Chumbawamba Sing Their Farewells to Maggie Thatcher

Okay, I’ve put up a series of left-wing and socialist music videos over the past couple of days laying into the Tories and other right-wing pundits and blowhards like Piers Moron and ‘Depeche Toad’ Farage. The results of the council elections are coming in, and it seems the Tories haven’t done terribly well. Not as disastrously as I’d like, but they’ve lost several councils to Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens. And I thought I’d rub it in a bit further with this musical reminder that Maggie is no longer with us. This is a performance by the pop band Chumbawamba singing their song anticipating Thatcher’s death, ‘In Memoriam – So Long So Long’ at a concert in Bedminster, one of Bristol’s suburbs, way back in 2009. It was put up on Random Planet’s channel on YouTube in 2013.

The song was written and performed before Thatcher’s death and the band were going to release it as an EP. Hence they ask people not to put it up on YouTube just yet, and also give instructions on how you can order it directly from them. As the performance is over a decade old, it’s doubtful this arrangement is still working. You can, however, hear the full EP on YouTube as well. This includes a short piece in Spanish which is supposed to be General Pinochet’s regards from beyond the grave, as well as Frankie Boyle’s joke that when Thatcher dies, the Scots are going to dig a hole so deep they’ll be able to hand her over to Satan personally. It’s an interesting piece musically. It’s jazz-inflected and actually really laid back, for all that it’s celebrating Thatcher’s demise.

Thatcher’s long gone, but unfortunately Thatcherism still remains a force in British politics as zombie economics – a doctrine long shown to be dead and useless, but which is still propped up into a kind of ghastly semblance of life by right-wing politicians and the media. It’s about time it was laid to rest as well.

Priti ‘Vacant’ Patel Plans Nazi Defence for Officials Causing Deaths of Migrants

Okay, my last piece was against anti-White racism and how the media really doesn’t like covering race-hate crimes against Whites. Which means that supposed comedienne Sophie Druker is able to get away with a stupid joke about Blacks wanting to kill Whites on a show last year hosted by Frankie Boyle, and has even won the Comedy Award because of it.

But now I have to cover the opposite racism against Blacks, Asians and other ethnic minorities. Mike’s put up a piece warning that our wonderful, loathsome foreign secretary, Priti ‘Vacant’ Patel, wishes to pass legislation making any official causing death to a migrant immune from prosecution. According to the Groan, this specifically means anyone pushing the migrant boats crossing the channel back out to sea. Mike’s called this abomination what it is: Nazism. It’s the defence used by the monsters who carried out the Holocaust and other atrocities committed by Hitler’s Third Reich: ‘We wuz only following orders!’

Mind you, what really, really seems to get right up the nose of right-wingers like Patel is when you call them ‘Communists’. Well, despite the obvious difference that Stalin had everything nationalised and the Tories would like to privatise everything they can, you can make the same comparison. Stalin killed 30 million Soviet citizens during his purges. This included the deportation of whole nations, such as the Chechens, and Russian minorities like the Cossacks to Siberia. He was a vicious anti-Semite and would have liked to have deported the Jews there as well. He set up a Jewish autonomous oblast (district) out there, but only a small number of Jews actually went. I remember watching a documentary on the deportation of the Cossacks in the 1990s. This was filmed by members of Leningrad University’s anthropology department, and simply consisted in a large part of the students and researchers sitting down and talking to the old folks who’d survived. It was understated but harrowing. People described cannibalism during the famine, boys running away from Hannibal Lecter’s all too real predecessors. School children dying of starvation en masse. One woman tearfully describes how she was gang-raped by prison camp guards. It was horrific stuff, told in simple conversation over glasses of tea in Soviet peasant homes.

Stalin also used the purges to industrialise the former Soviet Union. Business managers sent the KGB lists of the types of workers, manual and intellectual, they wanted to the KGB, who obliged by rounding them up on false charges of anti-Soviet activity. They were then sent to the gulags, around which whole prison cities grew up with populations of hundreds of thousands.

But no-one responsible for the mass arrests have been charged for their crimes against humanity.

Yes, Khrushchev in his secret speech attached and dismantled Stalin’s ‘cult of personality’, and Lavrenti Beria, the rapist in charge of the KGB responsible for enacting the purges, was arrested by the Soviet army and shot. But other, lesser officials got away with the mass murder of millions. Their membership of the Communist party gave them a ‘get out of jail’ free card.

Just as it seems, membership of the DWP and the Tory party do the same in 21st century Britain.

Samuel Miller, one of the excellent folks on Twitter Mike quotes in his article, has said that the Tories have already made DWP officials responsible for the deaths of benefit claims immune to similar prosecution for years.

And Mike has also published a long article about the ways Priti Patel intends to pass legislation breaking international laws on refugees. He has also pointed out that such laws don’t just affect non-white immigrants. They affect traditional White Brits. Because, as the late, great Tony Benn observed, what the Tories do to native Whites, they start by doing to immigrants. Food banks first appeared under Tony Blair, when he made illegal immigrants illegible for benefit. Then the Tories decided it could also be used to support -just barely-all the indigenous Brits, by which I also include Blacks and Asians, who’ve been here for generations, who got thrown off benefits due to their genocidal sanction system.

The moral of all this: Don’t get pulled in to supporting to this by all the rhetoric against ‘dinghy divers’ and so on by people like Alex Belfield. ‘Cause after PolPotPatel (copyright ‘Cleckylad’) she and the other walking moral imbeciles will come for you.

Because they have the same contempt and hatred for the White poor, as they have for Black and Asian immigrants.

https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2021/10/14/priti-patels-planned-immunity-for-officials-who-cause-deaths-of-refugees-is-nazism/

https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2021/10/13/priti-patels-borders-bill-is-an-attack-on-national-and-international-law/

‘Kill Whitey’ Joker Sophie Druker Wins Comedy Award Despite Outrage

In one of his videos yesterday, right-wing YouTuber Alex Belfield expressed his strong disapproval of Sophie Druker, who has won the Comedy Award, it seems, for her joke on a show with Frankie Boyle about Blacks wanting to kill Whites. She made the joke last year as a guest with other Black personalities on the show talking about Black Lives Matter and its protests. Boyle had opened the programme with a joke about asking his guests why they wanted to kill Whitey. Druker, a comedienne, replied, saying ‘We don’t want to kill Whitey’, then adding ‘Yes, we do.’ Okay, it’s obviously a joke. Druker clearly doesn’t want to kill Whites. It was obviously intended as a throw-away line. But it left a large number of people annoyed, including Belfield himself. And it’s quite understandable why. Belfield states in his video that he’s upset about the double standard. It would clearly be unacceptable for him, as a White man, to tell jokes about killing Black people. But it should also be unacceptable for Blacks to joke about the racist killing of Whites. But the Beeb and the judges of the Comedy Award don’t share that view. The Beeb brushed off the complaints they received about Druker’s comment, while the judges have apparently awarded Druker the award because of it. No doubt they thought it was challenging, edgy, and anti-racist, and so was pushing the boundaries of comedy in a blow against White racism. But it only shows instead the Beeb’s and the judges’ complete complacency and ignorance about anti-White racism.

It would clearly be unacceptable to joke about the racist murder of Blacks because of the real racism and racist violence experienced by Blacks and other ethnic minorities. But there’s also a high level of racial violence and abuse of Whites. This has, at times, been at the almost the same level as that against non-Whites, and sometimes above it, but has not received nearly the same media attention. For example, in 2006 the Guardian ran an article reporting that between 1998 and 2004 Whites accounted nearly half of all murder victims in which race was a factor in the killing. In this period there were 58 murders, with Whites making up 24 of the victims. At about the same time I remember there were reports that for the first time, Whites formed the majority of victims of racist crime, though looking through the internet it seems it was a report by the Committee for Racial Equality published in 1999. I found an article in the Independent that claimed, if I recall correctly, that Whites now formed 60 per cent of victims. And the amount of anti-White abuse and violence still forms a significance percentage of racist crimes. The right-wing Lotus Eaters in a video posted on 26th March 2021, quoted official stats from the government’s own Hate Crimes Unit, which stated that in the year from 2019 to 2020, Whites constituted 41 per cent of all victims in England and Wales. However the amount of anti-White racist crime is not reflected in the media, which exclusively concentrates, with very few exceptions, on abuse and attacks on non-Whites.

Some of this may come from the fact that a relatively small proportion of the White population is affected as opposed to Blacks and Asians. The Lotus Eaters quote the same stats, which show that nearly all of England and Wales’ Black population have experienced some kind of racial offence. But the proportion of Whites who have experienced it is much smaller, undoubtedly due to the greater size of the White population compared to that of Blacks and Asians. At the last census, Whites constituted 85 per cent of the population, while Blacks and Asians were about 15 per cent. The Beeb and other media bosses can be complacent about it, because quite simply they may never have experienced it.

But another factor is that the police and media don’t like talking about it because they are afraid of being accused of racism. The Guardian article quoted Peter Fahy, the Chief Constable of Cheshire and the Association of Chief Police Officer’s spokesman on race, who said ‘The political correctness and reluctance to discuss these things absolutely does play a factor. A lot of police officers and other professions feel almost the best thing to do is try and avoid it for fear of being criticised. We probably have got ourselves into a bit of a state about this. The difficulty in the police service is that the whole thing is being closed down because we are all afraid of discussing any of it in case we say the wrong thing – and that is not healthy.’ It is this attitude that meant the Muslim grooming gangs in Rotherham and elsewhere were left to abuse young White girls horrifically for nearly two decades completely unpunished, despite the police and authorities knowing exactly what was going on.

Some of this reluctance also comes from the fear that anti-White racism will be exploited by the Fascists. This is absolutely reasonable. I remember a report in one of the papers that the BNP did exactly that following reports such as those in the Groan. The BNP organised a competition for children in which they were supposed to imagine themselves as the victims of racism. This was White children, and imagine the racists were Black. Clearly nobody wants to hand Nazis like the BNP a real weapon to justify their race hate and violence.

There is also opposition by Black activists to anything other forms of racism except White from being discussed and condemned. Or even reported. A few years ago Diane Abbott told an Asian colleague, who was worried about racism within the BAME community, that she didn’t want it discussed because ‘they’ would use it to divide and rule. Black activists have also tried to redefine racism, so that something is only racist if it involves institutional oppression. This would mean that a racial assault by a White person on a Black victim would be officially racist, because Blacks are generally more disadvantaged and thus institutionally oppressed. But the reverse, a Black man assaulting a White victim, isn’t seen as racist as the White victim would be held not suffer such oppression. A little while ago there was a stir when three non-White activists, one Black and two Asian, made this argument against the inclusion of anti-White crimes in the statistics of racist offences.

Belfield is a terrible right-winger, who’d like to privatise the Health Service. But in this case, he is absolutely right: Druker shouldn’t be rewarded for her tasteless and inappropriate joke and the Beeb should get down of its corporate high horse and apologise for it. As should Druker. And the Comedy Award has been a non-event for years. I have the impression that way back in the ’90s it used to be the Perrier Award. This was in the heady days when comedy was expanding as the ‘new rock ‘n’ roll’. It even, for a brief period, had its own magazine. That was when the Award was given to up and coming comedians who were actually funny, and who went on to become household names. Now no longer. Perrier have stopped sponsoring it, as has, it seemed, the corporation that stepped in to replace them. And the Award is now reduced to promoting people like Sophie Druker for their tasteless and, some would say, racist jokes.

I was so annoyed by this that I drew this cartoon of Druker and Diane Abbott about it. I have to say, I have mixed feelings about Abbott. I agree with much of what she says, but some of her comments on race drive me up the wall and have me wishing she’d resign. As when she ignored the police’s strong advice for people not to speculate on the identity of the attempted murderer of Sasha Johnson. Abbott jumped to the conclusion that the murderer must have been a White supremacist, although the men actually accused are all Black. Abbott’s comments could easily have provoked a race riot. Instead of apologising for being too hasty, Abbott played the victim and made comments implying that the media instead were being racist for criticising her, because she was a woman of colour.

This is nowhere near good enough. Years ago opponents of anti-Black racism chanted that ‘Silence Violence’. If you didn’t speak up about anti-Black racism, you were also culpable.

But this should also apply to those who remain silent about anti-White racism or seek to close down any discussion of it.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/oct/22/ukcrime.race

The Lotus Eater’s video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wi4pDOjpC1c&t=309s

BLM Activist Calls for Dictionary to Redefine Racism

Here’s something far more controversial after some of the posts I’ve put up recently. A few days ago, the writer and Youtuber Simon Webb put up on his channel, History Debunked, a piece about a worrying attempt by a young Black American woman, Kennedy Mitchum to change the definition of racism in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Webb states that most people would say that racism means racial prejudice, or that there are more profound differences between racial groups than their skin colour and physical appearance. The Merriam-Webster dictionary currently defines racism as

1. A belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities, and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.
2. A doctrine or political programme based on racism and designed to execute its policies.
3. Racial prejudice or discrimination.

This wasn’t good enough for Mitchum. Three days after the death of George Floyd, with riots breaking out across America, she emailed the publisher calling for the definition to be changed in accordance with Critical Race Theory. This holds that racism is due to the imbalance of power in society, and implemented by the dominant racial group. Instead of telling Mitchum where to stick her suggestion, as Webb himself would have done, the publishers responded to her, telling her that this issue needed to be addressed sooner rather than later and that a revision would be made. Peter Sokolofsky, one of the dictionary’s editors, stated that the second definition would be expanded to be even more explicit in its next edition, and would include systemic oppression as well as sample sentence, and would be formulated in consultation with academics in Black Studies.

Webb points out that if this is done, then it would redefine racism as something that only Whites do, and absolve people of colour of any responsibility for it on their part, or indeed see them as being racist at all, because Whites are the dominant race in Britain and America. This is, he claims, the attitude of many liberals and leftists, who believe that all White people are racist. It would also mean that Blacks, who hated Jews or Indians, would not be viewed as racist. He has personally seen such racism in the Caribbean street robbers of Hackney. They hated Orthodox Jews and used to go to Stamford Bridge to prey on the Jewish community there. He ends the video by stating that such a redefinition of racism would mean that all Whites in Britain and America are defined as racist but no other ethnic groups.

Changing the dictionary definition of racism – YouTube

There certainly is an attitude amongst some anti-racist activists that only White people can be racist and are never the victims. Way back in October 2019 Sargon of Akkad, the man who broke UKIP, put up a post commenting on a report in the Guardian about complaints about an EHRC investigation into racism at Britain’s universities by a group of Black and Asian academics and students. The group, which included Heidi Mirza, the visiting professor of race, faith and culture and Goldsmiths College, University of London, Fope Olaleye, the NUS’ Black students’ officer, Gargi Bhattacharyya, professor of sociology at the University of East London, and Zubaida Haque, the deputy director of the racial equality think tank, the Runnymede Trust, were outraged at the Commission because it dared to include anti-White, anti-English racism. This, they seemed to believe, detracted from the Commission’s true purpose, which was to combat White racism against Blacks and Asians.

Students of Colour Furious that Anti-White Prejudice is Considered to be Racism – YouTube

I’ve posted a number of pieces criticising the lack of attention and action against anti-White racism. At the moment the attitude that racism is something that only Whites are guilty of racism seems extremely prevalent. In fact, the situation regarding racial prejudice, abuse and violence is far more complex. About 20 years ago, before 9/11 and the subsequent massive rise in Islamophobia, Whites briefly formed the largest number of victims of racial abuse and violence. There are also tensions and conflict between different non-White minorities. In the 1980s or ’90s there was a riot in Birmingham, not between Blacks and Whites, but between Blacks and Asians. I’ve also heard that in one of the schools in Bristol in one of the very racially mixed areas, most of the playground fights were between different groups of Asians. Some people were aware that different ethnic groups also had their racial prejudices. Boy George mentioned it when he appeared on Max Headroom’s chat show on British TV in the 1980s, for which he was praised for his brave outspokenness by the world’s first computer generated video jockey.

There is, however, a real reluctance to tackle ethnic minority racism. A couple of years ago an Asian man told Diane Abbott that there should be more action on the racism members of ethnic minorities experienced at the hands of other non-Whites. Abbott told him she wasn’t going to do anything about it, because the Tories would use it to divide and rule. Like Kennedy Mitchum and the Critical Race Theorists, as well as the critics of the EHRC, she was solely focussed on tackling White racism.

That focus, in my opinion, explains why the Black comedian and anti-racist activist, Sophie Duker, felt she could get away with a joke about killing Whitey on Frankie Boyle’s podcast. Boyle had assembled a panel of mainly Black and Asian activists, to discuss the topic of how ethnic minorities were coming together to kill Whitey. Duker had made comments about racism being the product of an ideology of Whiteness, which was harming Blacks and Whites. She then said that they didn’t want to kill Whitey, before adding ‘we do really’. She was clearly joking, but her comment resulted in the corporation receiving 200 complaints. According to right-wing internet radio host and Youtuber, Alex Belfield, the Beeb is now being investigated by the Greater Manchester Police for what is described as a ‘hate incident’. His attitude is that while Duker’s comment was a joke, it should be unacceptable, just as making jokes about killing Blacks is unacceptable. See, for example, his piece ‘Reply BBC ‘Whitey’ Joker STAGGERING From Unapologetic Hate Lady Comedian’, which he put up on Youtube on the 8th January 2021. No, I’m not going to link to it. Even I have standards! I think one of the reasons she felt she could make the joke is because she and the other activists concentrate exclusively on White racism. Anti-White racism simply isn’t an issue with them. But anti-White racism, abuse and violence does occur, hence the angry complaints.

We really do need a study of anti-White racism and racism amongst ethnic minorities. Sir Alan Burns, a British colonial civil servant and former governor of the Gold Coast, now Ghana, discusses Black prejudice against Whites and other racial groups in his book, Colour Prejudice, published in 1948. Nigel Barley also discusses the blind spot Cameroonians had towards their own racism, as well as that of a Black American ethnologist in his The Innocent Anthropologist. The Black American was very racially aware. An idealist, he was inspired by notions of Black brotherhood and wished to live and be treated by the local people the same as one of them. He was shocked when they continued to regard him as they would White westerners, and failed to see how the Fulani traders rigged the local markets to exclude those from other tribes. As for the Camerounians generally, they commonly believed that only Whites were racist. Barley describes how they excused the massacre of French nuns in the Congo by the claim that the nuns were themselves racists. But they refused to recognise that their own hatred and contempt of the people he was studying, the Dowayo, was also racist.

Some Asian nations also have a reputation for racism. Back in the 1990s I found a book on Chinese xenophobia on sale in Waterstones in Bath. I’ve also read various books on Japan, which have also described how racist Japanese society is. I don’t know if it is still true, but one could only qualify as a Japanese citizen if both parents were Japanese. This meant that there was a sizable Korean community, who had lived in the country for generations, which had no civil rights under the law. In schools there was a strong suspicion of outsiders, so it has been claimed, which resulted in foreign students being segregated in separate classes. This is on the grounds that their Japanese language skills may not be good enough for inclusion with the rest of the pupils, but it is applied even to children who are fluent in the language. Outside Japan, expatriate or visiting Japanese will stick almost exclusively to themselves. Back in the 1990s there was a controversy in Australia, I believe, over the construction of a luxury resort there by the Japanese, because it was exclusively for Japanese and no-one else. I don’t mean by this to claim that all Japanese are racist. I’ve met people, who lived in Japan, who admire them and who told me that in their experience they were a very kind people. The travel writer and historian William Dalrymple also describes the anti-Black racism he encountered in India in his book, In Xanadu. Arriving at a railway station with a friend, a Black American soldier, he approached a group of Indian porters, only to see them turn away, sneering at the Black American simply for being Black. Again, I don’t wish to imply that all Indians are racist either.

Racism and racial prejudice exists amongst all peoples and ethnic groups to a greater or lesser degree, even in this country. It is about time that there were proper academic studies of it amongst non-White ethnic groups and anti-White racism in this country. At the moment there is a feeling amongst Whites that only White on Black racism is taken seriously, and that prejudice against Whites is not only acceptable, but being fostered by supposed anti-racist activists.

If the authorities are serious about tackling racism, and all forms of it, that needs to change.

Frankie Boyle Jokes about Israel

I found this short video of about 5 1/2 minutes long posted by Foam Chomsky on YouTube. It’s a series of jokes about Israel by Scots comedian Frankie Boyle, intercut with footage of Israeli soldiers beating, shooting and killing unarmed Palestinians.

As you would expect from Boyle, some of the jokes are coarse and nearly all of them savage. He starts by saying that he’s learning the Israeli military martial art, and now knows various ways to kick a Palestinian woman in the back. Female porn stars are now calling their pubic area a ‘Gaza Strip’, because it’s been viciously pummeled and there’s no hope of children getting out there alive. The monarchy also gets a drubbing. On Prince William’s visit to Israel, Boyle quips that he’ll be the first British royal to go there who wasn’t leading a crusade. He shreds the Israeli claim that the Palestinians use people as human shields. He talks about how you have to visualize Palestine as a cake. It’s a cake that’s being pummeled by an angry Jew. Netanyahu’s name spoken with a Glaswegian accent sounds like a rubbish Scots internet provider. They should call comb-overs Netanyahus, because they’re an attempt to colonise territory they’ve no right to.

One of the jokes was cut by the Beeb from Boyle’s appearance on stage at the Palladium. There’s also a series of tweets by Boyle attacking Israel, including caustic replies to American comedian Bill Maher and former Tory MP David Cameron. The latter gets it for his hypocrisy wishing Muslims a happy Eid al-Fitr at the same time he was bombing their countries.

I don’t know if Boyle has been accused of anti-Semitism yet. It wouldn’t surprise me if he had. But there’s also an element of irony here, in that Boyle also appears to have swallowed the media lie that Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-Semitic, even though Corbyn isn’t, and the people making the accusation are the same apologists for Israel that Boyle himself has torn into.

Dimbleby Resigns as BBC Propagandist on Question Time

Yesterday, Mike put up a piece commenting on the resignation of former Bullingdon boy David Dimbleby as the host of Question Time. The man Private Eye dubbed ‘Dimblebore’ has been presenting the show for 25 years, and now considers it the right moment to leave. Dimbleby is another BBC presenter, who is very biased towards the Conservatives. Mike’s photograph of him accompanying his piece shows him raising two fingers, with the comment that it’s probably to a Socialist. Mike also cautions against feeling too good about Dimblebore’s resignation, as we don’t know what monster’s going to replace. He wonders whether the secret of human cloning has been found, and whether the next biased presenter of the programme will be Josef Goebbels.

https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2018/06/17/if-david-dimbleby-is-leaving-the-bbcs-question-time-what-horror-will-replace-him/

Last week Dimblebore was off in Russia, presenting a documentary about the country under Putin ahead of the footie there. He wasn’t the only, or even the first person to go. The comedian Frankie Boyle got there over a week earlier, presenting a two-part show about the country, it’s people and football on Sunday evening. Dimblebore was rather more serious in tone, presenting Russia as a country in the grip of a repressive autocrat, and mired in corruption which was strangling the economy.

Dimbleby first explained that Putin was most popular with young people, the generation that everywhere else is rebelling against autocrats, dictators and tyrants. He puts this down to Russians’ experience of economic collapse under Yeltsin. Yeltsin ended communism and dismembered the economy of the Soviet Union, privatising whatever he could. The result was chaos, and massive employment. At one point it got so bad that some factories were paying their workers in the goods they produced. Putin has restored order and economic stability to the country, and so has the support of the younger generation.

He spoke to a great of young professionals, an advertising branding team who were supporters of Putin, working to promote him through images and slogans. He stated that most of the media was controlled by the Russian president, with a few exceptions. He then went to speak to someone from RT’s Moscow branch. Dimbleby explained that some of the staff were British, and asked one of the Brits there whether he was presenting propaganda. The man denied it, said that there was no one watching over him, telling him what to do, and that his conscience was clear. Dimblebore then gave a knowing smirk into the camera.

He then talked to a female presenter on one of the few dissident broadcasters Putin had allowed to remain open. She said that she had not received any threats, but she knew that she could be killed for what she did. But she was still determined to carry on.

He then talked about how those, who criticised the government were arrested and jailed, interviewing a human rights lawyer, who defended them. When asked what people could be arrested and jailed for, the lawyer explained that it could be criticism of the government, or a non-traditional understanding of the Second World War. The other year Putin passed a law criminalising the view that Stalin was partly responsible for the Nazi invasion of eastern Europe and Russia through the Nazi-Soviet pact. From what I remember, I think you can also be arrested for promoting gay rights.

He then spoke to a woman, who was protesting her treatment by the state. She had already been jailed for criticising Putin, but was determined to do so again. She had not been able to get a permit to organise a protest, and so held her own, one-woman demonstration outside the court. This is permitted under Russian law. If you can’t get a permit for a demonstration, you can still protest, so long as there is only one person involved. As she stood with her placard, she was joined by an increasing number of counter-protesters determined to disrupt her protest, and possibly send her to jail. They moved closer to her, and she moved away, telling them to keep their distance. They kept coming, and their numbers kept increasing. Then the cops turned up, and started filming things as they’d been told foreigners were involved. And someone else from one of the TV companies materialised to film the protest as well. Eventually it all ended, and the police and counter-protesters disappeared.

Dimbleby then did a piece about the police’s brutal suppression of dissent, complete with footage of the cops beating what looked like a feminist protester from Pussy Riot.

He also touched on gender roles. He talked to a hairdresser, while having his haircut, who told him that Russia still had very traditional gender roles, in which women wanted a strong man to provide for them.

Putin has also succeeded in reversing the declining Russian birthrate. Instead of falling, it is now rising, with medals and benefits given to couples who have large families. He showed one woman and her husband, who were being presented a medal by Putin for having ten children.

He also went off to talk to a youth organisation, that was set up to get children, including boys of junior school age, interested in the army. The group’s name translates as ‘Net’, and is run by army officers. The children there wear combat uniforms and learn to shoot using air rifles, which they are also taught how to strip down. They were shown blazing away at targets, and competing with each other over who could reassemble a gun while blindfolded the quickest, with Dimblebore cheering the winner. And it wasn’t all boys. One of the youngster there looked like a girl. Dimblebore asked them if they wanted to join the army, to which they gave a very enthusiastic ‘Yes’.

He then went off to speak to a prelate from the Russian Orthodox Church about its support for Putin, where he described Putin as an autocrat attacking human rights and threatening peace in Europe. The prelate responded by saying that there were those, who did not agree with his view. And that was that.

He then went off to discuss the massive corruption in Russia, and how this was undermining the economy as more and more investors and companies left the country because of it. Russia has 144 million people, but it’s economy is 2/3s that of Britain, or about the size of Italy’s, and is declining.

Now all of this is factually true. John Kampfner, in his book Freedom For Sale discusses Russia as another state, where the population has made a deal with its leader. They have absolute power, in return for which they give their people prosperity. Except that, according to Dimbleby, living standards and wages are declining. Putin has passed laws against the promotion of homosexuality, there are massive human rights violations, including the jailing of the type of people, who would have been called dissidents under Communism. Journalists, who haven’t toed the Archiplut’s line have been beaten and killed.

Other aspects of the Russian state, as revealed by this programme, would have been immediately recognisable to the generation raised by Communism. Like the corruption. It was rife under Communism. The Bulgarian journalist, Arkady Vaksberg, wrote a book about it, The Soviet Mafia. And Gogol took a shot at official corruption under the Tsars back in the 19th century in his play, The Government Inspector. So no change there.

As for the Russian Orthodox Church supporting Putin, it was always the state church under the tsars, to which it gave absolute support. The watchword of the tsarist regime was ‘Autocracy, Orthodoxy and the People’. And its support of autocratic leadership didn’t begin under Putin. After the restrictions on religion were lifted in the 1990s, the BBC journalists interviewed some of its clergy on their shows. And the clergy had the same preference for absolute state power and total obedience from the people. Putin made the relationship between the Church and his government closer by granting them a sizable share of Russia’s oil.

The youth groups designed to get children interested in joining the army are also little different from what already went on under the Soviet system. Secondary schoolchildren did ‘military-patriotic training’ to prepare them for national service as part of the school curriculum. It was led by retired army officers, who were often the butt of schoolboy jokes. They were taught to handle weapons, complete with competitions for throwing grenades the furthest.

And let’s face it, it also isn’t much different from what used to go on over here. I’ve known young people, who were in the army and naval cadets. And the public schools used to have the CCF – the Combined Cadet Force – which the Tories would dearly love to bring back. And boys, and some girls, do like playing at ‘War’, so I’ve no doubt that if something like the Russian group was set up in this country, there would be many lads and girls wanting to join it.

Russia has also too been a very masculine society with very traditional ideas about gender and masculinity, despite the fact that most engineers were women, who also worked as construction workers and many other, traditionally masculine areas. One of the complaints of Russian women was that the men didn’t do their fair share of standing in queues waiting to get whatever groceries were in store.

And the medals and rewards to the women, who gave birth to the largest number of children is just another form of the Heroic Mother Awards under the Soviet Union. Putin’s Russia continues many of the same aspects of the country’s society from the age of the tsars and Communism, although Dimblebore said the country was going backward.

I’ve no doubt it is, but the programme annoyed me.

What irritated me was Dimblebore’s knowing smirk to camera when the guy from RT denied that he broadcast propaganda. Now I’m sure that RT does. There’s videos I’ve seen on YouTube from RTUK, which could fairly be described as pro-Russian propaganda.

But what annoyed me was Dimblebore’s hypocrisy about it.

The Beeb and Dimbleby himself has also broadcast it share of propaganda supporting western foreign policy interests, including imperialism. Newsnight has finally got round, after several years, to covering the Fascists running around the Ukraine under the present government. But the Beeb has emphatically not informed the British public how the pro-western regime which was put in power with the Orange Revolution, was created by the US State Department under Obama, and run by Hillary Clinton and Victoria Nuland. Far from being a grassroots movement, the revolution was orchestrated by the National Endowment for Democracy, which has been handling the US state’s foreign coups since they were taken away from the CIA, and one of George Soros’ pro-democracy outfits.

Putin is also presented as the villainous aggressor in the current war in the Ukraine, and some have compared his annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine to the Nazi annexation of the Sudetenland. But Crimea had been a part of Russia before 1951, when Khrushchev, a Ukrainian, gave it to that state. And Putin is not looking to take over the country either. The population of Russia is 144 million. Ukraine’s is a little over a third of that, at 52 million. If Putin really had wanted to annex it, he would have done so by now. And under international law, as I understand it, nations are allowed to intervene in foreign countries militarily to defend members of their ethnic group that are being persecuted. That was the pretext for the Nazi annexation of the Sudetenland, and it’s also the reason why Putin’s invaded eastern Ukraine. But it’s legal under international law. And I don’t doubt for a single minute that Russians, and Russian-speaking Ukrainians, were being persecuted by the new, pro-Western government.

In his documentary, Dimbleby met a very angry, patriotic Russian, who told him that the British had tried to invade Russia three times in the past three centuries. Once in the 19th century during the Crimean War; then in 1922 during the Russian Civil War. And now we were preparing to do the same. He angrily told us to ‘get out!’. Dimbleby looked shocked, and said to him that he couldn’t really believe we were ready to invade.

This was another continuation of the Soviet paranoia and hostility towards the West dating from the Communist period and before. Russia has always felt itself encircled by its enemies since the tsars. But the man has a point. We did invade Russia in 1922 in an effort to overthrow the Communist regime. Pat Mills has talked about this in his presentation on comics he gave to the SWP a few years ago. He tried to get a story about it in Charlie’s War, the anti-war strip he wrote for Battle. This is another piece of history that we aren’t told about.

And when Gorbachev made the treaty with Clinton pledging the withdrawal of Soviet troops from eastern Europe after the collapse of Communism, Clinton in turn agreed that these state would not become members of NATO. He broke his promise. They now all are, and NATO’s borders now extend to Russia. At the same time, western generals and NATO leaders have been predicting a war between Russia and NATO. One even wrote a book about it, 2017: War with Russia. Thankfully, 2017 has been and gone and there has, so far, been no war. But with this in view, I can’t say I blame any Russian, who is afraid that the West might invade at any moment, because it does look to me like a possibility.

And there are other matters that the Beeb and the rest of the lamestream news aren’t telling us about. They’re still repeating the lie that the invasion of Iraq was done for humanitarian reasons, whereas the reality was that western corporations and the neocons wanted to get their hands on Iraqi state industries and privatise the economy. And the American and Saudi oil industry wanted to get their mitts on the country’s oil reserves.

The civil war in Syria is also presented in simplistic terms: Assad as evil tyrant, who must be overthrown, and Putin as his bloodthirsty foreign ally. Assad is a tyrant, and one of the causes of the civil war was his oppression of the Sunni majority. But we are constantly being told that the rebels are ‘moderates’, while the fact is that they still have links to Islamists like the al-Nusra Front, the former Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, and ISIS. Nor have I seen the Beeb tell anyone how the Syrian rebels have also staged false flag chemical weapons attacks against civilians in order to draw the west into the war.

And objective reporting on Israel is hindered by the pro-Israel lobby. Any news item or documentary, which shows Israel’s horrific crimes against Palestinian civilians is immediately greeted with accusations of anti-Semitism from the Israeli state and the Board of Deputies of British Jews. I’ll be fair to the Beeb. Some of their presenters have tried to give an objective reporting of events, like Jeremy Bowen and Orla Guerin. But they’ve been accused of anti-Semitism, as was Dimblebore himself when he tried to defend them. In this instance, the bias isn’t just the fault of the Beeb. But it is there, and newsroom staff have said that they were under pressure from senior management to present a pro-Israel slant.

Domestically, the Beeb is very biased. I’ve discussed before how Nick Robinson in his report on a speech by Alex Salmond about Scots devolution carefully edited the SNP’s answer, so it falsely appeared that he had been evasive. In fact, Salmond had given a full, straight answer. Salmond’s reply was whittled down further as the day went on, until finally Robinson claimed on the evening news that he hadn’t answered the question.

And numerous left-wing bloggers and commenters, including myself, have complained about the horrendous bias against the Labour Party and Jeremy Corbyn in the Beeb’s reporting. Dimblebore himself has shown he has a very right-wing bias on Question Time, allowing right-wing guests and audience members to speak, while silencing those on the left. Not that he’s alone here. Andrew Marr has done exactly the same on his programme on Sundays.

Dimblebore is, quite simply, another right-wing propagandist, with the Beeb backing current western imperialism. His smirk at the RT journalist’s denials of doing the same is just gross hypocrisy.

RT: Muslim Council Demand Inquiry into Islamophobia in the Tory Party

Here’s a political development that the Tories really won’t welcome. They’ve been trying to present themselves as a new, anti-racist party, ever since David Cameron made a great show of cutting links with the Monday Club, and throwing out members connected with the BNP and the rest of the Fascists. They’re now trying to present themselves as completely untouched by racial or religious prejudice, unlike the terrible Labour party, which is infested with anti-Semites.

In fact, the Labour party is not infested with anti-Semites. The incidence of anti-Semitism under Corbyn in the party has gone down, whatever spurious poison Gideon Falter and the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, Frankie Boyle, David Baddiel, John Mann, Ian MacNichol and the rest may utter to the contrary. And very many of those accused of it, as I’m heartily tired of saying, are anything but. They’re decent people, who’ve fought against, and often suffered genuine anti-Semitic abuse and assault. Their real crime is that they despise the Israeli government and its persecution of the Palestinians. Or have made the point, as Jackie Walker did, that other nations and ethnicities have also endured genocides comparable to the Holocaust under the Nazis, and these should also be commemorated. The Tories and their allies in the press and in the Blairite right in the Labour party are weaponising such accusations in order to unseat Corbyn. Whom they fear and despise as someone, who genuinely wants to do something for the poor, rather than wreck this country and its great people with more neoliberalism.

And the Tories are as nasty as ever. There’s the same racism there. In fact, the levels of it in the Tories are much higher than in Labour. And Mike put up a post the other day, reporting on the suspension of a number of Tory candidates in the run up to the council elections for racism. Many of those were suspended for Islamophobia.

Now the Muslim Council has stepped in, and demanded that the Tories launch an investigation into it. In this video from RT, the terrible Russian propaganda outfit reports that they have a called for an independent inquiry due to Islamophobic incidents within the party now occurring weekly. Their letter to the Tories lists three council candidates, who were suspended. They are:

Mark Payne, suspended for Islamophobic tweets on social media.
Alexander van Terheyden, for the same.
And Darren Harrison, who had links with Generation Identity, which RT describe as an anti-Islamic organisation.

The report shows some of their posts, as well as comments from people determined that the Islamophobia in the Tory party has gone on far too long: Simon Maginn, Crumpets and Tea and Rachel Swindon. The latter’s name seems familiar. I think she may well be one of the people Mike follows on Twitter.

It’ll be interesting to see how the Tories respond to this. It was one of the Muslim Tories, who said in an interview a week or so ago that Islamophobic incidents occurred weekly in the Tories. Simon Maginn in the post RT shows in their video states that there have been demands for an investigation by the Muslim Council for two years now. The Tories have obviously ignored it, and will most likely do their best to sweep it under the carpet. While their more than willing to exaggerate the incident of racism in Labour, when it comes to them they make a great show of punishing the person responsible, quite often trivially, and then briskly declaring that the issue is over and the problem dealt with.

It isn’t. Not by a long chalk.

The Tories are a deeply racist party, and Islamophobia is only part of the problem. We’ve seen just how racist they are in their treatment of the Windrush Children, the victims of the Grenfell Tower Fire, and the rest of Tweezer’s despicable ‘hostile environment’ policy. The Muslim Council’s call for an investigation into Tory Islamophobia is to be welcomed. But this is just the tip of a very nasty iceberg.

And while we’re at it, please can we have an investigation into anti-Semitism in the Tory midst. Despite their claims that they don’t have it, and it’s only in the Labour party, Anti-Semitism does exist in the Tories. And if the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism is to be believed (they’re not, but let it go for the sake of argument) and anti-Semitism is rampant in British society, then it needs to be examined and combated in the Tories.

Except that the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and Jonathan Arkush, the President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, won’t want to do that. They’re true-blue Tories, whose interest in anti-Semitism seems simply to be to use against Jeremy Corbyn and critics of Israel. And as Tories, they definitely don’t want anti-Semitism investigated in the Tory party.

In which case, they are letting their political bias allow the real anti-Semites and Nazis to go unpunished. And perhaps, if they are unwilling to defend Jews from real, vicious persecution, they should resign. Or submit to another, genuinely impartial inquiry, to see if they are doing their job.

Gordon Dimmack on Frankie Boyle Pushing Anti-Labour Anti-Semitism Smears on New Show

Another week, another pile of steaming BBC propaganda against Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party. In this video, Gordon Dimmack talks about the first edition of Frankie Boyle’s new show, Frankie Boyle’s New World Order, and in particular it’s very strong bias towards Israel, and against the Labour party. Boyle began the show with a joke about the Israelis shooting Arabs. This was topical, as the show was broadcast the same week as the Gaza massacre. But this was cut. This was the only joke or comment Boyle made about Israel. Instead, Boyle spent a long time talking about the problems of the Labour party under the headline ‘In four years time Labour will lose Britain’s last ever general election’. He then went on to discuss its putative problem with anti-Semitism with David Baddiel.

Dimmack says about the video on its YouTube page:

As the BBC cut his jokes about Israel, Frankie Boyle and David Baddiel have come under fire for discussing anti-Semitism in the Labour party, rather than the Gaza massacre – but is it fair they are under attack? Or is this another case of BBC editing?

I’m afraid I can’t tell you. The video’s just over 34 minutes long, and I only had the heart to watch the first couple of minutes. This just seemed to tell you all you really needed to know: that it was just the Beeb repeating the smears against the Labour party again. If you want to see it, here it is:

I am not surprised that the Beeb cut the joke about the Israelis. I dare say the Corporation would defend, and argue that they had to do it on grounds of taste. However, Peter Oborne in his programme on the Israel lobby for Channel 4’s Despatches noted that of the record many of the BBC newsroom staff said that there was pressure on them from higher management to give a positive bias to stories about Israel. Presumably this pressure came from managers like Danny Cohen, the Beeb’s director of programming, who ran off to Israel a few years ago screaming the Israel lobby’s lies that anti-Semitism was at its highest in Europe since the 1930s, and Jews should move to Israel for their safety. He’s since returned from Britain, so obviously the level of anti-Semitism in this country isn’t like that of Nazi Germany. In fact, it’s nowhere near. Polls show that only 7 per cent of Brits have negative feelings about Jews. Most people either have positive views of them, or simply don’t see them as either bad or good.

And while I’m not complacent about the problem of anti-Semitism and racism in British society, with the exception of grotesque Nazi groups like the banned terrorist organisation, National Action, there aren’t nutters goose-stepping around in uniforms, trying to hold torchlight rallies or swearing their eternal allegiance to Hitler. And those groups that do, like National Action, have minute memberships. As an electoral force, the BNP is effectively defunct, as they announced a few months ago that they wouldn’t be fighting the council elections.

As for anti-Semitism in the Labour party, Mike has pointed out that yes, it does have its anti-Semites. But anti-Semitism is actually lower in it than in the rest of British society and some other, competing parties: like the Tories. But most of the people, who’ve been accused of anti-Semitism were cynically smeared as such, not because they were, but because they opponents of Israel, or at least its seven-decades long policy of persecution and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Or, like Mike, they defended those, who had been smeared.

I’m not impressed with David Baddiel appearing on the programme either. He is a really funny comedian and comic writer, and very intelligent. He’s got a Ph.D. from Oxford, along with a double first. But if he does really believe that the Labour party has a genuine problem with anti-Semitism, then all I can say is that he’s checked his brains at the door and allowed himself to be deceived by the Israel lobby.

I’ve no doubt that if you complained about the show’s content to the Beeb, you’d just get the standard piece of pompous verbiage telling you that everyone in the Beeb’s news team is trained to be scrupulously impartial. Or they’d tell you that the programme represents the presenter’s personal views; or that the BBC is required to represent a wide variety of viewpoints, and so on.

Whatever they would say to justify it, this is still just more of the Beeb’s right-wing, Conservative, pro-Israel bias against Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party.

No, Toksvig, Sometimes Testosterone-Fuelled Jokes are the Only Appropriate Response

Sandi Toksvig, the presenter of Qi, former presenter of Radio 4’s News Quiz, and various game shows on BBC TV, was in the I last week. She and her same-sex partner, a BBC radio presenter or manager, are the founders of the Women’s Equality Party. She came out to say that there ought to be an equal number of women on panel shows to stop men telling ‘testosterone-fuelled’ jokes.

I didn’t read the article, just the headline, so I might be misjudging her. But I found it odd that she could say this, after she very publicly gave her endorsement in the elections last year to Hillary Clinton and Theresa May. Because they were both girls going after the top job. It didn’t matter that Killary has earned her nickname because she’s a vicious warmonger, who has never met a war she didn’t like, and fully backs the American imperialist machine. And if you want to see the kind of horrors that has inflicted on the peoples of the Developing World in the decades since the Second World, I strongly recommend you look at the videos Abby Martin has made about the subject over at The Empire Files.

But warning: you need a very, very strong stomach for some of this. It doesn’t dwell, but neither does it shy way from describing the sexual mutilation of women and men, and the rapes committed by the South American Death Squads trained by the American military at the base formerly called the ‘School of the Americas’.

Both Killary and May are, in terms of their policies, profoundly anti-woman. They have nothing to offer working people, except more poverty, exploitation and disenfranchisement. And women perform the lowest paid work, and so are at the sharp end of this. Both Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn actually have better policies for women, and are probably better feminists, despite both being men. Which is why Killary and his supporters in the Labour had to manufacture accusations of misogyny against them. As well as attacking women, who weren’t going to vote for their fave female candidates as ‘traitors’.

Which shows how much respect these self-proclaimed, middle class corporate feminists really have for women and their ability to make their own minds up.

If you want something closer to proper feminism, you could have voted for the Green Party. It’s presidential candidate was Jill Stein, a medical doctor. Part of her platform was Medicare For All. She made the point that women particularly needed it, and was seen discussing the issue with a group of ladies in one of her political broadcasts. I put it up here, so it should be on this blog somewhere.

Likewise the British Green Party. They were, briefly, the left-wing alternative to the Labour party when it was run by the Clintonite fanboys, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, then followed by Ed Miliband, who still adhered to their policy of trying to copy the Tories in the hope of winning over swing voters. The Greens are very hot on feminism and equality. I don’t whether it’s still true now, but they used to have a joint female-male presidency, where both a man and woman were in charge of the party together.

But this would have been a bit too radical for Toksvig and go. They want a nice, respectable type of feminism. A feminism that gives women access to the top jobs, but which otherwise leaves the class structure intact. A type of feminism that won’t frighten true-Blue Conservatives with terrible visions of boiler suited lesbians with degrees in sociology telling kids they should be bisexual. Or whatever stereotyped nonsense the Scum, Heil, Torygraph and Star are trying to push.

Now the argument that there should be a better gender balance on panel shows is a good one, and it can stand alone. It doesn’t really need a ‘because’. You can simply make the point that women are half the population, and so should be given half the places on these game shows. To support it, you need only to say that there are very many talented women, who are being passed over because of gender bias, or who provide a different, fresh point of view.

Toksvig’s statement that they’re needed on the panel shows to stop men telling ‘testosterone-fuelled’ jokes is in some ways strange, and actually rather reactionary. It’s misandrist, in that it sees men as being rather nasty, and who can only be restrained and civilised by women. It’s also very curiously old-fashioned, as if Toksvig hasn’t quite come round to understanding how women can also be lewd, crude and coarse.

In general, women do prefer a less coarse type of humour, though that’s true of a fair number of men as well. And I think that an awful lot of men, who don’t like that kind of humour being made in front of their wives also really object to it themselves, but as we’re supposed to be roughty-toughty blokes we aren’t supposed to show it. So we project it onto the memsahibs and use them as an excuse.

But women can also be very coarse. I’ve known women, who were far cruder than I was, and every bit as vulgar as any man. I’m not saying all women are like this. But it’s true of some. And there is the feminist argument that says that women should be free to do so, and talk explicitly about sex, without being condemned as whores.

And since the 1990s there have been any number of female comedians telling very sexually explicit jokes. Or further back, if you count Joan Rivers. The female led, and directed film Bridesmaids won critical acclaim the other year, but the crudity of its humour was remarked upon and did cause some controversy. I also remember a review of evening of stand-up comedy by the gay community in London. This feature a female comedian traumatising the men in the audience with a monologue about her cervical smear. Well, it was the 1990s, the age of Topless Darts and other crimes against television. You can also go and look at Absolutely Fabulous if you like. It’s witty, funny and very well done. But much of the humour is based about sex, and it doesn’t shy from talking about issues that would have Lord Reith spinning in his grave, like homosexuality. One of its heroines, Edina is a man-hungry, champaign-swigging selfish monster, while another of the characters, who runs a PR agency, uses the type of language that would make a docker blush. And when BBC 3 was still around, and orienting itself as da yoof channel, some of the programmes presented by women had coarse language in their titles. Like ‘F*ck Off, I’m a Hairy Woman’, which was presented by a female comedian attacking the beauty industry that demands women pluck and shave their bodies.

But there is also the argument that sometimes, very harsh, cruel, dark humour is the only appropriate response to a particular subject.

For example, there’s the late Bill Hicks, and Frankie Boyle, both known for their bitter political humour. Hicks’ humour was sexually explicit, and could be quite foul. There was an element of homophobia there, particularly when he told his audience that George Michael was gay, and if you ladies loved him, then you were too. But in coarser language. Some of it was simply about porn, the inauthenticity of contemporary rock stars, and getting drunk and stoned.

But he also used his vicious wit against Reagan’s super-patriotic America. In one monologue, he described Reagan’s Attorney-General Ed Meese as a serial killer, who would one day cut his wrists in the bath. Then they’d find the skins and clothes of all the children he’d murdered in his attack.

But Reagan was responsible for backing Fascist Death Squads in Central America, who committed horrendous atrocities. And so there was a point when he said that he’d pay ‘an extra nickel, just to have little brown kids not clubbed to death like baby seals’. It’s shocking imagery, but it was true. And he was one of the greatest protest voices in the media against such horrors in the ’80s. Channel 4 actually gave him his own show. I don’t think we’d be that lucky now.

Now on to Frankie Boyle. Boyle’s humour is too dark, extreme and tasteless for many people, irrespective of their gender or sexual identity. He was a member of Mock the Week, a satirical panel show presided over by Dara O’Briain, but was too extreme for the Beeb. But there was a point to his dark, vicious jokes. What got pulled from one episode was a joke he made about calling up the Ministry of Defence, and getting ‘the Department of N*gger Bombing’. I don’t doubt that this was pulled because it contained the ‘N’ word, which is highly offensive coming from Whites. But arguably, Boyle was quite right to use it, and right about the joke. He explained to Richard Osman at the Edinburgh Television Festival one year that he made it, because he had read about comments from British generals during the Empire’s heyday that said they were all about ‘bombing n*ggers’. He was factually correct. And it was a curt, but pithy remark on contemporary western imperialism under Bush and Blair. Or whichever mass-murderer was in power then.

It was offensive, but it was an accurate reflection of an even more offensive reality.

So while I can see where Toksvig is coming from with her comments, I think she’s wrong to condemn all dark, weird and brutal humour, simply because it offends her delicate sensibilities. Sometimes you need the extreme and tasteless to reveal and comment on an even more horrific reality. One that Toksvig, it seems, with her backing of Killary and May, wants to deny exists, or is perfectly comfortable with.

Comedian Bill Hicks on Gulf War I and George Bush Senior

I found this great tirade by Bill Hicks against the First Gulf War, George Dubya’s murderous father, and the sheer barbarism of American foreign policy on YouTube. And frankly, it’s unbelievable and unbelievably disturbing that it’s still relevant nearly 30 years later.

He begins by attacking George H.W. Bush, and says that it isn’t because of his economic or foreign policy that he hates Bush. No, it’s because Bush is a child of Satan come to destroy the world. And it goes on every bit as vicious and politically informed as it is relevant.

He talks about the double standards of accusing Hussein of having weapons of mass destruction, when America and Britain sold them to him. He talks about the racism behind America – and Britain – attacking a Middle Eastern country. It’s two predominantly White country attacking a nation of ‘sandn*ggers’.

That’s the word Hicks used to describe their derogatory attitude of contempt towards Arabs, and I don’t doubt that was the attitude of the warmongers behind the invasion. Remember the Frankie Boyle joke about the Ministry of War’s ‘Department of N*gger Bombing’? Boyle based that joke on a real statement from Lloyd George. When the great Prime Minister was asked what would Britain do when the country was overtaken as a world power by America, he replied ‘We’ll teach them to bomb N*ggers’.

Looks like the Americans learned the lesson only too well.

He also talks about how the right always focus on the government raising taxes as a way of getting into power. It comes from conversations with Republican friends, who told him that if Bill Clinton got the presidency, he’d raise taxes. At the same time the Republicans are screaming about keeping taxes low, their responsible for horrific butchery of innocent people in South and Central America.

‘Hell,’ says Hicks, ‘I’ll pay that extra nickel just to have a little brown kid not clubbed to death like a baby seal.’

It’s dark, impassioned, angry stuff. Here it is.

And we’re still in Iraq, and still backing terrorist factions – al-Qaeda, ISIS and the al-Nusra Front in Syria – who have also committed horrendous atrocities, all for the same geopolitical reasons Saddam Hussein was overthrown. It’s the toxic mixture of American-Saudi oil politics, Israel’s campaign against the Arab countries supplying arms to the Palestinians, and America’s long established strategy of overthrowing secular Arab and Middle Eastern regimes, ’cause they’re a threat to western imperial power. Secular and Socialist Arab governments, like Hussein’s, Assad’s in Syria, Gaddafy in Libya and Nasser in Egypt are too close to Communism. It’s one of the reasons Britain and America have spent nearly a century backing the butchers, despots and head-choppers in Saudi Arabia.

Most of the Fascist regimes in Latin America have fallen, but the Americans have played the same game down there in this century. Hillary Clinton, fully living down to her nickname of ‘Killary’, backed the right-wing coup in Honduras that overthrew a left-wing president because he was doing too much for the poor and indigenous peoples there. The dams his predecessor wanted to build had been impoverishing and displacing the indigenous Honduran peoples. Furthermore, he wanted to give the peons free electricity and better access to medicine and other reforms. American corporate interests were threatened. So once again, the Americans found a comprador dictator to overthrow his predecessor and set up an oppressive military dictatorship. Trade Unionists, left-wing activists and campaigners for indigenous rights have been rounded up, beaten and killed.

And Killary cosied up to Henry Kissinger, one of the world’s biggest unindicted war criminals. It was Kissinger, who, under Nixon, was responsible for spreading terror and genocidal dictatorships from South America to Asia.

Killary didn’t understand the moral repugnance an increasing number of Americans, particularly the young, feel about their politicians backing murderous Fascists. The Democratic leadership had to arrange a dirty tricks campaign to steal the nomination from Bernie Sanders, who said America should no longer go around overthrowing other governments. And she still can’t understand how she was beaten by Donald Trump. Okay, this was mostly due the Electoral College system, which gave its backing to Trump despite the fact that half a million or more people voted for Hillary. But amidst all his stupid and contradictory verbiage, Trump also promised not to involve America in any more wars.

He’s since broken that promise big time, but clearly some people believed him. He offered a break from the pro-war policies of George Dubya and Obama.

And this country is still supporting the Americans in their imperialist wars in the Middle East and elsewhere around the world.

The war on terror isn’t working. It’s creating more radicalised Muslims through the carnage in the Middle East. And we’re working against stopping terror by selling arms to the Saudis, who are backing the Islamist terrorists.

Jeremy Corbyn has said we need new thinking to stop terrorism. And Labour has pledged to stop arms sales to the Saudis.

As Corbyn has said of Labour’s policies, ‘tough on terrorism, tough on the causes of terrorism’.

For a saner, and more peaceful world, vote for Corbyn tomorrow. We can’t afford another five years of Tory misrule.