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Posted by J.Perez
By Finian Cunningham
April 09, 2013 “Information Clearing House” - Hours after the death of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, the history books are being re-written and the beatification of the Iron Lady is well underway.
Current British premier David Cameron praised Lady Thatcher for having “saved Britain” and for making the has-been colonial power “great again”.
Tributes poured forth from French and German leaders, Francoise Hollande and Angela Merkel, while US President Barack Obama said America had lost a “special friend”.
Former American secretary of state Henry Kissinger and former Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev also lamented the loss of “an historic world figure”. Polish ex-president Lech Walesa hailed Margaret Thatcher for having brought down the Soviet Union and Communism.
Such fulsome praise may be expected coming from so many war criminals. But it is instructive of how history is written by the victors and criminals in high office. Obama, Cameron, Hollande and Merkel should all be arraigned and prosecuted for war crimes in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Somalia and Mali, among other places. Kissinger has long evaded justice for over four decades for his role in the US genocide in Southeast Asia during the so-called Vietnam War in which over three million people were obliterated in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
The British state is to give Thatcher, who died this week aged 87, a full military-honours funeral. The praise, eulogies, wreaths and ceremonies are all self-indictments of association with one of the most ruthless and criminal political figures in modern times.
So, here is a people’s history of Thatcher’s legacy.
She will be remembered for colluding with the most reactionary elements of Rupert Murdoch’s squalid media empire to launch a war over the Malvinas Islands in 1982, a war that caused hundreds of lives and involved the gratuitous sinking of an Argentine warship, the Belgrano,
by a British submarine.
By declaring war, rather than conducting political negotiations with Argentina over Britain’s ongoing colonial possession of the Malvinas, Thatcher salvaged her waning public support in Britain, and the bloodletting helped catapult her into a second term of office in Downing Street. Her political “greatness” that so many Western leaders now eulogize was therefore paid in part by the lives of Argentine and British soldiers, and by bequeathing an ongoing source of conflict in the South Atlantic.
It wasn’t just foreigners that Thatcher declared war on. Armed with her snake-oil economic policies of privatisation, deregulation, unleashing finance capitalism, pump-priming the rich with tax awards subsidised by the ordinary working population, Thatcher declared war on the British people themselves. She famously proclaimed that “there was no such thing as society” and went on to oversee an explosion in the gap between rich and poor and the demolition of social conditions in Britain. That legacy has been amplified by both successive Conservative and Labour governments and is central to today’s social meltdown in Britain – more than two decades after Thatcher resigned. Laughably, David Cameron, a protégé of Thatcher, claims that she “saved” Britain. The truth is Thatcher accelerated the sinking of British capitalism and society at large. What she ordered for the Belgrano has in a very real way come to be realised for British society at large.
During her second term of office in the mid-1980s, the Iron Lady declared war on the “enemy within”. She was referring to Britain’s strongly unionised coal-mining industry. Imagine declaring war on your own population. That is a measure of her pathological intolerance towards others who did not happen to share her obnoxious ideological views – ideological views that have since become exposed as intellectually and morally bankrupt.
For over a year around 1984, her Orwellian mindset and policies starved mining communities in the North of England into submission. Her use of paramilitary police violence also broke the resolve and legitimate rights of these communities. Miners’ leader Arthur Scargill would later be vindicated in the eyes of ordinary people, if not in the eyes of the mainstream media. Britain’s coalmines were systematically shut down, thousands of workers would be made unemployed, and entire communities were thrown on the social scrap heap. All this violence and misery was the price for Thatcher’s ideological war against working people and their political rights.
The class war that Thatcher unleashed in Britain is still raging. The rich have become richer, the poor decidedly more numerous and poorer. The decimation of workers’ rights and the unfettered power given to finance capital were hallmarks of Thatcher’s legacy and are to this day hallmarks of Britain’s current social decay. But that destructive legacy goes well beyond Britain. The rightwing nihilistic capitalism that Thatcher gave vent to was and became a zeitgeist for North America, Europe and globally. The economic malaise that is currently plaguing the world can be traced directly to such ideologues as Margaret Thatcher and former US President Ronald Reagan.
A final word on Thatcher’s real legacy, as opposed to the fakery from fellow war criminals, is her role in Ireland’s conflict. Her epitaph of “Iron Lady” is often said with admiration or even sneaking regard for her supposed virtues of determination and strength. In truth, her “iron” character was simply malevolent, as can be seen from her policies towards the Irish struggle for independence from Britain. In 1981, 10 Irish republican prisoners, led by a young Belfast man by the name of Bobby Sands, died from hunger strikes. The men died after more than 50 days of refusing prison food because they were demanding to be treated as political prisoners, not as criminals. Thatcher refused to yield to their demands, denouncing them as criminals and callously claiming that they “took their own lives”. No matter that Bobby Sands had been elected by tens of thousands of Irish voters to the British House of Parliament during his hunger strike. He was merely a criminal who deserved to die, according to the cold, unfeeling Thatcher.
As a result of Thatcher’s intransigence to negotiate Irish rights, the violence in the North of Ireland would escalate over the next decade, claiming thousands of lives. As with Las Malvinas dispute with Argentina, Thatcher deliberately took the military option and, with that, countless lives, rather than engage in reasoned, mutual dialogue. Her arrogance and obduracy blinded her to any other possibility.
As the violence gyrated in Ireland, Thatcher would also embrace the criminal policy of colluding with pro-British death squads. Armed,funded and directed by British intelligence, these death squads would in subsequent years kill hundreds of innocent people – with the knowledge and tacit approval of Lady Thatcher. It was a policy of British state terrorism in action, sanctioned by Thatcher. One of those victims was Belfast lawyer Pat Finucane, who was murdered in February 1989. He was shot 12 times in the head in front of his wife and children by a British death squad, after the killers smashed their way into the Finucane home on a Sunday afternoon.
Thus whether in her dealings with Las Malvinas row with Argentina, the British working people or Irish republicans, Margaret Thatcher was an intolerant militarist who always resorted to demagoguery, violence and starvation to get her political way. She was a criminal fascist who is
now proclaimed to be a national hero.
Reports this week say that Thatcher died with Alzheimer’s, the brain-degenerating disease in which the patient loses their faculty for memory. Western leaders, it seems, would also like to erase public memory of Thatcher’s criminal legacy.
Finian Cunningham, originally from Belfast, Ireland, was born in 1963. He is a prominent expert in international affairs. The author and media commentator was expelled from Bahrain in June 2011 for his critical journalism in which he highlighted human rights violations by the Western-backed regime. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For many years, he worked as an editor and writer in the mainstream news media, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. He is now based in East Africa where he is writing a book on Bahrain and the Arab Spring.He co-hosts a weekly current affairs programme, Sunday at 3pm GMT on Bandung Radio.
And, you know there is no such thing as society. -Margaret Thatcher
A former Prime Minister of The United Kingdom has passed away, and is to have a ceremonial funeral with military honours, with personnel from the British Navy, Army and Royal Air Force lining the route of the funeral procession.
While the mainstream media in Little Britain is full of nought but eulogy, and that such ‘99 and 44/100 bullshit’ may extend unregulated ‘across the pond’ as an extension of the hegemony of free market orthodoxy - context of ‘Globalization’ reflected in Corporate ownership as would practise ‘universal deceit’, readers of this esteemed Democratic Organ deserve to know ‘a little bit more’ about the ‘Iron Lady’ as she was referred to, and what she represented ‘self evident’ for so many People in Britain during time of her long ‘Ministerial Rule’.
‘A little bit more’ as in knowing what’s going on, to paraphrase Burroughs (William S.)
It is contention herein this small article that Margaret Thatcher was as heartless as she saw Ronald Reagan as brainless, form of her quote concerning POTUS 40 evidenced in her remark:
Poor dear, there’s nothing between his ears.
This contention concerning the heartlessness of Margaret Hilda Thatcher evidenced of what could otherwise have been a Human Being is based on the sufferance and division which her rule as longest serving British Prime Minister represented; in retrospect as prototypical of the ‘shock and awe politics’ as has now come to be dominant in the Western World – and it a matter of no small irony that the day she died was also the beginning of an equally shocking and awesome change concerning ‘State Benefits’ austerity in Little Britain as part of ‘structural adjustment program’; whereby the disabled are to be ‘re-assessed’ concerning the benefits payable they receive from the State, and this to mean further extension of ‘austerity’ - meaning the streets of Little Britain are to see more disabled people begging, and more of the poor homeless, such the ‘Big Society’ as current mantra of the ruling Political Coalition in Britain as embraces ‘Thatcherism’; form of ‘nothing’ budgetarily elevated – and as accompanied by the ridiculous ‘spin’ that ‘we are all in this together’ would circumscribe such a politics devoid of compassion – and thus be devoid of ‘self evident’ truth.
Verily is the ‘bedroom tax’ as in process of implementation in the ‘United Kingdom’ a further raft to such new regime of austerity as a structural adjustment; an advance upon the ‘Poll Tax’, such the spawn of the Thatcher years concerning the tragic realization of free market orthodoxy as shall be precipitate of further division manifest as ‘riotous’, to paraphrase a prescient song by the Kaiser Chiefs.
For the tragic fact which Stateless Bastards leverage to the hilt as evidenced by ‘Thatcherism’ is that the poorest as would yet struggle to survive are the easiest targets when it comes to the implementation of ‘free market orthodoxy’, as at least 101 million Americans could currently testify- and as President Reagan fought against Unionism as contributory to a Society of greater distribution or sharing of wealth; so did Prime Minister Thatcher have the same proportion of body committed across the pond in ‘smashing’ the Miners Union, and so as to dividing communities through the control and manipulation of ‘Law’ such as epitomising a then ‘nascent’ Globalization as a structural adjustment program in which austerity loomed large?
This – despite the ever growing presence of ‘memory hole’ as would be reflected in a total imbalance of representation, courtesy of Corporatism as brings you homogenisation and standardisation; such the line?
And as would have monster praised to point of denial of mere spawn such the 2 + 2 = 5 realized?
While self evidence still exists such as there are yet People there can be no denial of Truth – form that it will out; and the truth concerning Margaret Thatcher is that she rose through the ranks Political through an abrogation of Humanity; through the manifest compromise and abeyance of compassion as reflected in a willing service of the Stateless; the truth being that Margaret Hilda Thatcher died many years ago as concerns Humanity, and was a pathetic, drooling ‘zombie’ nursed in luxurious circumstance long before she was elevated by the British establishment to being a ‘Baroness’ as the British equivalence of the American award of ‘Medal of Freedom’?
-Long before she passed away in the luxurious surroundings of ‘The Ritz’ as a fitting counterpoint to the circumstances of the many she condemned to greater poverty as corollary or ramification of self professed belief in ‘there being no society’- and as part of the price to be paid?
There are no pockets in a shroud, but…
For many she will be remembered as ‘Thatcher the milk snatcher’ as a result of a political decision to make cuts to free school milk for children, for others she will be remembered for her description of Nelson Mandela as a terroris (how prescient concerning Incorporation?), or her friendship with the monstrous General Pinochet, or indeed her support for Suharto in Indonesia. It is a ‘free market’ indeed, but not when it comes to the statement of the self evident, not when a little man would ‘piss on the parade’, not when it comes to the denial of Orthodoxy as the ‘death of thought’ as Orwell described?
Money talks, and it can shout – but it cannot silence truth?
Make no mistake: the death of such an abomination as Margaret Thatcher as traitor to Humanity reflected in the heartlessness of the political policy implementation she supervised during her watch over the United Kingdom is no ‘mercy’ – much as Inferno is no work of mere fiction?
Margaret Thatcher should be buried at Sea; ideally at a distance where her corpse is unlikely ever to ‘grace’ the shores of the ‘United Kingdom’ (as a misnomer ad hominen) ever again; this paraphrases Hunter S Thomson’s eulogy for POTUS 37 – and reflects the loathing which the usurpation of Democracy demands when exemplified by thirst for power as instanced by any ‘politician’ willing to trade their Humanity for bucks, or as in the instance of ‘dear old Maggie’ ( sense of ‘Maggie’s Farm’) pounds sterling.
It is appropriate that Margaret Hilda Thatcher is to be given a military funeral, sense of that, as per Smedley Butler, she was a mere Gangster participant in a degenerate racket; the tragedy is that the many of those who shall form the line of the route are unknowing conscripts concerning the manifold forms of War as racket, and will never read Smedley Butler concerning how they have been betrayed, not the least concerning ‘Economic Warfare’?
It is very difficult for a Man to rejoice in Victory when War is invoked, but Margaret Thatcher did, such the tragedy as when abrogation at such a level entails, as it must, the particularly ‘fugly’.
Margaret Thatcher is represented by her support of the Falklands Conflict and her quoting, such the brass neck of ‘The Iron Lady’, Francis of Assisi on the occasion of her election to being Prime Minister.
This small article would be part of a change of the balance as concerns the ‘acknowledgement’ by ‘media’ of what the death of Margaret Thatcher means, and how much she contributed to the progress of society as reflected her belief as to there being no such thing, when it is obvious in retrospect, sense of the self evident, that what she really meant was that there was no such thing as ‘State’, in as much as she served the stateless in furthering the transfer of resources from poor to rich, and indeed so can be seen as ‘The Queen Mother of Global Austerity and Financialization’ indeed?
The effect of Margaret Thatcher’s zombie/Manchurian Candidate like following of free market orthodoxy at the level where there was potential impact at the level of National policy concerning what was once a Sovereign State is either a matter of glee as concerns the one percent who expropriate as incorporating the meaning of ‘society’, such the slaughter concerning life well spent – or else much more likely a matter of sadness as reflects upon the sufferance inflicted upon the Majority when a member of Humanity as could have been permitted a position of Political authority can abrogate compassion as in mercy born of possessing a ‘heart’ concerning ‘The People’, and there is ‘of’ such the tragedy of life sold?
Should there be a rejoice in the death of Margaret Thatcher as much as there should be rejoice in the death of military conscript as demanded by ‘Victory’?
Should there be condemnation of such an individual as Nelson Mandela as a ‘terrorist’?Or should there not be that Humanity within us as is us yet, despite the ‘austerity’, as that we do realize that the death of Margaret Thatcher itself as a removal from pandered luxury to a world of real should remain unknown such the Mercy, such the Compassion, such the Justice as was unknown to her?
-And as such we should live in fear, not of expressing what we see as self evident, and certainly not of the power of mere money as a belief, but that we ever, ever could sell our souls so cheap, such the eternality gifted?
As George Galloway MP tweeted most apposite: ‘tramp the dirt down’
‘I pray the Lord your soul to keep’ – so it goes.
RIP Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Prime Minister of The United Kingdom 1979-90, born 13 October 1925, died 8 April 2013.
Stephen Martin can be reached at: stephenmarti@yahoo.com
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/04/10/honoring-the-death-of-a-stateless-bastard/
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