The Silencing of Gaza: How Media and Politics Shape Narratives of War. In recent months,…
Loyalty to country always.
Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.
We’re back to the same lies that got us into Iraq.
Do we never learn to question the propaganda?
( Ron Paul )
Men in flat caps built our country and Tory men in expensive suits destroyed it.
( Wilfred Soon )
The UK Anti-Terrorism Strategy Has Been Undermined By Relentless Tory Cuts.
When I first heard about the tragic events in Manchester, memories of 7/7 flooded back.
Tony Blair was in Scotland for a G8 meeting.
The day before, we had won our bid to host the Olympics and London was a happy place.
I was chairing Cabinet when we heard about an explosion on the London Underground.
We were told it could be a power outrage.
Then a bus exploded off Russell Square and we realised we were under attack by terrorists.
I hosted the first meeting of COBRA, named after the place it meets – Cabinet Office Briefing Room A.
COBRA co-ordinates a response with experts from the emergency and security services and across local and national government.
The first duty of a government is to protect people. But Manchester highlighted an inconvenient truth for Theresa May.
The reason she has deployed the Army on our streets is because she made sweeping cuts to our emergency services.
The Conservative rhetoric – “We will be resolute in defending the country from terrorism and other security threats” – is not matched by their actions.
The UK anti-terrorism strategy has been undermined by relentless cuts to frontline public services.
Border guards are literally on the front line of combatting terror, but under the Tories more than 1,000 were lost and Border Force budgets cut by 12%.
Police are central to counter-terrorism strategy, but thanks to Mrs May, 20,000 officers went and since 2010 she has cut budgets by more than £2.3billion.
Fire and rescue services are first responders to terrorist incidents.
But 10,000 firefighter jobs have gone since 2010 and budgets have been cut by a third.
Ambulance services are also first responders but cuts have been so severe that response time targets to Category One emergencies have not been met since 2015.
But it’s not just emergency services hit by cuts that could potentially hinder our response.
The Counter Terrorism and Security Act 2015 imposed an additional statutory duty on partner public agencies to identify those vulnerable to radicalisation.
But these agencies are already struggling to provide core services against a background of Tory cuts.
( John Prescott, 28.05.2017 )
You might be an economic illiterate if you think roads created business success and not the other way round.
( Ron Paul )
Why do I find it so annoying to be told cuts in the public services we rely on are essential, by people with tennis courts, swimming pools, nannies, private health insurance and offshore bank accounts!
( Rose Winfold )
Wouldn’t it be great if we could inflict Conservative policies only on people who voted Conservative.
( Wilfred Soon )
We Now Know There Are 23,000 Jihadists On Britain’s Streets.
There can be no doubt the activities of MI5 must remain top secret.
If we knew what they were doing, terrorists would know too – and that would be disastrous.
But secrecy has an added value to the intelligence community because it allows them to keep their mistakes secret.
We know Manchester bomber Salman Abedi had been on MI5’s radar.
We know that on Monday he walked unhindered into Manchester Arena and killed 22 people.
We do not know what happened in between.
And an inquiry is needed to find out.
We also now know that the number of jihadists on Britain’s streets is not the 3,000 we had been led to believe, but 23,000.
That’s 3,000 “live” cases and 20,000 which have been shut down.
Why, we need to know, was Abedi’s case one of the latter?
We now have a picture of the true scale of the terror threat.
And it is truly terrifying.
( Sunday Mirror, 28.05.2017 )
There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions of an audience not practised in the tricks and delusions of oratory.
( Mark Twain )
The environment should be put in the category of our National Security.
Defence of our resources is just as important as defence abroad.
Otherwise, what is there to defend?
( Robert Redford )
I’m not anti-social, I’m selectively social.
There’s a difference.
( Rose Winfold )
The Police Do Not Have The Resources To Manage.
The NHS is in financial crisis, facing record levels of patient demand, routinely missing key targets and under unprecedented operational pressure.
Schools and colleges face cuts of around 8%.
Local authorities and social services are at breaking point due to cuts and increased demand for social care.
More than 40% of councils are already cutting frontline services.
We now hear that the community knew the Manchester bomber was a risk and reported him five years ago on the Anti-Terrorist Hotline.
We can’t be sure cuts contributed to the atrocity in Manchester.
But serious questions need to be asked.
As the Police Federation said, the Army has only been deployed because “the police simply do not have the resources to manage an event like this on our own”.
( John Prescott, 28.05.2017 )
The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.
( Edward Paul Abbey )
A religion will hide the truth if the truth would destroy their religion.
Science will hide the truth if the truth would destroy their theory.
Why is it that countries which we call ‘strong’ are so powerful in creating wars but so weak in bringing peace?
Why is that giving guns is so easy but giving books is so hard?
We have already taken many steps in the right direction.
Now is the time to take a leap.
( Malala Yousafzai )
The Tories Sense Domination Again – They Want To Party Like It’s 1983.
I remember the night of June 9, 1983 like a slo-mo flashback from a slasher film.
I felt sick to the pit of my stomach knowing that undiluted Thatcherism would now be unleashed.
That with a 144-seat majority she would go after her enemies with a merciless vengeance and the country would be brutally divided between Us (her disciples) and Them (the rest).
It was.
She declared war on the unions, ripping apart whole communities.
She privatised key publicly-owned industries, handing the profits to rich pals in the City.
She sucked up so hard to a right-wing U.S. President that Britain became a virtual 51st state.
She dismantled Labour-led local authorities, replacing them with unelected quangos run by hand-picked Tory stooges.
Taxes for the richest were slashed while at the bottom, unemployment rose to 3.4 million.
Inner cities were ravaged as crime soared, drugs were rife, kids’ lives written off and pensioners left to rot in fear.
Our booming North Sea oil revenues were wasted on a welfare bill which spawned a culture of dependence as many families’ only hope of a payslip was a dole cheque.
As Theresa May tries to sell herself as Maggie 11 (replacing Argentine dictator Galtieri with the EU’s Juncker in her woeful 80s Iron Lady tribute act) and as her colleagues and lackeys paint Jeremy Corbyn as a shambolic, unelectable Michael Foot 11, they arrogantly believe another landslide is theirs for the taking.
The Tories have called this election for one reason: they sense domination again.
They want to party like it’s 1983 and crush their enemies.
Why else do you think City backers gave them £3.7million in one week in May, ten times more than Labour received, and the billionaire owners of our overwhelmingly right-wing Press are rabid in their demonisation of Corbyn?
Before that 1983 election, Neil Kinnock correctly predicted the consequences of a decisive Tory victory: “I warn you not to be ordinary. I warn you not to be young. I warn you not to fall ill. I warn you not to get old.”
( Brian Reade, 03.06.2017 )
When talking to a stupid person, it’s a good idea to pretend you are not stupid.
The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the constitution so the second will not become the legalised version of the first.
( Thomas Jefferson )
Deceit for personal gain is a shameful recurring crime among our politicians and so-called public servants.
He knows nothing, and he thinks he knows everything.
That points clearly to a political career.
( George Bernard Shaw )
The BBC’s Election Coverage Has Been Very Pro-Tory.
I find it funnier than Theresa May’s Lord Lucan act that her party have complained to the BBC about an audience she couldn’t be bothered addressing.
Apparently the crowd invited to Wednesday’s leader’s debate – carefully selected by ComRes – was wildly left-wing, meaning the BBC is run by Corbynistas.
I wonder if the complainants watched the BBC’s 10 O’clock news on Tuesday, which led on Jeremy Corbyn screwing up a radio interview and never mentioned George Osborne calling the Tory manifesto “the most disastrous in living memory” – despite ITV and Sky going big on it?
My reading of this election is that if anything, the BBC’s coverage has been very pro-Tory, possibly because its bosses are desperate to keep those right-wing critics who want the licence fee abolished off their back.
Which is far more of a threat to our democracy than a polling firm not pulling together an audience that satisfies the Daily Mail.
( Brian Reade, 03.06.2017 )
Our governments are full of career politicians, interested only in themselves, not caring a damn about the welfare of the people.
When the rich rob the poor it’s called business.
When the poor fight back it’s called violence.
( Mark Twain )
Made To Walk Behind His Mother’s Coffin.
Fair play to Prince Harry for coming clean about how he felt being made to walk behind his mother’s coffin days after her tragic death.
I was reporting from the Mall that day, and saw close-up a 12-year-old boy who was clearly traumatised yet felt a duty to look stoic.
It bordered on child abuse.
Harry also told Newsweek he doesn’t know a single Royal who wants to become a monarch.
Which is fabulously frank but won’t go down well with the Firm, as it allows those of us who don’t see ourselves as “subjects” to ask: When can we have our land back, and when can we become a Republic?
Gawd bless you, Harry.
( Brian Reade, 24.06.2017 )
I think I need to see somebody who knows about mad people to tell me that I’m not one of them.
Patriotism is a conviction that your country is better because you were born in it.
( George Bernard Shaw )
The US Military’s Biggest Classified Leak.
WikiLeaks soldier Chelsea Manning wept as she thanked ex-President Barack Obama for freeing her from prison.
Transgender Manning, 29, speaking for the first time since being released after the US military’s biggest classified leak, said: “I was given a chance, that’s all I wanted.”
Obama commuted her 35-year sentence just before he left office.
She served seven years.
British-raised Manning had been an intelligence analyst in Iraq when she passed 700,000 documents, videos and diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks.
She said on US TV she did it as she felt a “responsibility to the public”.
The ex-US Army private added: “No one told me to do this.”
( Christopher Bucktin, 10.06.2017 )
Men were given strength by God to protect women.
So, if you are a man and you deliberately harm a woman, you have no right to call yourself a man.
You’re an asshole.
Human greed and ignorance have no limits, and the casualty will be nature, climate and biodiversity.
( Rose Winfold )
Boris Johnson Is Permanently Appearing In A Two Ronnies Sketch.
A year ago he stood before a bus promoting a blatant lie that Brexit would free up £350million a week for the NHS.
After the Grenfell Tower blaze, footage surfaced of him as London Mayor telling a politician who challenged the wisdom of his fire service cuts to “get stuffed”.
And this week he did a radio interview with Eddie Mair in which he didn’t have the faintest grasp of what his government had announced in the Queen’s Speech.
Yet Boris Johnson wasn’t mercilessly trolled like Diane Abbott for a similar car crash interview, and he didn’t lead the BBC News the way Jeremy Corbyn did when he struggled to get his numbers right on a manifesto pledge.
Despite being Foreign Secretary.
Media bias against the Left?
Probably.
Media fawning over a dangerous, amoral egomaniac who hams up a loveable buffoon persona?
Definitely.
Mair pointed out to him during that car crash that he wasn’t appearing in a Two Ronnies sketch.
But in a way, Johnson permanently is.
Because he couldn’t give a flying fork handle about the consequences of his actions so long as he seizes the Tory crown.
Which sadly for us all he no doubt will one day.
( Brian Reade, 24.06.2017 )
April Fool’s Day ..
A day when people pause to think if what they read or see on the internet is true or not.
A skill sorely lacking during the rest of the year.
Evolutionists have been digging fossil strata for about 140 years looking for these hypothetical forms.
They have found millions of invertebrate fossils and millions of fish fossils; yet nobody has ever found even one that is midway between them.
The Seven Social Sins.
Wealth without work.
Pleasure without conscience.
Knowledge without character.
Commerce without morality.
Science without humanity.
Worship without sacrifice.
Politics without principle.
( Frederick Lewis Donaldson, 20.03.1925 )
Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer but the right answer.
Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past let us accept our own responsibility for the future.
( John F. Kennedy )
I will never understand how politicians who call themselves Christian can read the Gospels and then treat the poor and the sick like dirt.
( James Martin )
We’ve become now an oligarchy instead of a democracy.
( Jimmy Carter )
The Tories Will Never Shed Enough Tears To Wash The Blood Off Their Hands.
Before that towering inferno stopped us all in our tracks we were talking about vellum.
Yes, vellum.
The goatskin parchment on which the Queen’s Speech has to be written, which takes days for ink to dry on it, and was supposedly stopping the State Opening Of Parliament.
Like men in tights with black rods, us British have to do things just right when it comes to making our law.
It’s tradition.
It’s what sets us apart from the riff-raff.
As for the laws themselves, well, they’re secondary, really.
Take last year’s Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Bill, proposed by Labour, which may have stopped that Grenfell Tower inferno had the government voted for it.
But Tory MPs voted it down, 72 of whom were landlords who would have been out of pocket through all the extra nanny state interference.
One of them, Philip Davies, argued it would put “a huge burden on landlords” who are “an easy target for the Left in this country”.
They certainly are now, Phil.
But not for the Right, who believe landlords (in many cases, them) should be free to make as much rent as they want without being bogged down by all that expensive red tape.
Not that the Right is totally against state intervention in housing.
Ask Jacob Rees-Mogg’s in-laws, whose ancestral pile, the 365-room Wentworth Woodhouse, was given a £7.6million restoration grant last year.
The same Rees-Mogg who repeatedly voted for the Bedroom Tax, which punished people with one extra room.
Oh yes, the Establishment can always find that Magic Money Tree when it suits them.
Which is why we’re spending £369million refurbishing 775-room Buckingham Palace to make it fit for one family, but can’t find the £200,000 to put sprinklers in flats a stone’s throw away, where 600 people lived, literally on top of each other.
The Tory media loves to bang on about how “elf ‘n’ safety” has gone mad and red tape is a needless burden on business.
Some have even maliciously tried to blame the Grenfell blaze on EU regulations, despite the killer cladding being banned in Germany because it’s deemed flammable.
But not here, where since Thatcher’s time we’ve been cutting corners to aid private profiteers.
Many on the Right hail Brexit as a golden opportunity to throw all of the EU’s overbearing rules and regulations on a bonfire.
Oh, the irony of that phrase, when we look at the heartbreaking inferno in London.
During the election campaign, Theresa May told us she wanted to lead a government that would rule for ALL the country.
Long-time Tory-watchers laughed out loud, knowing they never have and never will.
Grenfell Tower is a big, ugly, smoking symbol of the Tory’s callous lies.
A symbol made even uglier by news that May’s chief of staff Gavin Barwell sat on a report as housing minister which warned that such tower blocks were vulnerable to deadly fires.
He didn’t care, just as the local Tory council and his Government didn’t care.
Because all they cared about was cutting council budgets, fire brigade budgets, social housing budgets, safe in the knowledge that if the worst happened, it wouldn’t be their family left devastated, but the powerless ones at the bottom who don’t count.
Still, next week the vellum will be ready and ancient pomp and circumstance will take over Westminster as Her Majesty reads out May’s self-serving agenda, leaving many of those landlord Tory MPs teary-eyed with patriotism.
But they’ll never shed enough tears to wash the blood off their hands.
( Brian Reade, 17.06.2017 )
Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.
( Theodore Roosevelt )
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
( Ephesians, 6:12, King James version )
Society is like a stew.
If you don’t stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top.
( Edward Paul Abbey )
Food For Thought Next Time You Vote.
Certain joyous things have gone unsung about last week’s election.
Like one-time MP and wannabe Hello! celebrity Simon Danczuk, who said Jeremy Corbyn had lost touch with the ordinary people of Rochdale, so stood against him as an independent there to prove his point.
And lost his deposit.
Or the difference in calibre of the real celebrities who nailed their colours to the mast.
Jeremy Corbyn attracted some of the cleverest, funniest, most talented ones – including Stephen Hawking, Danny Devito, Maxine Peake, Rag ‘n’ Bone Man, Charlotte Church, Ricky Gervais, Steve Coogan, Jessica Hynes and Eddie Izzard.
While Theresa May drew on the backing of Jim Davidson, Peter Stringfellow, John McCririck and, erm, Katie Hopkins.
A guest list for a Celebrity Come Dine With Me episode that would have you serving arsenic fritters, followed by polonium pie, then cyanide soufflé.
Food for thought next time you vote.
( Brian Reade, 17.06.2017 )
In 2012, research in New Zealand found an irreversible reduction in intelligence is just one cost of smoking cannabis from your early teens.
Religions, invented by man, have increasingly become a corrupt mechanism of manipulating large chunks of the population and attacking humane thought.
( Len Firswood )
Prices Of Rail, Water And Energy Keep Outstripping Pay After Tory Privatisation.
Virgin Trains has a TV advert out telling customers that when it comes to travel there’s no better choice than them.
To the soundtrack of Spandau Ballet’s True, a woman called Valerie arrives relaxed, stress-free, smiling and punctual at a job interview, having taken one of their lovely trains.
Meanwhile, an alternative Valerie is also shown arriving late, dishevelled and suicidal having gone by car.
Well, here’s my latest Valerie experience.
On Sunday I needed to book a standard-class open return from Liverpool to London to get to a job there the following morning.
If you haven’t done this kind of thing for a while I’d advise you sit down when you do in case you have a stroke.
Virgin wanted £318 (first class was £484) for taking me on a two-hour journey to London and back home again.
For that money I could have booked a weekend for two in Rome, and had enough left over to bribe a Swiss Guard to give me an audience with the Pope.
There are no planes from Liverpool to London, and motorways are slower than a cart and horse, so I had to use Virgin.
But I wasn’t going to give old Beardie £318, so bought a £159, second-class single for the 7am train which meant at least I’d get to the job in good shape and on time.
Well, sort of.
I was asked to pay extra for wi-fi (despite our local buses giving it free), struggled to get a laptop power-point even though the train was half-full, and it arrived in London 21 minutes late.
Meaning, unlike Valerie, I was late, stressed and snarling.
Virgin likes to tell you about all their cheap fares, but they need to be booked weeks in advance.
If you don’t, unless you want to travel in the off-peak hours, they delight in making tax-exile tycoon Branson even richer.
Take a train between major cities abroad and you’ll be baffled at how cheap it is in comparison.
You’ll also ask yourself why our government gives massive state handouts to private firms then lets them exploit commuters as they run a virtual transport monopoly.
For those who looked at Labour’s manifesto and said Britain can’t afford to go back to nationalisation, I’d say we can’t afford not to.
Between 2010 and 2015 the East Coast line was run by the taxpayer and returned £1billion in premiums, as well as several millions in profits, to the Treasury.
When the Tories re-privatised it again in 2015, new owners, Virgin, immediately hiked prices.
A senior Labour figure told me after the election campaign that nationalisation had been a big policy winner on the door-steps.
Because as prices of rail, water and energy keep outstripping pay, a majority of voters realise one of the biggest follies we ever made was flogging off our vital industries to private companies.
Many of whose shareholders are foreign governments profiting from UK consumers to subsidise their own.
Had the Tories won a landslide two weeks ago it would now be full-steam ahead for even more privatisation.
Chunks of the NHS are already being flogged off to private firms, one of whom is, surprise surprise, Virgin Care.
Who we know, from our experience of Virgin Trains, are only interested in running parts of the NHS because their Caribbean exile boss wants to make Britain a better place.
And definitely not to make loads more money screwing the already screwed tax-payer further into the ground.
( Brian Reade, 24.06.2017 )
The Earth will continue to cleanse itself while material and negative things collapse and cease to be.
( William Roache )
Poor God, how often He is blamed for all the suffering in the world.
It’s like praising Satan for allowing all the good that happens.
Will This Steaming Idiot Dare Show His Face.
Beverley town council in Yorkshire is supporting this weekend’s Great Get Together in memory of murdered MP Jo Cox, inviting all the locals to join in.
I wonder if the town’s Tory councillor Dominic Peacock, who wrote on Facebook shortly after Jo’s murder that he’d “just donated the steam off my piss” to the appeal in her name, will heed the call and take part?
If so, can I suggest the best way for him to get involved is to be placed in stocks in a pub toilet and charge locals a fiver to stand over him and let off a bit of steam.
( Brian Reade, 17.06.2017 )
Boris Helps Hitler Achieve His Ambition.
The number of Britons who’ve applied to become German citizens has jumped by 361% since last year’s EU referendum, with experts saying it will soar even higher as Brexit approaches.
So take a bow Boris Johnson and your Leave campaign chums.
Your bus that promised to give £350million a week back to the NHS did more to ensure Hitler’s ambition to make British people German citizens than his entire Luftwaffe fleet.
( Brian Reade, 17.06.2017 )
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