Starmer embroiled in MASSIVE NEW SCANDAL involving freeing a dictator!

Right, so Keir Starmer has a new security advisor and well it really does reflect on Starmer somewhat in who his appointee is and what his past track record has been, to be honest he really does seem to be the perfect fit for Starmer. Keir Starmer is a man who’s previous track record as a supposed human rights lawyer has become a sick joke and his alleged involvement in the attempted deportation of Julian Assange to Sweden as well as other allegations made against his record during his time as Director of Public Prosecutions at the Crown Prosecution Service have only hardened more and more people’s views against him.
On top of that of course opinion of him has soured all the more, because of his lies, stemming from presenting himself as the next Jeremy Corbyn to become Labour leader, to actually being a wannabe Tony Blair on steroids, all the ambition, but none of the political skills or charisma, that had Blair fooling all and sundry. It has of course cemented Starmer’s position as very much that of a red Tory.
But his appointee to the post of security advisor taps into every one of those negativities, because he’s just appointed Jonathan Powell, a guy who was Blair’s Chief of Staff for over a decade and who played an intrinsic role in freeing the then arrested Chilean dictator and mass murderer Augusto Pinochet to avoid extradition. Pinochet versus Assange is how I looked at this story and Starmer’s views of both. It doesn’t reflect well on him does it?
Right, so Jonathan Powell is Starmer’s new security advisor and whilst the mainstream media is quite happy to cover Powell’s track record as an explainer of who this guy is, they’ve pretty much dug only as far as oh, he worked for Tony Blair and as far as criticism goes, a comment sought from Diane Abbott was pretty much the summation of that, she saying it is a return of the Blairites and that is ostensibly very true, but it was the end bit of Sky News’ online coverage of this story that made laugh the most when they stated:
‘Ministers will insist his career history proves he is the best person for the job, and that there are no restrictions on special advisers serving in this post.
After the very public fracas around former Downing Street chief of staff Sue Gray, the government will hope this back-office appointment will pass-off with less controversy.’
Not a chuffing chance as it happens if alternative and independent media have their way, but I’ll come onto that in a moment.
As you might expect the opposition have already had a moan, but they too, miss the biggest issue.
You see the post of a national security adviser is supposed to be an impartial one. By appointing a blatantly Labour and Labour right aligned individual, impartiality on matters of national security can be called into question, so Starmer has given the Tories ammo.
Additionally, and especially in light of the Tories having lurched even further to the right now that Kemi Badenoch is Tory leader and her last challenger for the role Honest Bob Jenrick is now the shadow justice minister, the latter of whom having echoed dusty old nods to British imperialism by bemoaning the fact we’ve given the Chagos Islands back to Mauritius. Powell was appointed a special envoy by Starmer as part of the negotiations for that handover, so he already had a foot in the door and now he’s walked through it.
For Labour MPs this appointment and the association with Blair is too much, especially since Powell was also heavily implicated in the decision to join the Iraq War, many of them want to step away from that part of the party’s history, but Keir Starmer of course is Blair on steroids – his words and a measure of his dishonesty when he portrayed himself to Labour members as continuity Corbyn, telling them what they wanted to hear to get the job, but not meaning a word of it, it’s become Starmer’s trademark of course ever since, if his lips are moving, he’s probably lying.
Powell also has links to arms sales – massive links and at a time when more and more people and progressive politicians are demanding an end to arms sales to Israel, this is not a good look either.
In 2005, Blair lobbied Saudi Arabia on behalf of BAE Systems, the UK’s biggest arms manufacturer, with more than 50 sites around the country and has been supplying Israel with parts for those F-35 jets, as well as mortars containing white phosphorus and an assortment of other munitions, bombs and artillery.
Blair wanted the Saudis to spend £40bn at the time on BAE Systems Typhoon jets, he was basically lobbying on behalf of an arms company and later on it was found that the Saudis agreed to do so, but had conditions and these included the deportation of Saudi refugees back to Saudi Arabia that were in the UK, dissidents, and with the Saudi penchant for head-chopping that wasn’t good news for those affected. Another condition was to drop a case being investigated by the Serious Fraud Squad involving alleged bribes paid by BAE Systems to members of the Saudi ruling family and third and notably according to the coverage of this story by Campaign Against Arms Trade, CAAT, the week before, BAE Systems had been accused of paying over £1m to former Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet.
Powell at the time of this Saudi deal was of course Blair’s chief of staff, and the Guardian at the time alleged that he was promoting this Saudi deal. Why would he do that? Well one possible reason relates to a BAE consultant at that time, and actually he may well still be, I can’t find evidence to state that he has retired from that position, though he may have and this person was a former advisor to Margaret Thatcher, we all know Blair’s fondness for her, so this guy also had been a special envoy for Blair to Syria in 2001 and later in 2005 whilst this Saudi deal was going on he became Blair’s Special Envoy to Brunei, all whilst certainly being still on BAE Systems payroll and this guy just happened to be Lord Charles Powell, Jonathan Powell’s brother.
But it is Powell’s links to Augusto Pinochet that are I would think going to be the most difficult for Starmer and Co to explain away, most especially Starmer himself.
In 1998, Pinochet, upon a visit to the UK, was arrested under the principle of universal jurisdiction, because he was wanted in Spain on charges of having committed genocide and Spain wanted him extradited to face those charges there.
Pinochet was the dictator of Chile from 1973 to 1990, with thousands disappeared, tortured and killed under his oppressive regime, which banned other political parties, banned trade unions, stifled free speech, yet enjoyed good relations with the usual suspects, the US and the UK, Pinochet being close friends with Margaret Thatcher, and the US having given backing to Pinochet’s coup to depose the socialist government of Salvador Allende, declassified files revealing that Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger were intrinsic in destabilising Chile and paving the way for Pinochet’s coup.
Well back to Pinochet under arrest in the UK, and in 2000 he was allowed to escape, he got released by then home secretary Jack Straw supposedly on the grounds of ill health, but actually came out as a result of a plan concocted between Tony Blair and the then president of Chile Eduardo Frei, which also included Spain’s then Conservative Prime Minister José María Aznar and his Foreign Minister Abel Mututes.
By this point Pinochet had been detained for getting on for 2 years and no end to the extradition proceedings looked in sight, not that that should really have been the point or an issue, however for right wingers both here in Blair and his government and abroad this was proving a bit of an embarrassment I suppose, but more than that it would be seen as a massive failure of UK judicial process if Pinochet were to die in the UK, with Straw eventually using his discretion to free Pinochet on health grounds even though it was never proven that Pinochet was too ill to stand trial, in fact Pinochet bragged of his fitness in life and when Pinochet’s medical report got leaked, it was damned for being skimpy at best.
It is how matters even got to this point that Powell comes into this story though. To arrange to get Pinochet released required getting Blair and Frei together to discuss the matter for a start. This involved a Chilean contact and a British one and these were a chap called Cristian Tolosa who was Frei’s press chief and Jonathan Powell. Over the course of apparently 6 meetings taking place at Number 10, the contact was arranged. Without Powell’s involvement therefore, Pinochet may have ended up answering for his crimes. As it was, he was smuggled out of the country and straight back to Chile via a UK military base to avoid protests.
This is the man Keir Starmer appointed an advisor on national security. Well, he certainly appears to have had a hand in smuggling people through it. Contrast that as I said at the start with Starmer’s determination to extradite Julian Assange, and he gives a top job to a guy also wanted on extradition charges but for genocide and the optics are that journalism is a bigger crime than that is in Starmer’s eyes, Starmer the former human rights lawyer lets not forget, but did his belief in human rights only extend for as far as how well it paid, because that is very much what it looks like. Add in the arms sales and our relationship with Israel now and this is in my opinion an appointment made in hell. But do let me know what you think of all of this and please do share, as once more only independent media are picking this up.
Meanwhile in other matters the mainstream media are deliberately failing us on, talks of pogroms and antisemitism once more dominate the headlines as football rioters in Amsterdam now claim victimhood despite them causing the riots, the damage and shouting abuse because the footage doesn’t lie even if various so-called journalists and other commentators do. Check out that story in this video recommendation here as your suggested next watch and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.