Material Interests (2022)

Book Review from the December 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Kleptopia: How Dirty Money Is Conquering the World. By Tom Burgis. William Collins £9.99.

Tom Burgis is an investigative journalist at the Financial Times. Here he provides a detailed account, backed up by meticulous referencing (often via interviews), of how some extremely rich and powerful people obtain their wealth and then move it around to ensure secrecy and keep it away from the prying eyes of tax collectors and supposed regulatory agencies.

Much of the action is connected to Kazakhstan, a former republic of the USSR, which became a base of private capitalism, run by oligarchs. Until recently, the president was the authoritarian Nursultan Nazarbayev, formerly boss of the ‘Communist’ Party. The country has lots of natural resources (oil, uranium, copper, chromium, etc), and much of this is owned by just three capitalists, referred to here as ‘the Trio’. They set up the Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation (ENRC), with a listing on the London Stock Exchange and an office in London, though that was later transferred to Luxembourg when regulators started to take too close a look. ENRC is officially a public company, but in practice is controlled by the Trio, who use it to move to the West the profit they make from exploiting Kazakh workers.

Their interests extend to Africa too. In Zimbabwe the resources are platinum, gold and diamonds, while Congo has vast reserves of copper. In 2009, ENRC bought a Zimbabwean mining company for nearly $1bn. Africa is attractive to investors in mining and raw materials: in other parts of the world, ownership of land and its resources are pretty much tied up, but in Africa they are often available to anyone with the right contacts and appropriate amounts of money. Even Robert Mugabe’s departure from power in 2017 had little impact on the tycoons.

Burgis also goes into detail about the armies of lawyers, private detectives and PR people who defend the ultra-rich and their reputations. He himself received a letter from a law firm accusing him of corruption and asking him to hand over details of the ‘third parties’ who had allegedly paid him to make his accusations. Various other people get a mention too: Tony Blair was a consultant to Nazarbayev for a while, Nazarbayev’s son-in-law bought a mansion from Prince Andrew, Donald Trump’s property empire was a convenient way of recycling money. More generally, real estate is an effective way of laundering wealth because of the secrecy involved.

Burgis has no illusions about what is going on: ‘Around the world, corruption has become the primary mechanism by which power functions’ and the kleptocrats aim ‘to seize power through fear and the force of money, and then to privatise that power.’ Maybe this kind of thing has become, as the book says at its close, ‘normal business’, but capitalism of all forms is based on power and the influence of wealth.

Paul Bennett

Out of the ground in Asia (2003)

From the December 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is plain that the invasion of Iraq was essentially caused by Western capitalism’s desire to control that country’s oil supplies. But the Middle East is not the only area with such resources, and other capitalist powers are keen to get their hands on whatever energy supplies they can.

China, for instance, used to pride itself on its oil industry, with “In industry, learn from Daqing”, referring to a celebrated oilfield, being part of a ubiquitous slogan in Maoist days. Since 1993, however, it has been a net importer of oil, and now imports 30 percent of its requirements. Existing fields are approaching depletion, and on one estimate, by 2020 at least half of the oil it needs will have to be imported. This is problematic for China’s rulers, in terms of both cost and security of supplies.

Hence the interest in exploring and exploiting the Tarim Basin, a vast area located in the extreme west of China, near the border with Kirghistan (see Beijing Review, 9 October). This has both oil and gas, possibly as much as 6 billion tons of the former and 8 trillion cubic meters of the latter. Oil production is already under way, but it is gas that is the current focus of interest. A pipeline, over 4000 kilometers long and costing untold billions of dollars, is being planned to carry natural gas from Tarim to the Shanghai area on China’s eastern coast. Even this, though, is only likely to provide thirty years’ worth of gas supplies.

Meanwhile, oil resources in Russia have also become a subject of dispute. The Angarsk area, near Irkutsk on the shore of Lake Baikal, is at the centre of a sizeable oilfield, and the Russian rulers, relatively strapped for cash as they are, see this as a resource they can sell in return for foreign exchange. However, the amount of oil there is unlikely to be enough to justify more than one pipeline to deliver it to prospective customers, so there is a scramble to see where that pipeline should go. China, of course, wants it to go to Daqing so that its own needs for oil can be met.

But Japan has another idea, a pipeline to Nakhodka, which is in Russia’s far east, just down the coast from Vladivostok and facing Japan. The Japanese Prime Minister visited Moscow in January this year, and the pipeline was one of the items on their agenda. And the United States, not content with getting hold of Iraq’s oil, has its own eyes on what is happening: a pipeline in the other direction to Murmansk, near Russia’s border with Finland, could lead to the oil being exported to the US instead.

Behind all this diplomacy lie two issues, apart from the general one of ensuring access to energy. One is diversification of supplies, so that problems in one area will not lead to a drastic cutback in availability of oil or gas. China, for instance, sees Kazakhstan as another potential supplier, and a Chinese company is already exploring there. Japan currently takes nearly 90 percent of its oil imports from the Persian Gulf area, and this is not a healthy situation as far as Japan’s capitalists are concerned. The other issue is seeking to prevent any one rival country from dominating oil supplies in a particular area. Japan, again, does not want China to control the lion’s share of oil in east Asia. Any country that was in such a situation of dominance would quite likely have the whip-hand over its competitors.

The availability and sensible use of energy is an issue for any society. But under capitalism, questions of strategy and inter-nation rivalry far outweigh environmental and other concerns. We cannot predict whether there will be an Oil War in central or eastern Asia in the near future, but there is no doubt that this is one area of the world to watch very closely.

Paul Bennett

Uprising in Kazakhstan (2022)

From the February 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

The latest wave of protests began in Janaozen (sometimes spelled Zhanaozen), an oil town in western Kazakhstan. It was here that police shot down unarmed strikers in December 2011. Ten years later, the oilmen again struck for higher wages, better working conditions and the right to organise. The immediate triggers were the layoff in December of 40,000 workers by the main local employer, Tengiz Chevron Oil (75 percent US-owned), followed on New Year’s Day by the doubling of the price of the liquefied natural gas used in vehicles.

On 2 January a protest meeting started in the main square. Next day the strike began to spread. Roads were blockaded. By 4 January all the oilmen of western Kazakhstan were on strike; in the evening they were joined by the coalminers and metalworkers of central Kazakhstan. Non-stop mass meetings were now in progress in some dozen cities. New demands appeared, such as lowering the pension age, but the emphasis remained on ‘bread-and-butter’ issues.

On 5 January mass meetings began in the Russian-speaking cities of northern and eastern Kazakhstan. The protests now encompassed the entire country, with the exception of the capital of Nur-Sultan – previously Akmola and then Astana before being renamed in honor of former president Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Politicisation

The last few days before the crackdown saw a politicisation of the protests. Political as well as economic demands were now raised, including an end to arrests, release of political prisoners, the resignation of President Tokayev, Nazarbayev’s successor, and the final departure of Nazarbayev himself, no longer president but still head of the Security Council of Kazakhstan. Some called for restoration of the Constitution of 1993, which had divided power between president and parliament more equally than later ‘super-presidential’ constitutions. Others demanded a purely parliamentary system with no executive presidency.

It seems that at this time there were also attempts to form committees and councils to coordinate the protest movement, and also a ‘Council of Elders’.

It is worth noting what sorts of demands were not raised. In sharp contrast to the mass protests in Ukraine, there were no demands to change the foreign policy orientation of the country. Nor did any of the demands raised concern ‘ethnic’ issues such as the relative status of the Kazakh and Russian languages (Kazakh is the ‘state language’ but both are ‘official languages’).

What happened in Almaty?

Although protestors in several cities did topple statues of Nazarbayev or occupy government buildings, protests in most places were peaceful: they did not entail violence against people. However, events in Almaty developed very differently.

Almaty is the biggest city in Kazakhstan. During the Soviet period and the first few years of independence it was the republic’s capital. Even after the capital was moved to Akmola/Astana in 1997, Almaty remained the country’s main commercial, cultural and intellectual centre.

On the night of 4 January, protestors marched to the main square of Almaty, where they managed to push back the police lines and gain the upper hand. Some policemen were seen to flee or even change sides. Stores were looted, bank branches trashed, police cars burned. There were also raids on armouries – a fact that helps explain the emergence of armed insurgents who that night seized control of Almaty International Airport and a number of suburban districts.

The protestors dispersed in the early morning hours of 5 January, but returned about 10am. Over the course of the day, both the city administration building and the police headquarters were stormed and set on fire.

The insurgency in Almaty lasted no longer than 24 hours – from nightfall on 4 January to nightfall on the 5th. It appears that at this time President Tokayev was afraid of losing all control over the situation. He announced a series of concessions: he made the government resign, removed Nazarbayev, lowered the price of gas, and promised to provide assistance to the poorest families. This was also when he appealed for help to other members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization. Russia promised to send troops, as did Belarus and Armenia.

As it turned out, Tokayev was able to defeat the insurgency without the aid of foreign troops. On the night of 5 January, police units regained control of central Almaty, the airport and the suburban districts that the insurgents had seized the night before.

The plane carrying the first ‘peacekeepers’ from Russia landed on 6 January. Their trucks and armoured vehicles trundled around the streets of Almaty. Now and then residents could hear what sounded like gunfire. On 16 January the last Russian troops flew home.

Who were the organisers?

While most strikers and protestors came from the regular workforce, the looters and insurgents in Almaty were ‘marginals’ – resentful young men from the countryside who live in certain suburban districts and are unemployed or occupy poorly paid casual jobs. But armed insurgency – and especially seizure of the airport, 15 kilometres from the city – requires a certain amount of organisation, planning and preparation. So who were the organisers?

Putin and Tokayev point the finger at ‘criminals’ and ‘radical Islamic terrorists’ backed by unidentified forces outside Kazakhstan. While this may help explain disturbances elsewhere in Central Asia, especially in Uzbekistan, it is highly implausible in the case of Kazakhstan. Although most Kazakhs are nominally Moslem, Islam lacks deep roots in Kazakh society and political Islam has very little influence. The purpose of resorting to this bogeyman may be to justify a harsh response to the protests in the eyes of Westerners and Chinese who know little about the people of the region and are influenced by racial stereotypes. This effect is enhanced by blurring the distinction between armed insurgency and peaceful protest and by ignoring the fact that members of all of Kazakhstan’s ethnic groups participated in the protests, including traditionally Christian Slavs.

A Russian colleague who knows Kazakhstan well has a much more plausible explanation in terms of clan politics. Why, he asks, did Nazarbayev move the capital to Akmola in 1997? The official reasons were that Almaty is susceptible to earthquakes and too close to the border with China. He suggests another reason: the danger to Nazarbayev’s position posed by hostile local clans. The recent insurgency may have been organised by the heads of these clans, who are at the same time small or medium businessmen and therefore dispose of the necessary resources.

Be that as it may, the events in Almaty point to the need to investigate possibly significant regional differences in how the uprising developed and whose interests it served.

Another Colour Revolution?

The leaders of authoritarian post-Soviet regimes in Russia and its close allies live in mortal fear of so-called ‘Colour Revolutions’ of the kind that have overthrown similar regimes in other post-Soviet states. These revolutions, though justified in terms of democracy and human rights, are in fact carried out on the initiative and in the interests of Western powers.

The EU and the US were indeed deeply involved in Ukraine’s Orange Revolution. However, there is hardly any sign of such involvement in the uprising in Kazakhstan.

True, there is a party called Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan (DCK), led by a group of anti-Nazarbayev Kazakh businessmen and former state officials in exile in France. It stands for parliamentary democracy and genuine – as opposed to crony – capitalism. The DCK website (bit.ly/3tzU6Ly) focuses extensively on the gross corruption of Nazarbayev and his relatives (he, his daughter and his son-in-law are all billionaires). Apparently DCK has used social media to encourage and facilitate protest inside Kazakhstan. It is hard to judge its impact. Perhaps its leaders have connections in Western intelligence agencies.

What seems more significant is that Western oil companies with investments in Kazakhstan have been demanding the restoration of ‘order’. Strangely enough, they don’t like strikes and demands for higher wages. The main interest of Western capitalists in Kazakhstan is continued easy access to its vast natural resources. It doesn’t bother them if Kazakh politicians grab a hefty chunk of the proceeds for themselves. What else is new?

As for drawing Kazakhstan fully into the Western sphere of interest, this is not currently viewed as a realistic goal. No one is talking about admitting Kazakhstan to NATO or the EU. For Kazakhstan, as for Central Asia more broadly, there are just two candidates for hegemon – Russia and China.

Aftermath

Gradually but surely, things are returning to normal – or so the Astana Times assures us. The official figure for the number of people killed, probably much too low, is 164. Some 10,000 people have been arrested. Where are they and what will happen to them?

A new government has been appointed. Not quite as new as it might have been, seeing that 11 of the 20 old ministers are back in office and the new prime minister is the first deputy of the old prime minister.

President Tokayev acknowledges that socio-economic problems underlay ‘the tragic events’. Measures must be taken to narrow the gulf between rich and poor. Taxes on the extraction of mineral resource must be increased. At the same time, foreign investors must be reassured so that they do not withdraw their capital (by making them pay higher taxes?). He calls on citizens to ‘get involved in building a new Kazakhstan’. Time will tell how far this reformist rhetoric will go and how long it will last.

Karim Massimov, head of the National Security Committee and a former prime minister, has been arrested ‘on suspicion of treason’. Educated in China, fluent in Chinese and friends with senior Chinese officials, he has promoted economic ties with China and advocated a foreign policy of ‘balancing’ between Russia and China. It is hard not to see ‘the hand of Moscow’ behind this astonishing event. The Russian leadership seem to be exploiting the dependence of the Tokayev regime on Russian support to exclude any Chinese influence from Kazakhstan.

Nazarbayev has disappeared from view. He may be in Switzerland, where his daughter and son-in-law have a $75 million luxury villa.

Stefan

Going for Oil (1999)

From the January 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

The US State Department once described oil as “the greatest material prize in world history”. Considering its value to present-day society and the lengths the US has gone in order to control an ever-greater share of the world supply of black gold, this would seem a fair description.

Just as its acrid smell has carried US profit-mongers, and indeed their war machine, over the entire globe, siding with all manner of tyrants, engaging in who knows how many atrocities in the process, so too is it now luring the US to a region of the world bedevilled by unrest manifesting itself in ethnic rivalry and border disputes and ruled by power-hungry and corrupt governments—The Caspian.

Long ago, the black sticky stuff that bubbled to the surface to be poured into leather bags and sold by camel trains throughout the Caspian region aroused no great interest. Now, a new type of entrepreneur is on the scene—the world’s oil companies, perhaps the most unscrupulous of capitalists.

Eighty of the world’s biggest oil companies have been wheeling and dealing in Baku and other Caspian cities since the collapse of Soviet state capitalism in 1989. No-one knows for sure just how much oil awaits them. Proven resources, according to BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy, are 17 billion barrels and that yet to be found ranges from 20 billion bbls (International Institute for Strategic Studies) to a 1996 estimate of 178 billion bbls—the latter perhaps making the Caspian one of the most important oil-producing regions in the world. However, a generally accepted figure is that of 50 billion bbls and worth some $4 trillion at today’s prices—a sum that hints instantly at trouble.

US oil companies have long since sweetened the former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan with $2 billions-worth of investment, reviving to an extent their collapsed economies—or rather making them ripe for milking—and at the same time making them less dependent on Russia. Moreover, US oil giants have lobbied on behalf of Caspian governments in Washington, extolling the virtues of their political causes.

Already this is bearing fruit, with Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan signing deals worth £40 billion with the West. Azerbaijan has signed deals with 10 consortia so far, the biggest shareholder being BP and Amoco.

While the former Soviet republics are adamant they should be free to exploit their own wealth, Russia and Iran, the two remaining countries whose shores are lapped by the Caspian, have other thoughts. Both are major oil producers themselves and have genuine fears of what a Caspian oil boom could mean to their own interests. When we consider that oil is pumped out of Kazakhstan, for instance, three times cheaper than out of Siberia, it is understandable that Russian capitalists fear a tremendous fall in their profits as oil begins to pour out of their former states through more efficient outlets.

Both Russia and Iran insist on a fair share of the development of the Caspian oil fields and argue strenuously that pipelines should be allowed to pass through their own territory. Russia has suggested that countries bordering the Caspian should each carry out offshore production inside a 72 kilometre zone and that the waters should be shared. And both Russia and Iran have backed their claim to shared waters by pointing to their naval forces (Russia has 90 naval craft in the Caspian).

Like Russia, Iran is also wary of US interest in the region, believing the Clinton administration is trying to marginalise Teheran’s role in the Caspian and, like Russia, argues for “fairness”, Teheran insisting that negotiations on who drills where on the Caspian seabed be carried out by all concerned, with Iran maintaining the right to veto any decision it construes as being detrimental to its own interests.

Teheran is also rumoured to be contemplating ways to upset US plans to take Iran out of the Caspian equation, one being to offer a better price for oil that could be won in Europe.

For their part, the US claim they want the oil to flow out through numerous pipelines, thus allowing no country to monopolise it. In June, Clinton was heard singing the praises of Iran as it moved towards “democracy”. He spoke of how Iran was “changing in a positive way” and how the US was seeking a “genuine reconciliation” with Iran. And just as the US dismiss trying to undermine Iran’s interests in the Caspian, they similarly claim no opposition to oil pipelines running through Russia, so long as Russia does not control the valves.

The biggest argument at present seems to be over which direction the oil should flow out of the Caspian. It is a debate that can only intensify the longer it rages. The arrival of the US (mainly since 1995) and the preparedness of the former soviet republics to foster a strong relationship with Washington suggests trouble ahead.

As the International Herald Tribune recently reported:

  The drive by US companies to exploit these resources already has produced a political realignment of historical dimensions including an unprecedented American presence in a region that has been under continuous Russian control since the mid 18th Century (5 October 1998).

With the demand for oil expected to increase by 30 percent in the next 20 years, we have every reason for keeping a close eye on developments in the Caspian. At the moment, the region is relatively stable, but history teaches us troops could be mobilised overnight when profits are threatened and that deals are only as strong as the paper they are written on when “the greatest material prize in world history” is at stake.

John Bissett

Tony Blair – Big Business, Big Dictators, Big Money (2016)

From the April 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blair’s successful career of getting people to vote for him and make him Prime Minister, 1997-2007, meant he was able after leaving 10 Downing St to move into the very remunerative world of advising wealthy companies and foreign governments.  

He made a good start. J. P. Morgan, the American investment bank, hired him to advise them for a fee of about £2.5 million a year.  He got other deals from Zurich Insurance, Bernard Arnault (part of a luxury goods conglomerate), and the International Sanitary Supply Association (Times, 2 March). His main firm, Tony Blair Associates, has been doing very well ever since.  Not only rich businessmen, but autocratic rulers round the world, can count on Blair’s support, at a price.  

Egypt

In 2013 Egypt’s first ever elected government (like every other government round the world, it was disreputable and unscrupulous – but it was elected) and its President Mohamed Morsi were overthrown by an army coup, a thousand ‘dissidents’ being killed, and thousands more arrested. Blair hurried over to Cairo to see the new army leader, Abdel al-Sisi, and went on Egyptian television to give his support.  ‘We can debate the past and it’s probably not very fruitful to do so, but right now I think it’s important the international community gets behind the leadership here.’  Previously Blair had given his backing to an earlier Egyptian dictator, Hosni Mubarak, and to the Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi (Guardian, 30 January 2014).

Blair keeps up a high moral tone.  In 2007 he went to China (in a private jet, naturally) and told a meeting of philanthropists (who paid £1500 a head – more than a Chinese production worker then got in a year) that you should be judged not on what you do for yourself but on what you do for others.  He made $500,000 for that speech.

Kazakhstan

One of his main clients is Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, who pays Blair at least $13 million a year (some say twice as much as that).  In the days when the country was part of the Soviet Union, Nazarbayev rose to become First Secretary of the local state-capitalist party (for propaganda purposes it was deceitfully called the ‘Communist’ Party); that is, he was the local ruler.  Then when the Soviet Union broke up, Nazarbayev held an election for a new President, and (believe it or not) easily won with 91.5 percent of the vote.  Unlike rulers in countries with a bit more free speech, he gets more popular the longer he rules.  He’s been re-elected several times, and was able to announce that he had won the 2015 contest with 98 percent of the vote. The Human Rights Watch perhaps helped to explain this, when it pointed out that ‘Kazakhstan heavily restricts freedom of assembly, speech, and religion . . .  Torture remains common in places of detention.’  Nazarbayev was anti-religious in the Soviet days when that was the party line, but since then has become an enthusiast for Islam (most Kazakhs are Muslims), and has done the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca.  There was an awkward business in 2011 when government forces killed fourteen unarmed protestors at a demonstration. Blair was able to advise Nazarbayev how to deal with the public relations angle, and sent him 500 words for his next speech to explain it all away.  All this goes down very well with other governments: Russia has given Nazarbayev six medals, and other countries have handed over another twenty-seven – including the dear old United Kingdom, which made him an ‘Honourable Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George’.  So no one could object to Blair’s giving (or rather selling) a helping hand to a knight backed by a couple of saints.  (What saints George and Mick really think of Nazarbayev hasn’t yet been disclosed.)

Azerbaijan

Another of Blair’s clients is Azerbaijan.  Heydar Aliyev was the KGB chief when Azerbaijan was in the old Stalinist Russian empire, and soon after independence he became president, until he died in 2003.  They know how to handle these matters in dictatorships, and (as with Assad in Syria) Heydar’s son – Ilham Aliyev – was immediately installed as ruler.  Ilham has a nice little family, two daughters and a son, and they all soon found themselves owning large Azerbaijani companies, not to mention valuable real property.  Ilham’s son, another Heydar, actually bought some luxury mansions in a Dubai development when he was only eleven years old.  Clearly a promising lad.  No prizes for guessing who will be groomed to succeed his father in due course as Azerbaijan’s freely-elected leader.  (In fact the family spent $44 million altogether on Dubai mansions, despite the fact that Ilham’s official salary is only $228,000; they must have been saving their pennies.)  Blair went to Baku (Azerbaijan’s capital) in 2009 and made a speech boosting the regime, in return for a fee of nearly $150,000.  ‘Journalists and human rights activists have been intensely harassed and savagely beaten’ (Guardian 6 January 2015), and opponents find themselves in jail; the security forces have arrested demonstrators ‘in order to protect citizens’ constitutional rights’ (which is one way of putting it).

Rwanda

Among numerous other clients is the ruler of Rwanda.  Blair is ‘an uncritical friend and well-paid adviser to the likes of Paul Kagama of Rwanda, a violent authoritarian’ (Economist, 5 March).  In that auspicious country, those who speak against the leader would do well to make their wills.  A number of politicians who opposed Kagama have come to a sticky end, while more than one who hoped to baffle Kagama’s strong-arm boys by fleeing abroad has met with a violent and unexplained demise even in a ‘safe haven’.

Blair’s wife Cherie is in on the act.  She has founded a firm to provide ‘strategic counsel to governments, corporates and private clients’.  One of her customers is the president of the Maldives, Abdulla Yazmeen, who has put the leaders of three opposition parties in jail, along with another 1700 opponents.

Providing help to despotic potentates round the world certainly pays off.  Blair’s personal fortune is now estimated at £70 million.  Windrush Ventures (which advises foreign governments; Firebush Ventures looks after affluent companies and sovereign wealth funds) –has just trebled its annual profits to £2.6 million, and the average pay of its forty-eight staff is now over £100,000 (Daily Telegraph, 6 March).  A tax specialist professor at City University said Blair when prime minister used to favour ‘accountability and transparency’; now he is ‘embarrassingly silent about his sources of income’.  Blair’s London home is a capacious house in Connaught Square (once owned by John Adams, later the American President), near Hyde Park, along with a substantial mews house behind, both guarded round the clock by armed policemen.  His country residence, which he bought in 2008, is a Queen Anne mansion in Buckinghamshire, complete with tennis court and swimming pool.  In fact Blair is now believed to own thirty-six properties.

Blair is keen to keep on good terms with the other world, and has founded ‘Tony Blair’s Faith Foundation’ to support all the major religions (with its main office in Grosvenor Square, just across from the US embassy); so perhaps he feels that in return the various supernatural rulers of the universe are supporting him, however dubious his activities.  Blair’s excuse for joining in the invasion of Iraq (which kickstarted the total chaos across the Middle East today – Syria has 250,000 dead, and half the population are ‘displaced’, i.e. refugees) – his excuse was that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator (as indeed he was).  He keeps saying he will defend the assault on Iraq ‘till my dying day’.  How ironic it is that Blair is now making his fortune by supporting other equally brutal dictators.

Socialists have always pointed out that Labour governments, and Labour Prime Ministers, can do no more than attempt to run capitalism more efficiently, and pretend to make people better off.  Tony Blair is now apparently engaged in an earnest effort to prove socialists right – at least he’s doing his best to make at least one ex-Prime Minister better off.

Alwyn Edgar