I spoke this morning with a Tory MP who has been commendably active on human rights issues in Central Asia, who wanted to speak to me about an article in the Daily Mail. In general conversation, he said Iain Duncan Smith is “disloyal” and the anti-EU Tories are “knuckle draggers”.
The last three UK opinion polls have all shown the Tory lead vanished to well within the margin of error, despite all the pollsters making substantial adjustments to uprate the Tory vote following the pollsters’ general election debacle. This has horrified the Blairites who were gleefully predicting Labour annihilation in English council elections.
There is a huge amount of polling evidence over decades that shows that the perception that a party is divided causes much damage to that party’s popularity rating. Indeed the perception of division or unity is almost as important as what the actual policies are. The spectacular tumbling of popular Tory support in the UK is therefore entirely expected when the Tories are kicking pieces out of each other over Europe and Osbornomics.
The corporate media, including the BBC, of course know this very well. That is why ever since those opinion polls the bitter Tory internal battles have simply stopped being reported. I have no doubt their political correspondents are having conversations like the one I had with an MP this morning, several times every day. Yet when did you last see one reported? Compare this to the regular reporting of every tittle tattle of anonymous Blairite briefing against Corbyn.
Corporate media blanking of the bitter and vicious Tory internal feuding in process at the moment is a stunning act of censorship.
Self-censorship in corporate interests is still censorship.
The kid-glove treatment given the Tories’ divisions compared to other parties is astonishingly stark, especially by the BBC.
[In Scotland the SNP lead remains serenely untroubled]
‘In Scotland the SNP lead remains serenely untroubled’
And that, as you know, is a problem that we must somehow deal with. Otherwise you might believe you are the lucky client who has been introduced to the only virgin in the brothel.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2016/03/28/the-stuxnet-team-reunion/
It’s Iran every time.
Off-topic is the new on-topic and so a few observations are perhaps in order.
1/. AIPAC is not going to leave the scene any time soon.
2/. It is perfectly normal for sections of ethnic groups in the US to band together and attempt to influence govt policy. Leaving aside the obvious example of African-Americans, this has been the case, for example, with people of Easter European extraction during the Cold War, with German-Americans during WW1 and certain Irish-Americans during the troubles in Northern Ireland. And why should they not attempt to do so?
3/. Nor is the State of Israel – the only truly democratic and free country in the Middle East (and, indeed, further east)- going to go away any time soon, despite the fevered longings of certain Iranian ayatollahs, Hamas or even some on this blog.
4/. US opinion and US govt foreign policy has been, with certain ups and downs, broadly favorable towards the State of Israel for decades and this is not likely to change. It could be argued that US public opinion has been favorable towards the State of Israel since the beginning because most Americans saw parallels between the British attempt to strangle the newly-founded United States at birth and the attempt of Arab neighbouring states to do likewise to newly-created Israel.
5/. An unbiased reading of Article 2 of the 1951 UN genocide Convention makes it clear to any but the usual Israel-haters that the State of Israel has not committed and is not committing genocide against the Palestinan people. And a clear reflection of this elementary fact is the absence of a single UN General Assembly Resolution accusing the State of Israel of that crime (never mind condemning it).
“4/. US opinion and US govt foreign policy has been, with certain ups and downs, broadly favorable towards the State of Israel for decades and this is not likely to change.”
________________
Habb.
Thst is very true, with Hilary Clinton, the mostly likely next President of the USA, openly kowtowing to the AIPAC.
Of course I completely understand why Mrs Clinton bows to AIPAC, among other very powerful J**ish lobbys, who fund her and will in the near future set her foreign policy, which undoubtedly will be very favourable to Israel.
In my opinion Israel receives more of America’s foreign aid budget than any other nation. The US has, in my opinion, given more aid to Israel than it has to all the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean combined—which have a total population of over a billion people.
According to the Congressional Research Service , the amount of official US aid to Israel since its founding in 1948 tops $121 billion (adjusting for inflation, $233.7 billion as of March 2013), and in the past few decades it has been on the order of $3.1 billion per year. (In 2014, for example, this amounted to $8.5 million every single day.)
That is quite a friendship, and a huge amount of financial aid, I’m pretty sure the average American, isn’t aware, of just how much of his hard earned tax dollars, go to support a foreign nation of just 8 million people.
If they did, well the friendship might not be so cosy.
The coordinated media will see to it that the average American won’t find out.
Rubbish.
The amount of various US aids to Israel since 1949 is well-known and has been reported on extensively and frequently.
Anyone who is interested – and even those who are not – can find the amounts very easily.
Habb.
I really hope you haven’t practiced criminal law, your rather weak and somewhat pathetic response, leads me to believe, that if you had, that all of your clients are now well and truly incarcerated. ?
RoS
I don’t quite understand your problem. Our Transatlantic Friend ws trying to give the impression that the amounts of aid given to the State of Israel were being hidden and I was merely correcting him by noting that the amounts were very well known to all thodse interested (and even to those not).
You seem in a bad mood – did you inadvertently buy some Jaffa oranges or Israeli wine today?
“You seem in a bad mood – did you inadvertently buy some Jaffa oranges or Israeli wine today?”
________________
Habb.
Why would purchasing Israeli goods put me in a bad mood? If I like something I’ll buy it regardless of where it comes from. ?
http://postimg.org/image/uz4m5yafv/
See you in court, you piece of shite.
Shite (for the Mods) for a country that commits numerous crimes against humanity, crimes that have a large number of UN resolutions passed against them.
If you ban what I say here you are going against international law.
Think about it.
Interesting that the resident snitch seems so much more interested in acquitting Israel of genocide than of acquitting the U.S. or the UK. He seemed to acquiesce in my view that genocide was committed in Iraq (at least that it was if it was committed in Bosnia). Priorities.
No, I said “..committed genocide (or not)..” Twice.
You really are an awful liar, Lysias. But then Walter Mittys are, qren’t they 🙂
http://postimg.org/image/uz4m5yafv/
for you too! http://postimg.org/image/uz4m5yafv/
French president Francois Hollande suffered a humiliating defeat, in his attempt to change the French constitution.
Mr. Hollande attempted to force passage of the contentious plan to strip citizenship by yoking it to more popular state-of-emergency changes, requiring lawmakers to vote on the measures as a package. The maneuver backfired, however, as opposition to the citizenship measure flared across the political spectrum, causing the proposal to mutate.
Mr. Hollande “created the conditions for the failure,” said former President Nicolas Sarkozy, who leads the centreight Les Republicains. “I regret the constitutional change announced by Mr. Hollande has stopped,” Mr. Sarkozy said.
Mr. Hollande initially proposed taking citizenship away from convicted French terrorists who were also citizens of another country. But Socialist lawmakers decried the idea, saying it would make dual nationals—many of them the children of immigrants—second-class citizens.
Thankfully Hollande’s power grip, on forcing through very stringent laws, laws that could’ve divided French society, has been negated.
Good analysis, RoS. Though with limits. Maghrebis are everywhere in the French administration in the lower levels. It would be difficult to start saying they should be deprived of their passports. I talk to them and ask them about their lives. You can’t put them at risk of expulsion. It simply doesn’t work.
Hollande is the equivalent of a Blairite. Not a real socialist, but one of the elite, who happens to have chosen the socialists for his career. I would be happy, if he were competent. But he is not, even worse than Sarkozy before him. He loves ceremonies, like the “Je suis Charlie” march, but he has completely failed to update France to the modern world. I am not saying that France should be a neo-liberal economy of the UK style; that would not work in France. They have Piketty there in France. They should listen to him.
What do you think of the current intention to update the Code du Travail, Laguerre?
Have you been striking along?
http://www.globalresearch.ca/french-workers-youth-defy-state-of-emergency-to-protest-austerity-policies/5517883
RobG
“http://www.globalresearch.ca/french-workers-youth-defy-state-of-emergency-to-protest-austerity-policies/5517883”
_______________________
Exactly, you imbecile – they are protesting against austerity (and the proposed reform of the Code du Travail, which is seen as a manifestation of austerity politics and not against the state of emergency .
This is the second time in as many days that you are spouting bollocks.
I am beginning to wonder whether you really live in France but whether you do or not you obviously do not understand the language very well.
But who is circling wagons around US generals in the Middle East. They have to be planning something on behalf of Israel – in my opinion as much a doomed state as apartheid South Africa. Greed has an ugly face.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/31/exclusive-21-generals-lead-an-isis-war-the-u-s-denies.html
I heard a report today that there are 12 U.S. generals presently in Iraq, far more than would be justified by the numbers of U.S. troops that it is admitted are in Iraq.
I think that the Israelis are behaving more like the pieds noirs European settlers in French Algeria than like the Afrikaners. I’m very much reminded of Alistair Horne’s book A Savage War of Peace and of Pontecorvo’s movie The Battle of Algiers.
Would the report today be from the link I provided by any chance? 🙂 Here is your lovely country offering more military assistance to another country in dire need of basics.
https://www.rt.com/news/337971-biden-ukraine-military-assistance/
Where I heard the report was on Democracy Now! yesterday.
Habba & Co are still not apparently afraid of the likes of me.
Big mistake, and total arrogance/ignorance.
Truth is, they are terrified of ‘the people’, because they can’t exist with an informed populace.
Keep on believing the lies, folks.
Where do you want me to start..?
Here’s a very recent interview with Paul Craig Roberts…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyVygYDYHCo
What are the loons and psychos going to say about this..?
That’s simple – I would say that Mr Roberts is obsessing again and would advise anyone with even only one foot planted in reality to disregard him entirely.
No counter arguement; no discourse: utterly pathetic.
That just can’t be said enough times!
Right on, Rob.
I just received from amazon.de a copy of the new third expanded edition of the encyclopedic work Lexikon des ‘Vergangenheitsbewältigung’ in Deutschland: Debatten- und Diskursgeschichte des Nationalsozialismus nach 1945, by Torben Fischer and Matthias N. Lorenz, about postwar reactions to Nazi rule in Germany. To judge by the fact that the work is now in its third edition since it first appeared in 2007, and by the extracts from reviews cited in the page on the book in amazon.de, it seems to have become a standard work.
The section in the book about the Reichstag Fire is by Benjamin Hett and reflects his rejection of the Diels/Tobias lone nut theory about the authorship of the fire. That would appear to indicate that younger German historians have been persuaded by the new evidence to reject the lone nut theory and to accept the Gisevius/Hett theory that the Nazis were responsible for the fire.
Should have been “Lexikon der …”
Cameron wouldn’t even be in power without his PR wing, in the form of the mainstream media. They never criticise their hero because they’ve given up on journalism and just want job opportunities and gongs. It’s no surprise the mainstream media are now covering up Cameron’s abysmal performance, because that’s what they’ve always done. But actually I think the polls were right last May and the result was faked.
where does Australia , its PM and all others that have indulged with that ‘safe tax haven tax avoidance’.. ???? love to see more about the people that have connections with it here..