tariq ali interview:
So Iraq has been destroyed against the wishes of the people, who don’t want it to be destroyed. All the opinion polls show that the people in Iraq want it to remain as one country. The United States however, whether they did it knowingly, or more probably as a result of total ignorance, have destroyed Iraq. And the country will be divided into three segments: the largest segment will be with Iran, the middle segment with Saudi Arabia and the Kurdish segment will become an Israeli-American protectorate. That is what I think, is going to happen. And the USA will keep military bases in the northern area. That is their plan. But there are many imponderables. The Turkish government does not like what is happening in Iraq. For its own reasons, they are threatening to intervene. So this is creating an instability of the whole region, which is shocking. There are reports done by medical people and medical institutions confirming that something close to one million Iraqis have been killed. One million Iraqis have died. And the Western citizens see this, read about it and are saying nothing to their governments.
(...) But the European states, desperate to show the USA their loyalty, completely ignored public opinion. All these pathetic new Eastern European states desperately show the USA their loyalty and recognize the new master. They sent him troops. Just think that at the height of the cold war, not a single Western European country sent troops to fight in Vietnam. Not a single country! And this at the height of the cold war ! But to Iraq, they sent their troops. So, I’m not surprised that Europe is such a weak and pathetic institution politically. It is sanctioning an economic common market, that’s all it is, designed to strengthen neo-liberal capitalism all over the globe. Now, you have the Finance Minister of the centre-left Italian government saying ‘we have to push through reforms’, something we’ve heard from Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair for the last 25 years or so. This is the project known as the Washington Consensus and the European Union is bound to the Washington Consensus. They cannot break away from it.
(...) I think the only viable solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a single state in which all Jews, Christians, Muslims, Druze and Druids and whatsoever have the same rights. It’s what we fought for in South Africa, And it’s what will have to be fought for in Israel. And people will jump up and scream: ‘no, we will never live with each other’. But living with each other is what has to be argued for. I think, it’s the only serious alternative. A Palestinian State is not possible. It would be a tiny little Bantustan run by a corrupt leadership, funded by the West and treated like an NGO. That is the PLO. That is the Palestinian Authority. It is not an authority, it is a joke. And the sooner it recognizes that it’s a joke and dissolves itself, the better. That’s what Hamas should do: they should not play this game, they should say ‘we dissolve the Palestinian Authority, it is not an authority, it is an outfit of the Israeli army. We dissolve all these bodies, we are now citizens of whatever entity there is in the region and deal with it. And then just live in their villages and towns, not trying to develop this fake apparatus of government, when that’s a joke, when they have no power at all and are treated like a joke. So all this is done to create a tiny, corrupt Palestinian elite. That’s why Hamas won the elections, because it is opposed to this. If it now capitulates to this, they will be finished”.