Thursday 31 January 2019

Winston Churchill: Close, But No Cigar

If An Eye Offend Thee

The call by men at Notre Dame for the university to block pornographic websites raises the question of why no such filter was already in place at Notre Dame.

But halting and reversing the proliferation of pornography is one of the great pro-life causes of our age. How many abortions must result from its production? It is not possible to be pro-life and to have any contact whatever with pornography.

Moreover, if the technology exists to identify pornographic websites in order to block them at certain institutions, or in order to require age verification, then the technology exists to block those sites altogether. That, therefore, is what needs to be done, by law.

Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

That Loosed This Scourge

Remember that IS has never attacked Israel, and that it went so far as to apologise when it once accidentally hit some IDF troops, something that one would only ever do to an active ally, as you read the words of a former Special Assistant to President Reagan, Doug Bandow:

Christians and other religious minorities continue to be at risk in the Middle East, now, it is said, because the Trump administration intends to withdraw from Syria. Their fate long has been of concern in Washington. During his ill-fated presidential campaign, Sen. Marco Rubio complained that “due to the scourge of radical Islam, some churches that have existed since the Book of Acts are on the brink of ruin.” 

However, it was promiscuous military intervention backed by Rubio and many Christian leaders that loosed this scourge upon Middle Eastern Christians. Indeed, absent the Iraq invasion, there would be no Islamic State. In practice, Mideast Christians may have no more dangerous enemy than Uncle Sam. U.S. policy, often backed by influential (if misguided) American evangelical leaders, has consistently painted a target on their coreligionists in the birthplace of Christianity. 

Now, to redress the ill consequences of their earlier policy prescriptions, some evangelicals want to conscript their fellow countrymen to intervene militarily on behalf of the Christians behalf in the same region. Washington should continue, presumably forever, to illegally occupy Syria’s north, and confront Turks, Iranians, Russians, Syrians, and ISIS fighters in a region of no serious security interest to America. 

Assuaging one’s guilt for past mistakes is not a valid reason to go to war, however. 

Washington has attacked Mideast Christians for years and on multiple fronts. The most enduring problem has been the uncritical embrace by many evangelicals of Israel, to the exclusion of Palestinian Christians. In 2016 Republican presidential candidates were particularly shameless in competing to give the most absolute and fulsome endorsement of Benjamin Netanyahu’s radical government and occupation policies. 

Yet Christians living in the West Bank suffer under military rule and de facto colonization by sometimes violent settlers, who often make “price tag” attacks on local Christians. In contrast, noted the State Department, “Relations between Palestinian Christians and Muslims were generally good, with both groups focusing more on ethnic and political similarities than religious differences.” On one trip to Israel I had dinner with several Arab Christians in Bethlehem, in the occupied West Bank, and they talked of inconvenience, hardship, harassment, fear, and discrimination. 

Even in Israel proper, vandalism and harassment of Christian property and clergy, respectively, by ultra-Orthodox activists is common.  The extremist group Lehava explicitly targets Christians; its head, Benzion Goptstein, called them “vampires and blood suckers” who should be expelled. Official Israeli policy is overtly hostile to Christians who visit to promote their faith. But evangelical leaders usually say nothing. I met Melkite Catholic Archbishop Abuna Elias Chacour a few years ago, who asked why “does friendship with Jews mean enmity with Palestinians” for U.S. Christians? 

As a result of Washington’s stance, Christians elsewhere in the Middle East and Muslim nations beyond often are blamed for backing Israel and its mistreatment of Palestinians, even when these Christians stand for Palestinians. Indeed, with Christianity considered to be the official religion of the United States, many Muslims see indigenous Christians as Washington’s puppets. Alas, the charge matches the mood in conspiracy-minded Muslim communities. 

But no single policy has been as injurious to Middle Eastern Christians as Washington’s simultaneously promiscuous and disastrous military interventions, most notably the invasion of Iraq. First to suffer were Iraqi Christians. They lived under the same political repression as Muslims, but were free to worship, work, and live, unlike in countries such as totalitarian Saudi Arabia. Indeed, the ruling Baath Party originally was formed by a Christian; a (presumably nominal) Christian, Tariq Aziz, later served both as foreign minister and vice president under Hussein. 

The U.S. invasion, which overthrew Hussein, immediately empowered Iran, Iraq’s ruthless majority-Shia neighbor and religious persecutor. Worse was the ensuing sectarian war. Although mostly between newly empowered Shiites and freshly ousted Sunnis, Christians and other religious minorities were caught in the crossfire. Targeted with kidnapping and extortion by common criminals and shootings and bombings by Islamist radicals, Christians fled by the hundreds of thousands to Kurdistan, Jordan, Syria—another secular dictatorship which did not persecute—and beyond. The Bush administration refused to do anything to assist Christians harmed by its policies lest it be accused of favoring America’s coreligionists. 

But the killing did not stop with Al Qaeda in Iraq, which arose only because of George W. Bush’s disastrously counterproductive invasion. That group morphed into the Islamic State, which erupted with extraordinary ferocity in 2014 in Iraq and Syria. It slaughtered anyone who did not hold to its radical Sunni faith: liberal Sunnis, Shiites, Yazidis, Christians, and other religious minorities. Although the Obama administration targeted ISIS, it simultaneously sought to overthrow the Assad government in Syria, which posed the most important barrier to that nation becoming part of the Islamic State’s planned caliphate. 

Bashar al-Assad was no political liberal, but Christians and members of other minority faiths, such as Alawites (a Shia offshoot of which Assad is a member), could live their faith unmolested. When I visited Syria last August an Alawite businessman told me that whatever the criticisms of Assad, there was only one choice when the civil war started. Another Alawite said that the alternative to Assad was “chaos and the jungle.” The slogan shouted by supposed “moderates” demonstrating against the regime, before the outbreak of hostilities, was “Christians to Beirut, Alawites to the grave.” 

Once war engulfed the country, religious minorities were among the chief victims. Admitted the State Department at the time: “Extremists groups targeted Shia, Alawites, and religious minorities with killings, kidnappings, torture, and arrests in the areas of the country under their control.” More specifically, the Islamic State “required Christians to convert, flee, pay a special tax, or face execution in territory it controls, and systematically destroyed churches, Shia shrines, and other religious sites.” Yet Washington sought to remove the Syrian government, effectively backing the expansion of the radicals. 

 U.S. policy was viewed with horror by many Middle Eastern Christians, especially those close to the conflict. On a trip to Jordan and Lebanon with a U.S.-based humanitarian group I met several Christian aid workers active in Syria. No one had anything good to say about Washington’s determination to overthrow Assad. One told me: “You Americans don’t know what you are doing” by targeting the Syrian leader. They already saw the Islamists’ movie in Iraq and didn’t like the ending. They certainly didn’t want a repeat experience: if radicals took over Syria, then where could Christians and other minorities flee? 

The debacle in Libya added fuel to the fire. Of course, responsibility for U.S. involvement falls largely on President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (who later giggled uproariously when asked about Muammar el-Qaddafi’s death). But most of the usual GOP suspects also backed the Obama administration’s decision to intervene in the Libyan civil war. Sen. John McCain and Sen. Lindsey Graham, the unofficial leaders of Washington’s bipartisan War Party, did the full Maori Haka in an attempt to involve the United States. It was another grand victory, which, alas, resulted in multiple competing governments, empowered numerous armed militias, spread weapons throughout the region, and left a vacuum partly filled by the Islamic State, which ostentatiously murdered Egyptian Copts laboring in Libya.

Frankly, it is a wonder that Mideast Christians do not run in horror whenever they see an American coming their way. 

However, U.S. Christians apparently learned nothing. They want U.S. troops to stay in Syria—illegally and without congressional authorization—apparently on the theory a couple thousand Americans, otherwise engaged in solving a multitude of regional ills, also can safeguard religious minorities. It is a fool’s errand. 

The good news is that most Christians live in areas retaken by the Assad government, even though Washington and its allies aided Islamist radicals, including, bizarrely, the local Al Qaeda affiliate. Whether Assad’s resurgence is seen as positive or negative from the perspective of U.S. policy, it clearly is good for Christians and other religious minorities. That leaves those living in northern Kurdish areas. For instance, Nina Shea of the Hudson Institute argued that “we do have interests in the region that need to be considered, including the protection of Christians, and the Kurds.” 

Far more apocalyptic, even hysterical, was retired Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin of the Family Research Council, who appeared to be channeling the Apostle John on the coming end times. “If the U.S. withdraws from this part of Syria, then Turkey—whose recent claim to religious freedom fame is its unjust detention of Pastor Andrew Brunson—is ready to step in,” Boykin said. “Our withdrawal would also allow Iran to expand its influence in the region and menace its neighbors, including Israel. Violent jihadists everywhere will see it as a signal to slaughter Christians, Yazidis, and others.” 

There are interests, as Shea argues, but they are modest. In contrast, Boykin is wrong in almost every instance. Iran already is involved in Syria, at the invitation of Damascus’, to suppress the U.S.-supported insurgency. Tehran’s involvement has had no impact on Syrian Christians (and a couple thousand Americans in the north will not prevent further Syrian-Iranian cooperation). 

In case Boykin didn’t notice, violent jihadists began slaughtering Christians and others after Washington helpfully removed Saddam Hussein. Such killings have nothing to do with the U.S. forces in Syria. And the Islamic State has been defeated as a caliphate, losing more than 99 percent of its onetime territory. Syria, Russia, Turkey, Iran, Jordan, Iraq, and the Gulf States collectively can clear out the final one percent. 

No doubt, an invasion by Turkey, a supposed U.S. ally, would be bad news for the Kurds, though Ankara has been repressive, not genocidal. Christians are less obviously at risk. Turkey is not a particularly hospitable home, but better than most of the Middle East. Brunson’s arrest was not a matter of religion: tens of thousands of Muslim Turks have been rounded up, most on similarly flimsy pretexts out of the 2016 attempted coup. Indeed, Ankara may have detained him as a bargaining chip with Washington over the fate of Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen. 

Still, Bassam Ishak, president of the Syriac National Council of Syria, complained: “If Turkey invades, our churches and our people will be gone.” David Curry of Open Doors proclaimed: “Left to protect themselves, Christians will become extinct.” That likely is hyperbole but, given the horrid experience of Christians in the aftermath of Washington’s blundering destruction of Iraq and Libya, is an understandable fear. If true, it further calls into question prior U.S. policy, which sparked the ongoing destruction of Middle Eastern Christianity. The greatest danger for local Christians actually lies with Ankara’s Arab allies—supposedly “moderate” insurgents also long backed by Washington. Which did Washington support them against the Assad government? 

However, if Washington is supposed to occupy territory to protect even small populations of religious and ethnic minorities, it should place permanent garrisons all over the region. Indeed, the U.S. should impose full-scale occupations of Libya, Iraq, Egypt, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia. In all of them Christians are treated wretchedly. The better approach would be to encourage the Kurds to negotiate with Damascus—in fact, talks have been ongoing—to reestablish government control over the region. Allowing Syrian authorities to manage the border likely would forestall further Turkish intervention. And Damascus already has proved that it will safeguard Christians.

In any case, the U.S. military is not a tool for sectarian religious leaders to use to protect their own. War is a horrid blunt instrument. America’s seemingly endless Middle Eastern battles have killed thousands of Americans, wounded tens of thousands of U.S. personnel, slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and others, created millions of refugees throughout the region, destroyed Iraq’s indigenous Christian community, visited horror on other religious and ethnic minorities, spread chaos and weapons throughout the Mideast, created and strengthened murderous jihadist groups, and enhanced Iran’s stature. Quite a result, all supported by many leading American evangelicals. Washington’s foolish military adventurism is the fount of the crisis facing Middle Eastern Christianity.  

Military involvement in the Middle East should reflect the interests of the United States—all of its people—not just evangelicals. But Syria has never mattered to the United States In fact, it was allied with the Soviet Union during the entire Cold War. Even before the civil war Damascus avoided challenging Israel; today’s wrecked state has no interest in confrontation. Absent full-scale war Washington cannot stop the sovereign governments of Syria, Iran, and Russia from cooperating with one another. 

ISIS as a physical caliphate is gone. Surrounding states have the incentive and ability to finish the job. American military involvement actually enhances ISIS as Islamist inspiration globally. Washington has no leverage to oust the Assad government, and doing so would create a huge risk for Christians and everyone else not a radical Sunni. It is time for Washington to bring home its forces. 

Evangelical leaders who once preached morality and purity have sacrificed their prophetic role by publicly embracing, often sycophantically, President Donald Trump. Their consistent support for war, irrespective of the awful consequences, further diminishes their religious witness in America today. They increasingly are seen by others as just another selfish interest group, unconcerned about the destruction, death, and chaos resulting from the policies they back. Supporting continued American involvement in the Syrian civil war is the latest, most tragic example of evangelical myopia.

Undue Leniency

For all their claims that they could earn twice as much outside Parliament, more than half of MPs who lose their seats are still unemployed a year later. When they can find work, then it very often as a favour from a friend who has fared better at the hands of the electorate. But that then ties them to the fortunes of their patrons. If Theresa May fell, then Gavin Barwell would fall with her. And when David Davis fell, then Stewart Jackson fell with him.

Had Fiona Onasanya been sentenced to 12 months or more, for a traffic infraction with which someone else would never even have been charged, then she would automatically have lost her seat. Hence the attempt, almost certainly doomed anyway since the decision would rest with the Court of Appeal rather than with the Attorney General, to seek a review of her sentence for "undue leniency". Well, if that is to become a political weapon, then bring it on, along with judicial review of decisions to prosecute or not. But in any case, Onasanya still has a live appeal. 

And even if proxy voting is not yet available in these circumstances, if Onasanya cannot be an MP on full pay throughout her six weeks in prison, through pairing (that is, voting only) at Westminster and through leaving the staff to get on with it in the constituency, then how was the Member of Parliament for North West Durham able to do that for six months in the second half of last year? Indeed, she had not been due to return to work until the end of this month. But someone must have made a fuss.

Sustainable Development

The Secretary of State for International Development, who in a clear conflict of interest wishes to spend her budget on the Royal Navy in which she herself is a Reservist, has described the target of spending 0.7 per cent of Gross National Income on overseas development assistance as "unsustainable".

We need the specification in the Statute Law that the United Kingdom's aid to any given country be reduced by the exact cost of any space programme, or of any nuclear weapons programme, or of any nuclear submarine programme, or of any foreign aid budget of that country's own, but with the money thus saved remaining within the budget of the Department for International Development, and with the 0.7 per cent target still resolutely intact.

Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Rejewelling Our Crown

The urgent need for trade agreements with the BRCS countries must not and need not preclude sharp criticism of their respective governments. But nor must that, in turn, preclude a willingness to learn from them.

The Congress Party may be better than the BJP, but it still has terrible failings. Yet it is moving, if not quite towards the Universal Basic Income, then towards something that can only end up there, once it had begun to be implemented.

That is one of several reasons to hope, on balance, for a Congress Party victory at the forthcoming Indian General Election. But even without that, the idea is now out there.

Are we to be left behind, apparently unable to do these things while India can? Well, look at our railways.

But we need to get our act together on those. And we need to get our act together on this, too. We need the Universal Basic Income.

Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. 

It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. 

I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Discovering The New World

While the Hard Left's is not the only possible way of interpreting the facts about Latin America, for decades the Hard Left has been the only section of British politics to have bothered to learn those facts.

In its greatest ever triumph, it has elected and reelected as Leader of the Labour Party one of its own most accomplished experts on the subject.

Between them, Jeremy Corbyn's and Chris Williamson's knowledge of that rapidly rising continent is approaching the encyclopedic.

Their enemies within and beyond the Labour Party may wish to question their analysis. But they cannot do so, because they have chosen to remain perfectly ignorant of the data to be analysed. So all that they can do is scream abuse.

Alas, those abusive screamers predominate within both main parties on the floor of the House of Commons, where they also seem to provide all of the Liberal Democrats, all of the Scottish Nationalists, and all of the Democratic Unionists. 

Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. 

It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. 

I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Attack State Red?

I almost admire the gall of someone like Colonel Richard Kemp, who thinks that his role in the war in Afghanistan gives him some kind of moral or intellectual authority.

More is the pity, compared to the alternatives available, but the wars in Iraq and Libya did not end with Saddam Hussein and Colonel Gaddafi back in power, nor did they take half a generation to bring that about. But days or even hours from now, the war in Afghanistan will end after seventeen years, right back where it started, with the "Taliban" as the winners. The people with somewhere else to go will always go back there eventually. But even the Viet Cong did not have to wait this long.

Over those years, Britain has moved from a country that was never very good at voluntary military recruitment or at looking after veterans, to a country where neither public schoolboys nor the sons of the Daily Mail reading classes will even join up anymore, where staunchly Conservative businessmen will not employ veterans, where staunchly Conservative landlords will not house them, and where Conservative councils in places like the West End and the South Coast will neither employ nor house them, even when that leaves them sleeping on the streets. I hope that Kemp is exactly as proud of that as he should be.

Not that he will ever sleep on the streets, of course. Again, more is the pity. But we may console ourselves that his obvious political ambitions are doomed. The British have never cared for military politicians, even in better days than these. No one who had ever been a member of the Armed Forces has led either main party into a General Election in 40 years, and he was defeated. No one like that has led a party to victory since as long ago as 1970, the only defeat of electorally the most successful member of the War generation, a perfectly healthy man who had never worn a uniform, yet who had still managed to come out of the War with the OBE before he was 30.

Alas, those who are equally unblooded, but who have a weird Beta Male crush on it all, remain powerful within both main parties on the floor of the House of Commons, if nowhere else. Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Scoring In Extra Time

I told you so. I said it yesterday. 

Theresa May always used to say, "The United Kingdom will be leaving the European Union on 29th March." But now she just says, "The United Kingdom will be leaving the European Union." 

And today, Jeremy Hunt has as good confirmed that there was no longer a specific date. Who is going to enforce one as "the law"? The Supreme Court? Well, there you are, then.

May is happier to meet Len McCluskey and now Jeremy Corbyn than she is to meet her own right wing. It has been confirmed that both the meetings with the unions and the meetings with the Labour front bench are going to be ongoing.

No Deal is now officially off the table, along with a second referendum. Hunt has clearly squared it behind the scenes that we can have as long as we like to come up with something else instead.

Never mind Gibraltar. That will go to some committee that will take 10 years to find a 100,000-word way of saying nothing.

No, what will most concern Spain, and France, and Denmark (and remember that each of the 27 will have an absolute veto on any deal), will be access to the United Kingdom's fisheries.

The only thing that can save those now will be if selling the fishermen down the river cannot get past Len McCluskey or Jeremy Corbyn. In point of fact, that is a very hopeful cause.

But put the belt and braces on, all the same. Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it.

It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post.

I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Toadmeister Watch: Day 48

I repeat my challenge to Toby Young to contest this parliamentary seat of North West Durham. Either that, or he has conceded every point here.

His party took 34 per cent of the vote at North West Durham last time. Labour, it and I are now universally accepted as being on 30-30-30, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. 

But I do not stand against people. I stand for things. Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it.

I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

This post will appear here daily until further notice.

Yaxley-Lennon Watch: Day 69

I warmly welcome Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who calls himself "Tommy Robinson" but who would have to give his real name on the ballot paper, as the UKIP candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham. Or, at any rate, as a candidate for this seat, of any party or none.

Either that, or he is running scared of the white working class. After all, I am mixed-race, and the sitting MP, who will presumably be the Labour candidate, has a mixed-race child. We are both impeccably middle-class (Google the house prices in Riding Mill, whence she hails), as the Conservative and the Liberal Democrat candidates will doubtless also be. 

From his own point of view, then, beating us ought to be a doddle.

Not that my candidacy is in any way conditional on his. Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. I will stand for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

This post will appear here daily until Yaxley-Lennon officially runs away with his tail between his legs by denying that he is a parliamentary candidate for North West Durham.

Pidcock-Kamm Watch: Day 70

Either Laura Pidcock is proud that she is now Oliver Kamm's endorsed candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, or she will tweet the following:

"I reject the endorsement of @OliverKamm, and I have made a donation to @NeilClark66's legal fund against him," followed by the link to Neil's fund.

This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.

Henig Watch: Day 76

Rather magnanimously, considering how he became the Leader of Durham County Council in the first place, the Durham Miners' Association has permitted Simon "Third Generation Who's Who Entrants Are Above The Law" Henig to sit on the platform of the last two Durham Miners' Galas.

On both occasions, he has of course shared that platform with the principal speaker, Jeremy Corbyn. It is therefore the least to be expected that @SimonHenig will tweet the simple formula, ".@jeremycorbyn is not an anti-Semite." This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.

Councillor Watch: Day 77

Hilariously, the third attempt to put me on trial is due to begin on 1st April. That will be one year after the second failed attempt, and two years after I was charged. 

The only purpose of this whole business has been to stop me from standing for Durham County Council (failed), to stop me from being elected (succeeded, because nothing else would have done), and to stop me from standing for Parliament (also doomed to fail, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign).

No one, absolutely no one at all, has ever suggested that I committed the acts alleged, or even that those acts ever really took place.

Specifically, until such time as they notify otherwise to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, then it is a matter of record that not only does every member of Durham County Council believe me to be innocent of the charges against me, but every member of Durham County Council believes that the acts alleged never happened in actual fact.

This post will appear here daily until further notice.

Wednesday 30 January 2019

From Covington To Corbyn

"And so ends the war in Afghanistan. Or will do, soon enough. It has been waged for as long as the Covington Boys have been alive. Or many supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, which is how, while in many cases they have quite a lot in common with the Covington Boys, they have come to be supporters of Jeremy Corbyn."

So I wrote on Monday. Leading one of this site's longest-standing readers to email me and point out that, very much for the reasons stated, the Covington Boys might well have been Corbyn supporters if they had been British. 

An entire generation, and especially the male half of it, has had its politics defined by the wars of the last 20 and more years, of which by far the longest-lasting has been the complete failure, even in its own terms, in Afghanistan. Donald Trump is bringing the troops home from Afghanistan, and from Syria. A shame about Venezuela, but that has only really kicked off in the public eye after the Covington Boys incident.

Online and offline, I know quite a few of the young male supporters of Corbyn. They are liberal-minded in the way that Nick Sandmann was when he denied to Nathan Phillips that there was any such biological category as race. They are liberal-minded in the way that one of Sandmann's classmates was when he shouted back "Who cares?" after a Black Hebrew Israelite had called Trump "a faggot".

But they are no liberals. Quite a lot of them are the kind who have actively chosen to be practising Catholics, or Evangelical Protestants, in the second decade of the twenty-first century. And yes, those ones are totally pro-life.

At least Corbyn has never been against abortion. When she stood here at North West Durham in 1992, then Theresa May put out a leaflet in its largest town, which is still quite heavily Irish Catholic and which was staunchly so in those days, saying that she was pro-life. Of course she knew that she was never going to win here, anyway.

But even so, she now talks about "the right to a safe abortion", and she makes public money available for women from Northern Ireland to have abortions in England. This delights the Labour supporters of austerity in other cases, the Labour supporters of the Saudi war in Yemen, the Labour enemies of Jeremy Corbyn.

Even more of the many young male supporters of Corbyn are no friends of Gramscian identity politics, of assaults on free speech, of assaults on due process and the presumption of innocence, of anti-industrial zeal, and so forth.

They fit in well with the Old Left types who joined or re-joined the Labour Party, or who became registered supporters, in order to support Corbyn, not because he was entirely opposed to such things, but because he was at least more concerned with economic equality and with international peace, and prepared to respect a range of views on other issues among people who shared that twin focus. You can be Ronnie Campbell, so long as you really are Ronnie Campbell. Although highly imperfect, Corbyn was not only the best on offer, but the best to have been on offer in a very long time.

To the younger comrades, as to anyone born after 1990, the all-women shortlist system is self-evidently illegal. Moreover, they can be made to see that it has done more than anything else to turn the Parliamentary Labour Party from 50 per cent Broad Left 25 years ago to 85 per cent Hard Right today. They are motivated by rage against the effects of deindustrialisation and against the harvesting of young men in endless, pointless wars. That righteous rage was also the motivating force behind the election of Trump.

But the economic changes of the last 40 years have turned into the ruling class the public sector middle-class women who dominate the PLP, while the wars of the last 20 years have barely affected them, having largely been waged for explicitly feminist reasons, albeit to no good effect for the women of Afghanistan, and to catastrophic effect for the women of Iraq and Libya.

Those MPs are Thatcher's Daughters, to whom the anger of the young men who are accruing to Corbyn is incomprehensible. As is those young men's closely connected discovery for themselves of the various schools of heterodox economics, and of the traditional Great Books that, for ostensibly if questionably feminist reasons, have been excluded from school and university curricula.

No one seems to have bothered to ask about the wider politics of the Covington Boys. If their MAGA hats had any meaning, then they are probably pro-industrial and anti-war for reasons that Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris can simply never begin to understand. Trump has been, and he is being, a tad disappointing on those counts. But then, Corbyn has been a tad disappointing on a number of counts, too.

Even so, though, the best arguments against the Clinton-Pelosi-Harris Democrats and the Never Trump Republicans are also the best arguments against the Blairite rump in and around the Parliamentary Labour Party, and against the Conservative Party in almost every way. The present British Government would strike any American as Clinton Democrat, and that is what it is.

All in all, then, I suspect that the Covington Boys and a number of similarly aged, critical but committed, committed but critical Corbyn supporters of my acquaintance could have a very good night out. They rarely ask for ID over here, Nick. And the girls would love your accent.

The Backstop To It All

Defined not merely as respecting the popular will there, but as campaigning there is support of the Union, the Unionist position in relation to Northern Ireland is marginal to mainland British politics.

Purely as a matter of fact, no one who held it, and it can only be held by in some way acting on it, would ever be regarded as anything other than a fringe figure in any of the Conservative Party, the Labour Party, or the Liberal Democrats.

Whereas the British Government and all three of those parties campaigned vigorously against Scottish independence, the line from all four on Northern Ireland has always been, "It's up to them, and we wouldn't interfere."

A border poll may well be on its way. With the British Government officially indifferent. With all three parties of the same view. With highly prominent Labour figures, at least, campaigning on the Nationalist side. 

But with only professional eccentrics, mostly but not exclusively Conservatives, making the trip over from Westminster to campaign for the Union.

"The United Kingdom Will Be Leaving The European Union"

On every previous occasion, Theresa May has added, "on 29th March."

But today, she did not.

The Conservative Right, plus a handful of misguided anti-Corbyn Labour MPs, sold out last night. They have been played. 

Bradied, in fact. Let that be the new word for it. They have been bradied by the ever-underestimated Theresa May.

Balance of Power

As if George Galloway could control who rang into his radio programme. I have been on it several times, and I know.

Ho, hum. Here's to the BBC, Sky News, Channel 4 News, and all the rest of them, having on people who will point out that the official line on the Skripals was and is the most obvious rubbish.

I could do it. Neil Clark could do it. John Wight could do it. Craig Murray could do it. Anyone from OffGuardian could do it. And of course, George Galloway could do it. Why was George, in particular, not already doing it?

And why has no one being doing it on the floor of the House of Commons? Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it.

It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post.

I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Unkempt

Rumour has it that the more or less illiterate Colonel Richard Kemp has once again been amusing the better-educated users of Twitter and enthusing those who, like him, burn books, not on principle, but because they sincerely have no idea what books are. 

This time, it is about Winston Churchill, and the curious belief among the exceptionally hard of thinking that had it not been for him, then German would now be the language of daily life in Britain. Is English, or Russian, the language of daily life in Germany?

There are those who have to maintain the myth of the War, for which the War generation itself had no time whatever, in order to justify endless supposed repetitions of it, to "liberate" here or there, this or that. But Kemp is nowhere near that sophisticated.

Richard Kemp is practically a Nazi himself. That is not an exaggeration. His presence in public life at all is a sign of just how mainstream the Far Right has become in the present decade. 

Furthermore, he will go to prison when there is a proper reckoning for the war in Afghanistan. He is a war criminal. Something else that has become perfectly respectable in Britain in the present century.

Although Kemp cannot possibly know this, such is neoconservatism's debt to Carl Schmitt, "the crown jurist of the Third Reich", the friend and collaborator of Leo Strauss, and the originator of the view among Strauss's elite that the rules of war simply did not apply to them.

It Is Time To Be An Immoderate Rebel

A low-level legislator from one of the least populous parts of Venezuela, the 35-year-old Juan Guaidó was educated in Washington, D.C., before spending the whole of the intervening period inside the American regime change factory, of which he is an immediately recognisable product.

Imagine that Russia or China unilaterally recognised as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom a 35-year-old low-level legislator from one of the least populous parts of the United Kingdom, who had been educated in Moscow or Beijing before spending the whole of the intervening period inside the Russian or Chinese regime change factory. If that factory does not already exist, then it very soon will.

So that Donald Trump's descendants might control Venezuela's oilfields deep into the twenty-second century, and future Board member John Bolton has as good as said as much several times, we may look forward to an imminent intervention in support of the "moderate rebels" of "the Free Venezuelan Army" or some such.

As surely as the "moderate rebels" of the "Free Syrian Army" were in fact the so-called Islamic State, which in turn was in fact the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, so the "moderate rebels" of "the Free Venezuelan Army" will in fact be textbook examples of Latin American Fascism, properly so called, which in its present form is of course the Brazil of Jair Bolsonaro.

Supposedly conservative people who are lining up with Tony Blair and the Clintons against Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul, I hope that you are exactly as proud of that you ought to be.

Meanwhile, like Wikipedia, the Saudi puppet Mike Gapes is already calling Guaidó "social democratic", because of course Trump, Bolton and Bolsonaro just love social democrats. Bolton appears with a Cold War style of map, showing the countries that have recognised Guaidó in blue, and those which have not done so in red. Most Labour MPs and almost all Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP, are of that same, downright evil frame of mind.

Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

One Struggle

It all goes back to Wikileaks. If you stand with Julian Assange, whether or not you might wish to be stuck in a lift or an embassy with him, then you must also stand with Roger Stone, whether or not you might always agree with his politics or with his methods.

And while, so far as I am aware, no connection has yet been suggested, nevertheless the allegations against Alex Salmond are not dissimilar to those against Julian Assange, being the kind that it is uniquely taboo in Britain for politicians or journalists to question. Again, this is by no means necessarily about agreeing with Alex Salmond.

Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

The Course of Justice

Oh, well, unless Labour pulls quite a rabbit out of the hat, then it looks as if we are going to need to get behind Patrick O'Flynn of the SDP at what does now appear to be the inevitable Peterborough by-election.

But as Fiona Onasanya goes to prison, when will Tony Blair be going to prison? Sister Fiona Onasanya MP, for so she remains, would not have been charged if it had not been for the confluence of her politics, her religious beliefs, and her status as a liberated black person.

Taken together, those were more than could be tolerated by the Crown Prosecution Service, which correctly identified her as all three of a Corbyn supporter, the kind of Christian that dares to claim the Old Testament of Jesus Christ as the Old Testament of Jesus Christ, and uppity enough to call out Liberal Establishment hypocrisy over integration at home and over white settler colonialism You Know Where. Of course, these three aspects are intimately connected to each other.

The CPS deployed its favourite method of adding some variation on the theme "perverting the course of justice" to the charge sheet in order to secure a desperately desired conviction from a jury that had thus been bamboozled into believing that the defendant must have cheated in order to explain the total absence of evidence that the original offence had ever taken place, and must have been guilty of at least one of several charges, or else why were there several charges?

In reality, and while there are exceptions that mostly date back decades, jurors ought ordinarily to acquit automatically of all charges anyone charged with some variation on the theme of "perverting the course of justice", since it indicates only that the CPS is desperate for a conviction, often of a political opponent.

A political opponent whom the CPS would be desperate to convict would include a Corbyn supporter, or the kind of Christian that dares to claim the Old Testament of Jesus Christ as the Old Testament of Jesus Christ, or a liberated black person who might be uppity enough to call out Liberal Establishment hypocrisy over integration at home and over white settler colonialism You Know Where.

But in this case, the CPS has managed to secure such a conviction. So Fiona Onasanya has been sent to prison. When will Tony Blair be sent to prison?

I am not a member of the same political party as Tony Blair. I am a committed but critical, a critical but committed supporter of Jeremy Corbyn. I do not hesitate to claim the Old Testament of Jesus Christ as the Old Testament of Jesus Christ.

And I am more than uppity enough to call out Liberal Establishment hypocrisy over integration at home and over white settler colonialism You Know Where, in my case as someone who, being mixed-race, is offensive in principle to the Crown Prosecution Service, simply by the fact of my existence.

My being mixed-race is also offensive in principle to Simon Henig. The same is true of my committed but critical, critical but committed support for Jeremy Corbyn. And the same is true of my proud proclamation that the Old Testament of Jesus Christ is the Old Testament of Jesus Christ.

Like the CPS, Simon Henig believes that we mulattoes should not exist, and should be imprisoned on principle if we cannot be killed. Like the CPS, Simon Henig believes that we Lefties should not exist, and should be imprisoned on principle if we cannot be killed. Like the CPS, Simon Henig believes that we Christians should not exist, and should be imprisoned on principle if we cannot be killed.

Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

The Bottom of The Barrel

Now will Yvette Cooper get lost? She contested the Labour Leadership Election before last, when she came third, with 17 per cent of the vote. Not even one in five.

Go away, Yvette Cooper. Or we might start talking about the many thousands of deaths that have resulted from your wicked tenure as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

Yet most Labour MPs seem to think that this ghastly person is marvellous. The Guardian has been backing her for Leader for four years. Even the BBC appears to be giving up on David Miliband and transferring its affections to her.

Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it.

It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post.

I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Toadmeister Watch: Day 47

I repeat my challenge to Toby Young to contest this parliamentary seat of North West Durham. Either that, or he has conceded every point here.

His party took 34 per cent of the vote at North West Durham last time. Labour, it and I are now universally accepted as being on 30-30-30, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. 

But I do not stand against people. I stand for things. Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it.

I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

This post will appear here daily until further notice.

Yaxley-Lennon Watch: Day 68

I warmly welcome Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who calls himself "Tommy Robinson" but who would have to give his real name on the ballot paper, as the UKIP candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham. Or, at any rate, as a candidate for this seat, of any party or none.

Either that, or he is running scared of the white working class. After all, I am mixed-race, and the sitting MP, who will presumably be the Labour candidate, has a mixed-race child. We are both impeccably middle-class (Google the house prices in Riding Mill, whence she hails), as the Conservative and the Liberal Democrat candidates will doubtless also be. 

From his own point of view, then, beating us ought to be a doddle.

Not that my candidacy is in any way conditional on his. Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. I will stand for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

This post will appear here daily until Yaxley-Lennon officially runs away with his tail between his legs by denying that he is a parliamentary candidate for North West Durham.

Pidcock-Kamm Watch: Day 69

Either Laura Pidcock is proud that she is now Oliver Kamm's endorsed candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, or she will tweet the following:

"I reject the endorsement of @OliverKamm, and I have made a donation to @NeilClark66's legal fund against him," followed by the link to Neil's fund.

This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.

Henig Watch: Day 75

Rather magnanimously, considering how he became the Leader of Durham County Council in the first place, the Durham Miners' Association has permitted Simon "Third Generation Who's Who Entrants Are Above The Law" Henig to sit on the platform of the last two Durham Miners' Galas.

On both occasions, he has of course shared that platform with the principal speaker, Jeremy Corbyn. It is therefore the least to be expected that @SimonHenig will tweet the simple formula, ".@jeremycorbyn is not an anti-Semite." This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.

Councillor Watch: Day 76

Hilariously, the third attempt to put me on trial is due to begin on 1st April. That will be one year after the second failed attempt, and two years after I was charged. 

The only purpose of this whole business has been to stop me from standing for Durham County Council (failed), to stop me from being elected (succeeded, because nothing else would have done), and to stop me from standing for Parliament (also doomed to fail, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign).

No one, absolutely no one at all, has ever suggested that I committed the acts alleged, or even that those acts ever really took place.

Specifically, until such time as they notify otherwise to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, then it is a matter of record that not only does every member of Durham County Council believe me to be innocent of the charges against me, but every member of Durham County Council believes that the acts alleged never happened in actual fact.

This post will appear here daily until further notice.

Tuesday 29 January 2019

Did Anyone Think This Through?

That noted Stalinist, Trotskyist Corbynista, Ron Paul, writes:

Last week President Trump announced that the United States would no longer recognize Nicolás Maduro as president of Venezuela and would recognize the head of its national assembly, Jose Guaido, as president instead. US thus openly backs regime change. 

But what has long been a dream of the neocons may well turn out to be a nightmare for President Trump. Why did Trump declare that the Venezuelan president was no longer the president? 

According to the State Department, the Administration was acting to help enforce the Venezuelan constitution. If only they were so eager to enforce our own Constitution!

It’s ironic that a president who has spent the first two years in office fighting charges that a foreign country meddled in the US elections would turn around and not only meddle in foreign elections but actually demand the right to name a foreign country’s president.

How would we react if the Chinese and Russians decided that President Trump was not upholding the US Constitution and recognized Speaker Nancy Pelosi as US president instead? 

Even those who would like to see a change of government in Venezuela should reject any notion that the change must be “helped” by the United States. 

According to press reports, Vice President Mike Pence was so involved in internal Venezuelan affairs that he actually urged Guaido to name himself president and promised US support. 

This is not only foolish, it is very dangerous. A Venezuelan civil war would result in mass death and even more economic misery. 

Regime change has long been US policy for Venezuela. The US has been conducting economic warfare practically since Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez, was first elected in 1998.

The goal of US sanctions and other economic measures against Venezuela (and other countries in Washington’s crosshairs) is to make life so miserable for average citizens that they rise up and overthrow their leaders.

But of course once they do so they must replace those leaders with someone approved by Washington.

Remember after the “Arab Spring” in Egypt when the people did rise up and overthrow their leader, but they then elected the “wrong” candidate.

The army moved in and deposed the elected president and replaced him with a Washington-approved politician. Then-Secretary of State John Kerry called it “restoring democracy.”

It is tragically comical that President Trump has named convicted criminal Elliott Abrams as his point person to “restore democracy” in Venezuela.

Abrams played a key role in the Iran-Contra affair and went on to be one of the chief architects of the disastrous US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

His role in helping promote the horrible violence in Latin America in the 1980s should disqualify him from ever holding public office again.

Instead of this ham-fisted coup d’état, a better policy for Venezuela these past 20 years would have been engagement and trade.

If we truly believe in the superiority of a free market system we must also believe that we can only lead by example, not by forcing our system on others.

Just four months ago President Trump said at the UN: “I honor the right of every nation in this room to pursue its own customs, beliefs, and traditions. The United States will not tell you how to live or work or worship. We only ask that you honor our sovereignty in return.”

Sadly it seems that these were merely empty words. We know from Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc. that this will not end well for President Trump. Or for the United States.

We must leave Venezuela alone!

And that other noted Stalinist, Trotskyist Corbynista, Patrick J. Buchanan, writes:

“Pay the soldiers. The rest do not matter.” This was the deathbed counsel given to his sons by Roman Emperor Septimius Severus in A.D. 211. Nicolás Maduro must today appreciate the emperor’s insight.

For the political survival of this former bus driver and union boss hangs now upon whether Venezuela’s armed forces choose to stand by him or to desert him and support National Assembly leader Juan Guaido.

Wednesday, Guaido declared Maduro’s election last May to a second six-year term to be a sham, and had himself inaugurated as acting president.

Thursday, the defense minister and army chief General Vladimir Padrino López, with his top brass, dismissed the 35-year-old Guaido as a U.S. puppet, and pledged allegiance to Maduro.

Friday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told the U.N. Security Council: “Now it is time for every other nation to pick a side. … Either you stand with the forces of freedom, or you’re in league with Maduro and his mayhem.”

By Friday, however, the world had already taken sides. Russia and China stood by Maduro, as did NATO ally Turkey, with President Erdogan phoning his support. Mexico, Nicaragua, Cuba and Bolivia were also with Maduro.

Backing Guaido are Venezuela’s neighbors Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, Paraguay, Argentina, Costa Rica, Colombia, the U.S. and Canada, and the Organization of American States.

Britain, France, Germany and Spain have sent Maduro a diplomatic ultimatum: Agree in eight days to new elections or we back the 35-year-old Guaido, who, until this year, was an unknown.

All options are on the table, says President Donald Trump. But Russia called Guaido’s action a “quasi-coup” and warned that intervention could result in “catastrophic consequences.” Vladimir Putin also phoned Maduro with his support.

The stakes for all sides here are huge.

Russia has contractors in Venezuela and has lent the regime billions. In a show of solidarity, Putin recently flew two strategic bombers to Venezuela. China has loaned Venezuela tens of billions, with Caracas paying Beijing back in oil.

Cuba has sent military and intelligence officers to maintain internal security. Hugo Chávez had seen in Fidel Castro a father figure and modeled his new Venezuela on Castro’s Cuba—with similar results. Where hundreds of thousands fled Castro’s revolution in the 1960s, three million Venezuelans have fled to Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia and other South American countries and the USA.

The economy is in a shambles. Though Venezuela has the largest oil reserves on earth, production is a fraction of what it once was. Cronyism and corruption are endemic. Inflation has destroyed the currency. There is poverty, malnutrition and shortages of every necessity of modern life.

Yet, still, the crucial question: What will the soldiers do?

And if the military stands with Maduro, and Maduro refuses to go, what do the Americans do to force him out? Invade? That would invite disaster. Venezuela is not Panama, Haiti or Grenada. Larger than Texas, its population is more than 30 million. And U.S. forces are already committed around the world.

A blockade and sanctions would magnify and deepen the suffering of the people of Venezuela long before they would bring down the regime. Would our allies support a blockade? And if years of suffering by the Venezuelan people have not shaken Maduro’s hold on power, what makes us believe more of the same would persuade him?

Maduro and his army are being offered amnesty if they peacefully depart. But what would Maduro’s fate be if he flees? If he gives up power under U.S. threat, he is finished and disgraced as a coward. Would he not prefer to go down fighting? And if the leadership of the army should abandon Maduro, there are younger ambitious officers who would surely see a rewarding future in fighting to save the regime.

Are we inviting a civil war in Venezuela? Should the shooting start in Caracas, what do we do then? Did anyone think this through?

Maduro is an incompetent brutal dictator whose ideology has helped to destroy a nation. But if he can change the narrative from a confrontation between a tyrant and his persecuted people to that of an embattled defender of Venezuela being attacked by Yankee imperialists and their domestic lackeys, that could resonate among the masses in Latin America.

And from all indications, Maduro intends to defy the U.S. and rally the radicals and anti-Americans in the hemisphere and the Third World.

Guiado’s constitutional claim to the presidency of Venezuela was a scheme cooked up in collusion with Washington, made in the USA, with Secretary of State Pompeo, John Bolton and Sen. Marco Rubio signing on, and President Trump signing off. This was Plan A.

But if Plan A does not succeed, and Maduro, with America’s prestige on the line, defies our demand that he yield, what do we do then? What is Plan B? “Assad must go!” said Barack Obama. Well, Assad is still there — and Obama is gone. Will the same be said of Maduro?

But No Cigar

Never forget that Piers Morgan was one of extremely few mainstream media figures to see through the Iraq War lies from the start. And thanks to his exchange with Ross Greer, Winston Churchill is back.

In Great Contemporaries, published in 1937, two years after he had called Hitler’s achievements “among the most remarkable in the whole history of the world”, Churchill wrote that: 

“Those who have met Herr Hitler face to face in public business or on social terms have found a highly competent, cool, well-informed functionary with an agreeable manner, a disarming smile, and few have been unaffected by a subtle personal magnetism.” 

That passage was not removed from the book’s reprint in 1941. In May 1940, Churchill had been all ready to give Gibraltar, Malta, Suez, Somaliland, Kenya and Uganda to Mussolini, whom he had called “the greatest living legislator”. 

All sorts of things about Churchill are simply ignored. Gallipoli. The miners. The Suffragettes. The refusal to bomb the railway lines to Auschwitz. His dishonest and self-serving memoirs. The truth about the catastrophic humiliation at Dunkirk. The other one, at Singapore, for which Australians and New Zealanders have never forgiven Britain. The Lancastria. The men left behind in France. 

Both the fact and the sheer scale of his 1945 defeat while the War in the Far East was still going on, when Labour won half of his newly divided seat, and an Independent did very well in the other half after Labour and the Liberals had disgracefully refused to field candidates against him. His deselection by his local Conservative Association just before he died.

And not least, his carve-up of Eastern Europe with Stalin, so very reminiscent of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. He borrowed the phrase “the Iron Curtain” from Goebbels and used it to mean exactly what Goebbels had meant by it. Broken by the War, the Soviet Union had neither the means nor the will to invade Western Europe, still less to cross either the Atlantic or the Pacific.

But the electorate was under no illusions while he was still alive. His image was booed and hissed when it appeared on newsreels. 

He led the Conservative Party into three General Elections, he lost the first two of them, and he only returned to office on the third occasion with the support of the National Liberals, having lost the popular vote. In the course of that Parliament, he had to be removed by his own party. It comfortably won the subsequent General Election. 

We have not forgotten the truth about him in the old mining areas. Nor have they in the places that he signed away to Stalin, including the country for whose freedom the War was fought. It was Churchill who coined the nickname “Uncle Joe” for Stalin.

Churchill wanted to transport the Jews to Palestine, since he saw them as not really British. He presided over the famine in Bengal. His views on race shocked his younger colleagues even in the Conservative Party of the 1950s. 

The famous dipping of the cranes for his coffin occurred only because the London dockers, who despised him, had been paid to do it. The London dockers, who had been as heavily Blitzed as anyone, anywhere. 

As for Churchill’s having “saved Britain”, it will be interesting to see whether anyone could continue to hold a serious academic or journalistic position in 10 years’ time and come out with that one. 

His cult seems to have begun only once he was dead, or at least so old as to have been politically as good as dead. It never translated into votes.

Changing Customs

No, as part of "a customs arrangement", Jeremy Corbyn did not rule out accepting the EU's State Aid rules, which he certainly hates to the core of his being, as well he should. He is in a hostage situation with the Parliamentary Labour Party.

Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. I will stand for this seat of North West Durham, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

All Along

Mike Gapes pronounces Spanish as if it were French. I doubt that he could tell you where Venezuela was. But he knows that he wants a war there. And above all, he knows that he hates Jeremy Corbyn.

Corbyn has been right about Kosovo, right about Afghanistan, right about Iraq, right about Libya, and right about Syria, where at least his enemies were denied the chance to give catastrophic effect to their error. Why should he, and the others who have been right on all of those occasions, be wrong about Venezuela? Ron Paul, say? Why should Ron Paul be wrong, and Mike Gapes be right?

Why should the people who have been wrong about Kosovo, which among other things is now the source of many of the illegal firearms with which Britain has been flooded, be right about Venezuela? Why should the people who have been wrong about Afghanistan, where the complete surrender that has always been inevitable is now only days or even hours away, be right about Venezuela?

Why should the people who have been wrong about Iraq, be right about Venezuela? Why should the people who have been wrong about Libya, be right about Venezuela? And why should the people who have been wrong about Syria, be right about Venezuela?

Gapes is a slave of Saudi Arabia, and accordingly of its ally, Benjamin Netanyahu. He has now adopted the same approach to Jair Bolsonaro, and to Donald Trump's attempt to secure for his dynasty control of Venezuela's oilfields deep into the twenty-second century. The dynasty and the business, in that correct order, are what interest Trump. Including the campaign that led up to his election, he will be in politics for no more than nine years, and those in the autumn of his days.

Alas, most Labour MPs and almost all Conservatives are like Gapes,and will remain so. The Lib Dems and the SNP are also lined up on his side. Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. I will stand for this seat of North West Durham, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

The Need For Dissenting Voices, Indeed

So, Ofcom, may we now look forward to George Galloway, and others who dare to point out the absurdity of the official story about Salisbury and the Skripals, on radio and television regularly, even on programmes that they themselves have not had to present and produce for the purpose?

Sergei Skripal's "contaminated" house in Salisbury is being dismantled by workmen in ordinary work clothes. Let's just leave that one there.

Toadmeister Watch: Day 46

I repeat my challenge to Toby Young to contest this parliamentary seat of North West Durham. Either that, or he has conceded every point here.

His party took 34 per cent of the vote at North West Durham last time. Labour, it and I are now universally accepted as being on 30-30-30, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. 

But I do not stand against people. I stand for things. Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it.

I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

This post will appear here daily until further notice.

Yaxley-Lennon Watch: Day 67

I warmly welcome Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who calls himself "Tommy Robinson" but who would have to give his real name on the ballot paper, as the UKIP candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham. Or, at any rate, as a candidate for this seat, of any party or none.

Either that, or he is running scared of the white working class. After all, I am mixed-race, and the sitting MP, who will presumably be the Labour candidate, has a mixed-race child. We are both impeccably middle-class (Google the house prices in Riding Mill, whence she hails), as the Conservative and the Liberal Democrat candidates will doubtless also be. 

From his own point of view, then, beating us ought to be a doddle.

Not that my candidacy is in any way conditional on his. Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. I will stand for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

This post will appear here daily until Yaxley-Lennon officially runs away with his tail between his legs by denying that he is a parliamentary candidate for North West Durham.

Pidcock-Kamm Watch: Day 68

Either Laura Pidcock is proud that she is now Oliver Kamm's endorsed candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, or she will tweet the following:

"I reject the endorsement of @OliverKamm, and I have made a donation to @NeilClark66's legal fund against him," followed by the link to Neil's fund.

This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.

Henig Watch: Day 74

Rather magnanimously, considering how he became the Leader of Durham County Council in the first place, the Durham Miners' Association has permitted Simon "Third Generation Who's Who Entrants Are Above The Law" Henig to sit on the platform of the last two Durham Miners' Galas.

On both occasions, he has of course shared that platform with the principal speaker, Jeremy Corbyn. It is therefore the least to be expected that @SimonHenig will tweet the simple formula, ".@jeremycorbyn is not an anti-Semite." This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.

Councillor Watch: Day 75

Hilariously, the third attempt to put me on trial is due to begin on 1st April. That will be one year after the second failed attempt, and two years after I was charged. 

The only purpose of this whole business has been to stop me from standing for Durham County Council (failed), to stop me from being elected (succeeded, because nothing else would have done), and to stop me from standing for Parliament (also doomed to fail, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign).

No one, absolutely no one at all, has ever suggested that I committed the acts alleged, or even that those acts ever really took place.

Specifically, until such time as they notify otherwise to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, then it is a matter of record that not only does every member of Durham County Council believe me to be innocent of the charges against me, but every member of Durham County Council believes that the acts alleged never happened in actual fact.

This post will appear here daily until further notice.

Monday 28 January 2019

Not Fresh, But Stale

The demand for fresh elections in Venezuela and the demand for a second referendum in Britain are essentially the same, and are accordingly being made by the same people, the likes of diehard Blairite MPs and The Guardian.

Curtains To The Net

The Government has officially abandoned the target of bringing down net migration to the tens of thousands. 

This is actually quite sad, because although it had long ago ceased to mean anything, and perhaps it never did, it had been there so long that it had become traditional.

This is like one of the Blair Government's abolitions of picturesque ceremonies from centuries ago.

Oh Dear, How Sad, Never Mind?

Following the death of Windsor Davies, there appears to have been no call for any kind of rehabilitation of the unmentionable It Ain't Half Hot, Mum. No article in Spiked. No column by Rod Liddle. Nothing.

Of course, it was before my time, and it was of a very different time. But it was a BBC primetime programme. It was what David Croft and Jimmy Perry did between Dad's Army and Hi-De-Hi, partially overlapping with each of them.

So I only ask, but it really cannot have been that bad. Can it?

By Proxy?

Proxy voting in the House of Commons is not a bad idea in principle, and by no means only for maternity or paternity purposes.

But watch out for Cabinet Ministers whose proxy votes were permanently in the hands of the Chief Whip, so that they themselves hardly ever needed to go near the place.

Who would be Caroline Lucas's proxy? Or Sylvia Hermon's? Or, at the moment, Frank Field's?

And none of this answers the question as to who would be the MP for a seat while its MP were off on the maternity leave that does not in fact exist. 

This is not the 1970s. If maternity leave for MPs were possible, then it would have been in place for decades. 

Giving another MP your proxy vote is no more sufficient than saying that you still had constituency staff to advise callers to try leaving a saucer of milk at the foot of the tree.

Just The Job?

Record levels of employment? You can work one hour per week and be counted as employed.

Do not fall for this. Not that anyone appears to be doing so.

Lost In The Post?

Waffle from the Post Office that the English language means whatever they say that it means, regardless of the clear grammatical meaning of a text. I suspect that I am not alone in having been treated to this. 

They obviously had no idea that anyone would try and participate in the second consultation, and they are in no mood to deal with anyone who does. So we do seem to have lost Lanchester Post Office. But at least we tried.

In 2021, do not vote for any County Council candidate in this ward who had not fought this fight to the end. Do vote for the best placed candidate who had. 

That will not be me, by the way. I will not contest this ward again while Ossie Johnson is still alive. That could be another 30 years, and it will probably be another 15.

Even in 2017, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats fielded candidates who lived miles away, who did not even put out a leaflet, and who did not even turn up to the count.

But if Ossie and whoever were his running mate next time did indeed sail into the first and second spots in 2021, then expect uncontested elections in 2025, in 2029, and until the day that Ossie died. 

Who would bother to contest them? Who would have nothing better to do than to be humiliated like that? And is that how Lanchester wants to end up?

I am no Lib Dem. But Martin Walker, Champion of the Post Office, over to you.

Pit Ponies, Not Donkeys

At Rother Valley, Kevin Barron's vote with the Government presents an opportunity to settle a very old score.

But even ahead of that, the Socialist Labour Party should now consider Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford to be its number one target seat. 

And it probably does.

What The Eck?

Alex Salmond retains his job at RT.

In protest, the Scottish Labour Party will no longer appear on that channel.

Meaning that it will be unable to set out his case for a better Scotland, illustrated with a picture of a mountain. In Wales.

Did RT ever even bother to have the Scottish Labour Party on air? The BBC has to, but it is difficult to see why anyone else would bother.

Intelligence, Gathering

If there really are 700 MI5 officers on standby in Belfast, and I cannot imagine who has told The Times that, then expect bombs to go off morning, noon and night in order to justify that agency's existence, back up its demands for more money, and bring about one the British Deep State's most cherished aspirations, that of finally getting rid of the Irish Question.

A Unionist view on Northern Ireland as a matter of principle has always been peripheral to the politics of Great Britain. A very long time ago, people who had only been token appointments in the first place would very occasionally resign from the margins of Conservative Governments because of some or other apparent betrayal of it. But that was all, and even that would never happen now.

In all fairness, MI5 is doubtless also working to stop a bomb from going off in London, and it would probably be London. But that would get Britain out of Northern Ireland within six months, and possibly within six weeks, entirely regardless of whether or not the Republic would be prepared to take the place.

Any whiff of a return to all of that, and Britain, always the biggest cutter and runner in the world, would cut and run. No one in Whitehall really cares that the Irish blow each other up in Ireland. But British Government would countenance that again. None.

London was made to pay the price of the principles of the right wing of Fleet Street, which took the train home to leafy suburbia and the Home Counties every evening. Over long, long years, London always expressed its unwillingness to pay that price, never losing an opportunity to elect Ken Livingstone, John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn. Well, not until the Mayoral Election of 2008, long after this had apparently ceased to be an issue.

But the days of people who know nothing of terrorism pontificating about it over the heads of people who do are as numbered as the days of people, very often the same people, who know nothing of poverty pontificating about it over the heads of people who do.

Norwegian Nick

Supporters of the Norway Option, you are now on the same side as Nick Cohen

I hope that you are exactly as proud of that as you ought to be.

Bad For Our Health

The idea of anything being regulated by Matt Hancock is too ridiculous for words.

But we all know why he is making the suggestion that he, or at least some member of our Official Political Class, be entrusted with such power.

For example, he, the Secretary of State for Health, received a donation of £32,000 from a think tank that wanted to abolish the National Health Service.

But he would certainly scream "abuse" if anyone pointed that out online, which is the only place where anyone ever would.

The weaponisation of a young girl's suicide is obscene. Don't let them get away with this.

Martial Your Thoughts

No, of course we are not the brink of martial law. 

Presided over by Gavin Williamson? Pull the other one. 

And enforced by whom, exactly?

It Is Time To Pick A Side

And so ends the war in Afghanistan. Or will do, soon enough. It has been waged for as long as the Covington Boys have been alive. Or many supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, which is how, while in many cases they have quite a lot in common with the Covington Boys, they have come to be supporters of Jeremy Corbyn.

And it is culminating, as it was always going to do, in the victory of the people who had never had anywhere else to go. After the Second World War, full denazification would have caused German society to have collapsed. Quite the reverse occurred, with West Germany, NATO and the EU all founded in no small part by former, meaning recent, Nazi officers.

Over the Wall, one of the East German Bloc Parties, complete with reserved seats in the Volkskammer, was the NDPD, specifically for former Nazi Party members and supporters, although it was often observed that there were in fact more former Nazi Party members in the Communist Party than the entire membership of the NDPD.

In 1968, long after East Germany professed to have eradicated all trace of Nazism, the new Constitution still felt the need to commit it to doing so. No one in West Germany even pretended, not really. The fairly recent obituaries of Helmut Schmidt and Helmut Kohl have been as frank as they themselves always were. And then there was Austria.

Apparently, the restored "Taliban" are going to be made to promise not to allow Afghanistan to be turned into a base for jihadis. Well, good luck with that, but it would at least be an improvement on Kosovo, Iraq or Libya following our own works of improvement there. Or on Saudi Arabia, whence came the attacks of 11th September 2001. Or on Sudan, the oil-rich country that is in the midst of a popular uprising but which is not all over the news.

In the form of Elliott Abrams, the oil-rich country that is in the midst of a popular uprising and which is all over the news is now under the benign gaze of the people who brought peace and order to Kosovo, to Afghanistan, to Iraq, and to Libya. Oh, yes, they did. They did not in any way bring Islamist terrorism, or rampant pederasty (Afghanistan), or rampant people trafficking (Kosovo), or rampant heroin-trafficking (both Afghanistan and Kosovo), or open and public slave markets (Libya). Oh, no, they did not.

The neoconservatives are simultaneously conspiring to bring down the Trump Administration over ridiculous claims about Russia, and to direct its policy of regime change in, for the time being, Venezuela. They have effectively taken over both parties, making meaningful electoral choice an illusion, if that. As on the cause that is dearest of all to neoliberal hearts, the legalisation of drugs, so also on much of foreign policy, Bernie Sanders and Kween Alexandria are little or no better than the neocons.

Donald Trump's promise of a break with neoconservatism has itself been broken, and far from withdrawing from NATO, he is lining up with Colombia, which is a candidate for NATO membership, and with Brazil, which has also now expressed the desire to join. NATO already commits us to the defence of Turkish Islamists and of Eastern European neo-Nazis. To them, we may soon be adding Latin American caudillos. We need to get the hell out of it, before it gets us into Hell.

On the grounds of the presence of Islamist militants, there was more of a case to invade numerous European countries or at least four of the Five Eyes than there was in to invade Iraq or even Afghanistan. Likewise, there is widespread, crippling hunger both in the United States and in the United Kingdom, but no one is suggesting an invasion of those countries because of the economic incompetence of their governments. Nor is anyone proposing to invade France, where dissent is currently being repressed more forcefully than in Venezuela.

Why, there are not even the sanctions that, as in Iraq, could starve even an oil-rich country into submission, because that is the point of them. Except, of course, that even sanctioned into starving Iraq did not submit, and nor will sanctioned into starving Venezuela. We all know what comes after that. We all know what comes after that, too.

Trump is not a politician. He is a patriarch and a businessman, in that order, which is the correct order. He fulfils those roles in whatever capacity he happens to find himself, and his present capacity is as the President of the United States. As that, he seeks North Korea's coal so that his dynasty might supply it to a dependent world deep into the twenty-second century, an arrangement to which the people who run North Korea seem perfectly amenable in principle.

But as that, he also seeks Venezuela's oil so that his dynasty might supply it to a dependent world deep into the twenty-second century, an arrangement with which the people who run Venezuela will have no truck. So the people who run Venezuela are just going to have to go. And in order to make them go, this businessman and patriarch now has at his disposal the full resources of the Imperial Presidency of the United States.

It is indeed time to pick a side. On one side, as ever, will be most Democrats and almost all Republicans, most Labour MPs and almost all Conservatives. They could not have shown you on a map which was Kosovo and which was Montenegro, which was Afghanistan and which was Pakistan, which was Iraq and which was Syria, which was Libya and which was Algeria, which was Syria and which was Iraq.

They could not now show you on a map which was Venezuela and which was Colombia. They pedalled, and they possibly even believed, any old rubbish about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, put about by the likes of Ahmed Chalabi. They are now pedalling, and they possibly even believe, any old rubbish about the privations in Venezuela, put about by startlingly similar characters.

On the other side, as ever, will be a handful of commentators from the Unofficial Right, together with the rather larger but still mostly ignored or derided Left, which of course has always included Jeremy Corbyn. We have been right every time in the past, and we will be right again. We already are. But we know how far that, in itself, has ever got us among either Conservative or Labour MPs.

Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. I will stand for this seat of North West Durham, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.