Today, nothing is more important than to say that we will not be silent on the dreadful oppression of the Palestinian people; the daily beatings, killings, humiliations, demolitions, expropriations and destruction of groves that are the concomitant of Israeli illegal occupation.
We will never be browbeaten into silence on the slow genocide of the Palestinian people.
Nobody with any grasp on the location of their right mind believes Jeremy Corbyn to be an anti-Semite. Nobody with any grasp on their right mind believes the Labour Party is now anything but the substitutes’ bench for the Neoconservative team. Under Keir Starmer, the Labour Party has failed to oppose the granting of legal powers to the security services to kill, torture, entrap, forge and fake with impunity. It has failed to oppose the limitation of prosecution of British soldiers for war crimes. The Labour Party now seeks to erase all trace that it might once have been a party that offered an alternative to the right wing security state.
As Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer pressurised Swedish prosecutors who wished to drop the case against Julian Assange, to persist in order that he might be rendered to the USA. He further persuaded them not to interview Julian here, which is standard practice when he was never charged but only wanted for questioning, and which would have reduced Julian’s ordeal by four years.
Starmer received £50,000 in personal donations from lobbyist Sir Trevor Chinn to fund his leadership bid.
It is perfectly plain that Starmer’s aim in suspending Corbyn is to drive the mass membership that Corbyn attracted out of the Labour Party, and make it a reliable arm of the right wing security state. He wants the Labour Party to be financially dependent not on its members, who have annoying principles, but on donors like Chinn.
The media and political elite have attained their aim; there is no longer any point in voting in Westminster elections. A right wing government supporting the neo-con status quo and the ever tightening security state is now firmly guaranteed and cannot be influenced by a Westminster election.
Forgive me for pointing out that my ability to provide this coverage is entirely dependent on your kind voluntary subscriptions which keep this blog going. This post is free for anybody to reproduce or republish, including in translation. You are still very welcome to read without subscribing.
Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with the every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.
Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.
Choose subscription amount from dropdown box:
Paypal address for one-off donations: [email protected]
Alternatively by bank transfer or standing order:
Account name
MURRAY CJ
Account number 3 2 1 5 0 9 6 2
Sort code 6 0 – 4 0 – 0 5
IBAN GB98NWBK60400532150962
BIC NWBKGB2L
Bank address Natwest, PO Box 414, 38 Strand, London, WC2H 5JB
Bitcoin: bc1q3sdm60rshynxtvfnkhhqjn83vk3e3nyw78cjx9
Subscriptions are still preferred to donations as I can’t run the blog without some certainty of future income, but I understand why some people prefer not to commit to that.
With more free time do we think we’ll see Sir Jeremy Corbyn joining The Trilateral Commission?
Being whisked into a Bilderberg Meeting in the back of a dark tinted glass limo obviously wasn’t quite his scene. /S
—
All the warning signs were there about Starmer had anyone bothered to notice.
The problem with Starmer is Israel. If he weren’t fooled by his family connections, he would be OK.
As DPP of CPS, Starmer didn’t come out smelling of roses.
Injustice wrt de Menezes & Ian Tomlinson were compounded under his watch as well as much of the initial hounding of Assange and the CPS’ interference with Sweden’s judiciary.
Starmer was already in close connection with MI5 and I think you will find he is definitely working to brief part of which is to discredit Jeremy Corbyn in any way possible the anti semitism card is part of that but the real aim is to destroy democracy in the Labour Party and to move it to a party reliant on big money like the American Democrats but still wholly involved in Neo liberalism.
Good conspiracy stuff.
No problem ask the Board Of Deputies.
Corbyn story plummeting down the state broadcaster’s news list now. As the AS “crisis” bollocks has done it’s job i.e. help remove Corbyn, there’s no need to go over it again and risk angry pushback from the Left that might expose the central fallacy. So the state broadcaster is dropping the story. Kirsty Wark had her arse handed to her last night, which might have helped focus their minds.
Kirsty Wark had her arse handed to her last night,
Tell me more! What happened? (I don’t have a TV.)
Same Here Twirlip…No TV….Do tell us more Mike
Mark – Thanks for flagging up Kirsty Wark getting trounced on Newsnight. I had tried to watch, but became seriously angry and too sick to my stomach to watch the entire show; by the time that vile, hateful, Margaret Hodge had been on screen for two minutes I just had switch off. I have seen a lot of people reacting in horror at Sir Keir Starmer’s latest lurch to the right now targeting Jeremy Corbyn; he is just a totally spineless opportunist destined to become increasingly irrelevant as he continues facilitating the Tory march towards full Dictatorship. Right now we need really strong opposition to derail this Tory goal before crash-out Brexit, because once established, Dictatorships take decades to remove!
To fight back, if you are still a Labour member you should stick it out just long enough to cast your NEC Vote. Corbyn still gas huge support and he can overcome the weak, unpopular leadership of Starmer who has ditched all his progressive pledges and deeply betrayed the Labour membership on many levels. If and when you jump ship consider this: There already exists a 100% Socialist, fully democratic, fair, just political party, so totally committed to tackling the Climate Crisis we created the Green New Deal: this is of course the Green Party. If, instead of remaining as an Independent MP or trying to form an entirely new party, Jeremy Corbyn aligned with the Green Party a massive swath of committed Socialists would flock to join him as would other progressive Left Labour MPs.
It is possible within the Green Party to declare as Green and another unique affiliation, so Corbyn and any other like-minded breakaway MPs could renounce the Labour whip, or wait for the public disgrace of the Starmer purge, and then declare as “Progressive Socialist and Green” Candidates. Independent candidates and breakaway political groups founder due to first past the post. Strength is in consolidation not fragmentation, but defecting MP can have the best of both worlds by selecting a strong new Socialist identity and teaming up with an established Party that already promotes all of their values. The Unions would have a new party to consider backing with their funding and this, on top of a sizable exodus of Labour MPs, could mean that the Captain of Capitulation, our Tory Trojan horse, Keir Starmer would lose his legitimacy as Leader.
Political Parties are now recognizing the importance of the global Climate Crisis; for the Green Party it was always a major priority, but equality, peace and the Socialist agenda is just as important to the Greens. However, due to considerably less air time many fail to realize that the have a far more expansive progressive agenda than just environmental issues and the first past the post voting system has kept the party down to one solitary, very well respected MP, Caroline Lucas. A new infusion of already elected MPs could mean that the Green Party finally gains the recognition and momentum it needs to surge in popularity among voters weary of austerity, inequality and injustice.
Greens totally reject Zionist Israeli intervention: we have always supported the poor, the oppressed and the Palestinian cause. Despite the enthusiasm among young voters for dealing with the Climate crisis, they worry that a vote for the Greens will be a wasted vote in our current system. But, for MPs hounded out of Labour, the Green Party already has a well defined progressive political agenda and a fully organized party structure in place, so they could literally ‘hit the ground running.” The Greens rapidly growing international membership stands ready to accept tolerant, peace loving, environmentally conscious, Socialist MPs and new members so I hope disillusioned Labour voters will join.
I have never believed in the unfathomable Tory ‘landslide victory’ of the Covert 2019 Rigged Election. The only reason the public accept the crazy ‘borrowed votes’ BS is because the corrupt BBC and Right wing media forced Labour MPs to grovel selling us this lie. Now they are trotting out more lies to help Starmer eviscerate the Labour Left; we must challenge these lies. My Petition to demand an Investigation of the result could delegitimize the Tory Government and restore Corbyn’s right to resume his role as Labour Leader. This is the last ditch hope for Labour so please sign: https://tinyurl.com/w4u9dwm Or join us on the Elections Aftermath Discussion Forum.
The Green Party’s main objective is to force as many people as possible into fuel poverty. The last thing the poor need is to be taxed and regulated out of warmth and cooking to prevent a mythical catastrophe which only enriches the wealthy and politically connected.
Unfortunately Sian Berrys ill timed or downright malicious tweet after Corbyns suspension saying we don’t want racists in our party was like a shot in the foot by a bullet made of feet. Instead of embracing a possible influx of members a number of Greens left the party in disgust at the implication. Though I did smile at one description of them as Tories with dreadlocks.
Having read what Mike had said about the Newsnight programme I did watch it – and managed to get all the way through…. Hodge was just as you would expect – undeniably creepy to my eyes… To represent “the Jewish community” they had a right wing Conservative Rabbi – well he was hardly going to support Corbyn was he? The whole programme was a shabby piece of propaganda it seemed to me – and Wark simply pursued an anti Corbyn agenda regardless of any facts. The true irony came I felt near the end of the programme where she had two (non Jewish) journalists and a Jewish left winger – Barnaby Raine. She actually managed to end up having a conversation about “what Jews think” with these journalists while ignoring the one person in the room who they could actually ask for his first hand experience! When he actually did get to speak he was talked over by Wark who did her best to deny his voice. The irony that a programme about the denial of Jews and Judaism should end up with its presenter trying to shout down a Jewish person because he wasn’t saying what she wanted to hear……
Little O Jones and the rest of careerist left media all going with: “Corbyn has self-indulgently deflected attention away from a very grave issue….”
Greatest Living Scotsman standing absolutely firm, continuing to point out exactly what is going on here. As is his way.
Craig would make a fine President.
The SNP may need that kick up the arse around formulating a plan B, and thinking four chess moves ahead, which he’d bring, should, as expected, Johnson reject granting a S30.
Expect a dirty campaign to stop him tho, esp. if he looks like winning. Pretty obvious that the SNP’s ultra cautious leadership will see him as potentially too controversial because of this blog and his campaigning.
Haven’t you heard the Sturgeon and her clique have put the kybosh on a Plan B.
https://www.thenational.scot/news/18833361.scottish-independence-plan-b-motion-rejected-snp-conference-vote/
The chance of independence next year, or any year in the near future is minimal at best, post the 31st of December Gove and his band of slabbering mercenaries employed to thwart Scottish independence will be let of the leash, whilst Johnson and Cummings set about undermining Holyrood, what a treacherous bastard Sturgeon has turned out be.
The only chink of light I can see is if Sturgeon is found guilty of breaking the ministerial code and has to step down.
,
Covid is frustratingly complicating matters. And to be fair to Sturgeon it’s difficult to simply change the subject to independence during a pandemic without the party looking self-obsessed.
———–
Craig’s retweeted some of responses he’s had to his candidacy.
Some are quite amusing. Good sport.
Oh the party’s hierarchy is self obsessed alright, obsessed with putting every conceivable obstacle in the way of independence, whilst Johnson makes hay on his post Brexit deal, and lines up a US trade deal and oversees the Internal Market bill that will destroy Scotland’s economy, what is Sturgeon doing? I’ll tell you what she’s doing, she’s lying her way out of trying to send Alex Salmond to prison for life, she’s pushing the self-id agenda, the GRA bill, and the Hate Crime bill, whilst as head of the NEC she’s moving into position compliant candidates for constituency seats, and dropping others that don’t conform to her agenda.
Even the ring fenced indy fighting fund has disappeared Sturgeon has betrayed us.
Oh, I wondered when they were going to shoo this hoary old mare out of the stable to take our attention away from the current shite. I couldn’t care less about that glorified neocolonial military base. Give medals out to the IDF for most creative infanticide and I’ll shrug – you’ve overused this one.
Wark’s epic fail: https://twitter.com/BarnabyRaine/status/1321972804347187200
Starker won’t “”””” renege “””” on Chinn’s bungs.
Such honour in public life, such squeaky clean politics.
I give you bangles in exchange for Palestinian land.
Bangles? Sovereigns!
£50 K is bangles to the 1%. Not that the 1% give a fig about so called sovereign nations. I never thought before that the blessed land of Israel would be a curse to the entire region having systematically destroyed all its neighbours in the last 40 years.
I never thought that Islamist Al Qaida would fight FOR Israel against Muslim Syria or that Saudi Arabia would do joint bombing raids on Muslim Yemen with Israeli pilots.
I never thought that a promise to get Jerusalem as the capital of Israel would get a TV host into the White House or that half a pound of tuppeny rice borrowed Grated british pounds would buy out the entire history of British socialism.
Lawks! Habbkuk wouldn’t have got out of bed for less than a brace of Tel Aviv beach babes..
Not to worry. Wouldn’t be stupid enough to vote Labour ever again.
Unlike the European project, which I still think was open to being radically challenged from within, I don’t know why anyone would want to stick with Labour now in the hopes that they could salvage something from that dead horse. What baffles me is that McDonnell and others are calling for calm, while their influence in the party had already been voided almost a year ago, and while there is a purge going on.
Still, I’m not sure that the classic anarchist abstention from voting makes sense now in the 2020s. A vote for the Greens is, in my mind, also a protest vote, at least against some aspects of neoconservatism.
You can vote to save their deposit. Something achievable!
Me, I don’t get the slating of the so-called right wing of the Labour party going on here (I don’t deny calling myself what used to be named a Fabian Socialist). Wilson and his associates were fine for the country, though not perfect, but better than the Tories under any circumstances. Even Blair, until Iraq came, was good for the country, in the measure that you can change things.
The main ways that things went wrong were 1) Iraq, a country where I used to, and still, work. and 2) Starmer and his excessive enthusiasm for Israel. Apart from those points, there’s no real reason for supposing that a moderate Labour government would not be the best for Britain, and electable. Extreme leftism won’t get elected.
Lauguerre
With Labour in opposition, Starmer cutting himself off from mainstream Labour Psrty values is pretty irrelevant.
He and his right hand bimbo can drift off into the obscurity while the mainstream gets on with fighting the Tories. Iraq survives in spite of Blair and Labour will survive in spite of Starmer. No election took place in December last year, unless you think gambling against algorithms is free and fair.
Yes, I agree that Starmer’s massive support for Israel was a big mistake. He’s lost Labour there.
My opinion is that Starmer is pushing his luck.
The sneaky Guardian as usual said ‘ a poll ‘ puts Labour 5 pts ahead of the Tories.
The inference being that the new lead ( from a poll carried out a week ago ) must be due to Starmers stance on anti-semitism.
In actual usefulness winning a majority on the NEC is a priority for the left.
Ripping up your membership card is exactly what Starmer wants.
Then he can say the Left left the Labour Party.
Like the ‘Tingers ‘ left the Labour Party.
Starmer will pay a price if Covid gets out of hand again as he has tired his personal agreement to nearly all that the Tories have offerd.
Anyone can criticise but by December on people will want answers – not carping.
What happened to Starmer’s Circuit Break?
Absolutely nothing because like all Centrist they are nothing because their policies are based on nothing.
Despite the bulling up of Starmer via the MSM the vast majority of voters have no idea who he is.
He is the invisible man with invisible policies.
A Nowhere Man.
Laguerre
You obviously don’t know the ins and outs of what blair did. Large scale preparation for privatisation of the NHS took place under Blair and brown, with payment by result and PPI. Ministers working under Blair went on to raje it in in private health companies. And Iraq was just not a minor thing. It was preceded by years of starving Iraqi children. The second worst choice is still a worse choice which means no choice.
Evidently I do know what Blair did. I don’t much like what happened. It was more the period, but I don’t particularly defend them.
With regard to Iraq, I do know what happened, because I was involved. “starving Iraqi children” was not particularly the fault of the UK. It was US policy, from before Blair’s time. The invasion was Blair’s business. At that time, many Iraqis had had enough of Saddam, and so didn’t fight against the invasion. What they didn’t expect, was the US destruction of the state and the post-occupation policy. Was Blair involved with that? I don’t know.
@laguerre
Remember that Blair went on UK TV and stated all Saddam had to do to stay in power was give up his WMD, so those that have sought to restyle the invasion/occupation in humanitarian clothing are attempting pure revisionism. Blair had no problem with Saddam’s regime or rule per se, no problems whatsoever, he stated this himself. It was about WMD and ongoing WMD programmes he told us. WMD many believe he knew didn’t actually exist.
Hans Blix the then Executive Chairman of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission was on the ground with his team – with permission from the Iraq authorities to go anywhere and even he was pleading with the US and UK to tell him where to look if they were so sure .
Since emerged:
Wiki quote :
Senior U.S. officials ordered the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to investigate Blix to gather “sufficient ammunition to undermine” him so that the U.S. could start the invasion of Iraq. The U.S. officials were upset that the CIA did not uncover such information.
Blix said he suspected his home and office were bugged by the United States, while he led teams searching for Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction. Although these suspicions were never directly substantiated, evidence of a request for bugging of UN security council representatives around the time the US was seeking approval from the council came to light after a British government translator leaked a document “allegedly from an American National Security Agency” requesting that British intelligence put wiretaps on delegates to the UN security council.
For. more insight of what it was like in Iraq during and after the war in Iraq, have a look at the excellent Once Upon A Time in Iraq on iplayer. A sobering, disturbing watch.
Remembering Dr David Kelly. Murdered by the UK state. RIP.
Me too, Mary.
Extreme leftism won’t get elected because there’s no way they’d even be allowed to appear in the first place.
Never mind extreme leftism (whatever that might be: we have let our enemies define us). No kind of leftism is allowed. In Europe, Mr Corbyn’s Labour would have been seen as a perfectly normal, social democrat Party. In the UK, it was aggressively booted out of the Overton Window with only the Red Tories given extensive and sympathetic coverage. It is sadly obviously that Atlanticism is a fascist-leaning tendency and has now overwhelmed our country.
The fact that Kier Starmer (when head of the cps) wouldn’t prosecute the police murderer of Ian Tomlinson during the protests in 2009 even though the other pathologists disagreed with Dr Freddy Patel and still wouldn’t prosecute when Patel was suspended from practice as a result of allegations concerning the way he undertook autopsies and only decided to prosecute after an inquest jury had found that Tomlinson had been unlawfully killed, doesn’t that fact not chill you to the bone?
What about the fact that Starmer refused to prosecute the police when they clearly executed Charles Menezes and his superiors knew he was innocent? That not worry you? Or that he’s said nothing about Julian Assange’s fit up?
Kier Starmer has a proven track record of subservience to power which makes him appear, at least to me, even scarier than Tony Blair.
” What about the fact that Starmer refused to prosecute the police when they clearly executed Charles Menezes and his superiors knew he was innocent? That not worry you? “
Seeing how Starmer wasn’t DPP at the time, no.
CPS were making decisions & issuing statements in 2009 wrt not pursuing prosecution of de Menezes killers.
I imagine subsequent appeals may well have crossed his desk too.
Starmer could def. have tried to do better if he’d wanted to.
In July 2008, Attorney General Baroness Scotland of Asthal named Starmer as the new Head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and Director of Public Prosecutions; he took over from Ken Macdonald on 1 November 2008.
Not unique to Starmer. The justice system in this country seems to believe that no police officer should ever be punished for harming a member of the public no matter how great the weight of evidence.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/dec/03/deaths-police-custody-officers-convicted
“In 2009 and 2010, Starmer refused to prosecute the police officers accused of killing Jean Charles de Menezes and Ian Tomlinson”
” In 2012, Starmer announced that MI5 and MI6 agents would not face charges of torture and extraordinary rendition during the Iraq War, concluding that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/keir-starmer-labour-leadership-cps-ian-tomlinson-john-worboys-a9276321.html
The CPS decided not to prosecute police in the de Menezes case in July 2006. In 2008 an inquest under a heavily biased coroner (he instructed the jury not to return a verdict of unlawful killing) returned an open verdict. I’m not sure a prosecution would’ve been possible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Jean_Charles_de_Menezes
Put yourself in the position of the armed police officers in the Menezes affair. You have been told that a suspected suicide bomber has been spotted entering a Tube station. You know that there have already been suicide bombings with mass casualties. You confront the alleged bomber and are tense with the knowledge that at any moment you and the passengers around you can be blown to smithereens. The alleged bomber makes a move that you interpret as reaching for the bomb trigger. Do you shoot and save the lives of the passengers and yourself? Of course you do – and remember you have a split-second to make that decision. In the same situation you and I would have done shot too. If Menezes had been wearing a suicide vest the police officers would be hailed as heroes, because he wasn’t the cops are labelled as murderers.
This was a cock-up that started with the mistaken identification of Menezes from the CCTV images. To attempt to hang the police officers as scapegoats would be unjust.
You are correct, allowing the police to act like death-squads is not unique to Kier Starmer.
“Even Blair, until Iraq came, was good for the country, in the measure that you can change things…”
You’ve negelected to give him specific credit for two of his greatest achievements outwith the Iraq triumph:
1. Reneguing on the 1997 manifesto commitment to electoral reform. He had an absolute mandate for that. And if he hadn’t renegued on it there would never have been any Cameron or May, and there certainly wouldn’t be any Bojo and his 80-set majority right now. And there would be no need for the Labour Party to incessantly crawl and grovel to the right, in a feeble attempt to avoid offending the 30% of the electorate that the Tories need for a parliamentary majority. Thanks, Saint Tone!
2. Reneguing on the 2005 manifesto commitment to a referendum on the EU Constitution. That led directly to the rise of UKIP and the glorious triumph of Brexit. Thanks, Saint Tone!
You shallow, narcissistic, self-centred, greedy, money-grubbing, blood-drenched piece of filth.
Blair was better than the Tories, better by quite a bit. That all goes out the window, when we get into serious left-wing ideological blinkers, like you do.
“The second worst choice is still a worse choice which means no choice.”
That’s what I wrote. I never said that the Tories were better. But Blair has also destroyed real choice, Cameroon was his continuation and his defenders in the labour party have got rid of Corbyn.
Meant to be a comment on your comment below.
Whenever I see this mealy-mouthed “Apart from Iraq…” excuse-mongering on behalf of Blair (which I used to do with sickening frequency before I abandoned the Guardian altogether) I always think of this scenario:
A Middle-Eastern despot (let’s call him Muammar from Libya) casts his eye across the ocean to the UK. He decides that our antiquated FPTP system isn’t a proper democracy, and he’s going to help us put it right. And he has the miltary might to do so. So he invades the UK with his army, and bombs it to shit with his missiles and his air force. He destroys all the infrastructure – the schools, the hospitals, the lot. He destroys all the government infrastructure too. He kills a couple of million people, and leaves the survivors cringing under the jackboot of whichever group of right-wing thugs manage to fill the vacuum in their locality. He installs a puppet regime to use what remains of the UK’s assets to pay Libyan companies to rebuild the infrastructure he destroyed.
Ten years later, some smug middle-class Libyan “progressive” comes over to the UK to survey the ruins. He is collared by a Blair apologist, most of whose family have been killed, who starts to berate Muammar for the devastation.
The smug progessive wrings his hands sanctimoniously.
“Well, yes. Indeed. I quite agree. It’s all very dreadful. Quite dreadful. But before you judge Muammar’s legacy, you have to take into account all the schools and hospitals he built back home in Libya, and the single-sex marriage, and all the other good stuff he did…”
laguerre
But what is ‘extreme’ leftism and what is ‘moderate’?
Extreme leftism is when you don’t want a bloodbath in Iraq and the Middle East, moderate leftism is when you do.
M.C.
Defining leftism purely on the basis of Iraq, is in my view rather a narrow approach. Those who keep saying that Blair was good except for Iraq forget what he did to the NHS and other public service privatisation projects. He also, through Brown was responsible for ignoring control on the banks, and Brown bailed out the banks by socialising the risks and provatising the benefits. This was a very right wing party posing as a left wing one.
I agree with you tbh SA.
SA (and the rest)
Sure, the Tories are better than Blair, aren’t they? That’s what you’re suggesting, by saying Blair was the worst of the worst. He wasn’t; he was better than the Tories. It’s always relative.
What is centrist?
“Nobody with any grasp on the location of their right mind believes Jeremy Corbyn to be an anti-Semite.”
What makes this affair so corrosive, so 1984/“boot stamping on a human face forever”, is that I don’t think anybody does actually believe it. It’s not even clear to me that anyone believes anybody else believes it.
‘It’s not even clear to me that anyone believes anybody else believes it.’
Well said, though there were a few above who seemed to ‘believe’, or who seemed to want to believe that they can muster up enough belief to ‘believe’.
They even seemed to suggest that antisemitism (real or imaginary) was worse than any other kind of racism or crime against humanity. And it is just this that really I find trouble understanding. Why are some chosen for special protection from threats (real or imaginary), when everyone else can go to hell? Where is the logic in that? Or does logic no longer exist in this country?
Logical thinking, as David Hume showed, is not an easy skill to acquire. Indeed, it is not something most people do (or can do) in their everyday lives. And anyway, lacking sound premises to rest it on, what use would logical thinking serve? The Law of GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out) does not suggest logic is the answer to anything.
No. The chief problem is discerning the reality of the situation with which we are attempting to deal.
Logical thinking does not apply to the ‘madness of crowds’ either 😉
An essay that seems so apposite to your point David complete with references to 1984.
https://thesaker.is/why-propaganda-is-vital-in-upholding-the-illusion-of-a-democracy/
Sorry David G but I think many people do believe it, the polls show that. My theory is that they enjoy believing it for the following psychological reason. Many older British people are intrinisically a bit racist towards people with different coloured skin. If not racist, nervous at least. So to hear that Jeremy Corbyn is more racist and moreover racist in a worse way is music to their ears.
To put it another way, on introspection I will admit that I slightly enjoy reading that Boris Johnson is racist. I mean I am sure I am not without fault, but I enjoy thinking that at least I would never have said “watermelon smiles” etc..
A pulling no punches analysis of the EHRC report from the first Jewish person to be expelled during this current smear campaign.
Fair to say he does not think the appeasement route has worked.
Oh how different things may have been if when asked to apologise for supporting the artist (Mear one, some superb works BTW) who painted that mural, Corbyn had said go f*** yourself, sadly he was no Harry Perkins (A very British Coup)
https://tonygreenstein.com/2020/10/starmer-declares-war-on-the-left-its-about-time-to-declare-war-on-him-we-demand-the-reinstatement-of-jeremy-corbyn/?fbclid=IwAR1R5is__hJm3_TsdUZUvi_SZmdwuYiLJ_Z2Zd14ong0i7QTQ-0jWefm3ws
I find quite startling his view that one of the complainant organisations relied upon by the EHRC has a history of accusing Jewish individuals of being antisemitic. How can this be?
At least 25 of those accused of antisemitism in the Labour Party are Jewish – in all cases, they are outspoken supporters of Palestinian rights.
https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/jews-accused-of-antisemitism/
“A large number of Jewish Labour Party members have faced, or currently do face, formal investigation by the party on charges of antisemitism. JVL is aware of at least 25 such investigations: that is unlikely to be the full tally.
This number is far too high to be the result of chance or attributable to circumstances specific to individual cases. On the contrary, it suggests that Jewish party members are disproportionately exposed to being investigated for antisemitism.”
I know this reportedly has a lot to do with Israel, but it’s unfortunate that the left is associated with Marxism still, given Marx was ethnically Jewish but antisemitic or anti-judaism tropes. Though confusingly, attacking alleged marxism, “cultural marxism”, can also be an antisemitic trope conspiracy theory, per Jewish organisations.
Thank you Craig. This country just gets more frightening and more dangerous by the day.
According to conventional wisdom, this revelation of two abusive tweets constitutes “the darkest day in the history of the Labour Party.”
A party which on a pack of lies set in train mass murder in Iraq and the creation of isis.
A party that oversaw kidnap and torture.
A party that laid the groundwork for collapsing the economy Then drowned banksters in public money, money they agreed must redeemed from the poor and disabled.
A party that has smeared and demonized a leader who stands for peace and justice and worked day and night to prevent him becoming PM.
A party that wants security services to rape, torture and kill with impunity.
Yes, a couple of abusive tweets are the darkest day in the history of the Labour Party.
My reading of things is rather simple: the Northern Labour voters, often socially ‘conservative’ with a small c, ditched Labour in 2019 over their Brexit betrayal. It is very hard for ardent remainers and Scots to conceive that people took a sensible decision over Brexit, but they are not idiots, they made a statement for freedom and sovereignty, something Scots SHOULD be able to understand.
When the UK went to war with Germany, it did not do so for short-term economic gain, anything but. It racked up enormous debts and was almost bankrupt in 1945. The Empire was finished but Britain was not under Nazi rule. It brought Britons together like nothing else. And it told Churchill where to go when his post-war sales pitch was ‘go back to the 1930s chums. Oh, and those Russians that sacrificed 20 million on our side: they are our next enemy!’
Ordinary people were divorcing the EU, they were not stating that they would remarry the USA. That is the binary choice being forced by the MSM and the PTB. They were voting for true sovereignty, if not like Switzerland, then certainly like Iceland. If Iceland can go it alone, then so can the UK. Remainers who say otherwise need to look in the mirror and ask why they can’t.
They voted Conservative in 2019 not because they had joined the Tory Party, rather to ensure that ‘Brexit got done’.
They will be looking on at what Hancock et al are now doing to trash the UK economy, particularly in the North and I think I can say with confidence that the Tory votes will shrivel up oop north and Labour will not very likely replace them. They have a smarmy London-centric lawyer at the head of the Labour Party who brown noses to the US over Assange and to Israel over everything else. Northern folks expect a Labour leader to put them higher up the agenda than a 7 million population nation half way around the world. Starmer hasn’t, so they are going to forget Labour and look for a new party.
The Momentum mass membership, like them or hate them, will leave if Corbyn is sidelined. They joined because of him, not because of Blair or Keir Starmer. So Labour is going to be a right mess at the next election.
The Conservatives have sold the entrepreneurial class down the river in a way akin to Clement Attlee shutting down all the mines in 1945, selling all UK steel works to Konrad Adenauer, all the shipyards to General Tojo and all our secrets from Malvern to the Italians.They will not be forgiven for their treasonous betrayal of all their party claimed to hold dear. They are now the servants of TNCs, big banks and no-one else. They do not represent the FSB (the Federation for Small Business, for all I know, they DO represent the Russian secret service), they do no represent honest aspiration, they represent an East German Stasi on steroids.
So I can see the Labour Party becoming a London rump, with maybe a few outlying seats in trendy provincial University towns. I can see the Conservatives shrivelling to a SE rural rump.
So I can see the North of England becoming a truculent area where millions cast their vote for any party which opens its manifesto with: ‘F**k the Tories, F**k the Labour Party and F88k the Liberal Democrats!’
If Iceland can do it so can the U.K.
in case you haven’t noticed Iceland does not have international headquarters and money markets and so on that Britain has.
Also the war was forced on Britain it was a question of survival. Brexit was sold as an ecomomiracke to free us from the shackles of Europe whilst ignoring the inevitable shackles of the US. Please compare apples with apples not with oranges.
“in case you haven’t noticed Iceland does not have… and money markets and so on that Britain has…”
Ironically (as you seem to have forgotten) that’s exactly what it did have. But after the 2007 crash, instead of bailing out its banks and their greedy investors with public money, as the UK did, it told them to go take a hike.
Iceland put the greedy bankers in jail. And rightly so! Meanwhile, back in the UK we were awarding them gongs. SIR Fred Goodwin of RBS for one whose insatiable greed almost destroyed the world economy.
Iceland jailed a small number of its bankers, the difference being that whilst British bankers were/are immoral (allegedly) what they did wasn’t illegal. Iceland’s banks were in for 11 times the country’s GDP and the central bank couldn’t have bailed them out even if it had wanted to. Iceland suffered a terrible economic depression after 2008 which it was relying on increased tourism to pull itself out of. Bad luck Iceland.
Iceland is a member of the EEA which gives it access to the EU and it applied to join the EU in 2009 although the population may have changed its mind since then.
Goodwin was knighted before the RBS scandal and ‘de-knighted’ shortly afterwards. Anyone remember what happened to Alex Salmond who was cheering him on from the sidelines (“What’s good for RBS is good for Scotland”) and promising that an independent Scotland would copy Iceland’s banking system?
Best £3 Ever.
Wasn’t Keir Starmer democratically elected leader of the Labour Party, just as Jeremy Corbyn had been before him? And if so, does that not signal a movement similar to the emergence of “New Labour” a generation ago?
I agree about upholding the human rights of Palestinians, though. What Craig wrote reminds me of something Bertrand Russell wrote to a white African over 50 years ago. I will try to quote from memory: “I do not approve of ruthless cruelty because of the political views of its victims. South Africa is a tyranny over the majority of its inhabitants, and rules by brute force.”
‘does that not signal a movement similar to the emergence of “New Labour” a generation ago?’
I believe it does. All who voted for Sir Keir did so knowing he had the imprimatur of every prominent centrist pol and pundit. An overwhelming majority of Labour members wanted the establishment’s pick and they got him. Maybe they have been disconcerted to discover he is further to the right even than the elites who endorsed him, maybe not.
His very left-wing leadership campaign and his ’10 pledges’ offered much by the way of reassurance. Indeed, he wouldn’t have won without them.
What the SCG of Labour MPs and Union people should do now, is create a card with those pledges on it alongside Starmer’s face, and hand it out. See if the leadership tries to stop them. If they do try to stop it, at least the membership will know he lied to them to win.
When a Labour politician is being loudly endorsed by George Osborne, Phil Collins, Nick Cohen and co you need to be a special level of credulous to believe he will be leftwing.
Phil Collins?
Blair speechwriter, Times columnist
https://mobile.twitter.com/PhilipJCollins1/status/1321771091283640320
That was neat.
The most sickening aspect is how we’ve got the wretched authoritarian New Labour crew going around gloating about how they’ve got ‘one of theirs’ back in charge.
The guardian and and independent ask : Where now for the left ? As if whether the opposition to the Tories in tightly controlled two-party system is left or right shouldn’t concern anyone – i.e., something purely optional. No matter or thought given to the fact that if you’re a right-winger in the Labour party, you’re denying voters real choice and in the wrong party.
I don’t agree. Starmer pretended to appeal to unity. Out of all the candidates he looked plausible against Johnson. The other candidates were weak. There was little choice.
It will be interesting to see how Angela Rayner reacts.
He looked plausible according to the terms of all the very worst people in the British media and politics. He was always their choice, without reservation. The first question any Labour member should have asked themselves is why.
@Brian c
He’s being lionised by those who seek the complete annihilation of the left. The guardian wants to turn politics into a battle of bland centrist alternatives; one in which you can barely get a cigarette paper between the parties in terms of policy. They see any ideology demanding radical change as dangerous, yet fail to acknowledge how far to right we’ve drifted over the decades and how only a series of radical steps will correct that.
Angela Rayner is Jess Phillips for all intents and purposes. She’s been on the same journey.
She never had any real intellectual heft anyway, and the signs were all there before members elected her for those who bothered to look. She won’t oppose anything Starmer does.
Not so sure. Her twitter is silent, no comment since 29th. Also she may also be part of the purge.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/10/30/labour-crisis-deepens-key-figures-including-angela-rayner-face/
Someone like John McDonnell MP should’ve stood for deputy leader. The membership fucked up, both in picking Starmer and picking Angela ‘designer labels’ Rayner.
Starmer would have been kept on a tight leash and would’ve kept his pledges.
“Also she [Angela Rayner] may also be part of the purge.”
_____________________________________________
The so-called Campaign Against Antisemitism (Oh, no it doesn’t! https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/campaign-against-antisemitism-oh-no-it-doesnt-2/) has just put out a contract – I mean submitted an ‘antisemitism’ complaint – against Rayner, Abbott, Osamor and a host of other left-wing Labour MPs known for their support for Palestinian rights (I mean ‘for their antisemitism’):
https://skwawkbox.org/2020/10/29/within-hours-of-ehrc-report-caa-sends-starmer-72-page-complaint-targeting-rayner-abbott-osamor-rlb-and-others/
Given that she is in the sights of the CAA, I think she will be very circumspect. It won’t take much to purge her.
It’s an odd name to be on that list tbh.
Maybe it’s an old list?
The CAA basically just want anyone remotely associated with the left/Corbynism – therefore by definition supportive of Palestine – thrown out of the party.
Dancing to their tune would make Starmer an imbecile.
Am donating for your campaign, despite the fact that my US citizenship may become part of a statistical attack on your candidacy.
On Greenwald/Snowden:
“The newly jobless left-wing journalist revealed that Joe Biden bullied foreign governments into denying the NSA whistleblower asylum.”
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/glenn-greenwald-sparks-snowden-deja-vu/
Nothing new but a good reminder of how Biden will treat whistleblowers if he becomes president which polls seems to indicate (unfortunately).
Trump should have helped Snowden and perhaps even more Assange, but he have simply not been focused on such topics, perhaps just because of the witchunt against him with Wikileaks/Russia.
It is laughable to hear Greenwald claiming to be Left, being part of a media dominated by billionaires, some including the supposedly independent intercept! Shocking naivety or what?
As to the US election my only wish is that Trump doesn’t win but that does not mean that I hope Biden will either.
Totally wrong, what Greenwald just proved is that he refused to bow down to the demands on what not to write about.
Read the headline of this thread – simply Greenwald stood up and spoke out. Suddenly some phony left try to throw him under the bus when he criticize Biden.
Trump is not the ultimate president but I dont understand how anyone could have missed that compared with other presidents he was the most peaceful of them all.
Now, we face a presidency of Biden which is backed by the same deep-state bureaucrats that made up the anti-Russia hysteria past years, he is backed by neocons that will strengthen allies/Nato and once again become the policeman of the world. Not to mention the pro-israel Kamala Harris.
Trump was also pro-Israel but the Biden/Harris camp are worse since they are the types that put “Israel first”, not America.
“How Biden plans to undo Trump’s ‘America First’ foreign policy and return US to world stage”
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/31/politics/biden-foreign-policy-plans/index.html
“Neoconservatives are flocking to Biden (and let’s forget about the Iran deal)”
https://mondoweiss.net/2020/10/neoconservatives-are-flocking-to-biden-and-lets-forget-about-the-iran-deal/
Jack
Greenwald by his own admission bottled up a lot of what was going on in the Intercept, including the Reality Winner case and other cases where Intercept’s carelessness led to arrest and conviction of whistleblowers. Also the Intercept has been very poor and taking the establishment’s line on Syria and not consistent in the Assange case. He only resigned when the censorship affected him personally and he couldn’t stand the stench anymore. It like the rest of the MSM is owned by a billionaire.
As to your peaceful Trump. Killing people by sanctions is certainly much more peaceful than killing them with bombs. Part of why Trump has apparently changed tactics is more to do with the establishment changing tactics. Invasion a la Iraq and Afghanistan are no longer acceptable because of the resulting quagmire, nothing to do with inherent kindness and unwillingness to kill or subjugate. The reneging on the JCPA was an act of war by other means, and the rest of the world is unable to tell him that he is wrong. As to the Palestinian problem, sorting it by totally supporting annexation and by getting his cronies and co-conspirators in the Arabian peninsula to recognise Israel may appear to be violent free, but is the final liquidation of Palestine. Nothing could be worse than Trump.
Not that for a moment I support Biden or Harris, all are under the influence, the methods are a bit different but the results and intentions are not miles apart. Trump did not seek to drain the swamp, he only sought to take it over and enlarge his part of the swamp.
Glenn Greenwald
@ggreenwald
If you don’t like socialism, the way to refute socialism is to refute socialism, not to cynically exploit bigotry accusations against socialist politicians as was done to Sanders and Corbyn.
1:59 pm · 1 Nov 2020
After this shameful expulsion, I dont think Labour will ever win power again in the UK & nor should they. Corbyn resuscitated a zombie Blairite party & they undermined him at every turn, slandered him, & finally booted him out. Corbyn exits with his honour intact. The flake who suspended him will forever be known as the genius behind the Vote Again policy. An inspiration only at the Observer newspaper & Vauxhall Cross. He will do well to match the vote share of last December let alone 2017.
You will never get any centrist politician to state what their policies are as it will expose their real motivations – namely: they will follow whomever is in power – with a few reservations, because we have to pretend to defend
the workers and the poor otherwise they won’t vote for us.
They are similar to someone who reluctantly and eventually gets to the Xmas party only to find that the beer’s run out and everyone has gone home.
They intend to return next year in order to do the same thing.
Centrism like Kissinger and satire died many years ago.
The Orwellian Ironies of the So-Called Labour Party
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/30/the-orwellian-ironies-of-the-so-called-labour-party/
Powerful little essay by Tony McKenna
In an article posted by JVL in January this year there’s a video clip of Marie van der Zyl taken from an interview she did with an Israeli news station in which she says that Jeremy Corbyn is spending more and more time with terrorists and extremists. Here’s what it says in the article:
The video you’re watching in this post is from August 2018 and it’s of Marie Sarah van der Zyl, the current and 48th President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. She’s being interviewed by i24News – a right wing Israeli news channel. In the interview, Van der Zyl claims, repeatedly, that Jeremy Corbyn had been “spending more and more time with terrorist and extremists” and “with people who threaten the security of Britain”.
Needless to say it’s a whopping great Big Lie, and were there any truth to it the British media would have been all over it, as it seems HIGHLY unlikely they wouldn’t have been aware that he WAS, if he HAD been. And given that the British media DIDN’T report any such thing, then surely Marie van der Zyl could only have concluded that they HADN’T got to hear about it and, as such, informed them about it. But she didn’t. I wonder why not!
And it is of course very strange that the person interviewing her didn’t think to ask her who these terrorists and extremists WERE!
Needless to say, the reason they didn’t is because they knew that it was a Big Lie.
What more proof does anyone need that the whole A/S thing was a smear campaign.
https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/expose-who-are-the-board-of-deputies-of-british-jews/
Correction….. IS a smear campaign!
And has been from the outset.
The latest statement by Macron (“This is our Europe”) supports my view that the French government may be about to start a war, beginning in France itself. “Gates of Vienna” may soon become a common reference.
a croissant revolution perhaps? (the bakers of Vienna invented the croissant, in the shape of a stirrup, in celebration of their defensive victory) so they say…
correction croissant derives from the crescent of the Ottomans also the bagel (stirrup)… and invented cappuccino having found sacks of coffee beans.
The cappuccino was an Italian invention. The Viennese version, made with whipped cream rather than frothed milk is a kapuziner
I’m Jewish, but not a Brit. (I’m a New York Jew, which is to say pretty much of a heathen, living in Toronto. Dual citizen.) I don’t know what we here can do about the dog’s breakfast the British Labour Party has made of itself. Neither the UK nor the US has an actual left-wing party. (Canada does, but….. ) I think you’re going to have to create one.
Interesting summary of the whole story as seen by Kenneth Surin in the US:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/11/04/the-uks-report-on-labour-party-antisemitism/
There is probably no left-wing party in the US but still there are some left voices there.
Jonathan Cook has today (5 Nov) published a damning critique of the EHRC report. It is headed: “Corbyn was never going to get a fair hearing in the EHRC antisemitism report”.
See jonathan(hyphen)cook(dot)net.
Wonder if there could be a new offence added to the Labour Book of The Law. Potential AS thought. No one need know that they might have one later in life, that would be up to those greater than you and I. The judges need not be in the labor party, girls who do sums should be sufficient. It’s the potential that is the offence. Of course instant dismissal without appeal is automatic. I cut my card up years ago thank goodness. We live in a mad world.