The NHS is ours. The NHS is what makes us special. We care for people.

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ed: I’ve amended this post. The title originally had ‘ That’s what Socialism is ‘ at the end. I’m not sure that it is appropriate. While I accept that Socialists certainly do care about people, I don’t consider that it is correct to associate the NHS so clearly (tightly) with Socialism. Although – of course – that is exactly the reality.

later ed: It’s yours and mine?

The NHS is so important. It is ours and it’s important. It cares for people when they’re sick  and vulnerable.

Do you ever get that feeling that as your write it’s not so much that you’re writing on a tractor as your flicking a doganoo!

Let that be a lesson to you!

Continue ReadingThe NHS is ours. The NHS is what makes us special. We care for people.

New Labour were crap, weren’t they?

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Tony Blair, what a child

what a child

what a child

ed: did you notice I called him a child?

What a child, eh?

ed: I suggest that this has no relevance to anything and should be ignored. While this is nonsense, I think that people and politicians etc, should pay attention to all the false-flag BS that’s happened. Politicians particularly should pay attention because its BS and they’re expected to behave as if it’s real shit. That must be awkward – so much BS which politicians have got to pretend is real.

Continue ReadingNew Labour were crap, weren’t they?

I advise not having a television

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Er,

It’s fantastically ‘efficient’ at wasting your time

It’s fantastically ‘efficient’ at distracting you

Don’t you have much better things to do with your life?

ed: Isn’t it just keeping you there inactive – while actually polluting your brain with nonsense – while you could be doing something better or more productive?

Like going for a walk, or meeting people (while you’re going for a walk), tidy up, put the trash out, going to the gym (eh?), going for a walk, go to the pub instead of watching television – please people going to the pub is great, you get to drink alcohol and talk to people. Try it.

Anyway, try taking the fuse out of the plug and see how it goes. You’ll be surprised – your family will talk to each other. You could have a broken fuse so that the television doesn’t work over Christmas. XXX

Continue ReadingI advise not having a television

New Statesman: When David Cameron became Tory leader, he wanted to end child poverty. Now he just wants to stop measuring it

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New Statesman: When David Cameron became Tory leader, he wanted to end child poverty. Now he just wants to stop measuring it

Now you see it…  Now you don’t.  The government’s rustled up a party trick for the kids this Christmas. They’re going to make 3.7 million of them disappear.

Britain’s children aren’t going anywhere, of course, particularly those who are growing up poor. But with a legislative sleight of hand, the government plans to quietly give up on the targets to end child poverty enshrined (with cross-party support) in the Child Poverty Act 2010.

And with it, they’re hoping to magic away any mention of child poverty at all. The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission will become the Social Mobility Commission. The Child Poverty Act will become the Life Chances Act.

All this is more than a little politically convenient.  Apart from a solitary BBC Today programme interview with Iain Duncan Smith last year, which left presenter Evan Davis audibly flabbergasted, not even the Government claims it is on track to meet the child poverty targets.

Indeed, the latest available projections, from the Resolution Foundation, warn child poverty will rise from 2.3m children to 3.3m by 2020 – a figure that will be even higher once the poverty-producing impact of the Summer Budget and the Autumn Statement is totted up.

 

I suppose there may be a few chimneys left for them to sweep and the poverty will keep them small enough.

Continue ReadingNew Statesman: When David Cameron became Tory leader, he wanted to end child poverty. Now he just wants to stop measuring it

Sunday evening politics review

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First off, I’ve had a really stinking cold for a week now. I turned to brandy for some respite and all of a sudden it seemed the cold was cured. Drinking more than one bottle of brandy does have it’s disadvantages but at least I appear to turn into a ranting fool rather than a death-threatening ranting fool. One of the dangers of overindulgence is that you think everything you say, think and do is fantastically profound and important. That’s the magick of eau de vie.

On the subject of death-threats, there has been at least one arrest for making death threats to MPs on facebook. I’ve failed to find what was actually said but come on. I’m certain that New Labour ministers and policemen did allsorts of nonsese to me while I was legitimately participating in the democratic process. The problem was that I was good at it ;) These MPs did after all vote to kill people – and it is expected – innocent people too unless these astoundingly super-wonderful weapons of mass destruction ‘Paisley’ missiles have got some truly divine abilities. That’s understandably likely to piss some people off a lot.

More false-flag attacks. C’mon, you’re finding it so easy that you’re not really trying. Don’t forget the issue that the innocent patsies are executed as part of that BS.

Image of Mhairi Black, SNP MP
Mhairi Black, SNP MP

Congratulations to Mhairi Black awarded University of Glasgow’s Young Alumnus of the Year.

Principal and Vice-Chancellor Professor Anton Muscatelli said: “Mhairi has been a true ambassador for the University of Glasgow, demonstrating huge commitment to her final year studies at the same time as canvassing for election.

“Students and staff at the University of Glasgow have shown they can change the world – I am certain that Mhairi will make a difference to the lives of others as she strives to combat poverty in her role as an MP. I am also sure that she will be an inspirational role-model for other young people to engage in the democratic process.”

There are various calls from disgruntled Labour MPs for Corbyn to step-back or disassociate with Stop the War Coalition and the Momentum movement and to refuse to attend the Stop the War fundraiser as guest of honour. Well he has already stepped back from Stop the War but a Corbyn spokesman is entirely correct in saying

“The anti-war movement has been a vital democratic campaign, which organised the biggest demonstrations in British history and has repeatedly called it right over 14 years of disastrous wars in the wider Middle East,” the spokesman said. “Jeremy Corbyn rejects any form of abuse in politics from any quarter. But he will not accept attempts to portray campaigning, lobbying and protest as somehow beyond the pale. In fact it’s at the heart of democracy”.

Is Corbyn responsible for all actions of all Momentum or Stop the War members and activists? What can he realistically do to stop any online abuse? He appears to be held to a far higher standard than others. Does the left call for Blairites to distance themselves from right-wing thinktanks?

Alex Salmond suggests Corbyn does a shadow cabinet reshuffle. Well, what did they expect?

I’m sure that I read a report that Corbyn’s chief whip Rosie Winterton refused to whip the Labour Party saying that she answers to the shadow cabinet. I can’t find any mention of it now but I’d like to know. Perhaps someone could buy me a ticket to the fundraiser and I’ll ask him?

And lastly, Jeremy Corbyn in a santa hat raising money for refugees.

Image of Jeremy Corbyn in a santa hat raising money for Oxfam's refugee appeal.

slightly later edit: I think that I understand Corbyn’s drive for a new politics. It is a different politics inspired by the Stop the War Coalition. In my case I also saw it in the 2005 G8 campaign.

It’s a real desire for consensus rather than confrontational politics. We did this at my own Stop the War group when delegates were representing the views of the group (which strangely enough is not the way unions and political parties do it).

Cameron claimed that he wanted consensus with the Syria vote. He didn’t and instead simply wanted a win to look the big war leader. Clearly there was and there is division rather than consensus.

Continue ReadingSunday evening politics review

Going Underground Special: John Pilger on Paris, ISIS and Media Propaganda

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Going Underground Special: John Pilger on Paris, ISIS and Media Propaganda

4/12/15 00.25 GMT Pilger: “That’s a ludicrous argument”. Do both of them share knowledge – probably like all real journalists that it’s ludicrous, er, perhaps like a ludicrous diversion?

From Pol Pot to ISIS: “Anything that flies on everything that moves”

by John Pilger

(on 2014-11-02)

 …

Last year, the former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas revealed that “two years before the Arab spring”, he was told in London that a war on Syria was planned. “I am going to tell you something,” he said in an interview with the French TV channel LPC, “I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business. I met top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria… Britain was organising an invasion of rebels into Syria. They even asked me, although I was no longer Minister for Foreign Affairs, if I would like to participate… This operation goes way back. It was prepared, preconceived and planned.”

READ a 2007 State Department cable published by WikiLeaks about the 2006 declaration of the “Islamic State of Iraq”, the forerunner organisation of ISIS.

READ two US Congressional Research Reports on the emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq under the leadership of Abu Omar al-Baghdadi (the predecessor of ISIS’ Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi), following the death of the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, in 2006. See here and here.

READ a 2007 cable showing Islamic State presence in Iraq during 2007, and how demographic shifts in response to sectarian Shia-Sunni tensions, directly provoked by the US invasion and installation of a Shia-dominated government, were already playing into the hands of the group.

VIEW 113 Iraq War Logs documenting US forces encountering ISI in Iraq from 2007 onwards.

BROWSE nearly 3,000 documents published by WikiLeaks which mention the Islamic State of Iraq.

READ three US Congressional Research Report on the history of the US-backed “Sons of Iraq” Sunni militias, formed to oppose Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. The failure by the US-backed Shia government to integrate the Sunni militias into the Iraq army later led to many “Sons of Iraq” returning to the jihadi insurgency, swelling the ranks of modern-day ISIS. See here, here and here.

READ a 2009 cable on AQI/ISI in Mosul.

READ in a 2010 State Department cable how Syria’s head of intelligence Ali Mamlouk discussed with US diplomats the migration of foreign “takfiri” fighters, such as the Islamic State, into Syria from war-torn Iraq, and offered the US a military and intelligence partnership to address them. Declining, the US later lent support to jihadi groups as Syria’s “opposition” during the Syrian civil war.

READ a leaked 2010 STRATFOR email containing a private intelligence product documenting the transition of Islamic State leadership to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, after the killing of former-ISI leader, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi in 2010.

 

4/12/15 00.45 about the Guardian newspaper

http://off-guardian.org/about-2/#comment-5091

reinertorheit

I understand the anger and frustration many people have voiced here – and I think that it would be worth posting an explanation of what has actually happened at The Guardian.

In 2013, The Guardian filed some of the worst financial accounts in the newspaper’s history. The publishers were clearly in deep financial trouble, and were forced to sell-off some of their assets, simply to avoid immediately bankruptcy. The financial outlook appeared very grim.

But ‘hope’ was around the corner… although it was a vile kind of ‘hope’ indeed.

The Guardian was (quietly) relaunched, positioning itself primarily in the USA and Australia – whilst aiming to retain as much as possiible from its former days as a left-wing newspaper in Britain. New and mysterious ‘backers’ appeared, who were now controlling the political content of the newspaper. Alan Rusbridger was quickly removed and thrown on the rubbish-heap – the usual nonsense about wanting to develop his career (in retirement?).

It was a very simple idea – “buy up the opposition to neoconservative American ideas – and neatralise it with a daily diet of pro-Pentagon, pro-Washington, shabby indoctrination”. Unwanted old left-wingers were quietly pushed aside. Ambitious Americans like Hadley Freeman were shoved forwards. New right-wing writers were hired, such as “Rafael Behr” (who he?). The screaming voices of the lunatic right, such as TImothy Garbage-Trash, suddenly become Leader Writers..

Let’s just explain what “neoconservative” actually means. It means following right-wing policies and ideas under the apparently acceptable cloak of being socialists, in order to secure public support for these extreme right-wing policies. Tony Blair is the perfect example… a man who found himself in perfect accord with George Bush – a god-bothering war-mongering racist fascist psychopath with the brain of a mollusc.

But it gets worse. The Guardian is now not really written by Guardian journalists any longer. Instead, coverage of all “sensitive” topics has been franchised out to American rightwing organisations. Now we get articles and editorial which have been “sponsored by the John D Rockefeller Foundation” (an extremist rightwing organisation), whose authorship and views chime perfectly with American hard-line exceptionalist Christian white right. Sometimes the sourcing is hidden more carefully… for example, the “Calvert Journal” – an American-funded pile of rightwing trash based in Calvert Street in London…. trailed as an “expert source” on Russia, but actually ghost-written in Washington. A few down-at-heel Russian emigres were hired as the ostensible “authors” of this crap. So now the Guardian’s Russia coverage is written by spooks in Washington under the guise of being written by “Russian opposition voices cowering from Putin in London”. I’ve met these filth – they are pathetic users who are happy to take Washington’s dollars to fund their empty-headed glamorous lifestyles in London. This comes under the heading of “New East”, headed by a new rightwing extremist at the Guardian called Maeve Sheerlaw… a cheap hack who has never been to Moscow in her life, yet was made an Overnight Expert to parrot the opinions of filth like Andrew McFaul, failed American Ambassador to Moscow.

Then there are all the articles ‘syndicated’ from the Moscow Times – another fake newspaper funded by American rightwingers in Washington, via a chain of anonymous holding companies in the Netherlands and Scandinavia. Don’t be fooled by that “Moscow Times” title – it was one they picked on purpose, to make it sound like a serious newspaper. In fact it’s staffed by a team of cheap American journalism students, and there are no Russians working there at all. A few Russian names appear as columnists… but – surprise! – they are all Russian runaways, living in Miami or Brighton Beach, and delighted to have Washington’s cash in exchange for some bitter hatred penned during a drunken lunch-hour.

In summary, then – The Guardian which readers remember from the 1980s and 1990s no longer exists at all. Its exterior appearance and readership has been bought for cash by American fascist organisations… but covertly, so that readers “believe” they are still reading The Guardian. Surprised? You shouldn’t be, because it’s how Tony Blair came to power in Britain – the most Tory leader Britain has ever had. And where are his ‘socialist’ allies? Peter Mandelson, a penniless journalist, is now Lord Mandelson, with a two-million pound house and a seat in the House of Lords. Socialism, my arse.

The Guardian is now more right-wing than the Daily Telegraph. It features articles from Timmy Garbage-Trash saying how Britain should go to war against Russia, to save those jolly, plucky, Right Sector genocidal fascists in Ukraine.

None of this has ever been mentioned in the Guardian itself, of course. You are all still clinging to this rabid pro-American sheet of garbage until the moment they actually write it on the front page. That day will never come. Yet you still think the Guardian is a ‘socialist’ newspaper.

Continue ReadingGoing Underground Special: John Pilger on Paris, ISIS and Media Propaganda