[Marxism] Arrest war criminal and mass murderer Prime Mininster Tony Blair now.

["Nasir Khan" <nasir.khan@xxxxxxx>]

Source: GEORGE BARNSBY DAILY BLOG NO.160 MONDAY 21ST JUNE  2007

www.gbpeopleslibrary.co.uk


<span style="font-style:italic;">ARREST BLAIR, WAR CRIMINAL, SERIAL KILLER AND 
VANDAL NOW.
</span>
    Simon Jenkins in the Guardian 8 June has been the first to record that 
British and American collusion in the pillaging of Iraq's heritage is a scandal 
that will outlive the illegal and racist war. Under Saddam you were likely to 
be arrested and shot if you stole an antiquity. Under the US and Britain you 
are liable to be shot if you don't steal one. Iraq is the site of some of the 
irreplaceable Wonders of the World. For instance Ur is reputedly the oldest 
city on earth, but the great zigguratt is pock marked with shrapnel and its 
national Museum in Baghdad has been looted not only by permission of the 
American but with their active participation.

     Blair's crimes are those of war criminal,  serial killer and  cultural 
vandal and it is no longer fanciful to point the example of the Nazi war 
criminals in 1945. They were charged at a newly invented War Crimes Tribunal in 
the heart of a ruined Germany at Nuremberg in a specially built prison and 
court premises with mass murder and crimes against humanity.

     Blair's trial will take place under  different circumstances. For instance 
he might be Impeached, as recently suggested by General Michael Rose. This has 
not been done since Cromwell times and might remind us of the time when 
Englishmen led the world by cutting off the head of a king and existing  for 
some years as a Republic. At the moment Parliament is too craven for 
Impeachment to succeed, but times change fast and this could be Blair's fate.

     Other  ways are possible in our more sophisticated world. For instance 
Blair might be tried at the Court that he himself set up in 2000, namely the 
Court of Human Rights. This would be poetic justice. Another possibility is the 
European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg in France. Finally Blair could be 
arraigned before the International Criminal Court dealing with the most serious 
crimes such as genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

     But it is not only Blair that we are concerned with but those who have 
aided and abetted him. Chief of these is Gordon Brown who seems not only eager 
to pick up the bloody mantle of Blair but to add war crimes of his own. Then 
there is the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith who not only criminally declared 
the war in Iraq legal and thus    gave Blair his excuse to support the war, but 
has supported Blair in every other illegal act that Blair has performed.
     Next we should mention several of those currently competing for the post 
of Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, a post Brown, assuming that he becomes 
Prime Minister, could abolish with  a snap of his fingers. I am thinking 
particularly of Peter Hain, Harriet Harman, Alan Johnson and even Hilary Benn 
if he doesn't back track soon, all of whom have been ministers in the Blair 
government and thus a party to his crimes. Also Hazel Blears so devoted to Tony 
Blair that it seems she is willing to go down with the sinking ship. To those 
can be added Labour MPs who continue to support the war in Iraq. Also civil 
servants and Heads of Departments often guilty of giving wrong advice and 
bludgeoning Ministers into decisions they would not have taken on their own. 
When Blair stands trial, there will be many who share his guilt.

     I would mention only one other category of people. That is journalists and 
newscaster who today have unprecedented power and are virtually the  sole means 
of our being given truthful news. I pick out Jeremy Paxman, Andrew Marr, Jon 
Snow, Kirsty Wark and Martha Kierney, all members of the ruling class through 
their education at public schools and Oxbridge who have protected Blair by 
never challenging him on the war in Iraq and in their arrogance and conceit 
have for 37 times ignored the urging of a plebeian like myself  to explain 
their actions. 

PATRIOTISM  AND LOCAL HISTORY .
      British Day, I am told has just come and gone . I have expressed myself 
before on this question but it bears repeating. I see no reason at all to be 
proud of a gynaecological  accident which saw me dropped on a slice of land 
called England where the people are much the same as those elsewhere, some 
good, some not so good and others so awful I wouldn't touch them with a barge 
pole let alone a flag pole. Of those who want to wrap the Union Jack around 
themselves and me I recall the words,  'Patriotism is the last refuge of a 
scoundrel'. often attributed to Winston Churchill, but actually said by another 
great patriotic Englishman Dr.Samuel Johnson, whose biographer, James Boswell, 
amends this to read, not the last, 'but the first' refuge of a scoundrel.

     In my search for a definition of my Englishness I recall the famous 
statement, 'I am a citizen of the world my aim is to do good'. This occurs in 
various forms including Baden Powel, but I prefer the version of Pablo Casels, 
'Love of one's country is a splendid thing, but why should love stop at the 
borders'.

     My next exemplar in the search for my Englishness is that great patriot, 
and scourge of all hypocrites and humbugs, W.S.Gilbert. You may remember that 
in the comic opera HMS Pinafore, Gilbert had  a character with a choice of 
nationality. 'He might have been a Roosian, A Frenchman or a Proosian, or 
perhaps I'tal-ien'. However after mature reflection, 'In spite of all 
temptations to belong to other nations he remained an Hinglishman, he 
rem-aaaaained an Hinglishman'. And if that is good enough for Gilbert and 
Sullivan it is good enough for me. I am an HINGLISHMAN.  

     But my best definition was that of Karl Marx, 'Workers of the World Unite, 
You have nothing to lose but your Chains'. This was certainly true of me when 
in 1939 I was conscripted to fight for 'my country' and possessed nothing but  
two suits and a bicycle. Clearly some people had much more of this country than 
I had and some were enlisting me to fight against my fellow working men in a 
war waged, like the 1st World War to re-divide the world among capitalists.

     Whether Marx's definition remains true I am still not quite sure, but I 
know that Gordon Brown, who wants to burden me with a British identity that I 
don't want and even Tristram Hunt a true English born aristocrat who writes 
eruditely on this question cannot separate my Englishness of what I am from the 
Britishness that I don't want to be saddled with.

     In the meantime, I have lived a long life, been round the world and have 
been not only a history teacher who teaches history from a text book written 
and researched by some one else, but a historian who has researched history for 
himself. And many strange thin g  s  have I discovered.

     For instance, I was brought up in the town the Romans built on the banks 
of the Thames and called Londinium. Except that the Romans didn't build it. Few 
of the invading army were Romans, most being Celtic tribesman from Western or 
Eastern Europe who had been trained to do the skilled work while the unskilled 
work was done by 'ancient Britons' of many tribes.

    The same is true of Roman roads built throughout Britain. But particular to 
my studies, the Roman road which branched off from Watling Street  and went 
through Wolverhampton which I was the first to excavate with a party of school 
children from Etheridge Secondary Modern School along the line of the road at 
Barnhurst Farm. This was built by labourers whose descendents were to become 
Mercians and who were probably too few to be able to resist the alien invaders 
of their land.

     This Mercian 'nationality' has recently been in the news from revived 
interest in the Battle of Tettenhall fought either in Tettenhall or Wednesfield 
and where possibly in Henwood  Road where I live Anglo-Saxon tribesman charged 
down the steep slope to defeat the Viking invaders who fled to their ships 
moored on Smestow Brook and thence down the Severn and back to Scandinavia with 
their ill-gotten loot. To excavate in Tettenhall or Wednesfield and turn up 
remains of tribesman or their weapons is the exciting  prospect for children 
and adults in this neck of the woods. History does mean something to us here.

     Finally I want to deal with another feature of local history. Just before 
Wolverhampton's millennial year in 1985 which is dated to the time of the 
discovery of the first written document of the charter to Wulfruna of the 
'gift' of Wolverhampton,  I discovered that Lady Wulfruna was not the gracious 
benefactress beloved of all, but the  Mrs.Thatcher of her age who received a 
gift she was not entitled to accept from a person who was not entitled to give 
it, namely the King of Wessex,  of what was virtually the whole of 
Wolverhampton.

     Inspired by my fellow midlander, Williiam Shakespeare who was 
disparagingly said to know little Latin and even less Greek, but became one of 
the world's enduring history writers, I who had no Greek or Latin or even 
Anglo-Saxon was inspired to research what was, and remains the only history of 
Wolverhampton adopting a Marxist  outlook of class struggle. The booklet 'The 
Origins of Wolverhampton to 85 0 AD'  was published by Wolverhampton Borough 
Council to celebrate the town's millennium. The booklet argued that although 
the Charter of King Ethelred to Wulfrun in 985 was the first written document 
of the town's history, it was the final act of assigning land to private 
persons land which had formerly been the property of the whole community. So 
from the time the Romans landed bringing with them a class society we have had 
ever since, in Anglo-Saxon times an unholy alliance of Church and State whereby 
the state punished all those who wished to return to a classless society and 
the Church threatened everlasting damnation to those who refused to accept the 
new religion. 

     So history is made by the common people and should be written by them, not 
as an academic exercise, but to illuminate the history of the Multicultural 
world which is emerging in the 21st century.
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