"Money screams". War Child and the Evening Standard

“Money doesn't talk - it screams.” As a co-founder of War Child I reluctantly have to step up to the line on this one. George Osborne voted against saying that the case for war against Iraq had not been established. And on 18 Mar 2003 he voted that the Government should use all means necessary to ensure the disarmament of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction leading to the UK joining the US invasion of Iraq two days later. His support for Western 'intervention' in Libya and Syria was to follow. Now he supports War Child?

The Pornography of War

Chemical, gas, phosphorous, even radioactive weapons are fine when used by 'our side' but cause for military intervention when used by our supposed 'enemies'. An intervention which draws on stocks from the above.

Al Jazeera reporter Dahr Jamail stated that, 'The U.S. invasion of Iraq has left behind a legacy of cancer and birth defects suspected of being caused by the U.S. military’s extensive use of depleted uranium and white phosphorus.' 
Witnessing the birth defects in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, Jamail added: ‘They’re extremely hard to bear witness to. But it’s something that we all need to pay attention to ... What this has generated is, from 2004 we are seeing a high rate of congenital malformations in this city.'
His view was supported in an epidemiological study in The International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health which concluded that: 'Fallujah is experiencing higher rates of cancer, leukemia and infant mortality than Hiroshima and Nagasaki did in 1945.' (Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005-2009)
Fourteen years later ex-UK ambassador Craig Murray writes about Syria: 'In this extraordinary war, where Saudi-funded jihadist head choppers have Israeli air support and US and UK military “advisers”, every time the Syrian army is about to take complete control of a major jihadist enclave, at the last moment when victory is in their grasp, the Syrian Army allegedly attacks children with chemical weapons, for no military reason at all.'
His cynicism is shared by Theodore Postol, a leading weapons academic at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who believes that the US government does not provide any "concrete" evidence that Assad was responsible. He has said: 'I have reviewed the [White House's] document carefully, and I believe it can be shown, without doubt, that the document does not provide any evidence whatsoever that the US government has concrete knowledge that the government of Syria was the source of the chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria at roughly 6am to 7am on 4 April, 2017.'
Meanwhile the drums of war get louder with Tony Blair predictably urging on the bombers. 
Craig Murray is right to warn that, 'The massive orchestration of Russophobia over the last two years is intended to prepare public opinion for a wider military conflict centred on the Middle East, but likely to spread, and that we are approaching that endgame.'
Perhaps there is another endgame in sight and they are linked. It's the arrival of the fifth horseman of the Apocalypse, 'War as Diversion'.
The FBI has now raided the offices of Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. He was involved in the $130,000 payment to 'Stormy Daniels'. Apparently she can describe the President's genitals. 
For the sake of the dead and dying and for all our sanities it is time to oppose pornography in all its forms.

Maajid Nawaz lays a trap

I was at Sussex University today (15 October 2016 ) at the Migration Awareness Day and about to talk about NGO's and refugees, about my experiences at War Child and about my book, 'Left Field', which deals with these issues. The phone rang. It was LBC asking me if I was prepared to be interviewed by Maajid Nawaz. I told them that I was co-founder of War Child, author of 'Left Field' and guest at this conference and could speak in those capacities. They asked me it was it true that I had been Press Officer at STW and I said I had not worked for Stop the War for years. I asked them to call back at 2.30 after my talk and assumed that the call was a result of the conference taking place at that moment. As you can tell from this excerpt the invitation had nothing to do with the migration awareness day and all to do with ensnaring me in Maajid's venomous trap. Pity they stopped this recording just before I screamed my anger at him and shut him down. For those interested in uncanny happenings. I think I have been called twice in the years since I left STW. And this call, five minutes before my talk, seemed to me obviously connected to my talk. Obviously not. Watch the interview here.

Standing in the light

Ex-Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, General Wesley Clark, made this comment eight years ago.“We’re going to take out seven countries in 5 years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran”. Hasn't exactly gone to chronological plan, but they are still working on it. My friend Haifa Zangana, novelist, short story writer and political columnist, invited me to a showing of 'Whose Peace Will it Be' at the P1 Studio London last night. Directed by the Belgian filmmaker, Luc Pien, it was deliberately not a film about the atrocities that have been committed in Iraq—and now far beyond its borders. Pien spoke with writers, poets, academics and refugees. As well as Haifa, they included Zainab Khan and Intisar al Obaidy, artist Rashad Salim, film maker Al Daraji and academic Mundher Adhami. Harold Pinter said, “We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people.” Yet out of this degradation the survivors emerge, defiantly standing in the light and speaking for themselves and for a civilisation that belongs to all of us. Don't forget to be at Downing Street at midday on Saturday. We still have to act against Clark's seven-country plan and stand in the light. More on Haifa Zangana in Left Field