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Friday, May 26, 2006 |
The question was first put in Harper's Magazine. Are we allowed to write that we would like to kill the president? Now George Galloway has raised the ante by stating that in the view of people attacked by Blair it would be morally justified to kill Blair.
Guardian: "George Galloway has said the assassination of Tony Blair would be 'morally justified' given his support for the war in Iraq.
The anti-war Respect MP said a suicide bomb attack on the Prime Minister would be 'morally equivalent to ordering the deaths of thousands of innocent people in Iraq as Blair did'.
The controversial left-winger added that he was not calling for such an attack and that he would tip off the authorities if he knew of one. But his remarks provoked a furious response, with one Labour MP calling him 'disgraceful' and 'twisted'."
Galloway is right. For pacifists and anti-war protesters the question is merely hypothetical. They would not kill, nor would Galloway.
The matter for Blair and Bush is quite different. They use extreme violence and have started an illegal war. If we are to apply the same rules to all belligerent parties then it is completely justified to kill Blair from the point of view of the nation attacked by Blair. Would it have been moral to kill Hitler? It certainly would have been morally justified.
Of course, the outrage of the Blair camp is largely determined by their predominance in the ideological field. They decide what is allowed and what is not allowed. Nevertheless, purely objectively and morally Blair is on the same quicksand as anyone using violence. It is only justified in case of self-defense.
The problem always is that violent criminals (like Bush and Blair) tend to impose their laws (or lack of) on others and that pacifists don't use violence to oust them, which gives the criminal an advantage over decent people.
Let's see now how far the discourse and 'political correctness' (or incorrectness) will allow Galloway to state the obvious.
Respect: "What I did make abundantly clear is that I would like to see Tony Blair in front of a war crimes tribunal for sending this country to war illegally and for the appalling human consequences which resulted."
4:27:34 PM 
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Ecademy: "Just under 1 in 4 people in the UK - or nearly 13 million people - live in poverty, according to the latest figures. This includes nearly 1 in 3 children, almost 4 million.
One recent survey showed that about 6.5 million adults go without essential clothing, such as a warm waterproof coat, because of lack of money.
Over 10.5 million people live in financial insecurity: they can't afford to save, insure their house contents, or spend even small amounts on themselves. About 9.5 million can't afford adequate housing - heated, free from damp, and in a decent state of decoration."
Oxfam: "With a quarter of Britain's population living below the national poverty line, and three million households in debt to door-to-door money lenders, life is bleak for many in this apparently affluent country. Poverty rose sharply during the last two decades, particularly in the 1980s."
In Britain you can blame Margaret Thatcher for the catastrophe, but this happens all over the world where deregulation and privatisation are the new dogmas.
11:32:13 AM
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Yesterday Dutch public NOS tv news commented on the ENRON verdict by saying this was a victory for the US government and that its campaign against corporate crime was successful. As usual the pro-US/Bush bias is evident.
In fact, this is a defeat for Bush as the ENRON gang were his supporters and friends. This is a success for that part of the judicature that is not corrupted yet and for the people.
TheNation: "The man who paid many of the biggest bills for George Bush's political ascent, Enron founder Kenneth Lay, has been found guilty of conspiracy and fraud almost five years after his dirty dealings created the greatest corporate scandal in what will be remembered as an era of corporate crime.
The same jury that convicted Lay found Enron's former chief executive, Jeffrey Skilling, guilty on 19 counts of fraud, conspiracy, making false statements and engaging in insider trading.
Lay, who President Bush affectionately referred to as 'Kenny-boy' when the two forged an alliance in the 1990s to advance Bush's political ambitions and Lay's business prospects, contributed $122,500 to Bush's gubernatorial campaigns in Texas.
A report issued by Public Citizen in February, 2001, months before the Enron scandal broke, identified Lay as 'a long-time Bush family friend and an architect of Bush's policies on electricity deregulation, taxes and tort reform while Bush was Texas governor'.
After Bush gave Enron exactly what it wanted in 1999, by signing legislation that deregulated the state's electrical markets, Lay knew he had found his candidate for president."
'No one is above the law', deputy attorney-general Paul McNulty said. 'We will continue to pursue relentlessly this type of corruption.'
Let this be a warning to Bush and his cronies.
11:22:14 AM
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