Qatar & The Tory Legacy

I give you enough reasons to not vote Conservative tomorrow.

Even if the chronic mismanagement of the nation's funds, the conflicts of interest rife in the front bench, the lack of empathy toward anyone but wealthy white married couples, and the suicide-pact of a no-deal Brexit isn't enough to convince you...then I will give you the one big and very current reason. One that isn't about right or left, one that isn't about welfare or austerity.

The government in general - and the Prime Minister in particular - has ties to Saudi Arabia that can't be ignored. They aren't alone in this. Saudi Arabia is a wealthy nation, and likes to disseminate that wealth amongst democracies so they'll leave it alone to continue being vaguely shit to its citizens and the citizens of other nearby nations. I touched on this in my last blog.

We sell them weapons. We sell a lot of people weapons, but the PM very recently went on something of a personal mission to sell them a shitload of weapons. Of course Trump then followed right behind her and sold infinitely more, but hey - they make more guns than we do.

It has become rather clear, in recent years, that Saudi Arabian government also has a hand in funding groups including ISIL. In the same way as the Pakistani government had a hand in funding Al Qaeda, which only became obvious when they were literally bullied into helping to find Bin Laden, who had been - to the surprise of nobody that paid attention - hiding out in Pakistan the entire time.

As people in the west have been harmed by extremists - I don't like using the word terrorist, it gets thrown around very quickly and easily - all of a sudden, the media cares. They haven't cared much about the continuous campaigns of bombing in Syria, the Yemen, Iraq, the Lebanon, and who knows where else - and the mess that is Israel/Palestine is a whole other story.

All of a sudden, as the people of Manchester and London and everywhere else that has been targeted by ISIL are pulling themselves back together, those who have been supplying the group that claims responsibility are named and shamed - and guess what? Our Prime Minister went to them on an arms sales mission, scarcely a month ago.

Saudi Arabia, probably, feels uncomfortable that the west - a long-term supplier of its military machine - is starting to take an interest in the funding of extremists. An interest perhaps peaked and aided by the report which the government is trying to cover up, but which will be leaked, I don't doubt. The report which details, in black and white, Saudi connections to ISIL and beyond.

And so Saudi needs someone else to take the heat - and someone to use those shiny brand new guns on.

Most people don't know a lot about Qatar. If you've ever heard of Al Jazeera - they are based in Doha, Qatar's capital. It's a sovereign state, set out on a peninsula. It is surrounded on most sides by the Persian Gulf, and has only one land border.

Saudi Arabia.

All of a sudden, a revelation. According to the Saudis - Qatar is funding the extremists! Isn't Qatar naughty? And half a dozen other nearby nations, including the United Arab Emirates, are going along with it. The UAE actually made it illegal to express sympathies or support to Qatar. That's serious business.

Donald Trump is in on it. He blabbed early - probably let in on the little scam when he went to visit his gun-purchasing buddies. Let slip a tweet or two pointing the finger at Qatar before Bannon or his son-in-law got the phone out of his hands.

While this pretext to war spins on the axle, Turkey shipping in troops to ward off an attack that may never happen if we are lucky, and the guns that we sold the Saudis looking like they are imminently going to pick up some dust...

...our Prime Minister determines that the way to keep us safe isn't to reverse the cuts that she, as Home Secretary, made to our police force.

It's to take away OUR rights.

You know other places that don't have any human rights legislation or protections?

Saudi Arabia. UAE. Pakistan. Qatar, to a point. Syria, now.

You know. The kind of places that fund and give rise to the kind of people that come to places like the United Kingdom, and Iraq, and Iran, and Kenya, and Egypt, and France, and Afghanistan, and Australia, and Somalia, and Iraq, and Pakistan, and India, and Burkina Faso, and Algeria, and Mexico, and Tunisia, and Cameroon, and Colombia, and Mali, and Niger, and hurt people.

That's a list of all the countries that have suffered an attack specified by their governments as terrorism...this month.

And it's only the 7th.

I urge you not to vote Tory because they are milking this tragic and awful cycle of death and extremism at both ends: they feed in weapons to get money, and at the opposite end, they demand the curtailment of the rights of the victims, on the grounds of protection.

Which is of course why they have had a huge media campaign trying to convince the British public that Jeremy Corbyn - who has persistently been on the right side of history, from the poll tax and Apartheid to nuclear weapons - is a terrorist sympathiser.

If that one reason isn't good enough, well...what's the point?

No more blogs before the results come in, folks. Let's see if we can't make the world a better place, one day at a time.