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This is a story of
two letters and two Britains. "There has been no initiative at all by the US government to address the health and economic effects on the people of Vietnam affected by dioxin," wrote the respected US attorney Constantine Kokkoris, who led an action against Dow Chemical. He noted that "manufacturers like Dow were aware of the presence and harmfulness of dioxin in their product but failed to inform the government in an effort to avoid regulation."
For this reason, Coe's mention of "reconciliation" is profane,
as if there were an equivalence between an invading superpower
and its victims. His letter exemplifies the London Olympics'
razor-wired, PR and money-fuelled totalitarian state within a
state, which you enter, appropriately, through a Westfield mega
shopping mall. How dare you complain about the missiles on the
roof of your flats, hectored a magistrate to 86 residents of
London's East End. How dare any of you protest at the "Zil car
lanes", reminiscent of Moscow in the Soviet era, for Olympic
apparatchiks and the boys from Dow and Coke. With the media in
charge of Olympics excitement, as it was for 'Shock and Awe' in
Iraq in 2003, now enter the man who played a starring role in
making both spectacles possible.
On 11 July, a so-called Olympics evening - "a coming together of
the Labour tribe", declared the Labour Party leader Ed Milliband
- celebrated its "star guest" Tony Blair and his 2005 "gift" of
the Games and "provided the perfect opportunity for Blair's
return to frontline politics", reported the Guardian. The
organiser of this contrivance was Alistair Campbell, chief
spinner of the bloodbath Blair and he gifted to the Iraqi
people. And just as the victims of Dow Chemical are of no
interest to the Olympic elite, so the epic criminality of
Labour's star guest was unmentionable.
The source of the Olympics' chaotic security is also
unmentionable. As established studies in Britain have long
conceded, it was the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and the
rest of the "war on terror" that served to recruit new jihadists
and bolster other forms of resistance that led directly to the
London bombs of 7/7. These were Blair's bombs. In his current
rehabilitation, courtesy of his Olympics "legacy", there is the
additional spin that Blair's huge post-Downing Street wealth is
concentrated on charities.
The second letter I mentioned was sent to me by Josh Richards
who lives in Bristol. In March 2003, Josh and four others set
out to disable an American B-52 bomber based at RAF Fairford,
Gloucestershire, before it could bomb Iraq. So did four other
people. It was a non-violent action faithful to the Nuremberg
principles that a war of aggression was the "paramount war
crime". Josh was arrested and charged with planning to lay
explosives. "This was based on the ludicrous idea," he wrote,
"that some peanut butter I had on me was actually a bomb
component. The charge was later abandoned after the Ministry of
Defence performed extensive tests on my Tesco crunchy nut peanut
butter."
During two trials and two hung juries, Josh was finally
acquitted. It was a landmark case in which he spoke in open
court about the genocidal embargo imposed upon Iraq by the
British and US governments prior to their invasion and the false
justifications of the "war on terror". His acquittal meant that
he had acted in the name of the law and his intention had been
to save lives.
The letter Josh wrote to me included a copy of my book, The New
Rulers of the World, which, he pointed out, had provided him
with the facts he needed for his defence. Meticulously
page-marked and highlighted, it had accompanied Josh on a
three-year journey through courtrooms and prison cells. Of all
the letters I have received, Josh's epitomises a decency,
modesty and determination of moral purpose that represent
another Britain and antidotes to poisonous Olympic sponsors and
rehabilitated warmongers. During these extraordinary times, such
an example ought to give others heart and inspiration to reclaim
this receding democracy.