…and as dangerous as ever as we mark the dark 20th anniversary of the illegal invasion of Iraq, a country still disabled by that catastrophe.
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We watch in horror as the predictable and predicted
results of the lies of Brexit stifle this country’s future. Similarly, we who
have paid attention over the decades, sink in the stultifying inevitability of
the madness of having sold off anything and everything of worth as the
privatisation chickens come home to roost. We see a wasteland of corruption and
dysfunction in our infrastructure as everything that was put in place post WWII
for ordinary folk in Britain is now in private hands and fuelling the offshore
accounts of the wealthy instead of making life better for ordinary people.
Lineker-gate rocks the already shaky foundations of
the public broadcaster - see my letter in The Independent
As the BBC plummets further in credibility, our
so-called public broadcaster is currently led by a Tory donor who was advisor
to both Johnson and Sunak before being gifted the role of BBC chairman after helping
Johnson secure a private loan. There is no better (or worse) example of the
power of mass delusion than the illegal invasion of Iraq – orchestrated for
Britain by Tony Blair. However, in the wake of the BBC nonsense we should remember
the destructive power of wilful delusion and there is no surer symptom of constructed
mass delusion than the attempt by weak politicians to control the media.
The 2003 invasion was not just a totally caustic and
still corrosive historical madness perpetrated against the people of Iraq knowingly
done under blatantly false pretences (like Brexit) – it has deeply, permanently
harmed Britain – also like Brexit.
After the slightly saccharine up-beat early Blair
years the rot of his ‘rightness’ set in. His own politicians sensed he was leading
them down a wrong path. The country certainly knew with one of the biggest mass
anti-war demonstrations Britain has ever seen. People like Diane Abbot
threatened to resign but then shamefully did not and the madness entered our
collective veins leaving its political poison.
It was a kind
of sickness a person might feel when they know they have done something deeply
harmful, reprehensible and irreversible. In fact – there is only one thing to
do and that is to continue with the delusion. I wonder if that is why Blair is
still feted in the media; still interviewed by mainstream papers and on our
news. It’s as if no one has read of even heard of the Chilcot Report.
One or two outliers did point out the obvious
similarities when Putin invaded Ukraine under false pretences – but – that is
them not us.
One of my very early blogs concerned the distortions
of false wars known and felt to be
entirely wrong and how it ensnared an American soldier called Lynndie England – in that I outlined the disconnect between wrong doing by the soldiers on
the ground and the worse wrong doing by those who knowingly instigated the war.
Abu Grahib was – as was admitted years later – a
fertile breeding ground for what we came to fear as global terrorism – and for
the UK that had not that long banished Irish terrorism – it should have
sickened us more than it did.
Then came fear of migrants and some would argue –me
include – as I have often on this blog – the attitude that led us to a racism/jingoism
fuelled Brexit with all its xenophobic nonsense and now to the very migrant bashing
that brought Lineker out to criticise the vile and idiotic Suella Braverman.
Weapons of mass destruction would have been
monstrous if they had existed and let us not forget that Saddam DID use disgusting
weapons against the Kurds. This is no defence of his regime.
However – in the long run – it is the insidious
weapon of mass delusion that will do for us if not reigned in…
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