Private Eye on New Labour Rigging Party Election in Rotherham

This comes from the ‘H.P. Sauce’ column in Private Eye’s edition for 30th November – 13th December 2012 nine years ago. It’s about how Tom Watson, Angela Eagle and Keith Vaz nobbled the party election in Rotherham to exclude the popular candidate and get their people in, to the disgust of the local party. The piece runs

‘Labour has a dismal record of fixing selection contests, but the “Rotherham fiasco” marks a new low.

After local MP Denis “expenses fiddler” MacShane was belatedly expelled from parliament, the party’s “special selections” committee arrived in South Yorkshire to draw up a shortlist for the by-election on 29 November.

MP Tom Watson presided, supported by Keith Vaz and Angela Eagle, and their first casualty was popular local councillor Mahroof Hussain. He was followed out the door by Yorkshire-based solicitor Richard Burgon, who had the support of nine affiliated trade unions – a record for any potential Labour candidate in recent times.

Watson and chums opted instead for the chief executive of a cancer relief charity, Sarah Champion, and one Sophy Gardner, an RAF Wing Commander. Realising their decision might not go down too well with the comrades, Watson demanded that the vote of the selections committee “not be recorded”.

Hearing of the “fix”, more than 80 members of Rotherham Labour Party duly walked out in disgust, leaving the two endorsed candidates to slug it out, with Champion receiving all of 13 votes to her rival’s 11.

Not everyone was cowed by the order “not to speak to the media.” After the mass exit, one disgruntled comrade told the Rotherham Advertiser: “These people who ‘arrive’ in Rotherham to further their careers and then decide they know enough about us to represent us, make me sick. What a slap in the face to impose someone who has been a card carrying member for two years and a union member for two weeks. You would have thought they had learned a lesson because they imposed MacShane and they say we aren’t capable of choosing a candidate! Excuse me while I go and puke.”‘

This shows just how long the Blairites have been rigging elections, though I’ve no doubt that there were cases going even further back when Blair was parachuting in his preferred candidates to safe Labour seats over the wishes of the local party. Given this piece of prime Blairite corruption, it should have been no surprise when Starmer started changing the selection rules against the Left.

Labour Employees Responsible for Smearing Left-Wing Sites as ‘Fake News’

Excellent detective work by John McElvoy at The Canary. He’s revealed a new low in the Blairites’ attack on the Labour left and Corbyn’s supporters. This was two sites, which claimed to be dedicated to refuting fake news and online hate, but in fact largely concentrated on smearing and attacking left-wing news and comment sites, like The Canary.

One was the impressively named Center for Countering Digital Hate, a not-for-profit NGO which was formally registered at Companies House as Brixton Endeavours Ltd two years ago in 2018, although it had been operating unofficially since 2017. At the time of its incorporation its only director was Morgan McSweeney, who was Starmer’s chief of staff, and Liz Kendall’s campaign manager for his attempt to take the Labour leadership. Brixton Endeavours was renamed the Centre for Countering Digital Hate at the end of August last year, and McSweeney resigned his directorship in the first week of April this year.

The other site involved in the smears against the left was Stop Funding Fake News, which again has links to leading Blairites. It was founded last year, 2019, by the same CEO behind the CCDH, Imran Ahmed, although the two were set up as separate organisations. Ahmed has been a special adviser to Hilary Benn and head of communications for Angela Eagle, who launched her bid to become the party’s leader in 2016, the same time as Benn encouraged a vote of non confidence in Corbyn. Benn and Eagle were staunch supporters of the Iraq War, which surely shows how much she values the gentler politics she claimed to be promoting in her leadership campaign. Ahmed, however, is now on the steering committee of the government’s Commission for Countering Extremism, where apparently he’s an adviser on ‘conspiracist’ news sites. The Centre for Countering Digital Hate also shares premises with the Blairite, ‘Blue Labour’ outfit, Labour Together. Whose previous director was McSweeney, but is now under the joint leadership of Lisa Nandy.

Mike points out that not everything the two organisations have done has been bad. They have been responsible for successfully removing some genuinely noxious figures from parts of the web, like David Icke and Hatey Katie Hopkins. But most of their attacks were against the left, and The Canary in particular. As well as sharing CEOs, the two also have a patron in common: Rachel Riley. It isn’t known whether she’s funded SFFN since 2019, when she was loudly proclaiming that The Canary was on its last legs. And the CCDH claims it receives additional funds from members of the public and ‘philanthropic trusts’. Riley’s own yardstick for judging what counts as digital hate against Jews includes anything remotely in favour of Jeremy Corbyn. Because despite being an opponent of anti-Semitism, he has to be a Jew-hater for supporting the Palestinians, apparently. Mike concludes his article about these two noxious organisations

There is strong evidence to show that CCDH and SFFN are fronts for an anti-left-wing propaganda campaign run by people within the very organisation that should be supporting lefty news endeavours.

Perhaps it is time these people were put on the spot and, rather than accepting their accusations without question, we put their own credentials to the test.

Absolutely. Many peeps on the left have had their suspicions about these organisations for a very long time, as well as The Canary. Zelo Street put up a few articles about them, noting how they seemed to focus overwhelmingly on the left and pointing out how reticent they were to reveal their identities and who was funding them. Now we know why. They were partisan Blairite organisations deliberately set up with the main intention of smearing and discrediting the left.

And now they and the identities of the people behind them have been revealed, it should be they who are discredited and treated with contempt for the digital hate they have spread.

See: Betrayal: Online campaign against left-wing political sites was started by LABOUR employees | Vox Political (voxpoliticalonline.com)

Cole Morton Names the MPs and Lords Describing Desperate Channel Migrants as ‘Invaders’

The Tory campaign to divert us all from the horrific mess they’ve made of Britain and their mass killing of its people continues. Once again, it’s all about illegal immigrants. Mike and Zelo have put up several excellent articles this hate campaign, with Zelo Street pointing out that the number of these asylum seekers coming to this country is trivial: 4,000 compared to 40,000 applications for asylum last year, and 677,000 people immigrating to the UK in 2019. Nevertheless, the Tories are describing it as an invasion. Zelo Street today has posted an excellent Tweet from the author Cole Moreton, who has named these disgraceful bigots. Moreton writes

Here are the names of 23 MPs and Lords who claim the desperate men, women and children risking their lives to cross the Channel in tiny rubber boats in search of peace are “invading”. Anyone here on the coast who has met them knows how obscenely ludicrous that is.

They are

Sir John Hayes CBE MP, South Holland and the Deepings

Sir David Amess MP, Southend West

Lee Anderson MP, Ashfield

Gareth Bacon MP, Orpington

Scott Benton MP, Blackpool South,

Rob Blackman MP, Harrow East

Philip Davies MP, Shipley

Nikc Fletcher MP, Don Valley,

Sally-Ann Hart MP, Hastings and Rye,

Tom Hunt MP, Ipswich,

David Jones MP, Clwyd West,

Daniel Kawczynski MP, Shrewsbury and Atcham

Pauline Latham, OBE MP, Mid-Derbyshire

Jonathan Lord MP, Woking,

Sir Edward Leigh MP, Gainsborough

Karl McCartney JP MP, Lincoln,

Stephen Metcalfe MP, South Basildon and East Thurrock,

Craig McKinley MP, South Thanet,

Lia Nici MP, Great Grimsby,

Andrew Rosindell MP, Romford

Alexander Stafford MP, Rother Valley,

Henry Smith MP, Crawley,

Martin Vickers MP, Cleethorpes

Lord Horam

Lord Lilley,

See: https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/08/migrant-row-wheres-mark-francois.html

And Mike’s also named a few names in a piece in his blog.

Mike notes that Priti ‘Vacant’ Patel was told back in November that her policy was forcing migrants to use more dangerous routes into the UK. She ignored the report because it recommended establishing more legal routes into the UK, as well as doing something about the reasons they were leaving their home countries in the first place. Patel’s innate ruthless caused her to reject all this. She just wants to stop them, and so is determined to make this route unviable. Mike notes that she uses the word ‘shameful’ in her Tweet about this, to divert attention from the fact that the real disgrace here is her.

Mike then goes to cite a Beeb report on one of the boats, where they were forced to use a plastic container to bail it out. When asked where they came from, the migrants replied ‘Syria’. In 2018 the UK voted to bomb Syria following reports that its government had bombed its own people. But the materials used to manufacture the bomb were supplied by Britain. Mike writes

Now, I don’t know the personal situations of the people on that boat, but it seems entirely likely that the UK is the reason they have been fleeing their own country.

If you approve of this behaviour by your country’s leaders then you are a jingoistic, sabre-rattling racist.

Fortunately, the evidence I’ve seen suggests that few people do. Most of us appear to have reacted with disgust – both at the government and at the BBC. 

He then provides a few tweets by people disgusted with this contemptible hate-mongering.

One of them is by Richard Murphy, who points out

We can apparently put the RAF over the Channel today to needlessly spot dinghies but have only allocated £5 million for emergency relief for Beirut. In terms of humitarian crisis management haven’t we got almost everything wrong?

Kerry-Ann Mendoza:

I’d like to say “I can’t believe England is calling for the extra-judicial murder of displaced people in dinghies” but I can believe it. There are great & compassionate communities in England. But others seem bent on regressing it into a spiteful, cold, grim little island.

Zarah Sultana MP:

People fleeing war, famine and persecution shouldn’t be confronted by gunships and hostility, but instead offered safe, legal routes to asylum. Our common humanity demands nothing less.

Carole Hawkins contrasted the attitude with Lebanon, which has accepted 1.5 million refugees

Lebanon with all its problems has accepted 1.5 MILLION REFUGEES & Spaffer/Patel going loopy over a few hundred so much so that Spaffer wants to change or make new laws. This is Trump politics – executive directives which Spaffer is also doing. Totally non democratic.

Mike points out that this demonisation may not stop if you vote for Labour, because of the right-wingers who voted to bomb Syria. According to Ben, they were

Stella Creasy

Liz Kendel

Yvette Cooper

Neil Coyle

Hilary Benn

Margaret Hodge

Margaret Beckett

Maria Eagle

Angela Eagle

Lucy Powell

Harriet Harmen

Bridget Phillipson

Alison McGovern

He concludes ‘This lot chose to destroy these migrants homes’. Yes, yes, they did. Not because they were outraged at a government killing its own people, but because they’re bog-standard Blairite neocons. The Likud-Republican alliance has a list of seven countries, whose governments they want overthrown because they’re a threat to Israel and an obstacle to American imperial interests. One of these is Syria, because the ruling class and government are a Shi’a sect and allied with Iran.

And he starts his piece with this brilliant meme:

Wise words from Tony Benn. And its exactly right. Food banks originally appeared under New Labour, when Blair and Brown passed legislation forbidding illegal immigrants from claiming benefits. Then the Tories decided that it would be a wizard system to inflict on the native, British population – by which I mean all Brits, who have been here for generations, Black and Asian as well as Brown – as they cut away the welfare state. The result is mass starvation.

Counterpunch and the late critic of the American empire, William Blum, have published several articles pointing out that what the west does to the rest of the world supporting Fascist dictators ultimately comes back home. Those same governments then set about militarising the police force and stripping back people’s civil rights, all in the name of protecting us from terrorism, of course.

After Patel has finished rounding up desperate men, women and children fleeing real war and violence in their countries of origin, she will try to turn to the guns on us. And scumbags like Hillary ‘Bomber’ Benn, Margaret ‘F***ing Anti-Semite’ Hodge, Angela ‘Gentler, Caring Politics’ Eagle and the rest will help her.

What did Orwell say the future was? ‘A jackboot stamping on a human face. Forever’. It’s in 1984. And Patel, the 23 Tory MPs and their New Labour collaborators are all ready to polish it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Private Eye Sides with the Witch Hunters, Smear Merchants and Plotters in Article about Leaked Labour Document

I should have realised it wouldn’t last. Last fortnight’s Private Eye carried an article about the leaked Labour party document revealing the antics and intrigues of Blairite party bureaucrats to prevent the party winning the 2017 general election. Although the article accepted uncritically the leaked document’s false assumption that Labour was a hotbed of vicious anti-Jewish hatred, it nevertheless seemed to take seriously the document’s allegations that a series of highly placed Labour apparatchiks had been doing everything they could to sabotage its election chances in order to get rid of Corbyn. Now that attitude has been completely reversed.

In this fortnight’s Private Eye, for 8th – 21st May 2020, there’s another article about the document. Titled ‘Party Poopers’, this has returned to the magazine’s old line of pushing the anti-Semitism smears along with the rest of the lamestream media. The article views the leaked document as a series of terrible libels against people, who were genuinely exposing massive anti-Semitism. These people were also being victimised for their participation in the Panorama programme, ‘Is Labour Anti-Semitic?’, were suffering vicious personal abuse, including being targeted by an online Nazi group. Fortunately they’re being defended by defamation and privacy specialist (sic) Mark Lewis.

The article runs

Like a retreating army planting booby traps, Labour’s routed Corbynistas have left Keir Starmer some unexploded bombs: most notably the 860-page report on the supposed complicity of anti-Corbyn officials in hindering investigations into anti-Semitism.

They have left the party open to investigations by the information commissioner and Inspector Knacker – and multiple actions for libel and breach of privacy. Not content with electing one lawyer as leader, Labour may soon be enriching more of them.

The report, commissioned by general secretary Jennie Formby, created a stab-in-the-back narrative by alleging that Labour lost the 2017 general election because, in the words of John McDonnell, staff undermined the leader in a “shocking act of treachery”. It implied that anti-Corbyn officials sat on complaints of racism to make him look bad. Criticising “whistleblowers” who appeared in a Panorama film about Labour and anti-Semitism, it said the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) should “question the validity of the personal testimonies”.

Party lawyers advised Formby she couldn’t submit the report to the EHRC, let alone publish it. After an unknown Corbyn supporter leaked it over the Easter weekend, however, online activists were quick to share unredacted copies – including much confidential personal information.

A shower of writs is now about to descend on the party. At least 30 former Labour officials have contacted defamation and privacy specialist Mark Lewis – so many that Lewis has signed up other lawyers who are twiddling their thumbs in lockdown to deal with the backlog. Labour will ahve to deal with the fallout without Formby, who announced on Monday she was stepping down as general secretary.

The leaked report was based on 10,000 emails and private WhatsApp messages in which Labour employees bitched about their bosses, as employees tend to do. The information commissioner, who has the power to set multi-million-pound fines, is said to be taking the data breach seriously – all the more so because Labour has still not met its legal obligation to contact all the victims of the data breach to warn them that information they had the right to expect would remain private was in the public domain.

Equally angry are members of the public who are identified in the report as reporting incidents of anti-Jewish hatred – and whose names are now in the possession of neo-Nazi groups. The far-right website Unz Review used Formby’s dossier to name Labour members who complained and to denounce them as agents of “Jewish control” behind “the conspiracy to undermine and destroy Corbyn”. The group Labour Against Anti-Semitism has asked the police to investigate. Its lawyers have also hired private detectives to find who leaked the report.

One lawyer involved expects about 40 privacy and libel actions, estimating that even if Labour settles them at once, the cost to the party will be £2.5m. But Corbyn supporters on Labour’s national executive committee could try to block retractions and apologies. If so, the costs will explode.

Let’s deal with a few irritating little details Private Eye doesn’t mention. It claims that the plotters’ emails were leaked. They weren’t. The plotters did the intriguing using Labour’s computers, and duly handed them over when they were asked as part of the inquiry. They surrendered that information themselves. If they had wanted to keep it all private, they should have used their own machines.

They also went much, much further than bitching about their bosses. Their anti-Corbyn scams included mocking up fake videos to mislead Corbyn that the anti-Semitism allegations were being effectively handled, when they were allowing those same allegations to pile up. They ran two sets of campaigns in London with the intention of ensuring election victories solely for members of the Blairite right. They also suspended constituency Labour parties that were on the verge of deselecting the sitting MP, like Angela Eagle’s in Liverpool. Leading conspirators also acted as members and moderators on Tory online groups, and openly wished for Conservative and Lib Dem victories. This is against party rules, and the same conspirators had also thrown out other members of the party for doing the same, such as one individual who made the mistake of liking an internet comment by a Green politico.

The Panorama programme ‘Is Labour Anti-Semitic?’ was a farrago from start to finish. It’s producers were already biased against Corbyn, and it allowed members of the anti-Corbyn groups to make their allegations of anti-Semitism without revealing their membership of the same groups. Mike, Zelo Street and any number of other left-wing news sites and blogs have torn it to shreds.

Now look at the way it deliberately connects the leaked report with Nazism. The allegations of intrigue and plotting are described as a ‘stab-in-the-back- narrative. This is the same language historians use to describe the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that propelled Hitler to power: that Germany had been ‘stabbed in the back’ by the Jews so that the country lost World War I. Then it brings in the real Nazis, Unz Review.

If innocent people are being target for anti-Semitic abuse and attack by real Nazis, then it is absolutely disgusting.

But the Eye is also hypocritical in not mentioning the abuse and intimidation heaped upon their victims by the anti-Semitism smear merchants. People like Jackie Walker, Tony Greenstein and Mike, who is still accused of being an anti-Semite and a Holocaust denier, even though he won his IPSO complaint against the newspapers who so libelled him. Mike, and other victims of the anti-Semitism smears, also had their private information leaked to the press. Mike has also complained to the Information Commissioner about it, but so far the Commissioner has done nothing. This awkward fact also isn’t mentioned by the Eye, because Hislop’s mighty organ has also done everything it can to push the anti-Semitism smears. And some of the witch-hunters’ victims have suffered far worse than abuse and death threats. One commenter on Mike’s blog posted that he had also been smeared as an anti-Semite by David Collier, part of the GnasherJew troll farm. Not only did Collier smear him, but he also doxed him as well, putting his personal details up on his wretched website and then camping outside his door. Collier has so far not taken the information down.

No mention of any of this from Private Eye!

On then, to Mark Lewis. The Eye’s description of him as specialising in defamation and privacy issues is one way of viewing him. In fact, he’s Rachel Riley’s pet lawyer, and the one she uses whenever someone criticises her for smearing and bullying decent people as anti-Semites and Nazis simply because they support Corbyn.

And finally, there’s the whole issue of ‘Jewish control’ in the Labour party. In fact, a large number of the victims of the anti-Semitism smears are themselves Jewish, because the ultra-Zionists of the Israel lobby cannot tolerate the idea that any Jew does not support Israel and regards its ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinians as abhorrent. Yet there are any number who do, from the Haredi who believe Jews must continue to live in galut – exile – until Israel is truly restored by the Messiah, to politically liberal Jews, who believe that Israel’s maltreatment of the Arabs violates the liberal principles they view as being intrinsic to Judaism. As the saying goes, ‘to be a Jew is always to identify with the oppressed, never the oppressor’. It violates the commandment in Deuteronomy that the Jews are not to maltreat the ‘stranger in the land, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt’. These entirely decent, self-respecting people are smeared, insulted and sometimes physically attacked, like the non-Jews the witch-hunters have also targeted. Some of them have even been the victims of real anti-Semitic assault themselves, or, if non-Jewish, they’ve been attacked because they’ve dared to defend Jews or have Jewish friends, partners and relatives.

But no-one from the press, including Private Eye, has ever asked them about their experience.

And the talk about ‘Jewish control’ is designed to stop any objection to the Board of Deputies of British Jews’ demand for the right to interfere in the Labour party. By demanding that the Labour leadership contenders, including Starmer, sign up to their wretched 10 Pledges against anti-Semitism, the Board of Deputies of British Jews now exercises a very high level of control over the party. They want the right to decide who should be allowed membership, including seeing confidential personal information. They have also demanded that members should not be allowed to share platforms with those expelled for anti-Semitism.

These demands are unreasonable, dictatorial and one-sided. No such demands have been made of the Tory party, Lib Dems or anyone else. 

By talking about Nazis and their denunciation of the Blairites’ intrigues and plotting as ‘Jewish control’, the article is clearly intended to make any objection to the Board’s demands seem anti-Semitic. But the Board has overstepped the boundaries of reasonable criticism into comprehensive involvement with these demands. And there are party political motives at work here. Not only does the Board uncritically support Israel and its atrocities, but it is also partisan in its political support here. The Board’s president, Marie van der Zyl, has sent messages of support and congratulations to Tweezer when she took office as Prime Minister. It’s possible that individual members of the Board may not be Tories, but to me it looks extremely likely that Zyl and the Board will use the anti-Semitism smears to demand the expulsion of anyone, who either criticises Israel or seems serious about returning the party to its socialist roots.

I’ve said many times that Eye publishes some excellent stuff, but I am exasperated by its complicity in the anti-Semitism smears. I despise the way it, and the rest of the media, has steadfastly refused to cover the people, who have been unfairly defamed and threatened by the witch-hunters simply because they criticise Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians. And this article is another example of the same. I notice that the article is also unsigned. It is not credited to ‘Ratbiter’, perhaps because ‘Ratbiter’s’ real identity as Nick Cohen of the Guardian and Absurder is too well-known.

But like Cohen’s articles, this is yet another disgraceful smear and another vile attempt to keep the witch-hunt going and the witch-hunters safe from retribution for their foul activities.

Cartoon: The Dead Thatchers – Bedtime for Democracy

Hi, and welcome to another of my cartoons, in which I attempt to lampoon the Tory party and our disgusting Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. This one is another mock poster/ record sleeve for my entirely fictional band, the Dead Thatchers. The name’s modeled on the American ’80s punk band, The Dead Kennedys. One of their satirical attacks on Reagan’s administration was ‘Bedtime for Democracy’, which I’ve used as the title and inspiration of this drawing. It shows Boris Johnson as Mussolini, surrounded by Maggie Thatcher and her bestie, General Pinochet, the Fascist dictator of Chile, as well as Ian McNichol and Emilie Oldknow.

Despite their loud claims to be the defenders of democracy, the Tories have so often been anything but. Churchill was an ardent opponent of Nazism, but it was because he saw them as a threat to British maritime domination of Europe and the North Sea. He was personally authoritarian, and actually like the Spanish dictator, Franco. He did, however, have the decency to describe Mussolini privately as a ‘swine’ when he visited Fascist Italy. In the 1980s sections of the Tory party had a very strong affinity for the Far Right, such as the Union of Conservative Students. Among their antics was calling for the National Front’s doctrine of ‘racial nationalism’ – the idea that only Whites should be considered true Britons – to become official policy. They bitterly hated Nelson Mandela as a terrorist, singing songs about hanging him in response to the pop single demanding freedom for the future leader of a democratic, multiracial South Africa.  Other songs included a parody of ‘We Don’t Want No Education’ from Pink Floyd’s The Wall, ‘We Don’t Want No Blacks or Asians’. There were also Tory demonstrations in support of apartheid South Africa.

The libertarian outfit to which Guido Fawkes belonged played host at its annual dinners to politicos from the South African Conservative Party, as well as the leader of one of Rios Montt’s death squads. Montt was the dictator of one of the Central American countries.  Maggie Thatcher’s friendship with Pinochet was for the old monster’s support against Argentina during the Falklands War. But some of it no doubt came from Thatcher’s own very authoritarian personality. She wanted a strong state, which meant the police, armed forces and the intelligence agencies. The Tories also claimed that she was somehow working class. She wasn’t. She was lower middle class, strictly speaking, and despised the people the Victorians called ‘the labouring poor’. She despised the trade unions and regarded the working class as ungrateful and disloyal. Following Enoch Powell, she was a monetarist, as was Pinochet. His regime was supported by Milton Friedman, who went down to Chile to advise Pinochet on its implementation, because he and the rest of the Chicago school and American libertarians because they believed it could only be established by a dictator. The masses were too wedded, they believed, to state intervention and a welfare state for a monetarist government ever to be democratically elected.

And Boris is also extremely authoritarian. He shares the eugenics views of Cummings and Toby Young, as well as previous Tory governments, that the poor, the disabled, the elderly and the long-term unemployed are useless eaters on whom as little money and resources should spent as possible. He and his cronies seem to regard their deaths as simply the inevitable operation of the forces of Natural Selection. His and his advisers were in favour of letting the British people develop ‘herd immunity’ against the Coronavirus, which meant avoiding lockdown and letting the disease take the weakest in order to preserve the economy. When Johnson was finally forced to act, he did so by awarding himself dangerously wide, exceptional powers in order, so he claimed, to be able to deal with the emergency.

These powers could very easily be used to turn him into a dictator.

The Coronavirus bill debated by parliament on 19th March 2020 gave the government sweeping new powers to arrest, detain and surveil for the next two years. It was criticised by Observer journo Carole Cadwalladr, who asked why the bill was supposed to last for two years, when the government did not expect the emergency to last that long. She also asked the pertinent question of what the government would do with all the information it wanted to collect.

Labour’s Chris Bryant also attacked it, stating that current emergency legislation, from the Civil Contingencies Act to various health and disease legislation, also gave the government sufficient powers to deal with the emergency. The Civil Contingencies bill requires renewal every 28 days, and the other laws also contain important safeguards. Commons library clerk Graeme Cowie also stressed how important ‘Sunset Clauses’ are. He explained that they ‘

are an important safeguard against the use of unusually broad or general executive powers. They also take different forms: (a) time limiting provisions in an Act (b) time limiting the power to make regulations or (c) time limiting the effect of regulations”.

Zelo Street, the bill looked like a power grab by Boris, enabled by Tory tribal politics.

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/03/coronavirus-bill-warning.html

This is all too credible, given the way BoJob also had the Queen grant him extended powers to try to force Brexit through parliament despite the opposition of many MPs, including those in his own party.

But Boris isn’t the only anti-democrat.

I’ve also included in the cartoon Ian McNichol and Emilie Oldknow, the chairman of the Labour party and the present COO of Unison respectively. Because these two charmers were part of the very real conspiracy within the Labour Party democracy to unseat Jeremy Corbyn by withholding information on the anti-Semitism scandal so as to make him appear incompetent. Other tactics included trying keep Wallasey Labour Party suspended for as long as possible so they wouldn’t deselect the sitting Blairite MP, Angela Eagle, running a parallel election campaign in London intended to ensure that only Blairites would be elected, debating whether they could get Momentum expelled. They also wanted to set up an interim government with Tom Watson as leader after the 2017 election, and intrigued against and vilified other Labour MPs and activists from the left-wing – the real Centre – of the party. All this is described in the Anti-Semitism report, which was suppressed on the advice of the party’s lawyers, and on which Starmer sat for a week before it was leaked. One of the plotters wanted to get an electoral college set up in the party to make sure that a left-wing could never be elected leader.

McNichol, Oldknow and the rest of them are as anti-democratic as Johnson.

They did not work for the good of the party as a whole, but merely their own, narrow factional advantage. And as the behaviour of the Blairites has repeatedly shown, they prefer Tory government to one by a left-wing Labour figure. The report describes how they debated who to vote for if it came to a contest between Corbyn and Tweezer. But their contempt for Labour party democracy has been amply shown over the past four years of Blairite intriguing against Corbyn. And Blair himself was very authoritarian, curtailing party democracy and centralising it around himself. The Blairites themselves are only small minority within the party, but they were able to present themselves as representing mainstream Labour through their monopolization of the party bureaucracy and the connivance of the lamestream media.

Now following the report’s leak, the Socialist Group of Labour MPs have written to Starmer asking very serious questions. Ordinary Labour members, activists and supporters like Mike are also demanding greater disclosure about their activities, as well as their censure and expulsion.

This is absolutely correct, as their contempt for their party’s leadership and members and fervent support of Tory policies shows that they are a threat to democracy like Boris and his mob in government.

Here’s the cartoon. I hope you enjoy it.

 

‘The Lobby’: Labour Friends of Israel’s Lies and Smears at Labour Conference

This is the third part of the Al-Jazeera documentary, ‘The Lobby’, on the Israel lobby in the UK. In this section, the Arab news agency’s undercover reporter went with Shai Masot and Mark Regev of the Israeli embassy to the Labour conference in Liverpool. There they met and advised Joan Ryan, the Chair of Labour Friends of Israel, and her parliamentary assistant, Alex Richardson, and Michael Rubin, the Parliamentary Assistant for Labour Friends of Israel, on how to deal with supporters of the Palestinians. They also recorded Ryan smearing Jean Fitzpatrick as an anti-Semite, accusing her of saying something which she definitely did not. Ryan did so because Fitzpatrick had the temerity to ask her a question she could not answer about what the LFI was doing to advance a two-state solution to the conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis.

Israel’s Attack on the BDS Movement

The segment includes a clip of one of the Labour party’s Israel lobby saying that she could ‘take’ Jackie Walker. It then moves on to the challenge to Israel posed by the BDS movement, and Israel’s response to it. Netanyahu is shown saying to the camera that Israelis have to fight the BDS movement because it is morally wrong. Israel’s attack on the BDS movement is run by the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, which recruits mainly former Israeli secret agents. London is a major battleground in the conflict over the BDS movement. There’s a shot of Ilan Pappe, the Israeli historian and critic of Israel, stating that in many ways the BDS movement started in Britain. There’s another clip of someone from the Labour Friends of Israeli ominously declaring that they work closely with the Israeli embassy, ‘doing a lot behind the scenes’. The documentary’s director, Clayton Swisher, states that one of the main targets is the Labour party, as for the first time they have a leader, who is a champion of Palestinian rights. There is also a shot of Peter Oborne, the Telegraph journo, who himself made a Channel 4 documentary investigating and criticizing the Israel lobby, saying that Israel interference is an outrage, an affront to democracy and shouldn’t be allowed.

Mark Regev on What to Tell Supporters of the Palestinians

The video shows the Israeli ambassador, Mark Regev, telling a group of sympathetic Labour activists that people on the left today are likely to be pro-Palestinian and hostile to Israel, if not anti-Semitic. He tells them that to combat Progressives, they are to ask them why they are supporting reactionaries like Hamas and Hezbollah, and to say in the language of Social Democracy that they are misogynist, homophobic, racist anti-Semitic and reactionary. The chair of the Labour Friends of Israel, Jeremy Newmark, then talks to the crowd about how he used the argument to win over Clive Lewis, one of Corbyn’s close allies.

Jackie Walker: The Anti-Semitism Crisis Is Constructed to Unseat Corbyn

There is another clip of Jackie Walker stating that the anti-Semitism crisis is constructed and manipulated by parts of the Labour party, other parties and the media to discredit Corbyn and a number of his supporters. She makes it clear that she wants an argument between Zionism and anti-Zionism, instead of the fake conflict there is now. She also states that at a debate she had with Newmark, he turned his back on the audience and whispered to her that she was a ‘court Jew’, the Jewish equivalent of calling a Black person a ‘house n*gger’. A note at the end of the programme states that when they contacted Newmark, he denied he said any such thing and feels that it is not a fair description of Walker. When asked if she had told anyone, she replies that it’s hard to use the compliance system, because it’s so discredited.

Masot is also filmed boasting that the Israeli embassy had attended 50 events that year at universities, and that more than 100 events were organized by the Israel societies on campuses, eight receptions for young people at the embassy, and three receptions for more than 300 people from Parliament.

Jean Fitpatrick and Joan Ryan of Labour Friends of Israel

The video also interviews Jean Fitzpatrick about her encounter with Ryan and the Labour Friends of Israel. Fitzpatrick says that is was her first Labour conference, and that she wanted to use the opportunity to have a genuine dialogue with a group she felt had a lot of influence. She is shown asking Ryan and the others what they were doing about the Israeli settlements in Palestine. Ryan replies that they aren’t friends of Israel and enemies of Palestine, and that they believe in a two-state solution. Fitzpatrick asks how this will come about. Ryan simply comes out with more flannel about coexistence and self-determination for both peoples. Fitzpatrick states that she had no idea, who was on the stall, and what she wanted was straight answers not slogans. Fitzpatrick asked Ryan what they were doing about Israeli occupation. In reply Ryan restates that they’re in favour of a two-state solution, and Israeli security.

Swisher then follows, explaining that a two-state solution is impossible due to the way Israeli colonization has atomized the existing Palestinian villages and towns, separating them from each other. Fitzpatrick also states that she wanted reassurance that a two-state solution was still possible. Back to the video of Fitzpatrick and Ryan talking, where Ryan states that they have to be careful not to let their feelings morph into anti-Semitism. Fitzpatrick in reply says she’s not anti-Zionist.

Ben White, a journalist with the Middle East Monitor, appears on camera to state that it is clear that, whatever party is in power in Israel, the country has no desire to relinquish the territories seized after 1967. This throws up questions no-one wants to ask. Or don’t want to answer.

Ilan Pappe states that there are only two solutions to the problem. Either you support Israel, which is an ethnic apartheid state, or you support a change of regime in Israel, which means that the country would go through a process of genuine democratization like apartheid South Africa. There is no third option.

Back to the conversation between Fitzpatrick and Ryan, Ryan tries to end the conversation. Pappe observes that Fitzpatrick didn’t ask anything about Judaism or the existence of Israel. She just asked about the settlements, and how anyone who supported Israel justified them.

Ryan Calls Fitzpatrick Anti-Semitic

Fitzpatrick states she was interested to know how they would use whatever funds and influence they had to bring about a two-state solution. Fitzpatrick is shown saying to Ryan that they have a lot of money and prestige in the world. Ryan asks her where she got that from. Fitzpatrick replies that that is what she has heard. the Labour Friends of Israel is a stepping-stone to good jobs, and that the son of a friend of hers got a good job at Oxford university on the basis of working for the Labour Friends of Israel. Ryan then responds that this is anti-Semitic, which Fitzpatrick denies, stating that it’s a fact. Ryan then goes on about how it’s an ‘anti-Semitic trope’ and talks about ‘conspiracy theories’. Ryan then declares she’s ending the conversation, because she doesn’t want to talk further about getting jobs in university or the City through this, which is anti-Semitic.

Swisher then explains that Ryan falsely claimed that Fitzpatrick had spoken about getting jobs in the City, London’s financial centre. Pappe comments that Fitzpatrick wasn’t anti-Semitic, and Ryan and her friends knew it. She was simply an ordinary pro-Palestinian person concerned about Israel’s violation of their civil rights. Ryan continued talking about how Fitzpatrick had spoken about banking as she left the conference hall, even though Fitzpatrick had never mentioned it.

That evening, at a rally for the Labour Friends of Israel, Joan Ryan described her day, claiming that there were three anti-Semitic incidents that day at the stand to the people staffing it. Which she believed showed the reality of anti-Semitism in the party.

Ryan, Angela Eagle, Jennifer Gerber and Chuka Umunna

Swisher states that by the following day the news had got out about the exchange on the stall. The video shows internet messages from LBC and the Labour Friends of Israel. Various MPs came by to express their views on the subject, including Angela Eagle, who is told by Ryan’s assistant, Michael Rubin, the Parliamentary Officer for Labour Friends of Israel, that they had someone talk to them, who said the anti-Semitism accusations were made up to attack Jeremy Corbyn. Chuka Umunna also turns up to hug Jennifer Gerber, the director of the LFI, and asks for an update on the anti-Semitic incidents. They tell him that a ‘nutter’ turned up to tell him that the coup was run by Jews, Jewish MPs and Jewish millionaires. They also say that Angela Eagle’s husband was Jewish to show how unpleasant this comment was. Ryan also tells Umunna that she reported ‘that woman’ and that Fitzpatrick had videoed her not answering the question. This has clearly upset Ryan. Ryan then goes on to say that she didn’t film her telling Fitzpatrick that she’s anti-Semitic, and that she’s made a formal complaint.

Fitzpatrick states that she’s angry about how Ryan misquoted her, and anxious about how she totally misinterpreted her words. Fitzpatrick says she has no idea how Ryan got from what she really said to getting good jobs in banking. ‘Maybe she believes her own trope’.

The video goes back to Gerber stating that she met someone who said that the anti-Semitism isn’t real, they haven’t seen it, their Jewish friends haven’t seen it and it’s really being used to crush Corbyn.

Pappe then says that it’s pathetic and worrying that such evidence is used every day to attack Corbyn, and get him to deny that he is anti-Semitic.

Alex Richardson: I Don’t Know If It’s Anti-Semitic Or Not, But It Made Me Uncomfortable, So It Is

And then were back Gerber telling the LFI that it’s upsetting to her as a Jew to hear about how anti-Semitism is being used to undermine Corbyn. But Gerber then goes on about how this person worries her more than the blatant anti-Semites, who talk about how Jews have big noses and control the world, because she doesn’t know whether she’s an anti-Semite. The conversation then moves on to a debate over which of these incidents was worse, with Rubin claiming it was Fitzpatrick’s conversation with Ryan. And Rubin himself is shown saying that he doesn’t know where the line is about anti-Semitism anymore. Alex Richardson, Ryan’s parliamentary assistant, then gives his opinion, that it’s anything that makes you uncomfortable. And so he reported Fitzpatrick’s comments as anti-Semitic, even though nothing anti-Semitic was said – but he’s sure there were undertones – simply because it made him feel uncomfortable.

Fitzpatrick observes that she tried to talk to them because she thought they were willing to talk about Palestine. Now it appears they are not, and if you try to talk about it, they will bring a charge of anti-Semitism against you.

Pappe observes that the LFI is really scraping the bottom of the barrel to find 2 1/2 cases of anti-Semitism, and that even they aren’t sure if 2 of their 3 cases are actually anti-Semitic.

Fitzpatrick Investigated

Fitzpatrick was unaware that a complaint of anti-Semitism had been lodged, and that the story had made the news. This part of the video shows the headline in Jewish News. Shortly afterwards, Ryan’s parliamentary assistant emailed Rubin asking him to be a witness to the supposed anti-Semitic incident. But Richardson says that Fitzpatrick’s comment was ‘on the line’, but he felt it was anti-Semitic, even though she didn’t mention Jews, but Israel instead, and was all about Jews controlling money and power. Richardson then speculates about how ‘that woman’ might be banned because she said something anti-Semitic.

Shortly after she left the conference, Fitzpatrick was contacted by someone from the Labour party, who only told her it was about ‘a serious incident’. She was left racking her brains wondering if she had seen a fire or an assault of some kind. She was then told that it was her conduct, that was being investigated, ‘which was a real bombshell’.

At the end of the programme, it is states that they contacted everyone involved for their opinion. Ryan stated that she believes that it is duty of all party members to report language that is racist or anti-Semitic, and that she believes that her actions were entirely appropriate.

She added that comments like those about certain groups having lots of money and prestige and helped to advance people’s careers appeared to evoke classic anti-Semitic tropes.

The documentary also states that neither Shai Masot nor the Israeli embassy responded to their findings.

Conclusion

This shows just how nasty and desperate the Israel lobby is, and I admit, it has changed my opinion about the Israel lobby. I’d previously assumed that the accusations were a cynical ruse to smear Corbyn and his supporters. But it seems from this that the people who make them, Labour Friends of Israel, the Jewish Labour Movement and others are so fanatical and blinkered, that they really do think that any who questions their views and Israel’s barbarous treatment of the Palestinians is an anti-Semite.

Of course, they can’t clearly tell you what is anti-Semitic about particular comments. As Ryan showed with her own faulty recollection of what she was asked by Fitzpatrick, if it’s not explicitly anti-Semitic, they won’t remember it properly and make it fit their existing prejudices. Anti-Semites think Jews are behind the banking system, so when Fitzpatrick talked about the prestige surrounding the LFI that got her friend’s son a job, Ryan altered it in her recollection of the event to be about banks. Even though banks weren’t mentioned.

Nor did Fitzpatrick say anything about Jews. And it may very well be that the board interviewing the young man for the job at Oxford University were impressed that he had worked for Labour Friends of Israel. But just because Fitzpatrick believed, or her friend’s son believed, that he had got the job because of this doesn’t make it anti-Semitic. Fitzpatrick did not say that Jews controlled education, only that working for the LFI got him a job. People are impressed by different things, and it is not remotely impossible that someone at the university, who was personally impressed by the LFI, would offer a job to someone, who had worked for them.

As for Regev telling the Labour Friends of Israel to ask supporters of the Palestinians why they are supporting reactionaries, it’s true that Hamas and Hizbollah are unpleasant organisations. But there are deeply reactionary, racist and misogynist organisations in Israel. Not every Palestinian supports Hamas, and the nature of that political organization does not justify Israel’s dispossession and persecution of the Palestinians, which started long before it arose.

It’s clear from this segment that the Israel lobby can’t justify it’s treatment of the Palestinians. Ryan couldn’t in her conversation with Fitzpatrick, and this embarrassed and angered her. Hence the smear. And with no arguments, Rubin and Richardson act like precious snowflakes demanding ‘safe spaces’ from being made uncomfortable.

And the use of anti-Semitic tropes to accuse decent people of anti-Semitism is contrived and deliberately constructed so that those making the accusation do not need to take any account of the reality of what they are being told. It’s a particularly nasty way of sticking their fingers in their ears, and saying ‘la-la-la, I’m not listening to you, and you’re an anti-Semite anyway for telling me things I don’t want to hear, can’t answer, and don’t want you to know.’

Nicholas ‘Fatty’ Soames Uses Homophobic Insult against Owen Jones. No Censure from Tories.

So much for the Tories and their vaunted ‘Respect’ policy. These are the people, who claim that Labour is riddled with anti-Semites and misogynists, all busily insulting nice young Blairites like Luciana Berger and Angela Eagle. Berger has received anti-Semitic abuse and threats, but they’re nowhere near as extensive on the left as she’s claimed. And one Blairite made up her tale of misogynist abuse completely. They exaggerate and lie because it’s convenient for them to say so, in order to cling to power in the Labour Party. And, of course, for their allies in the Tories to cling to power in government.

Allies? Really? Isn’t that going too far? No, not at all. As one terrified local Blairite Labour leader called for Tories and Lib Dems to join her party, in order to stop it being overrun by the ‘far left’, by which she means Momentun and mainstream social democrats, and the Blairites stand for exactly the same policies as the Tories – privatisation and welfare cuts – it’s fair to describe them as exactly that.

Jones had written an article criticising the mainstream media for living in the London bubble. It ignores everything outside the capital, and is dominated by groupthink. It is also full of mediocrities and incompetents, who got there not on personal merit, but because of who they knew.

Mike was a professional journalist, and brings his own considerable journalistic skills to his blogging. And he entirely concurred. And what Jones said is not remotely controversial, except to offended establishment journos. The Guardian and Independent have talked about how national journalism is dominated by London. Just as so many of the leading journos were also friends and neighbours of Dave Cameron in the Cotswolds. I noticed long ago that some of the stories that got into the national press about burglaries and murders were only in there, because they occurred in London. The same crimes are perpetrated all over the country, but these cases were only considered worthy of national news because they took place in the nation’s capital.

As for groupthink and classicism, you can see it. The mainstream media all follow the establishment line that unquestioningly accepts the need for austerity, and gets very shrill and upset when somebody else does. You look at the backgrounds of the main journos, and you’ll see that the majority of them are very comfortably upper-middle class with family connections to the press and media. Paul Dacre’s father was another hack with the Mail, when he was writing admiring stories about Hitler in the ’30s, for example. The editor of the Scum is an old Etonian.

And what makes this situation worse, though Jones didn’t mention it, is that the industry relies heavily on unpaid interns. The worst offender is the Groaniad, if Private Eye exposes can be believed. It’s very difficult for talented outsiders to break into, and they are being exploited by the hacks and mediocrities above them.

This was all too much for the establishment journos, who all dogpiled into Jones to revile him. And the odious Soames was in there as well, calling him by a homophobic epithet. Jones is gay, and Soames called him a ‘sh*tweasel’. According to the Urban Dictionary, this is someone who inserts his penis up another’s bottom by surprise without warning. So pretty much an anal rapist, then.

It’s an ugly term, and an ugly slur. Mike considers the possibility that Soames may not have known what it meant, and though it just meant he was someone who stabbed people in the back, in the conventional way.

Not an excuse.

Not that Soames is exactly a stranger to controversy. I can remember how he was all over the News Quiz on Radio 4 under Major for his monstrously bigoted comments.

But the silence about this from the Tories and the mainstream media is deafening. As Mike points out, you can imagine the howls of outrage from the Tories and the mainstream press if this had come from a Labour MP, and directed at a Tory or Blairite. Especially with the upcoming debate on anti-Semitism. But when it’s good, right-wing Tories making such comments, there’s nothing.

So much for the new Tory embrace of the gay community. Well, I can remember how, over a decade ago, backbench Tory after backbench Tory had to resign after making homophobic and racist comments. Cameron said he was going to clean it all out as part of his campaign to modernise the party. He clearly hasn’t, as Soames remark shows.

The Tories are an organised hypocrisy, and this shows once again how corrupt and partisan the mainstream press are. Get them out.

Does the ‘I’ Really Believe People Hate May Because of her Gender?

On the front page of the I, the paper boasted that it had an article by novelist Philippa Gregory on the eight prejudices that have historically been levelled against women rulers.

Is this supposed to imply that opponents of Theresa May are motivated solely by sexism?

It wouldn’t surprise me. After all, the paper gave a lot of support to the various female Blairites, who claimed that voting for Jeremy Corbyn and not for his female rivals in the Labour leadership elections was very, very sexist indeed. Despite the fact that Corbyn had far better policies for women, while the Harriet Harman and Angela Eagle had all been Blairite neoliberals, who had backed the failed economic and social policies that have actively harmed women.

If this is what the newspaper intends, then I have got news for them.

May’s gender is completely irrelevant to me.

I would loathe and despair her, even if she was a bloke called Terry. Just as I despised her male predecessors, the unfunny comedy double act David Cameron and Nick Clegg.

I despise May because she has

* Cut and done everything she could to privatise the NHS, running it into the ground.

* Cut and done everything she could to privatise the education system.

* Maintained the current system of tuition fees, which are loading students with mountains of debt.

* Carried on with Cameron and Clegg’s policies of massive welfare cuts, including the Bedroom tax and the humiliating and murderous Work Capability Tests, which have thrown thousands off benefits and into misery and starvation.

* Cut the numbers of police, armed services, border guards and other services back so that Britain was left dangerously vulnerable. A policy that ultimately allowed the Manchester and London terrorists to commit their horrendous crimes.

* Lied about her intention to put British workers in the boardroom, while she’s done just about everything in her power to get rid of workers’ rights.

* Her policies have also resulted in stagnant wages and maintained high levels of unemployment, to the point where most of the people on benefit are those ‘hard-working’ folk she and the Tories have patronised with their condescending rhetoric.

* Shown that she is completely incompetent to negotiate a fair deal for Brexit, which will enable British firms and other organisations contact with the EU and access to their markets.

* Done everything in her power to support the erosion of our precious civil liberties begun by Major, Blair, Cameron and Clegg. This means the massive expansion of the surveillance state and the malignant system of secret courts, in which you may be tried without knowing the crime, the evidence against you, who your accuser is, and behind closed doors. Like Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union.

* Cut taxes for the rich, while transferring the burden to the poor. Which, incidentally, was one of the reasons behind the French Revolution.

* Repealed legislation protecting our environment, so she can sell off Britain’s forests and trash our green and pleasant land with fracking for the profit of her friends in the oil industry.

* Supported Tory policies that have, instead of drawing the peoples of our great island nation together, have instead caused even further division by supporting islamophobia, fear and resentment of immigrants, and general racial intolerance.

* Not that she’s simply worked up racial intolerance. She and the Tory press have also done their utmost to whip up prejudice against the disabled to justify cuts in their benefits. The result has been a massive increase in hate crime against people with disabilities.

* Carried on with policies which will result in the break-up of the United Kingdom after three hundred years in the case of Scotland and England, and two hundred in the case of Britain and Northern Ireland.

The ‘Celtic Fringe’ – Scotland, Wales and Ulster don’t want Brexit. The Welsh and Scots Nationalist leaders want their nations and Ulster to be part of the Brexit negotiations. And all of the Northern Irish parties want to keep the open border with Eire. But all this is in jeopardy through May’s high-handed attitude to the nations, and her determination to promote only ‘Leave’ supporters to manage Britain’s departure from the EU.

And I could probably carry with more. Much more.

This is why I despise Theresa May and want her voted out, along with the party that chose her and has done so much serious harm to this country and its people for seven years.

I therefore urge everyone to vote Labour tomorrow to get her and them thrown out.

The Continuing Scandal of the DWP Asking the Depressed Why They Haven’t Committed Suicide

Mike this week put up a piece reporting and commenting on the admission by Maximus that they do indeed ask depressed people questions about suicide as part of the Work Capability Assessment. See http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/03/11/dwp-contractor-admits-routinely-asking-sickness-benefit-claimants-dangerous-questions-about-suicide/There are several questions. The first questions simply ask them if they have had thoughts about suicide, and the frequency and severity of these thoughts. These are, in my view, reasonable questions. Or rather, it would be if it were part of a genuine medical examination as part of a real programme to make that person well again. Depression isn’t a case of being ‘a bit down’. It is, as the British medical scientist, writer and Humanist, Lewis Wolpert described it in the title of his book, ‘A Malignant Sadness’. Clearly, if someone does have thoughts about suicide, they are extremely unwell and desperately need help.

The other questions, however, is unwarranted and frankly dangerous. The depressed person is then asked

“And what is it that stops you from acting on the thoughts that you have?

“Can you think of any reason that you’re not doing that? Is it friends or family support?”

Now it should be clear to anyone with the most meagre level of intelligence that asking people, who are already mentally fragile and have admitted they think of doing themselves injury or actually killing themselves, why they haven’t done so is extremely dangerous. My guess is that the way it is phrased in particular makes the question seriously unethical, as it seems to assume that the depressed person is not seriously troubled by these thoughts unless he or she has tried to act them out.

I don’t know, but I can imagine that if a social scientist or medical professional doing research amongst the clinically depressed asked the question, they could be hauled up before their relevant bodies overseeing professional standards for ethics violations or misconduct. As part of their training, social scientists are told not to phrase questions in the form of ‘You’re not…are you?’ And the Hippocratic Oath, a form of which doctors were required to take until recently, contained the provision ‘And I shall do no harm.’ These questions seem close enough to the first question, at least in spirit, to make them also unethical, while violating that provision of the ancient doctor’s Oath in that they could seem to some to be suggesting that they should.

The Work Capability Test itself is a scientific travesty. It is based on spurious and scientifically invalid research supposedly linking recovery to illness to mental attitude. The whole wretched test was introduced by Blair and his coteries on the recommendation of the American insurance fraudster, Unum, in a conference in the first years of this century. It is based on the attitude, shared by the Blairites and the Tories, that nearly everyone claiming invalidity or sickness benefit is a malingerer, despite the fact that such fraud only counts for 0.7 per cent of such claims.

The question also shows the immense double standards about health that persists between us and our rulers. It’s assumed that asking a severely ill person why they haven’t harmed themselves or committed suicide is acceptable. But heaven help anyone, who asked the same question of a captain of industry or leading politician why they haven’t tried to commit suicide, and you can imagine the feeding frenzy from an outraged press.

For example, the Blairite contender for the Labour leadership and flagrant liar, Angela Eagle, was asked by Andrew Neil on the Daily Politics about Tony Blair and whether the vile warmonger should face trial for leading Britain into an illegal war. Tellingly, she said no, as ‘Tony’s been through the wringer’. Thus showing that she cared more for the Dear Leader’s anguish than for the real horror he has inflicted on hundreds of thousands, of not millions of innocent people, who have been killed, tortured and forced out of their homes through the carnage he and that other malignant creature, George Dubya Bush, have created through their war. I don’t know what Neil’s response was, but can you imagine the outrage that would have resulted if Neil had said, ‘Well, he can’t be going through too much trouble, ’cause he’s still walking’.

Or if one of the other interviewers asked the same question of one of the Tories, like Theresa May, David Cameron, or the people directly responsible for the question: Ian Duncan Smith and Damian Green. There would have been fury directed at the ‘left-wing’ BBC. How dare they suggest that a minister of the realm isn’t doing his job if he hasn’t committed suicide for his failures! Or even the suggestion that they have failed in their job, which the Tories have, spectacularly.

But if it is acceptable to ask a gravely disturbed person why they haven’t acted out their desires to harm themselves, then by the same standard it should be acceptable to ask the same questions of anyone, including and particularly the ministers that have formulated that question.

Now I am not suggesting that Blair, May, Cameron, aIDS or Damian Green should be asked these questions, or otherwise be told to kill themselves, for precisely the same reason I don’t think anyone should be asked these questions. I am merely trying to point out the double standards involved here.

Now I imagine that if they were asked about this question, Damian Green or his predecessor, the Gentleman Ranker (and a right ranker he truly was) would say, in their inimitably patronising manner, that they are only trying to gauge the severity of the illness. This is rubbish. The whole test is structured so that the government can find some pretext to deny paying the ill person disability benefit on the grounds that they’re still somehow fit for work.

And Mike and many other bloggers and disability activists also see something much more sinister here. Many tens of thousands of people have committed suicide, or died in poverty and misery after being thrown off benefit, although the DWP continues to deny it. See Stilloaks website and the blog, ATOS Miracles, for further coverage of this and the biographies and individual cases of some of the victims. For Mike and people like Jeff Davies, one of the long term commenters on my blog this is evidence of a covert, secret genocide of the disabled. The government wants them dead, because that way they don’t have to pay out to support them. They can continue lowering the taxes of their rich donors.

This is how it’s beginning to look to very many of us, whether we’re disabled or fit. The presenters of the Channel 4 comedy review show, The Last Leg, even said so themselves. There should be mass outrage about these questions and the test itself. That there isn’t is a major disgrace in itself.

The Young Turks on Women’s General Strike Planned for March 8

After the successes of the women’s marches across America and many other parts of the world, including Britain, the organisers are calling for another, expanded march and day of protest on March 8th – International Women’s Day. They don’t want the previous march to be a single event, which everyone then moves on from and then forgets. They want to keep the pressure up and the issues alive. Not only do they plan another march, but they’re also calling for a general strike by women. They state:

In the spirit of women and their allies coming together for love and liberation, we offer A Day Without A Woman. We ask: do businesses support our communities, or do they drain our communities? Do they strive for gender equity or do they support the policies and leaders that perpetuate oppression? Do they align with a sustainable environment or do they profit off destruction and steal the futures of our children?

The two hosts, Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian, point out that many men also joined the women’s march, and that it wasn’t just about one issue, but about a number that worry Americans. They also make the point that protesting is a quintessential tradition of American freedom, and warn about biased reporting from Fox News. Faux News broadcast some sneering, distorted coverage of the original women’s march, claiming that the marchers didn’t know what they were protesting against. To provide some similitude, they interviewed some people marching, who were less than articulate and informed than others. They make the point that this is the stand Faux News trick. If they ask 20 people about a protest, and 19 give a clear, informed answer, but one doesn’t, they’ll broadcast the answer of that one person.

They also jokingly wonder what’ll happen on March 8th, if Ana Kasparian and the show’s female producers and staff don’t come in.

Not everybody was happy with the inclusiveness of the women’s march. Julian Vigo, one of the contributors to Counterpunch, argued that its effect was diluted because it didn’t solely concentrate on women and their issues. I think she’s wrong. The march was very popular, because it included women’s equality as one of a number of issues that concerned women and men. I can remember some of the feminists campaigning in the Labour party, who tried to appeal to women to come out and vote during one election, saying that they believed that ‘every issue is a women’s issue’.

As for Faux News, well, what do you expect? They didn’t get their nickname for nothing. Academics, who’ve analysed their content has said that 75 per cent of it is rubbish. You’re actually less informed if you watch Fox than if you don’t. And pretty much could be said about the Dirty Diggers newspapers around the world, not excluding the Times.

There have been a number of general strikes by women around the world, ever since the ancient Greek play, Lysistrata. There was one way back in the 1970s or ’80s in Iceland, if memory serves me right.

It will be interesting to see if there’s a general strike by this country’s women. We suffer from the same issues that are plaguing America – poverty, starvation, stagnant and declining wages, cuts to benefits, destruction of the welfare state and attacks on state healthcare provision. But the head of the government is Theresa May, and these grotty policies were introduced by Maggie Thatcher. As a result, I’m afraid that if there is a march and women’s strike, the protestors will be smeared as misogynists. Killary’s platform was essentially Conservative, and she herself a staunch supporter of Wall Street and the power of big business. She had also supported the Iraq invasion, and a Fascist coup in Honduras, which saw a female indigenous leader murdered by a right-wing death squad. Despite the fact that her policies would have hurt millions of women across America and beyond, her supporters were smearing her critics, and particularly supporters of Bernie Sanders, as misogynists. There was also the unedifying spectacle of Madeleine Albright, who has very vocally supported all manner of international aggression and atrocities by the US, telling women that there was a ‘special place in hell’ for them if they didn’t vote for Hillary.

British feminists have also shown that they’ll back a female politico, even if they despise her policies. When Thatcher was ousted Germaine Greer penned a piece ‘A Sad Day for Every Woman’, lamenting the removal from power of the first female British prime minister. This was despite Thatcher not considering herself a feminist, there being no women in her cabinet, and the active damage her policies had inflicted on women in general.

Similarly, various female hacks in the Graun and other papers, including the I, tried to claim that Angela Eagle was the victim and other female Labour politicos were the victims of terrible misogyny from Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters, just as Killary’s supporters had tried to smear Sanders’, and similarly without any real evidence.

We definitely need more mass demonstrations and days of action in this country against the government and its vile policies, policies that are killing hundreds, and leaving millions in poverty and starvation. But I fear that if women march and strike against Theresa May, just like they marched against the Orange Buffoon, they’ll be attacked and smeared for their lack of solidarity to a female leader.