Trump and May Support Saudi Arabia’s Bombing of Civilians in
Yemen and then Complain about Terrorism
When it comes to hypocrisy no-one
can outdo the British press. Virtually the whole of the British press, with the
exception of the Daily Mirror, supported Britain’s invasion of Iraq. An invasion that killed up to 1 million
civilians.
Saudi money can buy, the murderous war of
destruction in Yemen. One in 3 Saudi air raids
hits civilian sites. Over 10,000
civilians have been murdered in circumstances no less tragic than what happened
in Manchester. Theresa May and Donald
Trump, no less than Obama and Cameron before them, literally have blood on
their hands, together of course with the Sun which then has the gall to
talk about terrorism and ‘our way of life’. One
in three Saudi air raids on Yemen hit civilian sites, data shows
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| Saudi Attack on Yemeni School |
Iraq before the invasion. There
were no weapons of mass destruction either.
The only thing Iraq possessed was an abundance of oil and it was this
that the United States was determined to lay its hands on.
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| The terrible aftermath of Manchester is a consequence of Blair, Cameron and May’s war policy |
bounds. A few years later they changed
their name to ISIS. Thus began the
growth of this monstrous death cult. ISIS was a product of the bloody war that the
United States and Blair’s New Labour imposed on Iraq. Nor was it accidental. When the Americans ran into heavy armed resistance
in Iraq they did what all imperial powers do, they played the divide and rule
card. The US and Britain deliberately
sowed the seeds of division between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims in order to
shore up their own positions.
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| The Scum Always Had a Problem with the Truth |
this. He went a few days ago to Saudi
Arabia to condemn the Iranian terror axis in the Middle East! ISIS, Al Qaeda and the other Jihadi groups in
Syria and Iraq are 100% Salafist Sunni groups.
Hezbollah, the main Shi’ite guerrilla group in the Lebanon, which is allied with Iran, has never exploded bombs in
Western cities. Nor has Hamas, which is
Sunni. Both condemned Al Qaeda for its
Charlie Hebdo murder yet they are called ‘terrorists’ because they fight or have fought the terrorist regime in Tel Aviv.
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| The SCUM has the gall to accuse Corbyn and McDonnell of having blood on their hands |
which fight a guerrilla war against Israel with organisations that butcher and
murder anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their definition of the Islamic faith.
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| Was it any wonder that the Scum supported Tony Bliar? That’s what the Labour Right wants again |
by Islam. It is a flag of
convenience. Much fun was made of ISIS
recruits in this country who bought Islam for Dummies before setting out on
their Jihad. Those who murdered and
maimed in Brussels and France, almost without exception, were petty criminals
who drank and led anything but a pious Islamic way of life. Being a
Muslim was a way of dignifying their alienation.
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| Lest we forget – the Sun attacked the one party leader, the late Charlie Kennedy, who opposed the Iraq War – under Nick Clegg the Lib-Dems became the pro-war party |
in Iraq, Cameron and Clegg also decided to intervene in the Libyan civil
war. Despite Britain’s previously close
relations with the Ghadaffi regime, we decided to repay old scores and support
the Islamic opposition to his regime.
The consequences were predictable.
Once again Al-Qaeda, ISIS and various Jihadist groups thrived. Ghadaffi
had warned of just such an outcome but we decided on another ‘humanitarian’
bombing campaign.
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| Germans reading the Nazi equivalent of The Sun – Der Sturmer was also a semi-pornographic paper |
The Sun Has the Blood of Manchester and 1 million dead Iraqis on Its Hands
a headline accusing Jeremy Corbyn of having blood on his hands. The irony is that it is the Sun which is
covered in the blood of the innocents.
should remind people, the Sun was the chief cheerleader for the illegal war in
Iraq. In Nazi Germany the editor of the Nazi
newspaper, Der Sturmer, which did most
to support Hitler’s wars of aggression and the attacks on the Jews, one Julius
Streicher, was hanged at Nuremburg in 1946 for crimes against humanity. Instead of being feted by Prime Ministers,
Rupert Murdoch should also be treated as a war criminal.
Manchester but Corbyn’s previous support of Sinn Fein and the Republican
movement. It is to be hoped that Corbyn does
not duck the challenge. Jeremy Corbyn did
indeed support the fight of the Catholic people of Northern Ireland for justice
and a United Ireland.
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| The Sun of course never acknowledges its own mistakes – it assumes that its readers are idiots (probably true!) and have no memory |
imposition of Direct Rule in 1972, Northern Ireland had been a Protestant
supremacist police state (much like Israel and South Africa). If you were a Catholic you couldn’t get a job
in the civil service or decent housing. Discrimination
was institutionalised in a state which the former Prime Minister, Lord
Brookeborough described as a Protestant state, which it was. Northern Ireland was created in 1921 after
the all-Ireland elections in 1918 had produced a Sinn Fein majority. This was unacceptable to the Tories allies
amongst the Unionists who threatened to use force to reverse the results of the
election. Thus began Ireland’s war of
independence.
launched a civil rights movement they were viciously attacked by the B-Specials
and Protestant supremacists at the Battle of Burntollet. It was the ‘spark that lit the prairie fire’
i.e. the Troubles. The Catholic ghetto of
the Bogside in Derry was attacked in a two day battle by the RUC and B-Specials
(a paramilitary police force). A civil
rights march in Derry was attacked
by the RUC. This was the beginning of ‘The
Troubles’. To those who want a greater
understanding than that provided by the Sun then The Troubles in
Derry article provides a starter. It
was only when Britain accepted that the North of Ireland could no longer be a
Protestant supremacist state that a peace accord was possible.
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| Lest we forget – the Sun invited people to cut out their dartboard filled with anti-war targets |
killed many innocent civilians. That is always
the consequence of war. Britain and the US call it ‘collateral damage’. However the IRA
killed far fewer civilians than the British army in Iraq, Afghanistan or
elsewhere.
exploded a massive 1500 Kg bomb in Manchester city centre. It devastated the heart of Manchester yet
not one person was killed. The
reason? They gave a 90 minute
warning. On occasions elsewhere, not
least Birmingham, when warnings went astray or weren’t heeded, people did get
killed, however the IRA never deliberately murdered civilians. Protestant paramilitary groups like the UDA
and UVF, which the British Army and its secretive Forces Research Unit
infiltrated with agents, deliberately targeted Catholic civilians.
and Sinn Fein had and continue to have massive support in the Catholic ghettos
of Northern Ireland. The fact that the
majority group amongst Catholics in Northern Ireland is Sinn Fein not the SDLP
is proof of that. ISIS by contrast has
to terrorise the inhabitants of the areas it controls.
Coburn exposes the hypocrisy of the British political establishment and
Theresa May. Saudi Arabia’s Wahabist
regime and Qatar have sponsored, armed and funded ISIS, Al-Qaeda and a host of Jihadist groups in Syria and Libya.
The regime in Saudi Arabia, under King Ibn Saud, was armed and funded by
the British in the wake of the first world war.
We have continued, with the United States, to support them ever since,
for the simple reason that this most austere and barbaric version of Islam is
ideal to keep the population of Saudi Arabia cowed. What better way of legitimising repression
and coercion than religion? For us to condemn the head choppers of ISIS when we support the head choppers of Saudi Arabia is the kind of hypocrisy for British imperialism was long renowned.
- Patrick Cockburn Thursday
25 May 2017
In the wake of the massacre in Manchester, people rightly
warn against blaming the entire Muslim community in Britain and the world.
Certainly one of the aims of those who carry out such atrocities is to provoke
the communal punishment of all Muslims, thereby alienating a portion of them
who will then become open to recruitment by Isis and al-Qaeda clones.
This approach of not blaming Muslims in general but
targeting “radicalisation” or simply “evil” may appear sensible and moderate,
but in practice it makes the motivation of the killers in Manchester or the
Bataclan theatre in Paris in 2015 appear vaguer and less identifiable than it
really is. Such generalities have the unfortunate effect of preventing people
pointing an accusing finger at the variant of Islam which certainly is
responsible for preparing the soil for the beliefs and actions likely to have
inspired the suicide bomber Salman Abedi.
The ultimate inspiration for such people is Wahhabism, the
puritanical, fanatical and regressive type of Islam dominant in Saudi Arabia,
whose ideology is close to that of al-Qaeda and Isis. This is an exclusive
creed, intolerant of all who disagree with it such as secular liberals, members
of other Muslim communities such as the Shia or women resisting their
chattel-like status.
A further sign of the Salafi-jihadi impact is the choice of targets: the attacks
on the Bataclan theatre in Paris in 2015, a gay night club in Florida in 2016
and the Manchester Arena this week have one thing in common. They were all
frequented by young people enjoying entertainment and a lifestyle which made
them an Isis or al-Qaeda target. But these are also events where the mixing of
men and women or the very presence of gay people is denounced by puritan
Wahhabis and Salafi jihadis alike. They both live in a cultural environment in
which the demonisation of such people and activities is the norm, though their
response may differ.
The culpability of Western governments for terrorist
attacks on their own citizens is glaring but is seldom even referred to.
Leaders want to have a political and commercial alliance with Saudi Arabia and
the Gulf oil states. They have never held them to account for supporting a
repressive and sectarian ideology which is likely to have inspired Salman
Abedi. Details of his motivation may be lacking, but the target of his attack
and the method of his death is classic al-Qaeda and Isis in its mode of
operating.
The reason these two demonic organisations were able to
survive and expand despite the billions – perhaps trillions – of dollars spent
on “the war on terror” after 9/11 is that those responsible for stopping them
deliberately missed the target and have gone on doing so. After 9/11, President
Bush portrayed Iraq not Saudi Arabia as the enemy; in a re-run of history
President Trump is ludicrously accusing Iran of being the source of most
terrorism in the Middle East. This is the real 9/11 conspiracy, beloved of
crackpots worldwide, but there is nothing secret about the deliberate blindness
of British and American governments to the source of the beliefs that has
inspired the massacres of which Manchester is only the latest – and certainly
not the last – horrible example.
The attack on Manchester Arena – and those on the
Bataclan and the Pulse nightclub before it – can trace their roots to
the Wahhabism of Saudi Arabia. The UK and US governments just won’t admit it.
