By Gilad Atzmon – London
Millions of ballot papers have been sent out yesterday to those eligible to vote in the Labour leadership election. Symbolically enough, this happened the day Tony Blair, the British PM who launched the criminal war in Iraq, published his controversial memoirs.
I am not holding my breath for the Labour party to make the right decision. Clearly, the same party failed to curtail Blair’s militant enthusiasm, even when it was plainly clear that the argument for the Iraq war was grounded in a dodgy dossier.
Considering the scale of the atrocities we are all complicit in thanks to the Labour government, it is my duty to remind the Labour party members who their leading candidate is, what he stands for and what interests he may serve.
Labour Party members should consider the role allegedly played by its leaders and leading candidate David Miliband in what has come to be known as "extraordinary rendition": knowingly allowing terror suspects to be transferred through British airspace, in order for them to be tortured in third countries and to allow British agents to gather information from suspects treated in this way. Miliband also attempted to block public disclosure of intelligence information related to torture allegations in the case of former Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed.
Interestingly enough, the same David Miliband has been preaching to us on ethics recently, here is what he told the Independent on Sunday.
"The alternative to an ethical foreign policy is an unethical foreign policy, and I don’t believe in an unethical foreign policy.”
I guess that Labour members better ask themselves what is so ‘ethical’ about concealing Britain’s involvement in torture.
The Labour party members also should remember that their leading candidate David Miliband announced his intention to change the law on ‘universal jurisdiction’. According to the Jewish Chronicle he was “pushing hard within Whitehall” for such a cause. In case someone has managed to forget, Miliband put much effort into the subject so that Israeli suspected war criminals could avoid justice once landing in this kingdom.
Ironically in the Independent Miliband claimed to know what ‘British values’ are, yet his actions against universal jurisdiction proves the opposite. However, is apparent that David Miliband certainly knows what Israeli interests are. He has been promoting these interests in our midst for quite a while.
David Miliband was, until recently, listed on an Israeli Propaganda site as an ‘Israeli Hasbara (Propaganda) Author’ (whatever that means). Interestingly enough, The Israeli Hasbara site that listed him disappeared on the 5th of May 2010, a day before the British election, when it was clear that Gordon Brown’s political career was cast to history. From then on it was obvious that David Miliband would offer himself as a candidate for the Labour leadership. Is it a coincidence? I honestly do not know the answer and I also do not have the means to check.
Miliband might have been happy to discover that the Israeli Propaganda site ceased to exist. However, he may not be as happy to find out that some of us have saved a PDF image of the site content. I believe that every Labour party member should look at the list of Israeli Propaganda Authors and find their party’s favorite candidate. Every Labour party member should wonder what a Labour leadership candidate is doing on such a list.
Like Tony Blair, David Miliband supports moral interventionism, as if killing 1.5 million Iraqis in the name of democracy is not enough. In 2008 Miliband maintained that spreading democracy should be a “…great progressive project; (and) the means need to combine both soft and hard power.”
I wonder what is so ‘progressive’ about pushing tribal and reactionary interests in Whitehall? What is so advanced in concealing torture? Is torture ‘soft’ or ‘hard’ power? What is so ethical in attempting to amend Britain Universal Jurisdiction? What is Moral about killing in the name of democracy? One may wonder how much torture can David Miliband take before he gives up on torturing others? Unlike Shaker Aamer, the Brit who is still incarcerated in Guant
