The Hugo Chavez litmus test

As I wrote here, there is a simple measure which can be used to differentiate the faux-left from genuine socialists.

The Hugo Chavez litmus test.

For genuine socialists, Chavez is a hero for the way he governs his country in the interests of the majority, for his redistributive economic policies and for his outspoken opposition to the neoconservative war agenda.

But for faux-leftists he's a "demagogue" and sometimes even a "dictator" despite his regular election victories, his frequent use of referendums and his belief in devolving power to local communities.

The Hugo Chavez litmus test works every time. Here's the latest example.

Freedom and its adversaries (supported by Coca-Cola)

Many thanks for Karl over at his excellent blog 'Eastern Europe Watch' for alerting me to the 'Freedom and its Adversaries' conference, which was held in Prague last month to commemorate 20 years since the 'Velvet Revolution', and which was supported by several western multinationals, including the Coca-Cola Company, Deloitte and TNT Post.

You can read a list of the participants here and what a bunch they were too.
Neo-con pin-up boy Vaclav Havel, described by current Czech President Vaclav Klaus as 'the most elitist person I have ever seen in my life', Iraq war supporting philosopher Andre Glucksmann and the fanatically anti-communist playwright Tom Stoppard, who is on the advisory board of the hardcore neocon magazine Standpoint.

And guess who’s there on top left? Yup, former US Secretary of State, 'Mad' Albright (above).

Her bio says:
As Secretary of State, she reinforced America’s alliances, advocated democracy and human rights, and promoted American trade and business, labor, and environmental standards abroad.

Well, I think we can fairly say Mad ‘promoted American trade and business‘- but ‘advocated democracy and human rights’?

By supporting the genocidal sanctions on the people of Iraq?.

"When asked on US television if she thought that the death of half a million Iraqi children was a price worth paying, Albright replied: "This is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it."

Or by bombing innocent Yugoslav citizens and helping to topple a democratically elected government whose only ‘crime’ was continuing to run an economy where social ownership predominated a decade after the Berlin Wall came down?

The 'freedom' that Ms Albright wants is the 'freedom' for big corporations to make money. Certainly not the freedom of people to elect governments the US State Department and global capital disapproves of.

How the West destroyed Yugoslavia

The trial of Radovan Karadzic in The Hague, which has been stalled by the former Bosnian Serb leader's refusal to show up in court, is likely to be used by the West to justify NATO's current policy of "humanitarian intervention."

At a time when the NATO-led operation in Afghanistan is becoming increasingly unpopular in countries which have committed troops to this theatre of war, Western officials are likely to propagate the generally accepted notion - created by Western governments to cover up the real, geo-political motives for their involvement in the Yugoslav civil war - that it was NATO intervention which ended the Bosnian war.....

However, as the case of Iraq has shown, the West has no compunction in fabricating a story for its own self-gain.

The Yugoslav civil war was a conflict which could have been averted had it not been for the actions of the US, German and certain other European governments who, according to Lord Peter Carrington, chairman of the Geneva-based conference on Yugoslavia, "made it sure there was going to be a conflict" in that region.

You can read the whole of Marcus Papadopolous’s brilliant Morning Star article on how the west deliberately destroyed socialist Yugoslavia, here.

With the Iraq war widely discredited and the Afghanistan war increasingly unpopular, it really will, as I argued here, be ‘game over’ for the serial warmongers, once people acknowledge the truth about what went on in the Balkans in the 1990s.

The Americanisation of Eastern Europe

continues apace....

With rising unemployment, rising poverty, huge disparities of wealth and a massive increase in violent crime, is it any wonder that a majority of Hungarians (and not just my wife, Zsuzsanna), believe that things were better before neoliberalism came to the country in 1989?

How Tony Bliar lied over the legality of the Iraq war

The Mail on Sunday reports:

Tony Blair was accused of a 'gross betrayal' of the Queen and Parliament last night after it emerged that the Government's chief law officer warned him eight months before the Iraq invasion that regime change would be illegal.

In a previously undisclosed memo, described as 'the most vital piece of the jigsaw so far', Attorney General Lord Goldsmith told the then prime minister that the war would be a blatant breach of international law.

But rather than slow his rush to war, Mr Blair froze Lord Goldsmith out of Cabinet meetings and sent two of his closest allies to menace him into changing his mind. Lord Goldsmith was so furious at his treatment he threatened to resign- and lost three stone as Mr Blair and his cronies bullied him into backing down

What lovely people Bliar and his cronies are, don't you think? Starting blatantly illegal wars. Bullying those who get in the way of their plans.

Tony Bliar, the man the neocons wanted to be EU President- is now a totally disgraced figure. He- and his few remaining supporters- need to be treated with utter contempt. But that's not enough. There is abundant evidence that Bliar is guilty of war crimes. The 'supreme' international crime is to launch a war of aggression against a sovereign state- and that's what Bliar did in 2003.
He- and his US counter-part George W. Bush- and the neocon fanatics who pushed so aggressively for war, need to be brought before a war crimes tribunal as soon as possible.

The great WMD hoax- and why David Aaronovitch owes Tony Benn an apology

BLAIR LIED LIED AND LIED AGAIN: MANDARINS REVEAL THAT 10 DAYS BEFORE IRAQ INVASION PM KNEW SADDAM COULDN'T USE WMDs.

says today's Daily Mail headline. Who'd have thought it eh? Tony Blair lying? I'm sure that news comes as a huge surprise to readers of this blog.

Reading the Mail's headline reminded me of the events of February 2003. Veteran socialist politician and peace campaigner Tony Benn travelled to Baghdad to ask Saddam Hussein if he did indeed possess WMDs. (you can watch part one of Tony's interview above, and you can watch parts two and three here and here).

For going to Baghdad and meeting with Saddam, Benn was savaged by the pro-war hawks in the media. David Aaronovitch, wrote this sneering, sarcastic piece poking fun at Benn in The Guardian. What a silly old naïve fool Tony Benn was the neocons and 'liberal interventionists' chimed, going to Baghdad and asking Saddam if he had WMD. Of course Saddam would say he hadn't and of course he was lying.

But it wasn’t Saddam Hussein who was telling porkies, but the British and American governments.

Of course, some of us said the WMD line was baloney. It wasn't a difficult call to make- for if Bush and Blair had genuinely believed Iraq possessed WMDs they would not have been so keen to attack the country, as I argued here.

But many, many journalists did swallow the lies about WMDs, hook, line and sinker.
As I said here, the pundits who parroted the U.S. and Britain's deceitful propaganda on Iraq have never been properly held to account.

Far from it, they've actually been rewarded for getting things so badly wrong.

Melanie Phillips, and not John Pilger or Seumas Milne, is on Question Time tonight.

UPDATE: Blair and Bush's Bush and Blair’s secret, illegal plan to ‘regime change’ in Iraq. Read all about it here and here.

Sir John Chilcot gets to work

Mehdi Hasan and Craig Murray explain his colour scheme.
hat tip for Craig Murray's post: The Exile