Hillary Clinton is American, owned by financial interests to whom she is completely in thrall, a rabid neo-conservative warmonger, completely uncritical of Israel and focused for any claim to be progressive entirely on identity politics. Which is also a precise description of today’s Guardian newspaper. The once august and intellectual title is now a shrill cheerleader for far right Blairites and wealthy American feminists.
The Guardian is as unabashed in its support for Clinton as in its support for the Blairites. The stream of “feminist” articles about why it would advance the cause of women to have a deeply corrupt right winger in the White House is steadily growing into a torrent. It is a perfect example of what I wrote of a month ago, the cause of feminism being hijacked to neo-conservative ends.
Bernie Sanders is not perfect – nobody is. But he understands that obscene and still burgeoning wealth inequality is the greatest problem of western society, and that the state framework supporting crazed banking structures is the root cause of this. The support for him is a sign of the inevitable popular reaction to the extreme inequality of society. Sanders is channelling that reaction effectively.
The establishment therefore circles its wagons around Hillary Clinton. The hope is that women can be persuaded it is an act of misogyny simply to stand in her way. The other great establishment hope is that the Democrat party machinery is so strong in black communities, that black Americans can be in effect ordered to vote for a woman who epitomises the system which disadvantages them, rather than an apostle of genuine change in the economic order. I retain hope the establishment may find that black Americans are cleverer than that.
The machinery used to manipulate identity politics – racial and gender – is all that Clinton has. If Clinton beats Sanders, it will be the perfect demonstration of the fact that identity politics has become the enemy of progress in society.
In the field of identity, Bernie Sanders would be the first non-Christian President of the United States. Would that not be wonderful in a country whose politicians feel the need to genuflect to swarms of religious evolution-denying nutters who believe foreign wars are good because they presage the Rapture?
And would it not be great if the first President since Carter not in thrall to Israel were Jewish?
A lot of people would’ve liked to have seen Assad’s oppressive regime fall. I mean how many countries really need four secret police forces?
“A lot of people would’ve liked to have seen Assad’s oppressive regime fall”
It’s just that most of them were sitting in Washington, London and Tel Aviv.
The irony of remaining blissfully unaware of our very own 748 internal secret intelligence gathering organisations!
Talk about pot, kettle, etc.
“The reality is that Poland had rejected Russian offers to guarantee its territory against Germany and prevented the USSR from assisting Czechoslovakia in 1938.”
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Accepting that offer and “preventing the USSR from assisting CZ in 1938” would both have involved allowing Soviet troops into Polish soil.
Perhaps the Poles thought that once on Polish soil the Soviet troops would never leave.
Habba- I accept the Poles had reasonable fears of Russian intentions in 1938.
I trust you accept that Yugoslavia also had reasonable fears in 1999, when NATO similarly attempted to ‘make them an offer they couldn’t refuse’ at Rambouillet?
http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/sr231/jenkins.htm
Of course Yugoslavia refused this gift horse, was subsequently bombed for 78 days, and in 2008 was faced with a UDI declaration from Kosovo supported by most of NATO. A quasi independent statelet of Kosovo has now been carved out of ex Yugoslav territory (in defiance of UN Resolutions) and the US benefits from having its largest base in the Balkans at Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Bondsteel
Incidentally, given that the detention facilities referred to above no longer to appear to be in use, surely that vacated space could be used to house a few hundred Syrian asylum seekers, who are presently testing the infrastructure of neighbouring Greece to beaking point? Why isn’t NATO stepping up to the plate, and offering parts of this near thousand acre facility for this much needed use ?
“A lot of people would’ve liked to have seen Assad’s oppressive regime fall. I mean how many countries really need four secret police forces?”
Indeed, and a lot of people would like nothing better than removing Israel from the map. As such, given Kempe’s support for a ‘lot of people’, no doubt he too will be joining the chorus group calling for the removal of Israel as a geographical entity.
Well do sir, i’ve heard of limp excuses for denying the facts, buts yours takes the biscuit.
And here’s another blinder in the form that Syria under Assad has four secret police forces. May I enquire how many secret agencies/police forces the USA has?
Here’s some assistance, its bloody more than four.
Do keep up the spinning, however untenable your position is.
Typo alert: That should be WELL DONE SIR
Well, if things cannot get farcical enough, we now have the spectacle of Oxford University’s Labour Club being accused of anti-semitism for showing solidarity with Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.
I find all this talk of anti-semitism, new anti-semitism and new, new anti-semitism disconcerting to say the least, indeed, given the left in the UK is now a hotbed of anti-semitism, I perish to think where our more extreme rightwing fringes stand on these issues.
One again we have attacks on freedom of expression, never mind a right to identify and highlight Israeli atrocities against Arabs, who no doubt are not humans, they are lesser humans so don’t count!
Here’s the latest in any case from The Guardian, but when in one of our oldest and most prestigious universities we hear that fair minded concerned individuals must be anti-semites we really are down the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/feb/17/labour-condemns-antisemitism-oxford-university-labour-club-claims
@Kempe “A lot of people would’ve liked to have seen Assad’s oppressive regime fall. I mean how many countries really need four secret police forces?”
The UK and they have more than four and the rest are very secret.It seems you have no experience of them otherwise you would not utter such uniformed rubbish.
“…The two countries had a history of distrust and animosity going back centuries and in 1920-21 fought a little known but bloody war which ended in an humiliating and costly defeat for the Russians.”
It really is high time that the unfortunate generation which grew up in the Cold War began to recognise that most of its information about Russia was heavily coloured by the propaganda of warmongers.
Russians have picked through the wisdom that they received in that period, which was biassed in favour of Moscow’s objectives, but in the “west” the crudest anti-socialist and Slavophobic themes are still being lapped up. (Talk about dogs returning to their vomit.)
It is true that Russia and Poland have a long and tangled history. This is even more true of Poland and the German states which have been pushing eastwards since the Teutonic Knights. It is also true that Poland, even after it had been dismembered in the C18th, treated the Ukraine as its own Ireland. (Joseph Conrad’s autobiography is interesting on this subject!)
But the war to which you refer was part of the 21 nation intervention on behalf of the ‘White’ anti-socialist side in the Civil War. Poland’s forces were led by a French Marshal fresh from the Western Front- I believe it was Weygand- and consisted of Poilus as well as Poles. There was an International Control Commission in Poland, one of whose members was (later to become Field Marshal) Alexander who went on to “kick Russia’s arses” in Latvia where he commanded the Landswehr, as the Latvian militias were called.
As to Russia’s motives, it must be remembered that the Bolsheviks regarded Tsarist Russia as a “prison of peoples” and favoured national independence. It would be profoundly mistaken to claim that the Red Army was attempting to annexe Poland, it was, in a preview of 1943-4, fighting against armies invading Russia and following up initial successes.
“Events post war proved the Poles to be correct in their distrust of Soviet motives.”
No doubt this assertion is thought to justify itself. I am at a loss to understand why-Poland after the war fell within the Soviet sphere of influence, negotiated on the basis that western imperialism would constantly advance towards the USSR’s frontiers and surround it with military bases. It did and it still does.
After 27 million deaths in the war it is understandable that Russians wanted buffer states between themselves and the “west.” Whether it was Poland’s fortune or misfortune to fall within this sphere is something that future generations will work out. But it would be hard to argue that after the initial period of the Cold War, roughly between 1948 and 1953, Poland did not enjoy as much independence from the Kremlin as the Bundesrepublik or Italy did from the US: the Warsaw Pact, was a response to NATO.
It simply will not do to condemn all attempts to put post war history into a proper perspective as apologias for Stalinism. There were all sorts of things wrong with Stalinism, and nobody knows this better than his first victims, socialists and Bolsheviks in particular, but the broad objectives that he pursued of protecting the USSR against constant attacks, including infiltrating terrorists, from the “west” ought not to be controversial. As Putin demonstrates such policies have nothing to do with socialism or atheism-anyone but a traitor would defend Russia’s national interests and fend off US attempts to establish world rule.
The pity is that Britain which for so long took the view that a Balance of Power should be maintained is now content to assist US megalomania in any way that is required.
Poland didn’t just refuse to allow the USSR transit of its troops to defend Czechoslovakia in 1938. Poland also annexed some Czech and Slovak territory as a result of the Munich agreement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Vienna_Award
Israel seem determined to snub international law, by building more settler houses on land belonging to the Palestinian people in the West Bank.
The Settlement Watch Report, which found that since 2009, when Benjamin Netanyahu became prime minister, Israel has built housing units for at least 40,000 new settlers in the West Bank.
There needs to be a complete halt to the settling of Israeli’s in the West Bank. No more usurping of Palestinian lands, what is required sooner than later is a two-state solution.
If Netanyahu and the people of Israel disagree, then Nato and the UN should deal with Israel as vociferously as it appears to be doing with Syria.
http://www.thenational.scot/politics/mep-alyn-smith-condemns-israeli-government-claiming-expanding-settlements-is-an-obstacle-to-peace-deal.13894
@Bevin 2.14PM,
An excellent exposition Sir, suffice to say its good we have ‘Revisionist’ historian’s not tainted by ‘Cold War’ biases and the Soviet Archives were a real font of information concerning its actions post-1945. I will say this, as far as corrosive relations with Stalin were concerned, it actually was the UK that was most fearful of the Soviet Union and as early as 1943 attention was being paid in the War Office and FCO as to what threat a resurgent Soviet Union poised to British interests in the Med, Far East and in Western states with large Communist Parties and members in positions of government. My own understanding is that at first the USA was not too concerned about the Soviet union – after all it had the ultimate weapon and had demonstrated its prowess. Hence we turn to Ernest Bevin who really was anti-communist and he was most distressed at the Truman Administrations dealings with, and accommodation of the Soviets.
Indeed, lest we forget Bevin was instrumental in the creation of NATO as a bulwark against the Soviet Union, and was not opposed to getting his hands dirty as in supplying arms and other covert assistance to anti-communists in both Italy and Greece. Further, Bevin did not trust France one iota because it had many who were sympathetic to Stalin< but, its also the Soviet Union that's blamed for the Cold War, despite many of its geopolitical actions being 'reactive', rather than 'proactive'.
The recently published Maisky Diaries show clearly how resistant the Chamberlain government was to an alliance with Soviet Russia, all the way up to the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement.
@Republicofscotland.
Sir, I urge you to moderate your attacks on Israel, less you find yourself branded a ‘terrorist’ or ‘terrorist sympathiser’ by the powers that be. Truth does not come into the equation.
Just look at the crap a few students in Oxford University are getting. Unbelievable!!!!!!!!!!
“A lot of people would’ve liked to have seen Assad’s oppressive regime fall. I mean how many countries really need four secret police forces?”
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Agreed Kempe, I’d also like to see the Assad regime changed, but not like this. It’s for the people of Syria to remove Assad.
Russia backing Assad and Nato opposing Assad, has led to the deaths of far too many civilians. It looks bad to the rest of the world. Nato lack credibility, they could restore some of that credibility if they resolved Palestinian persecution by Israel.
As for your second point many countries now have multiple secret departments. Britain has for example MI5/MI6/SIS/NDEDIU, and of course the plethora of secret departments that work out of GCHQ and Thames House.
“Sir, I urge you to moderate your attacks on Israel, less you find yourself branded a ‘terrorist’ or ‘terrorist sympathiser’ by the powers that be. Truth does not come into the equation.
Just look at the crap a few students in Oxford University are getting. Unbelievable!!!!!!!!!!”
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Yes Chris it won’t be too long before criticism of the oppressor state of Israel is classed as a crime, that will be followed by preemptive incarceration of thought crime against Israel.
Just think for a moment the UN and Nato, have been swanning around the globe for decades going into countries because the denizens of those countries have been oppressed or systematically murdrered, either by a dictator or a neighbouring agressor state.
Why haven’t they gone into Israel?
Why do they turn a blind eye to the systematic usurping of Palestinian lands?
Why hasn’t their been a cry in the press for the removal of Netanyahu, similar to the deafing cries for the removal of Assad?
The only conclusion that answers all of the above must be Nato and the UN can’t or won’t do anything of any real value-Why?
“If millions of Syrians in rebel held areas, where the Assad’s government had no authority, are claimed to have turned out and voted for him it puts an even bigger question mark over the validity of the election.”
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That is a intriguing point Kempe, a good way to call Assads bluff. Would be, to have democratic elections organised by a neutral and credible outside source.
If Assad is really serious about conforming more to the will of the people, then he shouldn’t have a problem with that.
The one major hurdle in all of this is finding a credible outside source to oversee the democratic process.
If the vote went against Assad, then he’d need to abide by it, or face the consequences.
“Activists linked with the Jeremy Corbyn’s hard leftist Momentum group are partly to blame for a rise in anti-semitism at Oxford, a senior source at the Oxford University Labour Club has alleged.”
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How desperate a statement is that, to try and fail to link Jeremy Corbyn’s name and Labour to activists.
But I suppose you must expect such vague and loose connections from the Whitehall Gazette aka the Telegraph newspaper.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/12163436/Momentum-activists-blamed-for-rise-of-anti-semitism-at-Oxford-Labour-Club-a-senior-source-has-claimed.html
COVERT FOREIGN POLICY has to become illegal under international law.
A document for perusal:
http://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Pg.-291-Pgs.-287-293-JW-v-DOD-and-State-14-812-DOD-Release-2015-04-10-final-version11.pdf
This is the sort of thing emanating from Israel’s clearly fascistic ruling circles that makes it imperative that non-violent options to prevent massacres-such as BDS- should be encouraged.
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/34885-no-israel-should-not-flatten-beirut
The alternative to Boycotts is not chastened acceptance of injustice and ethnic cleansing, motivated by a deep racism, but another of those violent uprisings that International Law recognises to be the right of populations subject to the sort of treatment meted out to Palestinians.
Republicofscotland
““And that makes you an Israel-hater.
Be careful”
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********Mods****** I’d like to draw your attention to the veiled threat from Habb.
I find that type of reply to my comment menacing and insidious.
It’s one thing to remonstrate with a fellow commentor but to threaten them is quite another.
Isn’t that a banning offence?
I trust you’ll take the appropriate action required thank you.”
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Don’t be paranoid, old chap.
Where’s the threat?
On the contrary, I was posting with your own best interests at heart; it might be advisable bot to get people of whom you light disapprove interested in you.
I think you owe me a big thank you.
Like you did when you once wrote on here that Zack Goldsmith was “corrupt” – I warned you that the comment was libellous and that it could get you (and/or this blog) into trouble. You then apologised and withdrew the comment.
That was wise of you, RoS.
Stay wise.
“Tony, Jacques Brel was also a class act. Unfortunately, if you post Brel songs on the likes of YouTube they get almost instantly removed (I’ve tried many times). If interested here’s ‘Le bon dieu’ (the good God).”
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Another example of someone living on a different planet.
There are hundreds of Brel songs – sung by the man himself and others – on YouTube.
Quel con!
“Don’t talk to me about The Guardian and Financial Times which both ignored the genocide of Novorossiyans.”
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Another example of the word “genocide” beiing deliberately misused by a Russian propagandist.
Or perhaps in ignorance – after all, Mr Goss does not have the “trained mind” of a historian.
(cue the Welsh Windbag..)
“I was only threatening you to do you a favor.” Shameless.
“On the contrary, I was posting with your own best interests at heart;”
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Habb.
Really! Forgive me if I’m sceptical you of course do understand that don’t you, given your real reasons for commenting on this blog.
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“it might be advisable bot to get people of whom you light disapprove interested in you.”
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Habb.
Since you have my best interests at heart, I’m sure you’ll tell of whom you speak of.
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Habb.
I recall a commentor issuing you with a veiled threat you immediately made the mods aware of it. You do understand that it sometimes helps, to have a taste of your own medicine, every now and then.
“Habba- I accept the Poles had reasonable fears of Russian intentions in 1938.”
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I should hope so.
In this connection, refer to Kempe’s post at 09h38. The Battle of Warsaw – also known as the “Miracle on the Vistula” – is, I believe, included in Major-General Fuller’s book on the 20 decisive battles of the Western World.
PS – did you know that a certain Captain Charles De Gaulle was a member of the small French military mission present in Warsaw at the time?
Bevin
“Poland’s forces were led by a French Marshal fresh from the Western Front- I believe it was Weygand- and consisted of Poilus as well as Poles.”
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There were no French combat troops present in the Polish-Soviet War of 1920-21 (therefore no “poilus”), merely a French military mission.
“Poland’s forces were led by a French Marshal fresh from the Western Front- I believe it was Weygand”
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Polish forces were under the command of Marshall Pilsudski.
Bevin
“It would be profoundly mistaken to claim that the Red Army was attempting to annexe Poland”
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Whereas it would be correct to see the Soviet invasion of newly-independent Poland (the Rzeczpospolita Polska) as an attempt to spread Bolshevism to the rest of Europe, the rest of Europe being seen by the Bolsheviks as rope for revolution.
They were sadly mistaken and had their arses kicked – a fact which evidently still sticks in the craw of some on here. 🙂
“Poland didn’t just refuse to allow the USSR transit of its troops to defend Czechoslovakia in 1938. Poland also annexed some Czech and Slovak territory as a result of the Munich agreement.”
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This is correct. For interesting footage of the time, go onto YouTube and type in “A magyar-lengyel hataron”.
The annexation by Poland of some Slovak had the fortunate effect of re-creating a common border between Poland and Hungary and allowing, in 1939, a couple of Polish divisions to escape over the border into Hungary. In this way, at least the officers concerned avoided capture by the advancing Soviets armies (and being sent to Katyn).
The Polish troops concerned were allowed by the Hungarian authorities, after a short periods of internment, to reach France (via Yugoslavia and Italy) and there to reconstitute three Polish divisions under the overall command of the French.