UPDATE
Minutes after I posted this article, the ludicrous Jess Phillips published an article in the Guardian which could not have been better designed to prove my thesis. A number of people have posted comments on the Guardian article pointing this out, and they have all been immediately deleted by the Guardian. I just tried it myself and was also deleted. I should be grateful if readers could now also try posting comments there, in order to make a point about censorship on the Guardian.
Catching up on a fortnight’s news, I have spent five hours searching in vain for criticism of Simon Danczuk from prominent or even just declared feminists. The Guardian was the obvious place to start, but while they had two articles by feminist writers condemning Chris Gayle’s clumsy attempt to chat up a presenter, their legion of feminist columnists were entirely silent on Danczuk. The only opinion piece was strongly defending him.
This is very peculiar. The allegation against Danczuk which is under police investigation – of initiating sex with a sleeping woman – is identical to the worst interpretation of the worst accusation against Julian Assange. The Assange allegation brought literally hundreds, probably thousands of condemnatory articles from feminist writers across the entire range of the mainstream media. I have dug up 57 in the Guardian alone with a simple and far from exhaustive search. In the case of Danczuk I can find nothing, zilch, nada. Not a single feminist peep.
The Assange case is not isolated. Tommy Sheridan has been pursuing a lone legal battle against the Murdoch empire for a decade, some of it in prison when the judicial system decided his “perjury” was imprisonable but Andy Coulson’s admitted perjury on the Murdoch side in the same case was not. I personally witnessed in court in Edinburgh last month Tommy Sheridan, with no lawyer (he has no money) arguing against a seven man Murdoch legal team including three QCs, that a letter from the husband of Jackie Bird of BBC Scotland should be admitted in evidence. Bird was working for Murdoch and suggested in his letter that a witness should be “got out of the country” to avoid giving evidence. The bias exhibited by the leading judge I found astonishing beyond belief. I was the only media in the court.
Yet even though the Murdoch allegations against Sheridan were of consensual sexual conduct, Sheridan’s fight against Murdoch has been undermined from the start by the massive and concerted attack he has faced from the forces of feminism. Just as the vital messages WikiLeaks and Assange have put out about war crimes, corruption and the relentless state attack on civil liberties have been undermined by the concerted feminist campaign promoting the self-evidently ludicrous claims of sexual offence against Assange.
As soon as the radical left pose the slightest threat to the neo-con establishment, an army of feminists can be relied upon to run a concerted campaign to undermine any progress the left wing might make. The attack on Jeremy Corbyn over the makeup of his shadow cabinet was a classic example. It is the first ever gender equal shadow cabinet, but the entire media for a 96 hour period last September ran headline news that the lack of women in the “top” posts was anti-feminist. Every feminist commentator in the UK piled in.
Among the obvious dishonesties of this campaign was the fact that Defence, Chancellor, Foreign Affairs and Home Secretary have always been considered the “great offices of State” and the argument only could be made by simply ignoring Defence. The other great irony was the “feminist” attack was led by Blairites like Harman and Cooper, and failed to address the fact that Blair had NO women in any of these posts for a full ten years as Prime Minister.
But facts did not matter in deploying the organised feminist lobby against Corbyn.
Which is why it is an important test to see what the feminists, both inside and outside the Labour Party, would do when the leading anti-Corbyn rent-a-gob, Simon Danczuk, was alleged to have some attitudes to women that seem very dubious indeed, including forcing an ex-wife into non-consensual s&m and that rape allegation.
And the answer is …nothing. Feminists who criticised Assange, Sheridan and Corbyn in droves were utterly silent on the subject of Danczuk. Because the purpose of established and paid feminism is to undermine the left in the service of the neo-cons, not to attack neo-cons like Danczuk.
Identity politics has been used to shatter any attempt to campaign for broader social justice for everybody. Instead it becomes about the rights of particular groups, and that is soon morphed into the neo-con language of opportunity. What is needed, modern feminism argues, is not a reduction of the vast gap between rich and poor, but a chance for some women to become Michelle Mone or Ann Gloag. It is not about good conditions for all, but the removal of glass ceilings for high paid feminist journalists or political hacks.
Feminism has become the main attack tool in the neo-con ideological arsenal. I am sceptical the concept can be redeemed from this.
O/T Thomas G. Clark’s latest brilliant piece.
http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/reign-of-terror-false-economies.html
Kind regards,
John
Macky
Cheers for the Link to LBN…Great to see.
Is this why the UK can claim no cilivian deaths iro bombing Iraq & Syria ?
http://m.heraldscotland.com/news/14193998.Revealed__British_government_refusing_to_accept_evidence_of_civilian_fatalities_in_UK_air_strikes/?ref=mr&lp=5
@Brian, yes, we lose somebody like that, but are still stuck with various clowns bring this blog down to playground level.
Fred : “Like the people who live where the oil actually comes from subsidise the people down in Edinburgh and Glasgow,…………as someone in Glasgow who will get half an hour knocked off their train time to London.”.
.
We thank Westminster for small mercies.
The comments section for the Phillips’ essay is closed so instead I wrote this letter to the editor:
To the editor:
What is the function of a newspaper in society? Is it to inform society and give voice to different viewpoints on the issues of the day? Or is it to control the public’s access to information and ideas so as to promote a particular agenda? If Craig Murray’s blog is to be believed, the Guardian has the latter purpose, for he writes that comments critical of Jess Phillips recent attack on Jeremy Corbin in the Guardian are being inappropriately deleted. Does the Guardian believe that Corbin’s ideas cannot be defeated on their own merits and underhanded tactics must be employed?
Sincerely,
Edward Qubain
Very good letter, Edward! May I reprint it on a 9/11 Forum, ‘9/11, The Bigger Picture & The Search For Truth?’:
http://www.911forum.org.uk/ It covers much more than 9/11, and one topic is the self-censoring of the MSM.
Your letter would inspire many of them to write in a similar vein.
I suggest that if you such a good point to make in future, you not only post it here, but also in the paper/s? I understand you only wrote the letter as comments were closed here.
Was the letter printad, if so can you provide us with the link?
Edward Qubain and Paul Barbara, there are any number of reasons I can deduce for some comments at the Guardian being removed and others, apparently just as provocative, standing. First of all there is not just one moderator but a number who work shifts. All are supposed to adhere to the community standards. The questions and answers regarding comments are exhaustive. Scanning through them it occurred to me that one reason a number of contributors to this blog might be removed is if they have used the same email address with a different user name but I’m not cerain. Here are the FAQs and answers.
http://www.theguardian.com/community-faqs#101
In fairness to The Guardian I thought the comment section was balanced and included a link to this blogpost which was not removed and took a number of likes.
This is one comment on The Guardian which I thought was apposite and critical as did others.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/07/misogyny-feminism-stop-the-war-jeremy-corbyn#comment-66372061
It looks like the comment with a link to this blogpost was removed but I know it was up for several hours. Perhaps it was a change of shift that led to its removal. Perhaps Jess Phillips had made a complaint about being called ‘ludicrous’. Who knows?
David Bowie RIP, door to counters cultures.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoDh_gHDvkk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v–IqqusnNQ
Tears My Friends ..Farwell
“And all the fat skinny people, and all the tall short people
And all the nobody people, and all the somebody people
I never thought I’d need so many people”
Respect
John
“because its you that sets the test.
So much has gone and little is new
And as the sparrow sighs dawn flickers for some to hear,
The thinker sits alone growing old
and is so tired,
I gave them life,
I gave them all.
They drained my very soul dry,
I crushed my heart to ease their pains
No thought for me remains there.
Nothing can they spare, what of me?
Who praised their efforts to be free?
Words of strength and sympathy.
I opened doors that wold have blocked their way……
…..We used him, we let him use his powers.
We let him fill our needs now we are strong
And the road is coming to it’s end.”
There is a media house based at the N Wing of the Pentagon that regularly gives us gems like the Harleyguy/Levanthal cameo one hour after 921, Jihadi John series, San Bernardino handcuffed assilants, etc. But it is finding an increasingly skeptical audience on the web, despite the best efforts of its shills like habba here. For those who know it as simply an appendage of US Military Intelligence, it becomes an unending quest to spot its next “Allah Akbar” episode thereby inoculating the unsuspecting masses from being sucked into its strategem, who are entirely unaware of this evil.
Suhayl Saadi
9 Jan, 2016 – 5:09 pm
[referring to Cologne attacks]
Yes, a fear has been created of attacks against ‘our’ women by the newly-invading migrants, playing, as you say, on old fixations and stereotypes. The attacks, in eight German cities, appear to have been coordinated and, from this witness, conducted:
“I watched for some time as three men who were smartly dressed gave out instructions. One time a group of three or four males would come up to them, be given instructions and sent away into the crowd. Then another group of four or five would come up, and they’d gesticulate in various directions and send them off again.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/08/cologne-violence-suspects-include-asylum-seekers
Nevermind has asked what the motives might be in such a scenario. ‘Fear’, I suggest, would be the motive; and, in consequence, more powers for the security services, as well as a further softening of the public’s attitude towards attacks on Muslim countries.
The inevitable immediate results;
“On Sunday evening six Pakistanis and a Syrian man came under attack in the centre of the west German city.
The attacks on Sunday took place in the early evening. In the first, a group of around 20 people attacked six Pakistanis, two of whom had to be treated in hospital.
Separately, five people injured a Syrian man who did not need hospital treatment.”
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35280386
“I note you didn’t tell me how you declared those particular feminists the ‘leading’ ones.”
.
For the most part, they are self-declared with the collusion of the MSM.
Much the same with the Power List which deems whether any old bent economist or barrister is worthy of our attention.
All power to feminists!
Women should not take it lying down.
“But we ain’t the ones griping about it.”
___________________
On the contrary Fred, you gripe constantly about the SNP and their policies.
Yes pity about David Bowie he was a charismatic character, who didn’t need to try to hard to make an impression, and behind Marc Bolan, he was a glam rock founder.
“Haa..Good Stuff from A Thousand Flowers ”
_________________
Brian, your above sentence reminded me of a Chairman Mao, comment. When he said “Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom.”
Moa was recalling his youth when China, had removed its monarchy, a time when discussion on just about every subject could take place without persecution. A time China may never return to.
Mao used the quote when in power, though he never allowed free speech, the way he had, as a youth.
Surely the title of this post implies that feminism can be used by neo-cons as a tool, not a statement that feminism is _nothing but_ a neo-con tool. Shows how knee-jerk feminists can be when it comes to taking offence, I suppose.
OTOH, as soon as anything to do with women’s right to chose what happens to their own bodies is concerned, some Jesus-freak pops up to start drooling on about
enforced motherhoodthe “right to life”, at least for a fetus, because they don’t give a flying hoot about it as soon as its born.“On the contrary Fred, you gripe constantly about the SNP and their policies.”
But they are different gripes. This time it was the SNP claiming credit for payments to flood victims which was actually coming from Westminster, I never griped about that before it’s a topical gripe.
Your reply is always the same old myths which have been debunked time after time. Does your keyboard have keys marked “trident” “hs1” “our oil” to save you time?
Goodbye chaps. It was all worth it. All of it.
BBC Radio 4’s 6 pm News – often devoted to matters of international interest – has just devoted 11 minutes to its headline item. The death of a pop singer. Yes, I know, iconic, world-changing, the soundtrack of your youth,
Velvet Underground impersonator, all that. But 11 minutes from a half-hour programme? Also preening itself in the reflected glow of someone who, whatever his faults, didn’t give a fuck what anyone thought of him is…guess….http://www.tonyblairoffice.org/news/entry/tony-blair-pays-tribute-to-david-bowie/
Full Diana mode.
“But they are different gripes.”
______________
Now Fred you’re griping about gripes, remarkable even for you Fred.
Roll over another one …..
http://www.blacklistednews.com/_Vermont_Man_Uses_Tractor_To_Flatten_8_Police_Cars_After_Marijuana_Arrest/48274/0/38/38/Y/M.html
Another day, another BBC lie….
https://thewallwillfall.wordpress.com/2016/01/11/madaya-bbc-caught-recycling-footage-from-yarmouk/
Guerilla pop. Brilliant. The band Squeeze were on Andrew Marr yesterday. So was David Cameron. Squeeze played out the show with their latest number “Cradle to the Grave” but they changed the last verse to :
David Cameron applauded them at the end. Twat.
https://tompride.wordpress.com/2016/01/10/squeeze-troll-cameron-live-on-tv-some-here-are-hell-bent-on-the-destruction-of-the-welfare-state/
In my humble opinion, ‘Life on Mars’ is one of the best pop songs ever written, both for its wonderfully surreal lyrics and its emotional intensity…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAo7YeRkJYo