaspora, but live as equal, respected citizens of the countries in which they were born. There are a growing number of Jewish Americans, who despise Israel because of the way it persecutes its indigenous Arab population. This includes Jews, who have suffered genuine anti-Semitism abuse and violence.
Within Israel itself, there is opposition to the official religious policy of the state. There is a sizable minority that would like a total separation between synagogue and state. Other Israelis don’t go this far, but do want Israel to become more secular. And there is tension between Reform Jews, and the Orthodox, who do not regard their theologically more liberal co-religionists to be proper Jews, and may even regard them as anti-Jewish.
But American Conservatives are unable or unwilling to understand Middle Eastern Christians, or why they would not want to support Israel. A few years ago Ted Cruz addressed a meeting of Middle Eastern Christians in America. This went well, until he started urging them to support Israel, at which point he was surprised to find that he was being booed. Part of his speech urged them to support the Israelis, because of the terrible persecution of Jews in the past. But the Palestinians have repeatedly rejected this argument, pointing out that they are being persecuted by the Israelis because of the way Europeans persecuted Jews. Cruz walked off, making comments about anti-Semitism, if I recall correctly. He failed to understand that to his audience, the Israelis were those doing the persecuting.
And this ignorance and the views and political situation of indigenous Middle Eastern Christians seems to be common to elite America. It’s shown by Trump’s decision to relocate the American embassy to Jerusalem, which has been supported by the leader of the Democrats in Congress, Chuck Schumer, and Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton. All of whom will stress their identity as Christians when it suits them.
It isn’t just rising Islamism and Muslim intolerance in the Middle East that is a threat to the indigenous Christian communities there. It is also American imperialism, and the country’s alliance with the ethnic and religiously intolerant regimes of Israel and Saudi Arabia. Thus, the media only covers Christian persecution when they can blamed it on Islam, But when it’s awkward for the American, and western military-industrial complex, the media is silent about it.
I know I’ve been late getting round to this, so apologies. This is just to give my thoughts and prayers for the 11 people, who were attacked outside Finsbury Park mosque on Friday by Darren Osborne. One man was killed and another nine were injured.
Finsbury Park mosque was at the centre of a storm of outrage nearly a decade and a half ago, as it was one of the centres of Salafist hate preaching in Britain, under an imam whose sermons advocated terrorism and violence against non-Muslims. The I newspaper reported that there have been four previous terrorist attacks against it. Its history is undoubtedly the reason it was targeted now.
However, the newspaper also reported that a new management had taken over the running of the mosque in 2005, and had cleared out the jihadis and their bug-eyed supporters. The people Osborne attempted to kill were not Islamist terrorists, but ordinary Muslims seeking to practice their faith in peace.
Mike over at Vox Political has noted the strong role the Tory press has played in whipping up hatred against Islam, with a selection of headlines from papers like the Scum, Star and Heil. He also shows a headline from the Times, which shows the double-standard for this type of attack. When a Muslim commits an atrocity, they’re a terrorist. When it’s a White, non-Muslim, he’s a lone wolf. This hypocrisy was picked out and attacked by some of the commenters on social media.
People condemning this attack, and giving their best wishes and solidarity to British Muslims included Gary Lineker and Susanna Reid. It was heartening and inspiring to see members of the local community coming together to support each other after the attack and against further bigotry and hate.
My guess is that Osborne was probably motivated by outrage at the recent terrorist attacks in Manchester and London. The article in the I also noted that other islamophobic incidents had risen sharply. This needs to end.
It’s firstly an attack on the innocent. Despite what the EDL and similar organisations are trying to tell everyone, British Islam is very diverse. It’s a mosaic of different sects and ethnicities. Some of them are very devout and traditional, others much more westernised and secular. They aren’t a uniform mass, and the jihadis really are only a minority. One of the complaints of ordinary, peaceable Muslims long before this was that their demonstrations against the bigots and preachers of hate were ignored by the media. This incident unfortunately shows what happens when the counter-demonstrations to the preachers of hate are ignored.
Secondly, Osborne’s attack and those like it are playing into the jihadis’ hands. They’re exactly what they want to happen. The last thing they want is for Muslim and non-Muslim to live in peace in this country. They want people to fear, hate and persecute Muslims, so that the Muslim community will be alienated from the rest of the British people. They want people to hate Muslims, to radicalise the Muslim community so that they can pose as its defenders.
The jihadis are, of course, massive hypocrites. Those captured by Salafist terror groups, like ISIS and al-Qaeda in Iraq and Syria have said that far from being devout, God-fearing servants of Allah, these creatures didn’t even have a Qu’ran. And as they believe that only their, bitterly intolerant version of Islam is correct, they’ve also murdered other Muslims as well as Christians and Yezidis. More Muslims have been butchered in total around the world by these grotty bigots than people of other faiths. And Muslims in this country have tried to warn the authorities of the dangers from Islamist terrorists, and been ignored.
There’s been a reason for that. As we’ve seen from the example of Salman Abedi, many of these terrorists were jihadis, who had been given asylum in Britain by successive British governments from Maggie Thatcher to Tony Blair for their assistance attacking and overthrowing secular Middle Eastern rulers. Several of them were Mujahideen from Afghanistan, who were allowed to settle in Britain to preach hate by Thatcher for their part in the proxy war against the Soviet Unions. Abedi and his family were members of an Islamist group dedicated to overthrowing Colonel Gaddafi, for which purpose they were allowed to travel to Libya. The wider Libyan community in Britain, by contrast, is well integrated into British society.
The commenters on social media is also remarked on Theresa May’s immense hypocrisy in condemning racism and bigotry, while it was her, as home secretary, who sent round vans urging illegal immigrants to hand themselves over to the authorities for deportation.
If we’re serious about tackling racism and terrorism, there can be no double standards. White racists and Fascists have to be condemned as much as Islamist militants. No one should have to live in fear simply because of their race or religion. The news reports after the attack covered how many Muslim women are now learning self-defence, fearing that they will be the next victims. Other Muslims told how their mothers were afraid to go out. This is disgusting.
And we should absolutely stop giving any aid and support to the Salafists in the Middle East. At the moment, Britain has followed American in supporting the Islamist groups in Syria seeking to overthrow Assad. We’re doing this, not because Assad is a dictator-he is, but that’s not the reason. We’re doing it simply from Cold War geopolitics. Assad’s an ally of the Russians and Iran. His is a secular, Arab socialist regime, which to Cold War America was synonymous with Communism. He’s blocking a natural gas pipeline, which the Gulf Arab states, like Qatar and Saudi Arabia, want to run into Europe. And so corporate America and the Wahhabi theocrats in Saudi Arabia want him overthrown.
And if that happens, it’ll lead to more violence and butchery against the Syrian people, and become another hotbed for Islamist terrorism.
The war on terrorism has failed. Let’s stop creating new terrorists, and giving aid and sanctuary to those that already exist. Let’s not confuse their ideology of hate and violence with that of the peaceful Muslim majority.
And stop further attacks on decent, ordinary people, whether they’re White, Black, Muslim, non-Muslim or whatever.
The last response on Mike’s piece about it is a reply to Susanna Reid by Yasmin A. Chaudhury, who wrote
Hate never ever wins. Only love does – it is deadliest, silent weapon and costs nothing.
Or as the Romans said ‘Amor vincet omnia’ – love conquers all.
I gather that the Tories are today trying to resurrect the tired old canard that Corbyn supports terrorism, because he, like many other MPs, met and supported talks with members of Sinn Fein in the 1980s. In fact, the Labour leader, like very many of his parliamentary fellows at the time, urged talking to the Irish republicans as a way of finding a peaceful resolution to the Troubles. I also have no doubt that he was, like many other Labour MPs such as Clare Short, also acutely aware of how badly Northern Ireland’s Roman Catholics were discriminated against.
But Mr Corbyn was respected by both sides. He has been praised by both the Irish Times and the Belfast Telegraph for his efforts for the people of the Emerald Isle. And the wife of the Reverend Ian Paisley described him as courteous, polite and ‘a gentleman’.
Which is obviously not the way the wife of one of the provinces most fervent Loyalists would describe a genuine terrorist fanatic.
Labour were vilified not because they wanted to talk to the Nationalists, but because they were open about doing so. At the same time Maggie Thatcher was jumping up and down on her soap boxes screaming abuse at the Labour party as supporters of terrorism, she herself was holding talks in secret with the IRA. One high-ranking republican commander has even written about, describing how strange it was to be saluted by a British squaddie when he visited an army base as part of the talks.
Now to compound the Tories’ hypocrisy, there’s a photo of another person of the right meeting Gerry Adams. Yes, it’s that well-known opponent of global terrorism, Donald Trump.
Mike has the incriminating picture of the two together on his article about it, and writes
The image undermines everything Mrs May has been saying about the terror threat. Her hypocrisy is revealed.
Both Mr Corbyn and Mr Trump had talks with Mr Adams, but she vilifies Corbyn and venerates Trump.
It is clear that she has no principles on this issue – none at all – other than kowtowing to power.
She is nothing more than a playground bully – and a failed one at that.
Mike also observes that while she enjoys bullying and intimidating weaker nations, she will do everything she can to please countries that are stronger, like the US, China and doubtless many others.
The countries she believes are weaker won’t be bullied by her, and so she will fail massively at the Brexit negotiations.
He concludes
She is a hypocrite and a liability to the security of the United Kingdom and she has to go.
On Thursday – if you vote Labour – you can make that happen.
Looking at the photo of Adams and Trump, you could be quite justified in wondering who is the real terrorist fanatic there. Parliamentary papers released about the negotiations between the British and Sinn Fein state that Adams always gave ‘reasonable’ and ‘considered’ replies to the questions his British interlocutors put to him.
Furthermore, after the peace deal was negotiated, he and Ian Paisley became staunch supporters of the deal and close friends. So close they became known as ‘the Chuckle Brothers’. Mr Adams also travelled to Spain in an attempt to negotiate a similar peace between the Basque terrorists, ETA, and Spain.
Trump has done the exact opposite. Despite his noise about combatting terrorism, he has just concluded a massive sale of American arms and military equipment to Saudi Arabia. A country, whose Wahhabi absolute monarchs and princes have actively sponsored global Islamist terrorism, backing ISIS, the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
And those arms will be used by the Saudis to butcher innocents, including children, in Yemen, for no other reason than that their victims of Shi’a, another branch of the Muslim faith, whom the Saudis vehemently despise. It wasn’t that long ago that one of the leading Saudi clerics declared that they were ‘enemies of the faith’ and ‘worthy of death’.
And the Saudis have no qualms about threatening Britain with terrorist atrocities when it suits them. When Blair began investigations into corruption between BAE and the Saudis, Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi National Security Council, flew to Britain to tear him off a strip. During his tirade, Bandar threatened Blair was ‘another 7/7’.
The IRA were killers and murderers, but they emerged from legitimate social and historic grievances in Ulster. Bandar threatened Britain with another atrocity purely from pique at the possibility of having his nation’s greed and venality exposed.
The Americans are also funding Islamist terrorists in Syria, as are the Saudis, against the Assad’s secular, Arab nationalist regime. The Ba’ath party there are no angels, but they’re not the absolute monsters they’ve been painted by American propaganda either. And the Islamist terrorists America and the West have funded, armed and trained – al-Qaeda, the al-Nusra Front and even ISIS, have committed horrific atrocities themselves.
And if we are talking about western governments with terrorist connections, we can go back once more to Maggie Thatcher. Under her, the British government gave information to Loyalist paramilitaries, using them as death squads against prominent IRA members and republicans.
She also implanted SAS men within regular army units, who were also used as assassins and death squads, just as she and her friend, Ronald Reagan, were staunch supporters of Pinochet and the real Fascist butchers in South and Central America.
May and Trump offer nothing but hypocrisy, violence and more war.
Jeremy Corbyn, on the other hand, is a man of peace, who wants to stop arms sales to Saudi Arabia, and who will set up a ministry of peace and disarmament.
He isn’t going to be soft on terrorism. Far from it – he will strengthen our security forces to enable them to combat it. But he will also stop funding and arming the very people behind it.
Don’t be taken in by Tory lies and deceit.
Please, vote for Corbyn tomorrow for a safer, saner, more peaceful world.
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