THE MAN WHO WANTED TO BE PRIME MINISTER/DOUBLE STANDARDS AND DISTANT ECHOES

THE NASTY PARTY AND THE VACUITY THAT IS DAVID CAMERON  

Baroness Warsi 

If you want to see just how nasty the Tory party can get just read some of the reactions, a great many off the record, on the resignation of Baroness Warsi.[1] The nasty party barely covered it, as some senior Tories and their bag carriers lined up to pour buckets of a metaphorical shit over the recently departed peer.
Her resignation came at a bad time for David Cameron and the Conservatives, her case against the government chiming with the complaints raised by Ed Miliband. The reactions of George Osborne and the new Foreign Secretary, Phillip Hammond, combined a patronising ‘more in sorrow than in anger,’ tone, with facial expressions tinged with the kind of disdain that only comes with years of unchallenged  superciliousness.
 The Governments position on the Israeli onslaught on the Palestinian enclave, slavishly following the line set by Washington, could not have been more abject; whilst its public support for Israel’s actions, whilst UN schools were targeted and children slaughtered by the IDF, truly repugnant. True sights were more stomach churning than the sight of the newly appointed Foreign Secretary, Phillip Hammond, cosying up to the Israeli Prime Minister at the same time as Gaza was being pounded.

“This crisis was triggered by Hamas raining hundreds of rockets on Israeli cities, indiscriminately targeting civilians in contravention of all humanitarian law and norms. In the last fortnight, Hamas has fired 1,850 rockets at Israeli cities. This unprecedented barrage continues to this moment, with Hamas rejecting all proposals for a ceasefire, including those put forward by the Egyptian government. I have been clear throughout this crisis that Israel has the right to defend itself.” David Cameron House of Commons 21st July.

From the Murdoch press and the appointment of Andy Coulson, to Gaza, Cameron consistently demonstrates a lack of both judgement and a firm moral compass. He is a man whose ambition was to be Prime Minister, period. Such men always turn out to be vacuous at heart.

DISTANT ECHOES


The front page of this morning’s Guardian, [08.08.14], makes for grim and depressing reading. From Gaza, to Iraq, Syria and Azerbaijan, from South Sudan and the Ukraine the reports are of violence and crimes against humanity. Whilst across Europe there has been a dramatic rise in anti-Semitic attacks. Reading reports from Iraq respecting ISIS, now ‘re-branded’ as the Islamic State, - Islamist SS would be a more accurate description, language begins to falter, crumble, then collapse under the enormity of the suffering and inhumanity inflicted.
“In recent days Yezidi women, men and children from the region of Sinjar have fled for their lives,” he said. “Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands are now hiding high up the mountain with little but the clothes on their backs, they are without food, they are without water. People are starving, children are dying of thirst. Meanwhile Isis forces below have called for the systematic destruction of the Yeziddi people, which would constitute genocide.” Guardian 8.8.14
The wrong faith?  
In East London someone has placed a black ISIS flag amongst rows of Palestinianflags and anti-Israel graffiti. Presumably whoever placed it there has been outraged by the Israeli onslaught on Gaza, maybe even carried pictures of dead Palestinian women and children?
Where are the massed demonstration against ISIS, or those against Assad? if people are going to trade in pictures of dead children where are the dead Syrian children murdered by Assad’s barrel bombs?* Of course as soon as you start arguing in these nauseating terms you are already morally compromised. 
What it is always essential is to keep at the forefront of your mind is that behind the statistics of the dead in Iraq, Gaza, Syria, South Sudan, Ukraine, and the Caucasus, are lives cut short, children who will never know the anguish of puberty or the emotions of first love. Students frantically studying for exams they will never take. Men with plans, ideas for improving the house, or meeting with a long lost cousin. Women worrying about their children, about the rising cost of food. Women living in fear for their children, their husbands and for themselves. Those fears now sadly realised in an apartment block reduced to rumble, on a scorching mountainside, or on the waste ground beside a church or mosque.   
Like the SS ISIS likes to film its activities.

The disgusting double standards that attend so much outrage and protest are but distant echoes of the brutality, the mind set of those who destroy lives, kill and maim and imprison for a cause, more often than not labelled faith.
 *A barrel bomb is a type of improvised explosive device (IED). Sometimes described as a "flying IED", they are typically made from a barrel that has been filled with high explosives, with possibly shrapnel, oil or chemicals, and then dropped from a helicopter or airplane.[1] Due to the large amount of explosives that can be packed into a barrel, their poor accuracy and indiscriminate use in populated civilian areas (including refugee camps), the resulting detonations have been devastating.[2][3][4] Critics have characterized them as weapons of terror and illegal under international conventions.

[1] Am a just a jaded old cynic in supposing that the timing of Boris Johnson’s declaration that he will stand for parliament, in breach of his pre-election pledge not to, was partly timed to knock Warsi off the front page? 

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