Ninety per cent didn’t want war in Iraq. So they voted Aznar out
“Here’s a country who stood against terrorism and had a huge terrorist act within their country. And they chose to change their government and to, in a sense, appease terrorists” – Dennis Hastert, Republican leader, US House of Representatives.
March 11, 2004. 08.15. Ten bombs rip through the centre of Madrid’s commuter route taking with them more than 200 lives and leaving countless others in tatters. This is a time to bear witness, to be with the victims and their families, a time for reflection and a time for silence in the face of horror. But for Aznar and his party, it was a time for canvassing, for hammering home his nationalist stance, for politicising death. Within an hour, the Basque separatist group ETA is being blamed for the atrocity.
Yet within that same hour it is clear to most who have lived in the Basque country and walked its streets that this is not ETA’s handywork. ETA are cowards, assassins in the shadows, agents of terror, but ETA lack the infrastructure to produce such a catastrophe. This is not a numbers game, and one death is as bad as 100, but for ETA to do such a thing would be not only political suicide, but lethal for the Basque people around Spain, a people who have been victims not only of their misguided countrymen, but of the narrow minded fools who breed in every city, equating each of them with the small minority who revel in killing. For ETA to do this would only serve to reinforce Aznar’s hardline approach in the eyes of his electorate.
No, ETA cannot be to blame here, though they may lurk in the background delighting in the scenes. Aznar, however, stands firm, and his ministers Acebes and De Palacio bleat on in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary that ETA have committed the worst crime on mainland Spain. Who now recalls Gernika (Guernica), the Basque village bombed into submission by Franco? Why? Simple. If ETA are to blame, Aznar’s stand against separatism is vindicated. If it is Al-Qaeda, Aznar’s decision to lead Spain to war against 90% opposition of his own people suddenly begins to look momentously foolish. People today seem surprised that such an electoral turnaround followed.
Again, the answer is simple. Aznar has been lying to Spain for a long time. He covered up the mishandling of the Prestige tanker disaster with a fabricated war, then manipulated the tragic, if indirect, consequences to apportion blame elsewhere. Yet 2 million new young voters have come of age under Aznar and took to the streets in search of answers.
The Basques and the Catalans, sick of Aznar’s anti-regional rhetoric, tired of being beaten with the stick he has been handing to the all-powerful state media, cried out, “Enough!” There are those who claim that the Spanish are appeasers, that by voting in the Socialists they have handed victory to the terrorists. What victory? Are we really supposed to believe that things would be different if the Partido Popular were still in power today? Are the people of France and Germany safe because their leaders stood against Bush and his lackeys? Who more than the Spanish have fought against terror in their own backyard?
The radical shift in the vote, while surprising, is no knee-jerk reaction to the detonations of Atocha. Rather, they are the manifestations of the disgust felt by many at the cack-handed attempts of an already tainted government to save face and apportion blame elsewhere. There is no victory. For anyone. The bombs will continue to sow destruction across the world. All that remains is the courage to carry on in the face of such outrage, to remain unbowed. And the people of Spain, amid all their divisions, have shown just that. In the aftermath of 9/11, most Americans, from the land of the brave, were too scared to fly. Three days after the Madrid bombings, suburban Madrilenos returned to the trains.
An English native with Basque-Spanish/Irish roots
¶ 3:59 PM
Questions time for anti-war movement
One year on from the illegal invasion justified by lies is an odd time for the UK anti-war movement. ‘Military’ operations ended last year, Bush and Blair proclaimed, since when we have seen the whitewash of an official enquiry and thousands more Iraqi deaths. While democratic means proved futile in last year’s marches worldwide, the Spanish electorate seized the opportunity to vote out a man who was literally no more than numerical support for B&B’s WOT. They saw all too clearly that invading a country to oust a tyrant does not make the world safer, and indeed propagates links between Iraqi resistance and the global Islamist movement*. Yet, casus belli apologists become more vocal in their praise. Iraqis are happier now, they say. Saddam has gone, yes, but power, water and basic services are still short of even pre-war levels and with Shiite and Kurdish jockeying and ‘Sunni Triangle’ resistance to what is an increasingly institutionalised coalition presence, dictatorship has been replaced by a society in dangerous flux. No wonder the UN took one look and said the place is not ready for democratic elections, angering Sistani and co.
Stopwar.org is calling for an immediate end to the occupation. Not only has this no chance of happening, but it would probably be too fractious because of the aforementioned way US tentacles have spread. ‘We’ now have a duty to help clear up the mess we started. Other demands, such as for accountability from the UK govt, are likely to fall on similarly deaf ears. Yet you can march for a variety of reasons on the main theme, such as a demand to hand decision-making over to the ‘Raqis or the UN until such time as is possible to have an election.
Moreover, the troops out/end occupation now lines are easily dismissed by pumped-up, deference-inspiring commentators. Yes, the call for an end to military occupation of Iraq is to be supported but that favours the US/UK getting their militaries the fuck out and handing over security contracts to private firms of white mercenaries/ex-soldiers who will be above whatever new laws are formulated by the future Iraqi administration. I would place a fairly large stake [£36.75] that this sort of guarantee (that private security firms protecting US corporates' interests will not be subject to investigation by Iraqi authorities) will be sought by the US before the next generation of (suitably compromised/in US debt) Iraqi politicians are allowed to assume any sort of control over their own country.
Doubtless one allied policy has been to prepare for the end of ‘military' occupation by making damned sure that US Inc will be locked into building up IraqCo for many years to come. Washington Group, Parsons, Bechtel, Kellogg Brown & Root – these names are fast becoming as synonymous with occupation as the military divisions. There is no way that Saudi, Kuwaiti or indeed local companies can do the main ‘infrastructure’ ‘reconstruction’: they are Arabs after all... Then you have firms like Nour, which won a contract for military supply on the back of their connections with the INC chav Ahmad Chalabi despite having no experience of this work at all (it has since been revoked).
Because of these diverging views and aims, WhoreCull foresees an odd atmosphere at the march yesterday, as groups squabble on the aims of the ‘movement’ and perhaps the more extremist Al-Muhajiroun-like elements assert themselves in line with the Madrid upsurge. That should not stop your involvement or your continued agitation against the machinations of Bush and Blair. Numbers will be down, but that doesn’t mean the spirit should be.
*Indeed, Iraq is well on its way to becoming as much of a cause célèbre/manqué as Palestine for Muslims/leftie weaklings worldwide
http://www.stopwar.org.uk/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/antiwar/story/0,12809,1173642,00.html
¶ 6:49 PM
Civil servant lauded by Grub Street for immigrants' easy-application allegations
Sheffield-based Immigration & Nationality Directorate whistleblower Steve Moxon, has been lauded as a hero in the race for top sales figures among the tabloids (as well as the tories), which love the idea that the metaphorical immigration ‘rulebook has been torn up’ by mad Cabinet members intent on ‘fast-tracking’ ‘commies’/’gypsies’ into the sceptred isle. Is this status justified for someone who has been working at the IND as a junior caseworker for a couple of months, is in his mid-40s and earns £12,000 pa? Very noble of him to take such a low-paid job and then immediately start complaining about the ‘numbers of illegals being ushered through behind the back of the grate Shitish public’ from this lowly position. What a surprise that minister Beverley Hughes was unaware of his ‘qualms’ out of the thousands that are no doubt registered everyday by Home Office civil servants (mostly about David Blunkett's breath).
The Cull would like to politely suggest that good Samaritan Moxon should wait for responses to his internal enquiries about the immigration status of eastern European businessmen before providing false justification for the three-year campaign of asylum and immigration hysteria that the usual turdloids have indulged in and forced the rest of the media/society (at false stat point) to engage in. The vast majority of the 40,000 or so were already here, legally, and this was a simple micro solution to a macro problem.
Fast Cack
The Cull would also like to suggest, less politely, that he fuck off to Haiti to assess just how dangerous the situation is, which would be enormously helpful to his (soon to be) former employers in assessing the legitimacy of any subsequent asylum claims from the ‘troubled Caribbean island’.
The fetid stench of the toilets in the Associated Press/Express newsrooms hangs around this incident, as it is a clear reaction to the Katharine Gun case. As a civil servant working on ‘intelligence' info from China, she was someone who could have brought down the government with information that was clearly in the public interest. What does Poxon's leak (of toxic personality) represent? The threat to the government from the unappeasable right-wing shit eaters such as those who run Migration Watch (chair Sir Andrew Green, former UK ambassador to Saudi Arabia and career diplomat) and with whom Blair/Mandelson have got far too close in their nice little political project, in which they would like to think everyone's nice to each other (except that nasty thinker Gordon).
The only controversy here is that trusty capitalists from the accession states are granted exceptional immigration status ahead of the official date, whereas people nipping over on the off chance of a better paid job will still be caught up in the evolve-a-minute asylum and immigration policy of blandman Blunkett (“I’m so tough it’s unbelievable”).
**STOP PRESS** – News just in, Brine Bannister Tony Blair and David Blunkett, the Home Actuary, meet for lunch every Thursday to dine on their favourite delicacy – Paul Dacre’s Wednesday morning shits. Tony seasons his favourite sneering, aspirational, fuckheaded Editor's stool with Dulux (Winter Cretin shade), while David prefers the stronger flavours available from a good douse of Nitromors.
¶ 10:10 PM
