Sept. 22: Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair
Posted on 10/05/2009 6:56:17 AM PDT by ETL
Sept. 22: Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair
The reluctant vote in favor of further European integration by the Irish this weekend may usher Tony Blair into a new role as titular head of the European Union — despite most of Europe being reluctant to have him.
The former prime minister is the leading candidate to become the European Union president for a want of alternatives rather than any enthusiasm.
With the Irish having finally ratified the Lisbon treaty, all that remains is for the Czech and Polish presidents to sign it and authorize the creation of two new key posts in the EU hierarchy: the president of the European council of heads of state, popularly known as the EU president, and that of high representative for common foreign and security policy, in effect a foreign minister.
The Swedish prime minister, who holds the rotating presidency of the EU, indicated last week that he wanted the president and foreign minister to be appointed by the end of this month.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Tom Happold
Guardian.co.uk
March 5, 2004
Tony Blair defended the doctrine of pre-emptive military action this morning, promising to "wage war relentlessly on those who would exploit racial and religious division to bring catastrophe to the world".
In a speech in his Sedgefield constituency, the prime minister warned of the "mortal danger" posed by Islamist terrorists and rogue states acquiring weapons of mass destruction, and insisted that "this is not the time to err on the side of caution".
"We surely have a duty and a right to prevent the threat materialising; and we surely have a responsibility to act when a nation's people are subjected to a regime such as Saddam's," he said.
Mr Blair called for the reform of international law and the UN to allow the elimination of rogue, repressive regimes which might supply terrorists with WMD.
He also dismissed charges that the attorney general's advice on the legality of the war was disputed, calling them an "elaborate smokescreen".
Insisting that Britain invaded Iraq "to enforce compliance with UN resolutions" and not because it had WMD, he suggested that the war was justified even if the Iraq survey group finds no weapons.
He said: "Here is the crux: It is possible that even with all this, nothing would have happened; possible that Saddam would change his ambitions; possible he would develop the WMD but never use it; possible that the terrorists would never get their hands on WMD, whether from Iraq or elsewhere.
"We cannot be certain. But do we want to take the risk? That is the judgment. And my judgment then and now is that the risk of this new global terrorism, and its interaction with states or organisations or individuals proliferating WMD, is one I simply am not prepared to take."
He claimed the attacks of September 11 had "altered crucially the balance of risk", showing as they did that Islamist terrorists were prepared to wage "war without limit".
"From September 11 on, I could see the threat plainly," he said. "Here were terrorists prepared to bring about Armageddon. ..."
Read Tony Blair's speech in full:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2004/mar/05/iraq.iraq
Blair promises 'relentless' war on terror:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2004/mar/05/iraq.iraq1
He sucks. He was good on 9/11 but he wrecked England and worked hard for islamification.
Its not like the subjects of the Eurosplat get to have a vote on the matter.
Tony Blair, the EU president no one really wants
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6860257.ece#
Has he moved? Last I knew, England was not part of Europe.
When we’re this far gone, Europe is what our commissars say it is.
“loyal U.S. ally in WOT”
I cannot believe that. It makes far more sense that the UK military was going to Iraq whether-Whitehall-liked-it-or-not and so No.10 had to act as if it was the instigator.
That makes FAR more sense than the “Blair was Pro-Bush” nonsense.
He was brilliant in comparison to what we got now, the dour Scottish tyrant, “not-so-flash” gordon brown.
Blair is a Muslim supporting Socialist. He may be the anti-christ.
Chairman Mao would be more enlightened than Brown. The Labour Party like the Democrats are criminals. Obama has Labour and Marx’s playbook/Koran.
The British have their own non war on terror reasons to be involved in their former colony of Iraq - a nation they founded from the scraps of the Ottoman empire.
What sickens me is converted to Catholicism recently. He should have become a Muslim as he is a stooge for Allah and Satan.
Blair could care less about religion or being Catholic and he supports abortion and jihadi Balkan Muslims.
Your boy, KGB Putin, certainly doesn't care about religion. As for the "Balkan Muslims", they aren't part of the jihadi movement. Your boys in Russia try to tie them to it so that they can justify 'eliminating' them. When a consistent Putin apologist like you are against someone it often means Americans should be supportive of him or her.
By Konstantin Preobrazhensky
Americans generally believe that Russia is afraid of Islamic terrorism as much as the U.S.A. They are reminded of the war in Chechnya, the hostage crisis at the Beslan School in 2004 and at the Moscow Theater in 2002, and of the apartment house blasts in Moscow in 1999, where over 200 people were killed. It is clear that Russians are also targets of terrorism today.
But in all these events, the participation of the FSB, Federal Security Service, inheritor to the KGB, is also clear. Their involvement in the Moscow blasts has been proven by lawyer Mikhail Trepashkin, a former FSB Colonel. For this he was illegally imprisoned, and is now suffering torture and deprivation of medical assistance, from which he is not likely to survive.
A key distinction between Russian and American attitudes towards Islamic terrorism is that while for America terrorism is largely seen as an exterior menace, Russia uses terrorism as an object as a tool of the state for manipulation in and outside the home country. Islamic terrorism is only part of the world of terrorism. Long before Islamic terrorism became a global threat, the KGB had used terrorism to facilitate the victory of world Communism.
This leads to the logical connection between Russian and Islamic terrorism. The late Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned in London in November, 2006, told me that his former FSB colleagues had trained famous Al-Qaeda terrorists Ayman Al-Zawahiri and Juma Namangoniy during the 1980s and 1990s. Ayman Al-Zawahiri, one of the world's most wanted terrorists, has been responsible for the murder of U.S. nationals outside the United States. Before his death, Juma Namangoniy (Jumabai Hojiyev), a native of Soviet Uzbekistan, was a right-hand man of Osama bin Laden in charge of the Taliban's northern front in Afghanistan.
In 1996, Alexander Litvinenko was responsible for securing the secrecy of Al-Zawahiri's arrival in Russia, who was trained by FSB instructors in Dagestan, Northern Caucasus, in 1996-1997.
At that time, Litvinenko was the Head of the Subdivision for Internationally Wanted Terrorists of the First Department of the Operative-Inquiry Directorate of the FSB Anti-Terrorist Department. He was ordered to undertake the delicate mission of securing Al-Zawahiri from unintentional disclosure by the Russian police. Though Al-Zawahiri had been brought to Russia by the FSB using a false passport, it was still possible for the police to learn about his arrival and report to Moscow for verification. Such a process could disclose Al-Zawahiri as an FSB collaborator.
In order to prevent this, Litvinenko visited a group of the highly placed police officers to notify them in advance. "If you get information about some suspicious Arabs arriving in the Caucasus, please report it to me before informing your leadership", he told them.
Juma Namangoniy was once a student of the Saboteur Training Center of the First Chief Directorate of the KGB in 1989-91. The school was notorious for the international terrorists who matriculated from it. It now belongs to the FSB, and since only KGB staff officers were allowed to study there, Juma Namangoniy's presence clearly suggests that he was much more than a civil collaborator.
Mohammed Atta, the pilot of the first plane to crash into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, had met with a senior Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague, Czech Republic, five months before the attack. But Iraqi intelligence was just a client of Russia's intelligence service. It brings a new understanding to the fact that President Putin was the first foreign President to call President Bush on 9/11. One may conjecture that he knew in advance what was to happen.
Muslim Name and Communist Heart
Tartars have always been patriotic to Russia. Their independent kingdom was conquered by Russia in the 16th century, but their gentry were allowed to join the Russian upper class and enjoy all its privileges. Even today, many Russian families of noble origin have Tartar origins. Russia has a half-millennium of experience in turning conquered Muslim nations into obedient citizens by bribing their elite.
There are many Soviet Muslims, therefore, who seem to face no conflict of spirit. One can be a Muslim in name only, whose heart belongs to Communism. There have been a lot of such people among Russian Muslims, especially among the Tartars. The Soviet Union has typically preferred to appoint them as ambassadors to Muslim countries. Their Muslim names give them a pass to the local society, but their Communist hearts order them to serve world Communism and not the world of Islam.
In the Soviet period, the highest leadership of the Muslim republics like Uzbekistan were unofficially allowed to practice Islam under the guise of folk rites, even though their Russian colleagues were severely reprimanded for participating in such Christian "rites" as Christmas or Easter. Unlike today, Soviet cartoonists were able to mock Islam as they mocked all other religions and it didn't bring any special reaction.
Muslims of the Uzbek and other Central Asian republics' elite joined the KGB intelligence in order to spy on fellow Muslim countries. In the KGB, I have met a lot of such quasi-Muslim officers.
Russia Grows Muslim
Putin continues the traditional Russian policy of giving privileges to the Muslim elite. Today's Russian Minister of Healthcare, Mikhail Zurabov, is a Chechen. His political agenda includes the total destruction of the Russian healthcare system, looking like revenge for the war in Chechnya. Putin shows no concern over that.
Strategically Russia is surrendering to the Muslim world. The Russian population is declining rapidly, being undermined by 70 years of Communist experiment and the cold indifference of post-communist rulers. Annually, Russia is losing 900 thousand people who are being replaced by Muslims from the Caucasus and Central Asia. Islam is now the second-largest religion in Russia, where it may total up to 28 million adherents. Because of this, Russia was able to join the Organization of the Islamic Conference in 2003.
Russia's great qualitative population change represents both a departure from the past and a strengthening link with it. The synergies between the history of Russia's national policies of terrorism and the radical Islamic terrorism that it is spreading around the world are natural partners that may severely impact on America's own future.
_________________
Konstantin Preobrazhensky, a former Lt. Colonel in the KGB who defected to the United States in 1993, is an intelligence expert and specialist on Japan, about which he has written six books. His newest book Russian-American, A New KGB Asset will be published in late 2007. This article was first published by Gerard Group International, Intel Analyses, 31 August 2007.
http://cicentre.com/Documents/russia_islam_not_separate.html
A lie Google can easily clear up - see someresults below.
Bosnia: The Birthplace of Al-Qaeda @ http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1439767/posts
Bosnian Al-Qaeda: documenting own crimes video @ http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8042224724888922860#
The six foreign-born Muslims accused of planning a shooting attack at the U.S. military base included four Kosovo Albanian Muslims affiliated with the KLA, or the Kosovo Liberation Army, a Terrorist Jihad Wahhabi group. The U.S. officials say their arrests highlight how Islamist groups are using the Balkans region to help in recruiting and financing terrorism from FOX News @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjpXSfsYj8Q
That you claim the Balkan Muslims are not jihadists means anything you say - including being against Putin and Russians is suspect in my opinion. Go pray facing Mecca you Muslim/Jihad apologist.
Col. Alexander Litvinenko
4 Dec 1962 - 23 Nov 2006
"You may succeed in silencing me but that silence comes at a price. You have shown yourself to be as barbaric and ruthless as your most hostile critics have claimed. You have shown yourself to have no respect for life, liberty or any civilised value."
Obituary: Alexander Litvinenko
Times of London, 25 November 2006
On April 23, 2002, Alexander Litvinenko, a former officer of the Russian secret service, arrived at Heathrow, supposedly on a stopover before flying on to the Caribbean. Claiming that he was being persecuted by the Russian authorities, he sought political asylum.
Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko was born in 1962 in Voronezh, south of Moscow. After high school and extended service in the Soviet Army (in which his grandfather was an officer), he graduated from the Interior Forces Military Academy, joining the KGB in 1988.
While his early career was in espionage, by 1991 he had made a name for himself in the organised crime and anti-terror divisions. He also worked in the central apparatus, leading co-operation between the KGB, by then renamed the FSB, and the Moscow organised crime police squad. In 1997 he joined one of the FSB’s most secret departments, specialising in the pursuit of criminal organisations, and became its deputy head.
This exemplary career came to an abrupt end on November 18, 1998, when, in a press conference, he accused his FSB superiors of extortion, corruption and illegal assassinations. The accusations were detailed and seemed credible. He was suspended and in March 1999 arrested and held in isolation in the infamous KGB Lefortovo prison.
He was tried and acquitted in November 1999, but immediately rearrested. In 2000 charges were dropped after he promised to stay in Moscow. He and his family lived under intense surveillance and when they heard that further charges were being prepared, they fled. They flew to Turkey and from there to London.
Tried in absentia and sentenced to nine years in prison, Litvinenko found work in Britain as a postman, while his wife taught ballroom dancing. He continued his campaign against his former employers in interviews and books, and contributed anti-Russian material to a Chechen website. At the time of his death he was investigating the murder of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
He is survived by his wife Marina and his two children.
Alexander Litvinenko, former officer of the Russian secret service, was born on December 4, 1962. He died on November 23, 2006, aged 43
http://www.cicentre.com/Documents/litvinenko.html
_______________________________________________________
Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian security agent fighting for his life in a UK hospital after allegedly being poisoned, has been a fierce critic of Vladimir Putin since before he became president in 2000.
Mr Litvinenko is thought to have been close to journalist Anna Politkovskaya, another opponent of the Kremlin who was shot dead last month, and said recently he was investigating her murder. It was after being handed documents apparently relating to the case that he was taken ill more than two weeks ago.
But he is perhaps best known for a book in which he alleges that agents co-ordinated the 1999 apartment block bombings in Russia that killed more than 300 people. He now appears to have fallen victim to the kind of plots which he wrote about.
Arrest
Mr Litvinenko, 43, first became a security agent under the Soviet-era KGB, rising to the rank of lieutenant-colonel in its later incarnations.
He is reported to have fallen out with Vladimir Putin, then head of the security service, in the late 1990s, after failing in attempts to crack down on corruption within the organisation. In 1998, he first came to prominence by exposing an alleged plot to assassinate the then powerful tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who himself now lives in self-imposed exile in the UK. He was subsequently arrested on charges of abusing his office and spent nine months in a remand centre before being acquitted.
In 1999 he wrote Blowing up Russia: Terror from Within, in which he accused the current Russian security service, the FSB, of carrying out several apartment house bombings in 1999 that killed more than 300 people. The attacks, which Moscow blamed on Chechen rebels, helped swing public opinion behind Russia's second war in the breakaway republic.
Petrol bombs
Complaining of persecution, in 2000 Mr Litvinenko fled to the UK where he sought, and was granted, asylum. But after settling in an unnamed London suburb, the former spy continued to behave as if on the run, constantly changing his contact details. The Times newspaper reported that over the summer someone tried to push a pram loaded with petrol bombs at his front door. Appearing alongside high-profile opponents of President Putin, he has continued to make allegations about his former bosses. Perhaps most notably, he alleged that al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri was trained by the FSB in Dagestan in the years before 9/11.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORo9N2pOIxM&NR=1
MSNBC video: Albanian Muslim Terror In America/ Kosovo Albanians Motivated By Taliban Jihad & September 11
Perfect example of a “do-gooder” idealist who made things worse.
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