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.
I am pleased to see Ivan Zadorozhny has come to a similar conclusion as myself regarding the ‘Litvinenko Inquiry’. How could any sane thinking person not agree that a legal judgement requires proof. What a farce Sir Robert Owen has made of English justice being seen to be done.
http://russia-insider.com/en/uk-litvinenko-report-struggles-implicate-russia-ends-clearing-it/ri12421
As one commenter says:
“Way to destroy 800 years of English law, from the Magna Carta on, Cameron you buffoon.”
Fred
Is anyone looking at the close proximity of giant windmills to the whale beaching sites or is this being blamed on climate change?
Wtf is Cameron up to in his EU negotiations? You may well think this fiasco is centred on his welfare rule ‘basket’ that ensures EU immigrants must work or risk deportation. No so, well only on the front page of his ‘global hegemony’ dictum manual.
Get real peeps – The Etonian playing field in Cameron’s huddle in ‘negotiations’ are all about lawless corporate behaviour, inequality before the Law and the lost Rule of that Law. Specifically The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership or TTIP between the EU and UK/US. As a bi-lateral trade agreement, TTIP is about reducing the regulatory barriers to trade for big business, things like food safety law, environmental legislation, banking regulations and the cut-throat sovereign powers of combatant nations such as Iran and Russia.
The EU must be run on corporate technocracy which in simple terms means NO future for elected politicians answerable to the populace; rather, they envisage a world where the globalist captains are in charge, and the pauperised citizenry must cling on to their coat tails as best they can.
The EU must remain and enhance the important power bulwark against a hated Russia/China/Iran, enabling rapid action to stop any threat to UK/US/IS global hegemony.
Anon1, 7:53 pm; does that really matter? Humanity, all of us, are causing a mass extinction.
Clark
25 Jan, 2016 – 12:28 pm
“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.”
……………………………………………………………………………………….
Humans are confrontational Clark because we are intelligent social creatures that nevertheless retain some primitive animal instincts located in the “reptilian brain” area.
Xenophobia is one such instinct. To counter these animal instincts requires an acknowledgement that these primitive instincts exist within us and to override them with compassion, logic and facts.
However, in times of stress, most people revert to their “gut instincts” as a survival mechanism where compassion and logic go out of the window.
What is more difficult to understand is why some people cannot control their animal instincts under normal conditions. Fear of strangers (xenophobia) is understandable in evolutionary terms but in the modern world it makes little sense.
It would appear that many people (and we see them here on this blog) are lead by their primitive instincts and no amount of logic, compassion or facts can change them no matter how intelligent and educated they are.
Resident Dissident, 7:02 pm; I read your link:
http://www.thenation.com/article/rejoinder-noam-chomsky/
Chomsky and Hitchens seem to be almost entirely in agreement, the only points of contention being Chomsky’s polemic comparison, and Hitchens’ outrage at Chomsky’s insinuation that Hitchens is unconsciously racist. This looks like little more than professional rivalry to me.
Doug Scorgie, 8:00 pm:
Quite. It seems to be the vast majority. This is why I lack hope.
Mark G. Cameron never had the support of anyone in the bag, because he failed on the compassionate fully engaged partner bit.
He is still proffering his laissez faire Conservatism and his eagerness to ever increase the rich /poor gap by hitting services with cuts and bleeding hard working TAX PAYING Europeans has been read loud and clear by everyone.
Hen has failed and his idea to have the referendum and local elections and mayoral elections and and all together on one single day, is just poor judgement and ignorance, he knows full well that voters will not be interested in multiple elections, and most likely be bored stiffby his hard line non effort at present.
I wholly agree with you on TTIP, they are already meddling in law making during their secret negotiation phase, the way this is
being pursued is totally undemocratic and dangerous, Europe’s voters must demand to have a vote on what is proposed.
Yes it does, Clark. Sadly man-made climate chaos theory has replaced solid conservation work. Show me any ten species of animal that are disappearing and it is because of persecution and habitat loss, not sodding climate change.
Doug, the essential problem would seem to be that the more recent, reasoning parts of the brain are founded on the older, instinctive/survivalist parts of the brain, the latter being completely dependent upon the former, rather as application software is dependent upon the operating system that runs it.
The old brain calls the new brain to its service. If old-brain xenophobia requires justifications to display publicly, new-brain rationalisation will supply them. Likewise greed and violence.
The reasoning process can prevail, there are plenty of examples of this, but too few as a proportion. Time is running out.
“There is of course a possibility that the whale the largest toothed predator on the planet has died due to ingesting contaminated prey. ”
No. The sperm whale only feeds in deep water, mostly squid, the North Sea is shallow. It would not have eaten for some time, it’s stomach would be empty.
Anon1, 8:08 pm, so you like your fast car, do you?
Climate change is fucking obvious now, which also means it’s too fucking LATE to fix it.
December 18th, I was north of Aberdeen and was too warm with a coat on; only wearing it for the wind and rain. Several days around December 28th, I was sat outdoors in a fucking T-shirt. Here in Essex, today, I saw a fucking butterfly.
We are fucked.
Clark
I think Hitchens has a rather different view on the responsibility for 9/12 – and the relative degree of wrong committed by Clinton in Sudan compared with that of the perpetrators of 9/11. There are also divergent views on Milosevic and the Khmer Rouge – but Hitchens does also acknowledge shared views in earlier times.
Nevermind
You’ll get a vote on TTIP at national level and in the EP. Demand met
El Nino year. And the climate changes, always has done.
That you want to believe i own a fast car is revealing as to your motivation.
Fred, contaminated prey isn’t confined to the North Sea.
The whole fucking planet is contaminated. By us. You, me, and everyone.
@Goss
So surprise surprise the Putin controlled Press don’t like the Livinenko enquiry and they agree with John Goss.
Mr Goss doesn’t like the fact that security service evidence was presented in private to the judge and wants it all to be made public. Does this happen in Putin’s Russia?? Could he also explain why if English law is so useless so many Russian’s chose to have their legal agreements drawn up in accordance with English law rather than relying on the local variant? He might also wish to inform us as to how the conviction rates vary between the Russian and English Courts.
Grown males Sperm whales, are known to enter surprisingly shallow bays to rest (whales will be in state of rest during these occasions). There are unique, coastal groups reported from various areas such as Scotland, Shiretoko Peninsula, off Kaikoura, in Davao Gulf, and so on.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperm_whale
Fred, if I were you I’d check my facts first.
Anon1, 8:31 pm; I own a fast car myself. I just don’t kid myself that it’s harmless, in contradiction to the warnings coming from almost the entire academic sector. Without the car my marginal sanity would have expired long since, because there’s no fucking COMMUNITY any more.
Resident Dissident, fucking hell, just argue the FACTS! Why the hell put questions to John Goss, who thinks the Twin Towers were nuked? Just write it straight; by routing your points through John Goss you’re choosing one of the most distorted signal-paths available in this comments section.
Clark
That was a Gladio mind-control butterfly tho’, nothin to do with cloimate choinge.
“Fred, contaminated prey isn’t confined to the North Sea.”
The whale washed up in Lincolnshire, it must have been in the North Sea for some time. It probably died of starvation or dehydration. Contaminated prey had nothing to do with it, the pod got lost and ended up in the wrong place.
Republicofscotland
Thank you for acknowledging the source for your post at 20h41 above (ie, Wikipedia).
Do you think you could make that a regular occurrence henceforth?
It has struck me that in many of your usual posts you are quoting whole chunks without acknowledgement – this is obvious from the sudden changes of style at the point where you stop quoting and add your own short text.
I can understand your desire to make yourself look more knowledgeable (and literate) by not revealing that you are in fact quoting, but that sort of plagiarism is rather bad manners.
A simple and not too time-consuming solution would be for you to use quotation marks where appropriate.
“Fred, if I were you I’d check my facts first.”
I already knew the facts which is why I knew the whale couldn’t have died from eating contaminated prey.
You were the one got it wrong.
“..by routing your points through John Goss you’re choosing one of the most distorted signal-paths available in this comments section.”
______________________
Seconded. Routing through Comrade Goss is like asking Radio Moscow to do your thinking for you.
A dead sperm whale that washed up on Spain’s south coast had swallowed 17kg of plastic waste dumped into the sea by farmers tending greenhouses that produce tomatoes and other vegetables for British supermarkets.
Scientists were amazed to find the 4.5 tonne whale had swallowed 59 different bits of plastic – most of it thick transparent sheeting used to build greenhouses in southern Almeria and Granada. A clothes hanger, an ice-cream tub and bits of mattress were also found.
The plastic had eventually blocked the animal’s stomach and killed it, according to researchers from the Doñana national park research centre in Andalusia.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/08/spain-sperm-whale-death-swallowed-plastic
Again Fred I’d check my facts before assuming.
Fuck, the ending is so SLOW. If only aliens would come, or a big asteroid to put us out of our misery cleanly.
We’re a sickening fucking species. Sickening.
Clark
Over the boulders,
under the stones
the bushman wanders
always alone
but know my love
and know, and always know
I will be with you
where you go
Last night I listened to an Australian talking about trying to connect to Reality on an uninhabited island, losing his legs under a boulder, and gaining peace of mind. Radio 4.
Can you not see that when the trolls get on a roll they start to get obstreperous, and bark out loud, like dogs in the night. They are not saying anything at all, just bonding.
And when we answer, we are answering their continual woofs of taking over the night’s silence, while the humans are sleeping, as none of them have made any points at all.