I have a confession to make.
When a journalist writes this it generally means they will proceed to reveal something they hope will actually show them in a good light or justified in some way. But I have a real confession to make, of something I did that was wrong.
Somewhere in the UK, among the papers of a dead loved one which nobody has the heart to throw out, in cardboard boxes in dusty attics or deep in the filing cabinets of Jeremy Corbyn, exist still a few copies of thousands of letters bearing my authentic signature.
These letters, on expensive paper with an impressive Foreign and Commonwealth Office crested header, state that the British Government will not deal with the African National Congress because it is a terrorist organisation.
Many of them go on to state that Nelson Mandela is a terrorist who was rightly convicted of terrorism by a South African court after a free and fair trial.
I really did write those thousands of letters, not just sign them. I did not believe a single word of it, and was only “doing my job” as a civil servant, but in a sense that makes it worse.
So I know how many government functionaries currently feel in carrying out the government’s policy of supporting and indeed actively participating in genocide.
When I joined the FCO, in my “fast stream” intake of 22 I was one of only two who was not public school and the only one who was not Oxbridge. I also had the unusual background of being a member of CND, Friends of Palestine and various other activist groups.
I could not be excluded because in the several days and stages of public examinations I had (tied with 2 others) outperformed everybody else of the 80,000 people who had entered the Civil Service administrative exams (it was 1984 with 3.5 million unemployed).
But the security services were not happy, and my “positive vetting” was delayed. This is an extremely exhaustive process (nowadays direct vetting) for those with the highest security clearance. An MOD officer, usually retired military, is assigned to investigate everything about you for months, including interviewing many who know you.
So while I joined the FCO in September 1984, for five months I was not given a job but rather put on full time French language training together with three other misfits (one of whom I think was being given extra investigation because his uncle was Roger Hollis).
In the end my positive vetting was left with a query, and I was pulled in to see the Head of Personnel Department. They said that they had decided to grant my vetting certificate, but that I was going to be placed on the South Africa (Political) desk as a direct test of whether it was possible for me to put my politics aside and function as a civil servant.
So I did. You tell yourself many things to get by, chiefly that the UK is a democracy and ministers are elected by voters to determine policy; whereas you as a civil servant are merely carrying through the wishes of the voters.
Thatcher was Prime Minister and she simply was a straightforward supporter of apartheid. This is much denied but I am an eye witness. Geoffrey Howe was Foreign Minister and it was never easy to determine what he thought about anything. Junior ministers running day to day policy were Lynda Chalker and Malcolm Rifkind, who were both viscerally anti-apartheid.
But the line that Mandela was a terrorist and the ANC a terrorist organisation was dictated by Thatcher and absolutely insisted upon.
It is difficult now to explain the intensity of feeling in the UK and the strength of the anti-apartheid campaign. Scores of letters would arrive every day, many from MPs, and – this bit is hard to believe now – in those days every letter would be answered point by point, not with a generic reply.
I was writing those replies by hand, and then giving them to the secretaries to type up. In 1985 the Department got its first word processor and I was able to draft forty template paragraphs and select from those for the replies. But out those replies went from Craig Murray, stating that Nelson Mandela was a terrorist, thousands of them.
I was very actively involved in the Whitehall battle to change the policy, but that is a different story which I have in part explained before.
But this is an extremely important thought that I want you all to ponder.
In 1985, the Terrorism Act 2000 was still 15 years away. There was no such thing as a proscribed organisation under the Terrorism Act.
Under today’s legislation, every single one of those people writing in support of the African National Congress or out campaigning for the release of Nelson Mandela would have been liable for arrest under Section 12 1 (a) of the Terrorism Act.
That is the danger of allowing the state to dictate whom you must consider a terrorist and punishing those who disagree with the state.
In 1985 the official position of the British state was that the ANC were terrorists and apartheid South Africa were the good guys.
In 2024 the official position of the British state is that Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorists and apartheid Israel are the good guys.
The state can be wrong.
It is therefore not an irony that Starmer and Cooper banned Nelson Mandela’s grandson from entering the UK as a “terrorist sympathiser” because of his support for Palestine. In this as so much else, Starmer is a follower of Thatcher.
The difference forty years later is that the state is now persecuting British citizens and locking them up for daring to say that the state can be wrong.
The ANC example explains why it is essential we do not give way to this pressure.
Let us face facts. Like most resistance units against colonialism, the ANC were indeed forced by the exigencies of asymmetric warfare into actions that were careless of, or even targeted the lives of, colonial settler civilians.
That did not put them on the wrong side of history. Apartheid South Africa was wrong just as Apartheid Israel is wrong. Occupied people have, in international law, the right of armed resistance. Within that context of lawful struggle, individuals remain accountable for individual war crimes.
The Terrorism Act, abused by the Israel lobby to make it illegal to support Israel’s opponents, is fundamentally bad legislation. It literally provides for up to 14 years in jail if you “express an opinion” in favour of a proscribed organisation.
40 years ago it would have been used against the large majority of the population who “expressed an opinion” in favour of the ANC, officially viewed as a terrorist organisation.
The sickening ratcheting up of pressure on Palestine supporters by super Zionist Keir Starmer continued yesterday with a 6am raid on highly distinguished journalist Asa Winstanley. All his electronics and journalistic materials were seized.
Today 10 UK police launched a pre-dawn raid on the home of Asa Winstanley, one of Britain’s leading and most celebrated investigative journalists.
All this devices, so all his journalistic materials, were seized and are now with the authorities.
He was not charged with a crime. pic.twitter.com/bT9fpnE8rU
— Matt Kennard (@kennardmatt) October 17, 2024
Panicked Zionist “elites” who run western states are lashing out in fear at their opponents. As their popular support evaporates in the face of clear evidence of appalling Israeli atrocities, they are resorting to the methods of fascism.
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It is therefore not an irony that Starmer and Cooper banned Nelson Mandela’s grandson from entering the UK as a “terrorist sympathiser” because of his support for Palestine. In this as so much else, Starmer is a follower of Thatcher.
The Global South must become more active; it annoys me how passive they are. They should initiate instant ban on western politicians/ambassadors etc. that have expressed any support for Israel. Tit for tat.
The western hegemony is unfortunately so easily upheld, because there is no party on the other side that takes the fight.
The whole terrorism label is wholly politicized, defunct.
ANC were terrorists then suddenly they were not. Same with PLO, same with Contras, same with Kahane Chai, same with Mujahedin e-Khalq, same with Afghan Mujahedin etc. – time and time again one sees how the West use the terrorist label when it fits not the law but when it fits their geopolitical interests.
Or take Ukraine, where the Ukrainian army could time and time again attack Russian civilians in Russia proper and no Western politician voices condemnation or labels Ukraine a terrorist state; instead the West are busy raiding the homes of pro-Palestinian journalists in the West, labeling them terrorist supporters for exposing the crimes of the terrorist state of Israel.
UK police raid home, seize devices of EI’s Asa Winstanley
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/uk-police-raid-home-seize-devices-eis-asa-winstanley
Thanks Craig, it is really important to understand the biggest lobby advantages were “agreed” years ago. I understand my role preparing regulated reports for an imaginary board; doesn’t have the glitz and glamour of the civil service. The reason I chose that role is the independent fund managers use very old advantages in the capitalist system. These laws and psychological tools of governance and accountancy are drafted in a way that – unconsciously – allows most humans to have a good excuse for not knowing them.
The number one statement I was told by managers, senior managers and even directors: “it doesn’t matter” – very few had the adequate background of corporate law and finance. Basically none having any practical experience of the actual duties of booking trades or speaking to investors or speaking to regulators. My function as a consolidator of global market data, to be interpreted by global market laws and reported to investors on an equal basis; in line with the prospectus and the older capital laws of companies: “didn’t matter” – it didn’t matter because very few understand our banking laws and the banks like it that way.
I stated that the responsibilities we imagine rest with government had passed to the banks; in 2009 they realised the banks had messed up; government had let them get away with it. The slew of laws sat between law and accountancy with neither professional class taking responsibility: still believing it rests with government.
The final stage of the market is the lowly investor, the key workers who pay a contribution to take part in society and so to their representative the independent fund manager. The laws on terrorism are actually embedded in this legislation and because it is a G7 market rule set the US interpretation where “dollars are speech” equity splits the opinion of the market. It’s not by chance that Blackrock and State Street started consolidation of our independent voices. The corporate policy of avoiding politics similar to the civil service; framing professional conduct only in areas of entity interest: my colleagues work for the business of buying assets. I have always worked for society’s future; the conduct rules and market rules should prevent all that we see in society. However, it needs impetus from the market; it requires truth.
Before we had fact checkers and all the other professional groups, wise kings had auditors; and because normally the king’s wisdom was debatable, those who dealt with them had accountants. I am on the oldest rules and they are all consistent. If you care about these things please learn, from someone else if you find me offensive; the funding of genocide is illegal. You simply need to find the laws in a body of work no one has read because the board I report to is a part-time duty based on the imaginary idea of what a board working on your behalf would be interested in. I respect the truth, I read the laws and the guidance for twenty years. Our investors care about more than profit.
Best regards,
Rob
“The whole terrorism label is wholly politicized, defunct.”
Totally agreed.
Same goes for “anti-Semitism”. Cf. after the Treblinka uprising, imagine if some rabid nutters had called the insurgents “anti-Aryan”, or had suggested that anti-Nazism in principle was OK, but everyone who criticised Nazism needed to be checked out by the German Security Trust, a security arm of the NSDAP, because their experts were well aware that anti-Nazism was sometimes used as a cover for anti-Aryanism, and it was important to draw a distinction. Imagine if they’d gone on to say that calls for “victory to the Treblinka insurgents” was a call for the extermination of the Aryan people, and could only possibly be made by “terrorists”. It’s just like that. “Anti-semitism” is a concept for c***s nowadays.
In case an impression is formed of the viscerally anti apartheid former foreign Secretary Sir Malcom Rifkind as a thoroughly good egg – one of the “fundamentally decent” British politicians of legend – he went on the BBC last October to say everyone in Gaza should be denied water and electricity. Sir Malcom is a former honorary secretary of Conservative Friends of Israel, so it may safely be assumed that his opinions on any expression of sympathy (or even understanding) for Palestinian and Lebanese resistance are strident.
Sir Malcom’s son, the Times columnist Hugo Rifkind, said Sir Keir Starmer was having a good “war” in Gaza shortly after the now PM went on LBC to likewise express support for collective punishment.
“Collective punishment” is an incredibly mild term for genocide.
The Gaza camp is itself an embodiment of collective punishment. It is a concentration camp.
Starmer said the Zionists had the right to cut off water and electricity to Gaza. That is saying the Zionists have the right to commit genocide. There are no two ways about it. Not “punishment”. GENOCIDE.
I really hope nobody reading this is thinking of even possibly voting Labour while Starmer remains leader.
The scumbag tried to backtrack because he said his remarks had caused distress (i.e. might lose him votes) in “Muslim communities”:
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/sir-keir-starmer-tries-to-clarify-comments-on-gaza-israel-lbc-interview/
“I was not saying Israel had the right to cut off water, food, fuel, or medicines, on the contrary.”
He’s a f*cking liar.
He was absolutely clear when he said the Zionists had the right to cut off the water and electricity. You can watch him say it – and the full context in which he says it – from a link at the above page.
It is the most obscene and disgusting thing I have heard any British prime minister or leader of the “opposition” say publicly in my lifetime.
Not only that but both he and Emily Thornberry declared that “Israel has the absolute right” and that they supported the Israeli State’s actions unconditionally, then a couple of months later tried to justify it by gaslighting the public on national TV that “absolute” and “unconditional” don’t actually mean “absolute” and “unconditional”. They tried to justify it by saying that a UN spokesman had described turning off basic supplies for up to a few hours as justified in the course of a specific and very limited, targeted Operation – but even were that the case, the fact that these two loathsome, “sophisticated” (in the legal sense) individuals couldn’t then also say “well it was abundantly clear from just a few days after the 7th of October that the Israeli State had gone wildly beyond any such definition and was therefore beyond justification”, not to mention that they’re unable to state what any person with half a brain can read and understand for themselves from the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide – and Starmer even went further by summarily dismissing South Africa’s incredibly well evidenced case as “a few cherry-picked videos from social media” (or practically identical phrasing).
It’s really sad for those of us who used to believe that these two people had integrity and were decent. It’s unbelievably sadder for those deaths and suffering, GENOCIDE, in which they are actively continuing to make us all complicit.
That last bit – it’s not sad only because we are complicit; I mean it is unbelievably sad for those who are dying and suffering as a result and that we as a State are doing nothing – whatsoever – to help stop more people dying and suffering. That we are doing nothing to help stop GENOCIDE (particularly since we’ve done nothing as a State to help prevent it).
You aren’t the only person who has had to learn the hard way about the inherently fascist nature of the state and its bureaucracies. The surprise isn’t in the conforming to them but in the rejection of conformity once you realise that you can’t keep your conscience and the money, and that you’d rather have clean hands. Well done that bloke.
Well said squeeth
Eythenkew!
But is it inherent to the nature of State? I mean, would you be saying that if Corbyn had succeeded in becoming PM and building a fairer society? Do you think the UK would still be complicit in this GENOCIDE if he had become and remained PM?
And don’t think I look upon Corbyn with rose-tinted spectacles; his pro-Brexit collaborationist policy was absolutely insane.
nota tory fan boy
I think he would have been assassinated.
“The sickening ratcheting up of pressure on Palestine supporters by super Zionist Keir Starmer continued yesterday … Panicked Zionist “elites” who run western states are lashing out in fear at their opponents. As their popular support evaporates in the face of clear evidence of appalling Israeli atrocities, they are resorting to the methods of fascism.”
The rolling back of democracy and the descent into fascism is well advanced in the UK. The total establishment control of a compliant mainstream media is just one example of this and their spinning of a tissue of lies about the war in Ukraine and their disgusting support for genocide in Gaza are just two graphic demonstrations of it. The competition between the two candidates in the Tory leadership contest to be the most anti-immigrant is another.
Starmer is well versed in the methods of authoritarianism having expelled hundreds, if not thousands, from the Labour Party on spurious grounds, Jeremy Corbyn’s suspension then removal of the whip being only the most glaring. Add to that his virtual suspension of free speech in the Labour Party and, worse still, his support for Israel denying food, water, power and medical supplies to the entire Gaza population. “They have that right” he said. We all saw and heard it.
But as we have a compliant media and political class there is no serious public discussion of these issues, much less any debate in Parliament.
Exactly one month ago Craig wrote about the development of a new political party of the left, “The Collective”, putatively/provisionally led by Jeremy Corbyn pending, as I understand it, the selection/election of a new leader.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2024/09/a-new-left-wing-party-in-the-uk/
Any serious new party of the left would have to engage with and confront the above issues fully and fearlessly in the knowledge that they could be jailed.
I would suggest that any such new party should have democratic renewal front and centre as one of its main policies (possibly reflected in its party name) and that the proposal and national discussion of a new democratic constitution for the UK should be in the forefront of that.
Such proposals, public discourse and policy could potentially be a world-leading example of democratic modernisation and a counter to the increasing insanity that we are now witnessing.
In the meantime what, if anything, is happening with the five independent UK MPs elected on a ‘support Gaza’ platform?
For me the most chilling revelation in the Ed Snowden biography PERMANENT RECORD was that workers at the NSA spent their lunchtimes watching Fox News. And this was Fox News at its rabid, warmongering worst.
But it makes perfect sense. if you’re paranoid about tariotrs and whistleblowers then you’ll recruit exclusively from the ranks of unquestioning patriots. Snowden himself was an unquestioning patriot who was converted to Establishment-critic by the nature of what he discovered in the course of his job.
The problem is that unquestioning patriots are, by very defintion, not the smartest and most analytical among us. If they’re futher vetted at promotion stage (by the Israel lobby, for instance) then you end up with a leadership that’s fundamentally weak and susceptible to woolly thinking and delusion. One can observe a similiar process throughtout the entire political system/media class — few would argue that the quality of those we see nightly on our TV screens is not at an all-time low.
Napoleon Bonaparte surrounded himself with generals who were brave enough to question him. The western political system, on the other hand, is being rotted from within by mediocrtities who don’t question anything.
I don’t judge you (Craig) for being an obedient civil servant in the 1980s. I’m impressed by your having coming top out of 80,000 in a difficult series of tests. The real tragedy is that of such a gifted person not having been better used by the government. Of course you found other things to do.
I have written to my MP, that the recent repression of journalists sends a very bad message, that British politicians cannot be trrusted not to misuse power, and that the laws on freedom of speech and the press need strengthening, whether by amending legislation or by being tested in court.
Methinks a letter to Santa Claus, c/o the North Pole, asking for a particular Xmas present would have been your time better spent, M.J.
If every reader of my message wrote a similar one to their MP (of whatever party), then I think it might have an impact. But if every reader thought ‘a letter to Santa Claus would be time better spent’ then indeed we would expect that the impact would be less.
“If every reader of my message wrote a similar one to their MP (of whatever party), then I think it might have an impact.”
I very much doubt it. What sanctions do constituents have against an MP who routinely ignores them? Only one, which is to replace them with someone else who will ignore them at the next election, up to five years away. However, the sanctions that the party has against MPs who ignore its wishes are real and immediate. Of which do you think the MP is going to take more notice?
I think that’s a false dilemma, because MPs don’t have to act tomorrow, as it were. They can note and be sympathetic of positions that many write about. So it’s worth bringing things to their notice.
@MJ – If you favour the strategy of using a certain method, you should gauge its level of success.
Imagine if you played a lot of chess and you favoured playing 1.h4 and 2.a4 because you thought that was a strong opening. If you kept losing with it, you would stop playing it or else you’d look at why it was going wrong and adjust features of your strategy accordingly. If you kept winning with it, good luck to you – you’d have a point!
You didn’t invent the strategy of writing to one’s local MP. Many have used it. Who has got anywhere with it? Do they include opponents of the Zionist lobby?
@Brian Red: I don’t play chess and will leave the assessment of your moves to others. I don’t agree that activities should be readily assessable to be worthwhile. Letters calling for the release of political or religious prisoners have often been effective, but this was not known at the time.
Writing to MPs is a privilege reserved to their constituents, and we should use it. The same applies to the democratic privilege of voting.
Example: Alexander Ogorodnikov, who after his release said to David Ames, MP for Basildon (Hansard, 29 July 1988, Column 821): “Please keep the pressure up, it is definitely working.”
Just because it sometimes works doesn’t mean that it always works or even has to work. Buying a lottery ticket sometimes means that you become an instant millionaire, however, if you bought a ticket on every lottery for the rest of your life, there would still be no guarantee that you would win anything at all. Although your MP might be influenced by you writing to them, they could easily ignore you until they are voted out, when you could enjoy the change of being ignored by someone else.
Anyway, I was talking about incentives, a point which you don’t address.
Here in the U.S., we have a First Amendment, a constitutional text that apparently guarantees freedom of speech, which has not not prevented various episodes in our history where that freedom was ignored. It seems incredible that a Eugene Debs could be locked up in a federal prison for a long term for delivering a very mild speech critical of this country’s participation in the First World War, when the justification for war was so threadbare. (Thank God Harding had the decency to commute Debs’s sentence.)
Paper guarantees of rights are only good so far. Hillary Clinton and John Kerry have recently spoken critically of the First Amendment.
Any State that has to do what it is doing currently and in the future is not a good State at all. It is a fearful State.
I’m sure that the very same Liberals in the US and the UK would use Stalin/Hitler and even Putin as an example of what a paranoid State will do under pressure.
Yet as guardians of The Rule Based Order they are engaging in breaking the rules they allege to abide by. They are under the boot of the US – as are the European Elites and to myself seem to be in a similar position as they were after the end of WW2.
The Germans to be fair had a reason – they were beaten but the victors have no such excuses and for all the talk of ‘Sovereignty’, they now have none. They all may as well fly the US Flag and make their national Anthems The Stars and Stripes.
Pathetic bunch.
Rules-based order = we stole it fair and square (Michael Hudson)
Do the actions of the British State not remind one of History lessons about Lavrentiy Beria, Henrich Himmler and Erich Mielke, amongst others?
And lest one forget, there is always the UKGBNI fascist state employment of media and propaganda against Sinn Fein to remember, which authorities insisted on constantly equating and reminding punters were really a provisional arm of a terrorist organisation, the IRA.
I remember my own vetting, only a couple of weeks shorter and for very similar reasons. Of course I was much lowlier in the service. Despite the Civil Service Code telling us to act on behalf of the ‘government of the day’ and ‘regardless of our own opinions’ they are very sure to bring on people whose opinions closely match their own as possible. Name another job where it would be desired (never mind legal) to look into someone’s political affiliation.
One thing I do disagree with is ‘legitimate targets’ of any armed organisation. Unarmed civilians are OUT. Military targets, those who form their own armed groups (that could possibly include some settlers due to the violence they inflict on others) and military personnel along with TOP political targets ie the leaders of a group’s political party (as aside from the military) I appreciate that there’s sometimes little difference between those last two but still. If civilians die in war it should be absolute minimal ‘collateral damage’ The example of a single cleaner on a military base Versus a single soldier in a tower block shows the IDF complete lack of care (at best) for Palestinian lives and the desire to ‘ethnically cleanse’ at worst.
Sadly I’m very aware as I write this that someone will try, deliberately, to misread this as support for ‘terrorism’ It’s not, it’s support for the Geneva Convention, for Humanitarian Law and for a sense of morality to prevail..
Re: ‘Name another job where it would be desired (never mind legal) to look into someone’s political affiliation.’
British police officers are not allowed to be members of the BNP, Britain First or the National Front, ED.
Is that not because they are supremacists and thus there would be a legitimate fear of Policing being selectively carried out according to those supremacists’ agenda?
Imagine if in Germany, 90 years ago, police started to be replaced by those who believed that Jews were “Untermenschen”? Oh wait…
are they allowed to be freemasons?
I shared the link here, a couple of pages back, to Asa Winstanley’s comprehensive, fully detailed and totally evidenced timeline for the events of October 7th last year. It does not surprise me that the powers that be would want access to all his sources. The horror cannot be overstated, and the facts completely overturn the official narrative. It would seem no one here was interested but someone somewhere wants the truth well hidden from ordinary people. The subhuman monsters who left charcoal statues of the party goers, and blew every vehicle to bits, including the majority of the intended hostages, plus their own ground troops, are beyond any rules of war.
Would you mind reposting that here? I missed it and would be interested to read, at the very least to try and understand how well evidenced it is (I’m not casting judgement either way until I read it, though given the MSM track record so far, it would hardly be surprising if an account that differed from their narrative was more accurate)
—
[ Mod: The only link Alyson has posted recently was in a comment on the Simply No Red Lines At All thread on 11 Oct at 5:08pm.
In that comment, she links to the homepage of Asa Winstanley at Electronic Intifada, not to a specific article – though she’s probably referring to the latest article (7 Oct), which is top of the list:
https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-israel-killed-hundreds-its-own-people-7-october/49216 ]
Thank you, Mod!
The increase in police raids is an indicative expression of the Police State’s intent to persecute and intimidate the Pro-Palestine Movement in the UK and exile it to the margins (defeated and fearful) of public consciousness and history. In response the resistance must arise, congregate and force the issue of state control and repression onto the public agenda directly by mass protest and disobedience. Every protester must identify and openly display his solidarity with pro-Palestinian resistance en masse. Time is urgent an imperialist war threatens in the Middle East do any of us believe that the UK will not be directly involved on the bidding of Israel and the US in this war of the West against the Resistance and Iran?
It’s never totally pointless to revisit old cliches. A famous one related to the topic of this article is: “One Man’s Terrorist, Another Man’s Freedom Fighter” This cliche has been rehashed ad nauseam in countless undergraduate essays for the last few decades. For example.
https://www.e-ir.info/2018/11/29/is-one-mans-terrorist-another-mans-freedom-fighter/
Likewise, underlining the changing assessments of various activists movements according to later geopolitical outcomes is like pushing very hard on a wide open door. And obviously in our modern Western culture, the most common example is that of the ANC in South Africa. Here also a routine curriculum for university students. See for instance:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/globalconnections/mideast/educators/militant/lesson2.html
The real question, seldom addressed, is that of individual responsibility, especially in cases such as Craig Murray confesses. Is obeying orders a valid excuse? When one is fully aware that authorities are acting against justice and human rights? Can you later be forgiven for your former complicity?
I guess many of us have to try and answer this question. Better late than never…
That’s such a meaningless distinction in that the two concepts are not mutually exclusive: you can use terror to achieve your aims and not be fighting for freedom, you can use terror to achieve your aims in the course of fighting for freedom and you can fight for freedom without using terror.
yes, quite so. The slogan is misleading. It should be something like “Some terrorists are freedom fighters, some aren’t”.
But in terms of the UK Terrorism Acts (btw, two of them, 2000 and 2006), pretty much all freedom fighters would be terrorists.
Craig talks about proscribed organisations – Hamas is, but the Israeli government isn’t – that is possible only because of the ludicrously broad definition of terrorism in s1 of the 2000 Act. This definition does not involve the broader context (like what a conflict is actually about). Thus the French resistance of WW2 was a terrorist organisation (likewise, I think, the British military now).
And it is the 2006 Act (s1) which criminalises anything one might say to “glorify” these organisations.
Is the difference between terrorism and state violence that clear-cut? All armed forces inflict fear (for starters) why let state forces pose as the respectable violence-inflictors?
Presumably because the state reserves to itself the achievement of its aims through force and therefore terror, it is one of the things that identify an organisation as a state. Therefore, laws proscribing terrorism only apply to those challenging that monopoly and hence breaking that rule.
That’s one of the reasons why states are fascist entities; either violence is bad or it isn’t.
Well said, Bayard
@Wilshire – No, obeying orders is not a reasonable excuse.
I don’t care about essays, undergraduate or otherwise.
Once someone has understood the implications of the Milgram electroshock experiment, perhaps followed up with a viewing of the amazingly important 2012 film “Compliance”, they’ll know and understand much more than they’ll ever understand if they stay in the world of liberal discussion, Montesquieu, human rights, activism, Thomas Payne, democratic politics, journalism, and the holy first amendment to the Poonited States’s constitution. And then the obvious period of recent history to apply their understanding to is Covid.
That’s the test. “Does my general take on how things are going in society give me a decent take on what happened during Covid?” Anyone who can’t honestly answer “yes” must try harder.
Brian Red, would you mind giving a TLDR of the implications of the electroshock experiments? (Also to what degree they were “good science” – i.e. randomised, double-blinded, placebo-controlled [if even possible in such a case], peer-reviewed in a reputable scientific journal, with follow up of long term study?)
Wasn’t this question answered at Nuremberg?
I added a PS to my message when I later came across a first-hand account of starvation from a young journalist in Gaza. You read that right. Be warned that it is not easy to listen to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ltJz_L6zBA
If the UK government doesn’t want to be a facillitator of crimes against humanity, it had better stop leaning on journalists who report such things.
The UK government is continuing to grant export licences for vital components for the F-35 fighter jets that have killed scores of thousands of innocents in Gaza.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/war-gaza-british-officials-warned-criminal-liability-over-f-35-exports-israel
For over a year the RAF has been servicing Israeli fighter jets, ferrying huge transporter planes to Israel and flying surveillance operations over Gaza.
Indeed the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz very early on identified RAF Akotiri in Cyprus as the international logistical hub for the Genocide.
Keir Starmer said Israel has the legal right to deny Gazans food and water, and that every other depraved act by the IDF is merely Israel defending itself. He has increased the number of military flights to Israel.
David Lammy said Israel has the legal right to bomb refugee camps because Palestinians raped babies on October 7th.
Take your pick.
As the writer Brendan Behan said, the man with a big bomb is a statesman while the man with a small bomb is a terrorist.
What could be more statesmanlike than Netanyahu using loads of American bunker-buster bombs to demolish apartment blocks in Beirut and kill hundreds of civilians, just to kill the ‘terrorist’ Hassan Nasrallah? He even gave the go ahead just after giving a speech to the UN General Assembly in New York.
“One death is a tragedy. A million is a statistic.”
Zionazis are probably dancing with joy at the thought that Palestinian resistance leader Yahya Sinwar, injured and sitting in a bombed out building as a Zionazi drone flies in to film him, only threw a stick at the said drone because he was a “terrorist”.
Quite probably most white British readers of the British MSM think “Hell, yeah, what a subhuman. And he has the gall to throw a stick!”
It’s interesting that British TV programmes were apparently interrupted recently for a news bulletin announcing the death of some young pop star or other whose name I don’t remember. (I think his surname may have been Payne.)
Were they testing for another interruption? Nuclear war or other use of WMD maybe? Or an infrastructure whack. Or could be the death of the monarch.
It just smells as though the b*stards are up to something.
Is it simply an inevitability as you get older,
that you realise that you have never actually lived in a democracy,
that your own country’s historic wealth was built on terrible crimes committed around the world,
and that nothing really changes…?
@Bob – Did you ever hear phrases such as “peasant wagon” for a bus? Just wondering.
The rulers in Britain are very well aware that they are the rulers. They know it from when they are young children.
Any ruling class sh*t of say 12 years old will know what a “peasant wagon” is.
They consider the lower orders to be subhumans. Barbarians, heathens, degenerates. But the word “subhuman” best captures the attitude. Or livestock.
If you follow their culture carefully, you will see that the apparent paying of respect to anyone in the lower orders is almost always linked to that person’s skivvying for them. It’s never linked to a notion of shared humanity, or respect for a person for playing a role in their family, enjoying their life peacefully, caring for others, being creative, or anything like that. Because those are HUMAN behaviours.
It should be an inevitability but sadly some people are so afraid that if they acknowledge it and act progressively, the tables will be turned and it is they who will suffer racially-motivated oppression and exploration for the next few centuries (at least). And even if they aren’t afraid of that, they’re afraid that all these other human beings they fundamentally couldn’t have considered to actually be human beings might turn out to perform better than them and build a more decent society if given the chance.
Dang it, that was meant to be “exploitation”
(They also ignore that they have been divided and ruled over on the basis that they too are also oppressed and exploited, albeit not because of their race, to punch downwards rather than look upwards and ask why there is any “upwards” at which to look at all, when there should only be a sideways at which to look)
“The difference forty years later is that the state is now persecuting British citizens and locking them up for daring to say that the state can be wrong.”
The British police are also doing things like seizing computer equipment and phones without even charging people with anything.
A lot changed during Covid, including the police stopping protests that were lawful, and harassing people doing other lawful things too, such as going for a walk or sitting down on a bench.
In the past few days there has been wide and supportive media coverage of the police seizing cars from men who are supposed to have catcalled at women joggers. I don’t in any way defend such harassment of women. But this is a case of punishment without trial. And blatantly so. And no “journalist” dares to notice. No charges, no trial, no calls to a lawyer or right to present a defence – just the police thieving stuff from people, saying they’ve broken the law. While e.g. local council officials spew out whole paragraphs of robotspeak to celebrate the police actions.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13954489/Police-seize-cars-men-catcalling-women-joggers-fact-undercover-female-officers-disguise.html
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2y1m393j0o
Harassment is unlawful. But people are being punished for it without even being charged with doing it.
Imprisoned former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan has been excluded from the list of eligible candidates for the office of Chancellor of the University of Oxford just released by the university. So graduates of that university cannot vote for him in the election for the office the university is about to hold, in order to replace the current chancellor, Chris Patten, who is about to leave the office. When Middle East Eye questioned the university about the reason for this decision, they gave no answer.
This decision is particularly unfortunate because the circumstances of his incarceration have become ominous. The lights have been turned off in his cell, so that he now lives in the dark. Up to now, his food in the prison has been cooked by his own cook, but that cook has now been sent away.
Middle East Eye quotes a peer in the House of Lords who says that the university was subjected to severe legal and political pressure to exclude Khan’s candidacy. What makes this relevant to this thread is that a lot of the pressure almost certainly came from officials in the UK government.
The publicity that would have resulted from his being elected Chancellor, or even from his running for the post, might have prevented his judicial murder, which now looks all too likely.
Khan would have been a powerful and influential opponent of the genocide now taking place in Gaza, Palestine, and Lebanon.
And Khan used to be so welcome to attend the same functions as the British ruling elite.
The tradtional wisdom of the said elite is that “We want the clever *!*!*s on our side”.
What this actually means is “We want the currently still successful and influential *!*!*s on our side”. They don’t how “clever” he is if he’s looking as though he’ll be Sindona-Epsteined in jail or perhaps even Ceausescued. They follow the money.
Oh how cultured they are at Oxford, how committed to the life of the mind.
And of course Jemima was the Queen Esther tool to control him on behalf of her father and he now has a Pakistani wife. Gone native, they’d say. He purchased Chinese manufactured tanks. Bad idea. End of.
The state has seized all our phones and laptops by making sure that they can eavesdrop on them. Taking them physically is a form of harassment not espionage. Remember that the only way to keep a secret is not to tell anyone; don’t put information on electronic media that you don’t want the secret shows to see.
The Genocide before our Eyes
Jabalia and Beit Hanoun in Gaza
In the Land of Palestine.
Whose footsteps do they follow
Beneath the grave below the rubble
At whose command must they obey
Imprisoned in the Camp of Death
The noose of Famine, World’s blockade
A hyssop stick won’t find its way
The Genocide before our Eyes
Jabalia and Beit Hanoun in Gaza
In the Land of Palestine.
Hearts of stone don’t turn your back
Or cross by on the other side
The ruined schools and hospitals
Assassinated long since died
Like journalists.
The Genocide before our Eyes
Jabalia and Beit Hanoun in Gaza
In the Land of Palestine.
The Moloch’s on the loose there
The halter’s off its neck
Unfettered on the godless track
Its maw is ruby red.
In its bellows defiant pride
Demands all Helpers turn aside
Calling down the rain of bombs
White phosphorus, uranium, for drones
And cluster strikes to come
The Genocide before our Eyes
Jabalia and Beit Hanoun in Gaza
In the Land of Palestine.
What turns their water into wine
Their towns to dust and tears to blood
Their love to hate which swells the Flood
Of crimes they perpetrate. In your name Lord ?
The Genocide before our Eyes
Jabalia and Beit Hanoun in Gaza
In the Land of Palestine.
Can they hide ? Hypnotism, Mesmerize
Illusion’s shadows flame and dance both far and wide
To gild the masses and disguise, the Horror
The Genocide before our Eyes
Jabalia and Beit Hanoun in Gaza
In the Land of Palestine.
For the Dispenser of broadcaster’s gold
To tell them don’t believe your eyes
To block your ears to hear their cries
Christ is tortured – Crucified
The Genocide before our Eyes
Jabalia and Beit Hanoun in Gaza
In the Land of Palestine.
While the beast of Zion prowls among the tented folk
The infidels of every faith erect their altars
To embrace its Human sacrifice. To slake its thirst for blood
And for its sake to fashion golden idols
For their-selves to celebrate
The Genocide before our Eyes
Jabalia and Beit Hanoun in Gaza
In the Land of Palestine.
What neighbours such as these
Could you commend to live in peace and amity.
From the Euphrates river to the sea
No limits or no lines ( except in blood) could you depend
Until this beast is shackled and defanged
Its commands for tribute, blood and Land
Will not be sated
The Genocide before our Eyes
Jabalia and Beit Hanoun in Gaza
In the Land of Palestine.
To whom will it be offered as a bride
Or receive the hand of friendship in this life ?
Slaves and sacrifice is what it craves
Appeasing Zion’s hopes is just delay
The piles of bones you see will only grow
And yours among the last that it will show
The Genocide before our Eyes
Jabalia and Beit Hanoun in Gaza
In the Land of Palestine.
Alone. Inferno. Raging in its pride
Its lust will burn the world and all inside
Dowse its flames in Solidarity
Resist its pain in Unity
The Genocide before our Eyes
Jabalia and Beit Hanoun in Gaza
In the Land of Palestine.
Repent with all your heart- you have delayed
To rouse and raise yourself- you can be saved
To join the battle albeit late
Join issue with the mighty ones of fate
To stand your ground and not to yield
In times like this the Poet brings his shield
The Genocide before our Eyes
Jabalia and Beit Hanoun in Gaza
In the Land of Palestine.
13/10/2024
The children’s cries are drowned by bombs,
Their homes, their dreams reduced to dust,
No shelter from the storm of war,
Where every breath betrays their trust,
And hope lies buried deep beneath.
The mothers’ tears could fill the sea,
As fathers dig the graves of sons,
Their hands once built a life in peace,
Now grasping shards of what was once—
A city turned to ash and bone.
The world looks on, indifferent, cold,
Its silence loud as death descends,
In Gaza’s streets where shadows fall,
On lives too fragile to defend,
And every promise left unkept.
10/18/2024
That’s a good poem
I think we all know who the terrorists are – and who are not – however if we point out which is which – we could find ourselves locked up for doing so.
So ironic.
(Though, frankly, it should be equally possible to point out that neither side is desirable)
I didn’t like every aspect of Nelson Mandela’s politics or persona, but two things I always respected him for were
1) he opposed the idea of a debate or compromise with white supremacy, for the simple (and obvious) reason that white supremacy does not have a case that deserves respect from any decent human being, and
2) he refused to renounce violence, and always kept to the view that the use of armed violence against white supremacist rule was justified.
Everyone who agrees with this appraisal of Mandela should support Hamas, the PFLP (which is secular), and other Palestinian resistance organisations fighting in Gaza.
These two points make Mandela tower morally FAR above a crap-artist like Noam Chomsky, who doesn’t even support a boycott of the Jewish-supremacist terrorist entity occupying Palestine, let alone agree with any kind of violence against it – and who pushes the obviously false idea that Israel is some kind of tool of the United States government. I can’t believe that a man of Chomsky’s intelligence doesn’t know what he’s saying is a lie.
It is nauseating to witness a person of intelligence prostitute their intelligence in the cause of what is essentially Nazi-type ultra-racist skinheadery. But of course in North London you see it all the time.
I agree with your points on Chomsky, but not the characterization as a crap artist. He has had unfortunate success pushing what you rightly say is “the obviously false idea that Israel is some kind of tool of the United States government”. Pretty much the worst thing he has said. Was writing a reply to someone duped by this inversion of the obvious, but weird truth – that (the worst, and generally victorious elements in) Israel successfully manipulate the USA against any sane construction of its interest, even the interests of its capitalists.
But it is in line with the general history and theory of the US Left that Chomsky embraces – Leftism so dogmatic and infantile it is pre-natal: That the US is completely and robotically run by an omnipotent and unified capitalist clique. Any sort of politics contaminates ideological purity, people are always more effective outside formal politics. Sure, this can be true, is often a good first approximation. But the US Left and leftist writing is fanatically simplistic this way. If history shows something different, that people actually got elected with Leftist politics – if that word is to mean anything – and actually put their program in action without a magical Revolution that instantly rights all wrongs . . . Then such figures, Lincoln & FDR should be and are slandered unceasingly (esp the latter), because they are counterexamples to infantile leftism.
So the problem is that he sincerely believes what he is saying – although the cognitive dissonance and mental confusion is obvious when he argues against BDS or when he confronts a work like Mearsheimer & Walt’s The Israel Lobby, that just describes the facts, that the tail Israel does wag the US dog, without the anti-semitic insanity so common and destructive.
Of course the zionist occupation is an imperial proxy, that’s why American Caesar uses it as a Brownshirt militia to enforce his rule. What can appear as the tail wagging the dog is pantomime; when Caesar deems it expedient the zionist antisemites back down. In 1973, when the zionist antisemites prepared to use a nuclear weapon, the US and the USSR ganged up on them. This won’t change for as long as the American empire’s rivals, like China, get lots of oil from the middle east and move goods in the opposite direction. Geopolitics trumps ideology.
No, Israel is not an imperial proxy. The thesis makes no sense and is mainly due to Chomsky. It was so obviously preposterously wrong until he started writing on the topic in the 70s, when it first acquired a grain of truth in the aftermath of Kissinger, that it was completely absent from the debate. It is so clearly wrong history that people with serious knowledge of the history since 1945 do not take it seriously.
The “zionist anti-semites” did not seriously *prepare* to use a nuclear weapon in 1973, although there was some thought it when Israel was losing even though it had known precisely when Egypt and Syria would attack. The US & USSR didn’t gang up on them in 1973. The US fervently supported Israel during that war, against most of the USA’s allies, and abandoned using leverage over Israel, a policy generally followed afterwards. Perhaps you were thinking of 1956?
Geopolitics is an ideology. It can’t trump ideology. And the geopolitics very clearly favored alliance with the Arabs and oil, not sowing chaos by Israeli terrorism. The opposition of pro-Zionist ideology and US interests/geopolitics was clear since the Great Bitter Lake meeting between FDR & Ibn Saud, which was the start of US geopolitics in this region. Unfortunately ideology decisively spectacularly, horribly won, and warped both Israeli and US society.
Here is a reply to a similar comment from someone else which has since disappeared.
No, the idea is absurd and inconsistent with history. The tail does wag the dog.
Here is how it has worked. It is absolutely clear that Big Oil was pro-Arab and opposed to Israel. It accepted its existence, but was opposed to post 1948 expansion. There is no doubt that they normally would have won and prevented the current horrible situation; almost certainly there would be a Palestinian State, the Golan Heights would be Syrian etc.
What Israel, the tail, Ideology, naturally the weakest player, did was carefully and intelligently play the US system, use its US assets to the max. And along with building its own military, and using it mainly for aggression and terrorism – making it a doctrine and a way of life, it allied with the most insane and terrorist parts of the US Military Industrial Complex.
It took a long time to achieve its dominance, because its mission is so obviously insane and self-destructive to both countries, against any sane geopolitics. “Ideology” was the weakest of them, but its pressure was fervent, united and prolonged and thus decisive. MIC + Ideology proved a little bit stronger than Big Oil and created a united international front for terrorism. Policy has frozen, as with “I am in blood / Stepped in so far, that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er”
Is it not also possible to decry violence in all its forms, whoever is perpetrating it?
“they are resorting to the methods of fascism”; that in particular including administrative justice, and state immunity from the criminal law.
And, allied with social media monitoring, an enormous sigint operation, it is still vastly cheaper than running a concessionary welfare state for fear that the dispossessed will all join up with the Communists/Communards and strip the plutocrats and oligarchs of their wealth power influence and privilege.
At some points in history concessions make the best political and even economic sense to preserve the power of crown and property; however most often it seems repression is far cheaper.
As a general rule, the more threatened/afraid/weak they are, the greater the state of repression.
As a final point, whilst a strong sympathiser, I don’t think Sir Keir has quite overstepped the line into fascism just yet. There is still an absence of extra judicial organised violence, he hasn’t suspended the courts or Parliament, he doesn’t yet appear to be thriving on induced chaos or even fully adopting a nativist ideology. All those may come, but at present he appears as an authoritarian and reactionary, a foreign policy ‘realist’ (i.e. do exactly and precisely what the State Department tells you to do), and an economic illiterate.
In short a perfect senior civil servant, without the zest to make Cabinet Secretary. Hence the voluntary pivot into politics at a time when it still seemed New Labour would rule for forty years.
As Squwarkbox has routinely portrayed him, it’s all the necessary makings of a latter day Stalin!
It took a few years after Mussolini came to power before Italy was a full-fledged dictatorship.
Well written but Starmer is no Stalin unfortunately. Stalin threatened capitalist hegemony and confronted its most basic manifestation, in the form of Naziism.
The USSR was just as capitalist as the west, but if you mean Stalin threatened the hegemony of the bourgeois western great powers, why did they ally with him?
Even before they allied with him militarily, they asked him in to the League of Nations. They didn’t seem too scared about him walloping their “hegemony”.
It would be more accurate to say the main bourgeois western powers were the USA, Britain, and France, and to say it was Hitler who threatened their hegemony.
For that, you would have to read “Behind Closed Doors” by Laurence Rees. Bloody eye opener.
Stalin expended most of his energy threatening his own population. He entered into a treaty with the Nazis; they were two sides of the same coin.
Have you had a chance to clock what western liberal leaders have being doing to women and children trapped in Gaza for a year? Let me know.
Chamberlain of Britain, Daladier of France and Mussolini of Italy had no problem entering into a treaty with the Nazis, dividing Czechoslovakia. And Poland had no compunctions either, taking the Teschen region during this division and refusing to let the USSR army through to help Czechoslovakia.
Why are you focusing on Stalin alone? Do the Polish names Smigly, Moscicki, Beck, Pilsudski mean anything to you?
Oh, sorry, silly me, I forgot that Poland is now actively promoting its image as a victim of World War II, very carefully avoiding the question of where the Jewish population of Poland went in World War II.
Another part of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, namely Western Ukraine, had no problem entering into agreements with the Nazis. You don’t talk about in your part of the planet today, because Bandera, Shukhevych, Stetsko are now national heroes of Ukraine.
That’s not a coin, Pears, it’s a fucking rubik’s cube
The USSR under Stalin and Germany under Hitler both had large slave labour sectors in their economies. Meanwhile as is well known the British regime murdered millions in India etc. Fuck the lot of them. Both world wars were imperialist wars.
Whataboutery. We were discussing Stalin.
“Why are you focusing on Stalin alone? ”
Because he was the leader of Russia, who the UK elite have always hated. The UK may have been allied with Russia in WWI, but that was only because it was at war with Germany, who it had only attacked because they had allied with the USSR, instead of doing what it should have done and attacked it. As soon as the USSR had finished off the Germans, the UK was planning to attack them (Operation Unthinkable).
Pears, no.
It’s YOU were discussing Stalin, and I added up to the whole picture, so, now WE are talking about the historical events and it’s actors.
Imo, it’s important to know more facts, because incomplete information is nearly a lie. Because people who only know incomplete information tend to come up to wrong conclusion. Because wrong conclusion produce wrong concepts and lead to errors.
In our case, it leads to hatred and wars.
So, it’s not a whataboutery, but rather it’s keeping the things real. Let’s care about the future of the humankind.
As the Russian saying ‘fools learn from their own mistakes, clever guys learn from other people’s mistakes’
Pears Morgaine thinks that if he keeps condemning Stalin it will erase what the US Democrats, the UK Labour Right, Trudeau, Macron and Scholz are currently doing to women and children trapped in Gaza.
It helps him maintain his article of faith that these liberals are champions of human rights, anti racism, international law, etc.
No, Stalin came into the conversation and attempts have been made to distract attention away from any criticism of him by reference to other people and events that are totally irrelevant. Poland was divided up by Hitler and Stalin, in the Soviet sector 200,000 Poles were murdered on Stalin’s orders. Jews who fled the Nazis and escaped to the Soviet controlled region were arrested and sent to Gulags. I suppose this was justified because the Polish government were ‘Nazis’.
No, Stalin appeared in the discussion together with the Nazis, in a certain linguistic device “two sides of the same coin”, which idiom logically excludes anything else.
I consider this as an attempt to portray Stalin as the only one who did something so unique that other participants of those historical events did not do.
On my part, the picture was supplemented for the sake of reality.
Just admit that many politicians of that time made agreements with Hitler. This is an indisputable historical fact that cannot be denied.
“Stalin expended most of his energy threatening his own population.”
Well he must of had a superhuman amount of energy then, managing to lead the USSR through WWII, rebuild Russia’s armed forces after the defeat of the early part of the war and then negotiate the post-war peace settlement with the British and the US, with all its ramifications and complications, ending up with the best deal of all three powers and all with just the small fraction of energy he could spare from threatening his own population.
If Stalin hadn’t purged the Red Army of its best officers in 1938 the story of the invasion might’ve been very different. As it was he was taken in by Hitler to the extent that when the British and his own intelligence warned him of the imminent invasion he refused to believe them; after the Germans crossed the border he spent two weeks cowering in his Dacha not knowing what to do. The paranoia he’d created meant that nobody would risk their necks without his direct orders so the invaders more or less had a free hand.
True, but hardly evidence of superhuman energy, in fact the reverse. One would not expect a superhuman like you make Stalin out to be to be “cowering in his dacha” when the Germans invaded.
Facts that will never cease to enrage shitlib KHivers.
State spooks set up social media.
Anyone who believed in the parliamentary road – OR in some kind of direct-democratic route involving mass assemblies or community struggle – should forget about it now. Neither of them even get past the bar for reasoned consideration in the present epoch.
The fascism of the past (in Germany and Italy anyway, seldom in Spain, Portugal, Croatia, or the USSR) is so many people’s favourite reference, and that’s OK so long as it’s dealt with sensibly. I would argue we are way past 1933 now. There is no equivalent to the CP or even the Social Democratic Party. Minds in the population are GONE GONE GONE. A few minutes’ clear thought about Covid and smartphones establishes that. An “Enabling Act” will come.
Starmer is a non-entity and no important decisions are left to whatever twat is currently in prime ministerial office. He probably hasn’t got a clue where the big levers are and how they’re controlled, and those who do know and who control them wouldn’t want him to know either.
“As a general rule, the more threatened/afraid/weak they are, the greater the state of repression.”
Agreed. And a people that pick their smartphones all day long are bloodcurdlingly weak in the ‘ead.
Thanks Brian. I won’t judge the many quite so harshly; but suffice to say that I don’t possess or want a ‘smart’ phone. Being beyond employment, I am also beyond compulsion!
@ Mike -👍
Have you seen the government’s plan to “give” millions of people “smart watches” through the NHS? This is going to be big in the news next week.
I doubt there will be a single voice of opposition in parliament or the MSM, even from clerics who have opposed the “Assisted Dying” bill.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13979353/NHS-set-millions-smartwatches-wearable-tech-track-health.html
A write-up about the “NHS plan” in the Torygraph is here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/10/19/health-monitoring-smart-watches-nhs-wes-streeting-labour/
Wearable tech is crucial to this.
The government are saying the NHS will be transformed into a “Neighbourhood Health Service” based on electronic surveillance – smart watches and smart rings in the first instance, with “far less reliance on hospitals”.
Apparently it’s all about “saving” the NHS. Well it would be, wouldn’t it? Real message: resisters are antisocial and enemies of public health.
I wonder whether there will be pop-up surveillance posts every 100 metres as there are in some areas of cities in Xinjiang.
(Edit – It seems that the answer is yes. “The Government will also detail plans for a network of neighbourhood health centres, placing GPs, nurses, physiotherapists and health visitors all under one roof to stop people being passed ‘from pillar to post’. The changes will also see a single patient record with all information on the NHS App.”)
Induced carrying or wearing of trackers plugged into the internet, soon to be unlawful to avoid – policed by squads able to respond fast fast fast (and I don’t mean to give people real help) – this is the near future, folks.
The idea of opposing this using democratic politics is just absurd.
BR – smartwatches:
No, I had not seen the stuff on smartwatches, as only picked up by Express and Mail to date. I would link it to the BBC article from January 2024 “NHS data sale can fuel tech boom – Blair and Hague”. At this stage I think it’s mostly about making money. But…
Recall Bentham’s panopticon gaols: this goes back a long way.
Intensive surveillance of target groups is evidenced from Tudor times. The shift to mass surveillance has been rather delayed by the absence of AI, but with colossal datasets, invincible computing power, there seems nothing other than ‘mere morality’ to prevent the irrevocable step over the line to full Big Brother.
Thank you all for your many replies.
My reference to Stalinism was rather whimsical, alluding (Ken Loach style) to his purging instincts and the ruthlessness he proudly exhibits when dealing with democratic socialism and anti Zionists. His support for neoliberalsim and Zionism itself seems to go far beyond popular positioning or accommodating to the State’; it seems something visceral.
The mention of ‘early’ Mussolini is interesting, (thank you, Lysias). Benito’s pivot from revolutionary socialist to revolutionary nationalist came when he was 31 (Starmer was a junior civil servant at that age and remained a civil servant until he was 51).
As a functioning civil servant he would – and did – keep any political views well under his hat. To see if he had any – literally any – prior views, I spent a week combing the University of Leeds student newspaper archive to see what tracks were left. He was one of the relatively few students who made no mark whatsoever on the student body. His leadership, charisma etc. was a of a magnitude insufficient to attract the least public notice, whether in politics, sport or indeed anything else. There was zero evidence of public endeavour. In terms of democratic politics he appears to have been a complete ‘idiot’. That was entirely unlike Benito, who was actively political all his life.
But there are commonalities.
Both were acutely conscious of the overwhelming threat they imagined derived from the Left: Lenin in the case of Mussolini and Corbyn in the case of Starmer. The graphic association of Corbyn and the Soviet-era leadership (famously on the BBC) was far from accidental.
For both leader/ras the measures taken to suppress the Left were justified by the apparent imagined danger of the Marxist threat, and the degree of plutocratic support that could and would and did adhere to the individual best positioned to achieve that suppression. Both were entirely correct in recognising that establishment support would create personal private opportunities for advancement for friends and family.
It was the paramilitary coup d’état of October 1922 (the so called ‘March on Rome’) that placed the premiership into Mussolini’s hands, probably due to the fearfulness and terror of Communism amongst the wealthier Italians. A One Party state was proclaimed five months later. Starmer, of less elevated stature, had to settle on a one faction party.
Finally, on the point offered on Totalitarianism, although the Fascisti self-declared themselves ‘the total state’, that is not the contemporary use. The present day use derives from the Cold War era, when there was a direct repudiation of our wartime Soviet allies. The notion was presented that Hitler and Stalin and Tojo, as all were ruthless authoritarians, were ‘birds of the feather’ and that the domestic political Left (‘fellow travellers’ and all) should be fought with the same vigour as was brought to bear in WWII.
It was a false idea then and it hasn’t changed.
“The notion was presented that Hitler and Stalin and Tojo, as all were ruthless authoritarians, were ‘birds of the feather’ and that the domestic political Left (‘fellow travellers’ and all) should be fought with the same vigour as was brought to bear in WWII.”
Have a look at this:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/ruhle/1939/ruhle01.htm
^ That’s a link to “The Struggle Against Fascism Begins with the Struggle Against Bolshevism (1939)”, by the German left-wing Marxist Otto Ruhle. Ruhle was a council communist (anti-Leninist from the left) and he absolutely was NOT one of various former Trotskyists who became pro-USA cold warriors. The critique is very very different.
Some of the ins and outs of Mussolini are not so relevant today, other than how he defined fascism as when you can’t put a cigarette paper between the interests of the state and the interests of big corporate business, which is obviously an accurate characterisation of today’s world.
Ruhle was right about world fascism.
Ian Tillium was clued up too, writing in 1994 about what he called “technological despotism”.
https://libcom.org/library/technological-despotism-ian-tillium
But the big question today is NOT to what extent were Nazism and Stalinism the same or different. (“Stalinism” can often be the wrong word, given that e.g. the Cheka was founded in 1917.) A much better focus is to ask a similar question about today’s despotism in the west and today’s despotism in China. The question practically answers itself.
We can then track back to Mussolini and see how there’s little space now between private business and the state in either the west or China (or for that matter in Russia). For example, in the west, Google is the best analogue of the Chinese state in some contexts. E.g. the company logs practically all actions of browsing to websites, just to give one example.
Xinjiang is the future for everywhere. And I won’t be surprised if once three-quarters of the population in Gaza have been killed and the survivors are frogmarched into ships’ holds and taken to British bases on Cyprus, they are “handed out smart watches to protect their health”.
@Mike T
“There is still an absence of extra judicial organised violence, he hasn’t suspended the courts or Parliament, he doesn’t yet appear to be thriving on induced chaos or even fully adopting a nativist ideology. All those may come, but at present he appears as an authoritarian and reactionary, a foreign policy ‘realist’ (i.e. do exactly and precisely what the State Department tells you to do), and an economic illiterate.”
Look at the way courts work, much of what they do is sham, trial by jury = about 4% of cases, plea bargaining, sentencing by the Home Office via ‘reports’ and Parole Board (I met someone on one years ago, nice lady but intellectually negligible and ignorant of working class life).
Right now in Britain the cops are seizing various people’s computer equipment and other stuff and holding it indefinitely, in some cases (mine for example) without even charging us or bringing us anywhere near a court.
I read about a rape victim whose phone the cops have kept for four years. A superb illustration of how one oppression melds with others in a torrent of a schizofascist drift. For all the liberal democratic talk of a state based on rights, the actual attitude of the cops is that most crime, including crime such as rape, is basically a matter of scum on scum. Rape victims are being told to hand over their phones or f*ck off. And that’s not by the rapists. It’s by the police, after they’ve been raped.
On Asa Winstanley:
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/uk-police-raid-home-seize-devices-eis-asa-winstanley
“The letter handed to Winstanley by police refers to the raid on his home as being part of ‘Operation Incessantness’ ”
“Incessantness” is a very unusual word, even if it’s in the OED. Are we sure it was the word that happened to come out of the word dispenser when a policeman pressed a button?
Call me suspicious, but could it be a translation from a more common word in Hebrew?
Could it have been given to the British filth by the Community Security Trust on behalf of the occupation?
They don’t know their affixes from their elbows.
The BBC are showing film of Zionazis relaxing at the beach and then cheering when they heard of Yahya Sinwar’s death, and other Zionazis literally dancing in the street in response to what for them is clearly joyous news, while flying their genocidalist flag:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3wpvd993zjo
Relaxing at the beach.
40,000 Arabs have been killed by their army in the past year in the world’s biggest concentration camp. Most have been CHILDREN.
I’m finding it hard at this stage to wrap my head around a workable definition of “Israeli civilian”.
Palestine must win this war. However long it takes.
The longer this massacre goes on, the more I have begun to question what zionism, Israel really is. It is like a combination of a brainwashed violent cult, a mafia mixed with the traits of a cunning, sick serial killer.
I feel so bad for the defenseless palestinians. Imagine being a palestinian and have to be neighbour with these callous people, day in and day out year after year they torment them in one way or another. It is like a nightmare you cannot get out of, something out of a horror movie.
It is not 40,000 it is probably now well beyond 200,000 i.e. 10% of the population. In 1948 the Zionazis only killed 15,000 (2%) to get another 750,000 to flee to get rid of a total 765,000.
The official count only includes those whose bodies reach morgues in still functioning hospitals. It does not count those buried under rubble and those killed in the open and then ploughed under by Israeli bulldozers. Finally I question whether anyone attempting to take a body to the counting place would be allowed to do so by IDF snipers and drone pilots.
Asa was targeted because his research has fatally undermined the western narrative about October 7th. It was primarily a successful military assault that humiliated the occupier. Civilians were killed in the process but it was Israel itself that (very deliberately) killed a large proportion of them, if not most of them. There are details of his arrest, as with that of Sarah Wilkinson, that strongly suggest direct Israeli involvement.
someone sent me this dribble of counter intelligence if you can even call it that. to think people with any thinking left in them don’t understand some semblance of history. start with your holy word of democracy that is ever changing in only the past 100 years. then read history of your heroes (mostly imprisoned first) that appear as saviours… mandela being very obvious in his role in africa. you support all these crooks seemingly. why don’t we mention thatcher herself, in her new order speaking tour, mentioned in her own words a parallel government ran the show UN… they all tell the truth. journalists ha, jokers. alan watts from scotland has taken time to expose and show in their own words (read UN treaties and books by bertrand russell, hg wells, gorbachov, jaques attali, zbigniew brzezinski, arthur c clark etc. and follow the thread. at least they tell the truth fed to them that don’t fit with your version. buy me a coffee for having read your half truths. £4.80 paypal me. you’re a reacter when this has been in the making before you were able to lie. cuttingthroughthematrixdotcom plus reading yourself for anyone that can still think.
Is this gibberish the product of AI? If so, it is best left in the machine. If not, a bit of Word editor might help to make a tiny bit of sense, but I doubt if it would even then.
If anyone can still access Asa Winstanley’s Electronic Intifada it is a very well researched web news page. If anyone is still being fooled by the Zionist narrative please read The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappé and understand that this process has been the same since they violently threw out the Brits and all the other constructs of law and order. Smotrich and Ben Gvir are now recognised as the architects of this final solution and have made laws to mandate the extermination of their hosts. Until the allies can come together to hold the war criminals to account then the expansion of this project will continue. First they came for the Arabs and we did nothing because we were not Arabs…
What is the ‘Generals plan. In my opinion it is Genocide, this is the plan being implemented now, with not a peep out of the Genocide supporter Starmer.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/explainers/israel-gaza-palestine-what-generals-plan
“All of Gaza will starve,” Eiland reasoned, “and when Gaza starves, then hundreds of thousands of Palestinians will be angry and annoyed. And hungry people, they are the ones who will bring about a coup against [Yahya] Sinwar, and that is the only thing that bothers him.”
Eiland also believes other threats to the well-being of Palestinians should be ignored, such as the possibility of an epidemic. “If such a situation exists, it will actually break Hamas’ fighting spirit and shorten the fighting.”
Likewise, he has little time for the vulnerable. In November 2023, Eiland said that Israel should not provide any humanitarian aid to Gaza because “after all, who are the elderly women of Gaza – they are the same mothers and grandmothers of Hamas fighters who committed the terrible crimes on 7 October.”
“The area will, says the plan, be subject to a “full and tight blockade, which includes preventing movement to and from it, and preventing the entry of supplies, including food, fuel and water”.
Anyone remaining will be treated as a combatant. The plan’s YouTube video states that the Hamas operatives who remain can choose to “surrender or die of starvation”. After that, “it will be possible to enter and cleanse the area of Gaza City with almost no enemy”.
Just a reminder……
On the 9th October 2023, Israel’s Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, said on behalf of the Israeli government:
“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything is closed.”
In addition, according to Bloomberg television, 9th October 2023, he said “We are fighting human animals.”
During an interview with Nick Ferarri, of LBC News on 11th October 2023 at the Labour party conference in Albert dock Liverpool, Mr Ferarri posed questions – regarding Israel’s intention to commit grave war crimes, including collective punishment and the withholding of food, water and energy to approximately 2.3 million men, women and children of Gaza -to Mr Starmer.
Mr Ferarri asked Mr Starmer “A siege is appropriate. Cutting off power, cutting off water?” To which Mr Starmer replied “I think that Israel must have, does have, that right. It is an ongoing situation.” (Video evidence here). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdBU3ufYGTY
I am grappling with the idea that the purpose of these raids are as data grabs for MI5, because I expect that, as these journalists are not engaged in armed struggle, whatever intelligence they might want about the circles in which these journalists and activists run, they would have more covert and convenient, yet nonetheless perfectly cromulent, means of obtaining. That said, it does seem very plausible that the precise targeting directives for the police to descend on this or that journalist so abruptly on this or that day are being given by intelligence, or some jewish lobbying group like campaign against anti semitism or whatever. At the same time, SO15 counter terrorism have very close relationship to MI5. But I still don’t understand what they would accomplish with these data grabs that they can’t get through simple PRISM style wiretapping: why do they so badly need the physical devices. I mean if their legal powers are adequate the seize the devices, then it seems like a fair bet that they’re sufficient for seizing data from Google or wherever email servers or whatever. And again I would get it if it was an adversary in armed struggle where tactical intelligence is extremely valuable. But where the battle in the U.K. largely amounts to lawfare the intelligence bang for the effort and trouble buck just seems very limited so I just can’t fully understand the logic of these raids.
Its a good job MI5 don’t have the intelligence to peruse Craig’s commentators, but then again have you seen the head of MI5, a Mr Bean lookalike. [Johnny English]
I assume the purpose of the raids and confiscating physical devices are:
a) Intimidate and inconvenience the individual
b) show that they can act with impunity
c) discourage the rest
As for contacts – I’m guessing if they choose (or the ‘target’ is important enough) it’s child’s play for the security services to obtain the info remotely.
But perhaps scanning a journalist’s physical devices for dangerous radicals like us (most of us) is just easier and cheaper.
Whatever the explanation, the obvious stepping up of raids on journalists and activists recently is a f***ingredients outrage.
At least the buggers must be worried, anyway.
And there are still more of us than there are of them.
Ah, the joy of predictive text… Mods if you fancy deleting my mistake ( I did not intend to type ingredients) please do. Thanks.
Also without his electronic devices Asa Winstanley will be unable to continue his work and if he buys new they can confiscate them as well.
There should be a law that says if you confiscate devices you have to image their contents and return them quickly, return an image or make them accessible at a place where the owner can access them.
Despite the hopeful wishes from the MSM that the killing of Sinwar (why didn’t they take him prisoner from his chair? – he was still alive according to the alleged drone footage), Netanyahu is hell bent on getting the US to do the Donkey Work of ‘eradicating’ Iran.
Maybe the pious wishes of the MSM were so as that they didn’t have to keep lying anymore on the subject. Good liars have to have good memories but, with the internet and archive footage, they can and are always exposed.
The likes of Asa Winstanley and many many other brave online commentators/journalist have to be stopped as they have good memories and footage of most of what has gone on.
The MSM have similar, but as I always say, the best propaganda to use is lying by omission. What the public can’t see can’t be assessed except for the Headline and sub-headline.
It will come to pass that If Netanyahu gets his way vis: Iran just supporting Palestine will be judged as support for Iran and by definition #become a criminal act.
On completing my first degree (more than a few years before you!), I also began the civil service exam process with the idea of entering the FC. However, on reading through the first exam paper, I figured what was required of applicants and knew it wasn’t for me. So I walked out without answering even the first question on the paper. A decade later (1977?), I applied to join the British Council as an Overseas Career Service officer. The procedure was, I think, not dissimilar to that of the civil service – though geared specifically to overseas representation: exhaustive interviews, written exams or tests, chairing a meeting of other applicants, a cocktail party with seniors, an interview with the board. In that year there were a mere 5,000 applicants (far fewer than your 80,000!), but I passed – apparently with flying colours – and began what I thought would be a long career. As it turned out, I left after a few years for personal reasons but not without admiration for the organisation. Very different from your experience at the FCO, which entirely corresponds with my early misgivings. Un saludo en solidaridad.
Margaret Thatcher, contrary to the popular image, was very cautious politically. There were many things that she was very wary of doing.
Her actual views were much worse than her actions as prime minister.
She opposed sanctions against South Africa because, as she stated at the time, they would hit ‘the very people we want to help’.
By that, she meant, of course, the apartheid government and its supporters.
Thatchler tried to abolish the NHS and set off a cabinet rebellion.