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.
George Galloway put it succinctly:
Us, the electorate, should push for our governments to disarm because it is our, “Western” governments that do most of the attacking. As part of the EU and NATO, the UK is not vulnerable to attack by other countries.
Nukes were originally developed, on all sides, to prevent other governments getting them first and thereby dictating to the rest of the world. In that sense they were a defensive development. But now they serve as backing or insurance for offense, and as political leverage through the permanent members of the UN Security Council.
“Us, the electorate, should push for our governments to disarm because it is our, “Western” governments that do most of the attacking. As part of the EU and NATO, the UK is not vulnerable to attack by other countries. ”
The alternative is that the UK is vulnerable to attack by other countries.
Nevermind
Cheers for the rowan blog link..
Here is another Good Take on the WMD’s –
The future role of the UK’s nuclear weapons
” The SDSR lists a number of future threats that UK nuclear weapons are intended to deter.12
These include the risk of nuclear missile attack by state or non-state ‘actors’. The UK’s position on the Atlantic coast is far from any possible new state-based nuclear threat. The only realistic locations for such threats are in the Middle or Far East. The historical lesson is that the intention of any such state is to try to create its own regional nuclear ‘deterrent’ – and the cases of Iran and North Korea are relevant here. The recent response to Iran is showing how the international community can use both negotiations and sanctions to prevent the possibility of a new nuclear weapons capability. The case of North Korea shows that the deployment of US nuclear-armed aircraft in the region has arguably led to a more aggressive response from that country rather than the reverse. One thing that is definitely clear is that UK nuclear weapons have been completely irrelevant to both situations.
Turning to non-state actors, there is a very real possibility that terrorists could use highly radioactive nuclear materials with explosives to spread radiation. The only solution is effective policing and controls of nuclear materials including medical sources. UK nuclear weapons could not possibly be of any use in deterring this threat. In fact, some terrorist groups might see it as a success if they could prompt a nuclear response.
The SDSR cites the value of UK Trident in countering a theoretical future threat from Russia (or possibly China). This argument is simply not credible as the overwhelmingly dominant factor in such Russian calculations would be the hundred times larger US nuclear arsenal. British nuclear weapons are irrelevant.
And all of this discussion assumes intent. Russia has major trading relations with NATO countries. Russia also suffered terribly during World War II – with 8.5 million soldiers dead and perhaps double this number of civilians killed, by far the largest casualties of any nation involved. The idea that it would risk launching a major assault on NATO – whether nuclear-armed or not – is hardly credible. Political and economic action and – in extreme circumstances – non-nuclear military forces are more than enough to deal with such a risk. NATO currently dramatically outspends Russia on its military forces by a factor of ten,13 which rather begs the question of who is threatening whom?
The recent conflict in Ukraine (including Crimea) arguably reflects old ideas about ‘spheres of influence’. While Russian actions may be unacceptable, such a conflict may also be partly a result of a new nationalism among Russian-speaking minority groups in some Eastern European and former Soviet countries, and a reaction to NATO’s expansion eastwards to the borders of Russia.
Nuclear hypocrisy and inconsistency
The arguments in favour of nuclear deterrence, used by the UK and other nuclear-armed states, can be used by any country. If nuclear deterrence ‘works’ then, to follow the logic of this proliferation argument, every state should be armed with nuclear weapons. Such beliefs have been the driver of nuclear arms races such as during the Cold War, or the nuclear stand-off between India and Pakistan and are clearly understood by North Korea.
This double standard, that the existing nuclear states require nuclear weapons for their security but that other non-nuclear states cannot have nuclear weapons to avoid greater insecurity, has been the source of a growing reaction at the UN, particularly as progress on disarmament has almost stopped and huge arsenals remain. It is the primary driver for the start of a new multilateral legal process towards a nuclear ban treaty supported by 135 non-nuclear states.14
Conclusion
The US and Russia continue to deploy very large numbers of nuclear weapons, but the UK’s arsenal also represents a major threat. While nuclear deterrence may work on occasion, it also creates an enormous risk – that of the destruction of civilisation – through the continued deployment of nuclear weapons. Russian and US weapons kept on high alert markedly heighten this risk. Launch command and control technology further add to the risk through its vulnerability to miscalculation, accident and cyber-attack. The UK’s nuclear arsenal is irrelevant in deterrence terms in relation to these very large arsenals, but its role in disarmament could be very significant. The UK could choose a different political path similar to that chosen by South Africa, Brazil, Japan and a large number of nations which, while possessing the technological ability to make nuclear weapons, see the benefits of not having such arms. This path would help to improve international security.
The UK could take a leading role in reducing the risk of nuclear war by immediately:
taking Trident nuclear submarines off patrol;
placing warheads in storage;
cancelling the replacement of the Trident submarines; and
actively supporting the current multilateral legal process for a global nuclear ban.
There would obviously need to be further steps towards complete disarmament as the process proceeded.
This in my view would be the responsible and enlightened course of action for the UK in its current situation. We only have this one planet and the use of nuclear weapons would have disastrous world-wide consequences. No nation can create security for itself by threatening nuclear devastation ‘elsewhere’.”
Dr Philip Webber is Chair of SGR and author of numerous books and reports on nuclear weapons.
http://www.sgr.org.uk/resources/trident-deterrence-and-uk-security
Dave Lawton – the Poet Ashraf Fayadh. Evil Bastards.
Fred:
Poppycock. Only nine of the world’s two hundred or so countries have nuclear weapons. Your logic would lead to the greatest arms race ever seen. That isn’t happening, so the vast majority of the world’s politicians and their strategic advisors must disagree with you.
The thing most making the UK vulnerable is all the resentment it stirs up against itself by attacking and invading countries such as Iraq, Libya and Syria.
Fred, you’ve framed this whole nuclear disarmament debate in terms of defence of the UK itself, just as the pro-war propagandists do. You’ve entirely ignored the fact the the UK is one of the most offensive countries in the world. Aircraft carriers, what are they good for? Right. So why have we got them?
“Fred, you’ve framed this whole nuclear disarmament debate in terms of defence of the UK itself, just as the pro-war propagandists do. You’ve entirely ignored the fact the the UK is one of the most offensive countries in the world. Aircraft carriers, what are they good for? Right. So why have we got them?”
You are the one brought up nuclear weapons not me I had more important things to talk about.
Fred, so what? I didn’t force you to write like a neocon propagandist. And you just turned it personal again, shit-for-brains.
Fred, goodnight. Try looking less like a goat and maybe you won’t need to act so stubborn. You’re still a good bloke 🙂
You don’t need weapons of mass destruction to destroy a nation and its people. A policy of mass destruction, carried out in small increments over an extended time period achieves the same effect : genocide.
murder, brutality, cruelty, destruction and persecution carried out by Israel on 12 January 2016:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Israeli Navy opens fire on Palestinian fishing boats
Israeli Army positions open fire on Gaza farms in 2 districts
Raiding Israeli troops shoot dead 1 person, wound 3
Israeli Army issues destruction orders on 8 Palestinian homes
Night peace disruption and/or home invasions in 3 refugee camps and 9 towns and villages
6 attacks (3 Israeli ceasefire violations)
27 raids including home invasions
3 dead – 7 injured – 4 abducted (aged 15 to 17)
7 acts of agricultural/economic sabotage
14 taken prisoner – 13 detained – 102 restrictions of movement
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://palestine.org.nz/phrc/index.php
The power of the Zionist Lobby strikes again; just recently the Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister demanded that Google & YouTube remove videos of Israel’s murders and assaults of Palestinians, which is being resisted so far, but now Facebook leads the way by acting to suppress criticism of Israeli crimes;
http://mondoweiss.net/2016/01/facebook-cartoon-critical
Can anybdy seriously imagine that this would happen iro any other Country, the suppressing of crimes if there were Iranian, Syrian, Russian, North Korean, etc ?!
Giyane:
“Travel therefore normally reinforces the narrowness of their vision.”
You know, I was going to react adversarial to that but I think you are absolutely right. It is only 48 (I was in my late 20s/early 30s then) do I see what you mean.
I spent hours chatting with Muslims about their faith and had huge respect for it as I still do. It is only the last five years in my own personal respect that I’ve come to realize most of the West has been living in its own Bernays-induced Bubble of self reinforcing righteousness, that I now as an old fart, understand what has been going on.
If you want to understand where Ic come from, Google Martin Keerns awesome 3 part opus.
Didn’t that Cluelessise Mensch woman pop up lately? That to me is a good sign. Ignore this Fred chap I am sure he isn’t bona fide and is from a Sinktank.
Jeremy Stocks, Fred is genuine; I’ve spent time with him in real life.
Clark, after reading last nights debate, I’m afraid that it looks like you have tried, but, have wasted your breath on Fred, what a pity that he should feel so insecure in the world once Scotland rids itself of Trident and uses its deep water access for better reasons.
Thanks for that link Brian, both the missis and me are members of SGR, a learned group of scientists who know that Trident is bad for us.
meanwhile Hamburg police has arrested eight identified men for the new years crimes committed and in Bornheim near Bonn, male refugees are banned from public swimming pools after indecent harassment and groping were witnessed and reported.
And Switzerland, now hard up after having to reveal all their tax evading immigrants to the country that they are now charging refugees 1000 Euro’s for transits.
well this is the best thing since Emmenthaler discovered holes in their cheese.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Hr3GBHRRSk
” Ignore this Fred chap I am sure he isn’t bona fide and is from a Sinktank.”
I’m genuine and interested to know why you think my view is not valid?
What sort of a society are you people proposing where only people who agree with you are allowed a say? Dissenters must be shouted down intimidated and bullied into keeping quiet.
I live in Scotland and along with the majority of Scots believe independence would be a bad thing. The fall in oil prices has shown that I was right and if Scotland was just going independent now we would be in big trouble.
Missiles don’t start wars, ships and boats don’t start wars, bigots with ideologies start wars, Nationalists start wars.
I have made valid points why should I be ignored? Am I not allowed an opinion because it doesn’t match yours?
“Clark, after reading last nights debate, I’m afraid that it looks like you have tried, but, have wasted your breath on Fred, what a pity that he should feel so insecure in the world once Scotland rids itself of Trident and uses its deep water access for better reasons.”
I remember back in 2014 when they tried to convince me an independent Scotland would be economically viable, they failed then as well.
Then Fred I humbly apologise. Sorry about that I thought you were one of the vested interests.
Your point that nationalists start wars is true. I subscribe to the discovery of Marx that those who own the means of production are the powerful. That applies not only to land but capital. This is illustrated in the Middle East right now. If Saudi suddenly said “this is our land and thus our oil, what about the American (Texan mostly I believe) extraction technology? Do they own that? In my opinion no.
In my humble opinion the future trend is not even devolving into smaller nations like Scotland (I’m originally Welsh btw) but splitting down even into town and city states eventually. Where I ended up – Bavaria – is incredibly wealthy. However imho the money is from outside not independently generated. Thus Bayern is also not in charge of its destiny.
The problem in the UK is that we don’t defend our country at all, we attack others. Our people are all unhealthy, stoned and unable to think for themselves. If a foreign power came, everyone would be too wrecked to defend themselves.
“The problem in the UK is that we don’t defend our country at all, we attack others. Our people are all unhealthy, stoned and unable to think for themselves. If a foreign power came, everyone would be too wrecked to defend themselves.”
We have a well trained military and at times people have been glad to see them. Just now in the flood hit north of England, in Sri-Lanka, the Philippines, Haiti they said great here comes the Royal Navy, in Africa they said “thank God the army medical teams are here with the field hospitals”.
I don’t think anybody ever said “CND have arrived we are saved”.
This line of juvenile projections of what if one morning I got up and found my balls had fallen off and were rolling down the stairs, so best keep a tight lid on things and wear my spandex cycling pant to bed!!!!! (kinky but not really practical).
The main driver for more nukes around the world is; those whom have the nukes and keep on attacking those whom don’t have the nukes, ie North Lroea waws being threatened with invasion during the Dubya Bu$h and it had no choice but seek a method of self-defence.
On the day that the world changes, why ever not for better world and a world that laws and convention are respected and the heads of government are not bought and paid vassals of the various corporate interests; be it hydrocarbon or fiduciary banksterism.
Furthermore wars just do not happen over night, there is a lot of toing and froing and lots of acrimony, recollecting the forty five minutes grace of Saddam’s WMD exploding over London, simply put there is enough time for any war to get planned the public and then executed leaving enough time for preparations by all sides !!!
In addition, given that no country has attacked UK for the duration of the last century (WWII does not count, we declared war on the Germans) why on Earth should this change now?
Also given the fact that we can manufacture these deadly weapons does not mean that we should stock pile them!!! Best keep the manufacturing line mothballed for a just in time Nuke!!!! The world of just in time commodities ought to apply to weapons systems too, won’t you agree!!!
The fact that stock piled weapons systems have been a source of undue mischief and warmongering by our various great leaders and dear leaders is a patently obvious fact. the budgetary control of austerity would be a lot more easier if these weapons were made just in time and the costs of maintenance upkeep, and security concerns all reduced to zero!!!!! (given your lines of thought).
Fact is as it stands spending these huge sums on a elephantine project “white” is only helping to keep the shareholders dividends flowing and the rapacious mega death industry pretty well lubricated with our tax funds. There is no other reason for these mega death structures to exist or to be such a burden on the tax payers when poor old Mrs Miggins has been reduced to the status of “bed blocker” in a poxy hospital ran on health market parameters, that keeps telling the ill patients don’t come to us unless you are dying!!
Fred, nationalism in itself is neither good nor bad. Like most things it depends; upon context, for one thing – I doubt you’d argue against all of the various strands of nationalism that helped secure the independence of many African countries, for instance.
Fred, the following has more than a hint of self-fulfilling prophesy about it:
First, you’ve lumped together everyone who has disagreed with you in many different ways into “you people” – which is reminiscent of the mind-set that can accompany nationalism.
But more importantly, more than once last night I pointed out examples of you turning the argument personal. You fail to notice when you do this, and attribute all responsibility to your opponents. I’m not saying your opposition are perfect – you well know that I have my criticisms of RepublicofScotland, for instance. I’m just saying that you sometimes fail to notice those occasions when you provoke a hostile response, and once the conflict has escalated you use it to blacken the image of your opponents. That is divisive, the sort of process that fuels the negative aspects of nationalism and other “us versus them” hostility.
A good form of nationalism is national pride. Not belief in ones own and ones compatriots’ superiority to others; just the healthy sort of pride like pride in ones own work and achievements, pride in having developed a healthy and contributory set of values, pride in having helped others.
I can’t have as much pride as I’d like in being British because much of the UK’s foreign policies are immoral.
Jeremy Stocks:
Yes, decentralisation; a finer-grained democracy supporting the greatest achievable degree of autonomy compatible with mutual cooperation, at all levels of scale from the international down to the personal, even extending to self-respect for and awareness of the contradictions we each carry as individuals.
“But more importantly, more than once last night I pointed out examples of you turning the argument personal.”
No you didn’t.
Pointing out that you were the one initiating the discussion is not making it personal it’s just pointing out a relevant fact.
You said “Fred, you’ve framed this whole nuclear disarmament debate” didn’t I have the right to set the record straight and point out I wasn’t too bothered about talking about nuclear weapons in the first place? I didn’t “frame” anything. How is that making it personal?
Fred,
Because it takes two to tango.
“Because it takes two to tango.”
You lost me.
How come “Fred, you’ve framed this whole nuclear disarmament debate” isn’t making it personal but “You are the one brought up nuclear weapons not me” is?
Please explain.
Fred, here’s how you turned the argument personal:
In other words “The issues I, Fred, raise are more important than the ones you, Clark, raise, so I’m better than you”.
In other words, “You’re a selfish hypocrite Clark”.
Fred, the political and the personal inevitably overlap. What matters is the course we choose when they do. Just gently steer back towards the issues and maybe we can avoid the FOADs.
Mr Salmond did not need nukes to defend the people of Scotland from the slurs that Paul from St Albans attempted to cast.
Well, worth a look at the video to see Wee Eck on top form.
.
http://www.lbc.co.uk/salmonds-fiery-row-with-lbc-caller-over-oil-123093
“In other words,”
Let’s not talk about other words. Let’s talk about the actual words I said not the other words that I didn’t say.
“Well, worth a look at the video to see Wee Eck on top form.”
I saw the video already, Eck got demolished.
Fred:
OK Fred, I submit to your control. You tell me what is important to discuss. And when you continue to discuss nuclear weapons, I agree, it’s only me who forced you into it; it doesn’t take two to tango.