Western European News Digest

John Major Attacks Blair on Iraq War Lies

Jan. 2 (EIRNS)—As former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is scheduled to testify before the Chilcot Commission on the Iraq War over the coming weeks, Blair's predecessor, the Tory John Major, attacked Blair's justifications for the Iraq War, in an interview today on "BBC Radio4 Today." Major said it now seemed there were doubts before the invasion about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; he wants to know whether the Cabinet had known about these doubts before the decision to take military action. "The suspicion arises that this was more about regime change than it was about weapons of mass destruction," he said.

In response to Blair's claim last month that he would still have thought it right to go to war even if he had known there were no WMDs, Major said, "There are many bad men around the world who run countries, and we don't topple them, and indeed in earlier years we had actually supported Saddam Hussein when he was fighting Iran. The argument that someone is a bad man is an unacceptable argument for war, and certainly an inadequate and unacceptable argument for regime change."

British Strategy of Tension Strikes in Denmark

COPENHAGEN, Jan. 2 (EIRNS)—In an attack calculated to escalate Her Majesty's strategy of tension, a Somali terrorist attempted to assassinate former Danish Jyllands-Posten cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, who drew the infamous cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed with a suicide bomber belt in 2005. The attacker was a 28-year-old Somali of the al-Shabaab Islamic fundamentalist group, which is reportedly connected to al-Qaeda.

The Danish Police Intelligence (PET) issued the following statement in English: "It is PET's impression that the attempted assassination of the cartoonist Kurt Westergaard is terror related. According to PET's information, the arrested person has close relations to the Somalian terror organization al-Shabaab and al-Qaeda leaders in East Africa, and he is also suspected of having been involved in terror-related activities during his stay in East Africa. The arrested person has as well been part of a terror-related network with connection to Denmark. For some time, this network has been a subject of PET's investigation without, however, this having any relation to the cartoonist Kurt Westergaard."

Danish Parliament President Blasts IPCC

COPENHAGEN, Jan. 2 (EIRNS)—Danish Parliament President Thor Pedersen attacked the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in an interview with the Danish news bureau Ritzauf today. He said that the IPCC operates as a "big conglomeration of bureaucrats, researchers, together with political viewpoints and political considerations." He is critical of the UN and Denmark's goal to keep the global warming below 2°, and calls the plan for a legally binding agreement on global warming "an idea which belongs to a czarist regime, where there is a world ruler, who can punish all countries. That world ruler doesn't exist. And it is much worse if you believe that it is the UN, because the ideals on which the UN is based have been being increasingly erased throughout the years. When you speak of justice, human rights, and equality, it is being eroded, when you see which are the countries that make the decisions, and what kind of debates there are."

Iceland President Vetoes Icesave Legislation

Jan. 5 (EIRNS)—Iceland President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson announced at a press conference today that he has decided to veto the Icesave legislation, which would provide compensation for mainly British and Dutch depositors in a failed Icelandic bank, passed by Parliament on Dec. 30, and send it to a national referendum.

Leaders of the Confederation of Labor, the Federation of State and Municipal Employees, the Confederation of Employees, and the Federation of Icelandic Industries all had urged the President to pass the legislation.

Last week, 33 members of Iceland's 63-member Parliament had capitulated to the demands of the International Monetary Fund and European Union, and voted to loot Iceland's 320,000 citizens, to provide loan guarantees to pay $5.4 billion to British and Dutch depositors who lost money when the private Landsbanki bank and its online IceSave bank failed in October 2008. The financiers were more than a bit annoyed by Iceland's quaint idea that it ought to give preference to protecting Icelanders who had lost their savings in the global financiers' operations.

The President met with Cabinet members Dec. 31, and said he wanted to hear concerns raised by critics of the plan. A recent poll showed that 70% of Iceland's citizens are against the bill. There have been large demonstrations against it, and some 40,000 people signed a petition opposing it.

What the financial oligarchy wants to extract from Iceland amounts to nearly $17,000 for each citizen of the country, and equals 40% of Iceland's GDP.