TONY
BLAIR'S PLACE IN HISTORY 
(Or
how Comrade Tony Blair got rid of Comrade Carl Marx)
Tony
Blair is far from being history even if he was forced out of his PM
position in 2007. He may become president of the European Union, a
post that may turn out to be very influential.
Yet,
we already have plenty of material to ponder on as to where Blair
stands as far as history is concerned.
To
understand the real significance of Blair's feats, one should first
remember the British and international contexts.
THE
BRITISH CONTEXT
Unlike
the US, Britain was (probably still is) a pretty backwards, class
society, where you have a well-defined establishment and a very
centralized system of government. “The privileged few” cliché
is still in play there. They don't call Diana "the people's
princess" for nothing.
The
opportunities for the average Nigel in the UK are far cry from what a
“nobody” can achieve and achieves in the US.
In
Britain, you can eventually become successful if you happen to be a
good actor and make your move to Hollywood at the right time. Even
if you are a mediocre singer, but know how to shake your anatomy, you
also have a chance.
But
that's about it, more or less. The other potential paths to success
are more or less foreclosed.
The
British were even known as the poor relative within the European
context (meaning the more prosperous north, Germany, Holland, France,
the Scandinavian region).
So,
British “laypeople” are left with three major ways to
psychologically deal with their unpleasant realities:
A.
Heavy binging
B.
Heavy watching of soccer/European football (garnered with drinking,
of course)
Since
those two can't work all the time and for everybody, people's grievances will have to
be expressed in an ideological form as well, politically.
And
here we come, the British Labour, the party that represents the
interests of the underprivileged majority of working people, those
who have to struggle most if not all the time.
What
is our solution? Nationalization of the “means of production”.
And since we are obviously the majority, we must have the political
power and those very same “means of production” at our disposal.
This
is not just the most fundamental principle Karl Marx came up with,
but even the wording is strictly his. “Ownership of the means of
production”
"To
secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their
industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be
possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the
means of production, distribution and exchange, and the
best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each
industry or service."
Clause
IV of the Labour Party manifesto, is initially authored by Sidney
Webb in November 1917 and officially adopted by the party in
1918.
Time
coincidences? November 7, 1917 is the day when Lenin's coup d'etat in
Russia succeeds and the “common ownership of the means of
production” there is a matter of brutal efficiency, mass
slaughters, and even genocide (as is the case with Ukraine).
For
those who doubt that Soviet communism was in the minds of the British
Labour thinking:
“ The
Webbs [Sydney Webb and his wife, Beatrice] were supporters of
the Soviet Union until their deaths, their book, The Truth
About Soviet Russia, being published in 1942.“
And
all that after Stalin had his pact with Hitler and all the massacres
throughout the Soviet Union, the concentration camps.
Prior
to that, the Webbs had visited the Soviet Union in 1932 and wrote a
book extolling the Soviet economic practices, predicting that "the
social and economic system of planned production for community
consumption" of the Soviet Union is going to spread to the rest
of the world.
This
is how ideology irreversibly damages human brains.
After
the Second World War, some in the leadership of the Labour party try
to get rid of Marxist nationalization but since this is the very
fundament of the entire labourite ideology at the time they fail
miserably. Clause IV is printed on every membership card of every
proud member of the British underclass.
That's
the central political principle, characterizing the British Labour
Party and the trade unions.
Labourite governments had actually nationalized very large chunks of the UK economy, making it a clumsy socialist catafalque, that was losing to all major European countries in the competition of economic growth and prosperity. Not only was most of the big business owned by the state, but about half of all Britons live in municipality owned homes.
More socialist than that were only the communist states. While Margareth Tatcher confronted and got rid the British society of this MArxist idiocy, she did so on country level. The Labour party remained the same old socialist dinosaur looking for another chance to strangle the country an the economy in its etatism.
Here is where Tony Blair comes into play. Tatcher reformed the country, Blair was supposed to reform the socialist party and its militant trade unions.
In
the early 1990s it is Tony Blair who takes over the Labour party. 
And the first thing to do is? Right, he dubs it “the Old
Labour party”. And replaces it with the so-called New Labour mantra.
What
is behind the semantics? Getting rid of the Marxists nationalisation
of the means of production, no less.
Blair
proves successful at outmaneuvering his comrades and thanks to the
cooperation of trade union leader John Prescott, operation “Death
to Karl Marx” is carried out successfully. At their conference in
1995 they finally get rid of the old Clause IV.
1. Old Labour John Prescott fighting for Clause IV 2. John Prescott transforming 3. New Labour Comrade Prescott knocking Clause IV out
This
is how, and most ironically at that, Tony Blair's most important,
historical achievement relates to a period before he even gets to 10, Downing Street.
The
Labour movement, the progressive Left will still be riddled with
people whose blood is boiling of class fury that they don't have
Clause IV anymore.
Provided
the frozen in time, or very inert at best British realities, this is
epochal. Having in mind the entire 20th century history of
UK Labour, the importance of reforming the labourites is enough for
Blair to get a monument right in the center of London.
Having a tango with Margaret Thatcher on Karl Marx's grave would be a fair representation. Just looking for a sculptor.
Once
he becomes PM, Blair would try to reform the other side of the
British equation. Decentralizing power – giving more rights to
Scottish and Welsh local governments. Trying to reform the House of
Lords. The bloke is trying all sorts of reforms with results mixed at best. No way near his previous success.
THE
INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT 
Blair
was the staunchest supporter of the US in their drive to spread
democracy and confront Slobodan Milosevic's and Saddam Hussein's
regimes, once again, to the utter disgust of the extreme Left.
The
US version of democracy involves not only political but also economic
freedoms, and economic freedoms mean private property, free
market, supply and demand mechanisms and competition (where there
always be winners and losers). It is commonly designated as liberal
democracy. In the newly liberated Eastern european countries it
is typically called even free market democracy.
Can
we expect the extreme Left (consisted of predominantly economic
losers, or disgruntled in any possible way ideologues) to approve of
Blair's support for first, Clinton's Kosovo effort, and then Bush
43 liberation of Iraq?
Of
course, not.
Blair supported and participated in Bill Clinton's bombing of Iraq in 1998 and the Kosovo campaign without any explicit authorization of the UN Security Council whatsoever.
Luckily, since Bill Clinton is not associated with big-fat-oil-corporative-warmongering imperialism the way Bush and Cheney are, the deranged Left, not sufficiently irritated in its ideological guts, let Tony Blair off the hook.
Then Blair supported the US in their military campaign against Saddam, which was authorized by Resolution 1441, and Saddam was in a 12-year consistent and open violation of the UNSC resolutions of 1990 and 1991, suspending the war and many more, enacted in between.
This time poor Tony Blair was not that lucky.
This time he had to support a big-fat-oil-corporative-warmongering imperialist (Dick Cheney) and his political appendix,(Bush 43) who equally enraged the progressive comrades in the UK and worldwide with everything even distantly related to him - upbringing, political biography, religion, corporative history.
This time the ideological intestines of all the comrades are so much convulsing that their multi-personality abilities are turned on in their full glory.
Bush lied (about Saddam's WMDs) and so did comrade Blair,
- even if German Intelligence claimed the same even before Bush 43 took office in January 2001
- even if Saddam's own top generals were convinced the regime had those
- even if in ultra-secretive totalitarian state you can't have a reliable source under any stretch of the imagination, so your intelligence estimate will for sure be educated guess, and not a lie
- even if Saddam had binary sarin shells when the deranged Left parroted Baghdad Bob's claim that the shelf-life of their unitary sarin makes their chemical weapons obsolete
They are proponents of individual rights only when it is their own civil and workers rights are concerned.
If it is about Saddam's regime, a mixture of Stalinist brutality and the Nazi principles the Baath party was built on, cuttiing people's tongues in the street, pushing people from high buildings to death, drowning people in acid baths, then, it's aaaaa, Saddam was a bad guy, but .............
But, our priorities of disgruntled losers in our own country are of a much higher priority than those tortured and maimed losers in Saddam's Iraq. Even if their basic human rights are considered by many as of higher priority than social and civil rights.
No corporate bloodsucker should blame us for our only half-hearted criticism for Saddam being no where near our vitriol against against Bush and his British poodle.
And yeah, we admit that Saddam was a bad guy, but we are saying this only half-heartedly, his crimes were committed too soon and are so inconveniently obvious. So yes, we have to pay the lip service. What a nuisance?
But don't we love and glorify Che Guevara, a butcher of the same caliber and ideology as Saddam? Of course we do. See how good we look in these nice T-shirts. And Hollywood just made another movie we are going to see tonight.
As long as there is a free market system, there will be winners and losers and their ideologues. And people like Blair will have their haters. General progress, economic growth, technological revolutions help relieve the pain, but it's not enough.
In
both places, that Blair strongly supported the US to remove dictators - former Yugoslavia and Iraq, there existed totalitarian
regimes.
Usually, Westerners have vague idea of what totalitarianism
is, if any. To have a well established totalitarian regime in given
society (compared to a developed liberal democracy) is somewhat
similar to having a living organism with all vital systems (lungs,
coronary system, brain) being overtaken by cancer cells compared to a
healthy one.
Transition
from state B (complete malignancy) to A (normal) will never be easy. Even if
ultimately successful, it would be extraordinary difficult. Cancer
structures never give up until they are totally disabled or
destroyed.
This
is the main reason why both Kosovo and Iraq are marred with problems. In Kosovo,
totalitarian Serbian and Russian structures still oppose normal
independent development of the country, apart of its own difficult evolution.
In Iraq, the Baathist guerilla
campaign and Al Qaeda terrorist attacks and assassinations proved
extremely effective.
They
had enormous influence on the public thinking in the US and the west,
mainly because the mainstream media were so anti-Bush/Blair, that
they focused on the carnages without reporting ever on the positive
transition to a completely different type of society.
They would never even hint that with all the
current problems around, Iraq is a democratic political entity, much
more democratic than post-war Italy and Japan, right after WWII, when
both were occupied and politically dominated by the US.
Since
these transformations are not easy and simple, as they usually are in
Hollywood movies, computer games, and 2-dimensional ideological vitriol, those transitions will be interpreted by the disgruntled as
complete failures.
The
Left will never accept anything else less than Iraq as complete
disaster, Bush 43 as the incarnation of the evil capitalist system
that made them such losers.
This
is why, to the deranged Left, Blair will forever remain an evil
figure, probably as hated as Bush himself.
For
those, however, who value the concept of liberal, free market democracy and
political freedoms Blair's achievements will remain as fundamentally important as Margaret Tatcher's. Provided that his own political party was so
against his own ideals, ever more so.
.....................
ISRAEL and THE WORLD
To understand the essence of the
Arab/Israeli problem, first one has to be aware of some set of facts as
they have happened since the end of WWII.
Most important of those is that the UN essentially created Israel
by adopting a resolution in 1947, partitioning the land of Palestine so
that both Jews and Palestinians could have where to live and form their
own state.
The Jews accepted this piece of international law. On behave of
the Palestinians, a number of Arab countries rejected it angrily and
when the Jewish state was formally created, attacked Israel from every
direction, threatening that the Jews will be slaughtered in a way
comparable to the Mongolian massacres.
Here are some quotes, made by prominent Arab leaders over the years since WWII.
"This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre
which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades."
Arab League Secretary-General Azzam Pasha, the next day after Israel
proclaims independence, on the day 7 Arab states attack militarily and
thus start the 1948 War against Israel. (Some trivia - AL Qaeda's No.2,
Al Zawahiri happens to be a relative to Azzam Pasha)
“… the sons of Islam will cleanse the land of Palestine… there will be no peace on Israel’s
border because we demand vengeance, and vengeance is Israel’s death”
Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser, 1955.
Comment: At the time Egypt was preparing to launch a war against
Israel. Egypt had already become a totalitarian regime and client state
of the Soviet Union. The main goal of Soviet policy in the region is to
"stir the pot" and help Arab regimes destroy Israel as Israel
demonstrated it would prefer to be part of the capitalist West, instead
of a close ally to the Soviet Union, as Stalin hoped. It was the Soviet
Union that was the main proponent of the creation of Israel in the UN.
The US were pretty ambivalent at the time but Truman finally made up
his mind to support Israel.
"The Arab nations should sacrifice up to 10 million of their 50 million
people, if necessary, to wipe out Israel ... Israel to the Arab world
is like a cancer to the human body, and the only way of remedy is to
uproot it, just like a cancer."
--Saud ibn Abdul Aziz, King of Saudi Arabia, Associated Press, Jan. 9, 1954
"I announce from here, on behalf of the United Arab Republic people, that this time we will exterminate Israel."
--President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, speech in Alexandria, July 26, 1959
"We shall never call for nor accept peace. We shall only accept war. We
have resolved to drench this land with your (Israel's) blood, to oust
you as aggressor, to throw you into the sea."
--Hafez Assad, then-Syrian Defense Minister, May 24, 1966, later a totalitarian dictator of Syria
"Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel."
--President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, May 27, 1967, nine days before the start of the Six-Day War.
While Israel launches an attack on Egypt and Jordan, it's the Arab
countries that had deployed land forces (tanks and troops) in
aggressive positions. By striking first, Israel achieves unbelievable
victory for a very, very short period of time, hence the name of the
war.
"The existence of Israel is an error which must be rectified. This is
our opportunity to wipe out the ignominy which has been with us since
1948. Our goal is clear -- to wipe Israel off the map."
--President Abdel Rahman Aref of Iraq, May 31, 1967
"All countries should wage war against the Zionists, who are there to
destroy all human organizations and to destroy civilization and the
work which good people are trying to do."
--King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, in a speech in Uganda, Beirut Daily Star, Nov. 17, 1972
"The battle with Israel must be such that, after it, Israel will cease to exist."
--Libyan President Mohammar Qadaffi, al-Usbu al-Arrabi (Beirut) quoted by Algiers Radio, Nov. 12, 1973
"Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity is there only
for tactical reasons. The establishment of a Palestinian state is a new
expedient to continue the fight against Zionism and for Arab unity."
--Zoheir Muhsin, head of the PLO Military Operations Department and member of the PLO Executive Council, 1977
Clarification: PLO was created by the Arab League, but it
consists of far left, many of those - communist groups and parties.
Individual members, militant and terrorist operatives, many of those
were trained and financed by Soviet and Eastern European communist
intelligence services, as well as Arab ones.
"There has been no change whatsoever in the fundamental strategy of the
PLO, which is based on the total liberation of Palestine and the
destruction of the occupying country. ... On no accounts will the
Palestinians accept part of Palestine and call it the Palestinian
state, while forfeiting the remaining areas which are called the State
of Israel."
--Rafiq Najshah, PLO representative in Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabian News Agency, June 9, 1980
"The struggle with the Zionist enemy is not a struggle about Israel's
borders, but about Israel's existence. We will never agree to anything
less than the return of all our land and the establishment of the
independent state."
--Bassam Abu Sharif, a top Arafat aide and PLO spokesman, quoted by the Kuwait News Agency, May 31, 1986
"There are two different approaches in the Arab world: that Israel can
be overwhelmed militarily, or that a military victory is impossible.
The power struggle between Israel and the Arabs is a long-term
historical trial. Victory or defeat are for us questions of existence
or annihilation, the outcome of an irreconcilable hatred."
--Al-Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, July 11, 1986
"The establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank
and the Gaza Strip does not contradict our ultimate strategic aim,
which is the establishment of a democratic state in the entire
territory of Palestine, but rather is a step in that direction."
--Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad) interview with Al-Safir, Lebanon, Jan. 25, 1988
"The armed struggle must continue, everywhere, against the Zionist
enemy and his allies. ... We have no alternative but to carry out armed
activity in order to vanquish the enemy and establish our state."
--Salim Zaanoun, Deputy PNC speaker and member of the Fatah Central Committee, in Al-Anba, Kuwait, Dec. 23, 1988
"We will enter Jerusalem victoriously and raise our flag on its walls.
... We will fight you (the Israelis) with stones, rifles, and 'El-Abed'
(the Iraqi missile)..."
--Yasser Arafat, reported by the Associated Press, March 29, 1990, months before at the start of the Gulf War
"In the name of Allah, we shall cause fire to devour half of Israel. ..."
--Iraqi News Agency, April 2, 1990
"We say to the brother and leader Saddam Hussein -- go forward with God's blessing."
--Yasser Arafat, the next day, Iraqi News Agency, April 3, 1990 , mothns before Iraq invades Kuwait.
“There is only one
possible solution to unrest in the Middle East, he said -- "namely, theannihilation and destruction of the Zionist state."
Iranian top ruler, Ali Khamenei before hundreds of thousands of Iranians in
his Dec. 31, 1999 prayer sermon at Tehran University
History Lessons
