Feminism a Neo-Con Tool 2656


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.


Allowed HTML - you can use: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

2,656 thoughts on “Feminism a Neo-Con Tool

1 71 72 73 74 75 89
  • Habbabkuk (respect the blog owner!)

    “Clark, I will tale that as a statement that we can discuss 9/11, as long as we don’t discuss the destruction of buildings.”
    ________________________

    It might be safer – and certainly more courteous – to ask Craig or the Moderators.

  • Resident Dissident

    Clark

    I’m afraid your argument is getting a little ridiculous – the next think you will be claiming is that because the Allies used torture during WW2 (as they undoubtedly did) then we shouldn’t have opposed Hitler.

    And no that doesn’t mean that I support torture or have ever done so or don’t support any torturers being brought to account – but there are other things that need to be considered.

    Has Putin ever renounced the torture performed by organisation of which he was a member?

  • Doug Scorgie

    From the Wild Wood

    26 Jan, 2016 – 11:03 pm

    Doug Scorgie @ 7.57pm:-

    Is not the reason that so many refugees at the Calais ‘Jungle’, and elsewhere, are so desperate to reach Britain merely because English is their second language, and thus it is so much easier for them to come here, rather than to have to learn a new language from scratch in order to find work? That as well, of course, as many having relatives in the UK

    ……………………………………………………………………….

    Not really. Most EU citizens speak good English as a second language.

  • lysias

    Clark’s point is that testimony elicited by torture has no value as evidence. To whatever extent the Allies may have used torture in World War Two (and it seems to have been quite limited and not to have had official approval at the highest levels), any testimony that it may have elicited also lacked (and lacks) value. However, I cannot say that I recall any such testimony that the Allies in WWII used torture to elicit.

  • fedup

    I cannot say that I recall any such testimony that the Allies in WWII used torture to elicit.

    You best start finding out about Tin eye Stevens!

    Pioneered the “unnecessary” surgical procedures on his inmates!

  • John Goss

    Tony_Opmec

    You’re doing a great job holding the fort against all the bozos and government troll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ops.

  • fedup

    Victors justice in Nuremberg included the trial of the former Waffen SS lieutenant colonel Fritz Knöchlein:

    At his trial, he claimed he had been tortured in the London Cage after the war. He was deprived of sleep for four days and nights after arriving in October 1946 and forced to walk in a tight circle for four hours while being kicked by a guard at each turn.

    He was made to clean stairs and lavatories with a tiny rag, for days at a time, while buckets of water were poured over him. If he dared to rest, he was cudgelled. He was also forced to run in circles in the grounds of the house while carrying heavy logs and barrels. When he complained, the treatment simply got worse.

    Nor was he the only one. He said men were repeatedly beaten about the face and had hair ripped from their heads. A fellow inmate begged to be killed because he couldn’t take any more brutality.
    All Knöchlein’s accusations were ignored, however. He was found guilty and hanged.

    Just a foot note without any memorials of any sorts and without any remembrance of an sorts, leaving the field open for yet more tortures to come and more refugees to be shunned, coerced and rejected. In seventy years time there will be a memorial for the drowned refugee child announced by the prime minster of the time! That is if there are no more survivors of the WWII are still alive.

  • mark golding

    Oh affected lament… The ‘black screen of death’ demonstrates your potency Agent Smith, flaunting your machine intelligence. Clearly your pragmatic path has departed into uncontrolled aggression and you have become more of a virus, a disease organism that will replicate uncontrollably and likely destroy the holographic environment were it not for intention and truth keeping your minions in check.

    Nice try Agent Smith but not clever enough; the street has become shining with the light emanating from your own demise.

  • Resident Dissident

    “Clark’s point is that testimony elicited by torture has no value as evidence.”

    That is the case but he then makes illogical conclusions that it invalidates all other evidence to make ridiculous overall conclusions.

  • Tony_0pmoc

    I will now give you some advice on taking LSD (1982-1984) (I gave up all drugs in 1985).

    (I don’t think LSD is still available now – I have no experience of Exscacy MDMA – or any of the other shit…nerver done cocoaine – and cetainly not heroin (needle and the damage done) Never).

    LSD is different to smoking a joint – but at first it may seem much the same…but with LSD you can’t control it …for maybe 6 hours…it is extremely dangerous if you are in a vulnerable environment.

    Don’t do it unless you appreciate the dangers – some people go off – and they NEVER come back..It sends them mad almost forever..and they lose all their skill (e.g Syd Barrett – Crazy Diamond) and many others..sure some have survived it and they still go on..

    But if you really must do it…then do it when you are already exceedingly happy and in love and exceedingly well protected and safe..and you know she will look after you…

    and then give it up – or you will go mad.

    LSD ain’t like Alton Towers..well maybe a bit..except you can’t come down for 6 hours..and there’s colours and images flying everywhere and you start to paint them on your Commodore 64…funny ..but not good…and then you go to work the next day bright as a button.

    (it was a long time ago – no one noticed)

    Tony

  • Habbabkuk (respect the blog owner!)

    “Is not the reason that so many refugees at the Calais ‘Jungle’, and elsewhere, are so desperate to reach Britain merely because English is their second language, and thus it is so much easier for them to come here, rather than to have to learn a new language from scratch in order to find work? That as well, of course, as many having relatives in the UK

    ……………………………………………………………………….

    Not really. Most EU citizens speak good English as a second language.”

    _______________________

    Yes, Doug, but irrelevant. We are talking about the refugees and their language abilities, not about “most EU citizens”.

    Close reading practice recommended (in English).

  • lysias

    What “other evidence” is there that Clark invalidates? If you look at the footnotes to the section on the operational details of the alleged Al Qaeda 9/11 conspiracy in the 9/11 Commission Report, that whole section relies almost exclusively on the testimony of detainees, the principal of whom we know were tortured and all of whom were subject to severe psychological pressure in secret CIA prisons and Guantanamo. It’s all worthless evidence.

    And the fact that that’s basically all that the 9/11 Commission had is most indicative.

  • Tony_0pmoc

    I am now going a bit deaf..it annoys my daughter back home after 6 years..but it encourages her to speak clearly…

    Yes too much live music over my life…but my Dad was pretty deaf too..considering the circumstances (including diving in polluted water..I think my ears are doing pretty well..)

    Do you know how easy it was it get full 5 dimensional sound from a computer and and computer game in 1989…and how difficult it is to do now if you hook your computer up to a HDTV screen or even an old Theatre Sound System>?>>

    and the reason is down to the manufacturers of computers and HDTV screens trying their best for them not to work together – protecting their own copywrites???

    It gets people really annoyed….

    and then there is 3D…

    promoted like crazy 2010-2013…

    then dropped like a brick

    and now virtual reality…

    Facebook and All The Rest…

    The Greatest Pleasure is not with some silly thing on my head or watching some stupid screen..it is Meeting People..and talking to them..and sometimes asking them to dance in front of a live band..and they are all watching us including my wife and trying not to laugh…

    Massive Attack next week at The Brixton Academy

    I think I will take my walking stick.

    I am not going to give up walking and dancing until the day I am dead.

    Tony

  • Tony_0pmoc

    What most girls don’t seem to realise..is that we are different.

    We are Boys and we Like Our Toys….

    Yes, I know my Playroom is a bit of a mess..but it is my playroom…and my new toy had just turned up and I hadn’t even opened the box…

    She told me this morning before it had even arrived…if I was going to eg Retile The Kitchen (which I did whilst she was sulking and I cooked most of the food…and she hasn’t even got dressed yet…been walking around skimpily dressed all day…)

    This morning fine…but I can’t do it again today…well not until after I have opened my box…my toy

    I will tidy my Playroom tomorrow…or the next day…O.K??

    Do I complain about all the pretty things she buys on the Internet – or even in the Charity Shop (you would be amazed what some people throw out)….

    Boys and Girls are Different…

    Get used to it

    and Stop Nagging us

    Stop Telling Me what to do.

    I will do it any way – just for you (if you just turn the nagging down)

    Where’s My Hearing Aid??

    I think it has an Off Button

    She tells me I have selective hearing…if its your “Sis” in front of a Heavy Rock Band…you can hear everything

    They are all the same…mostly blonde..(in my case)

    what would we do without them?

    Still got the same one since 1981.

    She is My Wife.

    Tony

  • ------------·´`·.¸¸.¸¸.··.¸¸Node

    Tony Opmoc :

    and then there is 3D…

    promoted like crazy 2010-2013…

    then dropped like a brick

    The entertainment industry has been using 3D as a gimmick for a century but they always eventually drop it like a brick. There is basic problem and I’ve figured out what it is.

    3D is great when you first put the glasses on and settle down to watch the movie. Things fly out of the screen and make you flinch, you’re very aware of depth. Then after a while you get into the film and forget it’s in 3D, and when you remember again, you have to remove your glasses for a moment to remind yourself how 3D is different from the usual 2D movie.

    The problem is – all movies are already 3D, even the ones on your ordinary TV. The Indians are chasing the cowboys across the prairie and the light from the TV screen enters your eyes and it makes no sense – Indians aren’t 3 inches tall and no way is there a prairie in the corner of your living room. So your brain takes all the visual clues that the film director provided, interprets them, then projects them into a realistic scenario in the arena of your mind, just as it does with all the scraps of information your senses provide about the real world. And just as your mind provides you with a 3D model of the real world, it provides you with a 3D model of the movie world. We’ve all grown up with the telly, so we think nothing of this mental trick.

    Then the entertainment industry remembers it hasn’t run the old 3D scam for a while, and so for a few years, 3D is the ‘new’ craze, you pay extra for 3D movies, buy the latest 3D TV. And so you go to the cinema and you put the glasses on and watch the 3D movie, and it doesn’t make sense, Gandalf doesn’t have a 6 foot head and Mordor wouldn’t fit in this cinema, so as usual your brain does its job and creates a realistic 3D scenario in the arena of your mind. Only this time, the visual clues provided by the director are differently packaged, there’s more depth information, so for a little while, you wonder at the exaggerated difference between foreground and background. But as soon as you stop consciously paying attention to the visual process and get into the film, bingo, it’s just you watching the world projected onto your mental arena again, and the 3D is nothing to do with the glasses, it’s your brain making sense of scraps. As always.

    So the reason 3D technology has never caught on is because we’ve all already got it, better, for free.

  • Tony_0pmoc

    Of course I know some of Massive Attacks most famous songs (at least one of which (well at least Everything in the video) has been used by a rather famous musician from Lancashire..incidentally I do not expect Massive Attack to do any of their Famous Songs particularly when they were Told by The UK Government to Change their Name From Massive Attack to Massive..just before the First Massive Attack on Iraq in 1991…

    then years later some bloke who believed in the concept of “Free Energy – sorry mate it doesn’t work” posted this in reply..So I bought All Massive Attacks albums that I could find…My Wife just loves Massive Attack too..cos they invite The Best Musicians in The World to Sing and contribute too

    so it would be great if they could do this..I have absolutely no idea how it would work live…

    They didn’t seem to understand in Dublin last week (subdued audience – or maybe it was the journalist who reported the event…)

    “Massive Attack – Special Cases”
    emimusic (inc 30 second advert) (1,817,802 views – so I assume it is legit (apparently emi have sold out to some American company who have banned The Beatles from Youtube??)

    How daft can you get? (“All You Need is Love” is Now Banned By The New USA Owners of The Beatles Music?)

    My brother-in-law was there at The EMI Studios when the Beatles recorded it (working on The Design of Weapons of Mass Destruction as Bizarre as it may seem). He Resigned.

    I think its Sinead O’Connor singing – but could be wrong..I haven’t checked. This is awesome.

    “Massive Attack – Special Cases”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ31yNp6Nao

    Tony

  • ------------·´`·.¸¸.¸¸.··.¸¸Node

    That’s strange. The Tony Opmoc post I was quoting has disappeared. I remember he also said something about 5D sound. Maybe his post has disappeared into the fifth dimension.

    Actually, we think in 5 dimensions. That’s another thing I figured out a while ago. I can prove it too. I’m including time as one of the 5 dimensions which may or may not be appropriate. To play safe, I will rephrase that : we think in 4 spacial dimensions.

  • John Goss

    Tony_Opmoc (sorry for misspelling your name). It was an unfortunate mistake but I note that spelt backwards your surname is compO (does anybody remember that stuff) but it was actually spelt with a K. For colds. It was 6% proof and tasted putrid.

    Any it is ‘On his deafness’ I wish to speak (or should that be shout).

    I’ve heard some groups, nearly all the top groups of the early seventies, and the younger people in my family raise their voices (because they think I’m deaf) when I turn the television up (on the few occasions I watch television). “Can’t you hear that?” The truth is I can, but when they are all speaking at the same time it is no longer possible to isolate the clear diction of actors and actresses from the babble in the background, however much I concentrate.

    But it reminds me of a trip we made to to Falmouth to see my Auntie Gwen(dolen). She was proud of her Welsh connections (Aberystwyth). My late partner, Jenny, was with me and Auntie Gwen was already in her eighties (she was 95 or 96 when she died). Although I speak with a northern accent my diction is quite good – or at least I hardly ever get people asking me to repeat what I’ve said.

    Anyway, what I think Auntie Gwen’s problem was she could hear the high range well, which was her range but down in the baritone to bass range her hearing was something to be desired. Yes, she needed the historic ear-trumpet. Lovely woman. But rather than admit this she would make a hurtful comment like: “John, I can hear everything that Jenny says, but you really must learn to enunciate properly.” The deaf old bat! I jest.

    She was talented of course. She had a good two and a half octaves. The whole family were talented. My mother at sixteen won an elocution competition in Rotherham reading Alfred Noyes wonderful poem “The Highwayman” which she would occasionally, but not often enough, recite to us. Like myself, Auntie Gwen’s highest achievements came late in life. I write “like myself” of course because mine have yet to come but I have great expectations from my novel, which I have neglected to talk about deafness and Auntie Gwen. More here on Gwen.

    http://johngossip.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/a-royal-occasion-60-years-ago.html

  • glenn_uk

    Node: There may be a lot of truth to that. 3D suddenly kicks in again because there’s an updated technology which allows the effect to be Super-Real now, and gives an excuse to the film industry to re-introduce what everyone got bored with rapidly a few years earlier, each time.

    Films, like books or any other form of story-telling, require that the participant suspend disbelief for a moment, and take in what’s happening as their own experience on several levels. Perhaps as an abstracted observer, or as one or more of the characters being portrayed, each for a moment, or as the director intends.

    Perhaps I’m old fashioned, but suspending belief means that at no moment should the director call attention to what’s actually happening – we’re looking at a staged scene through a camera. The instant a camera calls attention to itself, a different narrative comes into play. What’s the camera doing there? Are we there, but looking through a camera for some reason?

    “Shakey-cam” is the very worst spoiler a film can manage, IMHO. We can only conclude as a viewer, than we’re supposed to be looking through the eyes of someone during some amphetamine session – bobbing and weaving around, even as other actors might be sitting around a desk, or standing calmly in conversation. This brings attention to the camera, which jolts the viewer out of that agreement to suspend disbelief.

  • John Goss

    They can change Anyway to Any. Believe me. They can change “They can change Anyway to Any.” to “The can change Anyway to Any. Believe me.”

  • Tony_0pmoc

    We didn’t do that at ICL in the 1970’s..but we did make the most powerful computer in the world..and they expected me to test it. It was the size of a Fridge connected to a 2980 (well about 3 or 4 Fridges size) and We Blew The Cray Away (The Cray was The Most Powerful Computer The Americans had ever built..at the time – about the size of most of an aircraft hanger (we just used a tiny corner of ours in West Gorton Manchester and Ashton_U-Lyne Nr Oldham)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICL_Distributed_Array_Processor

    I know you don’t believe me…but someone has written something about it on wiki…He is probably going to retire very soon and doesn’t know…..that the Americans nicked most of his pension too..His bit (the bit that I worked for was bought by several companies..and they each stole a bit of our pensions…Eventually it arrived at a North American Company who stole the lot…)

    Because I have got a very unusual name…despite moving several times…I keep getting these letters which more or less say…from The UK Pension’s Administrators…..you may have a bit of a problem…So I asked how much was left…well they said there was a bit

    How much…

    well we may pay you off in one lump sum…is £10 O.K…The Americans have got the rest.

    I said I took my pension with me to my new employer you idiots..you don’t owe me anything…they said yeh…but they didn’t take all of it…they didn’t even round it down to the nearest month…we still owe you a lot of money..is £10 O.K.??

    So what are my friends and colleagues going to get…the most Brilliant people – I have ever worked with in my life going to get.

    They basically invented the modern digital computer and made it work…We were more than 10 years ahead of the Americans at Manchester University / Ferranti/ ICT / ICL

    Are my work colleagues going to be left in Poverty in their old age?

    Did The USA Take Everything???

    Tony

  • bevin

    This is just another example of the Tories’ new found gift for humour:

    “Britons ignorant of Saudi ‘successes’ on human rights, claims Foreign Office Minister.”

    Incidentally, Republic of Scotland, it ill becomes the Prime Minister of a government which is directly responsible for making several countries uninhabitable for millions driven to seek asylum in Europe to trivialise the fate to which he and his mates have consigned them.

1 71 72 73 74 75 89

Comments are closed.