UPDATE
Minutes after I posted this article, the ludicrous Jess Phillips published an article in the Guardian which could not have been better designed to prove my thesis. A number of people have posted comments on the Guardian article pointing this out, and they have all been immediately deleted by the Guardian. I just tried it myself and was also deleted. I should be grateful if readers could now also try posting comments there, in order to make a point about censorship on the Guardian.
Catching up on a fortnight’s news, I have spent five hours searching in vain for criticism of Simon Danczuk from prominent or even just declared feminists. The Guardian was the obvious place to start, but while they had two articles by feminist writers condemning Chris Gayle’s clumsy attempt to chat up a presenter, their legion of feminist columnists were entirely silent on Danczuk. The only opinion piece was strongly defending him.
This is very peculiar. The allegation against Danczuk which is under police investigation – of initiating sex with a sleeping woman – is identical to the worst interpretation of the worst accusation against Julian Assange. The Assange allegation brought literally hundreds, probably thousands of condemnatory articles from feminist writers across the entire range of the mainstream media. I have dug up 57 in the Guardian alone with a simple and far from exhaustive search. In the case of Danczuk I can find nothing, zilch, nada. Not a single feminist peep.
The Assange case is not isolated. Tommy Sheridan has been pursuing a lone legal battle against the Murdoch empire for a decade, some of it in prison when the judicial system decided his “perjury” was imprisonable but Andy Coulson’s admitted perjury on the Murdoch side in the same case was not. I personally witnessed in court in Edinburgh last month Tommy Sheridan, with no lawyer (he has no money) arguing against a seven man Murdoch legal team including three QCs, that a letter from the husband of Jackie Bird of BBC Scotland should be admitted in evidence. Bird was working for Murdoch and suggested in his letter that a witness should be “got out of the country” to avoid giving evidence. The bias exhibited by the leading judge I found astonishing beyond belief. I was the only media in the court.
Yet even though the Murdoch allegations against Sheridan were of consensual sexual conduct, Sheridan’s fight against Murdoch has been undermined from the start by the massive and concerted attack he has faced from the forces of feminism. Just as the vital messages WikiLeaks and Assange have put out about war crimes, corruption and the relentless state attack on civil liberties have been undermined by the concerted feminist campaign promoting the self-evidently ludicrous claims of sexual offence against Assange.
As soon as the radical left pose the slightest threat to the neo-con establishment, an army of feminists can be relied upon to run a concerted campaign to undermine any progress the left wing might make. The attack on Jeremy Corbyn over the makeup of his shadow cabinet was a classic example. It is the first ever gender equal shadow cabinet, but the entire media for a 96 hour period last September ran headline news that the lack of women in the “top” posts was anti-feminist. Every feminist commentator in the UK piled in.
Among the obvious dishonesties of this campaign was the fact that Defence, Chancellor, Foreign Affairs and Home Secretary have always been considered the “great offices of State” and the argument only could be made by simply ignoring Defence. The other great irony was the “feminist” attack was led by Blairites like Harman and Cooper, and failed to address the fact that Blair had NO women in any of these posts for a full ten years as Prime Minister.
But facts did not matter in deploying the organised feminist lobby against Corbyn.
Which is why it is an important test to see what the feminists, both inside and outside the Labour Party, would do when the leading anti-Corbyn rent-a-gob, Simon Danczuk, was alleged to have some attitudes to women that seem very dubious indeed, including forcing an ex-wife into non-consensual s&m and that rape allegation.
And the answer is …nothing. Feminists who criticised Assange, Sheridan and Corbyn in droves were utterly silent on the subject of Danczuk. Because the purpose of established and paid feminism is to undermine the left in the service of the neo-cons, not to attack neo-cons like Danczuk.
Identity politics has been used to shatter any attempt to campaign for broader social justice for everybody. Instead it becomes about the rights of particular groups, and that is soon morphed into the neo-con language of opportunity. What is needed, modern feminism argues, is not a reduction of the vast gap between rich and poor, but a chance for some women to become Michelle Mone or Ann Gloag. It is not about good conditions for all, but the removal of glass ceilings for high paid feminist journalists or political hacks.
Feminism has become the main attack tool in the neo-con ideological arsenal. I am sceptical the concept can be redeemed from this.
Laguerre: “Yes, I’ve known a good number. Doesn’t mean they’re always right though. Modern historians have had a tendency to rely on (British) documents, and to be unaware of anything that happened before 1800, although the economic system was much older.”
Arguably the best of the lot was HRP Dikson who was the British political agent in Kuwait. Hia “Arab of the Desert” is a classic.
I spent hundreds of nights in the Saudi desert camping in Central and Eastern Provinces 1994-99. The Bedu we came across were always friendly.
“So an expert believes that Caithness is well rid of your Lord and better off under the SNP.”
Probably another arsehole politician looking after his own interests.
So what?
Fred :Probably another arsehole politician looking after his own interests.
Like your Lord? Exactly. Good riddance, eh?
“Like your Lord? Exactly. Good riddance, eh?”
Not my Lord, just someone with enough power and influence at Westminster to help his constituents.
Now we have an irrelevant laughing stock last I heard was being investigated for theft of HoC stationary.
Fred : Not my Lord, just someone with enough power and influence at Westminster to help his constituents.
And that in a nutshell is why I want out of Westminster, away from a system where the Queen decides who has “influence.”
Brown Slug:
“I spent hundreds of nights in the Saudi desert camping in Central and Eastern Provinces 1994-99. The Bedu we came across were always friendly.”
Exactly the point that Laguerre was making. The Brits believe that travel broadens their minds, whereas they haven’t a clue about the meaning of what they are seeing because they have no understanding, especially of Islam.
Travel therefore normally reinforces the narrowness of their vision.
Fred, I will not defend the personal insults that get directed at you; they are wrong. But I can also see how you wind people up. As Craig has pointed out there is more to politics than improving matters for oneself, and there is a lot more behind the Independence Movement than mere nationalism and the SNP.
Fred, you seem quite smug about propping up the establishment in your own self interest. So your MP was a lord with “power and influence at Westminster”, eh? But nearly half of your compatriots want rid of Westminster power and influence entirely, and that entrenchment of the establishment which you’d perpetuate for your own advantage, where some MPs are more equal than others, is one of the exact reasons why.
Giyane 🙂 you’ve reminded me of this:
Fred, many, many of the Scottish electorate including most of the Yes supporters want rid of nuclear weapons and the immoral foreign policies of Westminster. When you lump such aspirations all together with “fanatical nationalism” and thereby dismiss them, such people understandably feel personally insulted.
The insult is masked but still potent, and some people quip back at you. You then accuse them of starting the insults and start firing off your FOADS, feigning a purity you do not deserve.
“Fred, you seem quite smug about propping up the establishment in your own self interest.”
Actually my post was about Alex Salmond’s radio show but the subject has been twisted to avoid talking about an embarrassment to Scotland. I vote not only for the candidate best suited to help his constituents but also one not intent on bankrupting Scotland.
“Fred, many, many of the Scottish electorate including most of the Yes supporters want rid of nuclear weapons and the immoral foreign policies of Westminster. When you lump such aspirations all together with “fanatical nationalism” and thereby dismiss them, such people understandably feel personally insulted.
The insult is masked but still potent, and some people quip back at you. You then accuse them of starting the insults and start firing off your FOADS, feigning a purity you do not deserve.”
You mean you you want rid of nuclear weapons and you do not mind the people of Scotland paying the price. It was never on the cards anyway, Trident is here to stay as what happens, just another SNP con.
Another reminder to Fred as to what he is so virulently arguing for, Trident is an antic obsolete and indiscriminate weapons system that would inevitably kill third parties not part of the war/ nor a target, just take it from those on here who have military experience in these matters.
http://rowans-blog.blogspot.co.uk/
Fred, I’m disappointed by the SNP, but not really more than I expected to be; the expediency required within party politics always leads to disappointment. The aspirations of the Independence Movement are so much greater than mere political party support – I know, I’ve spoken to many in Scotland about this.
Fred, no. Please don’t put words into my mouth, or is the correct response to that “FOAD”?
I’d still like to move to Scotland if I can, so I’m willing to pay my share of “the price” as you put it. And I’m irrelevant anyway; at least a huge minority and probably a majority of the Scottish electorate are prepared to pay this “price”.
Are you calling prosperity in Scotland a bribe to buy the hosting of nuclear weapons? What do you think I call those prepared to accept bribes?
It is independence that can rid Scotland of the nukes – the independence of the electorate will be far more powerful a force than a mere political party, the SNP, with all the political bargains it has to make.
“Another reminder to Fred as to what he is so virulently arguing for, Trident is an antic obsolete and indiscriminate weapons system that would inevitably kill third parties not part of the war/ nor a target, just take it from those on here who have military experience in these matters.”
People are being killed with conventional bombs all the time, the death count rises year on year. No third parties have been killed with nuclear weapons since 1945 and it looks set to stay that way.
But as I said, it’s irrelevant what I or anyone else thinks, Trident is here to stay as what happens. The SNP thought it would get them votes at the referendum just as they thought £8 billion in oil revenue in the first year of independnce would get them votes but neither would have happened.
And Fred:
Note that YOU just made it personal there. That’s the trouble with feigned purity – it is accompanied by self deception.
“Are you calling prosperity in Scotland a bribe to buy the hosting of nuclear weapons? What do you think I call those prepared to accept bribes?”
Just take a look at all the things the SNP were promising before the referendum, it doesn’t take a genius to know they couldn’t deliver on all of them even if the price of oil hadn’t crashed and it doesn’t take a genius to work out which would be the ones they were prepared to back down on.
Abolition of Trident was never going to happen and they knew it.
Fred, if the Scottish people get the chance to evict nuclear weapons from their soil it bodes well to alter the power balance of the entire world. Since so many of those conventional bombs are launched by the US and its neocon allies, Scottish-led nuclear disarmament would likely decrease the prevalence of warfare generally. I doubt the US would be so aggressive in its foreign policy if it didn’t have its Scottish nuke-launching site that it can write off with little cost to itself.
“Note that YOU just made it personal there. That’s the trouble with feigned purity – it is accompanied by self deception.”
OK so you don’t want rid of Trident, if you say so, I just assumed you did.
“Fred, if the Scottish people get the chance to evict nuclear weapons from their soil it bodes well to alter the power balance of the entire world. Since so many of those conventional bombs are launched by the US and its neocon allies, Scottish-led nuclear disarmament would likely decrease the prevalence of warfare generally. I doubt the US would be so aggressive in its foreign policy if it didn’t have its Scottish nuke-launching site that it can write off with little cost to itself.”
It wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference. People were going to war before they invented nukes and they are going to war after. It would mean more money available for conventional weapons though.
Fred, an independent Scotland would not retain the nukes for long. Yes, the SNP would bargain away nuclear disarmament. But after independence, support for the SNP will start to drop. A rainbow of other parties would not be so easily bought off.
You’re the ONLY person I met in Scotland that I’ve heard arguing FOR nuclear armament.
Fred:
1) Governments go to war; people, generally, would rather not. Though you may be an exception, judging by your belligerent attitude; “oh, I just assumed” etc.
2) Governments are more likely to go to war when they feel more powerful. Deprive them of their nukes and they’ll be less belligerent.
“Fred, an independent Scotland would not retain the nukes for long. Yes, the SNP would bargain away nuclear disarmament. But after independence, support for the SNP will start to drop. A rainbow of other parties would not be so easily bought off.”
Hopefully the support for the SNP will drop long before that.
“You’re the ONLY person I met in Scotland that I’ve heard arguing FOR nuclear armament.”
Look it really doesn’t bother me either way, with nukes sitting there or without them I don’t think it is going to affect the price of potatoes any.
“1) Governments go to war; people, generally, would rather not. Though you may be an exception, judging by your belligerent attitude; “oh, I just assumed” etc.”
What’s belligerent about it? You seemed to object to me saying you were against nuclear weapons.
“2) Governments are more likely to go to war when they feel more powerful. Deprive them of their nukes and they’ll be less belligerent.”
Yes well my grandfather was in the trenches in WWI and my father in the RAF in WWII but I’m an old man now never been called to go to war in my life. Maybe part of the first generation in British history that has happened to.
Fred, it’s hard to believe you just wrote this:
Hey, so does ANY improvement in the economy, and ANY reduction in other public spending!
I strongly suspect that an independent Scotland would not want aircraft carriers either, or would it contribute to the new UK naval base in Bahrain. Such bases and aircraft carriers cannot be regarded as defensive; their only purpose is to project air power overseas. Same with nukes. Different weapons systems vary in their defensive and offensive applications.
Sorry, should have typed “Nor would it contribute to the new UK naval base in Bahrain”
Why? This line of thought wreaks of inertia! World is a changing environment despite all the inertia to the contrary.
Fred, OK, I’ll accept that was a genuine misunderstanding. Please read my original comment again.
Yes, I support unilateral nuclear disarmament for the UK, and France. Oh, and Israel, but that’s a moot point, obviously. The major powers should negotiate reduction of their nuclear arsenals, but us minor powers should just resign from the business of international military intervention, reduce our war budgets to zero, reconfigure for genuine defence, and save our economies a fortune.
Fred:
Surely that’s more attributable to US, Russian and Chinese nukes than to UK nukes. And look at the risk of global annihilation with which is bought!
But I suspect that it’s mechanised, technological warfare that has kept current generations “out of the trenches” – the trenches themselves are a thing of the past. Operatives at consoles direct drones from the other side of the world, and a small crew can unleash the same destruction as once required a hundred armies.
“Fred, it’s hard to believe you just wrote this:”
So you think Britain could lose the nuclear deterrent and not increase conventional weapons.
In the last thousand years this island fortress has been invaded more than 70 times, that’s averaging 7 a century and things might have gone a bit quiet lately but that could well be because we have adequate means to defend ourselves.
The defence budget would remain at around 2% of GDP with or without Trident.
“Why? This line of thought wreaks of inertia! World is a changing environment despite all the inertia to the contrary.”
Which is precisely why we have nukes.
Suppose at some time in the future some random country, lets say North Korea, were to develop a hydrogen bomb meaning they could put a warhead powerful enough to wipe out a city onto a missile small enough to be fired from a nuclear submarine. Suppose by some remote chance that were to happen and they were to say to the British government “do as we say or else”?
The world is changing all the time, who knows what he future will bring, having nukes and not needing them is far better than needing them and not having them.