Yesterday, the Israeli army used an array of snipers cowering behind a hillock and unmanned drones dropping gas bombs to launch a premeditated killing spree against peaceful unarmed civilian protesters across the border in Gaza.
Snipers cowering behind a mound of dirt picked out their targets
The official spokesperson for the Israeli military admitted, gleefully, that its actions were planned.
The response of the British right-wing organisation Board of Deputies was
“Alarming developments at Gaza border as Hamas once again using its civilians – inc children – as pawns. We call for calm & a return to negotiating table, resulting in a secure, Jewish & democratic Israel alongside a viable & vibrant Palestinian state.”
From a humane perspective it is impossible to understand how anyone could describe the incident as the Board of Deputies did. Willful blindness to humanity is the only probable cause of such a description.
The second sentence above in the quote was clear unashamed dishonesty and a gross misrepresentation of the acts and intent of the Israeli government.
Given its extreme political outlook – a perspective so extreme that it accommodates even the deliberate targetting and shooting of children at a peaceful protest – the Board of Deputies cannot be trusted as a reliable source of analysis on anything.
Today (March 30th 2018), thousands of Palestinians in Gaza took part in a protest against the theft of Palestinian land. The protest was next to the border between Gaza and Israel that had been imposed unilaterally by Israel in breach of international law.
The Israeli army launched an assault on the peaceful protesters using snipers to target individuals and gas bombs were fired into the crowd. All the weapons were fired across the border. More than fifteen protesters have been killed and hundreds injured.
This assault was one of the most brutal and most inhumane acts ever by the Israeli military. The military action was completely unprovoked and unjustifiable. It was cold-blooded murder.
But, most of the mainstream media suffered from an affliction that caused them to avoid describing what happened with any accuracy. According to newspapers and broadcasters in UK and USA Palestinians died, were killed and were hurt in the passive voice when “clashes” occurred.
As shown above, some media outlets didn’t even state that only Palestinians were killed or injured.
Each media outlet chose to avoid reporting that the Israeli military attacked the protesters, across a border, with snipers’ rifles and gas bombs. They chose to portray the incident entirely falsely.
None of these newspapers or broadcasters could claim that there was a lack of evidence: Photographs, videos and first hand accounts were available in real-time.
The refusal to assess what was happening, and subsequent decisions to report inaccurately and inadequately, are ingrained within a lot of the mainstream media whenever Palestine is a news item. Even blatant inexcusable slaughter of civilians cannot persuade their biases to relent.
This week (March 2018), Tory “Secretary of State for Housing, Communities & Local Government” Sajid Javid started a distraction debate by calling left-wing Labour-affiliated Momentum “neo-fascist.” He chose to make the comment with parliamentary privilege because he is too cowardly to express his opinion without that protection. Javid knows the comment is absurd. His exclamation was just a typical Tory belch of petulance designed to use up media time and discussion time. It was a dumb childish distraction.
Javid’s department is an abject failure: Homelessness is increasing rapidly, there are no plans for any social housing building or affordable home building and councils (including Tory-run councils) are going bankrupt due to huge reductions in central government support. He is completely inept and incompetent, and he couldn’t give a damn. Slanderous truculent insults are all he has to offer.
Highlights of Sajid Javid’s career in banking
Sajid Javid didn’t take the common Tory route of Eton-PPE at Oxbridge-PPS-MP. He had a banking career before switching to politics. In other words, he was planted into politics by the banking system. Thus, his ineptitude is not surprising and is also not a hindrance. He is in government as a lobbyist of the financial gangster system.
Deutsche Bank Javid was Managing Director of Deutsche Bank in the early 2000s. Towards the end of his tenure as MD the Bank was a key protagonist in the sale of bad debts, including mortgages, that was a cause of the worldwide financial crisis in that decade. In 2014 Deutsche Bank paid $1.93 billion to settle a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency over mortgage securities the bank sold to mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the previous decade.
Chase Bank In the nineties, Javid worked at Chase Manhattan Bank in the USA. Chase’s history includes exploitation of people throughout South and Central America via manipulation of governments. In the same year that Javid attained the position of vice-president – 1995 – a memo was sent by the bank to its investors:
“[The Mexican government] will need to consider carefully whether or not to allow opposition victories if fairly won at the ballot box. While [the Mexican state of] Chiapas, in our opinion, does not pose a fundamental threat to Mexican political stability, it is perceived to be so by many in the investment community. The government will need to eliminate the Zapatistas [left-wing opposition party supported by indigenous people] to demonstrate their effective control of the national territory and of security policy.”
A few weeks after the memo was published the Mexican government followed orders and sent the army into Chiapas. Villages were emptied and thousands of native Americans fled into the Lacandon rain forest.
Sajid Javid’s insult at Momentum is a small crime compared to his history.
Two weeks ago the Progress mob partook in a coordinated campaign against Jeremy Corbyn because he refused to agree without conditions with what the Tory prime minister had said about the Novichok attack in Salisbury. This campaign included a pointless motion submitted to parliament that was designed to isolate Corbyn while kowtowing to May.
This week the Progress mob revisited their participation in the smear campaign directed at Corbyn of claims of anti-Semitism. Organised by right-wing Board of Deputies a demonstration took place near parliament with the aim of mass-slandering Corbyn and his colleagues. There, the Progress MPs were happy to stand alongside Tory politicians, including the father of modern British racist rabble-rousing Norman Tebbit, and DUP MPs including racist homophobic sectarian bigot Sammy Wilson. Chuka Umunna was photographed stood next to Tory MP Sajid Javid who, two days later in parliament, described Momentum as “neo-fascist.”
Progress MPs Wes Streeting and John Mann “wrote a letter” to Jeremy Corbyn after the demonstration. In it they complained about “front bench spokespeople sharing social media video clips suggesting that concerns about antisemitism amount to a smear campaign.” Such a complaint is an attempt to stifle criticism and is intrinsically dishonest in intent. They asked that Corbyn should “make it clear that those who sought to disrupt and oppose the mainstream Jewish community rally do not speak for you, that their protest was not in your name.” No-one tried to disrupt the demonstration. An additional demo was also against anti-Semitism but supportive of Corbyn. Mann and Streeting have libelled the organisers and the attendees of the second demo.
John Mann debates
Progress was created to try to ensure that Labour never shifted leftward. Everything its MPs do and say is designed to achieve this aim.
Yesterday, a few weeks ahead of council elections on May 3rd (2018), a right-wing lobby group, Board of Deputies, organised a protest outside parliament against Jeremy Corbyn. A few hundred people turned up including rancid bigots from DUP, rabble-rousing racist Norman Tebbit and several Progress MPs. The organisers had claimed that they were protesting against anti-Semitism in the Labour party; they had stated that they thought that the leader of the party had not tackled anti-Semitism strongly enough.
Corbyn has always been resolutely opposed to anti-Semitism. He has no questions to answer. The charge of anti-Semitism against him, or the charge of a lax attitude to it, is entirely false and the Board of Deputies knows that it is false. The protest was a continuation of a smear campaign by right-wing lobbyists, politicians and journalists who are violently opposed to Labour’s tendency leftward. The right-wingers will use any slanderous smear tactic against him and his colleagues regardless of how untrue it is.
If anyone finds themselves stood near to a DUP MP or to Norman Tebbit, or if anyone finds their actions being applauded by the Daily Mail (as yesterday’s protest was), then such a person cannot seriously claim they are fighting against any prejudice at all.
Tebbit at anti-Corbyn demo
The protest was a stunt. It’s objective was to smear the Labour leader in advance of the council elections. Such smears are not working.
Screaming head and free school enthusiast Toby Young, famed for his eugenics – Young the eugenist, for his anti-disabled proposals – Young versus wheelchairs, for his snobbery – Young the snob, and for his lies – for example,Young lies about welfare payments, has lost three professional posts recently following protests against his presence in educational roles. In January, he was unappointed from a fake position at the anti-student, anti-education, pro-far-right platformists Office For Students and last week he walked away/was pushed out the door from his money-for-nothing role at ‘charity’ New Schools Network. (Young had also resigned as a director of the Fulbright Commission that oversees student scholarships between British and US universities.)
Good riddance to an unpleasant, extremely dishonest, dimwitted scammer, perhaps, although both the Office For Students and the New Schools Network exist to promote exactly the rancid politics that Young favours and they will continue to do so without him.
Young has no intelligence, no skills, no talent and no wit and is of no worth whatsoever to society. He is a typical far-right lackey who seeks unearned income for promoting a bigoted, divisive and dishonest political perspective. His entire professional life is a consequence of connections and inherited privilege and is littered with failure after failure. He is first and foremost a self-publicist but he is aided by a prevailing political environment that favours gobshites over people with ability. Young is the antithesis of usefulness.
Like all far-right rabble-rousers, Young is a snivelling little coward. As a response to his third departure this year from a useless post, Young emulated the examples set by Farage, Robinson, Waters, Golding, Rees-Mogg, Trump, Bannon, etc. and cast himself as a victim. Poor little Toby Young was under attack from hoards of naughty lefties and do-gooders who had the nerve to remind everyone of his filthy far-right views and acts. Why can he not be a hardworking bigoted eugenist without some people objecting?
The Mail On Sunday, the newspaper for which Young has a gormless professional troll column, managed to find a “journalist” – Mark Wood – with sufficient venality to manufacture a vomit-inducing article depicting little Toby victimised and fearful.
The opening finger-down-the-throat comment from Wood referred to the “spectacular destruction of his [Young’s] career by social media.” It is with unbounded certainty that it can be stated that Young’s career has never been and never willbe remotely spectacular; indeed, there is no detectable career that could suffer destruction. The claim that social media ruined his career is a far-right translation of “my bigoted views had not been erased and I was found out.”
Wood continued with some quotes from Young that echoed the style of comments a celeb’s PR team farts out when their client has been caught indulging in reprehensible activities:
“It has been a painful learning experience. But, I believe that the lessons I have learned are the ones that we can – indeed must – pass onto our children. The digital world they are growing up in is full of landmines and those of us who have stepped on them have a duty to point them out.”
As the above quote reveals, Young cited the response to offense he caused as the wrongdoer. His actions, including his vulgar grotesque sexism (in social media posts) and his extreme politics, were the reason there were protests against his appointments in educational roles but Young focussed on the objections and not on his own behaviour.
His decision to bring his own children into the discussion was a distraction and a tactic to try to make his public image less immature. Young said that his own children should learn a lesson of not posting too freely on social media; yes, they would not want to be as immature and as stupid as their witless middle-aged father has been. In a general sense, Young should not be giving any advice to children.
Wood’s article was accompanied by a photograph (above) of the Young family at breakfast. It is odd that Toby Young thought it was not problematic to have his children photographed in a national newspaper. Given Young’s notoriety, is it sensible for him to make his own children identifiable to the public? Sense is not one of his characteristics. Young’s children are featured as a simple PR stunt to depict him as a father.
The photograph was posed; it was not a natural scene. Young was being rather rude by sitting with his laptop open at the breakfast table. Something could get spilled on that Toby! If Young is out of a job then what work was he doing that was so important that it couldn’t wait until after breakfast and when sat at a desk? He looked perturbed, befuddled and confused.
According to Wood, Young “expressed his fears over the alleged damaging impact that social media and new technology are having on young minds.” That is, a middle-aged man posted offensive childish tweets and then he warned other people about social media’s problems.
Toby Young’s invasion into education was allowed because of his willingness to assist the current government’s destruction of state education. His far-right views made him an ideal candidate for the Office For Students whose main purpose is to remove obstacles to the promotion of extreme right-wing views at universities. He is a willing tool to be used as a political cog. He follows all the usual far-right routes including wailing about being a victim. Nothing about Young is surprising. Nothing about Young is commendable.
Royal brat Prince Harry visited Ireland yesterday with his fiancée Meghan Markle. They waved and smiled and posed for PR photos in an emptied pub. Another dull day of ten of thousands of pounds of public money being wasted (transportation, security, etc.) on a promotion tour ahead of their publicly funded wedding in May.
There was one significant difference between yesterday’s visit and the couple’s recent visits to Cardiff and Nottingham: Yesterday, there was no prior announcement. The secrecy about the visit was to ensure there would be no protests. To deny protests is anti-democratic. Therefore, the secrecy of the visit is anti-democratic. The secrecy is also an insult to the people who live or work nearby.
Normally, the locations of royal visits don’t matter to the royal pair and their PR team – the photos and video clips in the media are what matters to them. But, a PR stunt in Ireland has significance beyond photos of royal celebs grinning coldly. A pair of royals wandering along streets in Irish towns and cities, laughing and smirking, surrounded by armed British security, is effectively an invasion. It is a deliberate middle-finger to the majority of the population.
Prince Harry. (Library photo unconnected to Ireland visit)
The secrecy of the visit and the clearing out of the pub before the royals stepped inside show that they had no intention of engaging with the public. It was just a series of carefully choreographed poses for promotional purposes. It was a con, as are all royal engagements. But, it was also an arrogant and false demonstration of control against the Irish people, behind a wall of heavily armed British police. It was disgusting. It was an insult. It was cowardly.
It is not known if the royals plan to do any fishing off the coast near Mullaghmore
Hello-hurrah, what a nice day, for the Eton rifles Hello-hurrah, I hope rain stops play, with the Eton rifles ‘Eton Rifles’ – Paul Weller
The rancidness of excrement can be determined by the noxiousness of its odor. There may be a few nutrients within the body of the turd but the violence of its stench overwhelms any of its beneficial facets.
Eton College alumni Eton College might congratulate itself on producing actors Dominic West, Damien Lewis and Tom Hiddlestone, all of whom are feted in Hollywood because they have the right accent, but they are just a trio of posh boys whose acting careers have so much privilege attached that it is impossible to judge how capable they are as actors. However, the real filth from Eton flows into politics.
David Cameron, Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg laughing at the destruction they’ve caused
David Cameron, Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg enjoy many similar personality characteristics including unrestricted venality, an ingrained, relentless determination to be dishonest and deceptive, extremely anti-social attitudes to humanity, complete detachment from reality, unfettered shamelessness, rudeness, petulance, smugness and witlessness. Consequently, they are indifferent to legal and moral frameworks. They are separate from society. They perceive the public as vassals to be exploited and fleeced. Their profession is to do everything they can, regardless of effect, to support wealth terrorists. Their heroes are the slave-owners of the 18th century and all the conmen and confidence tricksters who have ever lived.
All these personality characteristics are necessities for Tories. They define what it is to be a Tory. But, such characteristics are not natural for human beings. These negative personality characteristics need to be induced. Eton College, and other top private schools, exist to ensure that there is a steady malodorous stream of anti-society soulless frauds who can combine continuous dishonesty with obedience to the dominance of financial gangsters.
Eton might erroneously make claims of a high standard of education, particularly given its astronomical fees, but a quick perusal of itsalumni from recent decades (that is, those born 1960s to 1990s) reveals one professor of mathematics and two music composers. The only barrister is David Cameron’s brother. There are no scientists and no poets. However, there are many actors, many Tory MPs and people whose description relates to inherited unearned titles rather than any accomplishment. As a school, it has failed to produce a reasonable quantity of pupils who have become valued members of society. Any state school, in a few decades, would produce a few scientists, architects, engineers, soldiers, etc. whose achievements would be worthy of note. Eton is so short of respectable alumni that it had to include a reality TV star and also someone who is famous for being the son of a royal, before she became a royal.
Eton’s Spencer Matthews, at work
Eton money The fees to attend Eton are huge. The only groups of people who can afford the fees are those with millions of unearned inherited wealth, very successful business people and criminals. Often, the parents of the children have a toe in each of those groups. For example, David Cameron’s father Ian had substantial inherited wealth from a long line of financial gangsters and he was a keen tax avoider; an ancestor of Cameron is a daughter of a former monarch of Britain. David Cameron’s background typifies the upbringing and family of an Eton College pupil.
Given the school’s poor record of useful and worthy alumni, it might be surprising to observe the willingness of parents to part with a lot of money for an Eton College education. However, their eagerness has little or no connection to a desire for their children to enjoy the highest quality education. The financial elite recognises Eton as an important machine in the production of protectors of their ill-gotten wealth. The flow of immune and anti-human gimps out of Eton’s rectum is vital to the maintenance of the wealth terrorists’ control of the distribution and storage of money. The Camerons provide another clear example: The desire to continue centuries of the Cameron family’s embedment in wealth exploitation is the reason Ian Cameron sent his sons to Eton. One son became prime minister and another a barrister; thus, both are able to assist in the continuity of financial gangsterism. It is Eton College’s abilities to instill obedience to the financial elite and to eradicate any tendency toward honesty, integrity or humanity, that are the key selling points to a potential purchaser of an education for their child.
Eton College is classified as a charity and, thus, avoids some tax on profits. Donations to Eton, from alumni or otherwise, are tax-deductible for the benefactor. The fees for education are also tax-deductible. If anyone with a lot of cash hanging around wanted to place that cash out of the tax inspector’s eyes then a nice donation to Eton or fees for the education of their child (or a sponsored child) would achieve that aim while helping to produce another well-trained cog or PR guy in the world of wealth terrorism.
Eton mess All the personality characteristics described above for Cameron, Rees-Mogg and Johnson are taught aggressively at Eton. The creation of heartless goons, subservient to the demands of international financial crime, is the purpose of Eton College. The thieves, con artists and liars who control the flow and storage of money know that Eton is a means to maintain the supply of professional charlatans for the Tory party, the judiciary and the business of finance. That is what Eton is good at. Conversely, as a school, it is ordinary and unremarkable; its status as a school is just a convenience.
Postscript: A recent success of Eton College is Cambridge Analytica chief executive officer and Strategic Communications Laboratories Group director Alexander Nix.
Alexander Nix
Nix’s attitudes to the public and to democracy are products of his education at Eton.
Postscript 2 (added in October 2018): Etonian Malcolm Pearson, a peer and a member of UKIP, invited extreme-right racist thug and professional criminal – assault, mortgage fraud, false passport, contempt of court – Stephen Yaxley-Lennon to the House of Lords for a photo opportunity. Etonians have often been keen helpers for the extreme-right.
Homelessness has always had two causes: A lack of homes and people not being able to afford to live in any available homes. That is it. These two factors have been the causes of homelessness throughout civilisation and in countries with a wide variety of political structures. Equally, a sufficient number of homes and sufficient income for everyone have always been the two respective solutions. That is, the means to end homelessness are clear and the only obstacle is the lack of will to do it.
Since 2010, eight years of Tory rule have created a huge increase in homelessness.
Lack of homes The Tories have been vehemently opposed to any new council house building and they have ensured that all new private property developments have been able to dodge their legal commitments to “affordable” housing even when said developers had received tax breaks that were described as incentives to build such housing. Meanwhile, particularly in London, many luxury apartment blocks have been built that lie empty; they have been “bought” by foreign investors, often as a tax dodge or as aid to money laundering.
Lack of money to live anywhere Under the Tories, there has been an exponential increase in the number of people who cannot afford even the cheapest accommodation. The direct causes of this are huge increases in zero-hours and sub-minimum wage jobs and vicious welfare cuts including bedroom tax, illegal benefit sanctions and restrictions on total welfare paid regardless of family size. All these factors are deliberate consequences of Tory policy.
Tory policies have created the increase in homelessness. It will continue to increase because there are to be further cuts to welfare this year and the Tories have no plans to address exploitative employers or to address the abject lack of homes.
However, the Tories have invented a minister for homelessness. MP Heather Wheeler has been assigned the role. At a visit to a housing project last weekend she answered some questions from the media about homelessness. All quotes by Wheeler below – in italics – are from Wheeler on homelessness.
She was asked about the causes of rough sleeping:
“In truth, I don’t know. That’s one of the interesting things for me to find out over the last eight weeks that I’ve been doing the job.”
The dishonesty of her comment is matched by the deliberate air of detachment. Wheeler knows that Tory policies are the causes of rough sleeping. Clearly, her claim that she intends “to find out” the causes is Tory-speak for saying she intends to spend a long time inventing false causes in order to absolve the Tories of guilt and to create a narrative to suggest the problem cannot be solved easily.
Wheeler responded to a question about the drop in rough sleeping in Scotland with waffle:
“I think that maybe England is a tad more cautious in that we are very keen that we have proper pilots and we assess it.”
Or, homelessness in Scotland is addressed by an SNP government, whereas England suffers a Tory government.
Wheeler offered surprise that there is little available social housing in England:
“I find it fascinating that there is no private-sector rental used at all to place people up here [in Scotland] – it’s all local authority and housing association, because you have supply.”
“Fascinating?” A Tory MP was fascinated that there is an abject shortage of council houses in England. Tory councils have refused to build council homes, other councils have been unable to build council homes due to central funding cuts by the Tory government and councils have been forced by the Tories to sell off council property, but a Tory MP was fascinated that there is a shortage. No, Wheeler was not fascinated by these facts; she was fully aware of them. Her expression of fascination was bad acting and revealed that she intends to operate with bad faith.
When asked if anyone during her visit to the housing project had raised the issue of welfare cuts leading to homelessness Wheeler replied:
“I didn’t hear that, which is refreshing.”
So, we move from “fascinating” to “refreshing.” Wheeler was aware that welfare cuts are the largest cause of homelessness and she was aware that the architects of the cuts knew that homelessness would increase greatly because of the cuts. She didn’t need to hear someone say it at a meeting at a housing project for it to be true – she knew it was true. Her response above made clear that the main cause of homelessness – Tory cuts to benefits – will be ignored. The Tories intend to plough on inhumanely with more devastating attacks on the poorest people that they know will lead to more homelessness and death and Wheeler has no intention of acknowledging that. Her simple use of the word “refreshing” showed that she is determined to stifle any recognition of the main cause of the desperate situation that more and more people encounter.
Wheeler said she was confident that the Tories would achieve a manifesto commitment of halving rough sleeping by 2022, and eradicating it by 2027:
“We’re [the Tories] going to move heaven and earth to get that done.”
Housing all the people who are currently sleeping rough would take a few days if the government had the will to do so. Preventing rough sleeping in the future would require policies on housing, welfare and wages that are diametric opposites of what the Tories have been doing and intend to continue doing. The number of rough sleepers will continue to rise because of Tory policy. Wheeler knows all that and she knows that the said manifesto commitment, like every word in the 2017 manifesto, is a con.
The Tory minister concluded with a repetition of a Tory lie:
“This is about supply. If you don’t sort out supply of affordable housing, there’s another million people living in our lovely country, we need to have greater supply of affordable housing. We are spending £9bn on affordable housing [by March 2021] because we recognise that’s what we have to do.”
The Tories have made similar claims to the above many times and every time it has been a blatant lie.
Minister For Distraction The role of the Minister For Homelessness is not to tackle homelessness. The role is to distract the public from the causes of homelessness.