Eideard

Tony Blair used his final foreign trip as prime minister to sign a confidential deal with Muammar Gaddafi to train Libyan special forces and supply him with Nato secrets.

A copy of the accord obtained by The Daily Telegraph shows that the two leaders agreed to co-operate on defence matters in a range of areas, including exchanging information about defence structures and technology.

It was signed during the former Labour prime minister’s “Blair-well” tour of Africa in May 2007, in Gaddafi’s tent in the Libyan desert.

Included in the document was an agreement on “co-operation in the training of specialised military units, special forces and border security units”. They also signed up to “exchanges of information on Nato and EU military and civil security organisations”. The document was personally signed by Mr Blair and Gaddafi…

The two countries also agreed to co-operate in “training in operational planning processes, staff training, and command and control; training of personnel in peace support operations; training co-operation relating to software, communications security, technology and the function of equipment and systems; exchanges of information and experience in the laws of armed conflict; and the acquisition of equipment and defence systems’’…

Yup. The context was different; but, oil was the predominant rationale for every aspect of treaty negotiations between Blair and Gaddafi. As it is for pretty much everything in the Middle East negotiated by western democracies.

With little or no concern for the last word in that sentence.

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Barclays Bank has been forced to admit it paid just £113m in UK corporation tax in 2009 – a year when it rang up a record £11.6bn of profits.

The admission stunned politicians and tax campaigners. It was revealed on the eve of a day of protests planned against the high street banks by activists from UK Uncut, a group set up five months ago to oppose government cuts and corporate tax avoidance.

The Labour MP Chuka Umunna, who lobbied Barclays’ chief executive, Bob Diamond, to reveal the tax paid by the bank, described the figure – just 1% of its 2009 profits – as “shocking”.

The current rate of corporation tax in the UK is 28%, although global banks such as Barclays – which has hundreds of overseas subsidiaries, including many in tax havens – do not generate all of their profits in their domestic market.

Max Lawson, of the Robin Hood Tax Campaign, said: “This is proof that banks live in a parallel universe to the rest of us, paying billions in bonuses and unhampered by the inconvenience of paying tax.

“If banks paid their fair share we could avoid the worst of the cuts and help those hit hardest by the financial crisis they did nothing to cause.”

Just to give you an idea of how “tough” the Blair Labour government was on big corporations.

Sounds like home to an American.

Tony Blair arrives to lie once again testify about the Iraq Invasion
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Tony Blair today admitted to brushing aside warnings that invading Iraq would be unlawful and made clear his overriding priority, even at the expense of opposition and secrecy at home, was to maintain a close relationship with the US president.

In four hours of testimony to the Chilcot inquiry, ending with expressions of regret for lives lost that provoked jeers from relatives of the dead, Blair disclosed that he privately told George Bush he could “count on us” in helping get rid of Saddam Hussein, an aim, he said, for which his government should be “gung-ho”…

He acknowledged the cabinet might not have seen official papers about plans for war, but said ministers would have been aware of the plans from the media…

Is that really how cabinet ministers should be kept up-to-date?

Throughout the hearings, and only occasionally subjected to sharp questioning, Blair described how he told Bush during a phone conversation in December 2001, well over a year before the invasion, that “if [regime change] became the only way of dealing with this issue, we were going to be up for that”.

Inquiry documents show how government lawyers, including Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, repeatedly warned that regime change as an objective of military action would be unlawful…

Blair, summoned back to the inquiry after apparent discrepancies in his evidence came to light, was questioned by Sir Roderic Lyne, a former ambassador and the most persistent member of Chilcot’s five-member panel, about claims he made to the Commons about the legality of an invasion, and what he was told privately.

Goldsmith has told the inquiry that by telling MPs in January 2003 that a fresh UN resolution was not necessary before an invasion, the former prime minister was ignoring legal advice he had given. In exchanges yesterday, Blair told Lyne: “I was making basically a political point.”

He continued: “I accept entirely that there was an inconsistency, but I was saying [that] not in a sense as a lawyer but politically.” If he had revealed publicly that the government had doubts about whether fresh UN authority was needed before an invasion went ahead it would, he added, have been a “political catastrophe for us”.

Once again, truth goes by the boards to satisfy politics. Decisions made which in the eyes of creeps like Blair and Bush neither require legality nor honesty to the electorate and the poor buggers sent off to die for their country.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission
You get to know “this much”

Tony Blair made made a profit of at least £710,000 last year from a mysterious web of companies set up to further his business interests, it can be revealed.

The former prime minister’s companies also declared net assets of £2.2 million – four times what they were worth last year – suggesting Mr Blair’s “pulling power” is as strong as ever.

The profits, funnelled through an “opaque” and highly complex web of financial structures, was declared to Companies House as it closed for business for Christmas last week.

The money is believed to have come from his often controversial private work, including his six-figure speaking fees, his banking and insurance consultancies, including work for JP Morgan, and his pay from advising Middle Eastern and African regimes.

Mr Blair – who has made at least £20million since leaving Downing Street – has a commercial consultancy, called Tony Blair Associates, plus paid jobs advising a US bank and a Swiss insurer.

In addition, millions of pounds have passed through two parallel company structures, called Windrush Ventures and Firerush Ventures, in the last three years.

Mr Blair has so far refused to discuss what these financial structiures, centered on a pair of mysterious limited partnerships, are for…

The public declarations come in the wake of claims that Mr Blair is earning up to £100,000 for making guest appearance and was paid a reported £600,000 signing on fee by the prestigious Washington Speakers Bureau…

He is also said to have earned around £6 million in consultancy fees, including £500,000 a year from Zurich Financial Services, £2 million from JP Morgan, the investment bank, and another £1 million from the Kuwaiti Royal Family…

The accounts give no indication of how much Mr Blair pays himself from the fees and other money channelled through his companies.

The profitable sleaze that follows upon time in office is no surprise. No doubt, some of this may be legitimate charity, legitimate enterprise. I wonder, though, how much is payment for services rendered while in office?

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair is to be recalled to give evidence a second time to the Iraq Inquiry.

He is one of a number of key figures, including former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, asked to appear before the Chilcot committee again…

The inquiry said it wanted “more detail” in some key areas…

The BBC’s Diplomatic Correspondent Nicholas Witchell said it was not clear why Mr Blair had been asked to appear once more, but there must be significant details that the inquiry wished to clarify following its analysis of documentary evidence and a number of private hearings over the summer…

The committee has been holding hearings since November, in which it has questioned a host of former Labour Cabinet ministers, senior military commanders, civil servants and diplomats.

A number of former government lawyers have argued that the invasion was unlawful…

Sir John has stressed the final report, not expected to be published before March, will be “full, thorough, evidence-based and frank”.

“We are independent of government and will not shy away from criticising if we find fault or if we conclude that errors have been made. We are determined to produce a report that will be useful to future governments,” he added.

Anyone ever going to depose George W. Bush under oath? Not that he wouldn’t offer the same lies, half-truths and rationales that continue to be the heart of American foreign policy.

Do you think the United States Congress or the White House – now or in the future – would have sufficient integrity, courage, to peer behind the barbed-wire closet door at the former emperor’s collection of patent leather lies?

Brits and Europeans have a clearer image of Blair than do Americans
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Tony Blair is preparing to launch a “faith offensive” across the United States over the next year, after building up relationships with a network of influential religious leaders and faith organisations.

With Afghanistan and Iraq casting a shadow over his popularity at home in Britain, Blair’s focus has increasingly shifted across the Atlantic, to where the nexus of faith and power is immutable and he is feted like a rock star.

According to the annual accounts of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, a UK-based charity that promotes cohesion between the major faiths, the foundation is to develop a US arm that will pursue a host of faith-based projects. The accounts show that his foundation has an impressive – and, in at least one case, controversial – set of faith contacts. Sitting on some £4.5m in funds as of April last year, mostly gathered through donations, it is now well placed to make its voice heard.

The foundation’s advisory council of religious leaders includes Rick Warren, powerful founder of the California-based Saddleback church. It attracts congregations of nearly 20,000 and is reportedly one of the largest in the US. Warren, who has addressed the UN and the World Economic Forum in Davos, has been named one of the “15 world leaders who matter most” and one of the “100 most influential people in the world”…

Mostly, the opinion of fools..

That Blair, a charismatic politician driven by faith, should be at home across the Atlantic is no surprise to political analysts. “He comes across as confident and persuasive,” said Professor Shawn Bowler, of the University of California at Riverside. “He does not talk like a modern robo-candidate in the way so many US political figures do.” Unlike in the UK, Blair’s religious fervour is seen as a strength. “Blair is very open about his faith and that plays a lot better in the US than in Britain,” Bowler said…

RTFA. I would expect him to rake in the gold from True Believers. Belief is stronger than reality for neurotic nutballs. Patting a bowed head is easier than feeding a starving child.

Perhaps he’ll invite George W. Bush to aid him in his New World Crusade.

An Iraqi taxi driver was the source of the discredited claim that Saddam Hussein could unleash weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes, a Tory MP claimed today.

Adam Holloway, a defence specialist, said MI6 obtained the information indirectly from a taxi driver who had overheard two Iraqi military commanders talking about Saddam’s weapons.

The 45-minute claim was a key feature of the dossier about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction that was released by Tony Blair in September 2002. Blair published the information to bolster public support for war.

After the war the dossier became hugely controversial when it became clear that some of the information it contained was not true. An inquiry headed by Lord Butler into the use of intelligence in the run-up to the war revealed that MI6 had subsequently accepted that some of its Iraqi sources were unreliable, but his report did not identify who they were.

Today, in an interview with the Daily Mail, Holloway said the key piece of information about 45 minutes came from an Iraqi officer who was using a taxi driver as his own sub-source.

Just so you know how rinky-dink the politicians are that some of you trusted with your votes, your lives, the lives of the men and women sent to die in Iraq.

Chief constables will be forced to justify the legality of recording thousands of law-abiding protesters on secret nationwide databases, the government’s privacy watchdog announced today.

Christopher Graham, the information commissioner, said he had “genuine concerns about the ever increasing amount” of personal data held by police.

Graham’s move came after the Guardian revealed how police have developed a covert apparatus to monitor people they consider are, or could be, “domestic extremists”, a term which has no legal basis.

Photographs and personal details of thousands of activists who attend demonstrations, rallies and political meetings are being stored on the databases. Surveillance officers are given so-called “spotter cards” to identify individuals who may “instigate offences or disorder” at demonstrations.

Alan Johnson, the home secretary, was today forced to defend the police for labelling protesters “domestic extremists”. He said: “I haven’t issued any guidance [to police] on the definition of that phrase. The police know what they are doing, they know how to tackle these demonstrations, they do it very effectively…”

David Howarth, the Liberal Democrat justice spokesman, said that “an alphabet soup of agencies appears to have decided to put everyone in this country who protests about anything on a list of suspects”.

RTFA. None of this should surprise anyone in the UK or the US. Give political powers to policing bodies and – guess what? – they expand on those powers as they see fit. No rhyme or reason is required. Don’t worry – a rationale will be provided on the spot.

In case you thought there was a slight difference between Labor and Conservative, liberal and conservative – remember it was the Blair Government that handed over these freedoms in the name of safety. The Bush government did the same thing here.

“Pour moi?”
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Outside the circle of gullible Eurocrats who might actually believe some of the crap that flows from Blair’s PR hacks, there can be only one of two decisions resulting from this equation: [1] Everyone is laughing up their sleeve at this foolish git who thinks he’s moving on to yet another position of power; or [2] this really is just a figurehead position desired by no one other than out-of-work political blow-up bed-mates.

Tony Blair’s ambition to become Europe’s first president have been set back by stiffening opposition from Sweden and Spain, the two countries chairing the EU for the next year.

Senior officials in Stockholm, which assumed the six-month rotating presidency of the EU today, said they feared a President Blair would be a divisive figure, triggering friction between small and large European countries, and added that José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Spanish prime minister, was even more strongly opposed to Blair securing the post and usurping Madrid’s running of the union next year.

The decision to appoint a new sitting European president, for a maximum of five years, is to be taken before the end of the year if Ireland votes yes in October in a referendum on the Lisbon treaty streamlining the way the EU is run and also creating the new post.

Have the Irish become suddenly demented in the past few months? Are they considering a “Yes” vote?

European governments had to decide whether the post ought to be turned into “a strong leader for Europe” or whether the president’s role should be limited to chairing EU summits and “not putting the [European] commission president in the shadow,” said the Swedish prime minister.

It was clear he preferred the latter role, a lower profile and less influential function that would probably be less attractive to Blair…

The Briton’s main assets, however, are name and brand recognition, international contacts, and the absence, so far, of any serious rival for the post.

In other words, nothing at all useful to a politician trying to achieve anything other than personal gain.

A pair of useless self-serving political gits

Tony Blair was aware of the existence of a secret interrogation policy which effectively led to British citizens, and others, being ­tortured during counter-terrorism investigations, the Guardian can reveal.

The policy, devised in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, offered guidance to MI5 and MI6 officers questioning detainees in Afghanistan whom they knew were being mistreated by the US military.

British intelligence officers were given written instructions that they could not “be seen to condone” torture and that they must not “engage in any activity yourself that involves inhumane or degrading treatment of prisoners”.

But they were also told they were not under any obligation to intervene to prevent detainees from being mistreated.

“Given that they are not within our custody or control, the law does not require you to intervene to prevent this,” the policy said.

Read the rest of this entry »