Yesterday I posted a Reuters article saying how Sanna Marin was leaving politics in Finland and joining the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.

I implied Tony Blair is a war-monger and his Institute promotes US hegemony.

Is Tony Blair recognised as a peace-loving fair minded politician internationally?

Totally neutral hashtags: 😉

#socialist #SocialistSunday #socialism #labour #labourparty #corbyn #blair #war #peace

Remember Sanna #Marin, former Prime Minister of Finland? One of who's noticeable achievements was getting #Finland into #NATO. She's landed a job at the Tony #Blair Institute for Global Change.

Of course she has.

The Finnish people lose their neutral status and get automatically dragged into a war if one breaks out between the US and Russia, and as a result likely destroyed.

She get's a job at a war mongering "think" tank that promotes US hegemony for her service.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/finlands-ex-pm-marin-join-blair-think-tank-leave-parliament-2023-09-07/

#RegnoUnito #Finlandia
Tony #Blair (#Labour|S&D): “Il nostro compito è aiutare i decisori politici di tutto il mondo a realizzare cambiamenti. Sanna #Marin sa esattamente come farlo. Marin è coraggiosa e pratica e comprende il ruolo della tecnologia.”

@OsservatorioEsteri

giulia33
@giu33liana
·
#FacciamoRete #WarCrimes

"Vent’anni dopo l’invasione dell’#Iraq, l’impunità per i crimini di guerra regna sovrana"

🧐Come mai da 20 anni la Corte Penale Internazionale (
@IntlCrimCourt
) è in sonno?

#AmnestyInternational #WarCriminals #Blair #Bush
https://www.amnesty.it/ventanni-dopo-linvasione-delliraq-limpunita-per-i-crimini-di-guerra-regna-sovrana/

@Gillinger @therightarticle @openDemocracy @UKLabour

Completely agree!

In my view, barring any major political calamity for #Labour, they look likely to win the 2024 election!

What gives me more of a “we are doomed” feeling is not just having a government led by an authoritarian liar & charlatan like #KidStarver, but a government led by ‘Sir’ Keir #Stürmer with the kind of huge #Blair-size super-majority many of the polls are currently predicting!

Rhetorical question: will it be possible to limit Starmer’s parliamentary majority - even to the point of a hung Parliament - so that his worst power-mad instincts will be severely constrained?

@therightarticle

Quoting Dan Hind in @openDemocracy

“But a 2024 @UKLabour govt committed to the #Blair-#Thatcher status quo, which refuses to meet the #UK’s accumulating crises with a programme equal to it, will only aid a nativist and authoritarian #Right that offers its own, hallucinatory solutions.

Our likely trajectory, absent fundamental reform, is one that discredits the centre-left in government and empowers the extreme right in opposition.

In these circumstances, our best option at the next general election must be a mobilisation that puts as many ecosocialists and sincere left Keynesians into Parliament as possible. Our priority should be to maximise the number of MPs willing to argue for replacing Thatcherism with a new green and democratic settlement.

Once we grasp that, the question then becomes technical: how?”

[..]

“If we can create the means for voters to communicate among ourselves in pursuit of our shared interests, if we then act with some fraction of the right’s energy and daring, with some fraction of their budget, we can begin to create a new economic and political settlement before the old impoverishes and demoralises even more of us. If we wait meekly for a #Starmer landslide, we will get nothing, and deserve less”

#LabourLies #StopStarmer #RedTory #EcoSocialism #Election2024

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/keir-starmer-labour-general-election-2024-need-radical-change-green-left/

I get the impression Starmer thinks Blair won so if I copy Blair I'll win
#Starmer
#Blair

I get the impression Starmer thinks Blair won so if I copy Blair I'all win
#Starmer
#Blair

@jackLondon @UKLabour

I’m sorry but if you think that, after #Starmer gets into power with the kind of super-majority that #Blair had (as predicted by some polls), he’ll reverse all the #Establishment/ Big Business- pleasing policies that he’s been promulgating (having U-turned on all the promises he made during the leadership election) then I think you need to have a few words with yourself!

The notion (as some sycophantic journos in #Grauniad like #Toynbee & #Behr are peddling) that Starmer is gonna turn into a some kind of ‘acceptable Corbyn’ (on eg ramping up on Climate Crisis/ Green New Deal) after he’s elected is risible!

Reality is, Starmer is a Right wing authoritarian & a racist (viz Labour Files) who only cares about power for its own sake & when he gets it he’ll use it to benefit the 1% - just like the Tories he replaces!

Editorial It’s an obvious pairing, but there’s danger in Starmer’s bromance with Blair | Morning Star
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/it%E2%80%99s-obvious-pairing-there%E2%80%99s-danger-starmer%E2%80%99s-bromance-blair

#Blair
#Starmer
#GreenIssues
#Autocrats
#InstituteForGlobalChange

In their book “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt”, @ChrisLynnHedges (#ChrisHedges) & Joe #Saco portray “inverted totalitarianism” as a system where corporations have corrupted & subverted democracy and where economics bests politics. Every natural resource and living being is commodified and exploited by large corporations to the point of collapse as excess consumerism and sensationalism lull and manipulate the citizenry into surrendering their liberties and their participation in government.

In #Britain, inverted totalitarianism is being played out before our eyes as never before because the elites don’t care any more if we, the poles, know what they are doing to us!

The utterly corrupt @conservatives (#Tories) are bought and paid for by #Putin’s #Russia, #Xi’s #China, #binSalman & other assorted oligarchs & despots.

The @UKLabour (#Labour) Party under #KeirStarmer is ‘in hoc’ to the #TrilateralCommission. Also, #Starmer has deliberately lost/ ejected so many of its former ~600k members (and their membership subs) that they’ve had to go, cap in hand, seeking donations from assorted corporate interests who will obviously want their ‘pound of flesh’ should #Labour come to power!

Our first-past-the-post electoral system is designed to entrench the inverted totalitarian system that is our so-called democracy! Nothing will change if #Labour replaces the Tories in the 2024 #GeneralElection - as is currently predicted to happen by a landslide!

Imo, at #UK #Election24:

1. #Tories *must* be destroyed electorally! This looks like a distinct possibility as they have do royally f#cked up pretty much everything! Nothing works in Britain anymore!
2. #Labour u/ ‘Sir’ Keir #KidStarver *cannot* be allowed to gain a #Blair-style landslide majority! #Starmer would use this almost unbridled power to unleash a torrent of illiberal policies on the country
3. Hence we must somehow elect a powerful #Left presence in Parliament to oppose his #NeoLiberal & authoritarian instincts
4. Well-informed, we’ll-organised tactical voting will be key - not just to wipe out the Tories but, crucially, to #StopStarmer

https://skwawkbox.org/2023/08/13/new-grassroots-stop-starmer-group-launches-with-video/

In their book “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt”, @ChrisLynnHedges (#ChrisHedges) & Joe #Saco portray “inverted totalitarianism” as a system where corporations have corrupted & subverted democracy and where economics bests politics. Every natural resource and living being is commodified and exploited by large corporations to the point of collapse as excess consumerism and sensationalism lull and manipulate the citizenry into surrendering their liberties and their participation in government.

In #Britain, inverted totalitarianism is being played out before our eyes as never before because the elites don’t care any more if we, the poles, know what they are doing to us!

The utterly corrupt @conservatives (#Tories) are bought and paid for by #Putin’s #Russia, #Xi’s #China, #binSalman & other assorted oligarchs & despots.

The @UKLabour (#Labour) Party under #KeirStarmer is ‘in hoc’ to the #TrilateralCommission. Also, #Starmer has deliberately lost/ ejected so many of its former ~600k members (and their membership subs) that they’ve had to go, cap in hand, seeking donations from assorted corporate interests who will obviously want their ‘pound of flesh’ should #Labour come to power!

Our first-past-the-post electoral system is designed to entrench the inverted totalitarian system that is our so-called democracy! Nothing will change if #Labour replaces the Tories in the 2024 #GeneralElection - as is currently predicted to happen by a landslide!

Imo, at #UK #Election24:

1. #Tories *must* be destroyed electorally! This looks like a distinct possibility as they have do royally f#cked up pretty much everything! Nothing works in Britain anymore!
2. #Labour u/ ‘Sir’ Keir #KidStarver *cannot* be allowed to gain a #Blair-style landslide majority! #Starmer would use this almost unbridled power to unleash a torrent of illiberal policies on the country
3. Hence we must somehow elect a powerful #Left presence in Parliament to oppose his #NeoLiberal & authoritarian instincts
4. Well-informed, we’ll-organised tactical voting will be key

https://tactical.vote/all/

Another reason, if any more are necessary, why it’s crucial to #StopStarmer!

“The Return of Tony #Blair: The former British prime minister, who left Downing Street widely unpopular, is back in favor with his party, #Labour, which hopes his political skills can be an advantage as an election nears”

“Mr. Blair, now 70, is graying, thinner and his face a little more gaunt than when he left Downing Street in 2007. But he still effortlessly held the stage as he told the audience that Britain would be in safe hands if Mr. Starmer won the next election.

‘It was like the apostolic succession was being declared,’ said John #McTernan 🤮 a political strategist and onetime aide to Mr. Blair, who added that ‘the chemistry between the two guys made you think they talk a lot and they understand each other.’”

via @NewYorkTimes

#TonyBlair #Iraq #WarCriminal #Austerity #ClassWar #NHSPrivatisation #Starmer #KidStarver #Zionism #Apartheid #LabourRacism #LabourLies #LabourStinks #ItWasAScam

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/16/world/europe/britain-tony-blair-labour-election.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

However you dress it up, the Iraq war was, under international law, an illegal act of aggression against a sovereign state. It constituted a #WarCrime and a #CrimeAgainstHumanity. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of innocent people have paid with their lives or suffered unbelievable hardship as a direct result of that act of aggression!

Those who perpetrated that aggression in the name of democracy & the ending of a vile dictatorship, like #TonyBlair and #AlastairCampbell in the #UK, are guilty of War Crimes yet they remain free men: #Blair to earn £millions from advising various sordid dictatorships like Saudi Arabia; #Campbell to be feted on the #BBC state broadcaster & various other #CorporateMedia talk shows!

Conversely, #Wikileaks founder Julian #Assange, who exposed many of those heinous crimes, has been rotting away in isolation for years in #Britain’s top security Belmarsh prison & awaits possible extradition to the #US Imperium where he will likely be imprisoned & tortured for the rest of his days!

In this short but excellent @DoubleDownNews episode, Stop The War Coalition’s (#STWC) Lindsey German asks “What kind of world rewards war criminals & imprisons those who tell the truth?” She discusses the legacy of the Iraq War & makes a strong case for putting Blair (and other Iraq war criminals) in jail instead of Assange! https://youtu.be/YudeIkDaTRA

Tony Blair Institute has continued to receive Saudi Arabian money after Khashoggi murder | The Independent
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tony-blair-saudi-arabia-khashoggi-b2392152.html

#Blair
#Saudi
#SaudiArabia
#Khashoggi

@AnthonyFStevens I could go on, but rather than debate the specifics point by point, or respond to your demand that I provide my own solutions, I want to make a simple point: this is #neoliberalism.

#Starmer exemplifies it, as did #Blair. They call themselves 'third way' or #centrist. But this is simply code for a slightly friendlier, or at least less openly predatory, form of neoliberal capitalism. The same assumptions are still foundational: that government policies are completely subject to the approval/disapproval of 'the market' (a reification of the plutocratic class) and so "we can't afford" to pursue more than the tiniest increments of justice, due to capitalist realism ("there is no alternative").

You seem to currently accept this set of assumptions & are arguing for what you see as better forms of it. Undoubtedly, you will in exasperation reply along the lines of "but that's all we can afford!", or demand a comprehensive alternative account. You may even accuse anyone who doesn't accept these things of being dangerously unrealistic. Maybe that's true.

At this point, I'm just hoping you realise that you (& Starmer) are operating within neoliberal assumptions (even if you think these assumptions are obvious/correct/unavoidable). #UKpol

@Stevenheywood

My take is that faced with a genuine problem of "due diligence" in the recent past - which did cost seats - they have chosen to revert to the playbook of the early #blair government - circa 1998 and 1999 - while apparently forgetting all the collateral damage and embarrassment that that caused! Having lived through those years and remained consistently loyal - sometimes through gritted teeth - I have no desire whatever to see them return!

@harphat

Of course the internal politics of this within #labour are likely to remain fraught. It looks from press briefings that some people best described as #blair #ultras may have seized on arguments over #ulez extension, #ltns and #netzero as a golden opportunity to resume a #vendetta against specifically #edmiliband and #sadiqkhan that has gone already for the best part of twenty years and has at different times involved the support of the #murdochs and possibly even #berlusconi !

@harphat

And even better news on this today. #johnMcTernan has written an article effectively telling #keirstarmer that he needs to define #labour more clearly. #McTernan matters because he cannot be dismissed easily as one of the "usual suspects" as say I might be. He was part of the original #blair team. He is calling now for an explicit embrace of #Bidenomics and the consequent repudiation of "neoliberalism" . Which is consistent also with staying at least as #green as #labour still is.

@rchusid
And the people round #blair accepted what they were told about WMD and went after the #bbc when it went near the manipulation of intelligence - even if it got some of the details wrong.