Sorry Blair? No, we're sorry... posted by Richard Seymour

According to The Observer, "Sorrowful Blair urges unity in face of Iraq terror threat" . We'll discuss that later, but what's this?

In his first public comments since the harrowing tape was broadcast of Bigley pleading for the Prime Minister to save him, Blair warned of the kidnappers' ability to 'manipulate the modern media', which he admitted left politicians in a difficult position.

Motherfucker, that's not an admission that's an excuse! You admit to something that's your fault, not to something someone else does to you. Still, Blair is in a difficult position, and we had better not forget his story amid all this sympathy for that - what's his name? - Bigley fellow.

'I feel immensely sorry for his family as well as for him,' Blair said. 'His family I think have been extraordinarily stoical and very dignified throughout.' As for the impact on himself, he said colleagues were rallying round: 'I've just had John Prescott on the phone saying, "It must be tough for you, and how's the family?"'

Look, can I just make an appeal to the Bigley family? When you're done being stoical and dignified about the likely slaughter of your own, can you just give the Prime Minister a call? Apparently, he's feeling bad about posturing and refusing to try to help Kenneth, and now that the MCB has stepped up to do what he couldn't and he's been obliged to support it, he feels a bit fucking stupid.

Blair called on those divided over the war to rally behind a fresh battle for the control of Iraq: 'I can understand why people still have a powerful disagreement about the original decision to go to war. But whatever that disagreement, surely it is absolutely clear we have to stay and see it through. Because the consequence of not doing so is that global terrorism will get a tremendous boost.'

Look, international terrorism has reached a 21 year high . If your strategy was working, the trend would be in the other direction, you idle-minded motherfucker. Ah, but! Blair has an answer for this:

Asked if the war on terrorism had really delivered a safer world, Blair suggested things were often darkest before dawn: 'There was more bloodshed in 1941 than in 1938.' The intensity of the insurgency showed, he said, how much was at stake.

Genius. This would, of course, be a totally bogus answer if and only if the 'war on terror' was nothing like World War Two. And if it were bogus, it would at least have the virtue of being a single, transferrable excuse for every year that the number of terrorist actions increased. Still, why should that be a surprise? Our ruling class relies on our forgetfulness and ignorance, but I remember the government propping up state terror in East Timor, giving the Indonesian dictatorship weapons to kill dissidents and bomb cities. I remember them contributing to Turkey's murder of Kurds in the south of the country, sending mercenaries into Sierra Leone to prop up the government. I see they're still sending money to the Colombian government and covering up for them in the press, still smoothing over the rough edges of Putin's murder of so many Chechens that a generation of babies is growing up missing a father, a limb, an eye, raised by a mother tired of being raped by Russian troops. I see they have a murderer named Negroponte making all the real decisions in Iraq. And no, they didn't video beheadings in El Salvador or Nicaragua when he was running things there, they just fucking raped, murdered, then burned the bodies by the roadside. They didn't stop at cutting heads off either. They sliced tits off, cut throats and pulled the tongues out.

If I had a video link showing this, I'd post it every time the Prime Minister piously commends the mission in Iraq, every time we hear about "standing firm" against terror, every time Bush reminds us of the struggles of the oppressed. Instead, you can have a look at this: "Aw, dude!" .