The BBC and corporate media coalesce around an extremely narrow consensus of political thought, and ensure that anybody who steps outside that consensus is ridiculed and marginalised. That consensus has got narrower and narrower. I was delighted during the general election to be able to listen to Nicola Sturgeon during the leaders’ debate argue for anti-austerity policies and for the scrapping of Trident. I had not heard anyone on broadcast media argue for the scrapping of Trident for a decade – it is one of those views which though widely held the establishment gatekeepers do not view as respectable.
The media are working overtime to marginalise Jeremy Corbyn as a Labour leadership candidate on the grounds that he is left wing and therefore weird and unelectable. But they face the undeniable fact that, Scottish independence aside, there are very few political differences between Jeremy Corbyn and Nicola Sturgeon. On issues including austerity, nuclear weapons, welfare and Palestine both Sturgeon and Corbyn are really very similar. They have huge areas of agreement that stand equally outside the establishment consensus. Indeed Nicola is more radical than Jeremy, who wants to keep the United Kingdom.
The establishment’s great difficulty is this. Given that the SNP had just slaughtered the Labour Party – and the Tories and Lib Dems – by being a genuine left wing alternative, how can the media consensus continue to insist that the left are unelectable? The answer is of course that they claim Scotland is different. Yet precisely the same establishment consensus denies that Scotland has a separate political culture when it comes to the independence debate. So which is it? They cannot have it both ways.
If Scotland is an integral part of the UK, Jeremy Corbyn’s policies cannot be unelectable.
Nicola Sturgeon won the UK wide leaders debate in the whole of the United Kingdom, despite the disadvantage of representing a party not standing in 90% of it by population. She won not just because she is clever and genuine, but because people all across the UK liked the left wing policies she articulated.
A Daily Mirror opinion poll following a BBC televised Labour leadership candidates’ debate this week had Jeremy Corbyn as the clear winner, with twice the support of anyone else. The media ridicule level has picked up since. This policy of marginalisation works. I was saddened by readers’ comments under a Guardian report of that debate, in which Labour supporter after Labour supporter posted comment to the effect “I would like to vote for Jeremy Corbyn because he believes in the same things I do, but we need a more right wing leader to have a chance of winning.”
There are two answers to that. The first is no, you don’t need to be right wing to win. Look at the SNP. The second is what the bloody hell are you in politics for anyway? Do you just want your team to win like it was football? Is there any point at all in being elected just so you can carry out the same policies as your opponents? The problem is, of course, that for so many in the Labour Party, especially but not just the MPs, they want to win for personal career advantage not actually to promote particular policies.
The media message of the need to be right wing to be elected is based on reinforced by a mythologizing of Tony Blair and Michael Foot as the ultimate example of the Good and Bad leader. These figures are constantly used to reinforce the consensus. Let us examine their myths.
Tony Blair is mythologised as an electoral superstar, a celebrity politician who achieved unprecedented personal popularity with the public, and that he achieved this by adopting right wing policies. Let us examine the truth of this myth. First that public popularity. The best measure of public enthusiasm is the percentage of those entitled to vote, who cast their ballot for that party at the general election. This table may surprise you.
Percentage of Eligible Voters
1992 John Major 32.5%
1997 Tony Blair 30.8%
2001 Tony Blair 24.1%
2005 Tony Blair 21.6%
2010 David Cameron 23.5%
2015 David Cameron 24.4%
There was only any public enthusiasm for Blair in 97 – and to put that in perspective, it was less than the public enthusiasm for John Major in 1992.
More importantly, this public enthusiasm was not based on the policies now known as Blairite. The 1997 Labour Manifesto was not full of right wing policies and did not indicate what Blair was going to do.
The Labour Party manifesto of 1997 did not mention Academy schools, Private Finance Initiative, Tuition Fees, NHS privatisation, financial sector deregulation or any of the right wing policies Blair was to usher in. Labour actually presented quite a left wing image, and figures like Robin Cook and Clare Short were prominent in the campaign. There was certainly no mention of military invasions.
It was only once Labour were in power that Blair shaped his cabinet and his policies on an ineluctably right wing course and Mandelson started to become dominant. As people discovered that New Labour were “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”, to quote Mandelson, their popular support plummeted. “The great communicator” Blair for 90% of his Prime Ministership was no more popular than David Cameron is now. 79% of the electorate did not vote for him by his third election
Michael Foot consistently led Margaret Thatcher in opinion polls – by a wide margin – until the Falklands War. He was defeated in a victory election by the most appalling and intensive wave of popular war jingoism and militarism, the nostalgia of a fast declining power for its imperial past, an emotional outburst of popular relief that Britain could still notch up a military victory over foreigners in its colonies. It was the most unedifying political climate imaginable. The tabloid demonization of Foot as the antithesis of the military and imperial theme was the first real exhibition of the power of Rupert Murdoch. Few serious commentators at the time doubted that Thatcher might have been defeated were it not for the Falklands War – which in part explains her lack of interest in a peaceful solution. Michael Foot’s position in the demonology ignores these facts.
The facts about Blair and about Foot are very different from the media mythology.
The stupid stunt by Tories of signing up to the Labour Party to vote for Corbyn to ridicule him, is exactly the kind of device the establishment consensus uses to marginalise those whose views they fear. Sturgeon is living proof left wing views are electable. The “left unelectable” meme will intensify. I expect Jeremy Corbyn’s biggest problem will be quiet exclusion. I wish him well.
More broadly on the Charleston shootings: I suppose I approach these questions as something of an outsider – a white person talking about race, and a Briton trying to fathom how America remains a breeding-ground for hate.
I read the unfolding public responses on Twitter, and I do think this format has been quite helpful in giving justified anguish and anger a space to be aired safely. Whilst we should have reservations about society’s dependence on corporate communication networks, it has taken some power away from traditional media, where black, working class and otherwise disempowered voices have been granted much less right to speak.
Thus, normally powerless progressive communities have been able to critique a predominantly white-filtered news media: Fox recast the story as an attack on faith, so that rich and privileged conservatives could feel hard-done by too. One white commentator referred to the event as an “accident” (though his network later claimed he meant “incident”). Several sources rendered the shooter in various positive ways, including references to his childhood, perhaps to psychologically deal with inexplicable bursts of “white people aren’t bad” cognitive dissonance.
Very quickly, a popular meme image sprang up in response: it said that when a Muslim carries out a shooting, an entire religion is blamed. When a black man carries out a shooting, all people of colour are blamed. But when it’s a white shooter, it’s a “lone wolf” who has a “mental illness”. Again, more reflections of white bias, spoken without a solid understanding of the minor, cumulative discriminations that people of colour suffer daily.
In a similar fashion, progressives of all races – and even some moderate conservatives – wanted to know why the television networks were not labelling the incident as “terrorist” in nature. Barely anyone believes the corporate media would refrain from such careless language if the shooter was suspected to be Middle Eastern of origin, or that some arms of the government would not have used such a case for an authoritarian propaganda opportunity.
However, it seems that progressives could run into a dilemma: whilst the labelling of incidents might be colour-coded, should the Left be clamouring for more categorisations of the use of the word “terror”? I don’t doubt that the purpose of the attack was terrorism (to instill fear into a target group) but nevertheless isn’t there a risk that we are assisting those who want to preserve the mechanisms for the suppression of domestic dissent? Glenn Greenwald has written about this contradition.
I thought the discussion around mental health was interesting too: by virtue of the opinion that this +was+ terror, and that it should be treated as such, progressives seemed to reflexively oppose any (right wing) explanations regarding mental illness. They felt it was a get-out clause: you can get away with anything if you’re mad. I’d have thought, politics aside, that anyone of any views and any colour would +have+ to be clinically insane to shoot nine people in a place of worship. And if we reject that explanation, what is the alternative? Do we instead reach for clumsy tabloid caricatures of “evil”, and thus inadvertently bolster the arguments of the prison industrial complex?
It seems to me that – and here I feel again like a white person arrogantly holding forth on race – focussing on the perpetrator might be pointless here. The act is truly appalling, but we may find that he is assessed to have diminished responsibility anyway. Would it even help if he was found to be of sound mind? I wonder if the immediate families don’t much care, and would rather ask people to focus on the societal fractures that gave rise to him. It’s relevant – and astounding – that one family member has publicly forgiven him already.
Despite their starkness, I wonder if America isn’t yet ready to learn any lessons. Even the smallest move towards social-democratic capitalism might equip the nation to better look after people’s mental health, and in so doing, the country might see the ego-centric reasons for the perpetuation of hate to wither away quite naturally. But will the privileged and wealthy permit it? In the same way, if the president makes even baby steps towards a more sensible approach to gun control, he’ll have fulfilled the conspiracy theory that the government has just been itching for an excuse to disarm the population. Presumably, at that point, white America will start buying more guns.
Suhayl Saadi
I came across an ancient leaflet related to the Bridport short story competition and there was the name Suhayl Saadi as one f the winners. Could it be the same Suhayl Saadi?
I notice the discussion going on about immigration and wages.
My approach to this is that, while difficult, I am sure that it is possible to create an equation which shows the way that the factors are related. Immigration is not the only factor. Emigration , age structure/gender of both immigrants and emigrants, educational status, technology changes, language, pre-existing economic disposition, to name just a few.
My sense of the issue is that there are likely to be sectors of the economy where wages are depressed. However there are also sectors where there is a net loss of skills and this likely leads to increases in demand and wages. I suspect the relationship is marginal and dynamic.
The issue of the racist murders in the US.
One of the alleged friends of the accused Dylann Roof was interviewed and while I would not want to minimise the deeper issues here, of which there are many, it is difficult not to conclude that it was also the act of a very stupid and barely developed, alienated and isolated individual.
His grievances are so contrived that they barely deserve serious consideration but of course access to serious firearms gives power to such thinking as well as being tacitly supported and encouraged by the tone of the dominant public discourse that surrounds race in these areas.
The choice of targets is also possibly significant, in that the church and the activity of the group, is in some ways a challenge to the condition of alienation and social isolation created by an economic system such as prevails on both sides of the Atlantic.
Is the privilege of being white in that context also the privilege of the descent into individualised, isolated, alienation. Privilege in this context brooks no assistance, nor accepts any insults to the agency of the individual.
The young man’s alienation is related to being workless, poorly educated, economically marginalised/socially pointless , but with the United States sop to not being utterly powerless by being granted access to guns, and having a contrived scapegoat for the hostility generated as well as having an imagined connection to that great American delusion of being, by virtue of being white american, one of the pioneering chosen, granted the freedom of a new world to shape.
“You can take away virtually everything ( in the name of capricious capitalism, create any tragedy or indignity but leave us with our guns, and the ability to inflict random harm.
Surely a painful, and tragic illustration of the fundamental dilemma that is posed by the ever more fragmented search for an expression of neoliberal ‘freedom’.
Hypothesis: Rooff’s grandpappy learned from his grandpappy about how, in his day, if a n***** didn’t give a white man respect, he’d get horsewhipped or lynched. And passed it on. And Rooff probably didn’t get much respect even from white folks on account of he was a little strange. And, what with a black President who was really a Kenyan Muslim, and our boys getting kilt by towelheads and that sassy rich n***** who run the PTA, the injustice of it all just kinda worked on him and a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.
Was it any more complicated than that? I doubt it. Southern culture – you probably can’t ban it, but you might hope to educate it if you didn’t look too much like a yankee liberal…
Sam.
I am glad of your Post on Nicola Sturgeon’s remarks made while in America.
I wondered why she was there, now I know.
I did not vote this time, first time in 50 years.
Now that the SNP are in Power, they are just the same as Labour and Tory.
I did not get my Independence, so I wanted out of Scotland. Now this health problem makes Insurance difficult for residency in another country.
Why is the Universe conspiring to keep me in Scotland, I wonder?
Macky, thanks.
I don’t know the history of your conversations with Suhayl, and dynamics between any two people probably only exist by virtue of their entangling psychologies anyway, so it’s hard for me to respond to what you’ve said. I’d say that Suhayl doesn’t need rescuing, and whilst he might be Old Guard here, I’m happy to disagree with him about something if necessary. As much as I am conscious of it, I try to not have biases.
(I am quite happy to ride a white horse though! The last one I rode was very chestnut, and a noble steed it was too. One day I’ll win the lottery, and ride another one. My bike will have to do for now.)
In my opinion, it is most useful if we can disconnect the theme of discussing race from specific individuals, and speak in general terms. I think also that it is worth considering how interactions between privileged and non-privileged groups often play out, which is that a non-privileged individual wishes to speak about the experience of discrimination, and the privileged individual reacts with hostility to disclaim that they would ever apply such discrimination, or that they are being asked to bear guilt for the unjust acts of their subgroup. It may feel to us privileged folks as unfair, but then so is the power balance. Thus, granting floor space to the victims of perpetual discrimination is correct, but it can rather be spoilt if we then use our greater freedom of speech to castigate and deny in the same session.
That’s not to say people who have experienced discrimination can never be wrong, or may not be subject to criticism. As ever, it’s about balance, and in this case, trying to strike the right note that attempts to revert historical and embedded cultural injustices. I see awareness about privilege as a mode of introspection, perhaps garnered from something like meditation. I suspect it comes from the idea that people aren’t born bad, and that when I worry about the gang of black youths that often gather in the council estate near my house, I am bringing a lot of assumptions to the table.
I sometimes regard it is as unfair that academic approaches to discrimination are considered to be a part of the radical Left, and thus are rejected by the middle ground out of hand. Have you read articles on Wikipedia here? This one on privilege is very good, as is the material on intersectionality.
Old Mark,
People are inclined to listen when you explain that housing shortages are a result of failure to invest in public housing, not immigration. But somehow the economy is different. It seems to have a life of its own, beyond the control of human beings. This makes it harder to tackle the idea that immigrants hold down wages.
In fact it’s all too easy to slip into a left wing version of opposing immigration, which goes something like this: those on the left defend workers’ wages and conditions, which are under attack because there are too many workers competing for too few jobs. So we should support restrictions on immigrant labour.
Whether views are from the left or right there seems to be a consensus of opinion that the arrival of large numbers of foreign workers into the labour market must drive down the wages of those already here. But there is simply no evidence that immigration provides global capitalism with its reserve army.
Many people on the left base their assertions on the notion that Marx argued for controls on immigration as a means of defending wages. But in so doing, they fail to grasp the nuances in his theory. The claim that he argued that immigrants prevented British workers from getting more pay is a false one. Mainstream economists sometimes fall back on too Marx’s “reserve army of labour” terminology too particularly when they glimpse just how bad things are for workers.
However, contrary to what many on the right, and particularly the left assert, the findings of the studies’ I cited are actually consistent with Marx as opposed to contradicting him. For Marx, the concept of the reserve army of labour is central to what he has to say about capitalism and workers’ wages.
He starts out by making a simple but important observation. Look at any capitalist industry and you see it consists of two parts – the machinery and the workers. He draws our attention to the relative size of each, calling the ratio of one to the other the “organic composition of capital”.
The point Marx wants to make is that the number of workers – the “variable” capital – that capitalism requires is totally dependent on the quantity of “constant” capital, the machinery. As capitalist industry expands it sucks in workers to operate the machinery, upping their wages to attract more of them.
But the worker is necessary to satisfy the needs of the machinery, rather than industry existing to satisfy the worker’s needs. So whether or not pay goes up depends on whether or not it’s profitable for the capitalist who owns the machinery to employ workers to operate it. What is more, two things interfere with this process.
First, the organic composition of capital tends to grow. As technology develops, larger amounts of machinery can be operated by a relatively smaller number of workers – productivity rises. Machinery itself is a product of labour, so it follows that workers’ effort and energy lead to the need for less workers’ effort and energy. It’s called “jobless growth” – capitalism can be doing fine but with very little impact on reducing unemployment.
And second, whether the capitalist expands their industry depends on what other capitalists are doing to compete with them. If they can’t make a profit from workers operating their machinery, then they will sack the workers, cut their wages or make them work harder in order to conquer the other capitalists. Marx draws the conclusion that capitalism is the first economic system in history in which there can be too many workers.
This “surplus” working population is nothing more to the capitalists than “disposable human material”, an “industrial reserve army” which is both an inevitable product of capitalism and a crucial lubricant for the system.
In any sane system of running the economy, industry would exist to satisfy human need. But under capitalism humans exist to satisfy the needs of industry. If anything positive comes about as a result – such as the production of useful things and the payment of wages with which to buy them – this is a by-product of the process, rather than its main aim.
The reserve army of labour helps capitalists hold down wages because it increases competition for jobs, forcing workers to sell themselves for less and to work harder for fear of being replaced. And so you have the contradiction we are all so familiar with today – the unemployed are desperate for jobs, while those in work are desperate to escape the relentless pressures of the working week.
UK arrests Rwanda spy chief over alleged war crimes
CNN 2015-06-23
“UK officials arrested Rwandan intelligence chief Emmanuel Karenzi Karake at London’s Heathrow Airport in “connection with war crimes”…
shttp://article.wn.com/view/2015/06/23/Rwandan_spy_chief_Karake_arrested_in_London/
UK does not arrest Shaul Mofaz at Heathrow airport in connection with war crimes.
On the phenomena of US mass murder shootings, I’m struck by the fact that they seem to be increasing in frequency, and was wondering if people had any thoughts on that ? For me it could be a sign that the dehumanising of human life in US socity is becoming increasingly overwhelming, and just like studies show that porn users quickly become subject to desensitisation and then regard extreme material as quite acceptable & nothing really to object to, the war porn & other human life demoting memes that now saturates US culture is perhaps having a similar effect; here is an article that makes an interesting connection between people who commit such crimes & regular soldiers;
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/06/20/war-murder-and-american-way
Welcome back Robert Crawford. Glad to see you on the mend.
As to Sam’s comment at 1.05 pm it beggars belief. What Nicola Sturgeon put to the electorate of Scotland was a lot different from what she’s saying now in seeking a partnership with USAtan. You cannot trust politicians. As soon as they get into power the veil falls off revealing the horror of horrors underneath. She hoodwinked a lot of people. At the people’s rally against austerity on Saturday one of the speakers said something to the effect that “anybody who thinks the Left is incapable of coming to power should look at Scotland and Nicola Sturgeon” never realising that as those words were being spoken Sturgeon was selling the Scottish electorate way down upon the Swanee river far from the old folks at home.
According to the Navy Times, the U.S. Navy is not going to have an aircraft carrier in the Middle East this fall. http://www.navytimes.com/story/military/2015/06/05/navy-pulls-carrier-centcom-islamic-state-group-presence/28554047/
I assume this is a result of the Navy’s problems with the Ronald Reagan, which was radioactively contaminated off Fukushima. According to the latest Navy Times, the carrier is back in dock in California, after having spent a couple of weeks at sea in the Eastern Pacific. Looks like those sea trials did not go well.
As the U.S. economy deteriorates, and as the economic position of its working class and middle class becomes more and more desperate, more and more people are going to snap and go off the deep end.
The Charleston murders illustrate the success of the American elites’ divide and rule tactics.
John Goss.
Thank you for your good wishes before and now.
I thought Nicola Sturgeon would be better, I really did. Seems we have another Thatcher on our hands.
A well, at 70, why worry, eh?
Thanks again John.
John Gross
I’m often wrong, very imperfect. But having previously posted this, then thought not. Then into the green party (that I imagined the most “left party”) i’m Starkey remained how right I was half a lifetime ago on this…
It was a fitting post on the subject. https://youtu.be/8lgMtzDheQ0
Sam and John Goss.
Now I know why Craig was not selected and wee Johnny the barber was.
It will be interesting to read what Craig has to say.
________________________________
Mary.
I am worried about your lawn turning from green to golden yellow with a bit of rain.
Should it not be the other way round?
Yes, very disturbing Robert. I can remember having some hope for Tony Blair, a young politician. Why could I not see through him the first time round? He got rid of Clause IV almost straight away and that was when I got rid of him in my mindset. He also promised to ban foxhunting (one of the reasons I voted for him the first time he stood) but that issue was not even debated till his second term by which time I was totally disillusioned and knew I would never vote for him again. He destroyed the party I had supported all my life.
How close to the truth about Blair is Robert Harris’s novel The Ghost? Harris, in his journalist days, got to know Blair quite well, didn’t he?
As the U.S. economy deteriorates, and as the economic position of its working class and middle class becomes more and more desperate, more and more people are going to snap and go off the deep end.
How about hoping the economy crashes and burns, to the point where the middle class are feeling the pain? That’s usually the point at which serious revolutions begin. For instance, Argentina….
http://www.redpepper.org.uk/argentina-que-se-vayan-todos-they-all-must-go/
The economic plane crash forced people to act on a neighbourhood basis, regardless of income – as no-one had one – , and enabled at least a partial takeover of production. Ok, the revolution’s been subverted now, but it’s a model. The contract between the bourgeoisie and the system that fed them was anulled by the system’s failure to play its part. Major violence was unnecessary: the sytem had taken itself down.
Wait for the next slump. And enhance it.
John Goss.
I don’t want to appear smug, but I never voted Labour. I had the experience of Harold Wilson just before I was age (21) to vote.
I formed the opinion then that Labour politicians were incompetent. History has proved me right.
He destroyed the party I had supported all my life.
With the support of most of the party. They followed him like lambs, with very few and honourable exceptions. IMO it’s yet to be seen whether Sturgeon is made of the same shoddy material as Blair. Or whether she’s pursuing a strategic imperative. She seems to be a bit brighter than Blair. Will the high life corrupt her? Dunno. Might be better to wait a year and work out her overall direction rather than picking on her moves to boost iScotland’s international credibility and support. The Holyrood elections will be more informative than the Old Labour sites dissing her as they are more or less bound to do.
Robert The yellow was the flowers of the bird’s foot trefoil which emerged after the rain. The plants are in the grass as I do not use weedkillers.
http://www.wildlifetrusts.org/species/birds-foot-trefoil
I would like to share this article by Dr Vacy Vlazna with you. It is a review of a book ‘The Drone Eats With Me: Diaries from a City Under Fire’ which informs what living in Gaza is like for a family.
Fifty-One Days of Israeli Terror in Gaza
Through the Eyes of a Father of Five
by Vacy Vlazna / June 23rd, 2015
‘We prepare the suhoor. We all sit around five dishes: white cheese, hummus, orange jam, yellow cheese, and olives. Darkness eats with us. Fear and anxiety eat with us. The unknown eats with us. The F16 eats with us. The drone, and its operator somewhere out in Israel, eat with us.’
I read The Drone Eats With Me: Diaries from a City Under Fire by Atef Abu Saif in almost one sitting — resenting that I had to break to cook and eat dinner. These beautifully written searing diaries recounting each of the horrific 51 days of Israel’s monstrous war on the people of Gaza sweeps the reader into Atef’s anguished experience. An experience so dreadfully encompassing of the dark depths of human sentience that it is simultaneously personal and collective.
‘Your personal concerns start to erode; even your gravest fears begin to seem unjustified. What does it matter if you’re afraid for your children when all the children in the Strip are in immediate danger? What does it matter if you’re worried that your house may be reduced to rubble when thousands are being destroyed up and down the Strip? Is your house any better than these countless others? Are your children any better than the hundreds who have been killed or maimed already?’
Atef shares with us the mental and emotional torment of every Palestinian parent, child, husband, wife, sibling, friend trapped in Gaza, as Chomsky puts it in the foreword, “under remorseless, relentless assault by the most advanced technology of killing and destruction that the ingenuity of modern civilization has devised”.
/..
http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/06/fifty-one-days-of-israeli-terror-in-gaza/
Thanks Mary, I told you there gaps in my knowledge.
It must be a beautiful sight to look out at.
All the very best.
Going to bed now, I am knackered.
The Independent: Ed Miliband was urged to throw out Lord Janner over ‘stomach-churning’ child abuse allegations five months before Labour suspended him:
Danczuk is now calling for a Labour Party investigation before Janner is expelled from the party. In the absence of a trial, this would to a certain extent be a substitute.
Something very mysterious has been blocking punishment for these crimes by members of the establishment for decades. What’s at work? Security services? Royal family involvement?
Good luck Robert, may you have a swift recovery.
You might also be interested in reading “Night in Gaza” by the heroic Mads Gilbert who gave a talk in Oxford on Saturday evening on his work in Shifa hospital during the last Israeli attack.
I havn’t read the book yet but have ordered,it sold out after the talk.
There are many interesting statistics he brings up such as the number of ambulances the Israelis bombed,the hospitals including the childrens’ hospital.
Another interesting figure that he mentioned was that 164 children were killed by drones,remote controlled from within Israel that have cameras on them that can tell the difference between a man and a woman and presumably an adult and a child. Suggesting,perhaps that the attacks on children could have been deliberate?
All far more horrific than even I had imagined.
“Something very mysterious has been blocking punishment for these crimes by members of the establishment for decades. What’s at work? Security services? Royal family involvement?”
Probably both. In terms of Janner, almost certainly, the British press has also played a pivotal and complicit role in concealing his alleged criminality:
“…Lord Janner was the chairman of the Board of Deputies, a group that claims to represent all British Jews at the same time he was allegedly molesting little boys. If the allegations are true, then Janner molested young boys at the same time that he represented the Jewish community. I can see why the British press attempts to conceal Lord Janner’s prominence within the Jewish world. But would the British press make a similar collective effort to conceal the ethnicity or prominence of a British Muslim paedophile?
http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/2015/4/25/jew-vs-muslim
John Young
“Off topic just watched the Keiser review on RT which to my mind anyway is a good bit more credible than most news outlets anyhoo,both Keiser and his guest economist Stacy Herbert I think was her name..”
____________________
You are obviously a newcomer to Russia Today and/or Mr Keiser, John.
Stacy Herbert may or may not be Mr Keiser’s “guest economist” but – more importantly – she is his squeeze.
A friendly suggestion to you: pronounce on Mr Keiser’s credibility once you have become a little better acquainted with him…. 🙂
Geoffrey,
This is what Mads Gilbert told CBS News in 2009:
“I’ve seen one military person among the hundreds that we have seen and treated. So anyone who tries to portray this as sort of a clean war against another army are lying. This is an all-out war against the civilian Palestinian population in Gaza and we can prove that with the numbers.”
http://uk.youtube.com /watch?v=Ev6ojm62qwA)
“As the U.S. economy deteriorates, and as the economic position of its working class and middle class becomes more and more desperate, more and more people are going to snap and go off the deep end.”
____________________
In which case perhaps our Irish-American friend should start worrying about his service pensions. But I hope his worrying will remain on this side of going off at the deep end.