I’ve already written a long piece about the acquittal of the four people responsible for the attack on the statue of Edward Colston. They were accused of criminal damage, but successfully defended themselves on the grounds that the attack was justified as the statue constituted a hate crime. The 12 good men and women true agreed, or the majority did, and so they were found not guilty. The right has been outraged, fearing that this defence leaves other controversial monuments at risk of destruction by the woke. I don’t believe that this is necessarily the case, and think that the threat to Britain’s heritage is probably exaggerated. As for the case of the Colston statue itself, there were campaigns to have it taken down going back thirty years or so. The people of Bristol voted for it to stay when they were polled, but now that it’s been torn down I think probably most people in the city are sick and tired of hearing about it.
But not, it seems, the Conservatives. Suella Braverman, our wretched attorney-general has apparently appealed against the decision. Mike and Zelo Street have both put up excellent articles stating what this appeal actually means. It’s another attack on British justice. Braverman and the Tories have no evidence and don’t allege that there was a mistrial, and so there is no real justification for an appeal. It’s just the Tories trying to revoke a decision they don’t like. This is an attack on the independence of the judiciary, which is one of the fundamental constitutional checks against government power. And the Tories aren’t just doing it with the verdict for the Colston Four. They’re also trying to pass legislation that would allow them to set aside judicial decisions against the government and its policies. It’s another step towards the right-wing dictatorship Johnson and co seemingly want for this country. It’s not too far from the way judges in the 17th century would send juries back to reconsider their verdict, and even imprison them, if they gave one they disagreed with. That power was undermined and discredited in a historic trial in Bristol in the late 17th century when William Penn, a Quaker and the founder of Pennsylvania and a group of his co-religionists were put on trial for seditious preaching. The jury repeatedly refused to convict them, and so the beak kept sending them back until he had them imprisoned until they came in line with his views. Which they didn’t. As a result, Brits not only have the freedom to be tried by their peers, but their peers have the freedom to deliver verdicts which accord with their consciences, not the authorities. Braverman’s appeal isn’t going to restore this unjust practice exactly, but it is doing something similar.
But it may also be a case of ‘be careful what you wish for. You might just get it’. Zelo Street’s article gives the learned opinion of lawyer Adam Wagner, who tweeted “there is a basic issue which will be becoming clear to ministers – a jury verdict sets no precedent, so the law is as it was, but a Court of Appeal decision would set an important precedent, which may not be the one the govt want”.
The Sage of Crewe also gives the opinion of those other internet legal gents, the Secret Barrister and and Jolyon Maugham. The Barrister said: “Not a single high profile criminal case can now pass without the Attorney General – a person with no experience of criminal law – exploiting it for political gain. It is difficult to think of an AG who has more enthusiastically abused their office”.
And the foxhunting lawyer gave his opinion on how much Braverman’s and the Tories’ determination to attack the verdict showed they really cared about British tradition and liberty: “By attacking the jury verdict in the Colston case Braverman tells a simple truth about how much Government really cares … about ‘British traditions’ … Theirs is a government without principles, without substance, of empty nationalistic signalling”.
But you wouldn’t know that by the way the right keeps banging on about our ancient constitutional liberties and the philosophers and lawyers who contributed to and guarded them. Like Sargon of Gasbag and the other Lotus Eaters raving about John Locke against the threat of the woke. Locke is one of the country’s great constitutional theorists. His Two Treatises of Government attacked autocratic theories of absolute monarchical power and instead provided powerful justification for the people exercising their sovereignty through elected representatives. He wasn’t a democrat. Indeed, the constitution he worked out for Virginia is based very much on the contemporary British social hierarchy and the power of the landlords. But it was a vital step towards modern, liberal theories of democratic government.
The Tories’ attack on the verdict represent another attack on these vital traditions and liberties in favour of restoring the power of a ruling class threatened by any indication of dissenting popular opinion.
Much of the news this week has been taken up with Dominic Cummings and his decision to leave London with his four-year old son to drive up to Durham thus breaking the lockdown rules. Cummings said that it was because his wife had the Coronavirus, and he was hoping that his parents or relatives up there would look after the child. They didn’t. While he was there, he drove thirty miles and back to Barnard Castle, in order to test his eyesight as he was worried it wasn’t good enough for him to drive back himself. He also appeared to have made at least two, and possible three trips in breach of the regulations. These journeys and his account of them flatly contradict what his wife was writing in his defence in the Spectator. And in the words of the irate newsreader in Broadcast News, people are ‘as mad as hell’ and ‘not taking it any more’.
To the vast majority of the population, Cummings’ behaviour and his boss’ refusal to sack him is a massive insult and display of flagrant hypocrisy and double standards. The British people have made great sacrifices in order to maintain the lockdown and prevent the spread of the disease. People haven’t been able to be present at the deaths of their loved ones, or attend their funerals because of the restrictions. And they have been very definitely prevented from driving anywhere as far as the 240 miles it is from London to Durham, except for the workers that haven’t been furloughed. It’s very definitely one law for the rich and politically connected, and another for the rest of us.
The result has been that Boris’ personal popularity has taken a nose dive. Last Tuesday, the same day that Britain booed the malignant buffoon, Zelo Street put up a piece about an article in the Independent. In the four days from the previous Friday to then, Boris had plunged in the polls from a rating of +19 to -1. It had dropped 35 points since the start of May, and 48 points from its peak on 8th April. Starmer’s ratings had fluctuated from +35 to +3. It was then at 12. And the government’s overall approval rating was at -2.
It’s a massive embarrassment to Boris, who is, like Trump, colossally vain. Boris wants to be loved and popular, like Winston Churchill (who certainly wasn’t as universally popular as the hagiographers try to make out). And so the Tories have been trying to redirect attention away from this affair through working up bogus stories in the press about the EU and Michel Barnier. Gove and the Attorney General Suella Braverman have been wheeled out to give their support to Cummings. In the case of Braverman, this has violated he duty to remain impartial, and is properly a matter for her resignation. Which, as a good Tory aiding her boss, she won’t do.
And now Boris is doing his best to silence any questioning or criticism of the matter. Emily Maitlis was censured by the BBC for her absolutely reasonable comments about it on Newsnight after a complaint from Downing Street. She was then replaced the following day by Kate Razzall. It’s another clear breach of the Beeb’s duty of political impartiality in favour of the Tories, following so many cases of bias against Labour by other Beeb news people like Andrew Neil and the odious Laura Kuenssberg.
And at a press meeting Bozo stopped the media from asking the Chief Medical Officer and the Chief Scientific Officer, questions about Cummings’ conduct on the grounds that they were political, not medical or scientific. But they were medical and scientific, because Cummings had placed other people’s health and lives in jeopardy. He also stopped Laura Kuenssberg from asking a follow-up question about Cummings. As Zelo Street remarked, this is conduct worthy of a dictatorship like Kim Jong-il’s Korea.
And that boiling popular anger all came out last night on Have I Got News For You. Nearly the entire programme was taken up with the issue. Ian Hislop, the editor of Private Eye, was particularly irritated. When asked by host Martin Clunes how his week had been, he replied that he’d been busy trying not to get too angry, and had been getting masses of letters from angry people, with whom he agreed. And the programme went on to tear gaping, bloody shreds off Polecat Dom and his tale. They asked how credible it was that Cummings could take a four year old child on a journey of that length without the lad wanting the toilet, as well as the obvious point that if you’re blind, you shouldn’t be driving. And they also brought up the Durham dialect term, ‘Barnard Castle’, as meaning a pathetic excuse. Given how swiftly the Beeb caved in to Boris’ complaints against Maitlis, this programme probably won’t have pleased Lord Hall-Hall. But I think it may well reflect how some Beeb programme makers and news crew feel about the scandal and the way Maitlis was treated, whatever she, Razzall and the producers may say to the contrary.
Everyone I know despises Cummings for this breach of the public’s trust, including Tories, who feel he’s let BoJob down. Well, there’s no danger of that, because BoJob’s standards are so low anyway only Britain’s few remaining miners and underground railway engineers can find them.
Cummings is making Johnson more unpopular by the day. And the longer it goes on, the worse it’ll get. Which is good news for Britain!
Frances Barber is a minor ‘sleb, who appears in bit parts here and there. She turned up in Red Dwarf in the ’90s as one of the forms of shape-shifting genetically engineered organism that fed on emotion. Appearing as a glamorous woman, the creature fed on the Cat’s vanity. She also appeared a little while later in an episode of the sitcom My Family, in which she played a woman with depression, who was part of a poetry group which the son joins. She’s part of the coterie around Rachel Riley and Tracy Anne Oberman, who think that Corbyn and the Labour party really are Nazis. Because criticising Israel as an apartheid state and its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians means you have to be a fully paid-up anti-Semite ready to get another Holocaust going. And Zelo Street has put up an excellent piece describing and commenting on her meltdown at Ash Sarkar in which she unintentionally displayed how racist she was.
Why the fury? Sarkar had appeared on Question Time, and describes her self as Communist. She then issued a series of tweets declaring that her beloved Labour Party was now the Communist party, attacking Communism as a hateful, despicable regime and sneering that it was ‘good our [Labour] representative – meaning Ash Sarkar – loves it’. There two things at least wrong with that statement, as Zelo Street reminds us. Firstly, just because a regime describes itself as something doesn’t mean it actually is. North Korea describes itself as the ‘democratic people’s republic of North Korea’, but is obviously anything but. And as Sarkar herself reminded Barber, she’s not a member of the Labour party. Barber couldn’t accept this. She asked Sarkar why she was representing Labour. Sarkar replied that she wasn’t, unless she’d been elected an MP and hadn’t noticed. Then Barber had the first of her racist sneers. She responded
“Neither you or Shami Chakrabati [sic] have been elected, but you speak on behalf of Seumus [sic] each time you are on Political programs . We the people hate it. You do not speak for us”.
To which another tweeter, Louise Raw, answered in turn by asking Barber why she was throwing Sarkar in with Shami Chakrabati. Sarkar was a media commentator, Chakrabati the Shadow Attorney General. It couldn’t be because they were both Asian, could it?
Then Barber moved on acting out Godwin’s Law. This states that in an internet debate, sooner or later someone will compare someone else to the Nazis. Barber then commented on the news that there had been a proposal in the Labour party to put a candidate up against Harriet Harman if she chooses to stand as Speaker by declaring that Labour were ‘the Brown Shirts’. And when she found out that Jon Lansman, the head of Momentum had tabled a motion calling for the abolition of the post of Deputy Leader, she again made an accusation of Nazism. ‘As if we didn’t tell you,’ she wrote, Ernst Rohm in action’. As Zelo Street pointed out, she had just called a Jew a Nazi, which is anti-Semitic according to the definition of the term by the International Holocaust Remembrance Association.
Zelo Street concluded
‘Not much use calling anti-Semitism on others if she’s going to indulge in it herself. And that’s on top of the brown people inference. Ms Barber needs to learn one lesson.
Stay away from Twitter late at night. Or don’t bother, and give us all a good laugh.’
Let’s make a few more points here, just to expand on those already made by the Sage of Crewe. When Sarkar describes herself as Communist, she’s undoubtedly talking about the Communist ideal, before it was substantially altered by Lenin and the Bolsheviks. I’ve put up pieces showing that most Marxists before the Bolshevik coup were democrats, after Marx himself. Except that they believed in a genuine democracy in which the workers took power into their own hands. Mainstream Marxist intellectuals like the Austrian Karl Kautsky hated the Bolshevik dictatorship and their persecution of the former upper and middle class. As for Soviet Communism, this described itself as Marxist-Leninism. In other words, Marxism as interpreted and adapted by Lenin. And when I was studying the Russian revolutionary movement at College, we were told that Lenin had altered Marxist doctrine almost as much, or as much, as the Revisionists.
As for the Labour party, the one thing Corbyn and the rest aren’t, is Communists. Corbyn’s programme of empowering the working and lower middle class by reviving the welfare state, taking the railways and other utilities into state ownership, giving back working people rights at work and restoring trade union power, is really simply a return to the post-War social democratic consensus. The consensus that no-one seriously challenged until Thatcher in 1979, with disastrous consequences. It’s nowhere near the complete nationalisation or the bureaucratic state Soviet Marxism demanded.
And let’s make one thing very clear: Corbyn and his supporters are very far from Nazis.
Historically, it’s been left-wing Socialists, Communists and trade unionists, like Corbyn and his supporters, who’ve actually stood up physically to Nazism and Fascism in this country. If you want further evidence, go over to David Rosenberg’s blog, Rebel Notes. Rosenberg’s Jewish, and a member of the Jewish Socialist Group. He comes from the tradition of the Bund, the eastern European Jewish Socialist party, who fought for Jews to be able to live and work as equals and fellow countrymen with the gentile peoples of the countries in which they lived. They had no desire to go to Israel and displace a people, who had historically treated the Jews better than Christian Europeans. Which means he’s also a strong critic of Israel. Rosenberg has put up many pieces describing how the Communists, the ILP and trade unionists, including the ’47 Group of Jewish combat vets kicked the rear ends of Mosley and his squadristi in the BU up and down London and the provinces, so that gentiles, Jews, Blacks, Asians and working people in general could live in peace and dignity without fearing the jackboot. See, for example, his article ‘When Stockton Fought Back’, about how the good folk of Stockton on Tees fought Mosley when he tried campaigning in their toon.
His most recent article is ‘When I Listen to Boris Johnson and Hear Mosley’, about the similarities between our anti-democratic populist Prime Minister and Mosley when he was leader of the New Party before its transformation into the BUF.
It’s a comparison that has become particularly pertinent, especially as the Torygraph a few days ago decided to give space to Jaak Madison, a member of the Estonian conservative party. The article’s been taken down because Madison stated that he found Fascism had many great points, and Madison himself was a Holocaust denier or minimalist.
Corbyn and his supporters are anti-Fascists. The real stormtroopers are nearly all on the right, whatever idiots and liars like Barber, Riley and the rest think, led by a mendacious media and Zionist Jewish establishment. They are the only people, who really stand between us and real Fascism in this country.
As for Barber herself, she clearly thinks of the Labour Party in terms of New Labour, Blair’s Thatcherite entryist clique. They did some good things, but they stood for Neoliberalism and the destruction of the welfare state and privatisation of the NHS. They wanted it to become another Conservative party, and in some ways went beyond the policies of the Tories themselves. They were no friends to working people, both Jewish and gentile. And neither is Riley, Barber and Oberman for supporting them.
Neumann then moves on to what Israel should do now in ensure its survival: it must leave the Occupied Territories.
‘with the acquisition of the
Occupied Territories in 1967,
Israel had a chance to make
handsome amends for the crimes
on which it was built. Saint-
lines or selfless optimism
were not required. Israel could
have sponsored and supported,
with true generosity, the
establishment of a sovereign
Palestinian state by backing
those amenable to reconciliation
and attacking those who were not.
This might not have been a just
settlement, but it would have
worked.’
American support for Israel following 1967 has made that possibility harder to achieve, and an exploration of this relationship is the subject of the book by James Petras. He dedicates the Power of Israel in the United States to Rachel Corrie, ‘US citizen and humanitarian internationalist volunteer in Palestine murdered by the Israeli military’. His style is that of the committed activist, in sharp contrast to the cool rigour of Neumann. There re times when his use of capitals, as in Terror Experts or Zionist Power Configuration, irritate. But while his writing is urgent, at times to the point of stridency, it is well sourced and invites the reader to inquire further into the areas he explores. Here is a flavour of the Petras style:
‘Through overseas networks the
Israeli state can directly inter-
vene and set the parameters to US
foreign aid in the Middle East.
The overseas networks play a major
role in shaping the internal debate
on US policy toward Israel.
Propaganda associating Israeli
repression of Palestinians as the
righteous response of the victims of
the Holocaust has been repeated
throughout the mass media. President
Ahmadinejad’s suggestion that
Holocaust victims might more properly
be compensated by land located in
Europe or in the countries that
victimised them was misreported, then
highly circulated to fuel, instead,
the notion of a rabid, anti-Semitic
Iran. From the height of the network
to the lawyers’ board-rooms, and the
doctors’ lounges, the pro-Israel
supporters of the network aggressively
attack as “anti-Semites” any critical
voices. Through local intimidation and
malicious intervention in the
professions, the zealots defend Israeli
policy and leaders, contribute money
organise voters, and run for office.
Once in office they tune in to Israel’s
policy needs.’
But hasn’t the United States always been subject to pressures exerted by those of its citizens with connections in other countries, be they links with Ireland or the countries of the former Eastern bloc? Petras accepts this, but answers:
‘The Cuban exiles in Miami
exercise significant influence
in both major parties. But in
no other case has linkage led
to the establishment of an
enduring hegemonic relationship:
an empire colonised by a
regional power, with the US
paying tribute to Israel, subject
to the ideological blinders of
its overseas colons, and launching
aggressive wars on its behalf.’
Who are these ‘overseas colons’? Petras has a very long line of ‘Israel Firsters’, people both inside Congress and electoral politics, and those unelected, such as Paul Wolfowitz and his friends in the Office of Special Plans driving the Iraq invasion, as well as many in the media. He tells us about the muscle asserted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations
with its Daily Alert (www.dailyalert.org/) prepared by the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs; the American Jewish Committee; the Anti-Defamation League, and the Zionist Organisation of America.
Petras looks critically at the four principal US sources of financial support for Israel he lists as:
‘1. Wealthy, Jewish contributors
and powerful disciplined fund-
raising organisations. 2: The US
government – both Congress and
the Presidency. 3: The mass media,
particularly the New York Times, Hollywood and the major television
networks. 4: The trade union bosses
and the heads of pension funds.’
In addition there are well-organised fundamentalist Christian groups with close links to Israel. Petras also sees the emergence under President Yeltsin of the Russian oligarchs (most possessing Israeli passports and having major financial interests in that country) as in part being due to President Clinton’s closeness to the Zionist lobby in the United States.
At times Petras is a little breathless in his description of the activities of those close to Israel, especially the people against whom legal proceedings have been taken after spying for that country while holding important Washington positions. This seems to be a measure of his anger and frustration at his native country being drawn into conflicts that he believes do not serve its interests. While I prefer the cooler logic of Neumann I also recognise the value of an emeritus professor of sociology like Petras alerting his readers in matters they can then look into in their own way and about which they can reach their own conclusions.
If Attorney General Lord Goldsmith advises prosecutions over cash for honours we may learn something of the financial network to which Tony Blair’s Middle East ‘envoy’ seems so central, and then perhaps something of the extent to which the Israel lobby has been influential on the politics of New labour. Whether or not the Crown Prosecution Service gets to dig a little below the surface of our political life, Britain could use both a Neumann and a Petras
to provoke examination of the way our electoral politics is linked to the fortunes of Israel. We should not be distracted by controversy over the veil covering the faces of Muslim women: there are other forms of concealment requiring our more urgent attention.
(Pp. 40-2, Winter 2006/7).
One of the smears against Jews is the accusation that they aren’t really descended from the ancient Israelites, but are really descended from the Khazars, a Turkish tribe in what is now southern Russia, who converted to Judaism in the early Middle Ages.
It’s an obscure, fringe theory, which very few people have probably heard about. It seems to have emerged as a particularly nasty offshoot of British Israelitism in the 1920s and ’30s. Donna Kossy devotes a few pages to it in her chapter on the Anglo-Israelites in her book, Kooks: A Guide to the Outer Limits of Human Belief (Portland, Oregon: Feral House 1994) 12-20.
Anglo-Israelitism, or British Israelitism, is the belief that the British peoples, and those descended from them in the Commonwealth and United States are the true descendants of the ancient Israelites of the Bible. The movement was started by John Wilson, who published Our Israelitish Origin in 1840. The idea was then taken up and publicised by Edward Hine. Wilson and Hine weren’t anti-Semites. They believed that the British were descended from the ten lost tribes of Israel, and that the Jews were therefore their brethren. Hine hoped that when the British realised their true descent from the lost tribes, they would join the Jews, who he believed were descended from Judah and Levi, in the Holy Land. The 12 tribes of Israel would be reunited, leading to Christ’s return in the Second Coming.
Kossy notes, however, that this theory was later used by anti-Semites and other racists to justify their hatred of other groups. Hine despised the various indigenous peoples, whose lands were invaded and conquered by the British, and felt they were on their way to extinction. These included Aboriginal Australians, the Maoris, and also the Irish, whom he identified with the Canaanites.
The foremost leader of British Israelitism in America was Howard B. Rand, who had been variously a lawyer, inventor and small businessman in Haverhill, Massachusetts. In 1928 he founded the Anglo-Saxon Federation of America, declaring himself to be its National Commissioner. Nine years later, in 1937, he founded Destiny Publications, to publish his writings about the movement. After the War he also tried to get himself elected as the Prohibition candidate for the office of Attorney General in Massachusetts.
Rand decided that the Jews were only descended from the southern kingdom of Judah, and stated that the Jewish exiles who returned from Babylon intermarried with Hittites and other gentile races. After the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD the Jewish nation, he believed, ceased to exist. Individual Jews, however, moved north and intermarried with the Khazars. Meanwhile, the Jews captured by the Assyrians moved west, becoming the Goths, and then the Germanic peoples of Britain, Scandinavia and Germany. (Pp. 14-15). Another writer who claimed that the Jews were really descended from the Khazars was Lothrop Stoddard, in his 1926 book, The Pedigree of Judah.
These ideas have since become a part of the various extreme right-wing movements that came to prominence in the 1990s through their confrontations with the federal authorities. Randy Weaver, who fought off the FBI for a week after they sought to arrest him on firearms charges, was a British Israelite, who believed that America was under the secret domination of the Jews, who formed the Zionist Occupation Government.
This bizarre anti-Semitic conspiracy theory comes from the view of the British Israelites that the Jews were pretending to be the true descendants of ancient Israel as part of their schemes for world domination. This is stated by one ‘Wm. Norman Saxon’, in his book, The Mask of Edom, published by Howard Rand’s Destiny Publications in 1985. (See Kossy, p. 16).
The idea that the Jews aren’t truly descended from ancient Israel, but are impostors descended from Khazars, and are plotting world domination is dangerous, ahistorical nonsense. And back in the 1990s there was real concern about the threat posed by the Militia movement in America, many of whose members believed strongly that the Zionist Occupation Government was a reality, and was determined to enslave and destroy the White race.
There is a people, the Karaim, whose name comes from the Hebrew word for ‘Readers’, living in the Crimea, Southern Ukraine and Lithuania, whose religion is Judaism, and who speak a Turkic language, that is, their language is related to Turkish and other, similar languages. As Jews, their language contains a large number of loans words from Hebrew, such as Adonai, ‘God’, sem, ‘name’, and guf, ‘body’. See Bernard Comrie, The Languages of the Soviet Union (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1981) 49. They are believed to be ‘a unique survival of Judaism as the official religion of the Khazar empire’. (Comrie, p. 47). Recognising their ethnic origins as remnants of the Khazar state certainly does not give any support whatsoever to the accusation that this applies to the Jewish people as a whole.
After Governor Inslee and the attorney general of the state of Washington launched their attack on Trump’s Muslim ban, Governor Charlie Baker of Massachusetts and Maura Healey, the state attorney general there, have also launched their appeal to block the ban. They are joining an action from the Massachusetts branch of the ACLU, as well as representing the University of Massachusetts, who saw two of their professors temporarily held over the weekend due to the ban. Attorney General Healey states that she and her colleagues have reviewed the legislation, and found it harmful, racist and unconstitutional. And just as Governor Inslee and the attorney general there believed that the Muslim ban was economically harmful to their state, so Healey is expected to argue that the detention of leading researchers and business experts will also damage the state’s economy.
This makes you wonder if any other states are going to come forward to challenge the ban, just as ordinary Americans have been doing at demonstrations across their nation.
Yesterday I put up a piece from YouTube showing Governor Jay Inslee of Washington state very firmly expressing his disgust and condemnation of Trump’s ban on Muslims coming to the US. Governor Inslee announced that he was going to seek ways to mount a legal challenge to overturn it.
In this clip, the state’s Attorney General, Bob Ferguson, announces that he is filing a lawsuit today against Trump, the Department of Homeland Security, and high-ranking Trump officials. The suit is intended to make key provisions of Trump’s ban declared illegal and unconstitutional. If successful, the legal action will result in the ban being declared illegal throughout America. Attorney General Ferguson also makes the point that America is a nation of law. Under the rule of law, it is not the loudest voice that prevails, but the law. You are either abiding by the Constitution, or you are not. And in his view, Trump is not abiding by the Constitution with the Executive Order.
Governor Inslee adds his voice, stating that this is not reality TV. It’s reality, and the immense suffering caused by ‘this train wreck’ prevents him from agreeing with Trump about how beautiful it all is. He states it is an insult and an attack on all of Washington’s citizens for a variety of reasons. An attack on one faith is an attack on all faiths. It is also damaging to the state of Washington. He also offers this advice to Trump, as a member of the chain of command for the National Guard: Stop giving ISIS recruiting posters.
I found this video on YouTube yesterday of the Governor of the state of Washington condemning Trump’s Muslim ban for its cruelty, its unconstitutional racism, the economic damage it is threatening to inflict on his state, and the chaos it has created at Seattle International Airport.
The governor states clearly that it has caused problems in the state’s premier airport, as it has been imposed without clear instructions how it is precisely to be implemented. It is cruel, as it affects people coming to the US as refugees. Many of these have relatives already in the US, ready to welcome them to their new country. He talks of one gentleman, who was hoping to join his wife in the US. He was not stopped when he boarded a flight to the US in Germany. But now that he has landed, he cannot cross the six feet which would take him to his wife’s embrace.
The governor also attacks the ban as constitutional, in that it puts Muslims at the bottom of the pile and other religions on top. He states that America has not passed such legislation in 200 years. He also draws parallels between the Muslim ban and Japanese internment. The governor lives on the island of Bainbridge, which is where the American government interned many Japanese Americans during World War II, based on nothing more than fear and demagoguery. Now, 75 years later, that fear and demagoguery has returned.
He also states that the local economy in Washington is being harmed, as Muslims are afraid to go abroad in case they are refused entry when they try to return. Many of these, he points out, are businesspeople and physicians, people who will benefit and contribute to the economy. And this is unacceptable.
He also talks about his attempts to contact the Trump administration and the Attorney General to register his opposition to the ban and attempts to overturn it.
This is a powerful speech from a leading American local politico. The man is clearly, and very rightly, angered at the damage the ban is inflicting on the state’s economy, the efficiency of its airport, and the huge harm and cruelty it is doing to innocents, whose only crime is their religion.
His anger is mirrored by hundreds of thousands across America and Britain. There are demonstrations planned in major cities across the UK today. After the rise of the Alt-Right and other Fascist groups, people are beginning the fightback against Trump’s racist policies. Hopefully it won’t be too long before they’re overthrown, along with the wretched demagogue that created them.
Spokesman, as you’d expect from an organisation that’s part of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, also publishes a couple of pamphlets on Tony Blair and the Iraq invasion. One is The Dodgiest Dossier, whose blurb states
This publication brings together for the first time all the leaked memoranda about the British Government’s decision to go to war on Iraq, plus the Attorney General’s legal advice.
You can read the full text of the revealing memorandum about preparations for war on Iraq, dating from July 2002, (which) was leaked to the press in the days before the 2005 General Election.
That’s 80 pages in lengths.
Rather shorter is Ken Coates’ Not Fit to Be a Prime Minister? That Interview and a Commentary by Ken Coates. The blurb for this states
In September 2007, John Humphrys interviewed Prime Minister Blair at length about his decision to go to war on Iraq. In his inimitable way, the Today presenter said:
‘If your judgement is wrong on this – let me put this very bluntly, you wouldn’t be fit to be Prime Minister …’
Ken Coates provides a commentary on the facts that underlie this memorable exchange.
Blair’s judgement was wrong – horrifically, catastrophically wrong, and Humphrys, for all his other faults, was right: Blair wasn’t fit to be prime minister. I don’t know how useful these pamphlets will be, considering the new information available and the Chilcott Inquiry’s report, which states very clearly that Blair misled parliament in order to get the war he wanted. They do show that at the time there was considerable scepticism about the war and the spurious pretext on which it was founded.
Trump isn’t just a racist Nazi – he’s a scam artist too. In this piece from the Young Turks, Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss how Trump is being sued by Tarla Makaeff and the New York Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman, for ripping off prospective students, who enrolled at his ‘university’. In 2005, Trump announced he was opening the ‘Trump University’ to teach students how to be successful Real Estate salesmen and women. Tarla Makaeff, one of those, who enrolled, and Attorney General Schneiderman, are suing Trump because the university was not accredited, did not issue degrees, and in fact only saddled the students with $60,000 worth of debt that they couldn’t afford for classes that didn’t materialise. In fact, all they got was a seminar in a ballroom. Schneiderman is launching a $40 million lawsuit on the students’ behalf. As for staff at the seminar, they were instructed to do all they could to get students to sign up for further seminars, costing $1,495. There were three booths ranged round the exits, so that if the prospective students left, they’d be button-holed by these spivs. Trump himself did not appear, despite promises that he would. Trump later dropped the title of ‘University’ as he realised this was actually illegal, considering it wasn’t. The scam, however, went on. Kasparian also asks whether it’s sensible to take business advice from a man, who went bust four times.
Kasparian is furious, as it reminds her of the inflated and frequently fraudulent claims of the for-profit colleges. Uygur points out that even they aren’t as bad as this, which is just pure fraud. As for any of Trump’s admirers, who will actually look up to him and boast about how he’s conned people, they should realise that he’s doing exactly the same in the election with his promises. He’s a scam artist, and they’re his next mark.
Beastrabban\'s Weblog 
Spokesman Pamphlets on Blair, the ‘Dodgy Dossier’ and the Iraq Invasion
September 14, 2016Spokesman, as you’d expect from an organisation that’s part of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, also publishes a couple of pamphlets on Tony Blair and the Iraq invasion. One is The Dodgiest Dossier, whose blurb states
This publication brings together for the first time all the leaked memoranda about the British Government’s decision to go to war on Iraq, plus the Attorney General’s legal advice.
You can read the full text of the revealing memorandum about preparations for war on Iraq, dating from July 2002, (which) was leaked to the press in the days before the 2005 General Election.
That’s 80 pages in lengths.
Rather shorter is Ken Coates’ Not Fit to Be a Prime Minister? That Interview and a Commentary by Ken Coates. The blurb for this states
In September 2007, John Humphrys interviewed Prime Minister Blair at length about his decision to go to war on Iraq. In his inimitable way, the Today presenter said:
‘If your judgement is wrong on this – let me put this very bluntly, you wouldn’t be fit to be Prime Minister …’
Ken Coates provides a commentary on the facts that underlie this memorable exchange.
Blair’s judgement was wrong – horrifically, catastrophically wrong, and Humphrys, for all his other faults, was right: Blair wasn’t fit to be prime minister. I don’t know how useful these pamphlets will be, considering the new information available and the Chilcott Inquiry’s report, which states very clearly that Blair misled parliament in order to get the war he wanted. They do show that at the time there was considerable scepticism about the war and the spurious pretext on which it was founded.
Tags:'Dodgy Dossier', 'Not Fit to Be a Prime Minister? That Interview and a Commentary by Ken Coates', 'The Dodgiest Dossier', 'Today', Attorney General, Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, Chilcott Inquiry, Iraq Invasion, John Humphrys, Ken Coates, Parliament, Spokesman, tony blair
Posted in Iraq, LIterature, Politics, Radio, The Press | Leave a Comment »