United Kingdom

Detoxing ‘Bretix Britain’ with ….Donald Trump

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To varying degrees both the Donald J. Trump and Brexit electoral victories were based on scapegoating minorities considered to be a threat to the Western natural order. For Trump, Mexicans and Muslims were the villains of the piece in his “Make America Great Again” campaign for the Presidency of the United States of America. For British Brexiters, scapegoating was encapsulated in the slogan of “Take Back Control”. This slogan was largely aimed at the bureaucrats in Brussels who mythically had taken control of Britain and the east European migrants who have legally arrived recently in the U.K. As others have pointed out there were similarities in the two campaigns with both rooted in the new (mostly right-wing) populism sweeping some western nations.

Another similarity was the violence the two campaigns unleashed. Admittedly the tensions at Trump rallies were successfully contained and never reached the level of the British Brexit campaign were a British legislator or Member of  Parliament, Jo Cox, was brutally murdered with the assailant yelling “Britain First” and “keep Britain independent” (slogans popular with extreme right) as he shot and knifed his victim 15 times.

This is where the similarities end because as can be seen by the Continue reading →

Has the Jihadi War on Syria turned Boris Johnson into a Leon Trotsky?

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The zenith of all political naivety must be to expect a politician to be consistent in his or her supposed beliefs or positions. Quite formulaically, politicians reach for awe inspiring moral heights of propriety, rhetoric and common sense when they are far removed from the levers of political power. But as soon as the levers fall into their lap, by some weird political alchemy these same politicians suddenly begin to espouse opinions they had seemingly opposed before their ascension to power. In layman’s terms, they say one thing out of office and do another when in office.

Within a timeframe of a mere nine months as Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs for the United Kingdom i.e. Foreign Secretary, Mr. Boris Johnson has provided a text book case of a politician adopting two diametrically opposed positions on each side of the variable of political power. Continue reading →

Fluid Alliances: War on Terror, Yesterday and Today

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Within a month of al-Qaeda’s terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11th 2001, a so-called ‘War on Terror’ was declared to combat the source of this outrage. Invasions and occupations of Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003) were promptly executed because the rulers of these countries were considered to be providing support to terrorism.

In the case of Afghanistan, it was obvious the Taliban rulers were providing a refuge for the al-Qaeda leader, bin Laden, and arguably making itself complicit in the attacks on the United States. Whereas Iraq was a supposedly rogue state which potentially could enter an alliance with terrorists like al-Qaeda and supply them with its alleged supply, of what transpired to be, its phantom weapons of destruction.

The United States-British invasion of Iraq in 2003 based on bogus arguments eventually destroyed the Iraqi state, killed hundreds of thousands, created millions of refugees and led to a proliferation of Islamist terrorism. Only nuclear war could have created a better Armageddon. Under the pretext of fighting al-Qaeda and its supporters, the decisions taken by George Bush and Tony Blair within the first two years of the ‘War on Terror’ led to more manifestations of Islamist extremism of the al-Qaeda variety, the most recent being ISIS.

Fast-forward fourteen years and the ‘War on Terror’ has dumbfoundingly been turned on its head. Continue reading →

Myth of the “English Speaking Peoples” a.k.a the UK-USA “Special Relationship.”

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Whether one is critical of the alliance between the United Kingdom and the United States or in favour of the so-called “Special Relationship” it is perceived to be an amicable, natural and trans-historical partnership between two nations who share the same language and whose global interests are more or less the same. Over the last fifteen years these two nations assumed the lead in their continuing support of the colonialist state of Israel and waging war on Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and calling for more military intervention in Syria and Iran. So it is no surprise that many find it hard to accept that this alliance is a recent advent rooted in geo-political exigencies of the historical moment at hand. The United States came into being by overthrowing the British imperialist yoke and declaring independence from it. In the first 150 years of the new Republic, the Empire continued Continue reading →

Prince Charles: The Ceremonial Pimp of UK-Saudi Venality

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On Sunday, Februrary 23rd 2014, the world witnessed the spectacular ceremonial finish to the Sochi winter Olympic games with dance, fireworks and customary pomp; on the preceding Tuesday the world clearly witnessed the ceremonial ending of a long running business saga with Prince Charles customarily dancing to the tune of the Saudi-Wahhabi clan. The first in line for the British crown dressed to the nines in traditional military regalia of the Saudi nepotistic despots, as he helped to seal another military deal which will healthily burnish the order book of Europe’s largest arms manufacturer, BAE Systems. The price for 72 Eurofighter Typhoon jets was finally agreed to by the Saudi clan.

The deal, aptly and orwellianly named “Salam” (i.e. Peace), is worth £4.5 billion (equivalent to roughly $7.1 billion) and according to a report in the Times of London, is part of the notorious and corrupt £40 billion “Yamamah” (i.e. Dove) deal. Furthermore, the hundreds of millions of pounds newly “wringed” from the Saudi clan will underpin thousands of jobs in the North West of England “and around the British defence supply chain” added the Times.

The Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT,) an organisation which monitors the arms industry, claimed that the United Kingdom sells Continue reading →