Michael Brooks is the titular presenter of an American left-wing internet news and comment show. He’s also a co-presenter with Sam Seder on the latter’s Majority Report. In this video, Brooks looks at and gives his approval to Labour’s election video.
Before going into the video, Brooks says that he thinks the election video is fantastic, that the initial polls look good and that Labour’s Brexit strategy is pretty smart. It’s smart from a tactical perspective of dealing with the competing demands from within their own party. He says of the Liberal Democrats that they are ‘utterly exposed’. They had an opportunity to form a government purely on the basis of making sure there wasn’t a no-deal Brexit. They rejected it because they care infinitely more about corporations and austerity and right-wing economic policies than stopping Brexit. Brooks then attacks the Tories, stating that Boris Johnson is the UK’s own contribution to the global embarrassment list – Trump, Netanyahu, Duterte and so on. Of Labour’s video, he says that he watched a conversation earlier that day between Alistair Campbell and John McDonnell, Corbyn’s no. 2. Brooks says that they’re really good politicians, because they’re putting so much on the table from the perspective of healthcare, workers’ cooperatives for a 21st century democracy, ‘that it’s not an opportunity to pass up.’ The video also shows they’re taking the campaign seriously, strategically and ‘presentationally’. They then show the video.
Labour’s election video begins with Corbyn’s election as head of the Labour party in 2015. It then moves through his career, and shows how he has forced the Tories to backtrack on some of their horrendous policies, while seeing off Prime Ministers David Cameron and Tweezer. In front of the relevant scenes are the following captions, beginning with Corbyn’s election. Corbyn’s shown saying ‘Poverty isn’t inevitable, things can and they will change. And they already have, says another caption. Tweezer is shown walking on, and then walking off backwards with the caption ‘Tories forced to backtrack on’ – dementia tax, winter fuel cuts, fox hunting ban, – ‘and many more’. A list of other policies blocked rolls up the screen too fast to catch, but they include grammar schools, police funding cuts, diesel tax, solar panel tax, tampon tax, Brexit deal vote, National Insurance, Brexit impact reports, Saudi prison contracts, Sunday trading hours, and triple lock on pensions.
There’s then footage of a reporter stating that polls show the Tories on 48 per cent, and Labour half that. Which is followed by John Snow saying ‘We, the media, the pundits, know nothing’. The captions then states that Labour had the biggest campaign growth since polling began. And that Corbyn bid farewell to two prime ministers, showing Tweezer and Cameron. It says he defeated May’s Brexit deal once, twice and then three times. He blocked Johnson’s disastrous no-deal Brexit. It then shows footage from the Labour conference of Corbyn saying that the party ‘will commit to unleash the biggest people-powered campaign we’ve ever seen in this country and in this movement.’ A caption then appears and says ‘To totally transform our society from grass roots upwards. To radically change our rigged economy so that it works for everyone.’ At this point there’s an image of Johnson meeting various people and Rees Mogg lounging on a Commons’ bench. The caption goes on ‘To urgently respond to the climate crisis with our green industrial revolution. To get Brexit sorted by giving the people the final say.’ It goes back to Corbyn against, who says, ‘We achieve all of these things by being a party and a movement totally and absolutely united to our common cause and purpose.’
The captions then appearing, saying ‘This is our chance, once in a generation to rebuilt Britain and put wealth and power in the hands of the many not the few. It’s time for real change’. And there it finishes with the Labour Party logo.
Brooks remarks, ‘That’s a good ad. They’re on point. I would really recommend if you’re in the UK you do absolutely everything you can for Labour. I’m incredibly excited to see what they put forward.’ He and the crew then discuss which date the election is on, before concluding that it’s the twelfth December. Brooks ends that section of the video by saying that he thinks it’s fantastic they have such a short election cycle.
The reason why the election cycle is so short, is because all the Tory governments have collapsed ever since Cameron’s wretched decision to call the Brexit referendum.
I think it’s brilliant that Michael Brooks thinks the video is so great, and gives his unqualified support for Labour. Brooks and Seder are both supporters of Bernie Sanders and his campaign to bring about the radical change America needs to empower its ordinary working people, and give them jobs and prosperity instead of more neoliberal lies, poverty and despair from the Republicans and corporatist Democrats. And what America most desperately needs is medicare for all. It’s a disgrace that a massive economic and geopolitical giant like America does not provide properly funded medicine to all of its people. The claims by the Republicans and right-wing Democrats like Hillary Clinton that the country can’t afford to is a flat-out lie. Bernie’s serious about correcting this glaring injustice in American healthcare, just as Corbyn’s determined to revive and regenerate our National Health Service.
We need and deserve Corbyn to win over here, and Bernie to win in America. And then we can make a better world by destroying four decades of Thatcherism and Reaganomics.
Before the really serious stuff, I though I’d start with a funny story from yesterday’s I, for 29th June 2019. This reported that cops in Limestone, Alabama, had finally arrested a man, who owned a vicious squirrel. This was no ordinary fluffy-tailed denizen of the trees, but an attack squirrel kept on methamphetamine. The article, ‘Owner of meth-fuelled ‘attack squirrel’ arrested’, by Francis Blagburn, ran
An Alabama man who allegedly kept a so-called ‘attack squirrel’, fired up by giving it methamphetamine, has been arrested on new charges.
Limestone County Sheriff’s Office in Alabama tweeted that 35-year-old Mickey Paulk was apprehended following a chase in which he rammed an investigator’s vehicle.
Authorities had been seeking Mr Paulk on multiple warrants unconnected to the squirrel he named Deeznutz, which was made infamous after police said they were warned about a meth-fuelled squirrel that had been trained to attack. Earlier this week, Mr Paulk posted a video to Facebook of himself with Deeznutz, which he considers a pet, in which he denied accusations that the squirrel represented a danger to the public, or that it had been given drugs.
“You can’t give squirrels meth; it would kill ’em”, he said in the video.
In a phone interview with Associated Press, Mr Paulk said he had “a few loose ends to tie up” before he surrendered himself to authorities, including sorting out alternative accommodation for the squirrel.
The sheriff’s office said narcotics investigators spotted Mr Paul leaving a motel on a stolen motorcycle and chased him. He has been booked into Lauderdale County Jail on charges of attempting to elude, criminal mischief, receiving stolen property and felon in possession of a pistol after it was discovered he had a handgun in his waitband.
As for Deeznutz, authorities say he could not be tested for meth and has been released. (p. 27).
Okay, it’s clear from the article that, squirrel aside, Paulk himself was a crim, and the cops were right to arrest him.
But it also made me wonder what the press and various politicos on both sides of the Atlantic would do, if they thought they could get votes out of this.
Donald Trump would probably start claiming that it was all down to Mexicans. They were not giving the US their best squirrels, and instead Mexican drug gangs were smuggling meth, cocaine and crack-fuelled squirrels into the country, to embark on a reign of crime. It would be categorically proven that most rapists and murderers were Mexican squirrels, and that was why America needs that wall.
Hillary Clinton would claim, regardless that Paulk’s colour isn’t mentioned in the article, that a new breed of superpredator was breeding these vicious, meth-addicted squirrels. She would then demand harsher legislation against Black men feeding squirrels in inner-city America.
And the corporate Dems as a whole would claim that this was all part of a plot by Putin. The Russian spy services, in collaboration with RT America, had infiltrated the American eco-system, radicalising squirrels and turning them away from true, patriotic American values. At a secret signal from Moscow, the squirrels would all leap into decent Americans’ homes, grab the TV remote control and occupy the computers, and change them over to Russian fake news promoting Donald Trump.
Over here, the Scum and the Times would declared that it was Corbyn and his supporters, who had radicalised the animals, brainwashing them with the works of Trotsky and Stalin. They were being trained to jump on people and start indoctrinating them with socialism. Momentum had already sneaked thousands of these squirrels into the Labour party as part of a far-left take-over, and it was well-known that Corbyn himself and other members of his group had squirrelist tendencies.
And the Scum, Heil, Depress and Sunday Times would also claim that the squirrels were anti-Semitic, Corbynist squirrels. The animals were known to believe in and promote evil, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Israeli interference in British politics. Corbyn had several times in the past attended conferences held by squirrels, attacking Israel. And it was well known that leading squirrels were also Holocaust deniers. The CAA would declare that the typical anti-Semite was a young Muslim male who kept a squirrel as a pet. Squirrels were also being recruited by ISIS as suicide bombers, and it was well-known that there were already no-go areas up and down the country, which non-Muslims couldn’t enter, patrolled by squirrels trained in sharia law.
And all the right-wing newspapers would fall in, saying that only a strong Tory party under Boris Johnson could deliver Brexit. This would be good for Britain, and allow us to take control of sovereignty and immigration, and allow us to combat squirrelist subversion.
All right, so the papers aren’t that bonkers yet. But all the racism, bigotry and prejudice is there, as well as the sheer desperation to smear Corbyn with whatever they can. And the latest attack on him by the Times, claiming he’s too elderly, smells to me of very rank desperation. So perhaps it won’t be long at all before they sink to trying to run stories about him and Labour, smearing him as the leader of vicious, subversive squirrels.
This is very interesting, and it made me think slightly better – but only slightly – of Alex Jones, the mad right-wing conspiracy theorist and his wretched internet show, Infowars. In this clip from Maoist Rebel News, host Jason Unruhe comments on a little piece of video which shows Jones screaming and cursing Trump for the airstrikes that hit Syria at the weekend. It was clearly shot before Jones went on air, so I assume the footage must have been leaked by someone.
Jones is one of the tin-foil hat brigade, who tells the world that there is a conspiracy by ‘the globalists’ to establish some kind of one world superstate and destroy all personal freedoms along with nation states. It’s standard right-wing conspiracy theory stuff, of the type that’s been a part of the right-wing paranoid fringe since at least the ’70s. Jones identifies the ‘globalists’ with the international business elites, who are under the control of demons or interdimensional aliens. Also involved in this are liberals, socialists and feminists. As for gay rights, they’re a transhumanist space cult to create a new race of genderless cyborgs and deprive us of our humanity.
Obviously, no-one has actually told the gays that. Or indeed, the producers and writers of Dr. Who. Since Russell T. Davis revived the show about ten years ago, it’s been very gay friendly. Which isn’t surprising, as Davis is not only gay himself, but way back in the ’90s made his name with the gay soap/ drama series, Queer As Folk. It’s also quite feminist, in that it’s been doing its best to break the stereotype of the Doctor’s female companions as just being there to scream and have things explained to them by the Doctor. The Time Lords are shown to change genders as well as appearance when they regenerate. The Master regenerated as a woman, and reappeared as Missy. And the next Doctor is going to be female as well.
But this liberal approach to sexual orientation does not mean a rejection of sexuality. Aside from the deep emotional bond between Rose Tyler and David Tennant’s Doctor, which saw Rose eventually settle on a parallel Earth with a human duplicate of the Doctor, there’s the Cybermen. Part of the horror of these monsters is the fact that not only have they had their humanity stripped away and replaced with steel and plastic, but they’ve also been deprived of their gender. They’re mechanical, neuter creatures, devoid of emotion, and determined to perpetuate themselves by turning humans, if not all humanoids, into themselves. All you have to do to see Jones is wrong about gay rights and transhumanism is simply watch a few episodes of Dr. Who.
Jones was initially a very enthusiastic supporter of Trump. He gave him much airtime when the orange buffoon was campaigning for the presidency. Jones thought that Trump was an outsider, who would defeat the globalists and drain the swamp of corruption engulfing American politics.
He’s been gravely disappointed. Trump has carried on with pretty much the same policies as his Republican and corporatist Democrat predecessors, and has, if anything, been even more corrupt in giving government posts to his friends and family, including positions where they would enjoy an unfair advantage as private businesspeople.
Trump’s decision to launch airstrikes against Syria provoked a particularly vehement reaction from Jones. Jones is very much a man of the right, but from here it looks like he belongs to that strain of American Conservativism which states that the country has absolutely no business interfering in other countries’ internal affairs. it’s why some American Conservatives were against the Iraq invasion, including a senior female Pentagon colonel. It’s peculiar, but some Libertarians can be very critical of American foreign policy and its programme of increasing tension with Russia, which can make them seem a bit more left-wing than they actually are.
Of course, Jones doesn’t go the whole way, and wake up to the fact that the reason Trump’s bombing Syria is because of American capitalism and the greed of American multinationals to conquer and exploit yet another middle eastern state, as well as the Neocons to destroy another threat to Israel. Instead he rants about how its all the fault of liberals, Democrats and other members of the left.
Unruhe makes some very valid, pertinent points himself in his comments on Jones’ screams of rage. He states that Marxists realise that the problem isn’t just individual capitalists, but with the system as a whole. But Jones’ anger at Trump shows how profoundly Conservative he is. Jones believes the present system is perfect, and that it’s only gone wrong because of a few individuals. This, Unruhe says, is the psychology behind conspiracy theories, such as those which see the world’s problems as being due to the Illuminati, or, in an anti-Semitic variant, the Jews.
He’s absolutely right on this point. The stupid, malign conspiracy theories which claim that there is a global plot by the Illuminati, the Freemasons, Jews or some other clandestine group, is an attempt to explain the failure of capitalism and laissez-faire economics, without challenging them. They’re seen as perfect, and so if they don’t create the freedom and prosperity their advocates promise, it must be due to some group operating outside the system and trying to pervert and destroy it.
I don’t agree with Unruhe when he says that individual figures aren’t of importance, and that what matters is the system as a whole. There are clearly good and bad employers and some Tories are definitely far worse than others. The present structure of society isn’t perfect, but the extreme right, like the current Tory party and the business people who donate and support it, are making it far worse. They need to be turfed out of office immediately.
Yesterday evening, ITV news reported that one of the big donors to the Labour party had left the party. The donor, who I think was called Gerard, complained that the party was rife with anti-Semitism, and that very little was being done about it. This must have delighted the biased mainstream media. I’m surprised they didn’t do a little dance of joy.
As everyone, who’s been smeared as an anti-Semite by the Israel lobby can vouch, this is an utter lie. The Labour Party takes such accusations very seriously. So seriously that decent people have been suspended, expelled and smeared as anti-Semites and, in Mike’s case, as a Holocaust Denier, simply through baseless accusations brought by mendacious, cowardly individuals. These people hide their real identities, and deliberately twist the evidence and misquote those they are maligning so as to misrepresent them. There are anti-Semites in the Labour party, just as there are in the Tories. But the anti-Semitism smears have nothing to do with real anti-Semitism. It’s about the Israel lobby and its cheerleaders and lackeys trying to get rid of Corbyn, because he supports the Palestinians. And they’re aided by the Blairites, who fear the rise of a real, genuine socialist Left. This is a blow against their control of the party, and their policy of pursuing the vote of the aspirant middle classes instead of sticking up for the poor, the disabled, the unemployed and the working and lower middle classes.
I don’t think that Mr. Gerard will be entirely missed, except by the Blairites. Blair was able to carry through his ‘modernisation’ of the party, getting rid of Clause 4 and transforming it into another Thatcherite political vehicle, because of the funding he was given was by a group of Jewish donors through Lord Levy, who Blair met at a gathering at the Israeli embassy. This made Blair independent of the unions and their funding.
ITV and their guest expert described this latest development as a blow, but said it wouldn’t be as severe as it may have been because Corbyn had transformed Labour into a mass party. And this is the core of the issue.
A couple of years ago Harvard University issued a report stating that America was no longer a functioning democracy but an oligarchy. This is because American politicos ignore what the electorate want, and do the bidding instead of their donors. Hence the Republicans and Corporate Democrats have done their best to represent the interests of the oil industry, big business and Wall Street against ordinary Americans.
And Blair was exactly the same. In Peter Mandelson’s notorious words, New Labour was ‘very relaxed’ about the rich, and Blair promoted a vast number of corporate donors, like Lord Sainsbury, to government posts. If you want to see how many, take a look at the relevant pages in George Monbiot’s Captive State. With the power of the Blairites being challenged by Momentum and the Left, it was always on the cards that the donors Lord Levy had brought into the party to support Blair would eventually abandon Labour. They were never really supporters of Labour to begin with. Indeed, quite the opposite. Like Rupert Murdoch, Who also switched from the Tories to Labour, the impression is that they were only interested in Labour as the best vehicle to pursue their own, corporate interests within the wider area of neoliberal economics. The last thing they wanted was a Labour party which actually does what the public wants and rejects neoliberalism for a mixed economy and proper state funding for education, health and welfare support.
And I doubt very much that anti-Semitism is the real reason Gerard left, despite his bitter comments. It seems to me that he’s another member of the Israel lobby, who feels bitter about the Labour leader supporting the Palestinians. Which does not equate to anti-Semitism. There are a number of Jewish organisations supporting them, which are very definitely not anti-Semitic or remotely self-hating, and who will not accept Jew haters as members.
I’ve been informed that Corbyn is a supporter of Israel himself, but wants a fair, peaceful settlement for the Palestinians. But this seems to be too much for the Israel lobby, who can’t tolerate anybody siding with them, even if they aren’t enemies of Israel as such.
As for Jewish support for the Labour party, Mike and very many other blogs have put up pieces showing the support Corbyn enjoys by a whole ranges of Jewish groups and individuals. And Jewish businessmen have supported the Labour party ever since the days of Harold Wilson, before Maggie Thatcher and her clique seized power in the Tories. I’m confident that the Jewish businesspeople, who genuinely support Labour, will continue to find a welcome place in the party.
It seems to me very strongly that Gerard wasn’t one of them. He looks instead like one of the very many donors, regardless of religion or ethnicity, who supported Blair simply for their own corporate advantage. And in Gerard’s case, to promote Israel against the Palestinians. Now that this is threatened, he has angrily made his departure.
And his accusations of anti-Semitism are just lies made to excuse himself and make his departure look less like the self-interested manoeuvring it is.
Mike over at Vox Political has already put up a piece commenting on the Tory and right-wing Labour attacks on Jeremy Corbyn for his response to the government declaring that Putin is responsible for the nerve gas attack in Salisbury on Sergei Skripal and his daughter. Corbyn stated in his speech that he totally condemned the attack, but wants absolute proof that Putin is responsible before blaming Russia and retaliating. This is just too much for the Tories, who when they find themselves confronted by a real statesman, rather than someone who just sabre-rattles and strikes nationalistic poses, immediately start lying. So the Labour leader has been vilified as Putin’s puppet, and for failing to condemn Russia for the attack in Salisbury. Despite the fact that Corbyn has condemned the attack. And the Beeb in their coverage was absolutely delighted when they showed the Tories cheering on the Labour backbenchers, who attacked Corbyn. This must have been music to the ears of their news editor, Laura Kuenssberg, who presented that piece. But Mike’s article shows how Corbyn is absolutely right, along with the support he has amongst thousands of people online sick and tired of Tory and Blairite lies, people who also make extremely good arguments in the Labour leader’s favour.
In this piece from the Jimmy Dore show, the American comedian and his co-hosts, Ron Placone and Steffi Zamorano, also discuss the smears against Corbyn. They make the same points Mike has made, and then apply it to the situation in America, where the Republicans and the Corporate Democrats are doing their level best to smear Bernie Sanders. And so Sanders has been reviled as racist, misogynist, wearing expensive clothes, you name it, they’ve flung it at him. This is, Dore states, how the establishment deals with anti-war progressives. It’s also, as they point out, the way the Democrats are attacking Trump. He’s being attacked as Putin’s puppet by that section of the Democrats that is now even further right than the Republicans.
He goes further, and describes his own vilification and smearing by his right-wing opponents. He has 300,000 subscribers to his channel, which is much smaller than The Young Turks’ 3 million. But he’s been smeared, his videos edited to make it appear that he’s saying things he isn’t and misquoted. He states that mostly he doesn’t respond to the smears, as this would elevate them and bring them to more people’s attention. With the exception of the Washington Post, when he decided he’d have a little fun. He makes the point that when Bernie announces his candidacy for the presidency, the abuse against him is going to make that against Corbyn pale.
Dore also makes the point that all this material from the intelligence community, like MI6, which supposedly points in the direction of Putin, really isn’t convincing either, given the way the intelligence services lied about there being weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And Steffi Zamorano also finds it very strange that the British government is leaping to attack Putin, but has declared that everyone in Salisbury is safe, and has not called the incident a terrorist attack.
Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, who was sacked and smeared because he was too honest, is also very critical of the identification of the nerve agent used in the attack. This has been identified as Novichoks, a toxin created by the Russians. But he presents evidence that casts considerable doubt on that identification, and the assertion that the Russians must be responsible. He concludes
1) Porton Down has acknowledged in publications it has never seen any Russian “novichoks”. The UK government has absolutely no “fingerprint” information such as impurities that can safely attribute this substance to Russia.
2) Until now, neither Porton Down nor the world’s experts at the Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) were convinced “Novichoks” even exist.
3) The UK is refusing to provide a sample to the OPCW.
4) “Novichoks” were specifically designed to be able to be manufactured from common ingredients on any scientific bench. The Americans dismantled and studied the facility that allegedly developed them. It is completely untrue only the Russians could make them, if anybody can.
5) The “Novichok” programme was in Uzbekistan not in Russia. Its legacy was inherited by the Americans during their alliance with Karimov, not by the Russians.
Some of the commenters on this blog have also pointed out that with an election coming up, and May seven points behind Corbyn, she definitely needs to start sabre-rattling to get the nationalists on her side. Plus, international tensions are delight to the arms industries, who want to sell more kit to our forces. And Porton Down, our chemical weapons research centre, has now been £50 million to build a new research factory. Which is just amazing, considering the government is pleading that there isn’t enough money to support the NHS, the sick, disabled, unemployed, the poor, schools or provide anything like the funding a really civilised society needs.
And as for supplying money to Porton Down, this comes rather late. As Mike points out, Labour set up a special regiment to deal with chemical weapons attacks. But this was closed down by Cameron in 2011.
And the backbench Labour rebels, who were attacking Corbyn seem mostly seem to be members of the Labour Friends of Israel. So the Israel lobby in the Labour party is seizing its chance to attack Corbyn, and try to get back into power that way. More smears by those, who manufactured the smears that Labour is full of anti-Semites and Nazis. I suppose I really shouldn’t be surprised. They’re very strongly connected to the corporatist Blairites, and it was Blair, who put pressure on MI6 to ‘sex up’ the dossier so it would provide a pretext for the Iraq invasion. So more lies from them.
Putin is a thug. In Russia he actively stamps on and persecutes opposition parties and politicians. Journalists and other critics of his regime are regularly beaten, and many have died in very suspicious circumstances. 14 other Russians have also died in similarly suspicious circumstances over here. But we have to be absolutely sure that he is responsible, not jump to conclusions, and make sure our response is proportionate and reasonable.
But May’s hysterical nationalism will play well with the jingoistic hordes of the Scum, Fail, Express and the rest, who will even now be salivating at the thought of making her into another belligerent Thatcher. Even if that means precipitating another, dangerous crisis in international relations.
The corporatist, Clintonite wing of the Democrats has looked at the success of Donald Trump, and drawn precisely the wrong lesson from it. They concluded that after a millionaire reality TV star won the Republican nomination and then the presidency, what they had to do was field their own millionaire TV star as a candidate. And in this instance, they’ve decided that this candidate might be Oprah Winfrey. The idea’s gone over well too in the press on this side of the Atlantic. The ‘Opinion Matrix’ column in the ‘I’ newspaper quoted two newspapers raving about what a wonderful idea this would be.
In this clip from The Jimmy Dore Show, Dore and his co-host, Ron Placone, talk about why Oprah would be a terrible candidate. There’s a lot in there, but essentially the argument is very simple.
They quote a long article from the Guardian, one of the few newspapers, which doesn’t think it’s a good idea to choose Oprah. This points out that the problems afflicting ordinary working Americans come from the very nature of free market capitalism. People are becoming poorer and more insecure because of the destruction of what remained of the American welfare net, outsourcing, privatisation, low wages and job insecurity. All of these need to be tackled.
But this is precisely what Oprah will not do. She’s another neoliberal, who believes that it’s not the system that needs to be changed, but you. If you look inside yourself, you can improve your place in society, and rise up to be anything you want. It’s a reassuring message for some people, as it tells them that America is still the land of opportunity. Even though it isn’t, and hasn’t been for a very long time. Way back in the 1990s there was little difference between social mobility in the UK and the US. An article commenting on this in the Financial Times made this point, and argued that what gave American society its attractive power was the myth that it was, that ordinary people could still move up to be president, or a company director, or whatever. This is now no longer true, and in fact there’s greater social mobility in Europe.
This explains why Oprah’s so attractive to the corporate elites. She’s a black woman, so if she got the presidency, it would be a symbolically liberal gesture. Just like Killary and her team were arguing that the election of Clinton would be a victory for all women. Even though Clinton has done and would do nothing for America’s working people, and especially not women, who do the lowest paid work. It was all identity politics, with Killary claiming to be the outsider because she was a woman. Even though she’s in the pocket of Wall Street and other corporations, and as thoroughly corporate and corrupt as any of them. But if you didn’t back her, and instead chose Bernie, who actually stood for policies that will benefit America’s working people, you were automatically smeared as a ‘misogynist’. This included women voters, who, La Clinton declared, were only doing what their husbands and boyfriends told them.
The same’s going to be the case with Oprah Winfrey. It’s more identity politics, even though identity politics didn’t work with Clinton, and they probably won’t work with Oprah. Winfrey offers ordinary working Americans nothing, which is presumably why the corporate press in Britain was raving about what a good candidate she is. All the billionaires now owning papers, who don’t pay tax in this country, are presumably salivating at the thought of another president, who’ll do just what business leaders tell them.
As for what effect her presidency will have on Black Americans, you only have to look at Barack Obama to see that this prospects aren’t good. Despite all the racist screaming from the Republicans that Obama was an anti-White racist, who was planning to exterminate White Americans, Obama in many ways was a completely unremarkable, corporate politico. And he did precious little to solve the various problems facing Black communities in America. Oprah will be exactly the same, only the poverty will be worse. Economists have looked at the decline in the household wealth of working Americans. This has declined drastically. But the decline in White household wealth is nowhere as severe as that experienced by Black families. It’s been estimated that in a few years, their average household wealth will be $8.
Oprah has nothing to say to that. Absolutely nothing. Except that people should look inside themselves, believe in themselves, work hard and then magically their dreams will come true.
Except we live in a harsh, cruel neoliberal corporate hell, rather than the dream reality held out by corporate shills like Killary.
And domestic poverty isn’t the only reason why Oprah would be an awful president. She’s another hawk in foreign policy. In this clip from the Sam Seder’s Majority Report, they comment on a piece in her show where she promotes the invasion of Iraq, repeating the lie that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.
Hussein didn’t have any weapons of mass destruction. There was no connection between him and Osama bin Laden. It was a Likudnik and Neocon lie to invade Iraq, steal their oil and plunder their state industries. The result has been chaos and mass death, carried out not just by Sunni insurgents, but also by the mercenaries under General McChristal, who was running death squads against the Shi’a.
If Oprah gets in, there’ll be more wars in the Middle East and elsewhere, as the American military machine keeps demanding more conflict and more funding.
Now I’ve nothing against Oprah Winfrey personally. She’s glamorous, intelligent and a genial TV host. But that’s all she is. In terms of policies, she offers absolutely nothing to ordinary Americans, except more corporatism, bigger profits for the rich, and more poverty and exploitation for the poor, including and especially Black Americans. And as far as foreign policy goes, she’s a danger to world peace. The Iraq invasion destroyed one of the most successful secular states in the Middle East, where women were safe to hold jobs outside the home, into a sectarian bloodbath. All for the profit of multinational corporations.
But I don’t doubt that if ordinary Americans don’t vote for her, the Democrat propaganda machine will vilify them, just as they smeared everyone who voted for Bernie against Killary. If you don’t vote Oprah, they’ll scream, you’ll be a racist and a misogynist. And no doubt Blacks will be told that they’re all ‘Uncle Toms’ and ‘housen****ers doing what Massah tells them. All while the Black, female candidate doesn’t care a jot about doing anything practical to help working Americans with their real problems, but just promotes the neoliberal myth of American social mobility. While seeing that the corporate rich get even richer, of course.
Last Sunday, 7th January 2018, was the Golden Globes. This got on the news around the world, not just because of the coverage of which actors and films were given awards, but because the female actors wore black in solidarity with all the women, who had suffered sexual abuse, harassment and exploitation. This culminated in one of the leading actors at the ceremony announcing that Hollywood’s ladies would stand in solidarity with every woman, who had suffered such sexual abuse and assault, and that they would be dedicating a special fund to help poor women sue their abusers.
Coming after the scandals about Harvey Weinstein, Roger Ailes and others at Fox News, including its long running host, Bill O’Reilly, such an announcement is clearly well meant, and for many women facing the cost of having to drag their abuser, who is probably their boss, through the courts, the prospect of being able to get some money from a charity dedicated to helping them would surely be welcome. But not all women, and not all feminists, saw it quite like that.
Roza Halibi in Counterpunch and the Sane Progressive on YouTube both put up pieces about it, criticising the move. Many women, including the French actress Catherine Deneuve, are critical of the #Metoo movement as they feel it demonises men. All men are now being viewed as sexual predators, real or potential. They also object to the way distasteful and unpleasant forms of sexual contact – like the boss with wandering hands – has been lumped in and conflated with far more serious forms of sexual abuse, like rape and women being told that if they don’t sleep with their boss, they’ll lose their jobs. Groping is unpleasant and humiliating, and it’s quite right that there should be a campaign to stop it. But it’s not at the same level as the other two.
They also found the stance of the individual actresses involved in the speech and this display of solidarity hypocritical. Weinstein’s behaviour was known for years by people within Hollywood, including Meryl Streep. And at the time they kept their mouths firmly shut. Some of this might have been because Weinstein was a powerful man, and no matter how respected and successful they were as ‘A’ list actors, he could have the power to destroy their careers, as he threatened numerous aspiring actresses if they wouldn’t sleep with him. But some of it no doubt was also the attitude of the time, to put up with it regardless.
But there’s also an attitude that the speeches against sexual harassment and exploitation were also a form of faux feminism, by rich, entitled women, who were trying to appropriate the protests by ordinary, middle and lower class women. Critics like the Sane Progressive and Halibi have argued that the successful protests always come from below. They are won by ordinary working people standing up for themselves and demanding further rights and change. They are not achieved by members of the upper classes deciding that they will charitably act as the saviours of the lower orders. The #Metoo activism at the Golden Globes represents very rich, entitled women trying to take control of a protest by their sisters lower down the social scale, and wrest it away from any meaningful challenge to a corrupt system as a whole.
The same critics have also made the point that the #Metoo activism has also acted as a diversion. Sexual abuse is only part of a whole series of problems corporate capitalism is inflicting on American society. This includes mass poverty and starvation, the further denial of rights to low paid workers, Trump’s attempts to repeal Obamacare and destroy Medicare, the destruction of the environment, and the political paralysis caused by a corrupt party system taking money and its orders from wealthy donors in big business, rather than acting in the interests of ordinary citizens. All of these issues need tackling, but the leadership of the Democrat party has become, under the Clintons and Obama, as thoroughly corporatist as the Republicans, and has no interest in tackling these issues. That would harm the interests of their donors in big business. So they make symbolic liberal gestures. Like Hillary Clinton’s bid for the presidency last year. Her policies were more neoliberalism, corporate greed, and aggressive militarism. For ordinary Americans she offered nothing but more poverty and exploitation. But she claimed that, because she was female, she was somehow an outsider, and that a victory for her would thus be a victory for women. Even though, as the lowest paid group, women would have suffered the most from a Clinton presidency. If you didn’t vote for Clinton, you were automatically a misogynist. And if you were a woman, and didn’t vote for her, she and her followers denied it was because you had opinions of your own. Rather, you were just doing what your husband or boyfriend told you. So much for Clinton believing in women’s independence and their agency as human beings.
But this experience of a very rich, entitled woman trying to make herself appear liberal when she was anything but, has clearly coloured some left-wing and feminist attitudes in America towards other attempts by the rich to embrace or promote left-wing causes. Clinton’s liberalism was a fraud, and so some people are suspicious that the actresses stressing their commitment to rooting out sexual abuse are less than wholehearted in their determination to ending the general poverty, exploitation and other issues plaguing American society. And just as the corporate Democrats are desperate to take power away from the real radical left, like Bernie Sanders, so these ladies are trying to take power away from ordinary women, determined to solve the problem their own way. Because this challenges their position in society and their political influence as arbiters and spokespeople of the nation’s conscience.
Now I think the #metoo speeches were well meant, regardless of the possible hypocrisy of some of the actresses involved, and hopefully some women will benefit from the money available to sue their abusers. But the Guardian’s Marina Hyde a few years ago wrote a book, Celebrity: How Entertainers Took Over the World And Why We Need an Exit Strategy, pointing out numerous instances where Hollywood celebs decided to take over a cause, only to make the situation worse. There’s a very good case to be made against such Hollywood activism. And this problem may well become more acute, as more celebs decide to promote symbolic issues, while leaving the other problems affecting ordinary people untouched.
Boris Johnson has flown to Moscow to try to repair some of the damage the new Cold War has done to Anglo-Russian relations with his opposite number, Sergei Lavrov. And despite declaring himself a Russophile – and I’ll believe that claim when I see concrete evidence – Eton’s blonde ambition seems to have made matters worse. He’s declared that there’s evidence that Russia’s been interfering in the affairs of countries all over the globe.
So RT spoke to Ken Livingstone to see what he thought of it all. And the man Private Eye calls ‘Leninspart’ and makes jokes about being a ‘Leninist newt fancier’ has some very interesting things to say. They are definitely what you are not going to hear on the lamestream news or tonight on Have I Got News For You.
Livingstone states that he knows Boris very well, having fought against him in four elections. He comments that the old Etonian blonde beast (Will without intelligence! How beautiful! How free!, as Nietzsche rhapsodised) doesn’t want to be a politician. He wants to be a celebrity. And he very often doesn’t read the briefing documents his aides prepare for him. Thus he managed to get Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s sentence extended by the Iranians for supposedly teaching journalism, when she was there on a holiday visiting her family.
As for the reasons behind the latest Cold War, Livingstone suggests that it’s all today with America’s failure to come to terms with the fact that China is about to overtake them as the world’s largest economy. Way back under Obama, the US tried to put together a coalition against China, because they were afraid of its growing power. Obama tried to get Russia to join their alliance, but Putin wouldn’t play ball. He had good reason. Russia does a lot of trade with the Chung Kuo, the Middle Kingdom. In pique, the Americans have decided to attack Russia and punish them for this disloyalty. Despite the fact that, as Livingstone says, a growing number of academics are pointing out there’s absolutely no truth in the allegations that Russia is manipulating other countries internal affairs.
It’s also very hypocritical. Livingstone was there in 1996 when Yeltsin, who by then he describes as ‘completely dysfunctional’ was up for re-election. Livingstone’s convinced that the election was rigged. The Communist candidate, Tsuganov, won the popular vote 54-46. But somehow Yeltsin got himself back into office. The result was his drunken antics on the international stage, the crash privatisation of the Russian economy, resulting in total meltdown and mass poverty and colossal corruption that reached all the way to the top. Livingstone states that most Russians probably found it a relief after Yeltsin to have Putin. I don’t doubt it. Putin’s another fascistic militarist, like Trump, and I’ve no doubt that the allegations of corruption around him are true. It’s why I’ve referred to him as the ‘arkhiplut’, a Russian term meaning ‘arch-criminal’. But he’s given his people stability, prosperity and national pride after the chaos of Yeltsin’s grotesque reign.
Livingstone is also pessimistic about any possibilities of change in Anglo-Russian relations. Despite Boris calling himself a ‘russophile’, Boris will probably start making speeches attacking the Russians the moment he gets back to Britain. And the situation itself will continue as long as America cannot reconcile itself to the fact that it is no longer going to be the world’s only superpower. Instead there are going to be many superpowers. But the Americans can’t accept that.
This sounds exactly right. I hadn’t heard that Obama had tried to put together an anti-Chinese alliance, but it doesn’t surprise me. It would explain why Killary also had a bitter enmity towards them, and why she was doing her best to ramp up tensions with the Chinese as well as the Russians. Counterpunch and other radical, left-wing news sites have also documented the way the Americans poured money into Yeltsin’s campaign, subsidising it to the tune of hundred of millions, if not billions, in order to get the drunk capitalist re-elected. Because Yeltsin was selling off state assets cheaply, and American multinationals wanted their ‘piece of the action’. Some of the resentment towards Putin coming from the other side of the Pond now is because Putin has stopped all that. Russia was supposed to be under America’s economic yoke, like every other country America has ‘helped’, going all the way back to the Marshal Plan. And because Putin has followed Lenin’s dictum of smashing the West’s economic imperialism at its weakest link – Russia – the Americans are furious and want to see him toppled and Russian influence combated.
There are, of course, other, personal reasons why the Americans hate Russia at the moment. Like Killary trying to fend off the fact that precious few Americans actually like her, and that she was caught fiddling the DNC’s internal elections to take the presidential nomination away from Bernie Sanders. Because she, like the men around her in the corporatist Democrats and Republicans, is the puppet of big business and very definitely in Wall Street’s pocket. So to try to distract attention from her glaring faults, she’s claiming it’s all due to Russian hacking. It wasn’t. WikiLeaks have said they got the leaked emails from a disgruntled insider. The FBI has said that the Russians aren’t interfering in America’s political affairs, or at least, no more than they usually do. The only people repeating this lie are Killary, the lamestream media, who fear losing out to alternative news media, like RT, and a group of Nazi libertarians, the Von Mises Foundation, who want everything privatised and have published eugenics ‘scientific’ racist balderdash claiming that America shouldn’t have a welfare state, because Blacks and the poor are racially inferior and undeserving.
As for BoJo, I also don’t doubt here that what Livingstone has said is correct. BoJo definitely enjoys being a celebrity. He’s appeared on Have I Got News For You, and used it as the title for one of his wretched books – Have I Got Views For You. He is ruthlessly ambitious, completely unprincipled, and absolutely bereft of any recognisable talent.
There’s a simply way to repair relations with Russia: sack Boris, and stop doing what the Americans say. This is another example of the ‘special relationship’ working against our interests and for the Americans. The Americans want Russia punished, and so our politicians act once again as their poodles and lapdogs. Just like Blair enthusiastically backed Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq. We’re trying to maintain our own failing status as a great power by riding on their coat-tails. And because America’s now in trouble and wants to hurt China and Russia, we have to follow suit.
The Special Relationship is all very well, but it’s time to assert our independence and do the right thing by refusing to toe the American line on Putin. Global peace may depend on it.
Well, as Freddie Mercury once sang in Queen’s epic track, ‘Machines’, ‘The machines take over’, and this time there really ‘ain’t no rock ‘n’ roll’. Or as the blurb for this video puts it instead, the Trump animatronic is so horrifying it’ll haunt your dreams.
Disney have created a robot version of America’s most unpopular fascistic president for their Hall of Presidents. The Trumpdroid stands in front of the other animatronic US presidents, and recites a speech, with appropriate gestures and body movements, about his august predecessors were responsible for crafting the American constitution and political structure, and so creating the freedom that Americans enjoy today.
And Seder and his co-hosts are right: it is very creepy. The robotics technology used to animate the machine is really impressive, but it does bear out the observation of one Japanese robotics scientist. I forgotten the fellow’s name, unfortunately, but he shrewdly observed that people are uncomfortable with things that resemble them closely, but are still very different. Hence the human discomfort with robots when they become a little too accurate. Something similar was also said by Red Dwarf’s Kryten way back in the 1990s. Lister, or one of the other members of the ship’s highly dysfunctional crew, ask him why his manufacturers have made him look very much less than a perfect replica of a human. He replies by stating that it’s because this would make people feel uncomfortable around him, for exactly the same reasons the Japanese scientist suggested. And way back in the mid-1970s, an irrational fear of robots – ‘robophobia’, or ‘Grimwade’s Syndrome’, was one of the plot elements in the Tom Baker Dr. Who serial ‘The Robots of Death’. This particular serial was set on a sandminer, a vast mining vehicle, operated by a small human crew under which was a much larger labour force of robots. And the robots start shaking off their servitude. It’s explained in the show that some people have an irrational fear of robots, because although they look like humans, they don’t employ any body language. And so to them they appear as ‘the walking dead’.
Rather more humorously, Seder and his friends joke that the other mechanical presidents are looking at the Trumpdroid wondering how on Earth it got there. And that the President Lincoln android is just about to tell the rest of them that there’s no choice for it now: they have to put the pistols to their heads and blow their little robot brains out. They also joke that it’s rather like the bit on the SF series Westworld, when the robots look down at themselves and finally realise what they are.
Rather more seriously, the clip begins with a discussion between Seder and a caller about the GOP’s tax bill, and why people join the Republican party. He states some join, because they hate the Environmental Protection Agency, and what to use highly toxic pesticides on their land, like Tom Delaye. Others really hate trade unions, and what to destroy them to keep ordinary people poor. But the majority do it to enrich themselves through corporate sponsorship. Such is the state of American politics. And the same comments also apply to the corporate Dems of Hillary Clinton, and to the Conservatives and Blairite Labour over this side of the Pond.
If these characters remain in power, perhaps the world would be much better if the machines really took over. Or the Xenomorphs from the Alien franchise. After all, as Ripley says in the 2nd film, Aliens, when she discovers the way she and the space marines have been betrayed by the Corporation, the aliens ‘don’t f**k each other over for a percentage’.
This is disgusting, but the person causing the outrage and nausea isn’t, or shouldn’t be, Sam Seder.
Sam Seder’s Majority Report is one of the American alternative news shows, whose clips I watch regularly. He’s a genuine liberal, supporting single-payer healthcare and a very trenchant critic of American Conservatism and Fascism. He’s also very critical of Israel and its abuse and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. And like others, who have spoken out about this issue, he’s also suffered the smears and accusations of being ‘anti-Semitic’. Despite the fact that Seder is, by his own admission, very Jewish ‘the most Jewish person you know’. This is almost par for the course. In my posts about the Israel lobby and the anti-Semitism smears, I’ve pointed out again and again how those accused of anti-Semitism because of their principled stance against the massacre and brutalisation of the Palestinians are very frequently self-respecting Jews, both secular and Torah-observant. Indeed, Tony Greenstein and other Jewish activists have stated that the Israel lobby particularly attacks Jews. It wouldn’t surprise me the least if this were true. It’s because Netanyahu and the Likudniks and other racists in the ruling coalition claim to speak for the Jewish people as a whole. And so independent Jews critical of Israel are a threat, because they show this to be a lie.
Apart from his own show, Seder was also a contributor to MSNBC. He has now lost that job, thanks to a Tweet he made back in 2009 sarcastically commenting on others’ defence of Roman Polanski. Polanski has been in exile in Europe ever since he raped a 13 year old girl at a party sometime in the late 1960s. Back in 2009 there were moves to have him extradited and tried for his crime in the US. Seder was annoyed by the attitude of other liberals, who tried to defend Polanski on the grounds of his stature as a great film director. So he sent out a Tweet with the sarcastic comment that he hoped that if his daughter got raped, it would be by someone with a great mise-en-scene. Seder has made it very clear that this was sarcasm, and has previously read out a statement on his show, complete with the other Tweets he posted in that sequence, that make it very clear that he certainly does not approve of rape or the sexual abuse of children.
However, this has not stopped Mike Cernovich, a right-wing troll, claiming that this Tweet shows that Seder does, and so he’s been sacked from MSNBC. There are a number of posts about this from other members of the American alternative news media, like The Young Turks, the David Pakman Show, and so on. In this clip, Seder describes just who Cernovich is. He states that the only person, who agrees with Cernovich’s view is David Duke, and that isn’t an accident. Of course not. Duke was the leader of the Klan in Louisiana, and those who’ve interviewed him, like Cenk Uygur, have described him as the most anti-Semitic person you could meet. Cernovich himself also seems to be very well-disposed to the Nazi right, retweeting all the nonsense about how diversity equals White genocide and so on.
In this clip below, Seder states that Cernovich may actually have done him a favour, as before he got the job with MSNBC he was more angry in his presentation, and rather more entertaining. He also states that he intends to make a documentary about Cernovich, so that the next time Cernovich goes after someone, they can put it up to show what kind of a person he is.
Here’s an earlier video put up by Seder, which explains the Tweet and the circumstances around it, placing it in its proper context.
I’m disgusted by this, as it shows how the right is using the public’s horror of child sexual abuse to smear and close down their critics. Looking at the second video, in which Seder responds to the smear by Cernovich and Sebastian Gorka, it seems to me that this is an attempt by the Republicans to divert attention away from Roy Moore. Moore’s the Republican Senator for Alabama, who has been very credibly accused of a series of sexual assaults, tantamount to attempted rape, on underage girls. So has Cernovich. As Seder points out in the first video, Cernovich was accused of attempting to rape a girl, but managed to bargain it down to battery. So Cernovich has got absolutely no business accusing anyone of sexual abuse.
It also appears that Sebastian Gorka is also involved in this sordid campaign. Gorka was briefly a member of Trump’s cabinet, and likes to style himself as an expert on terrorism. He’s also another individual with extreme right-wing views. He wears the medal of the Vitezi Rend, a right-wing chivalric order founded by the Hungarian dictator, Admiral Horthy, who was responsible for the country’s collusion with the Nazis during World War II and the deportation of its Jewish citizens. Gorka himself has been very active in extreme right-wing Hungarian politics, and was one of the founders of various Fascist, ultra-nationalist and anti-Semitic groups and networks. Not that this has stopped him from being welcomed by Netanyahu. He turned up the other year at the Herzliya Conference in Israel, the annual jamboree for the country’s military. As Tony Greenstein pointed out, this was another example of the way Zionists will ally themselves very easily with genuine racists and anti-Semites, when its convenient.
Seder and his co-host, Michael Brooks, who is also Jewish, have had a great time spoofing Gorka and his pretensions. Much of this has been very silly imitations of Gorka’s accent. Gorka spent several years in Britain, and so has a weird accent that’s a mixture of upper-class educated American, BBC British and Hungarian. All mixed in with his own weird diction. This smear by Cernovich and Gorka shows that Seder has drawn blood with his satire and commentary on Conservative political and moral corruption. Especially with those two clowns.
And I hope that this smear won’t deter him or his supporters around the world, and he’ll continue skewering the Republicans, Corporatist Democrats and the neoliberal elites, who are plunging the working people of America and the rest of the world into poverty for a long, long time to come.
The fact that Cernovich and Gorka have gone this low shows that the alternative news media is having an effect. So support them. And make the mainstream media and the racist right afraid. Very afraid.
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