NICKNAMED “THE THUNDERER” FOR ITS BOOMING PRONOUNCEMENTS WHEN BRITANNIA TERRORISED  ALL CREATURES LIVING ON LAND OR SEA,  THE FORMER IMPERIAL ORGAN  IS NOW A MERE HOOTER. NOBODY READING IT TODAY COULD GIVE TWO HOOTS FOR IT – by Donal Kennedy

It carries a letter from Lord Howard of Newport, a former member of Britain’s Intelligence and Security Committee, defending Tony Blair from an accusation that he, his spin-doctor Alastair Campbell, and Sir John Scarlett, of peddling falsehoods to justify the 2003 attack on Iraq. ( The attack on Iraq was not sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council and was, and remains unsupported by international law. It is reputed to have cost one million human lives, mostly Arab, and mainly civilian.)

 Lord Howard would appear to expect us to believe that Britain’s vaunted secret services, and those of their American puppet-masters were babes-in-the-wood and that Tony Blair should not suffer so much as a motorist who has been given a parking ticket.

 In what I find difficult to accept as “real life”,  Blair got scores of standing ovations when he gave a thirty minute speech to both Houses of the U.S.Congress.

 He has a celebrity net worth ” of several million dollars and he is a Knight of the Garter. He has ordered British troops into war on five occasions, more than any of his predecessors.

 Before the 1997 General Election in Britain he visited the White House, as British Labour leaders had done for some years, to get the approval of the American President.

 He also visited the Australian media mogul, Rupert Murdoch, who had formerly always supported the Conservatives, for HIS approval and got it.

These appeals indicate the depths to which candidates for Britain’s highest elected office have fallen, together with the self-respect of the British Labour Movement.

TODAY IN THE TIMES Russia’s President Putin is portrayed as a mogul or oligarch and all Russian business men as kleptocrats and crooks.

 And then we are told that Mr Putin’s private life mirrors those of the much-married Rupert Murdoch, and Boris Johnson (except that there is no rumour of abortions in Putin’s case). And THE TIMES carries an advertisement for a concert by the Rolling Stones and its lead singer, Mick Jagger, father of four children by Rupert Murdoch’s present wife.

 Putin has not apparently had any connection with the Duke of York, Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, Lord Mandelson  or the former adulterers hoping to be King and Queen Consort of the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and England.

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