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The Bush visit: freedom of speech threatened by Blair
BillieTheBot
Posts: 8,721 Bot
Poor old Blair is concerned that all those unreasonable protesters might offend his master the Hon. George W. Bush when he visits Britain next week. Details.
So he's looking at implementing an "exclusion zone" around the President and the places he will visit and stay in, to spare both of them their blushes.
Apparently the Americans have also called for the demonstrators to be kept out of sight, "because of security concerns". :rolleyes:
And look at what Blair had to say:
What an utter @#!#*^#* *@#@ he is! :mad:
Looking forward to next weeks demos. May this result in horrendous embarrassment and abuse for the mad murdering Texan and his poodle! And may everything be nicely broadcast to every American home, so it is crystal clear what the feelings of the majority of people in this country are.
So he's looking at implementing an "exclusion zone" around the President and the places he will visit and stay in, to spare both of them their blushes.
Apparently the Americans have also called for the demonstrators to be kept out of sight, "because of security concerns". :rolleyes:
And look at what Blair had to say:
So basically Bliar wants us to forget about any past crimes that might have been committed, be the breach of international law, illegal war, illegal occupation or others, because we should be concentrating in the present instead!"I say to those who will protest when President Bush comes: protest if you will. That is your democratic right. Attack the decision to go to war, though have the integrity to realise that without it, those Iraqis now tasting freedom would still be under the lash of Saddam, his sons and their henchmen.
"But accept that the task now is not to argue about what has been, but to make what is happening now work, and work for the very Iraqis we all say we want to help."
What an utter @#!#*^#* *@#@ he is! :mad:
Looking forward to next weeks demos. May this result in horrendous embarrassment and abuse for the mad murdering Texan and his poodle! And may everything be nicely broadcast to every American home, so it is crystal clear what the feelings of the majority of people in this country are.
Beep boop. I'm a bot.
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Comments
what is that all about? Is it legal to have a couple of hundred trigger happy U.S secret services drifting around London with bush? Does Blair take hundred's of MI6 with him on trips?!
I don't think that the authorities should be shutting off large area's of London for Dubya's safety, grinding London to a halt.
They could just fly him in, straight to number 10, tea with Tony, all talks could be done in Blair's living room, George could then play with Leo's plastic green army men (the ones you had when you were a kid) if he needs a break and then top and tail in Tone's bed for 3 nights and then all they would have to do is put an extra man or two outside number 10
Blair is as concerned with democracy as Pol Pot was with workers rights. Everything he does shows this more and more.
With a bit of luck some sniper will be able to get close enough to take both of those murdering bastards out. Permanently.
Itd be some collateral damage I could live with, anyway.
I heard a bloke talking about it on Radio Two and he seemed to be trying to push the idea that there are just a few weird people in Britain who are anti-bush but that the rest of the world is behind him.
I wouldn't go that far - the majority of the population is anti-Bush, and there are plenty of forms of media who are happy to show the truth.
Blair's actions regarding Bush are pretty shameful, agreed. I hope the British Parliament take the Aussie lead and shout Bush down when/if he addresses him.
But Aladdin, don't you think the key issue in Iraq *right now*, is to get the country up and running again? Agreed, all actions needed to be investigated, but you can't do that at the expense of ignoring the current situation and potentially making it even worse.
couldn't agree more
What Tony is saying here is: "Look, you may have a point about the war being illegal, about us lying repeatedly about the threat posed by Iraq, about the breach of every international law in the book, etc etc, but that's all in the past. So you shouldn't protest because what's done it's done eh?"
Under this profoundly disgusting argument there is no end of barbarities, acts of aggression and other violations that one can make. Don't like the Cubans? No problem. Invade, kill a few tens of thousands, and then later say 'look, there might or might not have been a good reason to invade, but the country is now better off without Fidel and people should concentrate in the present, the reconstruction'. Same trick can be applied to every country that doesn't dance to the tune of this modern day Empire.
I wonder how Blair, not to mention Bush would react if Osama bin Laden came on telly and said 'look, no point in trying to get justice for the 9/11 atrocities, what's done is done. How about we all sit down for tea and broker a peace deal eh?'
The end doesn't justify the means.
don't you just love it aye!
I'm sooo pissed off at not being in the country for Mr Bush!
Still, it looks like I will be well represented.
I hear one of the many things protesters plan to do is to throw pretzels at him.
The Observer carries today a list of demands the US government made to Britain for Bush's visit. These include:
Thankfully, other than agreeing to limited road closures the British have told the Americans they can kindly fuck off.
What a bunch of pretentious, ignorant, insulting, patronising, stupid c unts these people are! :mad:
Lets look forward to whom we can expect to see on our TV’s this week. Stalinists, Marxists, Anarchists, Anti-capitalists. The Friends of Palestine, Islamists, Abu Hamza. Most wont be British and the pictures being broadcast around the world could portray a very ugly image of the UK and London in particular that could put of tourists and potential business investments, especially from North America.
I’ve already read in some US news sites commentating on the perceived number of Muslims living in London, with ones site changing the name of our capital to Londonbad.
Were you in the United Kingdom on the 15th February 2003? That day saw the biggest demonstration in the history of this country. And I've got some news for you mate: practically all of the 1.5 million people who marched were white British citizens. From all walks of life as well: young and all; war veterans and peace activists; Guardian readers and Daily Mail middle-englanders... It would seem that you are practically alone in your support of that murderous scum.
The only image the demos will portray of London and England is that we won't be silenced by a pathetic poodle of a Prime Minister and we will continue to show our opposition to illegal wars, lies and deception. And I think that's great. It will repair some of the damage our poodle has done.
Well you can't help the perception some people in America will have can you? I couldn't care less what Fox (RightWing)News or some trailer trash pro-gun board thinks. The great majority of Americans who have a passport and are prepared to visit our country on principle are intelligent enough to see that we in Britain can make a difference between anti-US government and anti-Americanism. As a matter of fact many of the Americans who make it to England hate Bush just as much as the protesters here.
But no matter... feel free to continue defending that murdering lunatic. All in the name of that "special relationship" eh?
What with what's going on with us and Europe and The Middle East and America, I don't see a pretty picture.
I can see some social and adminstrative structures being built very similar to a brilliant book that sits up on my shelf.
The US is our number 1 ally, and its one country that would help us Brits out if we needed it, which is something I wouldn’t expect from the slimly French or the cowardly Germans.
One thing the antiwar brigade never does is come up with alternatives, they just moan. What has GWB done that is so wrong, and how would the antiwar brigade have done anything better. I don’t think they have a clue.
what has GWB done thats so bad! i think you need to read some newspapers ...
TalkSport is 60% owned by News International. Murdoch, using his Fox News franchise, is incredibly pro-war.
Spot a link?
Two random facts to put this myth to bed:
1. Our largest trading partner is the European Union, with over 60% of our trade going there. The EU is dominated by France and Germany. Shurely shome mishtake?
2. France and Germany were instrumental in blocking imports of Haitian bananas into the EU because of problems with US interference in the democratic process, including extortion and human rights abuses. We supported the EU.
The US responded by banning imports of Scottish cashmere into the US, causing serious amounts of destruction to the economies of Northern England and South-West Scotland in particular. That is how special our "Special relationship" is- if we dont do as we are told the Americans will destroy our economy. Funny way of "helping us out".
Come up with alternatives? You mean like NOT WAGING AN ILLEGAL WAR?
The UN process should have been exhausted, but thats not even the point. Iraq didnt even have the hardware ability to reach Israel, let alone London or New York. Hussein had only tangential links to Al Qaeda- the "training camps" were actually in Kurdistan, somewhere Hussein didnt have any influence over, which was the rpoblem with the "human rights abuses" in the first place.
We were not in danger, and if we were "protecting the people" where were we in East Timor (liberated by the French and Australians), Cambodia (liberated by revolution), Zimbabwe, Rwanda. Or why were we selling guns to the ABUSERS in Nicaragua, Cuba, Chile and parts of Africa?
And even leaving aside the ILLEGAL war, Im sure the death camp in Guantanamo Bay violates international law too...
'Sir,
I'd like Johann Hari to write, with a straight face, that to be anti-war is to be an advocate of doing nothing. His article ("The threat to Iraq comes from Western defeatists", Opinion, 29 October) is peppered with references to those opposed to military action in Iraq, implying that they also opposed anything good that came out of that conflict, such as the alleviation of the plight of the Marsh Arabs.
I, and many others, had a very simple alternative strategy. True, it also depended upon flying a B-52 through the notion of not interfering in the internal affairs of a sovereign state, but it had the attraction of no-one getting their extremities blown off at the hands of 'Coalition' pilots, so I think the UN might have been persuaded.
Basically, since human rights were intermittently cited as a large part of the justification for war - and never more so than now, with the embarrassing absence of WMDs - the weapons inspectors should have been complemented with 'human rights inspectors', charged with seeking out evidence of rights abuses and industrial size meat grinders.
I can appreciate that this strategy would have necessitated establishing a standard of acceptable conduct which would have held uncomfortable ramifications for the Coalition's middle eastern allies, and made the important task of wiping the political slate clean in Iraq quite impossible but, those purely selfish political considerations aside, I'd like Hari to say, with a clear conscience, that it would not have been better for the victims of the invasion, both dead and maimed, and their loved ones.'
They didn't print it, of course, but they did include an excoriating (not coruscating, it didn't twinkle) post by Richard Dawkins...
If he did, why has made the President of Uzbekistan, a country that persecutes, tortures and murders dissidents and ethnic minorities, boils people alive and sends 5 year old kids to forcibly work the cotton fields, his new best friend???
And why is he keeping hundreds of people, including 3 children, illegally imprisoned in cages thousands of miles from their country, without right to a lawyer, without being charged with anything, without basic rights, and subject them to torture?
He certainly has a very funny way to show his concern for human rights and freedom…
& as for Blair's quote about the called 'freedom' these people are enjoying now..... these people are still living fear. fear not only of the American army but still of Saddam & his hencemen & other militia organisations now trying to seize power. the country is in uproar & the Americans are just watching it.
Gee, I am at great pains to see the justification of this in the face of the valiant rhetoric that heralds the great "democracy" we are there to ensure, eschews the horrible maltreatment of those very same households at the hands of our toppled boogeyman, and is perpetrated under the pretext of the "rule of law" which we, "the coalition of the bought, bribed and otherwise cajoled" thoroughly disregarded when we went ahead with our conquest regardless of the SC's disapproval.
I try to imagine every day a future based on the precedents which my leaders in Washington have set for the world, namely "our might is right regardless", when we no longer hold preeminence and find ourselves the target of the next ascendent power which decides our system is illegitimate and barbaric and must be deposed by force.
Will all those now calling any and all Afghanis and Iraqis - who are "patriotically" fighting against foreign invaders and occupiers - "terrorists" and "unlawful combatants" consider themselves categorically the same as they inevitably fire upon those occupying our towns and neighbourhoods with the vast domestic arsenals at our disposal?
Will they shrug and accept capture and deportation to some camp in Mongolia, where they will be cut off from any communication with their loved one's back home, be denied any knowledge of the crimes for which they are being held, tortured and questioned endlessly, and perhaps where they will summarily be executed after receiving a token military show trial?
Knowing my countrymen and our penchant for demanding our "rights" I suspect they will certainly not.
Yet it's ok that we do it to other people's and nations, because after all...... "they're BAD PEOPLE!"
Bush has a mind!? Sounds like a News Of The World headline.
But seriously; when America was rightly up in arms about footage of THEIR captured soldiers being broadcast on television, same as always you see the hypocrisy of strong western powers. Because as some one has already pointed out America has been flaunting it's terrorist prisoners on TV for ages. Two wrongs don't make a right. As for Bush cheating his way into power, the French not backing us in the War against Iraq (France had oil interests with them) and Britain really not knowing who the hell's side it really wants to play with most, this World is becoming a pretty screwed up mess - all because of money and greed. Why in fcuk's name are we fighting over oil anyway - there's a massive clean, natural, abundunt source of power right up there above us and he's called Mr Sunshine...
I may be temporarily insane tonight I just quit my job... something about low wages agency work stress and not giving a shit really can create that kind of mental instability lol
And there's the Uni debts - yeah thanx again Mr Blair
lol I'm in a good mood.
I find just the opposite actually.
I might even go myself
Won't be peaceful then, like
I will be the dark haired woman shouting "hiya Mr Bush, how ya didling "
Yeah, how else will we recognise you?