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Politicans and world leaders making news and in the news, and spouting hot air

Massachusetts mayor plans to pickle the state’s first legal marijuana

weed boston

“I am not pickled – but my weed is”

 

From today you can buy weed legally in Massachusetts for fun. The state’s first commercial marijuana stores opened for business. Stood first in the queue was Northampton, Mass. mayor David Narkewicz. CBS News tells us:

When asked whether the purchase is simply ceremonial or it will be consumed, Narkewicz said, “I am actually going to probably preserve it and display it…because it is historically significant.”

It isn’t. Really, it isn’t – not unless you also have the first bag of crips sold in a pub and other humdrum consumables in a home museum to the everyday. A lump of pickled weed is simply a waste of weed.

“There has been marijuana use going on in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for a long, long time. What’s changing is it’s now being regulated. It’s now being tested. It’s now being strictly monitored. That’s really the major change that’s happening,” Narkewizc said.

Ah, smell that – it ain’t freedom blowin’ in the wind, folks. It’s the stench of regulation. 

Posted: 20th, November 2018 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians, The Consumer | Comment

Unions deeply upset that Tory minister Claire Perry allegedly swore

Claire_perry swearing

 

Claire Perry is accused of swearing and shouting at staff. The Guardian carries the news that the … Yeah, she’s the energy minister. Well, done, Claire and Claire’s mum for getting it right. Hard luck the rest of you. The paper’s story is choice:

Trade unions have written to the top official in the business department to raise concerns about claims that the energy minister, Claire Perry, has sworn and screamed at civil servants, the Guardian understands.

Trade unions are famously bastions of polite and civilised behaviour. No-one swears. No-one shouts. Right it is that they and the Guardian alert us to allegedly uncouth behaviour. In a welter of acronyms and counter-acronyms, the PCS, FDA and Prospect unions wrote a joint letter to Alex Chisholm, permanent secretary at the BEIS, noting Perry’s alleged behaviour. Civil servants are not there to be sworn at. What they are there for is to, well, again, shout out your answers; closest to the truth wins a job for life. No swearing. 

 

fuck the guardian

The Guardian says ‘so fucking what’ to saying ‘fuck’

 

fuck the guardian

Swearing is ok if you’re target is one disliked by Guardian readers

 

The paper continues:

It is understood that the complaints given to the unions include claims that Perry screamed and shouted, texted one civil servant to say “Fuck off”, and wrote, “What’s this shit?” on a memo produced by staff. The MP for Devizes became energy minister in June last year, a role that involves attending cabinet.

 

fuck the guardian

Guardian writer auditions for government

 

 

To think a woman who allegedly uses such filthy words is that close to the seat of power. If we’ve learned anything from the Brexit vote it is that liberals love using the words “fuck”, “bollocks” and “shit”, often on placards. There is a time and there is a place. Journalists at the Guardian are understood to be dismayed.

Posted: 20th, November 2018 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment

Brexit battle kills democracy as EU’s imperial army wages war

newspapers brexit

 

Congratulations Theresa May for stopping Brexit. The big problem for her is that people noticed, chiefly the millions who voted for Brexit and secondly a few of the public servants whose job it was to make Brexit happen, notably members of her Cabinet who saw the binary choice on offer and resigned. You are either in the EU or out of it. May’s Withdrawal Bill is a deal to stay in. Over 17 million of us voted out. The two things don’t tally. Sign the deal and Brexit has been stopped. 

Brendan O’Neill argues in The Spectator, “If we kill Brexit, we kill democracy itself.” May’s deal “will strangle British sovereignty and reduce us to a craven vassal state that not only has to abide by EU rules but will also lack any mechanism for unilaterally withdrawing from them. A ‘Brexit deal’, they call it. Do not insult our intelligence. Voters are not as dim as you think.” (Has anyone checked?)

Calm down, dear, says Jeremy Warner in the Telegraph. May’s deal is better than no deal or no Brexit, the other two offers on the table. The Withdrawal Agreements is not an end, rather a “staging post on the journey to a more complete form of Brexit”. Sure, Britain can only leave the Customs Union on the EU’s say so but if the arrangements are seen to be “very much against the national interest, then they will eventually unravel, even if that means breaking the treaty”. May’s deal begins the path to Brexit in “an orderly and manageable manner”. Yes, it’s got more holes that a Donald Trump wet dream but it is very British.

Leave it to Westminster to do right, then, a place Marina Hyde likens to “a sort of middle-management Westeros, where mostly terrible actors obsess over court politics, and the electorate are just CGI casualties in the Battle of the Bastards.” 

Brexiteers remain in Cabinet. Leader of the Commons Andrea Leadsom, Michael Gove, Liam Fox, Penny Mordaunt and Chris Grayling are all there to tell May how wrong she is. An unnamed source told the Sunday Times’ Tim Shipman, Gove is staying “to get this in a better place”. Or maybe he and the rest of them just want a few more days to measure No.10 for their own choice of curtains. Is May prepared for a leadership challenge? Conservative Party chairman Brandon Lewis said: “I think the prime minister is ready for anything.” 

The big issue with the deal is that backstop. The UK and the EU want to avoid a hard Northern Ireland border. So they’ll be a  “backstop” – or back-up plan as trade negotiations continue. The backstop leaves Northern Ireland more closely aligned to some EU rules than the rest of the UK. Got a problem with the UK being broken up? The UK would not be able to leave the backstop without the EU’s consent. Sound like Brexit to you? But not to worry. Things will work out. 

If the EU doesn’t take the hint, we can always go to war. Last week German chancellor Angela Merkel opined: “A common European army would show the world that there will never be war between the European nations.” Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s representative in the Brexit negotiations, tweeted: “I am very pleased that both #Merkel and Macron are now fully behind a European army. We fought for this for many years. In the world of tomorrow, we have to take our destiny into our own hands!” And French finance minister Bruno Le Maire added: “Europe needs to become a kind of empire like China and the USA… technological power, economic, financial, monetary, cultural power will be decisive. Europe can no longer afford to shrink from exercising its power and being an empire of peace.”

Nothing to worry about, then. We are either with the EU or we are with the EU. Vote now and vote often… 

 

Posted: 17th, November 2018 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment

BBC sign language expert nails Brexit

Are you keeping up with Brexit? Nothing’s been signed. No deal has been done. The UK remains in the EU. Millions of words have been written on the matter. But the whole thing can is best summed up by the BBC’s sign language interpreter:

 

 

Those Brexit options:

* A second referendum. Question to be asked: ‘Did you understand the 1st referendum?’
* Carry on talking to the EU forever
* Reduce number of people on benefits by giving the unemployed each two hours work as Brexit chief negotiator

Posted: 16th, November 2018 | In: Politicians, TV & Radio | Comment

The war for an independent Barcelona (1976)

grises barcelona

 

February 1 1976: three months after the death of dictator Generalísimo Francisco Franco (4 December 1892 – 20 November 1975), the Assembly of Catalonia (Asemblea de Catalunya) marched in Barcelona under the banner ‘Libertat, Amnesty, Estatut d’Autonomia’ (Freedom, Amnesty, Autonomy).

 

Barcelona indepedence

 

Local residents’ associations, Trade Unions, political parties (many illegal), along with members of cultural and artistic entities participated. Initially it was peaceful. There was a sit-in on the Passeig de Sant Joan, at the corner of Carrer de Provença. But the Civil Guard and riot police police-threw smoke bombs at the seated protesters and charged them. Later, numerous groups marched through the streets of the Eixample to reach the Modelo prison, where they sought the release of political prisoners.

The Civil Guard waited. They were armed with rifles. Manel Armengol had a camera.

 

PG. DE SANT JOAN/PROVENÇA; CAMI DE LA PRESO MODEL, A LA MODEL C.ENTENÇA

 

See many more on flashbak.

Posted: 5th, November 2018 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment

Turkmenistan’s president Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov lifts golden weights before his applauding Cabinet

What Donald Trump will make it has yet to be revealed, but for now all we have is Turkmenistan’s president Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov lifting golden weights bar before his applauding Cabinet. Mr Berdy is also the country’s prime minister and commander-in-chief of the country’s armed forces. And sine you asked, male homosexuality is illegal:

 

 

According to Human Rights Watch:

Turkmenistan remains an extremely repressive country. The government severely restricts all fundamental rights and freedoms, including freedoms of association, expression, and religion. President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, his relatives and their associates control all aspects of public life, and the authorities encroach on private life. The government carries out forced evictions without adequately compensating those affected. The government continues to conceal the fate and whereabouts of dozens of people forcibly disappeared following their imprisonment during waves of arrests in the late 1990s and early 2000s, although it has begun to return to families the bodies of several inmates forcibly disappeared years ago who have recently died in custody. Activists and independent correspondents critical of the government face increased intimidation, harassment, physical attacks and imprisonment. The country remains closed to any independent scrutiny.

 

Posted: 3rd, November 2018 | In: Key Posts, Politicians | Comment

Momentum uses Hillsborough to promote Jeremy Corbyn for Prime Minister

Jeremy Corbyn fans at Momentum want you to follow @PeoplesMomentum. “Let’s get a Socialist government to No.10! 💓 Join Momentum today! 👇,” runs their tweet.  And there’s a video. Things are interesting about 36 seconds in when the campaign uses the Hillsborough tragedy to promote Jez:

 

 

See that bloke chucking copies of the Sun newspaper into a bin bag? He didn’t do it because he wants Corbyn to be prime minster. He didn’t even do it to stick it to the right-wing media. The footage is of Everton fan Brian Kelly binning free copies of the Sun at Glasgow Airport as part of the boycott triggered by the paper’s appalling reporting on the horror of Hillsborough. The Sun apologised, albeit years later.

Mr Kelly told the Liverpool Echo: “A friend of mine, Tommy Fletcher, who’s a Liverpool fan, said put the lot in the bin and I gladly obliged. The rivalry obviously doesn’t come into it when this is involved… Loads of places now are gladly refusing to sell the paper. Football fans, true football fans, should agree to do the same.”

 

 

That Momentum thought using the Hillsborough horror to promote Corbyn was a good idea brings their judgement into question. The survivors, friends, relatives and loved ones of the 96 who died in 1989 still await justice. Hijacking their suffering is opportunistic and demeaning. Corbyn a pal of the working class who were defamed and monstered by a lying media and police a Hillsborough ? Don’t make me laugh. Back then football fans were “scum”, a white riot-in-waiting; today Corbyn portrays the tabloid reading masses as mentally negligible bigots who voted for Brexit and Tories because they were stupid enough to believe lies. Wary of these fools getting the wrong kind of information, Corbyn wants to nationalise the news.

Nothing’s changed.

Back then right and left were united in a war on football fans. Football was “a slum sport watched by slum people in slum stadiums” (Sunday Times); a game produced by “yobs and slum cultures of the stricken inner cities” (New Statesman); a game for the “udserclass” (Sunday Times). They still seek to regulate and control behaviour by restricting our view.

Note: What does footage of a man chucking copies of tabloid newspapers into bins say about Corbyn’s attitude to press freedom? It’s chilling. Don’t vote for censorship.

 

Posted: 1st, November 2018 | In: Key Posts, Politicians | Comment

After Pittsburgh Jews advised to build militarised homeland to deter attacks

 

President Donald Trump says mass murder at a Pittsburgh synagogue would have been “better” if the Jews had been armed.  “They had a maniac walk in and they didnt have any protection and that is just so sad to see,” said Trump. “The results could have been much better.” One day when Jews return to their homeland after millennia of persecution they can invest heavily in the military. Then no-one will be attack them. They will be treated with respect and murderous anti-Semitism will end.

As for now, we’re told that Robert Bowers walked into the Tree of Life Synagogue during Shabbat service and shouted “All Jews must die” before shooting dead 11 people sand wounding many more.

“This has little to do with it,” said Trump when asked what role US gun laws played in the massacre. “If they had protection inside the results would have been far better. This is a dispute that will always exist I suspect. But if they had some kind of protection inside the temple, maybe it could have been a much different situation. But they didn’t and he was able to do things that unfortunately he shouldn’t have been able to do.”

It’s all too much like when an adviser to Poland’s president said Israel was ashamed “at the passivity of the Jews during the Holocaust.”

Jews have sometimes been described, often for the purpose of assigning blame or inflicting humiliation, as having acted passively in the face of the Holocaust. Key acts of resistance contradict the trope, most notably the Warsaw Uprising of 1943. Smaller revolts took place in death camps, including Sobibor and Treblinka, where starving prisoners without weapons faced heavily armed German guards.

Image: Felix Nussbaum (1904-1944), Camp Synagogue, Saint Cyprien, 1941. (Via)

Posted: 28th, October 2018 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment

Pipe Bombs, Donald Trump and the surge in Demophobia

The rush to blame President Trump for the nut job posting pipe bombs to leading Democrats has been notable for its haste. Do you really believe that a vote for Trump was a vote for terrorism? Blimey, the man’s a berk possessed of all the diplomatic nous of a puppy sat by a pile of poo, but to jump on the link that banging on about ‘fake news’ and locking up Hillary Clinton leads to acts of potential murder is a leap onto a convenient lily pad.

Did we all rush to blame Islamism for the attacks on Paris, London, Barcelona, Nice, New York, Berlin, Toulouse, Brussels, Manchester and Madrid? The advice after those attacks was to look to ourselves for signs of Islamophobia. It wasn’t the loons we need worry about. The real danger was non-Muslims reacting with phobic-born violence towards Muslim mates, work colleagues, family, nurses, doctors, pot heads, cab drivers, lawyers, postmen, Lords, politicians, waiters, victims of crime, victims of Islamist terrorism and any other Muslims who after mass murder would surely mutate before our lizard brains into the enemy unless we were monitored. After Manchester was attacked, we got candles and pledges to unite and remain united. But after pipe bombs in the post, the message is get Trump because the man on the trigger for millions of dangerous fools.

If you want to politicise extreme violence and terrorism, then allow all terrorism to be openly debated. There have been no renditions of ‘Love is All you Need’ in response to the pipe bombs posted to George Soros, Baraka Obama, CNN and Hillary Clinton. We’re not warned to look out for Demophobia and fight it when he see it. Why? Because it’s safe to attack what we believe we can change. Trump can be undone by linking him to acts of violence, hope his decriers ; but confronting the issues that drive a radical, murderous form of Islam, well, best light a candle, create a hashtag and hope for the best.

Let’s not bury debate and allow the berks and bigots to fill the void. Don’t do it if you want to get rid of Trump and stop empowering the likes of Tommy Robinson…

Posted: 26th, October 2018 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment

This explains Donald Trump’s tweets

It’s fairly obvious that Donald Trump has lost the journalistic classes. Something that shouldn’t be all that much of a surprise, given that the journalistic class hating such things as Donald Trump and his supporter base is why he won the damn election. However, you might think that these people who make their livings with words would at least understand what he was actually saying rather than just mocking it. But that’s to misunderstand quite how badly the 90% Democrat and only 10% Republican profession is out of step with the America they write about and for.

I myself writing from the point of view of having been a part of that industry and really rather shocked at quite how vociferously all those in flyover country are derided.

Here’s the tweet Trump made:

And here’s the reaction from HuffPo:

His bizarre brag did not go unnoticed by fellow Twitter users, however:

Then follows a list of people making fun of the President. Fair game of course. AOL runs the same piece:

Trump’s bizarre grammar boast has Twitter users scratching their heads

But it’s not bizarre grammar in the slightest. We might call it a joke – not a very good one to be sure – or a claim to an excessive patriotism but it’s a good little piece of politics.

So, what’s the difference between country and Country? Well, we capitalise proper nouns in this language. So, if we capitalise then we’re making the claim that this is a proper noun. As with the difference between polish and Polish. Here the difference is between a country. Something that anyone can claim to come from as all of us do come from one or another. The other claim being Country, the country, not a, that is, *THE* country, the very apotheosis of what a country is and is supposed to be. And there are an awful lot of Americans out there in flyover country, those derided boonies, who think exactly that way about their place.

You know, it’s only the coastal elites that the journalistic class is drawn from who actually hate their own America.

Trump’s claim, with that capitalisation, is that the US is what every other place should aspire to be. Something that will indeed be understood – they still have grammar classes in that country – and which will play well out there where Republican isn’t a swearword.

Now it’s perfectly possible to disagree with this, entirely fair to deride it – look, it’s still a free country, you can think whatever you like – but to fail to understand it? Well, guess that’s why newspaper circulation is going down and no one does trust the fake news being sent their way, eh?

Posted: 22nd, October 2018 | In: Key Posts, Politicians | Comment

The Peoples’ March was futile: 700,000 demand the impossible

There’s really only one explanation for the Peoples’ March today in London – an advertising of personal virtue. For absolutely nothing else will be achieved at all, that time and money has been completely wasted.

 

people's march

Big media pretty much ignores the futile march

 

But out they came, to march through the streets of London:

No one knows where negotiations over the U.K.’s exit from the European Union will end up. (Things are not looking great.) But it’s now obvious that no one heading to the polls in 2016 could possibly have grasped the full implications of this misguided decision — and that the British people deserve another say.

That’s not an entirely ridiculous claim. I say this as a committed Leaver too – rethinks are indeed part of responsible governance and democracy. There are two good arguments against another vote though:

Organisers say more than 600,000 people rallied in central London on Saturday to call for a referendum on the final Brexit deal
People’s Vote march: ‘more than half a million’ rally for new Brexit referendum

That’s part of the battle over numbers. Don’t trust that count for a moment:

Protesters seeking a referendum on the final Brexit deal have attended a rally which organisers say was the “biggest” demonstration of its kind.

Young voters led the People’s Vote march to London’s Parliament Square, which supporters say attracted more than 600,000 people.

MPs from the main parties backed the event calling for a fresh referendum.

This is something which has already been ruled out by Prime Minister Theresa May.

The People’s Vote campaign said stewards on the route estimated 670,000 were taking part.

Scotland Yard said it was not able to estimate the size of the crowd.

No, really, do not believe that number.

Still, why shouldn’t we?

The first reason is that we’re British dammit. It’s the Europeans, the continentals, who keep having referenda about the European Union until the proles vote the right way. As was done in Ireland, France, Denmark. Admittedly, that’s an argument unlikely to find favour with those who like the EU.

So, the killer one. We’re out the door on 29 March next year. The deal, whatever it is going to be, is not finished yet. Reasonable people – that is others than me – think it might actually get sealed on March 28 at 11.59 pm. But even if it were sealed today then what?

British law insists that there be a 6 month run in to a referendum. Which is, of course, what a peoples’ vote is.

Our own laws say that we cannot have a Peoples’ Vote therefore. So why were half a million people pissing away their Saturday?

Posted: 21st, October 2018 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment

Brexit 1 Nick Clegg 0: Facebook seduces Mr EU to Leave for California

See ya, Nick Clegg. The man who wants a second EU referendum in the hope the great unwashed will vote for the status quo has opted to leave for the US, where he’ll work for Facebook. The former Deputy Prime Minister is now Facebook’s head of global affairs and communications.

On Facebook, natch., Clegg told us: “Having spoken at length to Mark and Sheryl [Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg] over the last few months, I have been struck by their recognition that the company is on a journey which brings new responsibilities not only to the users of Facebook’s apps but to society at large.”

A journey…to Luxembourg to pay less taxes? Clegg continues his travels into X Factor speak:

“I hope I will be able to play a role in helping to navigate that journey. Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger, Oculus and Instagram are at the heart of so many people’s everyday lives – but also at the heart of some of the most complex and difficult questions we face as a society: the privacy of the individual, the integrity of our democratic process, the tensions between local cultures and the global internet, the balance between free speech and prohibited content, the power and concerns around artificial intelligence, and the wellbeing of our children.”

Maybe. Or you could just, you know, disable the app? Life will go on. But Clegg’s already at work, it seems, assuring us that Facebook is life itself. It’s not a company geared to make money from a leisure activity; it’s part of who we are.

 

nick clegg facebook

 

He adds: “I believe that Facebook must continue to play a role in finding answers to those questions – not by acting alone in Silicon Valley, but by working with people, organisations, governments and regulators around the world to ensure that technology is a force for good.”

Or as he put it in a 2017 column: “Other critics of Silicon Valley are just plain disingenuous: traditional newspaper groups vilify social media companies for scooping up the lion’s share of advertising revenue. What do they expect? Social media companies – notwithstanding their occasionally pious New Age slogans – are profit-making companies, not charities.”

Good job he’s gone for the betterment of humankind and not the money.

Spotter: Financial Times 

Posted: 19th, October 2018 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians, Technology | Comment

10 reasons why Ivanka Trump should be US Ambassador to the United Nations

Ivanka_Trump_ UN US ambassador

In the UN powder keg, she’d be ‘dynamite’

 

 

Ivanka Trump is by far and away the best qualified daughter for the job of US ambassador to the United Nations. The incumbent Nikki Haley is leaving. Donald Trump says Ivanka getting the job “has nothing to do with nepotism”. She would be “dynamite”, an explosive presence in a diplomatic arsenal. She would be “incredible:

 

Here are 10 reasons why Ivanka Trump would be the best choice for US ambassador to the UN:

  1. QVC would edge closer to recognition as a independent state
  2. She’s blonde
  3. It’s nothing to do with nepotism
  4. Her husband was appointed Senior Advisor to the President
  5. She has endured hardship – her “boarding-school life” was a “prison”
  6. She is by far and way the best qualified daughter for the job
  7. She worked her way up in business, starting out as as Executive Vice-President at the Trump organisation
  8. She is a respected judge (see The Apprentice) – a job at the UN is the Supreme Court’s loss
  9. She advised Donald Trump for the first two months of his administration
  10. It has nothing to do with nepotism

Ivanka Trump is endorsed by Kin Jong-UN.

Posted: 10th, October 2018 | In: Politicians | Comment

Daily Telegraph pay: Boris Johnson promotes gender equality to deadline

You can read Boris Johnson’s thoughts in the Daily Telegraph. The Tory MP’s column earns him around £5,000 a week. The paper marks them as ‘Premium’ stories on its website.  If you want to read them all you have to pay. Or you can read them on his Facebook page for free. This week, Johnson pitches himself on the side of girls. The article is entitled: “Put a sock in it men: It’s time to end the global injustices and bigotry towards women.” It’s the kind of article any newly single man whose been caught cheating on his long suffering wife, as Johnson allegedly has, will think a good way to pull the birds.

On Facebook, Johnson’s publishes the following for free:

When a mighty dam is about to burst it does not just collapse in one explosive roar; it first springs a leak. A jet of water shoots from the crack, and then another crack appears and another horizontal fountain of foam; and as the whole vast curtain of masonry finally begins to tremble the onlookers behold the valley beneath and wonder who and what will be in the path of the billions of pent-up gallons as they are released from their captivity.

That is roughly how it feels today as we watch these extraordinary feminist movements like #MeToo, and the frenzy surrounding the nomination of judge Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court. We have a sense of the welling emotion behind these phenomena. We feel the rage at decades, centuries, millennia of complacency and injustice. We see women and men uniting to call for a change of attitudes, for a new and progressive sensibility…

What can possibly have triggered Johnson’s fire? One clue comes via Private Eye, which notes that the Telegraph’s new digital MD is one Dora Michail. Her twitter profile includes a rainbow flag. And recent retweets and tweets give a clue to her agenda, which takes in ‘tackling discrimination and promoting gender equality with an intersectional approach’:

 

dora michail

dora michail

dora michail

 

So there’s Boris Johnson’s column on his drive to tackle gender equality. Fee for the social justice warrior’s wisdom: £260,000 a year. In next week’s column Boris says: ‘Time to go, Theresa May, and give a bloke a chance…’

Posted: 8th, October 2018 | In: Broadsheets, Key Posts, Politicians | Comment

Free speech for Jew haters: Mahathir Mohamad addresses Oxford University students

Is Mahathir Mohamad a fan of Katie Hopkins, the rent-a-gob former Mail columnist and LBC radio presenter? Both seem to have missed the memo from Josef Mengele, the Nazi who when not dreaming up new ways to murder Jews in his lab was measuring Jews’ anatomy to check for nose size. It turned out that despite Nazi propaganda painting Jews as hook-nosed freaks, Jew noses were no different in dimension to the Aryan master race’s. So when Hopkins reportedly says “I got the nose but not the Jewish bit, which is shit” and Mohamed, the Malaysian prime minister, states that all Jews are “hook-nosed”, you might think they’re harking back to anti-Semitic tropes. You might also get the feeling that the sighting of “Jew noses” is not meant as a compliment, but intended to other the Israelites and mark out Jews as, well, “shit”.

Hopkins is no longer a regular presence on the mainstream British media. But you can catch Mohamad on the Beeb and on stage during his tour of the UK. He’s a lovely bloke. Not in the least bit of an anti-Semitic bastard. “If you are going to be truthful, the problem in the Middle East began with the creation of Israel,” he opined knowingly on BBC’s Hard Talk, pointing to those fabled pre-Israel lands flowing with the milk and honey of human comradeship [see the Bible, Islamic history, the big book of beheadings and the Horrible Histories series for children]. That is the truth. But I cannot say that.” He also knows that 4 million not 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust – which means 2 million dead Jews are liars, so too the ones who mourn them.

Not that the bigger figure is not without its appeal:

“1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews,” he said at the Organization of the Islamic Conference summit in 2003 in Kuala Lumpur. “There must be a way. And we can only find a way if we stop to think, to assess our weaknesses and our strength, to plan, to strategize and then to counterattack. We are actually very strong. 1.3 billion people cannot be simply wiped out. The Europeans killed six million Jews out of 12 million.”

He “wrote on his personal blog in 2012 that ‘Jews rule this world by proxy,” The Associated Press reported’.

But why read the case notes when you can catch him live? The man who says he’s “proud” to be called an anti-Semite appeared at Oxford University’s Islamic Centre, Imperial College and Chatham House. Good to see universities are not full of snowflakes after all – at least those sensitive students didn’t issue a ‘no platform’ decree when Jew-baiters and Jew haters are delivering the address…

 

Posted: 4th, October 2018 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment

Theresa May: better days ahead at St Custard’s

Theresa may dancing

 

Theresa May, the woman who graduated from Ronald Searle’s St Custard’s when they let girls in, is dancing for her country. The Mirror is strictly unimpressed – she’s no Ed Balls, a towering figure who at least had the decency to be booted from the Commons before drying humping the dance stage. It was “strictly shambolic” when May danced her way on to the stage at the Tory Party conference – a nod to her dancing on a trip to South Africa.

Wasn’t she “back in the groove”, as the Daily Mail appraises on its cover, it spotting our “boogie-woogie PM” adding a dash of humour to a performance that’s too often drier than a nun’s laundry? But as Abba blared, the Mirror awarded her four zeros from the judges for her “dad dance”. She has “zero credibility”. Her rivals are plotting to “dance on her grave”, which is the kind of proper scoring we demand from our pro-celeb judges. A perfect cha-cha-cha or death to whathisface from Casualty.

 

Theresa May

 

No, says the Mail. May is not running “scared” of Jeremy Corbyn’s “hope and vision” (Mirror).  She has “danced her way back to authority”. She promised “better days ahead”. She “savaged” Corbyn’s “betrayal of his own party” and the anti-Jewish racism that thrives under his leadership. May delivered a “barnstorming speech” says the Star. She told us that “austerity is over”. Her’s was an “upbeat message” (Sun) in which she “eviscerated” Labour. She “did her party proud”. We should “admire her staggering resilience”.

So “Let’s all dance to May’s tune” (Express). For most tabloids, it’s the only record playing…

Posted: 4th, October 2018 | In: Politicians, Tabloids | Comment

Boris vs May: Sunday Times puts us on first-name terms with Johnson

Boris Johnson wants to lead the Tory Party and become Prime Minister. Theresa May is blocking his ambitions. It’s “war”. But is it a fair fight in the media? No:

 

boris johnson theresa may

Boris vs May – surely: Boris vs Theresa or Johnson vs May?

 

Does it matter? Well, yes. Insults and ad hominem attacks are part of the debate. Words colour the argument. The persuadable onlookers can be swayed by words. So here’s Boris – a man we’re on fist-name terms with; he’s our pal – and May, not Theresa – an aloof presence.

 

 

Posted: 30th, September 2018 | In: Broadsheets, Politicians | Comment

The youth hungry Labour Party really is a cult to an old white man

Ever wondered how a society gets to the stage where they erect statues to the esteemed leader in every town and every city? Persecuting Jews is good. Starving people, also good. How about voting for Labour? You might not get a statue straight away – it takes time to nationalise the cement and industries – but there will be a puppet in place of a wilful MP. The Corbyn cultists have staged a vote of no confidence in Labour MP Chris Leslie. On Friday, activists at the Labour MP’s Nottingham East constituency party voted to pass a no-confidence motion for what they said were Leslie’s “repeated attempts … to undermine the leadership”. Members of the Mapperley branch of Nottingham East pointed to the former shadow chancellor’s “disloyalty and deceit”.

Louise Regan, chairwoman of the Nottingham East Labour party, guffed: “We overwhelmingly passed a motion of no confidence in our MP Chris Leslie. It was agreed that this information would be shared with the press, but that we would also make clear that members of the CLP [constituency Labour party] would be out campaigning on the national day of action, building support for Labour policies and a Labour government.”

The Labour policy seems to be ‘crush dissent and build a party of singular talent’. (Odd, no, that for a Party so keen on urban youth, and chucking out the ‘pale, male and stale’, the top team is so very old, privately educated, provincial, middle-class and white.) And cultists can play no small part in shaping what is still called the Labour Party. They’re able to force the sitting Labour MPs to compete for selection as a general election candidate.

“Sadly, differing opinions are no longer tolerated in some parts of the Labour party,” Leslie told the BBC. “But I have to weigh the views of a few dozen people at this meeting with the thousands who voted for me at the last election.” But it’s all about the party, Chris. Loyalty to zer party ist alles.

Anti-Corbyn Labour MP Chuka Umunna did what he does best and, er, tweeted: “Real unity is based on the freedom to disagree and debate… So we need to foster a much greater culture of tolerance… We must learn to listen a bit more, and shout a lot less. To focus on what unites us.” Us? You’re not with “us”, mate, say the Corbyn cultists. Your in yesterday’s Labour Party. And if you attack our beloved leader, we will attack you.

So at least Leslie is not totally alone. Labour MPs Gavin Shuker, Kate Hoey, Joan Ryan and Frank Field have been hit with no-confidence votes from their local party members. And here’s the thing. Labour must win 64 more seats at the next general election to form a majority government. But it won’t just be Labour Party members on the Far Left who get to vote for a Corbyn loyalist. The cultists can put one up for election, but the voters can knock them down.

Posted: 29th, September 2018 | In: News, Politicians | Comment

Boris Johnson in Kuenssberg and Rigby fake news shocker

boris johnson interview

 

Boris Johnson is back on the telly. Both the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg and Sky’s Beth Rigby have the first televised interview since Johnson resigned as Foreign Secretary. Is it a case of mistaken identity? This might be a mater for the US Supreme Court…

Posted: 28th, September 2018 | In: Politicians, TV & Radio | Comment

The newspapers: unpack your prejudices for Christine Blasey Ford v Brett Kavanaugh

Who do you led with – Christine Blasey Ford, the blonde, white women who stood before the massed ranks of the US Senate Judiciary Committee and the TV cameras as she accused supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her 36 years ago or the white, grey man who says he “never sexually assaulted anyone”? No contest for the newspapers, which leads with Dr Ford. She claims that at a 1980s high school party, she believed Judge Kavanaugh “was going to rape me” and “was accidentally going to kill me”. Kavanaugh then appeared before the same committee. He denied allegations of sexual assault. At home and on Twitter, we tuned in, unpacked out prejudices and picked a side we knew – just knew – was right. Our morals are sound. The other side is most probably evil:

 

brett kavanaugh Christine Blasey Ford paper newspapers brett kavanaugh Christine Blasey Ford paper newspapers brett kavanaugh Christine Blasey Ford paper newspapers

 

 

Posted: 28th, September 2018 | In: News, Politicians | Comment

British Jew who Jeremy Corbyn accused of not getting English irony sues Labour leader

Richard Millett is suing Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn for defamation, reports the Mail. Millett is the British blogger Corbyn was addressing when he accused British Zionists of not understanding “English irony”. Many, including the Labour Party supporting Daily Mirror newspaper, thought Corbyn meant Jews. Manhy Jews thought Corbyn’s comment anti-Semitic. Millett instructed solicitors to act after Corbyn talked about him to Andrew Marr on the journalist’s Sunday morning BBC 1 show. The Mail reports:

During an interview with Andrew Marr on BBC One, the Labour leader painted a picture of Mr Millett as ‘incredibly disruptive’, claiming that the police wanted to throw him out of Parliament until Mr Corbyn said he could stay.

Mr Millett, whose father fought for Britain in WWII, says that the allegations are entirely untrue and have caused lasting damage to his reputation. He is suing Corbyn for £100,000.

Millett tells the website:

“Jeremy Corbyn has constantly been trying to paint me as some aggressive traitor who has brushes with police. Listening to his interview, you’d have thought that the police were on the verge of hauling me out of parliamentary events and it was only saintly Corbyn who stopped that happening. It’s totally untrue. It’s preposterous. I think he just said it on the hoof, under questioning on the BBC on Sunday. He can’t actually back it up.”

 

The anti-semitism chatter begins just after 9 minutes.

 

As for those so-called British Jews, well, they’ve looked up ‘irony’ in the English dictionary:

Posted: 25th, September 2018 | In: News, Politicians | Comment

Anti-Semitism at the Labour Party conference and Corbyn’s other Jewish jokes

The tabloids are tucking into the Labour Party conference in Liverpool. Let’s take a look at see how they’re treating the issue of rampant Jew hatred in self-styled anti-racist party. We’ll begin with the Mirror, which mentions zer Jews on page 5, where they feature under “Joke of the Day”. MP Stella Creasy was at the Jewish Labour Movement meeting. Noting Corbyn’s comments about “British Jews failing to understand ‘English irony'” – no, not Zionists but Jews. The Mirror knows who Corbyn meant – Creasy quipped: “I was going to say something about how good it us being a Jew in the Labour Party at the moment, but someone told me you guys don’t get irony.”

On page 4, we hear Jeremy Corbyn’s response to being accused of being an anti-Semite. “Are you an anti-Semite,” the BBC’s Andrew Marr asked Corbyn. “No, absolutely not,” he replied. But a fair few of his friends and allies might be.

Jews are all over the Mail’s cover. Well, one them is. Luciana Berger, the Labour MP routinely attacked for being a Jew,  was accompanied by two coppers as she attended an anti-Semitism all in Liverpool, her home city.  The story continues on Page 6, where we learn that the coppers were carrying Tasers. Now we hear more from Creasy, and it’s not all that funny. The Mail finds space to include what the Mirror could not. Says Creasy:

“Nazism doesn’t turn up fully formed wearing black shiny boots and black shirts and goose-stepping. It builds bit by bit, it gains little by little, it paints itself as the victim – it paints its victims as the enemies, as traitors, the “other”. It rejects those norms and conventions on anti-Semitism that we have worked so hard to defend. That is the threat that we face if we do not confront this.”

And we get to hear from Berger, whose word were ignored by the Mirror. She told the meeting:

“There are Jews in this country who do not feel safe. We expect attacks that come from the far Right… but this year more than ever we have experienced attacks from the Left… Despite a last-minute and what I believe to be utterly shameful attempt to sabotage the IHRA definition and examples [the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance  definition of anti-Semitism], Labour has at last adopted it, albeit with that unnecessary caveat. What matters now is draining the swamp. We need to see the Labour Party step up the investigations into complaints of anti-Semitism and get a faster, fairer, more transparent system of internal party justice.”

Berger says Labour is awash with a “tsunami of anti-Semitic hate”.

“If we have to spend another six months like we have spent the last six months, patiently explaining to new Labour Party members – and some old ones – that Hitler didn’t want to help the Jews, or that the Rothschilds don’t run the world banking system, or that the Jews didn’t finance the slave trade or that me and other Jewish MPs are not Mossad operatives, or that it’s not cool to desecrate the mass grave of the Warsaw ghetto with ‘woke’ slogans, we will be no further forward.”

More on page 16, where the Mail calls Labour the “new nasty party” as the party descends into a “sewer of anti-Semitism”.

In the Sun, it’s Jews on page 4. Corbyn, we read, refused to apologise to British Jews for hanging out with Jew haters and Jew killers, questioning their Britishness and liking an anti-Semitic mural. We hear Labour MP Rosie Duffield tell the Jewish Labour Moment: “I defy anyone who repeats anti-Semitism trope you see the social media arena to go there [Auschwitz] and say and feel the same things.” And then we spot an actual Jew. It’s Maureen Lipman, the actress, a former Labour party supporter.  Lipman, we read, told a rally Corbyn is an anti-Semite. The Sun reports that Lipman’s new job on Coronation Street has attracted the attention of “Corbyn-backing viewers” who want her to be boycotted and sacked. Raus! Nationalise the soap industry!

Lastly, we turn to the Express. In page 5, we read: “Leader dodges anti-Semitism apology”. Why apologise for what you believe in? The Express says the anti-Semitism “dominated” the Labour conference – although not what the Mirror saw of it – adding:

At a packed rally on the conference fringe, some of Mr Corbyn’s harshest critics on the issue voiced their anger, singling out Unite boss Len McCluskey for accusing Jewish leaders of “truculent hostility” and PCS union chief Mark Serwotka for suggesting Israel fuelled Labour’s anti-Semitism row to distract attention from its own “atrocities”.

Labour MP Dame Louise Ellman said: “For major trade union leaders to not only smear the Jewish community and Jewish people for speaking out against anti-Semitism but then trying to blame them for it, I think we are entering into very dangerous waters… They are playing with fire and I call on them to withdraw those appalling statements.”

Here’s Marr with Corbyn:

 

Posted: 24th, September 2018 | In: Key Posts, Politicians, Tabloids | Comment

Brexit: Islington man demands Brexit as May is insulted

The Salzburg dinner was a “humiliation” for Theres May. But it wasn’t, was it? Not really. It was just another non-event in a series of non-events. Until the country leaves the EU in March, everything just chatter. And if it was a humiliating for May, what was it for the EU and its leaders, who gave her 10 minutes to deliver her plan before saying ‘Non’ and trolling her on social media. Pathetic? Game-changing? Revealing:

 

 

The two sides are set: one wants to Remain and still honour the will of the people who want to leave; the other wants to make leaving impossible and appear democratic. What say the people?

 

SAlzburg Brexit

 

Really?

 

SAlzburg Brexit letts

 

The man at the Mail knows a Remainer, like May, who isn’t a Leaver, like Corbyn, who wants Brexit, which is going to happen anyhow.

What about the opposition? No, not Rees-Mogg and his European Research Group. The Labour Party? Remember them…

 

 

Here’s one, the Labour MP for Brent North, Shadow Secretary of State for International Trade & Shadow Minister for International Climate Change and League of Gentleman character-in-waiting:

 

 

What about if they’re about to drive the bus you’re on over the cliff?

As British politics mines new zones of uselessness, we realise how the technocrats came to dictate the conversation. The EU manipulated Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Holland, France, Greece and Hungary. And now it wants to scupper Brexit. May’s Chequers kept us tied to the EU. But the EU wants even more. National sovereignty goes against all they stand for. So what next? Politics is unpredictable but one thing is certain: answers from the technocrats will be long-winded, well-paid and the clock will tick on*

*But which clock? EC President Jean-Claude Juncker wants to stop the ned to out the clocks back in autumn and forward in spring. The debate is which time the EU should go with. Will it be a permanent summer or winter in the glorious EU zone?

Posted: 22nd, September 2018 | In: Politicians | Comment

Brexit: tabloids react to EU bombing May’s Brexit plan

up yours delors Bexit

 

‘Chequers’, the half-backed ‘Remain by another name’ plan for the UK’s departure from the EU, is dead. The result, says the Mirror, is a Government “in crisis”. The message is clear: it’s us, not them.

European Council boss Donald Tusk (who voted for him – you?) told a meeting of EU politicos in Salzburg, Austria, “It will not work.” Over pages 4 and 5, we’re told “Europe turns its back”. We learn that May had a “row” with Tusk. You get an inkling of how easy that might be when you see a photo he posted on Instagram in which we see the wonk mansplaining some cakes (surely offering Mrs May a slice of sponge – ed) and adding the “barb”: “A piece of cake, perhaps? Sorry, no cherries.” We then hear the condescending one say: “In October we expect maximum progress and results in the Brexit talks, and then we will decide whether conditions are there to call an extra summit in November to finalise and formalise a deal.”

You know that guff about ‘taking back control’ – wasn’t all guff was it?

 

EU May brexit

Remainers of the day in the Star

 

Over in the Star, on page 3, we see a bit of kissing. May “winces” as Jean-Claude Juncker (you vote for him?) greets May. But she’s not wincing. She’s smiling. Maybe it’s the fumes?

The Sun sits on the fence and calls the EU a bunch of “two-bit mobsters”. French PM Emanuel Macron and Tusk are dressed up like mafioso. Rather than a defeat for May, we’re told the EU enforcers “ambushed” her with a “cack-handed attempt to sign-up to Brussels unacceptable terms there and then”. But May “refused to budge”.

By page 10, the Sun’s front-page news has morphed into the paper’s editorial. The EU is a “protection racket”. The EU has “refused to compromise”, “insulted the Prime Minister”. The EU “ignores their own citizens”. All the EU wants is to “punish us” for standing jp to them. But the country should ready itself for a “clean-break Brexit” – what other papers might call a “no-deal Brexit”.
 

 

“I won’t roll over on deal,” are May’s words on the Express‘ cover – which turn out to be words said by an unnamed source. She was “shaking with anger” as the EU “bullied” her. She was “furious”. We hear Macron “crow”: “Brexit is the choice of the  British people, pushed by those who predicted easy solutions. Those people are liars.” But they’d be our liars, you French ****. Step away!

And then it arrives. The EU, the outfit created to control Germany and to help Germany keep its impulses in check, is given the full Nazi treatment. The paper notes on two pages that the venue for the May’s speech to EU leaders was used to film the Sound of Music’s song ‘So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye.” The Von Trapps sing the song as they plot to escape Nazi persecution. A Mail writer evokes visions of Nazi stormtroopers at the Felsenreitschule theatre in Salzburg. He tells us the EU’s game plan is to get Britain to vote again in a second referendum and “zis time to vote ze right way”. The Mail’s message to Brussels: “Tell ’em to get stuffed.”

Or as the Sun once put it in those halcyon days before the referendum, “Up yours Delors!”

We’ve come a long way, baby….

Posted: 21st, September 2018 | In: News, Politicians, Tabloids | Comment

Gooners delight: Jeremy Corbyn vows to boycott Arsenal matches

More on Jeremy Corbyn’s obsession with the world’s one Jewish state. The story goes that the Labour leader mired in accusations of antisemitism was so upset by Arsenal FC’s 2006 deal with the Israeli tourist board he wanted fans to boycott the club. Corbyn is, of course, an Arsenal fan. So did he boycott any matches? Corbyn has voiced his support for BDS – the movement that wants to censor anything Israeli, including people – like, for instance, Yossi Benayoun, the Israeli who played for Arsenal in 2011.

“We must campaign against and boycott Arsenal football club for their arrangement with the Israeli tourist board,” said Corbyn to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign Trade Union Conference in 2006, as reported in the Mail. The paper pins the story to the noticebaord with this gem:

The £350,000 deal was approved by Dubai-based Emirates airline, Arsenal’s main sponsor, before going ahead. The UAE is known for its hostility to Israel and has never recognised its right to exist.

Ah, the noble Emirates, hosted in enlightened Dubai. Here’s what Human Rights Watch has to say about the United Arab Emirates:

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) arbitrarily detains and in some cases forcibly disappears individuals who criticize the authorities. The UAE plays a leading role in the Saudi-led coalition which has carried out scores of unlawful attacks in Yemen, some likely war crimes. The UAE was implicated in detainee abuse at home and abroad. Labor abuses in the UAE persist. Migrant construction workers face serious exploitation. Domestic workers’ rights are now enshrined in law, but some provisions are weaker than those accorded to other workers under the labor law. The UAE has denied activists and international human rights organizations’ access.

A Labour spokesman is cited: “Jeremy has never boycotted an Arsenal game.”

 

Posted: 20th, September 2018 | In: Arsenal, Politicians, Sports | Comment

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