Gordon Dimmack on Corbyn’s Pledge ‘No More Interventionist Wars’

Gordon Dimmack is a left-wing vlogger with a particular interest in disability issues. In this piece from the 27th September 2018, he gives his enthusiastic approval, with some reservations, to Corbyn’s speech at the Labour conference. Although he strongly supports all of Corbyn’s speech, in this video he concentrates specifically on the Labour leader’s proposed new foreign policy, as it particularly shows the difference between Labour and the Tories. After making these points briefly at the very beginning, he then moves on to a brief clip of that part of Corbyn’s speech. Corbyn says

Britain’s relationship with the rest of the world, our foreign policy, is no longer sustainable. We’re entering a new, fast-changing and more dangerous world, including the reckless attacks in Salisbury, which the evidence painstakingly assembled by the police points to the Russian state. When president Trump takes the US out of the Paris accord and tries to scrap the Iran nuclear deal, moves the US embassy to Jerusalem and pursues an aggressive nationalism and trade wars, then he’s turning his back on international cooperation and even international law.

We need a government in Britain that not only keeps the country safe, but can also speak out, speak out for democratic values and human rights. Today’s Conservative government continues to collude with the disastrous Saudi-led war in Yemen, turning a blind eye to the evidence of war crimes on the devastating suffering of millions of civilians. That’s why I was honoured to attend a vigil this week held in Liverpool by the Yemeni community in protest against what is taking place.

Corbyn has received applause before in this speech, but at this point it becomes a standing ovation. He continues

Labour’s foreign policy will be driven by progressive values and international solidarity, led by our international team of Emily Thornberry, Kate Osselmore and Neil Griffith. This means no more reckless wars of intervention after Iraq or Libya, it means putting negotiation before confrontation, diplomacy before tub-thumping threats. And it means championing human rights and democracy everywhere, not just where it’s commercially convenient. And working to resolve the world’s injustices, not standing idly by, or worse, fueling them in the first place.

He’s also applauded during this section, which is the end of the part of his speech included in the video.

Dimmack then goes on to the make the point that Corbyn was absolutely correct when he said that the UK’s foreign policy was unsustainable. It is, That’s why we’re in all these wars in the Middle East. Because it’s all about the oil, the petrodollar and a natural gas pipeline that has to go through Syria to supply Europe. And in answer to those, who deny this, the value of the world’s reserve fund is based upon it. And it isn’t sustainable, because oil and gas, fossil fuels, are the very products leading to the destruction of this planet. He argues that we have to move away from these wars in countries we shouldn’t be involved in and take care of our own country.

He is critical of Corbyn’s comment about the evidence in the Skripal poisoning pointing to the Russian state. This has ruined his speech for Dimmack, but he believes Corbyn has to say it, as if he didn’t, that would be the headlines in the paper the next day.

Dimmack liked the fact that Corbyn called out Trump, and pointed out that you don’t get Tweezer calling out Trump. You get them sycophantically licking his a**e like Boris Johnson does. And people like Jeremy Hunt meeting Kissinger. Dimmack praises Corbyn for calling Trump out on moving away from the Paris accords, scrapping the nuclear deal with Iran and moving the embassy to Jerusalem and states that you won’t find Tweezer doing the same. He predicts that in the Tory conference the following week we’ll get Tweezer offering Trump an olive branch in the hope of a trade deal.

Dimmack also praises him for condemning the war in Yemen, and states that while he’s critical of standing ovations, this one was definitely warranted. Dimmack makes the point that this is a proxy war that the West is allowing. We could stop it at any time. The Saudi planes wouldn’t even be able to take off unless we and the Americans gave our permission.

Dimmack is less impressed by Corbyn’s statement that the foreign policy would be run by Emily Thornberry. Although she’s an ally of Corbyn, she was mentioned in an article by the Electronic Intifada about the decision at the conference to freeze arms sales to Israel and other, similar countries like Saudi Arabia. Despite her closeness to Corbyn, Thornberry’s a supporter of Labour Friends of Israel and opposed the decision. The party also condemned the killing of civilians by the Israelis on the ‘March for Freedom’ protest. Dimmack would like to know who the source for the Intifada’s article was, as they are not named.

Dimmack states that Corbyn’s pledge that Britain would no longer engage in interventionist wars is what we all wanted him to say. He makes the point that Libya was ‘liberated’ in 2012, and that now there is a slave trade there. An open air slave trade in the markets. He goes on to say that this is ironic, as Reagan’s chief of staff for the CIA, Bill Casey, was under investigation at the time Reagan held his first meeting with him and the other chiefs, because he was suspected of instigating a coup in Libya to oust Colonel Gaddafy. One of the lies the Agency was spreading to destabilise Gaddafy’s regime was that Gaddafy was involved in a slave trade with Myanmar. And then after they get rid of Gaddafy within a few years there is an open slave trade in Libya.

Dimmack approves of Corbyn substituting negotiation for aggressive action, as you can’t solve anything without lines of communication, and the way he attacked Israel and the Saudis without explicitly singling them out. He goes on to state that the newspapers, especially online, were unanimous in their acclaim of Corbyn’s speech. Even the Torygraph, which said it was his best speech yet. Dimmack says that with this going on, it’s no wonder that within 90 minutes to a couple of hours following it that the government leaked details that one of the two men accused of poisoning the Skripals was commended or given a medal by Putin. He leaves his audience to make up their own minds about it.

Dimmack states that while there are some things he doesn’t like about the speech, it’s what he wanted to hear, and it’s a radical shift in our country’s foreign policy. And when people hear Corbyn speak, he wins votes. Unlike the opposition, who, like the Democrats and Hillary, don’t want Tweezer to campaign as whenever she does, her approval rating goes down. He then predicts that Tweezer at the Tory conference in the next few days would have a more difficult time than Jezze did.

Code Pink Urges US Institutions to Boycott Arms Industry

This is another important piece by RT America on attempts by American peace activists to stop the war machine that is currently killing and making homeless millions of innocents in the Middle East, as well as the courageous American and allied squaddies sent to fight in it, and which has also resulted in massive cuts to public programmes in order to fund it.

The left-wing peace group, Code Pink, has launched a conference to encourage universities and financial institutions to boycott and divest from the arms industry. The group’s leader, Medea Benjamin, states that the reason these wars have dragged on so long is because they are incredibly profitable to the arms manufacturers. Every time Trump goes to Saudi Arabia, for example, to announce a multi-million dollar sale of armaments, the share price of companies like Lockheed Martin goes up. So, she says, they are simply following the money and trying to get institutions to stop funding and supporting these ‘merchants of misery’.

Vijay Prashad, the director of International Studies at Trinity College, states that even though millions are being killed in these wars, there is no accountability, no outrage, no pity for the victims and no sense that anybody should be dragged before an international tribunal. Instead, the victims of these wars themselves are blamed, as is happening now in Syria, while the reality is that these wars are destroying country after country.

The Black American activist, Ajamu Baraka, who was the Green Party’s presidential nominee, also makes the point that in order to fund this war machine, the American state is cutting vital welfare services and programmes. These include those for the homeless, support for education, such aid for the poor to go to college, environmental protection policies will be cut, energy assistance for the poor and elderly will also be cut, all in order to find the money to provide the £696 billion granted to the US military. It’s money that has been supplied at the expense of poor people’s basic needs.

The clip ends with Medea Benjamin stating that the conference is designed to get people together to say ‘enough is enough’ and that institutions no longer want to make profits from the military and their wars.

All of this is correct. People in America, as well as those over here, are seeing welfare budgets slashed partly to provide funding for the continued wars in the Middle East and elsewhere. These are not being fought for democracy, or the defence of the West and its allies against evil dictators. They are being fought to provide profits for American arms contractors, who provide millions of dollars in funding for American politicos. Iraq wasn’t invaded because it had weapons of mass destruction. That was a lie. It was invaded because the Saudi-US oil industry wanted the Iraqi oil reserves and its industry. American multinationals also coveted Iraqi state enterprises, and Israel hated the aid Saddam Hussein was giving to the Palestinians.

And the same is true of Syria. The neocons want to destroy it, because its an ally of Iran and Russia and a potential threat to Israel. They and a group of Arab states, including Qatar and Jordan, also want to oust Assad because he’s blocking the construction of a massive gas pipeline, which will stretch from Qatar to Turkey. In fact, these nations even told the Americans they’d pay for the war if America attacked Syria.

And the neocons have already destroyed Libya, they’d like to destroy Somalia, Sudan and Iran. Hence Trump’s step in decertifying the Iranian nuclear deal with Obama.

General Smedley Butler described all this back in the 1930s in his book, War Is A Racket, detailing the way American big business had profited from the First World War. As for the poor suffering because of the need to cut services to fund the military, I think it was president Truman, who described it has taking food from the mouths of the poor, and denying the construction of schools and hospitals.

I’ve already said in my last article about the revelation that the CIA was staging fake academic conferences as part of its campaign against the Iranian nuclear programme, that Lobster had published an article expressing similar concerns about the way some of Britain’s universities were also supporting the British war machine. Millions are being plunged into poverty and death, including American and British squaddies, all for the profits of the merchants of death and big business like Haliburton. It’s time for this obscenity to end, and universities and investment houses to pull out of supporting the war machine.

Jimmy Dore: Taliban Have Surrendered Several Times, Each Time Refused by America

Here’s another very important clip from the Jimmy Dore Show. It’s one that should be viewed by everyone interested in what the various wars we’re fighting around the world are really about. Dore and his co-host, Ron Placone, discuss a review of Anand Gopal’s book No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban and the War through Afghan Eyes by Ryan Grimm in The Intercept. And its more of what the mainstream media aren’t telling us about these wars.

Dore starts the show by making the point that mainstream media never reveals the truth about the reasons behind America’s various wars in the Middle East and the Maghreb. They don’t mention the petrodollar, Libya, or the reason why Iran’s now a theocratic state under the ayatollahs. It’s because America – and Britain – over threw its democratically elected prime minister, Mossadeq.

And this is just as devastating. Gopal’s book reveals that the Taliban surrendered several times to America and its allies, only to be rebuffed. It was traditional in Afghan civil wars for the losing side to surrender to the victors. They would, in turn, incorporate them into the new government. Dore makes the point that this is a sensible system for governing a country, where people still have to live together as neighbours after the fighting. The Taliban tried to do this with the Allies, and were rebuffed. Several times. He also points out that the Taliban itself withered away, as its members put down their guns, either going back and vanishing into the rest of the population, or heading over the border into Pakistan.

However, America and the Allies offered rewards for those informing on the Taliban. With the real Taliban having vanished, and al-Qaeda down to a mere handful of people, the venal and unscrupulous amongst the Afghan population used the system to settle personal feuds. They smeared their neighbours as Taliban, for them to be killed or arrested by the US forces, and get the reward money. This naturally has created massively hostility against Allied forces. When America and the Allies first defeated the Taliban, the Afghans were glad to see them go. Now, having had their peace overtures repulsed, and the country reduced to more chaos and warfare, the Taliban have returned with popular backing.

But Dore states, you are not going to hear it from the mainstream news, such as MSNBC and Rached Maddow, because the media automatically backs the American war machine. And that war machine must be kept fed. He notes that Congress, with the backing of the Democrats, has just voted another $100 billion for the defence budget, in addition to what had already been voted for it last year. America already spends more on defence than the next 13 countries on the list combined. And the country and her allies have been in Afghanistan for 16 years. In other four years, the war will get a gold watch and be able to retire.

That’s it. There are absolutely no good reasons anymore for us to be anywhere in the Middle East. I backed the invasion of Afghanistan because I believed that it was a justified response to an act of war by al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies. I heard a few years ago from a friend that the Taliban tried to stop the invasion by offering to surrender Osama bin Laden, claiming that they didn’t know that he had been planning the attack. I wasn’t sure whether to believe it or not. But after this, it looks much more credible.

We’re not helping anyone in Afghanistan by staying there, except perhaps an already corrupt government, propped up by us, western mercenaries, and the opium trade, which has flourished more than it ever did previously. Dore states that the only areas in Afghanistan, which weren’t troubled by fighting, were those where there wasn’t a western military presence.

Of course, there are other, corporate reasons why we’re still there. Trump announced that America would stay in the country to exploit its valuable mineral resources, in order to defray the costs of the invasion. As well as the gas pipeline that was supposed to be built, but wasn’t, as Dore also mentions.

But the humanitarian reasons touted as justification for the invasion have vanished. We’ve long outstayed our welcome. As Grimm’s review concludes, we’re losing to an enemy who’s already surrendered. A hard thing to do. We’re just killing and maiming people for the benefit of the military-industrial complex. And our boys and girls are also being killed and maimed.

They’re coming back traumatized and with terrible injuries, not for defending their country and its allies, as they and we have been told. They’re being mutilated and killed purely for the profit of the big arms manufacturers.

Disgusting.

Dore encourages everyone watching this to pass it on. I agree. We are not going to hear about this from mainstream media, which includes the Beeb.

General Smedley Butler was right. War is a racket. We need to get out, bring our troops back home, and close all the wars and interventions in which we’re currently involved down.

Until then, there will never be peace across the world.

Jewish Chronicle Race Hucksters Make More Fake Anti-Semitism Accusation over Criticism of Luciana Berger

On Saturday Mike also put up a piece reporting how the Jewish Chronicle had taken the opportunity offered by the criticism of Luciana Berger, the Labour MP for Liverpool Wavertree, by a member of the local party’s executive to make fresh accusations of anti-Semitism against Momentum and the Labour party.

Berger had resigned from the Shadow Cabinet last year as part of the ‘chicken coup’ of Blairites hoping to weaken to Corbyn’s leadership of the party. Roy Bentham, the local officer, who made the criticisms, said

“Luciana needs to get on board quite quickly now. She will now have to sit round the table with us the next time she wants to vote for bombing in Syria or to pass a no-confidence motion in the leader of the party – she will have to be answerable to us.”

However, as Mike points out in his article, Bentham is not a member of Momentum, which has distanced itself from his comments. Angela Kehoe-Jones, the Secretary of Liverpool Wavertree constituency Labour party, said

The newly elected Executive of Liverpool Wavertree are looking forward to working with our MP Luciana Berger for our constituency.

We must disassociate ourselves from one of our officers who did not speak on behalf of the Executive. The views he has expressed do not in anyway represent the views of the CLP officers.

We have a lively and growing CLP and we have regularly campaigned together in local and national elections and to get Luciana re-elected in the General Election. We are united in our common goal to oust this Tory government and to see a Labour government elected under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.

Berger herself has stated that she did not resign from the Cabinet because of anti-Semitism. And while Bentham’s critics, like Owen Jones, have said that his comments were ‘off’, there isn’t actually anything anti-Semitic about them. There was no mention in his comments of Berger’s religion or ethnicity.

Mike speculates that the Chronicle may have been provoked by Bentham’s remark about Berger voting to bomb Syria. But that’s actually fair comment. There’s nothing anti-Semitic in criticising an MP, who wishes to bomb a foreign country for very dubious geopolitical reasons. Likud and the American Neo-Cons want Assad deposed, as do a number of Gulf states, including Qatar and Saudi Arabia, for similar reasons to the Iraq invasion: overthrew a secular, Arab nationalist state allied to Russia and Iran, stop a source of possible aid to the Palestinians, loot the country of its industries and oil reserves, and in the case of the Gulf Arab states and Jordan, send a gas pipeline through the country to Europe and Turkey, which is currently blocked by Assad because of his alliance with the Russians and Iran.

Britain and America are already supporting rebel forces trying to overthrow Assad, and these are very unpleasant indeed. They’re al-Qaeda and ISIS. So we’re cynically supporting the very people we’re supposed to be fighting against in the Middle East, because they’re against a secular dictator the American military-industrial complex also wants to remove.

And it is by no means only Jewish politicos in the Labour party, who voted for the bombing. So was Hillary ‘Bomber’ Benn, the son of Tony Benn.

So, as Mike himself points out, this is yet another baseless accusation of anti-Semitism, like those made against Mike himself in order to prevent him from being elected to Powys council, and for which Mike is pursuing legal action.

These accusations are all the more disgusting, as they detract from the real anti-Semitic abuse Berger suffered from a genuine Nazi, who was jailed for his offences.

Mike quotes one of the commenters on Twitter, EL4JC, who states that the people throwing around these smears undermine the genuine fight against anti-Semitism, and concludes

That is exactly right. Baseless accusations, such as those made against me or Mr Bentham, undermine the fight against anti-Semitism. One wonders why people do it.

Is it to spread division, confusion, disinformation?

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/07/08/fake-accusations-against-momentum-over-luciana-berger-are-undermining-the-fight-against-anti-semitism/

In fact, two weeks ago Tony Greenstein put up on his blog an article reporting how the Zionist lobby in the Labour party were going to launch another spate of anti-Semitism accusations after their disappointment with the results of the election. Contrary to their desires, this showed that Corbyn is massively popular with the electorate, a stance that threatens the Blairites’ neoliberal economic agenda and the Zionists’ demands that criticism of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians should be studiously avoided. Joan Ryan, the Chair of Labour Friends of Israel, even wrote to her supporters stating that Theresa May would be better than Jeremy Corbyn.

Mr Greenstein commented

The success of Jeremy Corbyn in turning the Tory tide is making these racists sick to the gills which is why they are trying to relaunch the false ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign in the hope of dividing the Party, sowing dissent and providing succour to the Tories. False anti-Semitism and false victimhood are their chosen strategy for defending a state which demolishes Palestinian homes, even of Israel’s own Arab citizens in order to make way for Jewish homes and towns.

In Israel ‘Judification’ is official policy. Google ‘The Koenig Plan’ or the ‘Prawer Plan’. In Nazi Germany they had deJewification campaigns. Israel is a state which officially does its best to stop Jews and Arabs having sexual relationships. A Jewish state means a Jewish Supremacist State. It isn’t a constitutional adornment. Purity of race and a Jewish settler state goes hand in hand. This is what Ryan, Kyle and Newmark are defending.

It is essential that if there is a further round of false ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations that Jeremy Corbyn stands firm and calls it out. There is no future in trying to appease the supporters of Israel. You cannot appease racists or the supporters of racism. If Corbyn had, at the very start, said that yes he condemns anti-Semitism and he also condemns false accusations of anti-Semitism directed against supporters of the Palestinians (and even against Jewish anti-Zionists) then he could have defused these attacks early on.

Corbyn above all knows that the ritual response of Zionism’s supporters to opposition to Israel and what it does to the Palestinians has always been false accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’. They even invented a ‘new anti-Semitism’ since the traditional anti-Semitism (hatred or hostility to Jews) didn’t accord with hatred of racist Israel.

Nothing Corbyn says or does will ever satisfy Israel’s supporters. They are part of the NATO supporting friends of US imperialism. Corbyn will never be acceptable to them which is why the Left in the Labour Party needs to be resolute in opposing any further appeasement of these people. If they think the Labour Party is anti-Semitic then they should clear off and join the Tory Party, the traditional home of genuine anti-Semitism.

http://azvsas.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/labour-friends-of-israel-zionists-are.html

In the case of the accusations made by the Jewish Chronicle and other commenters against Bentham and Momentum, this is just nasty, cynical yellow journalism. There’s nothing anti-Semitic in Bentham’s comments, and he wasn’t a member of Momentum. But they made the accusations anyway, and cynically expect the public to believe it. Who knows, perhaps they even believe it themselves? They hope that simply by repeating the smear – the big lie – they’ll get more people to believe it, just as Goebbels, the master of this type of propaganda, recommended.

There’s a very nasty element of race hucksterism here. This is what such accusations are often called in America, whenever a radical Black politician or activist, such as Al Sharpton, gets up and makes an inflammatory comments about White racism. The Republicans, backed by Fox News, immediately fall over themselves to denounce them as a ‘race huckster’ or ‘race baiter’, and try to turn it around so that the politico making the accusations of racism is the one, who is really racist.

And this is what is going on here. The Jewish Chronicle and its allies are simply playing the race card to smear their political opponents, who are genuinely anti-racists, and who include Jews and people of Jewish heritage. It’s about time the Chronicle was still held to the same standards as everyone else. Owen Jones states in one of his Tweets that they should retract their accusations. They should. And Tony Greenstein is also correct in that if they really think that Labour is anti-Semitic, then they should leave and join the Tories, who are, after all, their natural allies if Joan Ryan is to be believed.

Deep State Lies about Terrorist Threat Produced Syria and Russia

Yesterday’s I newspaper carried a story, UK faces ‘a generation of terrorists created by Russia’, says new MI6 boss, reporting that the director-general of the spy agency had held a press conference at which he told journalists that Putin and Assad were increasing Islamist radicalisation in Syria. The piece by Kim Sengupta ran

The brutal military campaign by Russia and the Assad regime in Syria is creating a new generation of terrorists who will be a threat to the international community, including Britain, the head of MI6 warned.

In his first public speech as director-general, Alex Younger criticised the conduct of the forces of Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad, saying their actions are leading to further radicalisation by Islamist extremist groups.

“As I speak, the highly organised external attack planning structures within Isis … are plotting ways to project violence against the UK and our allies without having to leave Syria,” said Mr Younger.

“I believe that Russian conduct in Syria, allied with that of Assad’s discredited regime, will, if they do not change course, provide a tragic example of the perils of forfeiting legitimacy. In defining as a terrorist anyone who opposes a brutal government they alienate precisely the group that has to be on side if the extremists are to be defeated. I cannot say with any certainty what the next year will bring. But I know this: we cannot be safe from the threats that emanate from the land unless the civil war is brought to an end.”

Mr Younger’s remarks, to a group of journalists in MI6’s headquarters in London, are at odds with the views of Donald Trump and his advisers, who have expressed admiration for Mr Putin’s actions in Syria and see Russia as a future ally against Isis and other Muslim terrorist groups.

Mr Younger also strongly criticised states that have been using cyber- and other forms of hybrid warfare to undermine Western democracies. Although he did not name Russia as one of the culprits, there was little doubt that he was pointing the finger at the Kremlin when he spoke about the “increasingly dangerous phenomenon of hybrid warfare.”

Now it may be true that the severity of Russia’s and Assad’s attacks on the rebels in Syria may radicalise them further, but this is basically just a piece of misdirection by the British secret state. Assad’s is the legitimate, recognised regime under international law and the UN. And before all this kicked off, Assad was beginning to liberalise. He was keen to share information on Islamist terrorists with the west as they were a common enemy.

Moreover, it is we, who are funding and supporting Islamist terrorism in Syria. This is what the rebels are, and we are funding and supporting them. And it’s a very moot point how ‘moderate’ those supported by America and its allies are. They include groups that have grown out of al-Qaeda, such as the al-Nusra Front. And the moderates have contacts with the more radical groups.

Ultimately, this isn’t about ending the civil war, or bringing democracy to the citizens of an authoritarian regime. Which isn’t remotely going to happen if the rebels supported by the US military and the rest of us get into power. This is simply about getting rid of an ally of Russia, thus isolating it from the Middle East. It is also about building a massive gas pipeline from Qatar through Saudi Arabia, Jordan to Turkey and beyond. Ousting the current Ba’athist regime in Syria has been a goal of the Americans for decades, long before the ‘War on Terror’. This has just given the Americans the opportunity they wanted to initiate armed revolt and military action.

As for claiming that Russian cyberwarfare was responsible for undermining Western democracy, this is the purest rubbish from Hillary Clinton. She used this at the election to explain the leaked material showing her corrupt relationship with big business and Wall Street. When asked what evidence she had for this claim, she had none. Nevertheless, she’s been demanding military action in response for it ever since. Now Alex Young is repeating this moonshine.

I’m afraid that misdirection and lies like this are being used to prepare the British public for a western invasion of Syria. The American hawks have been demanding a ground offensive. And so it seems the British deep state wants more war, more carnage, more of our dead and maimed young women and men, for global American military supremacy and big oil’s profits.