Tony Blair at UB
Since 1987-8, the University at Buffalo has invited the following speakers, most of them in its “Distinguished Speakers” series:
Al Gore
Ann Coulter
Bill Clinton
Colin Powell (twice)
Dick Cheney
George Bush
Janet Reno
Jeane Kirkpatrick
Karl Rove
Madeleine Albright
Norman Schwarzkopf
Rudy Giuliani
Wesley Clark
Zbigniew Brzezinski
We know that they have been generously compensated, with Colin Powell getting over $100K for his second visit, and Karl Rove and Wesley Clark receiving $50K and $30K, respectively.
What makes for a “distinguished speaker”? Evidently, one significant criterion is a willingness to murder thousands of civilians. Usually, these civilians have been Muslim Arabs and Afghans (Gore, Clinton, Powell, Cheney, Bush, Rove, Albright), with runner-up ethnic groups being Serbs (Clark); Nicaraguans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans (Kirkpatrick). Smaller but still significant body counts have been American (Reno’s tank assault on a fundamentalist group at Waco, Rudy Giuliani’s death squads directed at Africans and African Americans). No doubt, Barack Obama will be a Distinguished Speaker too, in the fullness of time: he murdered his first Muslim civilian children in his first week in office, so he’s already looking pretty distinguished to me.
I had high hopes that 2009-2010 might be a murderer-free year, and I saw some promising speakers that are actually appropriate for a university (Margaret Atwood, Neil de-Grasse Tyson, Cornel West) and some not so promising, but not worth much of a squawk (Bill Maher). But then I focused: their big score this year is Tony Blair (October 7th).
Yes, I know he comes off like a Howdy Doody choir boy, and it’s much easier to hate Karl Rove. But Blair is as guilty for the Iraqi megadeaths as George Bush, and more guilty than Rove (who had no immediate power and responsibility). See Harold Pinter’s magnificent denunciation of Blair as a war criminal:
Early in the invasion there was a photograph published on the front page of British newspapers of Tony Blair kissing the cheek of a little Iraqi boy. ‘A grateful child,’ said the caption. A few days later there was a story and photograph, on an inside page, of another four-year-old boy with no arms. His family had been blown up by a missile. He was the only survivor. ‘When do I get my arms back?’ he asked. The story was dropped. Well, Tony Blair wasn’t holding him in his arms, nor the body of any other mutilated child, nor the body of any bloody corpse. Blood is dirty. It dirties your shirt and tie when you’re making a sincere speech on television.
http://librarian3.blogspot.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
Blair defended Israel’s massacres of 1300 Lebanese in the summer of 2006. He is now the Quartet Envoy for Palestinian affairs, and his idiot smile is presiding over the terror siege of Gaza and the ever-expanding Occupation.
Maybe you, like me, feel a sense of outrage fatigue. And I begin to fear that UB can piss away money on a succession of slobbering monsters faster than we can protest it, much less stop it. But on the other hand, I don’t want to take this affront lying down.