Blair Middle East mission snubbed

[IndianaGreen]

Blair Middle East mission snubbed

Ned Temko, chief political correspondent
Sunday August 20, 2006
The Observer

Tony Blair's bid to revive the Middle East peace process has received a rebuff from Israel, The Observer has learned, placing in doubt his plans for a high-profile diplomatic mission to the region.

The cool Israeli response is likely to fan backbench criticism of the Prime Minister's handling of the Lebanon crisis in the run-up to next month's Labour party conference, with some critics pressing for him to name a date for his departure from Downing Street.

Blair has been fending off accusations of toeing the Americans' line over Lebanon by saying he was determined to get a 'stable' ceasefire and use it as a launch-pad for an early US-backed effort for new talks on a wider Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

In a reflection of the mood of deep scepticism within Labour, one of the party's MPs quoted the Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott as telling a private meeting last week that the Americans' record on the Israeli-Palestinian 'road map' talks was 'crap'. Prescott said he had been misquoted.

The Israeli rebuff was reportedly delivered by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at private talks last week with Blair's Middle East envoy, Lord Levy. In a series of meetings to test the diplomatic waters, Levy also met Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,,1854339,00.html

related story posted by allemand:

Blair 'feels betrayed by Bush on Lebanon'

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=2465099

[geomon666]

1. He's as useless as Bush and twice as culpable.

He doesn't have the excuse of being an idiot.

[Amonester]

6. Well, just by "siding" with the idiot actually makes him

an idiot in the eyes of (at least) most of the rest of the world (outside the Anglo-Saxon "axis").

Not being able to "foresee" the consequences of their despicable crimes is quite some characteristics of an idiot.

[Vidar]

7. Good one.

[gula]

2. US-backed effort for new talks on a wider Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

Isn't that kind of an oxymoron?

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. Nice paragraph at the end

The Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly will launch a Commission on Integration and Cohesion this week, aimed partly at tackling extremism in Britain's Muslim community. In a major speech, she is expected to stress the need to crack down on religious radicals.

"Religious radicals" presumably don't include Opus Dei, of which Kelly is a member.

[IndianaGreen]

4. There are rumors that Blair is a Catholic convert

His wife is Catholic, and the Blair children are attending Catholic school. Blair's turn to the right has an Opus Dei flavor to it.

Revealed: Tony Blair's Catholic secret
By Damian Thompson

(Filed: 09/04/2005)Page 1 of 9


Cherie Blair wearing her mantilla

The scene: the nave of Westminster Cathedral, its Byzantine mosaics glistening below bare brick walls that are still unfinished after a century. The occasion: Solemn Vespers for His late Holiness Pope John Paul II.

Enter Tony Blair, the (Protestant) Prime Minister of the (Protestant) United Kingdom, who makes a little bob of genuflection before the Catholic Blessed Sacrament.

Enter the Prime Minister's wife, a feminist Catholic who did not even wear a hat to the funeral of the Princess of Wales.

She is not wearing a hat this time, either: dangling from her head is a black lace veil known as a mantilla. She looks like a Sicilian widow about to fling herself on her husband's coffin.

In the pews, the editor of one Catholic newspaper turns to the chairman of another.

Editor: "Is Cherie wearing what I think she's wearing?" Chairman: "Good God. I haven't seen a mantilla for 20 years."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/04/09/ncatholic09.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/04/09/ixnewstop.html

[ShockediSay]

5. Read about the NeoCon formulated "self defense means attack" policy

http://www.google.com/search?as_q=New+Strategy+Securing+Realm&num=50&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=A+Clean+Break&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&as_rights=&safe=images

[CJCRANE]

8. Blair is crap.

He is a lame duck prime minister.