Private Eye on the Hedge Funds Supporting Boris Against British Prosperity

Yesterday Labour’s John McDonnell wrote to Cabinet Office Secretary Mark Sedwill requesting an inquiry into J. Peasemold BoJob’s connection to hedge funds. His request was based on statements by BoJob’s sister Rachel and the former chancellor, Jeremy Hammond, that Johson was being funded by currency speculators making money on shorting shares. This means effectively betting against the companies they invest in. These companies believe that Brexit will ruin the economy, which means that they, paradoxically, will make immense money from it. Boris’ connection to these financial interests and his determination to bring about Brexit whatever happens are thus highly suspect.

Inquiry demanded into claims Boris Johnson backers will profit from ‘no deal’ – and it can’t come soon enough

It isn’t only McDonnell, Rachel Johnson and Hammond, who are suspicious of the Boorish Generalissimo’s connections to the hedge funds. Private Eye has been discussing this issue in a series of articles since last year, when they first noticed that the hedge funds were heavily backing his campaign for the Tory leadership. Now that Boris is Tory leader, they’ve published several highly critical of his connection to them.

In their edition for 9th-22nd August 2019, the magazine published this article, ‘Shorts Story’ on page 7.

“The people who bet against Britain are going to lose their shirts,” boomed Boris Johnson in his first prime ministerial speech. In fact the betters-against-Britain are the only true winners in Brexit Britain – as the new PM should know.

One big beneficiary is Johnson’s long-time supporter and funder, hedge fund manager Crispin Odey, whose latest gift was a £10,000 cheque for the leadership campaign last month and most of whose funds are domiciled in, er, Ireland, as Eye 1482 pointed out in November.

Odey was public about shorting the pound last year as the process hit Britain’s currency, then earlier this year reversed his position as the market bought into the idea that a no-deal Brexit would be avoided. (Odey’s funds are also profitably shorting major British names including Royal Mail, AA, Debenhams, Autotrader and shopping centre-owning Intu – hardly a vote of confidence in UK plc).

Now that Johnson’s “do or die” Brexit policy and outright rejection of the Irish backstop has sent the pound tumbling again, the short-sellers can cash in once more. As former Goldman Sachs banker and Treasury minister Jim O’Neill told a Radio 4 interviewer last week: “Foreign exchange and hedge fund-type people [are] probably looking at what’s being said coming out of the UK as almost close to a free lunch.” A government that is deliberately promoting the no-Brexit [sic] risk” has left the traders saying “thank goodness for Boris – he’s giving us a chance to make some money”.

In the days before Johnson’s win, and with his coronation looking secure, hedge funds’ bets against the pound rose to more than $6bn worth, according to Reuters. The ensuing fall will have benefited them to the tune of more than $100m. Somebody’s certainly losing their shirt – but it’s not those betting against Britain.

This fortnight’s Private Eye has another piece about the hedge fund’s connections to Boris, and how they are keeping part of their currency trading secret. The article’s titled ‘Crash and Earn’ and it’s on page 7. It runs

Good to see former chancellors and top former Treasury civil servants catching up with the Eye’s concerns over Tory backers profiting from Brexit-induced turmoil. Last year the Eye (issues 1482 & 1485) pointed out how Boris Johnson-funder Crispin Odey was trousering large sums from shorting stocks heavily exposed to the UK economy, and pound itself.

Last month the Byline Times added up the sums bet against UK stocks by hedge funds that had donated to either the prime ministers’s leadership campaign or to Vote Leave. Its finding that there was an “£8bn bet on no-deal crash out” was roundly pooh-poohed – with some justification, given the crudeness of the calculation and the host of other reasons for shorting shares. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t hnefarious motives in the cross-over between short-selling and political influence, as non-conspiracy theorists ex-chancellor Philip Hammond and now ex-Treasury permanent secretary Sir Nicholas Macpherson have observed.

“Mr Hammond is right to question the political connections of some of the hedge funds with a financial interest in no deal,” tweeted Macpherson last weekend. “They are shorting the £ and the country, with the British people the main loser.” Alas, as the Eye put it last year, “there may be rules against rigging the financial markets, but not if the move is big, brazen and political enough.”

Nor is it possible to find out who is placing bets through currency trades, where the political/economic link is most direct. Post-financial crisis, significant share short-sales are publicly disclosed, but currency trades remain secret. Surely time to change this, and for more disclosure of the real financial interests behind those filling Boris Johnson’s boots.

Given the immense profits these people stand to make from the desperate misery and chaos that will follow a no-deal Brexit, it’s perfectly justifiable to call Johnson a traitor, and his backers economic saboteurs. McDonnell is right to call for an inquiry. Legislation needs to be passed forcing currency speculators to disclose their actions, if not a complete overhaul imposed on the financial sector as a whole.

And Johnson needs to be turfed out of parliament, and replaced with Corbyn.

 

Gordon Dimmack on Government Funded Disinformation House, the Integrity Initiative

A week or so I ago I put up an article looking at a piece by Mike about the Integrity Initiative. This is a government-funded disinformation programme run by the Institute for Statecraft, a private company whose funding also comes from the government and various right-wing think tanks, and whose staff appears to be drawn from the British military intelligence establishment.

The Integrity Initiative has caused a scandal because it claims that it was set up to combat Russian propaganda on the Net. It has expanded this, however, to include running smears against Jeremy Corbyn and Brexit. The company was first exposed when Labour MP Chris Williamson asked a question about it in parliament. The revelations about the organization’s political interference, both here and abroad, were truly shocking, but Duncan refused to say anything more about it, pleading that further information would reduce its effectiveness. One of those outraged at the Integrity Initiative and its malign activities was left-wing vlogger Gordon Dimmack, who states that this story is bigger than Brexit.

Dimmack has run a series of video about Integrity Initiative and its parent body, the Institute for Statecraft. In this one, he reveals the identities of three British journalists, who have worked for the organization in spreading disinformation and fake news. They are Ben Nimmo, and the Guardian’s Nick Cohen and Carole Cadwalladr.

Dimmack begins his discussion by running with Labour MP Chris Williamson’s own video about how his question about the government’s funding for the Institute revealed its dirty tricks campaign. It was revealed that last year it received 2.2 million pounds of government money, and was responsible for running political campaigns against various politicians and public figures across Europe. It and its pet journos put out disinformation to stop the attempts to by the Spanish Socialist party to get one of their country’s senior army officer, Pedro Banos, made its security leader. This was even before the Institute’s Spanish cluster got involved. One of the Initiative’s hacks is Ben Nimmo of DFR Labs, the DFR standing for ‘Digital, Foreign and Research’. Nimmo and his employers are funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Atlantic Council. Nimmo wrote a piece in the Scum claiming that Russia supported Corbyn, and then used his own piece as evidence to argue that Russia was not only promoting Corbyn as part of a disinformation campaign to sow division across the UK. Alan Duncan, the minister who answered Williams’ questions, then refused to reveal any more information. Dimmack comments on his excuse that it would damage the programme’s effectiveness, stating this means they’re frightened because they’ve been caught out. Williamson states that this is a threat democracy, and wants a public inquiry.

Dimmack himself notes that there have been four Labour MPs in parliament calling for an official investigation into the Initiative and its shady activities, including Jeremy Corbyn. But the media’s response has been to give it no coverage at all. The BBC wrote one article about it, which could have come from the Foreign Office. He states that the Guardian, or as he calls it, GCHQ’s propaganda rag, is very heavily implicated. Two of its journos, Carol Cadwalladr and James Ball, have attended Integrity Initiative sponsored events. They’ve also defended the Institute in the media and helped to cover this scandal up. They show that the media is not the ‘fourth estate’ holding government to account, but, in Dimmack’s phrase, ‘a fifth column’. Another Groaniad hack, Nick Cohen, has also attended events sponsored by the Initiative. Dimmack states that 90 per cent of Cohen’s articles are either attacks on Corbyn or Brexit.

He then moves on to an article by Craig Murray revealing the true location of the Institute for Statecraft’s headquarters. The lamestream media tracked it down to a disused timber mill in Auchtermuchtie, Fife, Scotland, owned by Daniel Lafeedney. Lafeedney, born with the more prosaic surname Daniel Edney, was formerly of D Squadron in the SAS and Military Intelligence. But Murray said that a quick search through relevant documents and a few phone calls revealed that the Institute’s real headquarters is in the basement of 2 Temple Place, London. This is definitely not a barn – it’s truly palatial, and was the London mansion of the millionaire William Waldorf Astor. The building has a website advertising itself as available for special functions, and showing off its opulent construction and decoration. It also invites people to donate to its maintenance. The Institute claims that it has no permanent staff, and shows nothing for rent, utilities or office expenses. In fact, the rent is paid by the Ministry of Defence. All of this is funded through MOD and the Foreign Office. Dimmack is naturally outraged, as the Ministry of Defence, as its name states, should be defending us rather than interfering in domestic politics or the affairs of foreign, allied states.

Lobster have also run a piece on the Initiative and its wretched parent, discussing government funding and its links to British intelligence, including MI6 and the cyberwarfare section of the SAS. It was set up apparently by Gordon Brown after he read a book on CIA’s sponsorship of the arts during the Cold War by an American academic. The book was actually a condemnation of the agency, but Brown missed the point and thought getting the intelligence services to launch propaganda campaign through the arts and media was a good idea.

As for the attacks on Corbyn, this seems very much like a return to hackneyed form by the British secret state. During the Cold War the IRD, the intelligence services’ propaganda department, ran fake stories attacking the Nationalists in Ireland and the British left. One of the most infamous examples of this was the smears made by MI5 against ’70’s Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson as a KGB spy. The media’s silence on this issue is easily explained: very many newspapers were complicit in running government disinformation. According to Lobster, the Sunday Times under Andrew Neil ran stories for MI5 in the 1970s, while Tony Greenstein did a piece a little while ago about Cohen and the fake news the Guardian was printing to smear Julian Assange of Wikileaks.

Chris Williamson is right. We need a genuine investigation into the Institute for Statecraft and the Integrity Initiative. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Lobster has been arguing for years that the British intelligence establishment is corrupt and out of control. And New Labour when they were in power aided this by showing a complete lack of interest in investigating or controlling it and its surveillance and smears of decent people to support the Tory establishment. There not only needs to be an investigation into the Integrity Initiative and the Institute for Statecraft, but tough questions need to be asked of the British intelligence esta

The Racism of the Tory Party and its Supporters

Yesterday Mike put up a piece commenting on the sheer amount of racism in the Tory party. Evolve Politics had published a piece about the 18 Conservative councillors and council candidates that have been suspended just that month for alleged racism. They gave the name of the councillors and candidates, the towns and areas in which they were standing, and the reasons for their suspension. And it’s a long, ugly list. Most of them were suspended for alleged islamophobia, though there was also accusations of anti-Semitism, general racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia and abuse of transsexuals. One candidate, Darren Harrison of Watford, had been suspended for allegedly having links to Neo-Nazis and the EDL. The Tory Mayor of Wokingham was also suspended for alleged links to the EDL. Two other Tories were suspended for supposedly abusing and assaulting their fellow activists. Another had allegedly been falsely claiming to have served in the army. And Geoff Driver of Sunderland was suspended on charges of corruption and witness intimidation.

Evolve Politics also reported that the largest Islamic organisation in the UK has called for an inquiry, but this has been ignored, as the media ignored the racism in the Tory party.

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2018/05/11/have-we-already-forgotten-the-huge-number-of-tories-who-were-suspended-amid-allegations-of-racism-and-abuse/

A few days earlier, Mike also posted a very relevant piece from the Turning the Tide blog. The blogger there had been a member of a number of Corbyn-supporting groups on Facebook. He had never once encountered a threatening, racist or anti-Semitic remark on them. But the media are fixated on attacking Corbyn with supposed left-wing racism. This is not questioned, because it is shared by so many of the mainstream media. They have also turned a blind eye to the much more prevalent racism in the Tory party. The blogger therefore compiled a selection of on-line hate, garnered from Twitter and Conservative-affiliated webpages. The blogger then gave an example from the Guido Fawkes site. This contained some very nasty comments about Muslims.

Mike then reminded his readers that the Guido Fawkes site has been the source for many of the anti-Semitism stories used by the Blairites and the right-wing media.

He concludes this article with the words

And nothing from the MSM on this issue, even though it is right in front of them.

Are our news reporters now so poor at their jobs that they can’t do even the slightest investigation? Or is their political bias now so great that they refuse to discuss anything that could harm Conservative political chances, no matter who is harmed as a result?

Let’s have an answer, mainstream journalists. You are avoiding this story because of either ignorance or incompetence.

Which is it?

https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2018/05/08/blogger-looks-for-right-wing-hate-online-and-finds-it-easily-wheres-the-media-outrage/

We shouldn’t be surprised at this racism and bias in the Tory party. This is the party, after all, which ran posters advising people to vote Labour if they wanted a Coloured neighbour in the 1960s. I also remember the scandals in the 1980s when the Union of Conservative Students adopted racial nationalism – the official ideology of the National Front and BNP – as its own. As for Guido Fawkes, he was a member of Freedom Association, a Libertarian organisation, when it was inviting the leaders of South American death squads to its annual dinners as guests of honour.

So it’s no surprise that the media are keen for the racism in Tory ranks to remain unreported. There have been academic studies of the role and power of the media, that show how important the media is for shaping which issues or considered suitable for discussion and debate. Those issues that aren’t reported, or which they sneer at, generally are held to be outside the circle of proper debate. And this is another case of the mainstream media trying to do this by not reporting the Tories’ racism.

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George Galloway: Torygraph Publishes Piece Speculating on Coup to Overthrow Corbyn

This is an excerpt from George Galloway’s Talk Radio Show, which I found on YouTube. He begins with talking about a conversation he had with James Whale, a fellow presenter, about the dangerous situation in the Middle East, where Israel is now facing an Arab, Russian and Iranian enemy. He pours scorn, however, on the juvenile scribblers, as Galloway sees it, who claimed that the missiles shot at the Golan Heights had entered Israel. Galloway states that the Golan Heights were illegally seized by Israel from Syria, and so are not part of Israel, no matter what the hacks say.

He then goes on to talk about Theresa May’s volte face, which has meant that victims of the Grenfell Tower fire will now be allowed onto the board investigating it. After that, he moves on to talking about how the Brexit negotiations are an appalling mess, and the whole affair something which all of us will have difficulty getting out of.

But the main subject of his ire is a piece published by Paul Carter in the Torygraph the day before, which may be 10th May 2018. The Torygraph had speculated on the possibility of a military coup against Corbyn. Galloway describes the article as chilling, and states that its author, Paul Carter, has no footprint in social media. The article claims that this coup would occur if the labour leader was elected to power and proceeded to enact to enact three particular policies. These were conducting a referendum to abolish the monarchy, taking us out of NATO, and taking us out of the western foreign policy consensus. Galloway himself wishes Corbyn would do all these, but the Labour leader will certainly not do any of them. The proximate cause of the Torygraph article is that it is 50 years since Mountbatten and the editor of the Mirror met to plan a coup against the Labour prime minister, Harold Wilson. Galloway states that Wilson was a political giant, who dominated the sixties and much of the seventies. He was right-wing Labour, a social democrat. But he had his house burgled and his mail intercepted because it was suspected that he was a Russian secret agent. If the coup had gone ahead, the country would probably be led by Mountbatten from the Despatch Box, probably from the House of Lords, unless he resigned and fought a bye-election. Not that such constitutional niceties would bother people, who had just overthrown their democratically elected leader.

He also makes the point that there were plans to intern 4,000 other leftists, including journalists, on the Shetland Islands. Galloway himself was too young at the time, but if they did launch a coup against Corbyn, this would be the last you’d hear of him for a long time, unless he managed to get onto Radio Free Shetland. He notes one expert, who has said that it would be much harder to launch a coup now that people have mobile phones and social media. It was easier fifty years ago when it was the editors of the newspapers to overthrow the government. But Corbyn would be wise to keep his mobile phone handy. If they did launch a coup, then millions would pour onto the streets to defended their elected leader? Or would they? Galloway leaves this as a matter of discussion for later in the programme. He says that eventually the plans for the coup were abandoned, because the conspirators thought better, including the government’s scientific advisor, Solly Zuckerman. But Galloway thinks this is false, and that they simply got cold feet.

Galloway then closes the segment with a piece about how popular the woman presenting the weather reports is becoming.

This is worrying, as it looks like a combination of smear piece and speculation by the Torygraph. Corbyn hasn’t any intention of trying to abolish the monarchy, taking us out of NATO or acting against the current foreign policy consensus, so it’s a smear to suggest that he might. The absence of any social media footprint for Paul Carter suggests that this is a pseudonym. And this in turn invites speculation that it’s someone from MI5 or another branch of the security services.

This wouldn’t be the first time MI5’s been acting against the government, if this is the case. The agency was convinced Wilson really was a KGB spy, and Stephen Dorril and Robin Ramsay, the editor of Lobster, have suggested that it was behind the smears circulating then about the Labour leader.

As for the coup they’re discussing, the plotting occurred later than the article claims. Mountbatten and the editor of the Mirror were making their plans in the mid-70s. And the Times was also looking forward to Wilson being toppled, though replaced by a civilian government of trusted members of the Labour party, like Shirley Williams, as well the Tories. These plots are discussed in Francis Wheen’s book, Strange Days Indeed: Paranoia in the 1970s, and by Ken Livinstone in his book Livingstone’s Labour. The date’s out, but otherwise everything that Galloway’s said about the proposed coup is correct. One of the reasons it failed is because one of the plotters approached Sandhurst, to ask if the old colonels there would help. They said they wouldn’t, and sent him away. Hurrah for Sandhurst!

Galloway says at the beginning of his discussion of the article that no-one else was talking about it. Which suggests that this is purely speculation and wishful thinking by the Weirdo Barclay Brothers and the paper’s managing director, Murdoch McLellan, and whoever is now the editor of this wretched rag. The paper’s been running articles attacking Corbyn, claiming that he’s an anti-Semite and so on, along with the Daily Mail. But this shows more than a hint of real desperation. For all the Tory and media talk about ‘peak Corbyn’, it seems they really afraid he’ll win the election. In which case, they want the troops to overthrow him. Not because they’re afraid he’ll do all the things they claim he will, but because his very mild socialist programme will cause the end of the Thatcherite consensus. The corporate rich could no longer look forward to a privatised NHS and railways, and parts of the electricity grid would also be renationalised, would which would also upset corporate profits. Not to mention that they could no longer rely on having a cowed, cheap workforce of the desperate on poverty wages, on zero hours contracts and kept in line by the threat of benefit sanctions and starvation.

This is all too much for the Torygraph and its scribblers. So they’ve started fantasising about the possibility of a coup. Just like the British stock exchange cheered the Fascists when they revolted against the Republican government at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.

The Torygraph has just about gone full Fascist with this article. And its publication is more than a bit hypocritical for the Tories. Not after they went berserk and accused Hilary Mantel of encouraging terrorism when she published her short story, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher. But this shows just how far Corbyn has rattled the Tories, and shown how some of them, at least as for the Torygraph itself, have started hankering after a coup to stop him.

Protesters Hold Vigil for Grenfell Tower Victims Outside Parliament

This is a very short clip from RT of a vigil that was held today outside parliament for the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire. You can’t really hear what the speakers are saying, but it’s clear that there are hundreds attending, many holding and making placards. One member of the protest speaks to the camera, and explains he is there to show his support and solidarity with the victims of the fire. The protesters are also determined to show that they want a proper criminal investigation, although Theresa May has not said whether there will be an inquest or an inquiry.

Vox Political and Eoin Clarke Refute Smears of Tory Warmongers Against Corbyn

Mike over at Vox Political has produced another excellent blog post utterly demolishing the lies of the Tory warmongers that Jeremy Corbyn supported IRA terrorism, and that his election would somehow leave Britain more vulnerable to atrocities such as the one on Monday night in Manchester.

His piece contains a graphic by Eoin Clarke showing that far from supporting terrorism, Corbyn consistently condemned paramilitary violence and sincerely looked and worked for peace in Northern Ireland. As such, he was respected not only by the Republicans but also by Loyalists.

Clarke’s graphic states, for example:

* In November 1994 Corbyn signed a parliamentary early day motion condemning the Birmingham Pub Bombings committed by the Provisional IRA.

* The same year, Corbyn held several meetings with four Loyalist leaders to discuss the release of Neil Latimer, a member of the UDR, and to be informed that October at the Labour Party’s conference of the ceasefire the following week.

* In October 2015 Ian Paisley’s wife told the Belfast Telegraph that she found the Labour leader courteous and polite, and thought he was a ‘gentleman’.

* In February 1987 the Times apologised to Jeremy Corbyn. Murdoch’s British ‘paper of record’ had smeared him by claiming that he had not phoned the police to warn them of a suspected Provisional IRA terrorist in London. In fact Corbyn had.

* In August 1988 the Irish Times hailed him as ‘a tireless campaigner for the Irish.’ Corbyn had worked to the quash the wrongful convictions of the Guildford Four, and reopen the inquiry into Bloody Sunday.

* Corbyn in fact only ever met Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams after Adams had been elected to parliament, 14 years after the commencement of the Troubles, in Adams’ capacity as an elected MP. He did, however, oppose Thatcher’s ban on broadcasting the voices of elected Sinn Fein politicians, and was keen that Adams’ constituents in West Belfast should not be silenced.

* When Adams visited Westminster in 1996, Corbyn was only one of a number of Labour MPs, who met him. The meetings were solely concerned with reviving the IRA ceasefire. This was achieved several months later. And Bill Clinton, who was then president of the US, had the previous year invited Adams to the Whitehouse. As Clarke’s graphic points out, this places Corbyn’s meeting with Adams firmly within the context of wider attempts by politicians to secure peace in Ulster.

Clarke does admit that there are two incidents, which are controversial, and do require an explanation.

* Shortly after the Brighton bombing of the Tory conference, Corbyn and other MPs met Republicans in Westminster. Corbyn’s motive for doing so was to end the strip searching of female prisoners on remand. However, Clarke states that the meeting was insensitive and wrong.

* In May 1987 Corbyn stood for a minutes’ silence to show respect for eight people, who had been killed by the British armed forces in Northern Ireland at a meeting of Irish sympathisers in London. Although one was entirely innocent, seven were members of the Provisional IRA. The circumstances of their deaths were unclear, and they may have been the victims of a ‘shoot to kill’ policy. The European Court ordered the payment of £10,000 each to the eight victims’ families.

* As for Adams himself, Clarke states that it was the Tory government, who began talking to him eleven years before Corbyn became an MP. Adams had been released in prison for the secret talks the Conservatives were holding with Irish paramilitaries following the deaths of 476 people in 1972, the worse year of the Troubles. This was revealed in MI5 files released under the 30 year rule. The files also showed that the Tories considered that Adams genuinely wanted a ceasefire and an end to the violence, and that his answers to questions were ‘reasonable and moderate’.

So while Corbyn did meet with Gerry Adams and other Irish Nationalists, he also worked with Ulster Loyalists. It certainly appears from this that Corbyn wanted to find a fair, peaceful solution to the violence and hatred in Northern Ireland.

Mike’s piece also includes a short video, running just under a two minutes, by the Labour MP Chris Williams. Williams points out that 14 years ago in 2003, Corbyn had warned that ‘the Iraq war will set off a spiral of conflict that will fuel the wars, terrorism and misery of future generations.’ He also warned several times that police cuts would leave the country more vulnerable to terrorism. He also warned that intervention in Libya would lead to it becoming a breeding ground for terrorism. He also objected to selling arms to Saudi Arabia for the same reason. Williams states that Labour has a crystal-clear policy to make Britain safer, unlike the Tories. They intend to undo the cuts to the police force, and have the longer term goal of rethinking this country’s foreign policy. This means not sending more of our courageous young men and women to die in wars no-one invited us to take part in, and destabilising countries like Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. And Williams asks his viewers to challenges the Tories, the rich, the media magnates and the cheerleaders for these wars in voting for Labour. New approaches and responses are required following the evil terrorist atrocity in Manchester, and Labour has precisely done that.

Mike also includes a wonderful little video of Channel 4’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy refuting Michael Fallon, the Tory defence minister. Guru-Murthy quotes Boris Johnson at him. Boris had said that the Iraq invasion didn’t create the problem of Islamist terrorism – the attack on the Twin Towers occurred before that – but it did sharpen their resentment. Fallon then attacks the quote, believing it was said by Jeremy Corbyn. When Guru-Murthy points out it’s by Johnson, he then flails around trying to claim that it shows that Johnson really concurs with him, that this does not explain terrorism. But the Channel 4 newsman goes on, and quotes Boris as saying that you can’t disagree with the nay-sayers, who say that the invasion has increased Islamic resentment. Even after he’s been told, Fallon continues to state that he’d have to see what Boris Johnson really says for himself, and denies that Britain’s foreign policy explains away terrorism.

Mike comments drily if there’s anyone, who doesn’t agree with Jeremy Corbyn? (Apart, obviously, from Michael Fallon).

And at the very top of the piece is a quote from the former director of MI5, Theresa Manningham-Buller, that the Iraq invasion ‘undoubtedly increased the terrorist threat in Britain’.

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/05/27/dont-believe-the-warmongers-on-jeremy-corbyn-get-your-story-straight/

So Jeremy Corbyn was right about the Iraq invasion. He’s been right about the overthrow of Colonel Qaddafi in Libya, and he was right about the cuts to the police force. And he is very right to demand a ban on arms sales to the Saudis.

And while two of his actions in support of the Republicans in Northern Ireland have been insensitive, he is not a supporter of terrorism, as the Scum, Heil and Torygraph would have us all believe.

Go to Mike’s blog and read and watch the full article. Eoin Clarke’s information about Corbyn is in the form of a graphic, so that you can post it elsewhere on line to refute the Tories and their stooges, who still continue with their smears about the Labour leader.

And if you really want to see a just end to the violence in the Middle East, and a sensible policy to eradicate Islamist terror in this country, then vote Labour on June 8th.

If we don’t, if we continue to follow the Thatcherite warmongering of Blair, Cameron and May, it will only lead to worse violence and terror in the Middle East and at home.

Vox Political: Inquiry Demanded into Smears by Police and Courts of Orgreave Miners

Mike has also put a report that tomorrow, a delegation from the Orgreave Truth and Justice campaign will meet with the Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, to demand an inquiry into the wrongful arrest of 95 miners at the colliery during the Miner’s Strike, the construction of a false narrative about them, and the presentation of this false narrative to the media, which then uncritically accepted it. These allegations are based on previously unseen documents which show that there was collusion between the police and the courts in the attack on the miners at the Orgreave during the strike in 1984.

Mike states that there is clear prima facie evidence that there was undue political interference in the police and the courts. In light of the ongoing investigation into the way the police and the government doctored the evidence in the Hillsborough tragedy, Mike states that it seems to him that an inquiry must be launched. He wonders, however, how the Tories will try to slither out of it.

Inquiry demanded after Downing Street ‘used police and courts to smear Orgreave miners’

There is in my mind absolutely no question whatsoever that the miners’ campaign is exactly right. There’s abundant evidence about the way the media deliberately misled the public about Arthur Scargill and the Miners’ Strike, and Mike and numerous commenters on this blog have frequently remarked on the way the BBC edited footage of the violence at the colliery to show the police being attacked by miners, when the reality was the other way around.

I also went to a meeting in Bristol of the Fabian Society, in which the guest speaker was a member of the NUJ. She was discussing the threat posed by the increasing right-wing media bias and the concentration of the press and media in the hands of a very small number of magnates. The bias against the Miner’s Strike was one example of this, and she described the way Conservative politicians and officials moved around the country to coordinate and direct the attacks on the miners.

Seumas Milne, a former advisor of Jeremy Corbyn, has also written a history of the Miners’ Strike attacking the campaign against the NUM. I wonder if this is one of the real reasons Private Eye has also been running stories attacking him as part of their campaign against Corbyn. After all, a Prime Minister, who decided that Arthur Scargill was exactly right and showed how the union was correct about the unnecessary destruction of Britain coal industry, and Thatcher’s determination to break the unions, would just be too much for the Blairites now writing for it. And far too much for a political establishment that has been more or less thoroughly Thatcherite since her election victory in 1979. We can’t have anybody shattering the popular illusion that she made Britain great again, by showing that she did the exact opposite. The 1% would never allow that.

Dennis Skinner on the Battle of Orgreave

Mike last Thursday put up a piece reporting that an all-party parliamentary group had demanded that Theresa May open an inquiry to reveal what really happened during the Battle of Orgreave in the Miner’s Strike. The MPs signing the demand include Sir Peter Bottomley, who was Employment Minister during the Strike, Angus Robertson, the leader of the SNP’s parliamentary group, Tim Farron, the leader of the Lib Dems, and much of the parliamentary Labour party, including Jeremy Corbyn.

The Battle of Orgreave was one of the most violent confrontations during the Miner’s Strike, when 6,000 police from all over the country charged the strikers on horseback, arresting 95 of them. However, the men were later freed after the trial against them collapsed.

Mike, however, remains pessimistic about ever getting the truth out of Theresa May.

See the article: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/05/26/will-we-get-the-facts-about-orgreave-from-someone-like-theresa-may/

Indeed. This is a government that utterly despises any kind of transparency and democratic accountably. Mike has described at length, and ad nauseam, the way Ian Duncan Smith and the DWP tried to block at every turn the requests from him and other bloggers and disability activists for the release of the official figures showing how many people had died after being declared ‘fit for work’ under the assessment system. This is a government that has reviewed the Freedom of Information Act itself to tighten it up to prevent the release of any information that may be embarrassing, uncomfortable or just plain awkward for the authorities. They have even declared that Freedom of Information Act requests should only be made to understand why an official decision was made, not to challenge it.

It is a deeply authoritarian attitude. They take it as their right to govern, and the public’s duty to obey unquestioningly. The Daleks would be proud.

I’ve been reading Dennis Skinner’s autobiography, Sailing Close to the Wind: Reminiscences (London: Quercus 2014). The notorious and celebrated ‘Beast of Bolsover’ comes from a mining background, and entered politics through his activity in the NUM – the National Union of Miners. He has always campaigned vigorously on their behalf, as well as those of all working people. He was a staunch supporter of the Miner’s Strike, organising much public support for the strikers. And as you’d expect, he has some very harsh and very pertinent things to say about Thatcher. He also gives his view on the Battle of Orgreave, the violence inflicted against the miners by an out-of-control police force, and the gross distortion of justice and attack on the working class it represented. He writes:

The police state imposed by Thatcher abused miners as the enemy within. Striking miners were stripped of civil rights, victims of summary justice. the courts were a tool of her oppression. Strikers were barred from picket lines and jailed on the uncorroborated testimony of police officers who made it up as they went along. It broke my heart to see miners trickle back to work towards the end, starved and beaten.

We suffered a strategic defeat in the June of the British Steel coking plant in South Yorkshire at the Battle of Orgreave. In hindsight, the field wasn’t an easy place for us to make a stand with a mass picket. the ground was too open, and there were few choke points where we could stop the convoys of lorries. the police in riot gear, with their dogs and mounted cavalry, lined up in their thousands. It was as if they wanted us there, coppers shouting mockingly ‘See you tomorrow’ when they went off a night. We were well and truly battered by the police. Some of the coppers were out of control, bashing anybody in reach. Mounted officers rode their horses at miners and used batons as swords. To escape being trampled under the hooves I climbed up a young tree, the sapling’s thin branches straining and threatening to drop me into the path of the cavalry. It was like a scene from a massacre in a Wild West film.

Orgreave confirmed the BBC was part of the campaign against the miners because the film broadcast on TV was reversed and it was forced to apologise after the strike, which was too late. The BBC showed the miners throwing sods of earth at the police and then the police retaliating but it had happened – and was filmed – the other way round. The BBC lied just like the Tory government.

The police would boast about overtime and taunt workers who’d not been paid a penny for months by waving £10 notes in front of them. I gave all my wages to the NUM, every penny in that year. I’d done the same in the 1972 dispute. I was seen as a miners’ MP and had been elected to Parliament only a couple of years before. In ’84 I was talking to NUM officials who’d said they wouldn’t be paid. ‘What about you, Dennis?’ they asked. My answer was: ‘I’m going to do what I did in 1972.’ I didn’t want to do anything else. (Pp. 203-4).

The hostility of the police was frightening, officers breaking the laws they were sworn to uphold. They were emboldened by immunity. Heads of miners were cracked and men wrongly arrested in their thousands. thatcher turned Britain into a police state. (Pp. 204-5).

It’s possible that following the Hillsborough inquiry, that has exonerated the Liverpool fans and put the blame on the stadium, the company operating it and the police, we might see justice in this area too. But I doubt it very much. Hillsborough was a terrible accident. The massive use of disproportionate force by the police to break the miners was a deliberate policy by that Tory idol, Maggie Thatcher, about whom no evil must be spoken. She did it deliberately to break the miners in retaliation for the way they had overthrown Ted Heath a decade earlier. Her policies are synonymous with the Tories, and the Tories cannot criticise and will not criticise the Leaderene. We need and deserve an unbiased report into Orgreave. But I very much doubt we will ever get it under this mendacious, deceitful and deeply secretive government.

Evolution, Race and African Civilisation: A Remedial Course for Kippers

A few days ago I reblogged a piece from Still Laughing At UKIP, reporting the massive racial abuse and vilification directed against the Labour MP, Chuka Umunna, by the Kippers on Facebook after he had the audacity to observe that they weren’t actually very good at spelling and grammar. The article’s ‘Racism. Uncontrolled, Mass Racism’, and it’s at http://stilllaughingattheukip.wordpress.com/2014/06/23/racism-uncontrolled-mass-racism/, if you want to check it out for yourself. The racist remarks reported by the Kipper Smoker include the crass, racial insults of ‘monkeys’ and ‘spear chuckers’ to describe Blacks, as well as remarks that people of ancient African extraction are ‘uncivilised’. So let’s go through a few facts about evolution and African civilisation, just to straighten the record.

Archaic Features in First Human Colonists in Europe Compared to Africa

The comments about ‘monkey’s recalls the daft and dangerous racial hierarchies Europeans drew up in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, which placed White Europeans at the top of the evolutionary ladder as the apex of human evolution, and Blacks at the bottom. The lowest rung was occupied by Aboriginal Australians. Below them were Orang-Utans, which Europeans were originally unsure whether they were human or apes. Science has overturned this classification, and I cannot see any modern, ethical archaeological department ever endorsing such claims that certain sections of the human species are inferior to Whites, no matter what the authors of the infamous ‘Bell Curve’ may claim about innate differences in cognitive ability between different ethnic groups.

It is true that physiologically Aboriginal Australians have many archaic features, such as a pronounced brow ridge. This is hardly surprising considering just how ancient these people are, having colonised the continent about 40,000 years ago. They are, however, just as human as every other part of the human race. Their facial features are also very close to those of the ancestral humans that colonised Europe at about the same time. Skeletons showing Australian Aboriginal characteristics from that remote epoch have been found in Southern France. A little while ago I went to a seminar at Uni taken by an American professor, who was one of the world’s greatest authorities on early man and the Neanderthals. He pointed out that the skeletons of the early modern humans – Homo Sapiens Sapiens recovered from that period have archaic features, and are less gracile than African skeletons from the same period. If you want to put it crudely, at that stage the ancestors of modern Europeans were less evolved than their cousins in Africa. Despite their physiological differences, they were still Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Their appearance does not saying anything about their essential humanity.

Ancestral Modern Human Skull from Broken Hill, South Africa. The first humans to colonise Europe 30-40,000 years ago had similar features

Africa: Continent of Many Cultures and Civilisations

Now let’s deal with the claims that Africans are somehow ‘uncivilised’. For a start, Africa is a continent, not a single country, and contains a plethora of cultures and peoples, whose lifestyles can vary considerably. The Bushmen of South Africa – the Khoisan peoples – are hunter gatherers, while many of the peoples of East Africa were traditionally nomadic pastoralists, herding their cattle across the Savannah. Others have long been settled in village as settled farmers and agriculturalists. And some of these peoples have developed highly advanced civilisations.

Ancient and Christian Nubia

The Nubians of the Sudan took over much of the culture of ancient Egypt, and for a time even ruled the ancient Land of the Nile. Regardless of the claim that the Ancient Egyptians themselves were Black, there was a dynasty of Black pharaohs, whose empire stretched into the Ancient Near East. One of these was the pharaoh Taharqa, who is mentioned in the Bible for his part in struggling with the Assyrians for the control of the various minor, Near Eastern states dominated by these two superpowers, like ancient Israel. The Nubians later converted to Christianity, and had a literate, Christian civilisation with strong links to Egypt and the Byzantine Empire until the country was conquered by Islam in the 14th century. Archaeologists have been studying the remains of their ancient culture since that part of Africa was opened up to Europeans in the 19th century.

Ethiopia

Further east is the equally ancient culture of Abyssinia, now Ethiopia. This too is also extremely ancient. There were early centres of civilisation at Meroe and then Aksum. Although Meroe was a literate civilisation, they spoke a language completely unrelated to any other, so that although their inscriptions can be read, scholars at still at a loss to know what they mean. The main languages of modern Ethiopia, Amharic, Tigre and Tigrinya, are descended from Ge’ez, which in turn is descended from the South Arabian languages, such as Sabaic, when colonists from these civilisations conquered and settled there well over 2,000 years ago. It converted to Christianity under its king, Ezana, in the fourth century, before the Anglo-Saxons had managed to over-run Roman Britain.

The Swahili in East Africa

South of Ethiopia, the great Muslim civilisation of the Swahili emerged later in the Middle Ages. They adopted not only Islam, but also other features of Islamic and Arabic life and culture. They built impressive cities from blocks of coral taken from the east African reefs, which were covered with a kind of lime wash produced by burning the same coral. In their time, they created some of the most outstanding examples of Islamic architecture, some of which can still be seen today in places like Zanzibar.

Nok, Benin and the Great Civilisations of West Africa

On the other side of Africa, other civilisations emerged which reached an extremely high level of civilisation. Africans in what is now Nigeria began smelting iron early, long before Europeans, in c. 1800 BC, due to the natural iron bloom available in the region. The earliest African artistic culture outside ancient Egypt, the Nok, appeared in Nigeria in the 3rd century BC. This is known for its highly stylised sculptures, the artistic skill of which has drawn admiration from modern art experts and connoisseurs. Other West African cultures also have been the subject of considerable scholarly interest for the high standard of their art, such as Ife and Benin. Both of these cultures produced extremely naturalistic metal sculptures. The Benin bronze heads, produced to form part of a shrine to the rulers’ life-force, are justly famous and are found in many European collections after they were looted by punitive raids by the British in the 19th century after they expanded into the region.

Sculpture of a king of Ife. Similar works have been found in terracotta dating from before the 12th century.

Benin Bronze from Shrine to Ruler

These cultures also impressed European observers and traders when they first encountered them in the 16th and 17th centuries. They commented on the size of the cities they encountered, as well as the chastity of the indigenous women, which they considered to be far greater than their own. These civilisations did practise much that struck Europeans as barbaric, such as human sacrifice. What surprised them about this, however, was that such a cultured and civilised people should actually engage in such horrors. Captain Denman of the West African Squadron, charged with suppressing the slave trade between Africa and America, stated this in his evidence to a parliamentary inquiry in the 1840s. When asked whether mass human sacrifice really existed amongst the peoples of Dahomey, Ashanti and other cultures in the region, he replied that it did, and that it ‘was remarkable, given the achievements they have made in most of the arts of civilisation’. In other words, what shocked Europeans wasn’t that the Africans committing these atrocities were barbarous savages, but actually the complete opposite: they were highly civilised, and so the massacres they committed were even more shocking and horrifying by contrast to the rest of their civilisation.

Plan of the palace of the Deji of Akure, showing how complex great African buildings may be.

View of the City of Benin, published 1668 by the Dutch explorer, Dapper

North of these pagan civilisations was the great Islamic empire of Mali. Access to a plentiful supply of gold made it one of the richest civilisations in West Africa. So rich, that when its ruler passed through Egypt in the 12th century on the hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, the amount of gold he and his retainers carried was so great that it actually through the country into a recession. Mali was also an important religious and intellectual centre, in which the scientific literature of the Muslim world also circulated. Scholars have uncovered vast libraries of ancient manuscripts preserved in the empire’s mosques from the Middle Ages. Amongst the treasures of this civilisation are manuscripts of the heliocentric system, showing the Earth and planets moving around the Sun, which Muslim scholars discovered independently of Copernicus about two centuries earlier.

Non-Ptolemaic Model of the Moon’s orbit, produced by the Turkish astronomer Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi in 1285. Similar works were copied and circulated amongst scholars in Mali.

Further south, in Zimbabwe, is the great stone fort from which the country takes its modern name. This vast structure is so impressive that previous European scholars could not believe it had been built by Africans, and instead attributed it to the Arabs or Chinese. I’ve got a feeling that some of the Ufolks may well believe it was built by ancient space aliens. Examination of the ruins themselves, however, show that it is indeed African in design and construction, similar to the way wooden houses are built by the peoples of the area.

The Temple at the Great Fort of Zimbabwe

There may also have been many other African civilisations, of which we currently know little, simply because the evidence for them has not survived. Africans tend to build in wood, rather than stone, a material that is particularly vulnerable to the continent’s climate and attack by termites. We only know of those civilisations that have either survived to the present day, such as Dahomey, Ashanti and the other contemporary Nigerian cultures, or who built in stone. Other civilisations may have existed which built in wood, the evidence for which perished over the centuries. However, merely because the evidence has not survived, does not mean that such civilisations weren’t there in the first place.

The Kippers racially abusing and insulting Umunna thus reveal just the extent of their own vile bigotry, but also how little they know about human evolution and African culture and civilisation. While these are fairly exotic topics, they’re not so arcane that only a few scholars know about them. There have been some excellent TV series on them, aimed at the general public. These include The Incredible Human Story on the BBC, presented by Time Team’s own Dr Alice Roberts. The BBC also produced a series on human evolution, presented by the avuncular, moustachioed Dr Robert Winston. Further back in the 1990s, Channel 4 also screened a series on human evolution, which presented the case that the early human colonist of Europe were actually Black. Again, an entirely respectable viewpoint, considering that all modern humans arrived out of Africa.

As for African civilisation, there have been a number of blockbusting series. Back in the 1980s there were a couple, one on BBC 2, presented by the Black African scholar Dr Ali Mazrui, and another on Channel 4 presented by the White afrocentrist historian, Dr Basil Davidson. More recently, BBC 4 and 2 screened a series, Lost Kingdoms of Africa, presented by a Black British art historian. I’m afraid the only thing I can remember about this chap’s name is that he was Gus somebody, and his name was double-barrelled. And that, like all archaeologists and intrepid explorers, he wore the de rigueur Indian Jones felt hat. This was also well worth watching, and there was a book to accompany the series. It’s great series like that which provide the strongest argument for retaining the BBC, and keeping television out of the mitts of Murdoch.

Africa’s Problems those of Human Evil, Corrupt International Economic and Political System

Terrible atrocities and crimes against humanity are being committed in Africa, by kleptocratic dictators and army generals, who are a blight on the human race. These have gained power partly through the profound economic and social problems of their nations, but also through the complicity of Western politicians, industrialists and financiers. The difference and superiority of western, scientific and industrial culture is only very recent. Western Europe only began to overtake Islam scientific and technologically in the 17th century, and there were still areas in which the Muslim world was superior in the 18th. Well into the 19th century, much of western Europe was ruled by absolute monarchs, whose societies rested on serfdom, the effective enslavement of their peasants. One American historian of the Balkans has pointed out that while the Turks in the 19th century were seen as barbaric for taking the heads of those they slew in battle, this was actually common amongst American bounty hunters out West. Before the development of cheap, efficient photography, the only way you could prove that you had successfully hunted down and killed a dangerous criminal was to take their heads.

Africa is beset by many severe problems, but this is not because its people are somehow less ‘evolved’ or ‘uncivilised’. Indeed, for much of human history, the opposite has been true. The continent’s problems come from a number of causes, which include the legacy of colonialism, a corrupt and unfair international economic system, and simple pure, unrestrained human evil. The last knows no difference in colour, and affects every culture. Including the upper echelons of the Tory party, and even now clouds the judgment of Kippers towards their fellows.