A day or so ago Simon Webb of History Debunked put up a video discussing the book, Negro Rulers of Medieval Scotland and England, by a Black American writer, Johnson. This claims that various British monarchs in the Middle Ages and early modern periods were really Black, including James I. He believed that this was a product of the prevalence of conspiracy theories in Black American and also Dutch Muslim culture. Conspiracy theories aren’t unique to either of these peoples. He stated that they were the reaction of people, who believe they are powerless. This seems to me to be about right, especially as they are most common in peoples where there is a strong distrust of the government. Black Americans generally suffer more from poverty, crime, unemployment, drugs and alienation than other demographic groups, and have been subject to overt oppression and exploitation. It’s therefore almost to be expected that conspiracy theories should be far more widespread amongst them than in the White population. Way back in the ’90s folklorists documented various rumours and urban legends in the Black community. Some of these erroneously claimed that named fashion designers and clothing firms wouldn’t market their brands to Black. Another was that Coca-Cola was putting chemicals in the water to sterilise young Black men. This was also very much not true, but given their history and treatment, you can well understand how some people could believe it. Webb considered that it was because of this conspiracy culture that some Black Americans were inclined to believe that some medieval British kings were Black. He compared this to an episode in the 1938 Evelyn Waugh novel, Scoop, in which the hero tries to arrange a visa to enter Ethiopia in order to cover the war there. He is told by an official that just about every major historical incident and invention, from the discovery of the circulation of the blood to the defeat of the Germans in the First World War, was due to Africans. Unfortunately, Webb stated, we can no longer laugh at such historical appropriations. White liberals were taking them seriously, and so books like Johnson’s were being taught in schools. This was also the reason why a Black woman had been cast by Channel 5 to play Anne Boleyn.
Now Johnson’s book clearly exists, as Webb showed its cover in his thumbnail and provided a link to its Amazon page. It seems to be the product of the same brand of Afrocentrism that drew on Gerald Massey’s 1881 Book of the Beginnings and David Macritchie’s 1884 Ancient and Modern Britons to claim that the inhabitants of the British Isles were originally Black. And it seems to me quite credible that some schools are teaching Johnson’s book. According to Stephen Howe’s book, Afrocentrism, there were 350 private, ‘afrocentric academies’, teaching 50,000 children in America in 1991. American public schools also have afrocentric curricula and even whole Afrocentric schools in the Black majority districts in Detroit, Baltimore and Milwaukee (see page 3). But I do wonder how many schools over here are teaching it. I don’t doubt that there are many Black activists and teachers that would like to. Last year during Black History Month the local BBC News for Bristol, Points West, discussed calls for Black history to be taught in schools. If I remember correctly, some were already supposed to have done so. But Britain also has a National Curriculum, which I would have thought would have prevented much Afrocentric material, at least of the extreme type, from being taught.
I also don’t know if books like Johnson’s were behind Channel 5’s decision to have Boleyn played by a Black thesp. It seemed far more likely to me that it came from the theatre, where Black actors have been cast in traditional White roles for a long time. I also think it was influenced by Armando Iannucci’s colour-blind film of Dickens that came out a few years ago. The Tudors are a part of the National Curriculum and have been a staple of British historical programming. Producers are always looking for a way to put a fresh angle on something, and following the BLM riots the TV companies were falling over themselves to promote, or be seen to promote, Black talent. Black History Month was set up partly as a way to motivate Black children at school and raise their academic performance. There may therefore be no other explanation for the broadcaster’s choice of actor than an intention to find a way to appeal to a Black audience as well. The only sure way of proving that the decision was based on books like Johnson’s would be if a document emerges from Channel 5 stating this is the case, or, failing that, they were working with a Black group that took the view that Boleyn and other members of the British 16th century nobility were Black. But Webb doesn’t produce any such evidence.
Some Black Americans may therefore be erroneously taught that Anne Boleyn and the rest were Black, but I see no evidence that such counter-knowledge is being taught in British schools just yet.
Ruined Leon is a Black American YouTuber, who takes delight in criticising some of the stupid, ridiculous and offensive attitudes promoted by the ‘woke’. I think he’s said he’s bi, and so attacks the extremist nonsense spouted by certain sections of the gay community. He certainly didn’t hold back when telling his viewers exactly what he thought of the American non-binary college prof, now on administrative leave, who decided to reach out to the MAP community. That’s Minor Attracted People, or paedophiles to you and me. He told them exactly what they are. He posted another video expressing his astonishment when the college’s students started protesting against this attempted rehabilitation of dangerous pervs. He thought they’d been indoctrinated into being too accepting, and would have been behind it. But I think it’s easily explainable. Gays became more accepted in the 1980s, at least in England, when the gay organisations cleaned out the paedophile advocates and stressed the difference between homosexuality and paedophilia. People were then willing to accept gay people as normal, decent members of society, albeit of a different sexuality, because they weren’t a danger to their children. Except for the Heil, that is, which still seems to want to promote the idea. RuinedLeon also hates the anti-White racism that’s also somehow seen as Black liberation or anti-racist activism.
A few days ago he posted this video responding to others, in which people said what they wanted less of in the New Year. What Leon wanted was for less Black on Black violence and murder. It’s there, and is a major problem, but the Black community and particularly Black anti-racist organisations like Black Lives Matter don’t want to talk about and don’t want to tackle it. There’s only protests and outcry when a Black person is murdered by Whites. He illustrates this with three examples. The first is Sasha Johnson, shot in the head while attending a party. There was a massive outcry at the time, but nothing’s been heard since. Not quite true. Alex Belfield posted a video saying that she was still in a serious condition, and her attackers were now on trial, pleading ‘Not guilty’ to murder. In fact Johnson’s shooting provides a very graphic example of the Black community’s silence over Black on Black violence. Before the identity of the attackers were known, we had Diane Abbott telling the world that she was shot by a White supremacist. This was against the police’s express call against speculation on the shooters’ identity. The witnesses initially said they were Black, then changed their tune and said they were White. Then they said they couldn’t tell who they were because they were wearing balaclavas.
The reason for this silence is simple, as RuinedLeon states with his second example. A cute eight year old girl, Sequoya Turner, was shot and killed by a Black man, ironically at Black Lives Matter rally. The people there were reluctant to identify her killer because, ‘snitches get stitches’. His last example is a Black policewoman, Keona Holly of the Baltimore PD, who was shot by a couple of thugs while working an extra shift in her police car. The little girl’s murder has put Black people off Black Lives Matter, as Ruined Leon demonstrates with a clip from another Black YouTuber, who expressly states he doesn’t support it anymore. Leon says he sick of people telling him that he mustn’t talk about Black on Black violence because it’s a conservative talking point. Leon states that there are no mass protests about these murders or media coverage because they don’t fit the narrative of White racist crime. Instead Black personalities prefer to talk about the excess coverage given to missing White celebrities. People of colour should expect the same concern. Which is correct, but doesn’t address the fact that this concern runs out if they’re murdered by other Blacks. Leon also shows two Black personalities on American TV stating clearly that Black Lives Matter was started as a protest against police violence. If you want to address Black on Black violence, you have to start another movement with a name explicitly about that.
Leon states that he doesn’t have a problem with the name Black Lives Matter and its call for racial justice, although when he hears it he thinks of a movement whose leader took the donations and spent it on five houses for herself. He states that Black lives don’t matter. Only convenient ones do, like George Floyd and others. He says he has nothing against protests against the cops stepping out of line. We should have a conversation about that. But the Black community should also deal with its in-house problems. He also reads out a tweet by a White, genderfluid ally, reciting the names of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other victims of White murderers, and demanding the decentering of Whiteness. These are now, he says, the Mount Rushmore of the Black community. Before then the only Black man anyone had heard of was Barack Obama, which is clearly an exaggeration on Leon’s part, but makes the point. But people aren’t protesting or complaining about the murders or attempted murder of the Sasha Johnson, Sequoya Taylor and Keona Holley, because it doesn’t fit the media narrative of White racial violence against Blacks. So for 2022 people should leave the notion that Blacks do no harm, Blacks don’t commit crime, Blacks don’t harm other Blacks, Black Lives only matter if they’re killed by Whites. Then we can deal with Black lives being taken unjustly, instead of only jumping when the White man is conveniently around.
This is long overdue, and I’m very glad Leon is talking about it. I can remember Black on Black violence was being talked about nearly a quarter of a century ago back in the 1990s, enough for Sasha Baron Cohen’s character Ali G to lure a senior policeman onto one of his stupid interviews on the pretext that he would be talking about Black on Black violence and the weapons ‘brothers were using against brothers’. But then there was silence.
I don’t think the fault’s entirely with the media. I think it lies with Black organisations and activists. I noticed the attitude in the editorial in issue 32/33 of the Black and Asian Studies Association’s wretched magazine which they sent me when I was doing voluntary work in the Empire and Commonwealth Museum in Bristol. Among the subjects it addressed was the coverage of the murder of the schoolboy Demilola Taylor in London. Taylor was a 12 year old boy, who was attacked by a gang on his way home from school. They stabbed him in the leg, and he bled to death in the stairwell of a tower block. The murder shocked the nation and made national news. I was particularly horrified by it. I was bullied a lot when I was at school, and remembered the fear and anger I felt at the bullies. But not so the peeps at BASA. Their editor jumped to the conclusion that he had been murdered by a Black gang, and stereotypically screamed ‘racist’. It shouldn’t have been covered. Instead the media should have reported more of the Black people being killed by White racists. This showed their prejudice, as the report initially did not mention the colour of Taylor’s killers. When it did reveal them, it said that the gang was made up of kids of different races.
Some of this reluctance to deal with the reality of Black on Black murder probably comes from the racist overreporting of Black criminality by the Conservative press. This spread negative attitudes towards Black people and hindered their acceptance by Whites. But I also think it shows an acute embarrassment about the issue. It’s far easier for Black activists to talk about violence perpetuated by White supremacists than it is to recognise that more Black people are killed by other Blacks. That might mean that some problems of the Black community have a more immediate cause than White racism, although structural racism may well be a contributory factor. And so the self-proclaimed spokespeople for the Black community, keen to attack racism, which is a real issue, are silent about Blacks killing other Blacks. It doesn’t fit the narrative.
Well it’s time that narrative was changed. It’s time that the slogan ‘Black Lives Matter’ also includes those Black lives taken by other Blacks. And this can and should be done as part of a genuine movementfor real Black empowerment. Until then, silence is violence, as the BLM slogan has it.
Paul Joseph Watson is another right-wing Youtuber. He used to be bonkers conspiracy theory peddler Alex Jones’ British buddy on Infowars, before he split with him and returned to Blighty. Leaving Jones to peddle his overpriced quack health supplements and mad ideas about the globalists running the world on behalf of demonic aliens, Obama and Hillary Clinton being demonic alien cyborgs set on imprisoning Americans in FEMA camps alone. Like Carl Benjamin, he’s also responsible for breaking UKIP. He entered the party along with Mark ‘Nazi pub’ Meechan. And the rest of the party, who really didn’t want to look like a bunch of racists, left in response.
But despite his extreme right-wing views and his opposition to immigration, I really don’t think it’s fair to call Watson a racist. And he does have a point about Black Lives Matter. BLM is centred around the perception that Black people are more likely to be killed by the cops than Whites, and that the police are institutionally racist. But this isn’t born out by the statistics.
Five years ago in May 2015 Watson posted this video, ‘Racist Facts White People Daren’t Talk About’ on his YouTube channel. He cites official government, police, FBI and academic statistics to show that Blacks aren’t killed by the cops more than Whites. But they do have more encounters with the rozzers because they disproportionately commit more violent crime.
He begins the video by showing that half of the police officers responsible for killing Freddy Gray, which set up of the Baltimore riots, were Black. But this fact is ignored. Black Lives Matter is about exploiting White guilt while ignoring the real causes of confrontations between Blacks and police.
Blacks commit disproportionately more violent crime than Whites. Blacks constitute just 13 per cent of the American population but commit half of all homicides. Department of Justice statistics from 1980 to 2008 show that Blacks were responsible for 52 per cent of all homicides compared to 48 per cent by Whites. FBI statistics for 2013 show that Blacks committed 38 per cent of murders compared to 31 per cent of Whites. From 2011 to 2013 38.5 per cent of those arrested for murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery and aggravated assault were Black. Young Black men between the ages of 15 to 34, who comprise just 3 per cent of the American population, are responsible for the proportion of these crimes from Black people listed above.
Whites, on the other hand, are twice as likely to be killed by the cops. Data from the Centre for Disease Control from 1999 to 2011 show that 2,151 Whites were shot by the police, compared to 1,130 Blacks. But as Blacks commit the same numbers of offences as Whites, then the numbers of Blacks shot should also be equal.
He also presents evidence to show that Blacks are far more like to commit crimes against Whites than the reverse. He claims that Blacks are eight times more likely to commit crimes against Whites than Whites are against Blacks. He cites FBI stats from 2007 that state that Black males were 40 per cent more likely to assault Whites as the reverse. And interracial rape is almost wholly Black on White.
He quotes the academics James Q. Wilson and Richard Herrnstein , who stated in 1985 that the higher rates of crime amongst Black Americans cannot be denied, even allowing for discrimination in the justice system. Every official statistic shows Blacks overrepresented people arrested and imprisoned for street crimes.
And Blacks are more likely to be involved in violent confrontations with the police. Here Watson makes the point that this does not justify police brutality, but it does refute the BLM allegation that the cops are racist or solely brutal towards Blacks.
This raises the issue of whether Blacks are unfairly targeted and framed by the police. This allegation is debunked by looking at offenders described as Black by the victims. The number of Blacks arrested correlates with the numbers of perps described as Black by their victims.
Watson also goes on to consider the factors responsible for the greater incidence of criminality in the Black community. Poverty is one factor responsible for disproportionately predisposing Blacks towards violent crime, exacerbated by family breakdown. But there is also the problem that there is an element in Black subculture that actively celebrates criminality. This is encouraged by the White liberal media. After the Baltimore riots the media justified the violence directed against Black owned businesses. This is racist, and it leads to more police brutality.
He states that police brutality is a problem in the US. But the real problem is the violent criminality in the Black community. But until this becomes part of the national conversation the real, underlying issues will not be resolved. He concludes that by keeping silent about this, Black leaders and White liberals are responsible for maintaining a vicious cycle of violence.
Obviously this is very controversial stuff. There have been complaints and campaigns for decades about the reporting of crimes committed by Blacks to prevent the automatic association of Blacks with criminality and violence. This has now got to the point where many people assume that a perp must be Black, if his race is not mentioned in any news reports as there are obviously no such delicacies about the reporting of crimes by Whites. 20 years ago this resulted in a reversal of racial prejudices. A poll of the British public taken about then found that White youths were the most distrusted section of the British populace.It’s undoubtedly true that Blacks have been the victims of massive discrimination and prejudice by Whites down the centuries. Highly discriminatory legislation was put in place to keep them down and segregated after the abolition of slavery in America. And there was considerable, vicious racism against them over here. I’ve Black friends, who’ve had terrible experiences.
Black Lives Matter’s assertion that police are prejudiced against Blacks also has a basis in fact. The police were, but I don’t think it’s true so much now. As I’ve said in previous articles, I’ve had relatives and friends in the police who very definitely weren’t. And this ingrained prejudice against the police has caused terrible misperceptions of intent when the cops have gone to help Black people. Years ago back in the 1990s I was on a sociology course as part of a postgraduate degree I wanted to do on British Islam. The lecturer told us that we had to be aware how our views of events didn’t necessary match those of others. One of these examples was a case in America, where a Black woman collapsed in the street. Two White cops went to help her, but other Blacks automatically assumed that they were attacking her and an angry crowd gathered. This was an instance where Black prejudice against the police, which I don’t doubt came from previous experience, was actively harming them by preventing the rozzers from helping that poor woman.
Watson has the attitude that the liberals and the media are keeping silent about the real reasons for Black confrontation with the police, as they wish to keep them dependent on the state. This is the usual conservative nonsense about welfare dependency. I think one of the reasons Britain did not have the same level of violent crime until the last couple of decades or so was because we had a functioning welfare state, or at least some semblance of one, which meant that in the absence of properly paid work people weren’t faced with the choice of robbing or selling drugs to keep body and soul together.
I’m not great fan of Watson, and certainly don’t share his arch-Tory, Brexiteer opinions. But I think that the facts are behind him in this case. And this does need to be recognised, because without it nothing will change.
Even if it discredits Black Lives Matter’s essential assertion that more Blacks are killed by police.
This is another great video from the Baltimore-based The Real News, posted on YouTube four days ago on the 25th February 2019. The news service’s host, Greg Wilpert, talks to Asa Winstanley of the Electronic Intifada about Israeli meddling in British politics to smear and discredit Jeremy Corbyn.
The Campaign against Ilhan Omar and Leah Whitson
Wilpert reports that the same day that Ilhan Omar in the US was attacked for anti-Semitism for comments she made about her country’s Israel lobby, an orchestrated campaign was launched in Britain to smear Leah Whitson of the Middle East section of Human Rights Watch. She had tweeted ‘Why is Israel interference in British politics acceptable? Is it only a problem when Russia does this?’ She was talking about the al-Jazeera documentary about how Israeli politicians tried to delegitimise left-wing politicians, particularly in the Labour party. Then the eight Labour MPs split, accusing Corbyn of bad leadership on Brexit and anti-Semitism. The deputy leader, John McDonnell, said they were making a mistake and should hold bye-election. This is followed by a clip of McDonnell saying that they should remain in the party to fight their corner. But if they don’t, they lose Labour party support, and should hold an election.
Wilpert then introduces Winstanley, mentioning his recent article for the Electronic Intifada, ‘Yes, Of Course Israel Is Interfering in British Politics’. Wilpert states that Israel has allocated considerable funding for Hasbara -propaganda-operations through various channels. Hasbara groups are very media savvy and have coordinated attacks in America and Britain. He then asks Winstanley what they are trying to do. What would they gain by the sacking of Leah Whitson.
Winstanley replies that they have been doing a huge number of things over the years with various degrees of success and failure. Human rights watch has been a thorn in their sides for many years because Israel is a state that abuses human rights, and this is impossible for Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International to ignore. Human Rights Watch puts out detailed information about human rights abuses in Israel, war crimes against Palestinians and injustices that Israel has always perpetuated against them.
Corbyn and the Labour Party
Wilpert then asks about what Israel is trying to achieve by smearing the Labour party with anti-Semitism. Winstanley replies that the anti-Semitism crisis in the Labour party is a campaign by racists to smear anti-racists. It’s a complete inversion of reality. Which is not to say that there is no such thing as anti-Semitism in the Party, it’s a mass movement of half a million people according to the latest figures, so statistically there are going to be some anti-Semites. In the main all the headlines about anti-Semitism in the Labour party have been at best an exaggeration and in many cases outright fabrications. A narrative that pro-Israel groups in the UK have been pushing for the last 3 1/2 years in order to sabotage the Labour Party. There’s footage at this point of pro-Israel demonstrators, wrapped in the Israeli flag, standing around with megaphones. Winstanley states that the party’s left-wing leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has for many decades been a Palestine solidarity activist. It fits in with the Israel lobby’s decades-long strategy of accusing anyone who is involved in Palestine solidarity of being an anti-Semite.
Wilpert remarks that Corbyn seems to be taking a passive approach to these attacks and is not going on the offensive against pro-Israeli groups. that are trying to undermine him and his party’s electoral chances. He asks Winstanley why he thinks Corbyn’s taking this approach. Winstanley replies that he doesn’t know the answer, and believes that there are several different reasons. But Winstanley feels that essentially he feels boxed in and limited it what he can do. Corbyn’s support from the party’s grassroots always comes most strongly when he fights his corner, as he had done on so many issues. Unfortunately the issue of anti-Semitism goes straight to the heart of what it means to be an anti-racist popular movement. Jeremy Corbyn has a strong record in this regard for decades, and the accusations of racism really hurt and are having an effect. Anyone on the left, who doesn’t realise this is deluded, and there are too many people in denial about it. Smears and allegations of anti-Semitism are the main weapon of the anti-solidarity movement, and this needs to be faced up to before it can be combated.
Why No Official Investigations of Israeli Propaganda Groups?
Wilpert goes on to say that it isn’t just Corbyn, but the Israel/Palestine debate as been a major issue in British politics although Britain has not occupied Palestine for 71 years. Why doesn’t Britain investigate accusations of espionage by Israeli hasbara groups? And what do the eight former Labour MPs hope to achieve by going against the dominant political views of their own constituents? Winstanley replies that it’s an excellent question, and that when the al-Jazeera documentary ‘The Lobby’ first came out, showing Israeli interference primarily here in the UK, mainly in Labour but also in the Conservatives and others, the Labour Party’s initial response, even from people like Emily Thornberry, Corbyn’s shadow foreign secretary, who was one of the Israelis’ supporters in parliament, a supporter of Labour Friends of Israel, called for an investigation into ‘improper interference in British politics’. But this was not followed up and nothing came of it. And this week, with the defection of the eight, now nine, Labour MPs away from the party, all but one of whom joined this new group, called the Independent Group, a political party in all but name, the vast majority of whom were pro-Israel. Of the initial eight, six were listed as supporters of Labour Friends of Israel, and Ian Austin, who also resigned today [25th] is also a member of Labour Friends of Israel. This calls into question Labour Friends of Israel. If a number of its MPs are not in the Labour party, then what is it doing in the Labour party. In Winstanley’s opinion the NEC should proscribe this organisation. After all, it’s a front group for the Israeli embassy in the UK, and its activities really need to be investigated.
Ryan and the Theft of Labour Membership Details
We have also seen this week Joan Ryan, one of the MPs, who’s joined this Independent Group, she’s being accused of improper access to Labour Party members’ data. Winstanley doesn’t know the full details about this yet. It looks like she accessed Labour members private electoral data. With her known links to Israeli embassy agents, including the embassy spy, Shai Masot, who was expelled from our country in 2017 after being exposed by the al-Jazeera documentary, questions have to be asked. There should be an investigation by the British authorities into this. What is she doing with that data? and it is a completely fair question to ask if she’s sending it back to Israel. In the al-Jazeera documentary on America, one of the LFI’s members, Jon Rubin, said in his own words ‘Joan will talk to Shai most days.’ She was in close association with someone who was effectively an Israeli spy. Is she still talking to the Israeli embassy most days? This is a real question to ask, but the mainstream media aren’t going there.
Over the past few days I’ve put up pieces reporting and commenting on the demonstrations against the slave auctions in Libya in Paris, Rome and London. These auctions are being held by the Islamist savages, who were helped into power as Britain and America’s proxies in the West’s campaign to overthrow Colonel Gaddafi. Gaddafi was a brutal dictator, but under his rule Libya became the most prosperous country on the African continent, its people had free healthcare and education. And, as this report shows, Gaddafi was no racist and made great efforts to benefit the entire African continent.
And the Islamists not only despise him, but are doing their very best to destroy the modern, relatively tolerant nation he created.
And the situation has been made worse by the silence of the mainstream media over the massacres committed against Black Libyans and migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, and their enslavement. And as this report shows, the media, or at least CNN, has kept silent for a very long time.
In this piece from the Baltimore-based Real News Network, anchor Eddie Conway talks to Glen Ford, one of the editors of the Black Agenda Report. Ford tells how CNN was aware of the atrocities against Blacks in Libya as far back as 2011. The Islamists despised Blacks, and so lynched and massacred them. These atrocities included the destruction of whole towns, such as Tawergha. This was a Black town with a population of 40,000. The Islamists destroyed it, butchered its people, and those, who survived were either enslaved or dispersed elsewhere in Libya. And Ford makes it clear that this was not done in secret. The Islamists put up flyers and notices announcing what they intended to do.
CNN did not report on this, and the other horrors, because it had reporters embedded in the Islamist terror gangs that were responsible for the ethnic cleansing and enslavement. The news got out thanks to that beacon of capitalism, the Wall Street Journal.
Ford also gives the reasons why the Islamists are targeting Blacks. He states that the Islamists hated Gaddafi because he came out of Arab socialism, and like many Arab socialist leaders was influenced by Egypt’s Nasser. They also hated him because he was pro-African, and their attacks on Blacks from further south in the continent is part of their venomous rejection of Gaddafi and his policies.
Conway and Ford also talk about how another African dictator, the ruler of Rwanda, is also exploiting the humanitarian crisis in the Libya. He’s promised to take in refugees, if the UN will pay for them. However, Ford points out that Rwanda’s ruler is responsible for the deaths of 6 million people in one of the largest genocides, and thousands more have been forced to flee into exile. He also says that once the money is paid, the refugees are not allowed to settle in Rwanda, but are then moved somewhere else.
The programme concludes that the ultimate responsibility for this carnage lies with the Western powers, America, Britain and their allies in Libya, who supported the Islamists, and the French in Rwanda, who are supporting the dictator there as part of a policy of recolonization all over the Continent.
I’m not surprised that Gaddafi was part of the tradition of Arab Socialism. It explains how it is that Libya had free healthcare and education. And it also explains part of the sheer animosity towards him by America and the West. True, Gaddafi himself was confrontational, and was certainly not averse to using terror and assassination when it suited him. But American foreign policy has always been against secular, nationalist Arab governments, including socialist administrations, as the next thing to Communism. He was overthrown because his government, simply by its nature, defied American imperialism. Quite apart from the fact that he was planning to reject the petrodollar for the Gold Dinar, and thus undermine America’s economic dominance through control of the main currency used in the oil industry.
As for the use of Islamist rebels, the US has been doing that ever since Ronald Reagan and Thatcher sponsored the Mujahideen in the Afghan War against the Soviets. And the Americans were warned by the Russian ambassador that once the Islamists had finished with the Russians, they would come for America. Thus the Russians knew that America would suffer an attack like 9/11. But Reagan and Thatcher had already decided these monsters were the forces of good and freedom, and so didn’t bother listening. They even heaped praised on Osama bin Laden.
This piece is also important for showing up the lies, omissions and distortions in the western media. These barbarities have been going on for the past six years, but it is only now that a mainstream newspaper has covered them. Conway and Ford state that it was due to the fact that CNN had its reporters embedded with the Islamists. That’s certainly a powerful factor. And it’s not used by the Islamists to control the media. The editors of Counterpunch, in their book End Times: The Death of the Fourth Estate, have several chapters on the way the American military is manipulating the media to promote its version of events in the Middle East. And this includes embedding journalists within army units. Once inside, the journos share a common bond with the soldiers around them, who are also responsible for their lives. So there’s a bias, as well as a vested interested, in presenting them in a positive light.
This story shows how much we really need alternative news networks, like RT, the Real News, Al-Jazeera, and alternative news shows like The Young Turks, the David Pakman Show, the Jimmy Dore Show and Sam Seder’s Majority Report and Secular Talk. These are the only shows and networks that are reporting and discussing the horror committed by western imperialism abroad, and the poverty and exploitation of working people in the west itself. All to boost those big, big profits.
They’re reporting what you’re not going to see on CNN, Fox, MSNBC or the Beeb over here. And it shows. More people are becoming aware of this, which is why Google and Facebook are trying to close them down, and the republicans and Democrats are screaming ‘Fake news!’ and ‘Russian propaganda!’ at RT.
This is a very interesting perspective on the massive downturn in the Tories’ lead in the polls here in the UK from the Real News Network. From the looks of things, this is a global Indian news programme based in America. In this video, Sharmini Peries in Baltimore talks to Kam Sandhu, a young woman, who is the founder of Real Media in the UK.
They discuss how the Tory polling lead has fallen from 20 per cent to just 5 due to May’s ‘Dementia Tax’, in which the homes of the elderly were to be seized and sold by the government to pay for their social care. Sandhu makes the point that this policy, and May’s removal of the cap on social care costs, attacked the Tories’ own supporters. The result was that afterwards, 28 per cent of people said they were less likely to vote Tory.
Sandhu also talks about the impact of the Tories’ plans to remove free school meals and replace them with free breakfasts. The Tories’ hadn’t costed this either, and when it came out that there was going to be only 7p spent per pupil on these breakfasts, it caused outrage and the Tories had to admit they didn’t know how much it would cost.
Sandhu admits that the 5 per cent polling lead of the Tories is only in one poll, but she says it has overturned the criticisms against Jeremy Corbyn – that he was too weak to lead, as against May, who was ‘strong and stable’. This has refuted these allegations.
She also states that even if Corbyn does not win, and is forced out of the Labour leadership, he has still set the Labour agenda on tuition fees, the Health Service and other major areas of Labour policy, which will be permanent. This is positive, and Sandhu is very glad that Labour now have a real chance of winning.
On Saturday I posted up a piece from The Empire Files about the long history of oppression, exploitation and brutality in Saudi Arabia. This is another video from the Files. Here the presenter, Abby Martin, talks to the veteran journalist Chris Hedges about the Empire and its machine of domination, including his experiences as a reporter in Iraq and El Salvador. Hedges is a Socialist, a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and the host of Days of Revolt on TeleSur English.
The programme begins with a discussion of how the American state cracked down on anti-War agitators, such as the Socialists Eugene Debs, Emma Goldman, Berkman and others for their opposition to World War I. This conflict saw the beginnings of the military-corporatist machine and the rise of modern state propaganda, pioneered by the Creel Committee and the use of the Sedition Act to crush dissent and peace protests.
After the War, the object of hatred turned from ‘the Hun’ to Communism and what has been described as ‘the psychosis of war’. This psychosis became institutionalised as total war after World War II. After World War I, the factories, that had turned to munitions production, changed back to their peace-time produces. This did not occur after the Second World War. The factories simply carried on producing arms, supported by a government financial network. This created the modern fusion of military and corporatist power.
Hedges and Martin also explore the way the American Empire differs from other, previous imperia. Hedges states that America, unlike other empires, colonised itself. The US army, for example, acted on behalf of the mining corporations, the loggers and so on during the expansion of the American West and the genocide of the Native Americans. After the colonisation of America was complete, America expanded overseas with the annexation of the Philippines and gun boat diplomacy in the Caribbean. Previous empires, like the British, occupied the countries they conquered. American doesn’t. Instead, America trains willing indigenous elites to act on its behalf. These included dictators like Mobutu in Zaire, Samosa in El Salvador and the Shah of Iran. They also overthrow foreign rulers, who threaten American corporate interests. Allende in Chile was overthrown because he threatened to nationalise the copper industry. Arbenz was ousted in Guatemala, because he was going to nationalise the property of United Fruit. America does not directly occupy these countries, but trains their indigenous rulers troops and supplies them with arms to govern for them.
The 1979 victory of Sandinistas in Nicaragua provoked a strong response from America, as they showed that they were not going to protect American corporate interests. And so Reagan pumped massive resources into the resistance movement and in supporting the dictator in El Salvador. The Salvadorean regime were given a fleet of 70 Huey helicopter gunships. They also recruited ‘black’ armies, that did not officially existed, using troops from outside the country. And CIA operatives were also brought in to aid the operations against the Salvadorean rebels. Half the population of El Salvador were landless peasants, while the land was owned by only ten families. The mass of the population were kept in dire poverty Hedges describes as worse than serfdom. When they tried to protest, or resist by forming labour unions and other organisations, they were gunned down in the street. At one point the death squads were killing a thousand people a month.
When America invaded Iraq, the same people, who organised the death squads in Latin America were brought in and used in the same strategy there. One of the officers, who was part of the American forces in the Iraq, had organised and led the death squads in El Salvador. In Iraq he created the Shi’a death squads to murder and terrorise the Sunni Muslims. The result of this was the creation of ISIS.
Hedges also describes the difficulties journalists faced reporting these facts from Iraq. Those reporters, who did cover these abuses were under constant attack from the American government, and particularly the state department. They were vilified as ‘fifth columnists’ and collaborators with America’s enemies. They also faced opposition from their own Washington bureaux. They could also be targeted for execution. In El Salvador, 22 journalists were killed during the war. He also states that the press themselves were quite willing to be used to support the American state’s propaganda in El Salvador. In the First Gulf War, the press was subject to very harsh restrictions. Dick Cheney wanted to deport Hedges, but was unable to find him. Very few war reporters – only 10 – 15% – actually go anywhere near the war. Instead, they stayed away from the front to listen to Cheney and the generals give lectures. The pool system of trustworthy reporters used to control the press in Iraq was actually administered by the journalists themselves. Hedges refers to these journalists as ‘Judenraten’, the Nazi term for the councils the Nazis set up in Jewish communities to administer them, and which chose the members of the population, who were to be sent to the gas chambers. And those journalists, who did join the troops, received great rewards for producing stories about how heroic the soldiers were. For his efforts in covering the dark side of the Iraq War, Hedges was booed off the stage when he gave a speech at Rockford College. The New York Times, for which he was writing, even accused him of damaging their reputation for impartiality. Its columnists were selected by the establishment to report the war as they wanted it. He states that it destroyed his career, but he would not have been able to live with himself if he had not spoken out. He stated he knew people, who had been killed, and describes the destruction of the country. 1 million people have been killed, 4 million displaced; and it has been irreparably destroyed as a unified nation state. It had some of the most modern infrastructure in the Middle East. This has also been destroyed.
Hedges makes it clear that the war is about natural resources, despite the verbiage about bringing democracy. He also states that you can’t be a Socialist without being an anti-imperialist and anti-militarist. It’s important to break the back of the Empire, because the methods it uses to control the subject peoples are then brought back into the heartland to use against the American people. The result of this is that Americans are under greater surveillance, the police has been militarised, civil liberties eroded and removed and so on. All of which could be seen from where they talking in Baltimore. It was the classic disease of empire, which the Greek historian Thucydides had documented when he examined the way ancient Athens similarly destroyed its democracy when it began its imperialist expansion.
Martin and Hedges also discuss the potential for revolution in America. Hedges states that when the system becomes so corrupt, that the elites only rule for themselves, there is always blowback. This can take malign forms, such as the Nazis in Germany. In America, blowback came in the form of FDR. He told the elites that either they gave up some of their power, there would be a revolution. This was when America still had the Communist and Progressive Parties. He states that America is now faced with the problem of challenging the dominant ideology, which has become so deeply ingrained. He describes going through the cemeteries in the American South with a civil rights lawyer. And in all of them there were row upon row of Confederate flags. The lawyer informed him that these had all gone up in the past ten years. Hedges states that what is happening in America is the same that happened in Yugoslavia just before it broke up. When people are made so desperate, they retreat into myth. Hedges finds the current rhetoric against Muslims particularly frightening, as it follows the pattern of violence he found in the wars he covered. Minority groups are first subject to verbal attack, followed by real, physical violence. He describes the American state as hostage to corporate and military power. This has become sacralised in the Christian religion, and part of the American gun cult. It will ignite into Fascism. It’s a symptom of a declining civilisation, the only solution for which is to re-integrate people into the economic system.
It’s a deep discussion, offering profound insights into the emergence of America as the modern imperial power, and the role played in this expansion by the corporate and military interests for whom the American state acts. This military-industrial complex dominates an empire abroad, and is stripping liberties and rights from its own people. The result is violent extremism abroad and at home, as alienated right-wing Americans become even more radicalised.
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