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.
Herbie 12:17
Precisely. Life is complicated. Not black and white. But you are right about the faking.
Can’t read a newspaper today and believe four fifths of it. probably never could. “Tell ’em that. They’ll believe it.” And they do, they do, they do.
I do not do politics publicly down the pub – nor on social media
I simply do not do it…I don’t do religion either….
I am just there to see the band with my wife and friends….
So do not to that to me…Do not taunt me…if you push me hard…when you think you know everything and you are telling me…
I might just respond – though I almost always regret it when I do..She says do not do that…I said it was only for a bit and then I withdrew.
Sorry about that mate.
Tony
I am slowly preparing for this virtual reality cardboard thing. I thought it would be shit and to be perfectly honest it was when I first tried it a few weeks ago..I would rather have a pint any day…but then I tried it again..with this stupid thing on my head with my mobile phone inside…and whoever wrote the code and did the graphics was really clever – it was like I was in a human brain with all these neuron connections…a completely different experience from watching 3D TV
yet in full 3D..and you turn your head to the left or to the right or you look up or down….and you have to stand up and look behind….
It is extremely weird…Don’t do it on drugs
Google Cardboard will send you mad.
http://www.roadtovr.com/google-announces-new-larger-cardboard-vr-viewer-with-universal-input-button/
Tony
Sibel Edmonds is launching a new media newsgathering outlet.
She won the Sam Adams award for whisleblowers, as indeed did Craig.
She really knows her stuff geopolitically, particularly in terms of the Caucausus, Turkey and Iran, which is where the geopolitical focus currently is. Born there.
Translator for the FBI.
Seen the secret docs.
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2016/01/15/bfp-roundtable-introducing-newsbud-where-media-integrity-matters/
Thing is though, she’s produced a novel, a fiction, “Lone Gladio”, which she says captures the reality of how things are done in the world by greater and lesser powers.
She says that she could say in fiction what she wouldn’t be allowed to say in non-fiction. In legal terms.
She has a non fiction book, “Classified Woman”, but heavily censored. Covers her whole case. trying to expose criminality at the heart of US Govt.
A subsequent book was completely classified, so unpublishable in law.
So, there ya go.
She turned to “fiction”.
Very critical of Greenwald, which does open another big can of worms.
Anyway. Pepe Escobar and many others are on board, so let’s hope it reaches a wide audience.
I suppose that I shouldn’t be too surprised, nevermind shocked to note, that on a Human Rights Activist/Whistle-Blower’s Blog, the 25th Anniversary of the mass killing spree of Iraqis known as GW1 didn’t seem to even merit a mention, nor apparently did the recent UN Report that states that 13 years after Saddam being removed by the West, violence suffered by civilians in Iraq “remains staggering”, with close to 20,000 civilians killed from 2014 to now, which certainly put the recent Paris killing into some kind of prospective.
Perhaps a more topical bit of xenophobic demonising might be of more interest here;
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/01/12/pers-j12.html
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/01/23/colo-j23.html
Thank you, Macky. Keeping our feet on the ground.
Thomas G. Clark examines the sudden Conservative enthusiasm for nationalisation:
http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/de-privatise-london-rail-tory-hypocrisy.html
Kind regards,
John
Fedup
“The excuser of genocide, land theft mass murder, and child abuse and torture, evidently finds light hearted answer because it’s malevolent satanic creed dictates to downplay any similarities of the persecutions past to the current persecutions.”
_______________________
Although I am none of the things you describe I take it that your post was addressed to me.
That said – are you seriously comparing the treatment of Europe’s Jews by the Nazis to the UK govt’s treatment of asylum seekers?
Of course you aren’t, so stop being so silly.
Fedup
It’s actually worse than Nazi Germany. Hitler may have gassed millions of Jews in industrial slaughterhouses, but he never went so far as to issue wristbands. #fascistbritain #worsethanhitler
Mr Goss
“Thankfully I have never been an apologist for Zionists or torturers. I think my support for Putin grew from reading your comments. ?”
______________________
I am flattered to think that I have influenced what passes for your thinking, John.
More generally, your obvious reluctance to answer questions such as “did you support Polish Solidarnosc”, “do you regret the demise of the Soviet Union”, “were you personally acquainted with Red Robbo”, “do you really believe that the Soviets were not responsible for the Katyn massacre”, etc, etc….the list is regrettably long… is quite revealing.
A somewhat dubious claim from Mr Goss:
“I criticise my work, my family, my life, my government, other people’s governments, what I wear, how I look, where I’ve failed, commenters on this blog, MSM, Israel, USA, Canada, UK, Australia, China, Russia,…”
__________________
The only times you have criticised the USSR and Putin’s Russia on here was to regret that they were insufficiently aggressive/anti-West. 🙂
Herbie we’ve discussed Sibel over at Clues forum and pretty much reached the conclusion she’s an intelligence asset.
I would take everything she says as a lie or at best disinfo until proven otherwise.
“Herbie we’ve discussed Sibel over at Clues forum and pretty much reached the conclusion she’s an intelligence asset.”
LOL. You’ve got to love this blog.
Macky
“I suppose that I shouldn’t be too surprised, nevermind shocked to note, that on a Human Rights Activist/Whistle-Blower’s Blog, the 25th Anniversary of the mass killing spree of Iraqis known as GW1 didn’t seem to even merit a mention” etc.
Leaving aside the fact that your excuses for having a go at Craig are becoming evermore desperate each time, it doesn’t appear that Craig is commenting on anything at all right now. Perhaps he is unwell, abroad, or doesn’t feel like writing anything. Perhaps he has lost interest in his blog because of people like you.
If you are so exercised by the 25th anniversary of the commencement of the first Gulf War, why don’t you write something about it yourself?
“Herbie we’ve discussed Sibel over at Clues forum”
AKA fruitcake corner – another conspiracy website – I typed in the name of my friend’s relative who was murdered in the twin towers – and it came up with him as a simulated victim by virtue of having a double ll (Symbolising the twin towers) in his name. Well at least Exexpat ( I wonder where he was thrown out of belives such twaddle!
Anon1
Perhaps he might just wish to acknowledge who started GW1 – but then again perhaps not.
@Anon1, my comments were more general & in regards to some the topics that have dominated the thread lately, especially the “Mr Putin is sooooooo bad !!” stuff; I don’t agree with everything Chomsky says here, but he is right that the US & UK are right of the scale in comparison;
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/upfront/2016/01/noam-chomsky-war-isil-160122112145301.html
Anyhow I thought that you, more than most, would be keen to address the points made in the two WSWS pieces I linked to.
Is that the same Chomsky who although he despises the US so much and could probably live anywhere he wanted still choses to live in the US?
As for the WSWS articles there is a more than a grain of truth in how they say the events in Cologne are being used by racists in an attempt to whip up xenophobia – but perhaps we should remember that the WSWS is part of the tendency that historically is rather too keen on throwing petrol on fires.
Resident Dissident; “Is that the same Chomsky who although he despises the US so much and could probably live anywhere he wanted still choses to live in the US?”
LOL ! Well that certainly wraps it up & refutes all of Chomsky points ! 😀
That’s the level of debate that this blog has been reduced to; anybody reading back in this thread, judging by all the Xenophobia, Russophobia, Islamophobia etc would wonder if they had stumbled onto the blog of some nutty Neocon, rather than that of a Human Rights Activist/Whistle-Blower !
Anyhow seeing as you appear a little black & white blinkered & ignorant about the origins of the first attack on Iraq (I refuse to call a one-sided turkey-shoot a “war”), I suggest a little read-up;
http://www.thefinertimes.com/War-in-The-Middle-East/causes-of-gulf-war-desert-storm.html
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialism-or-your-money-back/modern-era/economic-causes-gulf-war
The racist moron quips;
Evidently the fact that for the duration of the twenty first century to date it has been an open season on Muslims and millions of these have been killed through; invasion, bombings, starvation, disease brought on by the destruction of civil structures, and millions more made into refugees that the same racist is constantly referring to these beleaguered, and dissolute wave of humanity as “rapists” and “spongers”! The same wave that evidently now is “threatening” the Schengen agreement itself!
However as ever the copyrighted misery and destruction of the WWII trumps all, in the current age of chaos and destruction, which is evidently supported and promoted by the “descendant” of Hitler’s’ campaigns. In a fashion using one of the luminaries own verbiage is used in the;
The fact that the levels of religious persecution is the same if not higher given the scope and the range of countries and the inhabitants thereof at present. Then it was in the 1930s is not entertained and is taken as a “Muslims” only phenomena in which the Muslims deservedly get what is coming to them!!!!!! In fact the same racist zionist creeps are using the same techniques as in the 1930s to discount the humanity of the billions of Muslims in the way of preparing the way for the destruction of a large chunks of these Muslims.
======
Evidently you have not heard or read about “the jungle” in Calais!
There again these Muslims get what they deserve don’t they?
@Resident Dissident
“As for the WSWS articles there is a more than a grain of truth in how they say the events in Cologne are being used by racists in an attempt to whip up xenophobia – but perhaps we should remember that the WSWS is part of the tendency that historically is rather too keen on throwing petrol on fires.”
Resident Dissident This time I find it amazing that I have to agree with you the racist
organisation whipping up xenophobia being a Zionist one.
Macky
I looked at the first link from the World Socialist Web Site and, after I had purchased my copy of “In Defense of Leon Trotsky” ($15.95 since you ask), I got down to the gist of the article, which is that all the allegations of sexual abuse against migrants over the new year were invented by the media to demonize Muslims. That’s the German media, by the way, which you will remember censored itself so as not to upset the prevailing idea that mass-migration of the doctors, engineers and poets that make up the Muslim world would be a wholly beneficial thing to the West.
Clearly the extent of the “welcome” provided by Germany was unprecedented in its extent and stupidity, but you can always rely on the far-left to find racism everywhere, and promote the idea that any criticism of extending an open invitation to the world to settle in Europe is itself racist, even though the media and politicians have been falling over themselves to present a rose-tinted view of mass-migration.
Which is where I depart from Resident Dissident. It is not racists who are whipping up xenophobia. It is those responsible for the extremely foolish policy of inviting the world to settle in Europe who whip up xenophobia amongst otherwise tolerant and peaceful people. And those like Macky who deem it racist to oppose such an insane policy.
So you invite a million people every year to settle in your country with no experience or understanding or even repsect for the host culture and, inevitably, it all goes horribly wrong and there is a backlash. What do you do? Well if you’re Macky you criticise the media for reporting it.
The comments on this blog used to bring me hope. Now, they just convince me that humans are so confrontational that there is no hope at all.
“LOL ! Well that certainly wraps it up & refutes all of Chomsky points !”
Not really – but perhaps you could point me to those intellectuals who chose to enjoy the freedom of expression permitted by Putin in the on the scale Russia rather than the right off the scale US and UK. Why does Chomsky prefer the off the scale US to present his view rather than the on the scale regime of Putin?
I wasn’t trying to rufute all Chomsky’s points just the one you were trying to make by using his words – perhaps you might do better on your second response.
@Anon1, sorry but I have to be brief (lunch date):
Anon1: “That’s the German media, by the way, which you will remember censored itself ”
You mean only when not be ordered to;
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/10/leading-german-journalist-admits-cia-bribed-leaders-western-press.html
Anon1; “It is not racists who are whipping up xenophobia.”
Racists are refraining from whipping-up xenophobia ?! 😀
Anon1; “is those responsible for the extremely foolish policy of inviting the world to settle in Europe who whip up xenophobia amongst otherwise tolerant and peaceful people.”
Wow ! You are trying so hard, just need another logical step, and you’ll get there ! The refugee crises is due to the neocon warmongers devastating other people’s countries, and due to those those racists & xenophobes who support bombing those foreigners to “civilise” them Western style ! If you really are concerned with mass immigration into Europe, you better start paying attention of the consequences of those that YOU lend political/propaganda support to !
That’s right folks, fight fight fight. You can always solve conflict with more conflict, just like US foreign policy, to name just one offending empire.
“That’s the way to do it, that’s the way to do it!”
“Which is where I depart from Resident Dissident. It is not racists who are whipping up xenophobia. It is those responsible for the extremely foolish policy of inviting the world to settle in Europe who whip up xenophobia amongst otherwise tolerant and peaceful people. And those like Macky who deem it racist to oppose such an insane policy.”
I don’t think opposing the policy is per se racist – but the methods used by some certainly are, and I very much doubt that all the racists are Zionists (though some might be – and some probably lack the brain cells to even understand what is meant by Zionism, and some just stick to the old anti semitic views ). Although of course some here view any opposition to their own viewpoints as Zionist by definition.
Just to demonstrate to Anon1 that there are some racists whipping up xenophobia
http://www.thelocal.de/20160111/racist-attacks-ratchet-up-tension-in-cologne
Macky of course wishes to encourage the collapse of capitalism by whipping up both sides of the argument. It is what he does.
Well, here’s one racist who’s out and proud now:
http://217.218.67.231/Detail/2016/01/25/447242/Israeli-prime-minister-Netanyahu-settlement-construction-West-Bank
Namely, the pretence of a two-state solution has now been officially dropped. In other news, Bibi wants the US to increase its aid to poor little Israel from $3 Bn to$5 Bn.
“It is not racists who are whipping up xenophobia. It is those responsible for the extremely foolish policy of inviting the world to settle in Europe who whip up xenophobia amongst otherwise tolerant and peaceful people.”
And here is me thinking the problem is refugees and asylum-seekers trying to escape conflicts started by the west to destabilise the Middle East and North Africa. Silly me. During the Viet Nam war potential conscripts fled over the border to Canada to avoid fighting in a lost cause, another American attempt at ideological change. People do not want to fight wars. Muslims in these war-torn countries are looking for a better life somewhere where they might not get perpetual bombs falling on them from the sky.
But from someone who time and again has proved to be racist it is a bit rich to claim it is not racists who whip up xenophobia. Trying to get yourself of the hook there methinks. 😀