At its height in the 1980’s, Militant claimed 8,000 members. In 2013 its descendant, the Socialist Party, claimed 2,500 members and crowed that it was now bigger than the Socialist Workers Party. The SWP replied, not by claiming to have more than 2,500 members, but by saying that the Socialist Party’s claim of 2,500 was inflated. The various manifestations of the Communist Party are smaller. An umbrella group, the People’s Assembly against Austerity, incorporates more or less all of these disparate elements plus much of the organised left of the Labour Party and trades union supporters. Its mailing list, which includes many Greens and other radicals like me, is 40,000 people. That is probably an exaggeration of the membership of the formal left in the UK and it should be noted that a significant proportion of that 40,000 are long term Labour members. Momentum, the Blairites’ bete noir, has only about 10,000 members.
I have therefore watched with bemusement the claims that the 120,000 new Labour members now banned from voting, and perhaps half of the remaining 400,000 Labour electorate, are entryists from organisations of the “hard left”. Anybody who believes there are over 300,000 members of “hard left” groups in the UK is frankly bonkers.
What we are seeing is rather a spontaneous expression of a genuine popular upsurge against neo-liberalism. Angela Eagle’s car crash interview on the Andrew Marr show this morning was all delectable, but for me the best moment was when Marr asked her if she would resign as an MP if her local party in Wallasey no-confidence her, to which she replied that this could not happen because the national executive had banned all constituency labour party meetings. The attempts of the Labour NEC to play King Canute against a popular tide they cannot begin to comprehend are hilarious.
As these people have come to paid political position through groups of well-connected people pulling the right strings, they assume all politics must work like that. So they are convinced that there must be an entryist cabal who have organised everything, with powerful people pulling the strings. My bet is the Blairites will be defeated, deselected and defenestrated without ever working out it was not a plot. It is just that ordinary people find their vacuous careerism appalling.
Talking of politicians who are unwelcome in the Labour party …. Update on “The Killings Of Tony Blair”
Posted by George Galloway MP (Creator)
See the trailer here :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOvs3Lgj1Qs
The Trident debate just goes to show that our leaders are psychopathic mass murderers. We are becoming more like the US every day.
Watched Corby on BBC news channel, he stuck to NPT fine-print. However if the gov & mil is desperate for new big-bang toys surely they could consider this . . .As UK atomic weapons development is (plausibly) being done at the micro-level of massed-laser-focused implosion, with the FRENCH. Why don’t we just develop the macro-project for defending the UK by sharing boats & devices with the FORCE DE FRAPPE?
Some people might have to learn Français, but we could always shout at them in English. . . Now that I’ve saved £40B a year, can you just forward the usual fee to the usual address, thanx
YKMN, is that right? Is that an annual figure?
There are many guesses!
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/may/12/replacing-trident-will-cost-at-least-205-billion-campaign-for-nuclear-disarmament
So take £205B over nine years (and double it), then get to around £40B/yr, whilst instead we could offer lots of M&S tea to the little Bretons to borrow some of theirs, when we need them to impress the hell out of whoever the impressee might putitavely be!
Sounds VERY PERSUASIVE! Can anybody contest that?
Thanks!
I’m now informed (by an ex-admiral on bbc) that the real cost will only be 0.13% of uk gdp over the next 50 years
Gdp ~= 1.8T£
0.13% = £2.34B/yr for 50yrs
Total Trident (cheap at half the price) = £1,170,000,00,000
Alternatively the price of working with the French, priceless!
Presumably it will go out for competitive tender
Thanks YKMN
Naval phrase:
‘Rum, bum and bacca’
So does that include the cost of all of the above?
PS Why has Theresa May or Maynot covered her cleavage today? When on coronation she was wearing a plunging neck-line?
Worthwhile, present and future stuff. Enough History for Heavens sake!
This country need to move forward, now that we’re on our own. Are we?
Makes very interesting reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Holdings
Over and out now; i’ve procrastinated on my exercise walk long enough now!
My turn to quote:
“Every time I feel the urge to exercise, I lie down until the feeling passes away.”
Who said that?
‘Who said that?’
OK Alcyone, I confess it was me.
Makes two of us then Alan.
Btw, is it just my eyes or is Mhairi Black putting on weight. Too much room service?
Tony Benn
If vacuous careerism is a crime, what about my own vacuous career laissez-faire?
In one 🙂
Btw, all you brains here should check out the etymology of the word Progress. It’s fascinating, revealing. Boy are we in a rut!
Thankfully Krishnamurti could never be linked with the word progress, though the World Teacher as he liked to be known, wrote more books than Barbara Cartland, it is said Cartlands books were far more interesting than Krishnamurti’s. Krishnamurti’s books are more Ron L.Hubbard like, fanciful with no real substance.
Still Krishnamurti’s endless churned out books afforded him a good lifestyle in California, strange how all, prophets, gurus and enlightened seerers, end up in sunny well to do California.
Ha-Ha! The Vicar’s daughter says “I ‘wouldn’t hesitate’ to fire nuclear weapons”.
So much for all the “loving thine enemies” and “turning the other cheek” stuff.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/politics-live-theresa-may-first-appearance-commons-parliament-prime-minister-trident-latest-updates-a7142736.html
Plus, may I point out, all those nukes didn’t prevent the events on that September day Craig forbids us to mention.
This is exactly what the Vicar’s daughter is prepared to unleash:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9v5sW6t0zI
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2007/04/fr-emmanuel-mccarthy/a-military-chaplain-repents/
A Military Chaplain Repents
In August of 1945 Rev. George B. Zabelka, a Catholic chaplain with the U.S. Army Air Force, was stationed on Tinian Island in the South Pacific. He was assigned to serve the Catholics of the 509th Composite Group. The 509th Composite Group was the Atomic Bomb Group. He served as a priest for those who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After 22 years as a military chaplain he retired as a Lieutenant Colonel. What follows is an interview with him by Rev. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy. Rev. George B. Zabelka went to meet his God on April 11, 1992.
Fr. McCarthy: Father Zabelka, what is your relationship to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945?
Fr. Zabelka: During the summer of 1945, July, August and September, I was assigned as Catholic chaplain to the 509th Composite Group on Tinian Island. The 509th was the Atomic Bomb Group.
Q: What were your duties in relationship to these men?
Zabelka: The usual. I said Mass on Sunday and during the week. Heard confessions. Talked with the boys, etc. Nothing significantly different from what any other chaplain did during the war.
Q: Did you know that the 509th was preparing to drop an atomic bomb?
Zabelka: No. We knew that they were preparing to drop a bomb substantially different from and more powerful than even the “blockbusters” used over Europe, but we never called it an atomic bomb and never really knew what it was before August 6, 1945. Before that time we just referred to it as the “gimmick” bomb.
Q: So since you did not know that an atomic bomb was going to be dropped you had no reason to counsel the men in private or preach in public about the morality of such a bombing?
Zabelka: Well, that is true enough; I never did speak against it, nor could I have spoken against it since I, like practically everyone else on Tinian, was ignorant of what was being prepared. And I guess I will go to my God with that as my defense. But on Judgment Day I think I am going to need to seek more mercy than justice in this matter.
Q: Why? God certainly could not have expected you to act on ideas that had never entered your mind.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/08/no_author/entering-the-nuclear-age/
Christians? What can I say?
Just glad I’m not one!
The Church of Madness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ7JyfEuNFE
And they dare to accuse others of “Terrorism”
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/08/gary-g-kohls/the-70th-anniversary-of-the-bombing-of-nagasaki/
“An irradiated crucifix lies in the ruins of the Urakami Cathedral Following the Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki”
70 years ago (August 9, 1945) an all-Christian bomber crew dropped a plutonium bomb over Nagasaki City, Japan, instantly vaporizing, incinerating or otherwise annihilating tens of thousands of innocent civilians, a disproportionately large number of them Japanese Christians. The explosion mortally wounded uncountable thousands of other victims who succumbed to the blast, the intense heat and/or the radiation.
In 1945, the US was regarded as the most Christian nation in the world (that is, if you can label as truly Christian a nation whose churches are proponents of eye-for-an-eye retaliation, are supportive of America’s military and economic exploitation of other nations or otherwise fail to sincerely teach or adhere to the ethics of Jesus as taught in the Sermon on the Mount).
Ironically, prior to the bomb exploding nearly directly over the Urakami Cathedral at 11:02 AM, Nagasaki was the most Christian city in Japan, and the massive cathedral was the largest Christian church in the Orient.
Those baptized and confirmed Christian airmen, following their wartime orders to the letter, did their job efficiently, and they accomplished the mission with military pride, albeit with an astonishing number of near-fatal glitches in the mission. Most of us Americans would have done what the crew did if we had been in the shoes of the Bock’s Car crew. And, if we had never seen, heard or smelled the suffering humanity that the bomb caused on the ground, and if we had been treated as heroes in the aftermath, most of us would have experienced no remorse for our participation in what was retrospectively universally regarded as a war crime.
Indeed, the use of the most monstrous weapons of mass destruction in the history of warfare, was later defined by the Nuremberg Tribunal as an international war crime and a crime against humanity.
Of course, there was no way that the crew members knew that at the time of the mission. Some of the crew did admit that they had had some doubts about what they had participated in after the bomb actually detonated. But none of them actually witnessed the horrific suffering of the victims up close and personal. “Orders are orders” and disobedience in wartime is severely punishable, even by summary execution, so the crew obeyed the orders.
Making It Hard for Japan To Surrender
It had been only 3 days since the August 6th bomb had incinerated Hiroshima. The Nagasaki bomb was dropped amidst massive chaos and confusion in Tokyo, where the fascist military command was just beginning a meeting with the Emperor to discuss how to surrender with honor. The military and civilian leadership of both nations had known for months that Japan had lost the war.
The only obstacle to ending the war had been the Allied Powers insistence on unconditional surrender, which meant that the Emperor Hirohito would have been removed from his figurehead position in Japan and perhaps even subjected to war crime trials. That demand was intolerable for the Japanese, who regarded the Emperor as a deity.
The USSR had declared war against Japan the day before (August 8), hoping to regain territories lost to Japan in the humiliating (for Russia) Russo-Japanese War 40 years earlier, and Stalin’s army was now advancing across Manchuria. Russia’s entry into the war had been encouraged by President Truman before he knew of the success of the atom bomb test in New Mexico on July 16.
But now, Truman and his strategists knew that the bomb could elicit Japan’s surrender without Stalin’s help. So, not wanting to divide any of the spoils of war with the USSR, and because the US wanted to send an early cold war message to Russia that the US was the new planetary superpower, Truman ordered bomber command to proceed with using the atomic bombs as weather permitted and as they became available (although no more fissionable material was actually available to make a fourth bomb).
The Decision To Target Nagasaki
August 1, 1945 was the earliest deployment date for the Japanese bombing missions, and the Target Committee in Washington, D.C. had already developed a list of relatively un-damaged Japanese cities that were to be excluded from the conventional USAAF (US Army Air Forces) fire-bombing campaigns (that, during the first half of 1945, had used napalm to burn to the ground over 60 essentially defenseless Japanese cities).
The list of protected cities included Hiroshima, Niigata, Kokura, Kyoto and Nagasaki. Those five cities were to be off-limits to the terror bombings that the other cities were being subjected to. They were to be preserved as potential targets for the new “gimmick” weapon that had been researched and developed in labs and manufacturing plants all across America over the several years since the Manhattan Project had begun.
Ironically, prior to August 6 and 9, the residents of those five cities considered themselves lucky for not having been bombed as had the other large cities. Little did the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki know that they were only being temporarily spared from an even worse carnage in an experiment with a new weapon that could cause the mass destruction of entire cities that were populated with hundreds of thousands of live human guinea pigs.
The Trinity Test
The first and only field test of an atomic bomb had been blasphemously code-named “Trinity” (a distinctly Christian term). That experiment had occurred in secrecy 3 weeks earlier at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945. The results were impressively destructive, but the blast had just killed a few hapless coyotes, rabbits, snakes and some other desert varmints. That plutonium bomb at Alamogordo had been identical to the Nagasaki bomb.
Trinity also produced huge amounts of an entirely new type of rock that was later called “Trinitite”. Trinitite was a radioactive molten lava rock that had been created from an intense heat that was twice the temperature of the sun.
At 3 am on the morning of August 9, 1945, a B-29 Superfortress bomber (that had been “christened” Bock’s Car) took off from Tinian Island in the South Pacific, with the prayers and blessings of the crew’s Lutheran and Catholic chaplains.
Barely making it off the runway before the heavily loaded plane went into the ocean (the bomb weighed 10,000 pounds), it headed north for Kokura, the primary target. Bock’s Car’s bomb was code-named “Fat Man,” partly because of its shape and partly to honor the rotund Winston Churchill. “Little Boy”, first called “Thin Man” (after President Roosevelt), was the code name of the uranium bomb that had been dropped on Hiroshima three days earlier.
Nagasaki Was Being Incinerated as the Japan’s War Council Was Again Debating Surrender Terms
Japan’s Supreme War Council in Tokyo, scheduled to convene their next meeting at 11 am on August 9, had absolutely no comprehension of what had really happened at Hiroshima. So the members were not inclined to heighten their sense of urgency concerning the issue of surrendering. The council was mostly concerned about Russia’s declaration of war than what was happening – as they were meeting – at Nagasaki.
But it was already too late, because by the time the War Council members were arising and heading to the meeting with the emperor, there was no chance to alter the course of history. Bock’s Car – flying under radio silence – was already approaching the southern islands of Japan, heading for Kokura, the primary target. The crew was hoping to beat an anticipated typhoon and the clouds that would have caused the mission to be delayed.
The Bock’s Car crew had instructions to drop the bomb only on visual sighting. But Kokura was clouded over. So after making three failed bomb runs over the clouded-over city and experiencing engine trouble on one of the four engines – using up valuable fuel all the while – the plane headed for its secondary target, Nagasaki.
The History of Nagasaki Christianity
Nagasaki is famous in the history of Japanese Christianity. The city had the largest concentration of Christians in all of Japan. St. Mary’s Cathedral was the megachurch of its time, with 12,000 baptized members.
Nagasaki was the community where the legendary Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier planted a mission church in 1549. The Catholic community at Nagasaki grew and eventually prospered over the next several generations. However it eventually became clear to the Japanese that the Catholic Portuguese and Spanish commercial interests were exploiting Japan. It only took a couple of generations before all Europeans – and their foreign religion – were expelled from the country.
From 1600 until 1850, being a Christian in Japan was a capital crime. In the early 1600s, Japanese Christians who refused to recant of their faith were subject to unspeakable tortures – including crucifixion. But after a mass crucifixion occurred, the reign of terror expired, and it appeared to all observers that Japanese Christianity was extinct.
However, 250 years later, after the gunboat diplomacy of US Commodore Matthew Perry forced open an offshore island for American trade purposes, it was discovered that there were thousands of baptized Christians in Nagasaki, living their faith in secret in a catacomb-like existence, completely unknown to the government.
With this revelation, the Japanese government started another purge; but because of international pressure, the persecutions were stopped and Nagasaki Christianity came up from the underground. By 1917, with no financial help from the government, the re-vitalized Christian community had built the massive St. Mary’s Cathedral in the Urakami River district of Nagasaki.
Christians Killing Christians in the Name of Christ
So it was the height of irony that the massive Cathedral – one of only two Nagasaki landmarks that could be positively identified from 31,000 feet up (the other one was the Mitsubishi armaments factory complex, which had run out of raw materials because of the Allied naval blockade) became Ground Zero for Fat Man.
At 11:02 am, during Thursday morning mass, hundreds of Nagasaki Christians were boiled, evaporated, carbonized or otherwise disappeared in a scorching, radioactive fireball that exploded 500 meters above the cathedral. The black rain that soon came down from the mushroom cloud contained the mingled cellular remains of many Nagasaki Shintoists, Buddhists and Christians. The theological implications of Nagasaki’s Black Rain surely should boggle the minds of theologians of all denominations.
The Nagasaki Christian Body Count
Most Nagasaki Christians did not survive the blast. 6,000 of them died instantly, including all who were at confession that morning. Of the 12,000 church members, 8,500 of them eventually died as a result of the bomb. Many of the others were seriously sickened with a highly lethal entirely new disease: radiation sickness.
Three orders of nuns and a Christian girl’s school nearby disappeared into black smoke or became chunks of charcoal. Tens of thousands of other innocent, non-Christian non-combatants also died instantly, and many more were mortally or incurably wounded. Some of the victim’s progeny are still suffering from the trans-generational malignancies and immune deficiencies caused by the deadly plutonium and other radioactive isotopes produced by the bomb.
And here is one of the most important ironic points of this article: What the Japanese Imperial government could not do in 250 years of persecution (i.e., to destroy Japanese Christianity) American Christians did in mere seconds.
Even after a slow revival of Christianity since WWII, membership in Japanese churches still represents a small fraction of 1% of the general population, and the average attendance at Christian worship services across the nation reported to be only 30 per Sunday. Surely the decimation of Nagasaki at the end of the war crippled what at one time was a vibrant church.
George Zabelka, the Catholic Chaplain for the 509th Composite Group
Father George Zabelka was the Catholic chaplain for the 509th Composite Group (the 1500 man United States Army Air Forces group whose only mission was to successfully deliver atomic bombs to their Japanese targets). Zabelka was one of the few Christian leaders who eventually came to recognize the serious contradictions between what his modern church had taught him and what the early pacifist church believed concerning homicidal violence.
Several decades after Zabelka was discharged from the military chaplaincy, he finally concluded that both he and his church had made serious ethical and theological errors in religiously legitimating the organized mass slaughter that is modern war. He eventually came to understand that (as he articulated it) “the enemy of me and the enemy of my nation is not an enemy of God. Rather my enemy and my nation’s enemy is a child of God who is loved by God and who therefore is to be loved (and not to be killed) by me as a follower of a loving God.”
Father Zabelka’s sudden conversion away from the standardized violence-tolerant Christianity changed his Detroit, Michigan ministry around 180 degrees. His absolute commitment to the truth of gospel nonviolence – just like Martin Luther King – inspired him to devote the remaining decades of his life to speaking out against violence in all its forms, including the violence of militarism, racism and economic exploitation. Zabelka travelled to Nagasaki on the 50th anniversary of the bombing, tearfully repenting and asking for forgiveness for the part he had played in the crime.
Likewise, the Lutheran chaplain for the 509th, Pastor William Downey (formerly of Hope Evangelical Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, MN), in his counseling of soldiers who had become troubled by their participation in making murder for the state, later denounced all killing, whether by a single bullet or by weapons of mass destruction.
Why Should Combat Veterans Embrace a Religion that Blessed the Wars that Ruined Their Souls?
In Daniel Hallock’s important book, Hell, Healing and Resistance, the author described a 1997 Buddhist retreat that was led by the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. The retreat involved a number of combat-traumatized Vietnam War veterans who had left the Christianity of their birth. The veterans had responded positively to Nhat Hanh’s ministrations. Hallock wrote, “Clearly, Buddhism offers something that cannot be found in institutional Christianity. But then why should veterans embrace a religion that has blessed the wars that ruined their souls? It is no wonder that they turn to a gentle Buddhist monk to hear what are, in large part, the truths of Christ.”
Hallock’s comment should be a sobering wake-up call to Christian leaders who seem to regard as important both the recruitment of new members and the retention of old ones. The fact that the US is a highly militarized nation makes the truths of gospel nonviolence difficult to teach and preach, especially to military veterans (particularly the homeless ones) who may have lost their faith because of spiritually-traumatic horrors experienced on the battlefield.
I am a retired physician who has dealt with hundreds of psychologically traumatized patients (including combat-traumatized war veterans), and I know that violence, in all its forms, can irretrievably damage the mind, body, brain, and spirit. But the fact that the combat-traumatized type is totally preventable – and oftentimes virtually impossible to fully cure – makes prevention work really important.
An ounce of prevention is indeed worth a pound of cure when it comes to combat-induced PTSD. And where Christian churches should and could be instrumental in the prevention of homicidal violence (and the soul-destroying combat PTSD) is by counseling their members to not participate in it, as the ethics of the nonviolent Jesus surely guided the pacifist church in the first 3 centuries of its existence.
Experiencing violence can be deadly and sometimes it is even contagious. I have seen violence, neglect, abuse and the resultant traumatic illnesses spread through both military and non-military families – even involving the 3rd and 4th generations after the initial victimizations. And that has been the experience of the hibakusha (the long-suffering atomic bomb survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) and their progeny and it has been the experience of the warrior-perpetrators (and their victims) who experienced the acts of killing in any war, not just WWII.
What Should be the Church’s Role in the Mass Slaughter of War?
Years ago I saw an unpublished Veteran’s Administration study that showed that, whereas most Vietnam War-era soldiers were active members of Christian churches before they went off to war, if they came home with PTSD, the percentage returning to their faith community approached zero. Daniel Hallock’s sobering message above helps explain why that is so.
Therefore the church – at least by its silence on the issue of war – seems to be promoting homicidal violence, contrary to the ethical teachings of Jesus, by failing to teach what the primitive church understood was one of the core teachings of Jesus, who said, in effect, that “violence is forbidden for those who wish to follow me”.
Therefore, by refraining from warning their adolescent members about the faith- and soul-destroying realities of war, the church is directly undermining the “retention” strategies in which all churches engage. The hidden history of Nagasaki has valuable lessons for American Christianity.
The Bock’s Car Crew and the Chain of Command
The Bock’s Car bomber crew, as are conscripted or enlisted men in any war, was at the bottom of a long, complex, and very anonymous chain of command whose superiors demand unconditional obedience from those below them in the chain. The Bock’s Car crew had been ordered to “pull the trigger” of the lethal weapon that had been conceptualized, designed, funded, manufactured and armed by other entities, none of whom would feel morally responsible for doing the dirty deed. As is true in all wars, the soldier trigger-pullers are usually the ones blamed for the killing and therefore they often feel the post-war guilt that is a large part of combat-induced PTSD. However their religious chaplains who are responsible for the morals of their soldiers, may share their guilt feelings. Both groups are down at the bottom of the chain of command, but neither group knows exactly who they are trying to kill the “enemy” – or why.
Hopefully this essay will promote needed discussions about the ethics of making murder for the state while simultaneously – and illogically – professing allegiance to the teachings of the nonviolent Jesus.
The early church leaders, who knew the teachings and actions of Jesus best, rejected the nationalist, racist and militarist agendas of the national security agencies, the military-industrial complex, the war-profiteering corporations and the pre-Christian eye-for-an-eye retaliation doctrines that have, over the past 1700 years, enabled baptized Christians to willingly kill other Christians (not to mention non-Christians) in the name of Christ.
And yet they will cry and moan loudly because one man has killed just 80 people??? They who have butchered thousands!!!
Great stuff, Alan. They actually used that crucifix atop the Church in Nagasaki as the target. The target was largely chosen because the mountains around it acted as a natural bowl – to create an amphitheatre in which the detonation would be contained, reverberate, and give magnificent opportunity to study the effects.
You might be interested in the following podcast:
http://majority.fm/2014/08/06/86-greg-mitchell-the-hiroshima-nagasaki-coverup/
Indeed she is Alan, because she never has been subjected to US nuclear explosions in Japan, she does not know what suffering it would cause.
In a nuclear exchange Trident would not be used as a first strike weapon, but for retaliation, which wholly depend on the command structure still being in place, not wiped out.
As already mentioned here, a first strike by the west, however hard Russian and Chinese nuclear facilities are hit, will be responded to by automatically released second strike nukes, deep under ground.
The combined effect such an exchange will have could and most likely will shroud our beautiful earth in nuclear dust for at least two years ensuring that everyone gets contaminated to some extend.
The prospects thereafter can only be imagined, nobody would want to live during such devastation and hardship, people would die like flies.
Well, St. Theresa, speak for yourself. some might say, have your nuclear war here in England and see if you can stop involving innocent third parties who do not want it, but who by quirks of the weather and jet stream will be contaminated for years to come.
Nukes are indiscriminate whatever size they are, they will always hurt third parties. I feel ashamed that all the servicemen watching the nuclear tests in Australia and elsewhere, had to fight the MOD for decades to get compensated for the many cancers they suffered.
Not in my name.
Excellent.
Btw, anyone know why Tony Blair became a Catholic rather than COE? Good he thinks in terms of Heaven and Hell! How does he sleep at night? I wish upon him complete resistance to every drug, the amoeba that he is.
“Btw, anyone know why Tony Blair became a Catholic”
So he can go and hide in Ireland, assuming they don’t hate him as much as we do, but I know for a fact he holds an Irish passport.
It’s because, although Blair thinks he can distinguish between good and evil, he cannot distinguish between right and wrong.
My theory is that the Catholic Church provide absolution for crimes; most other religions and variants thereof do not. That’s what Blair wants – absolution.
The answer to that question, as to so many opthers, is Mrs. Blair.
Thank you all.
Personally I think it’s a very engaging question in order to look into the ‘personal’ mind of Blair. The timing of his conversion too. The Beauty of the process/mechanism of the brain and the mind is that you know it when you fucked up. Denial, even if only to others, amplifies the suffering. Drugs can help but only up to a point. I wish this lump of evil resistance to every chemical. I also hope he doesn’t receive the respite of dementia. Just pure suffering in his own toxic juice.
And The called Saddam a mad dictator.
There is a risk of regarding the current crisis in the Labour Party as being a leadership contest. It is nothing of the sort and it is a real mistake for people to see the question as being whether Corbyn should be re-elected or not.
The reality is that this is about democracy in the Labour Party and whether members should be ultimately responsible or whether the party apparatus-professionals employed at salaries to discharge well defined functions- should be allowed to dictate the terms of discussion and the conditions under which it should be allowed to take place.
What we see now in the Labour Party is a denial of democracy, based upon a view-evidently shared by the party’s employees and the majority of the PLP- that the membership is not capable of taking important political decisions.
It is a crisis which has arisen, in part, because most of the functions carried out by salaried staff are quite capable of being done by the members themselves, thanks to modern means of communication. The staff are, therefore, largely redundant. Hence this desperate last ditch campaign to arrogate to themselves functions previously discharged by democratic assemblies: setting policy in conferences, running elections, counting votes and maintaining internal discipline and order in meetings.
Some commenters have suggested that those disappointed at Labour’s failure to act effectively as an opposition should not vote for Corbyn.
Quite apart from the obvious fact that Corbyn has faced a sullen refusal to cooperate and compromise from his PLP colleagues and all which that entails; democrats and those who wish to continue to influence policy have no choice but to vote for Corbyn and insist that, if re-elected, he will commit himself to restoring and enhancing democracy within the party.
Then the real struggle can begin and the membership can get down to the urgent business of specifying how neo-liberalism is to be replaced by popular government.
Bevin,
The struggle within the Party is quite simple, do we support the Collins Report of February 2014, most of which was adopted at the September 2014 Party Conference, or do we go back to an effective dictatorship where an undemocratic Party organisation, in conjunction with the PLP rules the roost.
Regardless of who the leader is, and in my opinion it could be a monkey or tub of lard, I uphold decisions taken at the party Conference before the 2015 General Election, which endorsed the Collins recommendations – which all the Bitterites were hoopla over, until of course it dawned on them that much of the membership was to the left of the PLP, nearly 50% in fact of all those full members who participated in last years leadership election.
It’s a disgrace that as a full Party Member, member of Unite and member of the Co-op Party that I’m now disenfranchised, however three family members have now signed up as supporters – between us we have spent more than £160.00, but allegedly the Labour Party was founded by the working class to advance the working class – its now a bloody middle class talking shop for those who quite can’t bring themselves to vote Tory, as witnessed by the disgraceful performance of the Red Tories in todays trident vote.
As someone hailing from the working classes who’s parents lived and were raised in two of the poorest areas of South Wales, I can only say I’d like my Party back and have it represent those who actually founded it, and not the coffeeshop and wine-class of Islington.
‘Turkish Police Raid Incirlik Airbase Where US-Led Coalition Jets Are Based’:
http://www.defenddemocracy.press/turkish-police-raid-incirlik/
This has everything to do with what’s going on in Britain and France at the moment, because basically just about all European countries are colonies of America.
I’ve read articles claiming that this man was behind the coup, and that he is backed by the USA.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fethullah_Gülen
Gulen was a close ally of Erdogan, until 2013, Erdogan accused Gulen of being behind corruption investigations of him.
The US has a long history of backing exiles in coups, they certainly must be in the running for this attempt on Turkey.
RoS, you have a habit of being well behind the news. Gulen is an obvious scapegoat, has been running his own profitable racket in the US for years, and is no less an Islamist than Erdogan. The organisation and scale of the coup were, as it turned out, predestined to fail. I think the Yanks would have made it last at least a little longer*, and removed Erdogan just for starters. Erdogan knew it was coming (it was pretty well an open secret in army circles, apparently) and had the resources on hand to deal with it. There are only two plausible theories, IMO.
1. A secularist group within the army, and perhaps other state organisations, seeing that Erdogan was moving towards an Islamic state, in direct contradiction of Kemal’s founding principles, were panicked into premature action.
2. The same secularist group was clandestinely encouraged to act at a time of Erdogan’s choosing.
This was not in US interests. It would have poured petrol onto the regional flames. It was overwhelmingly in Erdogan’s interests, as he wants to rewrite the constitution, but needs to remove opposition to this. The perfect excuse. Gulen takes the blame for this, as for all other opposition to Erdogan, but given his potential support in Turkey, if he had been involved, this would have been a far more effective coup. If the Yanks had proposed this one, his name would have been on the banners, and it wasn’t.
*like 13 years
…apologies for the lack of a Turkish font in the above. Responding in haste…
As they said of Allende…’he will not escape alive”.
Well Baal judging by the Turkish people’s response to the coup Erdogan is a pretty popular guy himself, even more so than the exiled Gulen, wouldn’t you say.
I see a patsy has been found in the form of some general, who’d probably say anything after several hours of torture, I won’t rule out US involvement just yet.
Nor will I rule out Erdogan orchestrating it himself, afterall according to some press reports the coup has allowed him to remove members of the military and judicial system that he’d have had great difficulty removing otherwise.
I actually read somewhere today, RoS, that he is actually connected to the Clinton family. I’ll check if I can find it again.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45122.htm
“Ties Emerge Between Clinton And Mysterious Turkish Cleric”
Connections between Clinton and acolytes of the imam, Fethullah Gulen, could muddle the complex relationship between the U.S. and Turkey, a key NATO ally, if the former secretary of state wins the White House.
I’ve been vacillating but I have come to one little conclusion: I want a good debate and I want to see how big is our Big Society.
I am going to pay my 25 pounds and I want Jeremy Corbyn to show Eagle (and everyone else) how big are his balls; and I want to see her, perish the thought, ovaries if they haven’t shrivelled like her face when she tried to shed tears live on TV.
Just see the last 10 seconds, or you might die of boredom:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR8tJF1DxAQ
With all those windows behind her, why didn’t she just defenestrate herself? Is that the right use of the word here, lexicographers?
Is that the right use of the word here,
I don’t know, I think we need to get together and vacillate some more, but I suspect the mod will delete this 😉
The post has stood for a good couple of hours, so you’re probably OK
A parliament full of Labour and Tory one-toothed rednecks, “you’ll only take my guns out of my cold dead hand”.
These people are terrifying, as is how they got where they are despite being such in-bred trash.
You do have to wary of them, as Dr David Kelly and Bob Crow, are prime examples of how far the state will go, to protect its own politicians interests.
Yeah poor old Bob. The bastards held him prisoner on a luxury cruise liner for three weeks and force fed him champagne and pate-foie-gras until his heart gave out.
Bob Crow was a left-wing trade union leader – General Secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT).
Bob Crow got higher wages for his members and the RMT’s membership increased from around 57,000 in 2002 to more than 80,000 in 2008.
In 2002, Bob Crow was very badly beaten up in his own home by unknown masked attackers.
He nearly died.
Police ruled out burglary as a motive and said the attack was was “premeditated”.
The police fitted a panic button in his home because he was “a target of further attacks.“
This attempt on his life happened just before Crow was elected RMT leader in 2002.
Police fitted panic button in RMT leader Bob Crow’s home because he was a ‘target’ – 11 Mar 2014.
Yeah funny how most of them die of heart attacks John Smith, Robin Cook etc.
Kempe, I don’t claim to know his background. What is your issue with Crow?
Fantastic! At last someone gets it! I am so frustrated with being labelled a far left extremist! (if you met me you would think that quite hysterical!). What I was is a passive labour supporter who woke up and realised that the people I have been voting for at a local level for labour no longer support the labour values I thought they did.
At the last election I very nearly did not vote at all which is not something I would never of considered. Then one night, I saw Jeremy C. on Channel 4 news and I thought ‘who the heck is this guy – I like it’! That inspired me to go and hear him talk on a rainy November night – first Labour meeting I had attended in my life – like many others there. If the 172 who have been hell bent on getting him out actually pulled together we would have been in a fantastic position now. As it is, they are ruining the Labour Party.
The issue we do face is that I can no longer support/vote for my existing Labour MP (Tom Blenkinsop) and I suspect the same will be for others who have MPs who have selective hearing when it comes to listening to the views of members (Mr Blenkinsop blocked me on twitter because I sent him a tweet which said ‘I voted for you because I vote for JC’ not terribly offensive but no doubt going down on the list of extremist offensive views being recounted in Parliament.
Enuff said about the 172!
3 cheers for those who are positively with him (how many is that? 40+?), including Andy Burnham!!!
Please sign up here if you support the motion!
The entire debate about Trident is misconstrued.
The UK has about 180 nuclear warheads (i know, you can disagree with that figure, because who knows?). That’s enough firepower to incinerate 100s of millions of human beings, if that’s your want.
The uranium and/or plutonium fuel in each nuclear warhead degrades after about 9 years, and has to be replaced. That’s why we have a totally white elephant called ‘nuclear power’, which the markets won’t touch but the government totally subsidises because it needs a constant supply of fuel for all those nuclear warheads, to ‘keep us safe’.
Nuclear power and nuclear bombs produce waste, much of which remains lethal until, effectively, the end of time.
It’s so MAD it’s beyond belief.
Actually RobG,
The waste associated with creating nuclear weapons and from nuclear powers stations can actually be utilised in Thorium-based reactors, that is it can be used as fuel, the resulting waste being less toxic than before it was effectively burned – whilst Thorium is both cleaner and safer than PWR power stations, radioactive waste is still created, although at far lower levels, hence making storage more simple and less expensive.
But the US sacked Alvin Weinberg who was developing the Molten Salt Reactor that could do this, and licensed his PWR design against his objections: “Alvin, if you’re so concerned about reactor safety, we think it’s time you left nuclear power”. Continue here:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/forums/topic/nuclear-energy-remembering-chernobyl/
Clark, we sort of posted at the same time.
I, like many others, are suffering from what I term ‘Fukushima fatigue’. We’ve been banging on about this for more than five years now, and the world at large hasn’t taken a blind bit of notice, even with the Pacific Ocean on its last legs.
Thorium/salt reactors are still basically fueled by uranium; it’s the same old same old.
But it’s a nice evening in my part of the world, and as dusk comes I’m going to sit out on the terrace with a glass of vin rouge, listening to the cicada chirping: ‘ the human race are totally insane’, ‘the human race are totally insane’.
And tomorrow is another day.
You might be right as to the reasons for the designs put into operation, to feed the bomb-making production lines.
You’re still flogging however a no doubt poisonous quack remedy that cures the disease certainly, by killing the patient and the planet the hospital stands on for good measure..
Solid/molten coolant experiments as your benign sounding ‘salt’ reactors are, have been every bit as wayward as the bomb-making variety generating some token power, disguising them as power-stations we’re all used to and rwould rather not share a planet with, both ‘experimental’, I’d say just mental reactors: Dounreay and Lagnua Beach Fast Breeders, using molten sodium primary coolants both cost billions, were “newer”, “better”, so high-tech it was unbelievable, and it was, they promptly both melted down catastrophically. These things can flip completely out of all control in a nanosecond, no human or computer known could pre-empt the inevitable.
Tony, the reason for nuclear power is the NPT, the so-called Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty. Countries that undertake not to make bombs get the right to develop nuclear power. Arguably, it has restrained the proliferation of nuclear weapons, but undoubtedly at the cost of deploying thousands of times the amount of nuclear fuel, in nuclear power stations. And it has grown a powerful and expensive industry that is now “too big (and far too toxic) to be permitted to fall”.
Chris, please don’t give me this tired old crap.
You seem to be a nice chap (see, it rhymes, and possibly scans). Go do some real research.
RobG,
I do bloody well research and have spent a considerable amount of time reading up on the subject matter, I’m not propagandising and just made a bloody statement, if you don’t like it, fair enough, but some of us are bloody concerned about the environment and amount of fossil fuels being burned that a quickly killing our planet – now, again, since when does this bugger propagandise.
If you can’t make comments here without idiots tearing their hair out why bloody well bother!!!!
Chris
You live in the new world where change is conceivable.
RobG lives in the old world where plus ca change, plus c’est la f***ing meme chose buddy.
The world where you just went out and clobbered a wife:” oh my darling husband **!!.” or shot a mammoth with an arrow. “Shame about the fur, but very tasty!” ( MAMMOTH, NOT WIFE )
When it comes to this subject you are a complete ignoramus.
Do you understand the uranium fuel cycle? (go look it up)
Do you understand the Fukushima disaster?
You are all dead people walking, and you are all so fecking dumb that you don’t even understand this.
‘Death by stupidity’ will be the epitaph of the human race.
But hey, let’s go bomb some people in the meantime.
Please grow-up.
RobG,
After the giant earthquake in Japan and the Fukishuma disaster, unlike you, I actually was in Tokyo some thirty days later, suffice to say I’m still alive and lived through three aftershocks measuring nearly, I was scarred to death – I’m less than 3hrs flight away from Tokyo and where I live presently, its heavy pollution from mainland China that’s a killer, not radiation.
I’ve never claimed nuclear energy is safe, and do not claim thorium is safe, its safer than PWR is what I said.
Now, I’m all for renewables and think both Wales and Scotland could lead in this field, our bloody politicians believe £200 billion on a Trident replacement is better – well I don’t, for the way it’s going, we may as well use Trident now for if we burn much more fossil fuels we won’t have a habitable planet period.
And also go look up the whore who controls most of the world’s uranium.
Easy, Chris – you’ll set RobG off again. He’s OK most of the time these days.
This is the sort of thing that happens to RobG if you start talking about reactors… almost as bad as asking to see a 27B/6:
https://youtu.be/eosrujtjJHA?t=266
Yep, certainly had a chain reaction, however more concerned about the Labour Party Election after the Coup, in Turkey at least the masses took to the streets, although for what reason I don’t know, but we are witnessing an Establishment coup, one we need to stop in its tracks.
Rob, Chris is right, it probably can be done, but if we could start right now (which we obviously can’t) and made ALL our electricity using AMSTER reactors or similar, it would take centuries to consume just the waste that’s already been churned out. It’s mad to keep on making more waste, especially in boiling water reactors like the ones still out of control at Fukushima.
Look we’re off-topic here; there’s a suitable forum:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/forums/topic/nuclear-energy-remembering-chernobyl/#post-34262
You forgot to add: Your whites will come up whiter than white too and it comes with this handy plastic scoop.
The propulsion systems of these submarines are every bit as lethal as the rented US owned and controlled nuclear bombs they fire off.
This whole nuclear technology’s usage was deplored almost immediately by its key inventors.
“I have become the destroyer of man”
I think the propulsion reactors are potentially more lethal, since they contain more nuclear fuel than the weapons do.
But credit where it’s due. Considering that the context was the end of the Second World War, and every country thought that any other country that got The Bomb first might try to take over the world, the politicians didn’t do so badly. We’re still here. Now we have to untangle the deals they made to try to bribe countries away from making nuclear weapons by selling them nuclear power, and somehow radically transform the vast, powerful and highly unpleasant industry they spawned in the process.
‘The uranium and/or plutonium fuel in each nuclear warhead degrades after about 9 years,’
Well yes, which is why they talk about “half-life”; it’s a kind of logarithmic pattern.
The point is that the material in nuclear warheads has to be replaced every 9 years or so (depending on the weapon; every five years with some). That’s why you have completely mad schemes like the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station; and by the way, if ever one of these nuke plants blows up it’s bye, bye England; but of course the swivel-eyed loons don’t think about this; I mean, it’s not as though nuclear power plants have ever blown-up before.
It’s like living in a lunatic asylum; it really is.
Do you know the tonnage of weapons grade Plutonium and the cost of keeping and guarding the said plutonium,? Taking into account, the shifting around of the damn deadly metal, because it would turn the storage facility radioactive if kept for a long spells in the same place?
Clearly we need to rob the sick, the ill, the needy and the zerohour contract workers to keep the taxes down for corporation and the tax evaders, whilst ensuring the costs of weapons and the weapons grade material is met by the money saved from paying the ill, the needy, and the pensioners*.
* Have you noticed the pension adverts on the telly? These unscrupulous bastards have learnt to screw the masses any which way included ripping them off for the pensions that they will never get as the last lot of pensioners got ripped off included those who thought private pensions a were safe bet!!!!
Alan – the half-life on Pu and U is 24,100 years and > 700 million years respectively. A lot more that 9 years.
The 9 years refers to how long it takes for the setup to become unstable, not the time to decay to half its current radioactivity level.
Don`t worry Rob the Russians have solved the problem of nuclear waste. No more sleepless nights for you.
The method leads to obtaining various valuable and most valuable elements and isotopes, demanded in energy, medicine, and industry. Among them Francium, Radium, Actinium, Protactinium, Americium, Berkelium, Californium, and various other isotopes. All of them in convenient form, favorable for separation and purification.It would also be applicable for the 100% deactivation of nuclear waste.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/presentation-of-biochemical-method-of-elements-transmutation-300283573.html
Dave this is total bullshit; and I’m not sure if you’re being ironic or not.
There is no solution to nuclear waste, and every year thousands of tons of it keeps being produced.
And no one knows what to do with it.
Shall we get into the definition of insanity?
They are latter-day alchemists, ruffling through their almanacs for a propitious conjugation, high on fumes, turning lead into gold and all too.
Rob stop being a armchair amateur physicist.Where and when did you work in nuclear physics.Are you and have you been practitioner? What have you done then Rob at the cutting edge of Physics? You are always putting people down because you know best.So what have you done in the Nuclear,High energy particle physics or gravity wave detectors so if you have maybe we can have a dialogue.
Dave Lawton, I’m not an armchair amateur physicist.
I know what I’m talking about.
And what seems to being pushed here is propaganda about nuclear energy (would love to talk to you about quantum physics, but you’ll probably disappear quicker then the morning dew).
What shilling do you people take for this? Don’t you have any pride?
Yes Rob disappear you say ? I use a teleport machine and basis of which was founded on research
at the Physics lab were I worked. Here are some papers for you to read as you like doing research.
I knew Mike when I worked at H.H.Wills in the 60`s and 70`s.It may give you grasp of the research which went on there in the field of QM https://michaelberryphysics.wordpress.com/about-2/
The Berry page is fascinating, but there’s nothing there that’s likely to overturn current theories. Still less the nucleus of a macro-scale teleporter. LOL. Or are you just impressing us with your access to a page with a lot of completely reputable linked papers? Would you like to see some on sodic amphiboles? Can do.
Dave, I haven’t recognised your physics when I’ve looked at it before. If there really is a huge deception in mainstream physics, post a topic in the forums and discuss it with me there – such a deception is a matter in its own right, and would need to be set straight.
Clark There is massive deception in mainstream physics.I am quite happy to discuss with you my thoughts. But not on a public forum
I worked as Peter Aplin`s assistant on his invention.”The Split bar gravitational wave detector.
The reason why is below. Peter was just about airbrushed out of gravity wave research.
You should read page 139 to 140.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=HdP3Tscyr3AC&pg=PA139&lpg=PA139&dq=in+gravitys+shadow+peter+aplin&source=bl&ots=-PqdCaSA7B&sig=AaolvfIoV0TaUvVxwSFKzBiuL00&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiDw7jS2__NAhVHWBQKHaWbDxUQ6AEIIzAB#v=onepage&q=in%20gravitys%20shadow%20peter%20aplin&f=false
Dave, thanks; I read your link. Please e-mail me and post here when you’ve done so; the address is on the following page:
http://www.killick1.plus.com/home.html
OK, own up: Who and how many here are getting paid to post “counter-propaganda”? Or do you just do it for the laughs? RobG, Dave Lawton, Tony M.
There are real, very serious problems with nuclear power and, ironically, similar but smaller problems with weapons fabrication (much less nuclear fuel involved). But making things up doesn’t help anyone. The problems need to be understood before they can be addressed. It isn’t voodoo, and it is possible to understand, but not if ordinary folk keep muddying the water. Hopefully, we will get to make a democratic decision about all this one day, and if that day ever comes we’ll need an informed electorate.
And the problems still need to be addressed if all nuclear power and weapons were decommissioned right now, because there’s already seventy years worth of waste.
Clark, you can march off to your war with Russia; that’s your perogative; but to paint me and others as pro-Putin is, quite frankly, ridiculous.
You should know from my blog that I don’t have a Russian slant whatsoever. I just try to tell things as they are.
No one – repeat no one – will stop me from voicing my opinion.
(I could really steam into you here, but will hold back)
Did I mention Russia? Fits though. You never criticise Chernobyl or any Russian nuclear tech, nor fossil fuels that, you know, cause global warming and come through Ukraine and that.
Look, physics is physics. There are better policies and worse ones. Throwing our hands in the air might not be the best option.
So they want to spend 200 billion over a decade on a pointless nuclear weapon system – the best option is that it’s a complete waste of money, because if it isn’t wasted we’re annihilated.
So, a modest proposal. How about letting them have their prestige nuclear project, but instead of Trident they can spend between 1% and 10% on learning to make reactors that clean up waste? It’s got to be done sometime, it’s doable, it’s world-leading, it’d employ people in a far more rewarding way than the weapons would, and it’d generate loads of electricity. And it would be setting a really good example.
Entryist.
Why are 6,000 Turkish judges, journalists and generals all condemned for making a stand for decency and democracy against a fraudulent warmongering embezzler while the UK electorate cravenly fawned on for getting rid of warmonger Cameron and warmongering Federal Europe?
Dat god Demos got a lot to answer for, like dat other god De Market.
We now know that democracy can be used to defend bigotry, tyranny and state terror in the form of Erdogan and that however bad the other god De Market turns out to be, there’s another god De Bail-out also known as QE, to save de mockracy.
Is Demos a 2-faced god like Janus. For us you can take out the mushrooms in your curry if you don’t like them but for the rest of the world you have to eat the poisonous toadstools and lick the plate clean.
I know Craig is mocking the gravy trainers of the Labour Party , but why are the gravy trainers of Islamic State facilitators exempt from mockery? Can anyone tell me please?
Is terror intrinsically good for Muslim countries? per se? de facto????
No replies from Alcyone Anon1 or Rubberpants , please.
“why are the gravy trainers of Islamic State facilitators exempt from mockery? Can anyone tell me please?”
Because, and I am choosing my words very carefully now, they are “The Authorities”.
Entryists my arse, I’m no “hard-left” entryist, been im the party since 1988 (left for 2 years because of Iraq) till now. If “hard left means” no to nuclear weapons, yes to renationalisation of the railways, and utilities, yes to progressive taxation? no to academies, no to overseas tax corruption, no to privatisation of our health service etc. etc then YES I’m hard left, I voted for Corbyn and detest the gerrymandering by the NEC for those who can and can’t vote.
Angry Em Yes
Get these Fucking things Oot of My River
http://www.thenational.scot/
Corbyn wiping floor with Eagle and Smith in latest YouGov Poll of Party Members, that’s the 380,000 actually allowed to vote, he’s at 54% – we need them ‘supporters’ and Union Affiliates to follow – three family members registered as supporters this evening, all will Vote4Corbyn – lets give the establishment another bloody nose, its like Brexit, time they notice us and stop ignoring us. Quite happy before retiring to bed, was getting worried, but hope lives on and hope is all many of us have.
Hilary Consistently-voted-for-the-Iraq-war Benn was on Radio 4 this morning… he will give his full support to anyone who is elected as long as its not Corbyn. So respectful of the membership.
Of course May voted for the invasion too. People were outraged yesterday when May said she would use the bomb and kill 100,000 men, women and children if necessary. Well May and Benn and the others have done more than that already.
Its all carry on as if nothing happened – forget all about it..
I stumped up too, though I’m wary the Blairites and Bennites will move the goalposts again and make the payment pointless. It’s not my idea of democracy either, paying for it (it’s those who pay to get their political way who corrupt it), but it is such an important issue to support Jeremy Corbyn that for some of us it has to be done; and I think many others who aren’t well-off but can find the fee will choose to do so too. I’m just hoping the wealthy will look at the polls re. Jeremy’s support, then decide his backing is too strong for them to bother paying up to corrupt the election, as I think the Bennite plan was all along.
Labour members in South Shields have had to be given rules on how to behave as part of measures put in place to tackle problems found by party officials.
It comes after the South Shields branch of the party was suspended.
Read the full story here http://www.shieldsgazette.com/news/local-news/five-things-labour-members-have-been-banned-from-doing-at-meetings-1-7846766
“A raft of new rules which have been put into place as Labour North take over the running of South Shields Constituency Labour Party include:
1) No comments made under the breath, or to members during meetings.
2) No raised voices or comments made in anger.
3) No dismissive body language, including eye-rolling, tutting or head shaking whilst someone is speaking.
4) No comments that make reference to personal characteristics, such as age, experience, gender or individual personal politics.
5) No action which may be interpreted as aggressive physical behaviour, regardless of whether that was the intent, for example, finger pointing at other members.
Those who display this kind of behaviour are being warned they would face sanctions.
These include:
A written warning which would remain on their file;”
Have you got that no rolling of eyes etc.
Angela Eagle can defame Jeremy Corbyn by claiming he had provoked “personal attacks on MP’s, [and] a string of death and rape threats and brick’s through windows”. Absolutely disgusting.
1930s Germany?
The Labour Party’s MPs are deliberately orchestrating (and probably fabricating) trouble so that they can play the victims. I hope Corbyn and the membership stand up to them, and that these highly devious, self-serving individuals are expelled from the party.
I wonder how effective debate can be when you are in a straightjacket, blindfolded, whispering, and not allowed to cough or clear your throat in case it is “aggressive”. Yes the NEC and other Labour grandees are now entering the realms of Kafka and beyond.
This is laughable Harry, how dare they muzzle leaders because their NEC can’t cope with those who did not support their leader.
What sanctions do MP’s face for not supporting their leader?
How are false accusations handled?, such as bricks though windows of stairwell office?
A ludicrous attempt at shutting up members by a body that has shown no fairness of substance when it comes to enforcing its own rules.
The NEC has failed to support the leadership, as much as the blood red champagne soaks who clamber for power at any price.
The more their antics are displayed, the more electable Corbyn becomes.
For the last time. Any election coverage indeed any coverage of the Labour party should re adjust itself to the facts of that election, not speak of splits and division, because like all good Labour supporters/members who are shackled and told to shut up within meetings, long planned events being postponed, these MP’s will fall behind their leader, won’t they?
Any GE election coverage for Labour should be directly controlled by a foreign news agency. The BBC is just too biased and full of Conservative party spokespersons who masquerade as BBC political correspondents, a racket.
Oh well, it’s good to talk, even if it’s in a lunatic asylum.
i like this article
LIke most things in this country now, I suspect the Trident debate has very little to do with the national interest, and a lot to do with the interests of the arms manufacturers and military, and currying favour with the Americans.
You bet this is the price of hanging to the coat tail of the US. Help spread the costs of their R & D for a weapons system that we cannot use, unless the US first gives us their permission to use these.
Austerity for the masses, as the filthy sons of the bitches talk about getting the already impoverished and neglected people to pay to see their “GP” etc. All the while they are pissing the money away and whenever anyone questions their suck up kick down policies, the questioner is harangued at, and bullied into silence.
Fedup; You keep ignoring an important reply I asked of you
Did you mean to say Edrogan’s opponents don’t deserve a trial in the courts”
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/07/attempted-coup-turkey-must-denounced/#comment-613009
Which planet are you from Ben?
Any military personnel turning their guns on the public of any nation is not a civil matter!!! The said renegades ought to face court martial, and if they don’t then the question ought to be how come?
Talking about plots as predicted and I equate this to the Takeover of the Labour Party : Assimilation to the Collective – resistance is futile unless you know better…
The Turkish President is responding to the attempted coup, with an actual coup:
http://www.thecanary.co/2016/07/18/breaking-erdogan-purge-100-journalists-part-coup/
check out the banned video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONQDRLpJVoU
Dr David Morrison said that Britain’s Nuclear deterrent was not independent …”Today the British government will seek the approval of parliament for its proposal to renew the UK’s Trident nuclear weapons system.
China, France, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia and the US (and perhaps even North Korea) can each be said to possess an “independent” nuclear deterrent, because they manufacture and maintain their own nuclear warheads and the means of delivering them to target.
By contrast, Britain is dependent on the US for the manufacture and maintenance of a key element of its nuclear weapons system – the Trident missiles to carry the warheads to target, which are manufactured by Lockheed Martin in the US and are maintained by the US Navy at Kings Bay, Georgia, USA, along with the Trident missiles for US submarines.
In these circumstances, it is highly unlikely that Britain would use its nuclear weapons system to strike a target without the approval of the US. So, it is absurd to describe it as an “independent” nuclear deterrent. This applies to the current system, but it applies equally to the proposed replacement. To ask the British taxpayer to fork out upwards of £200 billion in the pretence that the UK will possess an “independent” nuclear deterrent for next 40 years is fraudulent”. Couldn’t agree more.
If there were 300,000 trots in this country, they wouldn’t be entering the labour party – we’d be on cusp of revolution. Good point nicely made though about the incomprehension of Labour MPs that most politically engaged people on the left don’t like them or trust them and are going to back Corbyn.
Another nice example is Zoe Williams in the Guardian. In her latest column, its clear Owen Smith supporting MPs have been emailing her, and what not, to gain her support. They must think she matters. That Labour members are a bunch of morons who will be influenced by a brain dead guardian columnist – the guardian coming out so aggressively against COrbyn I think will just stiffen the resolve.
You are all within minutes of being incinerated, yet you’ve been conditioned to accept this as normal.
I’m quite happy to be called a ‘nut case’ when it comes to pointing out the obvious.
I’d just like to highlight this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3696500/Now-help-bring-Blair-justice-Families-fallen-Iraq-troops-launch-public-appeal-funds.html
The requirement is for a full legal analysis of Chilcot to determine what if any grounds for legal action against Blair exist. Obviously, this will cost a lot. The families are hoping to raise £150,000, and my guess is that they won’t have too much trouble doing it if word gets around.
PS, the flannel at the bottom of the piece fails to mention the very close ties between Clinton and the Starkey Foundation, which gave Tony a shiny thing to wear round his neck in appreciation of his being a mate of Bill’s. Blair has been out of the country continuously since the 10th, and his three public appearances in the US in that time somehow failed even to mention Chilcot. See Blair Miles for details.
Thanks a lot for that Baal. That’s a very worthy contribution. I imagine it would be a pretty secure site, would you agree?
I am happy to see Blair on the run. The fact that others in the US have failed to even raise Chilcot with him is unsurprising. I like your “shiny thing to wear round his neck”. I was particularly sad to see when Bob Dylan similarly wore something given to him by that great pacifist leader Obama. I still can’t reconcile that. Can you help?
Btw, please repost this on the top thread, and repost agin intermittently to air this story and contribution opportunity.
In such cases, there is a message, written in invisible ink, under the very thin gold plate which makes the shiny thing shiny. The message says: “The wearer needs to authenticate his brand (having fallen on PR hard times), and has volunteered to be seen as our bitch in exchange for a credibility transfusion.”
It’s most important for Tony that his international charitable enterprise is seen as little as possible as a means of taking a slice off the top of government aid budgets for the benefit of his highly-paid executive team, while ensuring that the remainder is split equally between local corruption and subsidising foreign investment. Here’s a (not very impartial, but presumably accurate) take on the organisation which inspired and indeed mentored Blair:
http://dailycaller.com/2016/07/18/clinton-foundation-ignored-all-best-practices-for-good-governance/
But Dylan, surely he was/is above it all?
I’ve posted your DM Chilcot link btw on the top page.
TY. Would have done, but prefer to wait before going offtopic. Doing ok, anyway – last I looked it was at £32,777.
But Dylan, surely he was/is above it all?
Bet his agent and accountant aren’t.
Hmmm very true about the vultures around him, Dylan.
I thought that appeal was important enough to give it more prominence! There was never a better, domestic man-made cause. In addition of course to contributing to Iraqi people directly: any ideas on that?
Interesting analysis with IMO a fair amount of truth in it.
Around 1995 / 96 I was listening to a New Labour prospective candidate talk to my local LP branch. By the end of 30 minutes I felt I knew nothing about what he stood for, so I asked him to be specific about education, NHS, defence etc.. His, very polite, response was to say something along the lines of “I know this all sounds vacuous, but we do have some policies”. I had to say that I hadn’t accused him of being vacuous, he had done that all by himself. He still didn’t say what the policies were though.
Well thought out article. Your right we are fed up with careerist politicians many of whom seem to just want the job to use to become minor tv celebrities.
One major exception to that was of cause Jo Cox who prior to her sudden death many of us had never heard of. Not for her the glamour of a tv career but one of looking after all of her constituents. Of cause I am sure there are other MPs with her integrity but they are the exception rather than the rule.