Blair's speech to Parliament disrupted, Downing street whitewashed.

Tom | 04.02.2004 13:29 | Anti-militarism | Oxford

Tony Blair's speech to Parliament about the Hutton enquiry was repeatedly disrupted by activists shouting from the public gallery, easily audible on the live TV broadcast. The speaker suspended the debate and ordered the public gallery to be cleared.

Blair had somewhat strangely claimed that holding a public enquiry into the reasons for war would be "profoundly undemocratic". The Butler enquiry has an incredibly narrow remit and will sit in secret. Only its findings, i.e. 'the Government is Perfect', will be made public.

Is now the time to call for all of Tony Blair (and cabinet members) speeches to be disrupted with calls for transparency? The government would like nothing more than for the Iraq issue to dissappear, in fact Tony Blair already talks about it in the past tense while occupying soldiers and civilians die daily.

The disrupted speech came several hours after demonstraters dressed as judges poured white paint over downing street's gates in a protest against the government's persistant clearing of itself of any wrong-doing.

Bring down the government, they don't speak for us.

Tom

Comments

Hide the following 19 comments

BBC report

04.02.2004 15:32

here's BBC report:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3458541.stm

sociétélibre

JUDGES FOR JUSTICE

04.02.2004 15:56

hi,

yep, a group of five calling themselves "judges for justice", dressed in wigs and gowns, chucked white paint all over the gates of downing street this morning in protest against huttons whitewash and the fact that the government did indeed sex up the dossier. NO MORE BLOOD FOR OIL.

in earth solidarity

More corporate reports

04.02.2004 15:56

The Guardian:

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/kelly/story/0,13747,1140829,00.html

The Independent:

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=487809

sociétélibre

Phoney lied you can see it in his eyes ....

04.02.2004 16:23

INNIT !

Labourer

Hutton The Psychiatrist

04.02.2004 17:32

Hutton said that John Scarlett, head of JIC, may have been 'unconsciously influenced' by the desire to meet the Prime Minister's wish for the dossier to be as strong as possible. How exactly is he qualified to make such a statement? Does he even understand what psychologists and their ilk mean by that term? I thought Hutton was supposed to be a lawyer, not a shrink?

Seems he's dabbled in psychiatry and the unconscious before; Danny Morrison offers the following recollection:

"In 1978, he was part of the team defending Britain at the Strasbourg court
against Irish government allegations that internees in 1971 were tortured.
In 1981, he presided at the trial of a British soldier who ploughed at high
speed into a group of people in Derry, killing two youths. Hutton advised
the jury "to consider whether you think that perhaps unconsciously
some of the witnesses ... had a tendency somewhat to strengthen their
evidence against the army".

Danny Morrison is a novelist, was formerly Publicity Officer for Sinn Fein, and was sentenced to 8 years in The Maze in 1990.

Jack

A Leader with Honour...

04.02.2004 18:00

...would resign as Prime Minister.

Clare Jones

Fuck off Spock

04.02.2004 23:03

With your stupid trivialisation. Death in Iraq has been increased exponentionally. Not only in the everday shoot out and bombblast but from the further 2000 tonnes of DU
Extreme congratulations are due to the heroic whitewashing judges and hollering disrupters of parliament
This is a great day to celebrate imaginative expositions against the corruptions
Full support is due to those involved

yeah fuck off

05.02.2004 01:10

'the odd deaths due to people caught in the crossfire'- how insulting to the people you think have been liberated... incidentally, liberated to have a system of democracy like ours full of lies? lucky them

To Spock

05.02.2004 01:57

Why was this an unjust war?

>Resolution 1441 did not legalise the invasion of Iraq. When the resolution was passed, every Council ambassador other than Washington's made clear the resolution provides no authorization for war. According to Mexico's Ambassador, Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, force could only be valid, "with the prior, explicit authorization of the Security Council." Clearly, a unilateral act of war by the United States and the UK would be a war of aggression, falling outside the norms of international law and thus qualifying as a serious war crime. Principle VI of the Nuremberg Principles of 1946 explicitly states that the 'planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties' is a war crime. Former Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, chief U.S. prosecutor at the first Nuremberg trial, called waging aggressive war "the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

so there

Odd deaths

05.02.2004 10:29

Here are your "odd deaths due to people caught in the crossfire":

http://www.iraqbodycount.net

Between 8,000 and 10,000 civilian dead, due to the use of cluster bombs and other types of aerial bombardment, to minimise the risk to Allied forces, at the cost of a sharp increase in civilian deaths. The use of Depleted Uranium shells will vastly increase this number over time.

Ian

Except, Spock

05.02.2004 20:22

If that is your real name...

Saddam Hussein offered to hold free elections and allow US troops into Iraq to aid the search for WMD. The US refused.

The war was not a last resort, and the Iraqi people are not now free. At demonstrations, impossible due to fear of state violence under Saddam, Coalition troops and US-trained Iraqi police regularly shoot at demonstrators. Thats liberation!

Iraq has had an extra dose of Depleted Uranium; cancer rates in Baghdad are up 1000% post shock and awe. Unexploded Ordinance (UXO) kills hundreds of innocents.

Swallow too much propaganda and you'll be sick. Anti-war does not equal pro-saddam except in the wonderfully simple black/white, good/evil, us/them world of Imperialist logic.

A terrible crime has been visited on the Iraqi people in the name of their own liberation. It seems the US will even deny them elections. If they do, many Shia leaders have pledged to join the predominantly sunni resistance (and no its not just 'foreign fighters' and 'die-hard ba'athists'). At this point it is worth pointing out that US casualties already exceed those of the first 3 years of the Vietnam war.

Read Mark Curtis' 'Web of Deceit'. I dare you.

Tom

Spock the spook

07.02.2004 02:10

1. You can get 1000%. Suppose 10 people die, 20 people dead would be an increase of 100%(ie 10 people=100%). Now suppose that figure were 100 people(a rise of 10x100%) you would have your 1000% increase.

2. "This war is no different to any other war" except for the pre-emptive part which was justified with government lies.

3. "I think these people are a national discrace" as oppose to the national(ist) pride?

4. "An example of his ruthlessness is the murdering of Kurds in the North of Iraq with chemical weapons."
...except according to Dr. Stephen C. Pelletiere and LTC
Douglas V. Johnson II of the Strategic Studies Institute of the
U.S. Army War College (

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/war/docs/3203/ Appendix B page 2) ... "Blood agents were allegedly responsible for the most
infamous use of chemicals in the war—the killing of Kurds at
Halabjah. Since the Iraqis have no history of using these two
agents-and the Iranians do-we conclude that the Iranians
perpetrated this attack. It is also worth noting that lethal
concentrations of cyanogen are difficult to obtain over an area
target, thus the reports of 5,000 Kurds dead in Halabjah are
suspect."

5. "WMD not being found is not an excuse to say the war is unjust." I think you will find the onus for justifying war lies not with people who do not wish for war but with those who tried to justify it based on WMD being present.

So go back to your spook/pig/BNP friends and stop wasting our time!

Oi!

Learning from history: don't appease Bush!

08.02.2004 16:44

The mistake in appeasement was appeasement of Bush, who was selected by the Supreme Court of the USA rather than elected. Elected leaders like Blair, Chirac should have refused to recognise the Bush/Cheney junta. Now we see the tragic results of the Bush/Cheney junta remaining in power and threatening "sixty" nations around the world... They are much more dangerous to the world than Saddam Hussein ever was.

Spock: how about READING a bit about Saddam Hussein's history and how he's been supported by the USA for most of his bloodthirsty career:

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=4685

Chamblerlain II

Justice

09.02.2004 06:41

Spock says: "Whether you like it or not, justice will be got for the thousands of lives on sept 11th."

So do we get to see your evidence for Iraq being involved in Sept 11th? Seeing as every single piece of evidence I've ever seen so far has been completely exposed as lies and war propaganda on closer examination?

Don't be so fucking gullible.

Jeff

don't you dare.....

11.02.2004 04:41

Don't you dare cite September 11th for any of my country's subsequent massacres. Using the deaths of innocent New Yorkers to justify the continuing deaths of innocent Iraqis and Afghans is a crock of shit.

I was there. I saw the bodies.

You didn't.

So fuck off.

WTC relief worker

justice not vengeance

11.02.2004 15:52

justice not vengeance, spock, I respect your right to air your views, but I am worried that although you rightly point out that some of the other views are based on shaky evidence, yours are based entirely on state/corporate/mainstream media evidence and are therefore not to be trusted. The evidence of lying and deceit on the part of the US and UK governments throughout history is enough to tell us not to trust them when they asert that we should go to war.

It is obvious to most people who read these pages that the US government has many more WMDs that iraq ever had, and has perpetrated much more enormous and horrible acts of violence that iraq ever did. Why this is not obvious to you, is presumably due to your inability to see anything beyond official mainstream sources as valid information. It is also obvious that while Saddam was bad, the US government are the ones most people on this planet need to be freed from...

you have been lied to, and you are extremely naive if you cannot see this. I do not know the truth but I can at least accept this and search widely, questioning my sources as I go, for something that most resembles it.

good luck, benji

benji

Sources

11.02.2004 17:14

One Of Benji's Many Great Sources

Benji, your sources are bollocks. I suppose they tell you that Saddam, never invaded Kuwait and that the World Trade Centre is still intact. We have no time to become complacent in this time of world unrest. We must act, quickly and fast against people who are a threat to civilisation. (Idiot Smartass - but Saddam wasn't a threat, he didn't mean to fire scuds, or try to buy nuclear materials from other countries. He Didn't even touch the Kurds. Honest. As for Kuwait, you just made that country up) We cannot hang around and wait for another Bin Laden to spring up. We cannot risk it. Lets take the example of a dirty bomb. If one of these were to hit London, millions would die. You don't need much Caesium to make one of these bombs (less Caesium, smaller area of effect). You are the kind of person, who would say 'Why didn't this country do something against terrorism?' if a big attack on this country, were to happen.

Anyway, here is one of Benji's 'Sources' in action.

Mick

sources 2

11.02.2004 17:50

Here We Go Again - Benji's Sources

The picture didn't load. I'm getting sick of this site - with its inability to load pictures and the your mother articles.