This is another little video from RT of just under three minutes in length reporting May’s victory at the ‘No confidence’ vote. They report that she won by two thirds, 200 for her versus 117 against, and can’t be challenged for the next year. But they also note that her party remains divided between the Hard Brexiteers and the Remainers, and that she’s had an extremely difficult time getting them to back the deal. Their reporter, Anastasia Churkina, also states that no-one believes that the coming period is going to be easy for her.
The anchorman then discusses a Tweet attacking her and her wretched deal from Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn said
Tonight’s vote changes nothing. Theresa May has lost her majority in parliament, her government is in chaos and she’s unable to deliver a Brexit deal that works for the country and puts jobs and the economy first. She must now bring her botched deal back to parliament next week.
Which means that she has to end her postponement of the Brexit deal. As Mike has commented on his blog, it’s a good question whether she’ll do this, or whether she’ll keep on putting it off forever so that we crash out of the EU with a ‘No Deal’ Brexit.
And Corbyn’s exactly right when he comments that she has lost her majority in parliament. Despite her calls for unity, the party is still bitterly divided over the issue, and her rivals, Boris, Rees-Mogg and Rudd, are still out there, waiting for their chance.
This is another report from RT, which I don’t recall seeing reported in the British lamestream media. In this video put up on YouTube on 5th October 2018, the broadcaster’s reporter, Anastasia Churkina, discusses a court case being brought to a tribunal by four human rights groups, including Privacy International and Reprieve. They allege that MI5 has a policy of allowing its informants take part in serious crimes, such as murder, torture, sexual assault or other serious criminality, if it is in the public interest, according to their QC, Ben Jaffey.
This policy is supposed to have gone on for three decades, in various guises and under various prime ministers. Amongst the evidence is a heavily redacted note, and a letter from David Cameron to a judge involved in trying these cases, telling him that it has been government policy. It also tells him that such oversight does not provide endorsement of the legality of the policy, and that he would not be required to provide a view on whether any one particular case should be referred for prosecution.
This won’t surprise anyone, who’s read Lobster. The magazine, edited by Robin Ramsay, and now online, was set up to publicise and discuss real conspiracies by the western intelligence agencies to subvert the usual political processes. This has meant the overthrow of foreign governments that America and its allies find inconvenient or which pose a threat to American corporate or political interests. Which meant the CIA organizing coups to overthrow democratically elected left-wing regimes in South America, like Chile and Guatemala, and Britain and America collaborating in the overthrow of Mohammed Mossadeq in Iran.
It has also meant the monitoring and smearing of left-wing activists and political opponents in America and Britain. Domestically, there is much evidence that MI5 and the SIS collaborated with Loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, operating as death squads against leading Republicans. Over on this side of Irish Sea, there is a lot of evidence very strongly suggesting that MI5 were behind the 1970s smears against Harold Wilson that he was a KGB spy. There have also been serious questions about the deaths of Hilda Murrell and Blair Peach. I don’t doubt that the groups bringing this case are absolutely right.
Regarding the two groups named, Privacy International was launched in the 1990s to stop Britain becoming a surveillance state, in which the government uses electronic means to gather information on its citizens. These include the biometric ID cards and the plans for an ‘electronic bourse’ – basically, forms of electronic payment by card. The government has been keen to promote this scheme as it means that they can track how citizens spend their money.
Reprieve, from what I gather, is an organize that campaigns against the death penalty around the world. It has launched internet petitions calling on the government to intervene in the case of Britons imprisoned abroad and facing the death penalty, as well as direct appeals to the foreign governments involved. It’s kind of like Amnesty International.
I am really not surprised that RT seems to have been the only broadcaster to carry this story, unless I’m mistaken. Fleet Street really wouldn’t like to report on it, because it has been alleged that some of the right-wing press have connections to the intelligence agencies and have served as conduits for their propaganda. Like the Sunday Times when it was edited by Andrew Neil.
It wouldn’t be the Tory conference without a bit of casual racism. The Tory students down at Plymouth were photographed in their T-shirts saying ‘F**k the NHS’, and with Stars of David drawn on and captioned ‘Jude’ – the German for ‘Jew’. One of their number even drew a Hitler moustache on himself. One of the many great commenters on this blog, Kate Blair, alerted me to the article about it in Jewish News, who unsurprisingly really, really weren’t impressed. See: https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/tory-students-criticised-over-hitler-moustache-and-star-of-david-on-night-out/
And a few days ago the young master, Jacob Rees-Mogg, also had a sneer at Libya under Colonel Gaddafi. In the video below, the presenter and reporter Anastasia Churkina discuss Rees-Mogg’s sneer at Colonel Gaddafi’s full name for his country. This was the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahariya. The latter term is Arabic, and means ‘state of the masses’.
Rees-Mogg had drawled that the countries, who were least interested in their people always called themselves ‘peoples’, and referred to Gaddafi’s Libya as the ‘People’s Republic of Jam Jar, or something.’
Rees-Mogg sneer brought down condemnation from the MPs Alex Sobel, Liz Innes, and the Lib Dem’s Christine Jardine. They made the point that these sneers were becoming very common from the Brexiteers. It showed how Rees-Mogg and the others were ‘Little Englanders’, and Sobel even wondered if Mogg had had the same geography teacher at Eton as Boris Johnson.
Churkina and the presenter suggested that this comment had touched a raw nerve because of BoJo’s own casual racism in his remark about women in burkas looking like letter boxes or bin bags. Churkina also said it was remarkable, given Britain’s own role in Libyan affairs.
Actually, it shows the completely dismissive attitude towards this country from the Patrician, neocon elite. Which includes not just Rees-Mogg and Johnson, but also Tony Blair.
Gaddafi was a monster, who killed and tortured his political opponents in Libya, and had them assassinated abroad, in Africa and the Middle East. But under him, his people had free education and healthcare, and his country was the most prosperous in Africa. And while he used the Islamists as weapons to murder his rivals outside Libya, they were never allowed to operate within its borders. He also believed in African solidarity, and Blacks in his country were treated as equals.
All this vanished when Obama, Blair and Sarkozy decided to overthrow his regime, helping the Islamists to seize power. As a result, Libya has two parliaments, one part of the country is ruled by a coalition of Islamist warlords, and Black Africans are being enslaved. And the person chiefly responsible for agitating for Western aid to the rebels was Tony Blair.
And Boris Johnson showed his own unconcern for the victims of the civil war a year or so ago, when he told a conference that there were investors lining up to put their money into one Libyan city, ‘when they’ve cleared the bodies away’.
Gaddafi was a tyrant, but he was better for his people than what Obama, Blair and Sarko unleashed in his stead. And the remarks from Johnson and Rees-Mogg shows what they really think of the smaller countries and their people, who get in the way of Western imperialism.
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