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.
“A simple question for everyone. Is there evidence that Litvinenko was murdered?”
Not that I know of but I should like to see it if there is.
Whereas I merely suggested Service might be stuck in Cold War thinking (a common malady of people of his age), I am accused of being one of “Putin’s spiders”.
Further to the extraordinary claim that Robert Service is reliable source, hereis short extract from a review of his ‘biography” of Trotsky:
“….A biographer need not like or even respect his subject. No one would suggest that Ian Kershaw harbors the slightest sympathy for Adolf Hitler, to whose life he devoted two extraordinary volumes that were the product of many years of research. However, whether a biographer admires, despises or feels a cool and detached ambivalence toward the object of his scholarly attention, he must respect the factual record and strive to understand that person. The biographer has the responsibility to examine a life in the context of the conditions of the times in which his subject lived. But this is beyond Service’s intellectual capacities and the boundaries of his knowledge. Instead, in a manner both pointless and absurd, he assumes from the outset the standpoint of a disapproving career counselor. Trotsky, Service opines in the biography’s introduction, “could easily have achieved a great career as a journalist or essayist if politics had not become his preoccupation.” But Trotsky did choose a career in politics, and revolutionary politics at that, a decision that Service cannot abide or come to grips with.
Service describes his book as “the first full-length biography of Trotsky written by someone outside Russia who is not a Trotskyist.” [xxi] What is meant by “full-length”? Service’s biography is certainly long, plodding on for 501 pages. But in terms of content, it is no more than a super-sized version of the biographies produced by Thatcher and Swain. Like the earlier works, this is a biography without history. There is not a single historical event that is recounted with anything remotely approaching the necessary level of detail.
Service reduces the immense and complex drama of the revolutionary epoch in Russia to a series of vacuous tableaux, which serve only as the scenic background for Service’s ridicule of Trotsky’s alleged political, personal and moral failures. The coming to power of the Nazis in 1933, the eruption of the Spanish Civil War and the formation of the Popular Front in France are dealt with in a few desultory sentences. Even the Moscow Trials and the Terror merit little more than a page. Far more attention is given by Service to Trotsky’s brief intimacy with Frida Kahlo!
A Compendium of Errors
Moreover, the biography is full of factual errors that call attention to the author’s extremely limited comprehension of the historical material. In the course of a disoriented excursion into Trotsky’s pre-1917 views on the subject of revolutionary terror, Service writes that Trotsky “spoke out against ‘individual terror’ in 1909 when the Socialist-Revolutionaries murdered the police informer Evno Azev, who had penetrated their Central Committee.” [113] In fact, Azef (the correct transliteration from the Russian spelling) was not murdered in 1909. He was not murdered at all. Azef, who had organized terrorist acts, including assassinations, while working as an agent of the Okhrana inside the Socialist Revolutionary Party, survived his exposure and died of natural causes in 1918. Service fails to quote even a single sentence from Trotsky’s important article on the Azef affair.
Discussing the events of 1923 in Germany, Service asserts that the revolution failed after “Street fighting petered out” in Berlin. [31] In fact, there was no fighting in Berlin. The leadership of the Communist Party called off the uprising before fighting could begin in the capital. The only serious fighting in a major German city occurred in Hamburg.
In a passing reference to the Chinese Revolution, Service states that the Communist International sent instructions for an insurrection against Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang in April 1927. “It was just the excuse that Chiang needed to conduct a bloody suppression of communists in Shanghai and elsewhere.” [355] This is wrong. No such plan existed and no such instructions were sent. Service confuses the events in Shanghai in April 1927 with later developments in Canton.
In another passage, Service writes that in June 1928 Trotsky was working on his critique of the programme of the Comintern’s Fifth Congress. [371] Actually, the Fifth Congress was held in 1924. The critique to which Service is referring was addressed to the Sixth Congress.
Service even manages to get the year of the death of Trotsky’s widow, Natalia Sedova, wrong. He states, “She died in 1960, deeply mourned by her network of Mexican, French and American friends.” [496] In fact, Sedova died in January 1962 at the age of 79. Several months before her death, in November 1961, as one would expect a biographer of Trotsky to know, Natalia Sedova had written to the Soviet government, demanding a review of the Moscow Trials and the rehabilitation of Trotsky. At the end of the book, in yet another gross blunder, Service misidentifies the wife and daughter of Trotsky’s youngest son, Sergei, as being the wife and daughter of the older son, Lev. [500-501] These errors got by not only the editors at Macmillan and the Harvard University Press, but also eluded the none-too-watchful eye of Professor Ian Thatcher, who, we are informed by Service, read the entire manuscript.
Following the same procedure as Thatcher and Swain, Service fails to engage himself with Trotsky’s writings. With the exception of Trotsky’s My Life, which Service attempts to discredit, there is no persuasive evidence that the biographer worked systematically through any of Trotsky’s published books and pamphlets prior to writing this biography. Aside from the writings of Ian Thatcher, whom he profusely praises, Service has paid little attention to existing scholarly literature on Trotsky. Service affects an attitude of contempt toward biographers, educated in the Marxist tradition, who have taken Trotsky’s literary output seriously. The late Pierre Broué, a highly respected historian and the author of a massively researched and authoritative biography of Trotsky, is dismissed as an “idolater.” Deutscher is mocked as one who “worshipped at Trotsky’s shrine.” [xxi]
There is reason to doubt that Service actually read the work of most of the other historians to whom he pays perfunctory tribute in his preface. For example, Service takes note of Professor Alexander Rabinowitch as a historian who subjected Trotsky to “skeptical scrutiny,” and lumps him together with James White of Glasgow University, who ridiculously denies that Trotsky played any significant role in the October 1917 seizure of power. [xxi] In fact, Professor Rabinowitch’s The Bolsheviks Come to Power substantiated Trotsky’s role as the principal tactician and practical leader of the Bolshevik victory.
Despite Service’s self-satisfied description of his biography as “full-length,” there are virtually no extracts from, or adequate summaries of, Trotsky’s major political works. Service does not even review the basic concepts and postulates of the Theory of Permanent Revolution, which formed the foundation of Trotsky’s political work over a period of 35 years. His voluminous writings on China, Germany, Spain, France and even Britain are barely mentioned.
On the few occasions when Service does refer to one of Trotsky’s books, what he has to say is usually wrong. In a thoroughly confused reference to Literature and Revolution, Service attributes to Trotsky the view that “It would take many years … before a ‘proletarian culture’ would be widely achieved.” [317] Trotsky, as anyone who has actually read Literature and Revolution knows, emphatically rejected the concept of “proletarian culture.” (6) But Service does not know this – either because he did not read the book or because he was not able to understand it.
By now the reader must be wondering how Service, without paying attention to Trotsky’s writings, manages to keep himself occupied for 501 pages. How is it possible to write a “full-length biography” of a man who was among the most prolific writers of the twentieth century without paying the necessary attention to his literary output?…”
This is from a review to be found at the Trotskyist WSWS
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2009/11/serv-n11.html
“Is there evidence that Litvinenko was murdered?”
There must have been a definitive decision made at some stage. I’m sure there will have been an account of that process.
Wasn’t it a Police matter. Dunno. Maybe it was all just a media PR thing.
The case involved quite a bit of narrative invention in mass media, the Sundays and so on, full colour spreads, lots of spooky intrigue.
But I’m not sure I could point to any analysis of the evidence of murder versus misadventure, to say which is the stronger case.
I’m sure there must be competing arguments on this.
Let’s hear’em.
Weigh ’em up.
Democratic like.
It would certainly be very odd — and arguably suspicious — if there was no autopsy.
Litvinenko was a ticking bomb when he met those two Russians, having been poisoned by Andrei Tolchachev and Andrei Sidenikov when they had a sandwich him on Oxford Street before.
Polonium-210 takes at least a day for the target’s body to realize what is happening.
Read my articles on Veterans Today and cryptome about the assassination, though no one, especially British, American, and Israeli authorities, have asked me about the basis of my claims.
OK what about Gareth Williams,Dr David Kelly,Stephan Ward killed by persons unknown.Also John Lennon killed by a mind controlled assassin.All brushed under the carpet.
Right, Dave Lawton, and don’t forget the others like Stephen Hilder Gudrubn Loftus, Steve Rawlings et al. See my articles too about them.
John Goss 21 Jan, 2016 – 8:18 pm : More to come later [about the Big Ride for Palestine] when I know how much I can go public on.
Great. I’m sure Craig won’t mind you keeping us all informed through this blog. Let me know the damage and where to send it when the time comes. And meanwhile, you deserve a nice glass or two of wine and some chips, washed down with a couple of beers. And some chocolate and pies and cake … go on, it’ll give you stamina ….
This is for the anti Putin propagandists who are full of swollen hypocrisy.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/01/21/radioactive-agents-the-cia-and-the-problem-of-identity/
Thanks Trowbridge for that am checking it out.
“On the contrary, what careless radioactive traces in hotels, planes and elsewhere strongly suggest is that someone was laying an incriminating path to frame up the Russian men. And even at that we don’t really know if traces of radioactivity were actually found because, as noted the un-public nature of the British inquiry was based entirely on secret, unverifiable “evidence”.
This is the same conclusion I came to. And anyone with more than two brain cells could not fail to see it.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44010.htm
Thanks for the positive response, and the link, Dave.
Sure that the Counter Punch people will go on in their book to contend that CIA rather than Putin assassinated Sasha, though it;s just as likely that the Israelis or the UK supplied the Polonium-210.
They all wanted him dead.
The USA for his babbling about Reagan’s neo-cons assassinating Palme and wanting to conclude the Cold War with a non-nuclear showdown with the USSR, the cooperative Brits for his identifying Russian spies at the time, like their EU Commissioner Romano Prodi, and the Israelis hoping that such a favor for Washington would finally lead to the release of spy Jonathan Pollard.
What a cesspool we live in!
RoS
“Britain does indeed appear to be partaking in the war in Yemen, just not openly.”
Not half mate. But to me it seems quite clear, and in the open. It’s just the way that the narrative is being framed which obscures the picture.
The hypocrisy on show today re the polonium pantomime is staggering.
Let’s start with the supposition that todays report is 100% accurate.
i.e. Putin orders a hit. (what gets me is why?)
His minions make a dogs breakfast of the job.
Result. 1 dead Russian.
Let’s return to Yemen.
Cameron is told by ‘Interests’ such as our weapons suppliers and the House of Saud, to facilitate and manage their genocidal attack on the Houthis.
Naturally, he complies. And gets various minions to sort it out.
Result. The deaths of, lets just say, more than a few Yemenis, with the odd aid worker or unlucky medic chalked off for good measure too.
And double gins all round. Non exec posts in the pipeline for the main facilitators. Best to leave it for a couple of years though, it’s not good form to dive in the trough. Collective amnesia needs time.
And the difference ? Semantics over death really, dead being dead and all that. but one looks awfy like state sponsored murder, and the other like aiding and abetting a series of war crimes.
Hardly fair to compare really. Pots and kettles.
That must be why Auntie bigs up one , and whispers sweet nothings about the other.
It was the pushing of the lead coffin story which amused most today. (not just the sound of the presenters sphincter erupting, as he pushed too hard.)
The devil does indeed lie in the details.
Possible alternatives/variations on todays theme.
As above. Putin ordered ect. Why polonium, a substance that seems to leave quite a trail ?
The way to interpret this could be that it’s Putin sending out a message.
Or..
Putin didn’t know. Leaving such things to sympathetic minions to act, and have plausible deniability. Hmmm
Only a thought , but maybe some elements in the West were not so happy with Putins refusal to roll over and have his tummy rubbed, whilst they exploited Russia to the max, and had friends in the security services set up the patsies to do the dirty deed. Only a thought..
Nicely timed inquiry report.
And Finian Cunningham is a very goof researcher.
I only told him that he was wrong about who caused the helicopter killing of the Briitsh spooks at the Mull of Kintyre in 1994.
He thought it was the softliners, and I corrected him by saying it was the hardliners,and he accepted it.
Sir Julian Rose: ALERT! The situation in Poland is critical
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz9Nu8YJ7l8
Fedup gets to the pith as usual
Cameron is desperate for the Saudis to believe that USUKIS have not betrayed them in Syria, wasting billions of dollars of Saudi/Qatari cash spent on munitions and jihadis.
For this to happen cameron has to make it appear that USUKIS and Russia are enemies.
Cameron as usual is taking the pee.
Craig, you should make a list. You could call it Craigslist. Include all those who you think are wankers:
feminists (you until recently)
royals
neo-conservatives
liberals (you, until recently)
SNP types (you until recently)
Scottish independence no-voters
I could go on…
Then, start applying for jobs that you think you’re fully entitled to get…
Hahahhahhhahhhaaaaa!
Just look at how the Putinistas have come out to divert and distract in order to protect their man. Perhaps it is worth noting that one of their number David Lawton has already professed to outing CIA spies while leaving the KGB ones in place – so it is quite clear where his loyalties lie. As to the cause of Litvinenko’s death – perhaps Putin’s bottom feeders should note that there was a post mortem – but as always their beliefs will be based on prejudice rather than facts.
The prime minister has ordered a clampdown on “spurious” legal claims against UK military personnel.
David Cameron has asked ministers to draw up plans to end the claims, including measures to curb the use of “no win, no fee” arrangements.
A Number 10 source said Mr Cameron wanted to stop the “torment” felt by members of the armed forces who faced such cases.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35378985
……………………………………………………………………………
What he really wants is immunity from prosecution for the UK military like the US enjoys in Iraq.
Was Litvinenko murdered? enquires Mr. Putin, via Goss.
No. He accidentally ingested a rare radioactive element which can only be produced in a nuclear reactor or laboriously extracted from thousands of tons of uranium ore. Whose natural occurrence in the environment is negligible. Which had unaccountably and entirely coincidentally localised itself in high concentrations on two recent contacts of L’s, the hotel crockery he had drunk from, aircraft the contacts had travelled on, and their hotel rooms, and locations in Hamburg also associated with the contacts. And nowhere else, except Litvinenko.
Or maybe he committed suicide, using his contacts in the Russian nuclear industry to obtain a material which would guarantee him as lingering, painful and messy a death as he could imagine.
He was murdered. Like so many others before him and since, with Putin’s full knowledge and consent, because without the consent, these things don’t happen. He wasn’t murdered by Berezovsky, who had no reason to murder him. But Putin had good reason to put the boot in to Berezovsky, and we still don’t know much about Brezovsky’s later, convenient demise, either. Did he hang himself? Probably. But he’d just been effectively bankrupted by Abramovich. Who was then in favour with Putin.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/16/litvinenko-investigating-abramovich-money-laundering-claims-court-told
The Gosses of this world need to realise that the Russian business-government nexus in Russia is just as corrupt and powerful as that here…but much. much nastier. It should attract no sympathy from the Left.
In passing, and a nutshell –
https://leave.eu/en/news/0/leaveeu-responds-to-the-pms-speech-in-davos
Just.
Background reading – a tangled tale of everyday business life, Russian-style:
http://www.veidas.lt/what-are-lapdogs-of-russian-oligarchs-doing-in-lithuania
Do we at some level have to go on having some sort of relationship with them because we need a solution to the Syria crisis? Yes we do. But we do it with clear eyes and a very cold heart.
Syria; Syria; Syria
Fact: Russia (and somewhat China & Iran) salvaged and redeemed Syria from the contrived regime change chaos of Libya and Iraq.
Britain and America are culpable; to blame for massive loss of lives, cruel displacement of families, total destruction of a fundamental order of human development and the promotion and advancement of world terror, horror, shock and awe,
@resident dissident
“Just look at how the Putinistas have come out to divert and distract in order to protect their man. Perhaps it is worth noting that one of their number David Lawton has already professed to outing CIA spies while leaving the KGB ones in place – so it is quite clear where his loyalties lie. As to the cause of Litvinenko’s death – perhaps Putin’s bottom feeders should note that there was a post mortem – but as always their beliefs will be based on prejudice rather than facts.”
Pulled your chain then,knew it would.You just don`t get do you.? It`s like statements from he Media
put out the the only place you could obtain polonium 210 was from Russia. BS I say.You could buy it on the internet at the time.The problem with UK state lapdogs they are all brainwashed and conditioned and don`t know it.Ever heard of Exegesis or Programmes ltd.
While duplicity on a vast scale in the USUKIS politics of the Middle East, is it sensible to believe the Cameron/Andy Burnham narrative on Litvinenko?
I know posters here want to ignore Syria, like we used to want to ignore Northern Ireland, but the reason why those troubles are still not resolved is because no-one will admit to the betrayal/duplicity of the UK government in creating them.
Thanks to the web we are now aware of the duplicity at an almost concurrent timescale.
The longer the tiny minority of people in the UK , including Muslims, who take an interest in the politics of the Middle East, look the other way, the longer the bitterness created will remain unsolvable.
The only explanation for ignoring the elephant in the room is latent Islamophobia.
it’s like watching a game of football with 2 balls in play. Ba’al is watching and commenting on the blue ball at one end, while others are watching the green ball at the other.
http://www.voltairenet.org/article189971.html
Mark Golding
Thanks for your comment @ 11.17. Did you hear Andy Burnham scolding Russia in the House of Commons? More evidence of the joined-up policies of the blue and red Tories is totally unnecessary. Feminism’s husband is also a neo-con tool.
The excessive number of calculated coincidences between the deaths of people, who defined themselves as the opposition to the Russian authorities, and major international events involving Vladimir Putin is a source of concern. I am far from believing in the conspiracy theory, but, in this case, I think that we are witnessing a well-rehearsed plan of the consistent discrediting of the Russian Federation and its chief. In such cases, the famed “qui bono”[sic] question has to be asked.
The banks, the corporations, pharmaceuticals, agrochemical and others are a cabal hell bent on world domination. Britain writes the dominion blueprint and Britain devises the game-plan.
Thankfully the opposing spirit, the power of intention is unyielding, founded on truth, insight, observation and vision this power will exist generally after total chaos and war have had their day.
” As to the cause of Litvinenko’s death – perhaps Putin’s bottom feeders should note that there was a post mortem – but as always their beliefs will be based on prejudice rather than facts.”
A post mortem is not in question. What is in question is the lack of inquest findings. It makes the rest of the Inquiry, as with Hutton, a total whitewash. We do not know the cause of death.
As to Putin, I would trust him a lot more than the criminal oligarchs Berezovsky, Adamovich et al, or their minders like Litvinenko, all with a very spooky and shady history yet supported by our establishment and all the ‘Blame Putin’ advocates like yourself.
Does anybody know why Litvinenko converted to Islam on his deathbed? Was it to get an early funeral so too much probing would not go on? Or so he could be buried in Chechen soil as his widow says? Just asking.
The Blue ball being Tory neo-con swivel-eyed capitalism, + red Tories + political Islam.
The Green ball being the truth of Islam
The Red ball being centralised economies such as China and Russia, and followers elsewhere
For the last 35 years the Blue ball has tried to obliterate the Red ball of socialism and the Green ball of Islam, its 2 competitors.
Syria was the intellectual centre of Islam where socialism and Islam were nurtured together.
The machinations and violence of the Blue agenda means that they will never gain power in the region again. That’s a loss for British values, directly caused by the adoption of Thatcherite policies from 1980. A totally wasted 35 years, a total waste of time.
Re Syria
Just look at how Beautiful WAS Homms –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhqJLashLvM
And this Development Just about to Start Construction-
DownTown Emissa Project , Homs City , Syria
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF2ddnr2ziQ
AND NOW LOOK What we have Done, and Still Do… Soul destroying –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoRdCbDd50o
AND LETS not forget we are making sure the same destruction takes place in Yemen
Oh and The U.K had Fk all to say About israel’s Cowardly ‘ Protective Edge ‘ Crimes.