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.
Actually am happy to go inof with you When you mention Squonk
Habbabkuk
15 Jan, 2016 – 9:37 pm
Hello there, good to see you’re still here – I trust that you, Anon, Resident Dissident and a couple of others have been holding the fort in my absence?
Have I missed anything of interest?
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Hello Habby, good to see you back!
Actually, it’s been awfully boring here and consequently pretty quiet. Haven’t seen much of the others either probably for the same reasons.
Now for some fresh air and some sun. See you around later no doubt!
If it were My Page ………………………. i might keep them with the Ropes..Craig and Mods Hav A piont <, I hope
But i Dont Know ..We All Hated the Treatment Of Mary
A very interesting and thoughtful piece on the meaning and uses of “political correctness”.
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/01/14/3737907/the-phony-debate-about-political-correctness/
Kind regards,
John
“Actually, it’s been awfully boring here and consequently pretty quiet.”
Yep. You must have been bored to tears having to listen to your gibberish without having supporting gibberish from your buddies. Anyway, he’s back!
Others found it a relief, apart from your inane comments.
Hello Habby, good to see you back!
Actually, it’s been awfully boring here and consequently pretty quiet. Haven’t seen much of the others either probably for the same reasons.
Now for some fresh air and some sun. See you around later no doubt!
Do you CUNTS think you are going to ha some fun now.
Skimming the page I see JSD bwhaaaaghing about defending feminism on this blog single-handed. You got the wrong end of the prick, as usual.
Thanks to John Goss for introducing a real feminist, and true protector of feminism.
Russia finds it completely absurd, as I myself do, that feminism is interchangeable with sexual freedom in the West. The Syrian women who have always played a major part in Syria and Kurdistan have never asked for sexual liberation , the breaking of God’s universal commands. Nor did the Egyptian women who participated in the Arab Spring.
Julian Assange is represented here as a great liberator of women, chasrging like Sir Lancelot with his viagraed member again and again to defy and defeat the dragon of Victorian hypocrisy. No. You forgot to put your armour on. Dunce.
It still defeats me how people here can be so oblivious to the rights of women that they can interpret not wanting to get pregnant or HIV as wanting to extradite him.
Female chastity i.e. not to be forced to have sex outside marriage, rights of children not to be abused by adults, both seem alien to Englishmen. They are nothing but Vikings.
Did anyone see the report yesterday about a Chinese girl who killed herself by throwing herself under a lorry, because a young Muslim man had taken advantage of her sexually and then told he might have to end the affair because his parents might marry him off to someone.
In Chinese culture, allowing a man to communicate with you is regarded as your having chosen him as a partner, and going out with him as a sign of being engaged to him.
By choosing to follow the fatwa of his imams that sexual intercourse before marriage was a minor sin, and not respecting cultural differences, this young man has blood on his hands. The imams are responsible for his irresponsibility, because they know the rules, but for their own political advantage, the disruption of UK culture through sexual predation, they teach the wrong thing.
This teaching of wrong Islam will be punished by the Muslim community eventually, when the West tries to pin the blame for Daesh and abuser violence against women on the religion or on the Muslims.
Corruption and stupidity on this scale will not go unnoticed in a free press, but it might be possible to repress it in Muslim countries , simply by chopping off the heads of those leading the criticism .
Giyane
16/01/2016 12:01pm
Oh, good afternoon, Giyane. I thought you were never going to read a single word of my witterings again. Not very consistent, are you?
I have not yet received an apology for your false attribution to me of words I did not write, nor for your deliberate lying about it more than once. Could I have them now, please?
Otherwise, kindly do not bother to address me personally, you liar and time waster.
For the record, I said nothing about “single-handed”. Kindly point out where I said anything about single-handed? You can’t do it. You are lying and wasting everyone’s time with your nonsense, as usual.
John
Handbagcunt will not come back, however terrible it may be for him to see the un-interrupted discussion of women’s rights unfold on these pages.
He must be spinning in his ether black hole with ether worms drilling his ether eyeball..
JSD
Skim, not read. You are heading fast for the digestive tract vortex of oblivion where your fellow troll Habbabkuk has sadly gone. Whether you emerge as dung the other end, to manure other pages, you’re not coming back here again with your freemasonry tripe. You can write, but sensible readers will do the same as they did with Humbug, ignore the troll.
Giyane
16/01/2016 12:19pm
I want an apology for your false attribution and lying about the matter. Anyone who wants me to prove it is welcome to the documentation. Until then, don’t bother to address me personally.
Lying is haram in Islam, and denounced in the Qur’an, so don’t lecture anyone on what a man of faith you are until you have put your own fault right. Hypocrite.
John
Good afternoon. And here we all are, proving Fred’s point that humans will never stop fighting until all sides hold weapons so powerful that whoever fired one would wipe himself out along with his enemy and everyone else. Sad.
Anyone for some calm discussion, compassion, peacemaking, and reconciliation? I’d have a go myself but I really don’t feel up to the task.
Giyane, changing the subject, what does Islam teach about conscience?
BrianFujisan,
OK, Brian, I think I’ve got it. Bit of a misunderstanding.
Thanks.
Fuji-San
“i Should have Said Habby Fuck ofF”
________________
Do you remember what the Mods said about keeping it political and not personal?
BrianFujisan and Esclavo, I’m glad you’ve apparently sorted it out between you because I can’t even work out what the apparent disagreement was about, nor how it was reconciled :\
Esclavo
Thant you..too…sorry if i got you wrong
“But what a brave woman to have stood almost alone in a country where women have scant opportunity to voice their opinions against male abuse and protected privilege, in a country today where journalists and academics are being imprisoned for criticising the Erdogan government’s import of ISIS oil, export of weapons to ISIS and mass murder of Kurds from this NATO ally.”
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A splendid example of the sort of conflation the poster often indulges in. Conflation is often the hallmark of poor argument and is usually deployed in the service of propaganda.
Yes Hab… Can we try this
Thank you Clark..
Mr Goss
““Actually, it’s been awfully boring here and consequently pretty quiet.”
Yep. You must have been bored to tears having to listen to your gibberish without having supporting gibberish from your buddies. Anyway, he’s back!
Others found it a relief, apart from your inane comments.”
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Good will obviously reigns, as always 🙂
Remember what the Mods said about keeping it political and not personal and about not insulting other posters.
Fuji-San
“Do you CUNTS think you are going to ha some fun now.”
_________________
Your posts are always limpidly clear, well-written, informative and balanced. It would therefore be a pity if you were to get banned by the Mods for a week or so for insulting other posters (as above) for no good reason.
Mods (re the following, both from Giyane)
“Handbagcunt will not come back, however terrible it may be for him to see the un-interrupted discussion of women’s rights unfold on these pages.
He must be spinning in his ether black hole with ether worms drilling his ether eyeball..”
and
“JSD
Skim, not read. You are heading fast for the digestive tract vortex of oblivion where your fellow troll Habbabkuk has sadly gone. Whether you emerge as dung the other end, to manure other pages, you’re not coming back here again with your freemasonry tripe. You can write, but sensible readers will do the same as they did with Humbug, ignore the troll.”
_______________________
Could you be kind enough to confirm that the above kind of posting is sufficiently political for the poster not to get banned for a short period?
Habbabkuk, hello. Until the apparent hangovers wear off, personally, I’m trying to mention new, positive thoughts rather than quoting stale negative thoughts left lying around on the threads. Until we have a moderator to control us it seems sensible.
…or we might ALL end up banned!
Clark
“Anyone for some calm discussion, compassion, peacemaking, and reconciliation? I’d have a go myself but I really don’t feel up to the task.”
___________________
Would you care to identify and then condemn those who started with the insults and four letter words just a short while ago?
I only ask because you are a peace maker whose honesty, impartiality and love of the truth are bywords on this blog.
Habbabkuk, I won’t condemn the people, but I hereby condemn the behaviour.
Habbabkuk, I’m not well and in considerable pain at present. Finding and listing the specific nastiness just seems like too much effort right now. But we can each ourselves recognize where we each ourselves went wrong; that may well have been my motivation for mentioning conscience earlier.