Tag: jeremy corbyn

Corbyn’s Victory

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By Gilad Atzmon

Jeremy Corbyn’s victory yesterday is a clear message to the British political world. You politicians had better start listening to the people, otherwise you will be out.

But his victory goes has ramifications beyond British politics. In recent weeks an alliance made up of British Jewish leadership (BOD, Jewish Chronicle etc.) and heavily supported by their caretakers within the British establishment, have waged a brutal yet counter effective campaign against Corbyn.  The campaign abused and slandered the last gentleman in British politics and probably the nicest man in the parliament.

Prior to the election, as it became clear that Corbyn was well ahead of his rivals and destined to become the next Labour leader, the Jewish and Zionist media used all of their tricks to destroy him. The Labour leadership contest was subjected to the full range of ‘Jewish sensitivities’: Corbyn was associated with and then accused of Arab and Muslim ‘terror’, ‘treason’ and ‘holocaust denial.’  The British media failed to discuss Corbyn’s politics, his anti austerity plan or even his take on foreign affairs.  But, miraculously, none of that damaged Corbyn’s campaign. Quite the opposite, the more dirt they slung in his direction, the more people rushed to support him.

Before it happened, would anyone have believed that Corbyn would survive the ‘holocaust denial’ slur, or his supposed comradeship with Hamas and Hezbollah? Corbyn’s achievement yesterday was a political earthquake that delivered a clear message to the Jews and their Sabbos Goyim — beware, the Brits are going through a transition. They don’t buy into the primacy of Jewish suffering anymore, they have had enough of it and no sane person can blame them.

The hundreds of thousands of young people who joined the dysfunctional Labour party wanted to make a change. They are frustrated with austerity, Zio-con wars, the Jewish Lobby, the loss of manufacturing and the cost of education. Those who joined the Labour party are patriots as is Corbyn. They want to live in a country with a prospect of a future – a place where justice, equality, peace and tolerance correspond with reality instead of existing only as empty political slogans.

Those who continue to convince themselves that Corbyn is ‘unelectable’ may want to refresh their memories. Just three months ago the same Corbyn was unknown to most Brits and his candidacy was portrayed in the media as a radical left stunt. Yesterday the man won an unprecedented victory and proved to be, by far, the most popular political figure in Britain for generations. But in truth, it doesn’t really matter whether Corbyn makes it to 10 Downing Street. At the moment, this country badly needs a real feisty opposition. And I have no doubt that Corbyn is the right man in the right place.

The above article was originally posted by Gilad Atzmon on September 13, 2015 

All That Is Solid Melts Into Air

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By Daniel Margrain

The momentous nature of Jeremy Corbyn’s landslide victory should not be underestimated. It has to go down as one of the most sensational and politically earth shattering events in modern British political history – the impacts of which are sending tremors throughout the entire establishment. After the announcement was made that Corbyn had won, it was obvious that the smiles, handshakes and applause of the vast majority of the calculating and opportunistic labour elite were as a fake as Blair’s claim that Saddam was about to attack Britain within 45 minutes.

A pointer to the overwhelming inspiration underlying Corbynism was the fact that no less than 160,000 volunteers who seemingly emerged out of nowhere, were recruited to the cause. The grass roots support that Corbyn engendered – by far the biggest of its kind in history – was almost certainly the catalyst that propelled him to victory. Although the activists were mainly young people, they were by no means exclusively so. In fact the demographic was wide ranging.

Corbyn’s straight talking, lucidity, and unambiguous commitment to a programme of anti-austerity brought many older activists who had felt betrayed by the direction the party had gone under Blair, back into the fold. To put Corbyn’s victory into context, he secured a higher percentage of votes than Blair got in 1994  Even more significant, the 554,272 votes he achieved was more than double Blair’s, and no less than 76 per cent of them actually voted, a higher percentage turnout than Blair received.

This would indicate that Corbynmania is no flash in the pan, but on the contrary, represents a new optimism that things really can be better given the right circumstances. Decades where nothing happens can all of a sudden transform into the possibility where decades happen all within the blink of an eye. Neoliberal ideology, which for many was perceived to have been fixed and immutable has, with the rise of Corbynism ,the potential to be swept away.

The excitement that surrounds Corbyn in 2015, therefore, marks a more significant change within the labour movement than the superficial controversy of ‘third way’ Blairism in 1994. Blair’s subsequent general election victory in 1997 cemented the ideological coming together of the Red-Tory axis that this writer hopes Corbynism will shatter to the dustbin of history. What is certain is that September 12, 2015 will be remembered as the day in British political history that Blairism officially died.

When Corbyn was first nominated, he was seen by his opponents both inside and outside the party as a joke candidate. But an indication of how they are now taking him seriously is the extent to which the mainstream media are unanimously attacking him. The Tories, who apparently voted for him because they thought it would enhance their future electoral prospects, are the ones now claiming he is a danger to national security.

But the more they attack, the greater is his support. Justice Secretary, Michael Gove, Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon, Prime Minister David Cameron, Chancellor, Gideon Osborne and MP, Priti Patel have all made exactly the same public statements attacking Corbyn. Clearly, all of them have read the same memo issued from Whitehall. The fear mongering and demonizing propaganda, intended for news bulletin soundbites, is so transparent that it’s comical.

The Tories got this tactic from the Republican Party in America who repeat the same propaganda over and over again hoping that some of it sticks which it invariably does. Of course, the media play their part by uncritically reporting it. An example was the way Fox News repeated the lie that President Obama was a Muslim who was born outside of America.

The phrase repeated in the UK media is that “hard-left” Jeremy Corbyn is a danger to the security of our country, economy and every UK family. In the interest of consistency, why don’t the media who describe security-risk, Corbyn as “hard-left”, apply the euphemism “hard-right” to Cameron whose illegal wars greatly increase the risk of domestic terrorist activity? Gove said:

Jeremy Corbyn’s victory is a deadly serious demand from her majesty’s opposition that we put the future of this country in the hands of the MP for Islington North…There can be no room for doubt or ambiguity about what Jeremy Corbyn would do if he formed the next government. He would pose a direct threat to the security of our country, the security of our economy and the security of every family…. He would weaken our defenses and make Britain less safe. By choosing Jeremy Corbyn over his rivals, the party have now endorsed deserting our allies like Norway. He proposes leaving the NATO alliance just as the growing threat from Islamist extremists requires international solidarity.

Or to put it another way, Corbyn wants Britain to stop trailing after America to launch another war that got us into this mess in the first place. Gove continues:

“Corbyn would also reduce our armed forces further unilaterally, scrapping our nuclear deterrent whilst terrorists and state sponsors of terror seek to develop nuclear weapons of their own.”

Just think about that for a moment. In the unlikely event that terrorists get hold of a nuclear weapon, they are not going to put it on the back of a rocket and send it from where they are living because they will be easily detectable from space and consequently we would be able to respond in kind. Terrorists are insane but they are not stupid.

What they are more likely to do is Fed Ex some kind of small device in the hope that it would be undetectable which, therefore, totally mitigates against the effectiveness of a state like Britain to be able to use nuclear weapons as a targeted response.

Gove then goes on to criticise Corbyn for his apparent economic incompetency by suggesting that his policy of printing money would be inflationary, overlooking the fact that his own government flooded the bankers with money. The stated aim was that the banks would lend the money back to us with interest so that they would make more profit. But the bankers went one better than that by using the money to buy shares in their own companies thereby increasing the value of those shares and hence the amount of bonuses they were able to award themselves. Conversely, Corbyn’s stated aim is to give the money to the people as a means of generating growth.

Gove then misquotes Corbyn as saying that the death of Osama Bin Laden was a tragedy. But what Gove failed to mention, was that Corbyn was not describing the death as a tragedy, but the fact that Bin Laden wasn’t put on trial, imprisoned and therefore punished for longer.

Will there be a Blairite coup to unseat citizen Corbyn?

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By Daniel Margrain

Fantastic result. Now the hard work begins to purge the party hierarchy of the pro-war, pro-big business red Tory Blairites. The opinions of a reinvigorated party membership who propelled Corbyn into the spotlight will be respected so long as Corbyn remains leader. I heard Ken Livingston on LBC say that under Corbyn the party will unify and there will be little signs of any attempts to undermine him.

No sooner had Corbyn’s victory based on clear and unambiguous principles been announced, then a Shadow Frontbencher resigned in protest over those principles. This was shortly followed with threats to resign by other “modernising” Frontbencher’s who vowed to do so on the basis that Corbyn refuses to moderate his “extreme” policies.

Of course, not being a friend of Israel, supporting the nationalisation of the railways and utilities, opposing nuclear weapons and war, opposing the growing wealth gap and supporting the need for a massive affordable house building programme that benefits the mass of the population, are all extreme measures, but bailing out bankers that benefits nobody, is not.

How stupid can Corbyn supporters be?

According to the Daily Mail, among those refusing to serve in his team are current shadow chancellor Chris Leslie, shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt, shadow communities secretary Emma Reynolds and shadow defence secretary Vernon Coaker. Others include shadow transport secretary Michael Dugher, shadow chief secretary to the Treasury Shabana Mahmood, shadow international development secretary Mary Creagh and shadow Cabinet Office minister Lucy Powell.

I’m sure the Tories will welcome these unscrupulous careerists with open arms. It will be interesting to see how the triangulated Tory-lite views of the vast majority of designer suited robots in the hall where the result was announced who follow to the letter the scripts of their paymasters and who believe nothing whatsoever in the views espoused by their leader, can be reconciled with Corbyn’s own long-standing principled outlook.

It’s precisely these kinds of principles that has resulted in the regurgitation of the official/media meme which criticises Corbyn for voting against his party 500 times. This is represented as disloyalty. The notion that he might have voted against the Tories, while most of his Blairite colleagues, many of whom are war criminals, voted with them, is quietly forgotten.

Never before have I witnessed such a disconnect between the beliefs of the labour hierarchy on the one hand and those of its leader who carries with him the aspirations and hopes of the people who voted for him on the other. This is not the kind of euphemistic and disingenuous understanding of “aspiration” trotted out by Blairites in which neoliberal economic policy allows the super rich to get even richer, but one in which the basis of policy can give rise to the potential for everybody to get where they want without demonizing those who for whatever reason, don’t.

My fear is that the gap between the ideology represented by the elite within the hierarchy of the party and the multitude of its members is so vast that the void is irreconcilable unless the party is purged of this clique. I suspect that something will have to give as the party moves forward but we will see.

As I type this, Corbyn is protesting on a rally about the terrible treatment of refugees created by Cameron and Blair’s wars. Could, you dear reader, have ever imagined any of his predecessors post-Michael Foot doing that?

The idea that a highly principled leader of a party who espouses peace and reconciliation at every given opportunity, can reconcile two diametrically opposing forces seems to me to be a bridge too far. I hope I’m proven wrong.

Labour are still a bunch of crooks

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UPDATE

36,000 people voted for swizzler Tessa Jowell to be Labour candidate for London’s mayor. If you consider the facts below, that says something very scarey about a substantial portion of Labour Party membership, even if she didn’t win.

The fact that it is still a serious possibility that a substantial number of Labour members will vote for Tessa Jowell to be the party’s candidate for London Mayor – which Labour electorate includes the new membership – should be a serious jolt to anybody who believes the Labour Party is transformed. The Labour Party is still full of crooks, and Tessa Jowell is one of the biggest crooks.

As I wrote in 2009:

Tessa Jowell actively participated in the laundering of the corrupt payments from Silvio Berlusconi, given to her husband David Mills in return for false testimony in court to cover up some of Berlusconi’s endless crooked dealings. Tessa Jowell participated as a full partner in the three time remortgaging of her home, paying off the mortgage with cash and then remortgaging. She has stated that there was “Nothing unusual” in this.

Most people would think it was very unusual to be able to pay off a large mortgage with cash at all. To do it twice and remortgage again each time would strike most of us as very weird indeed.

Tessa Jowell claimed she did not read the mortgage documents before signing them or know where the money was coming from. David Mills was eventually acquitted on a technicality by the Italian legal system, but it is not in dispute that the money came from Berlusconi or that he lied in court. Jowell claimed she did not read the documents and had no idea where the money came from or what her husband was doing. She then “left” him and went through a sham “separation” which the whole London establishment knew was a fake, (but the media obligingly did not publish), until the heat died down and the couple could get together again.

Revelations about Labour crookedness constantly make you gasp, such as the meetings Cherie Blair set up with Hillary Clinton on behalf of the Qatari royal family. Blair’s free holidays on Berlusconi are well remembered. Labour can claim that the Corbyn election is a defeat for Blairism and a new leaf. But if today Jowell gets more than a derisory vote, we will all know Labour are still a bunch of crooks at heart.

Article written by Craig Murray and published on his blog on September 11, 2015.

The Austerity Con-Trick

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Cash machines targeted by Occupy protesters

Cash machines targeted by Occupy protesters (Pic: Guy Smallman)

The UK government mantra that it’s imperative to reduce the deficit (the difference between the money coming in and going out) is one of the greatest confidence tricks to have ever been fostered on the British people. In reality, the deficit could be wiped out at a stroke. In his documentary film The Spirit of ’45, Ken Loach highlighted that in the decade after the war, the UK government built 300,000 affordable homes a year and brought the NHS into being.

The chart below shows at that time UK national debt – the accumulation of deficits – stood at about 180% of GDP. At present it’s about a third of that.

UK National Debt since 1900.

uk-national-debt
Source: Reinhart, Camen M. and Kenneth S. Rogoff, “From Financial Crash to Debt Crisis,” NBER Working Paper 15795, March 2010. and OBR from 2010.

So why in 2015 are we apparently unable to afford to prevent the most vulnerable in society from committing suicide as a result of cuts to their benefits, yet after the war we were able to build hundreds of thousands of affordable homes for people to live in as well as bring our NHS into being? Why the insistence on getting the deficit down especially since there is no law forcing the government to repay the debt?

The answer to those questions is that since the crisis hit in 2008, there’s been an iron clad consensus between both the Labour Party hierarchy and the Tory right, predicated on neoliberal ideology which is used as a weapon with which to beat the poor with by way of the former’s support for, and the latter’s implementation of, a sustained programme of austerity and cuts. It’s this iron clad consensus that Jeremy Corbyn wants to break.

The notion that it’s imperative the British government “balances the budget” in order to reduce government debt is nonsense, as is the analogy that national budgets need to be treated just like household budgets. The bailiffs won’t be entering the House of Commons or the Bank Of England any time soon. The truth is, unlike personal debt, the deficits and debts of governments’ are not of primary importance.

When he became chancellor in 2010, Gideon Osborne boasted that he would eliminate the deficit by April 2015. But that plan is in tatters. He has now put back the promise to 2018/19. The government had to borrow £3.7 billion more in the first seven months of last year. This was partly because North Sea oil and gas revenues plummeted to a four year low.

The UK is a relatively low wage economy compared to it’s major rivals and its productivity gap with these nations’ is at the widest it’s been for 20 years. Moreover, because many of the new jobs created in Britain are mainly part time (against a backdrop of the longest drop in real wages since records began), means that tax revenues are low.

In order to make up the shortfall between real and expected revenues, the government borrows money by selling bonds which are essentially IOUs with the promise of future repayment. In the meantime, the government pays interest on these bonds which are sold to banks, insurance firms and even pension funds. The total of bonds that have been sold is called “public debt”.

In a crisis like the one we’ve had since 2008, bond buyers can demand higher interest payments which they have done. This explains why the cost to the government in terms of the interest on the national debt has risen since the beginning of the crisis as illustrated in the table below.

uk-debt-interest-payments-total

To appease the bond buyers, the government has imposed austerity on the people. We constantly read in the gutter press about the rail workers allegedly holding the government to ransom, but never the bankers – funny that!

During the peak of the swinging sixties, government debt was greater than it is in 2015 and yet, unlike those golden days, we are told that both the government and the citizens of today have to tighten their belts as though we were living the austere days of the Great Depression in the 1930s.

The truth is the post war Keynesian boom resulted in a steadily declining debt from it’s peak in the 1950s. This is because higher wages and high employment means greater spending power, which in turn means greater economic activity and higher government tax revenues.

This is precisely the kind of argument progressive capitalists like Nick Hanauer point to. The reason billionaires like him argue for a doubling in the national minimum wage is not because they are altruistic but because they understand that it’s in their best interests’ and that of the capitalist system as a whole. That message needs to be relayed to Cameron and Osborne.

The Rich Need To Be Forced To Pay Their Way For The Benefit Of All

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Leading American venture capitalist Nick Hanauer has argued that the actions of capitalists’ need to be reined in through a system of planned and coordinated regulation in order for the capitalist system to be sustainable. This is what he said in a BBC TV interview in front of a live audience:

Capitalists have the idea that THEIR things will be bought by everybody else as a result of higher wages paid by OTHER capitalists. But this logic of paying higher wages to staff to help improve business activity more generally, doesn’t seem to apply equally to them since they will insist on paying THEIR OWN workers next to nothing thereby not absorbing the costs themselves resulting in them gaining a competitive advantage over their rivals. The simple truth is, if a higher minimum wage was introduced universally, not only would it be affordable, but something like 40% of American’s would be able to buy more products from everybody thus benefiting all capitalists across the board. Business is challenged today because fewer and fewer people are able to buy things [1].

The implication, in other words, is that the capitalist system needs to be regulated by governments’ in order to save it from the rapacious actions of competing capitalists driven by their insatiable need for profit maximization. This rationale was long ago grasped by Karl Marx who understood that the essence of the capitalist system is, in his phrase, “accumulation for accumulations sake.”

So why don’t capitalists insist on using free labour and make their workers work all the hours under the sun? After all, wouldn’t that lead to higher profits? And one might also ask why their representatives within the elite political establishment would bother to spend any money at all on welfare? The simple but correct answer is that where they have a choice, they don’t. Where labour supply is low, the state is in effect forced to intervene on behalf of capitalists by introducing welfare as the means of preserving and reproducing labour.

But where labour is plentiful, the state rarely feels compelled to introduce health and safety, minimum wage laws and welfare.The rationale for this is that if a worker dies of malnutrition or has an accident at work, he or she can be easily replaced by another worker. Under such circumstances, the state regards these kinds of misfortunes as a price worth paying. Consider this account of the conditions of child labour in the lace industry in Nottingham in 1861 by a local magistrate:

Children of nine or ten years are dragged from their squalid beds at two, three, four o’clock in the morning and compelled to work for a bare subsistence until ten, eleven or twelve at night, their limbs wearing away, their frames dwindling, their faces whitening, and their humanity absolutely sinking into a stone-like torpor, utterly horrible to contemplate [2].

Compare and contrast that to a recent study of the conditions of life for rural migrants in contemporary China:

The trafficked children] came from faraway Liangshan in Sichuan and most of them are not yet 16. The overseers sought and recruited them from families mired in poverty, promising them high wages; some were even abducted and sent off in batches to Dongguan and from there distributed by the truckload to factories across the Pearl River Delta. On unfamiliar soil these children are often scolded and beaten and have only one proper meal every few days. Some little girls are even raped. Day after day they undertake arduous labour. Some children think about escape, but the road is blocked. The overseers threaten them and warn them that if they try to run away, there will be a price to pay [3].

What the above illustrates, is that the plentiful supply of labour power was as pertinent during the early days of the industrial revolution in Britain as it is to present day China. In both cases the introduction of welfare as the means of preserving and reproducing labour was not a concern for capitalists or the state. Consequently, welfare provision is as scant in China today as it was in 19th century Britain.

Similarly, while the deaths of more than 1,100 garment workers in a factory building collapse in Dhaka,Bangladesh, in April 2013 [4], most of them women on subsistence wages, is an unspeakable tragedy for their families and friends, it is of much less significance, other than concerns about negative publicity, for companies such as Primark for whom they were producing cheap clothes, simply because there are plenty more desperate workers who will take their place [5].

Where, however, the supply of labour is less plentiful or where labour becomes more skilled and consequently more expensive, losing workers through injury or disablement, or through working them to death doesn’t really make economic sense. But that doesn’t mean that capitalists in Britain or America wouldn’t insist that their workers work all the hours under the sun in the short term for peanuts if they thought they could get away with it.

One of the contradictions inherent to capitalism is that the system as a whole needs to spend money to make profits, yet every individual capitalist wants to spend as little as possible. The lengths to which giant companies like Amazon, Google and Starbucks will go in order to avoid paying tax shows how that dilemma is played out.

In the longer term, having workers working 14 or 16 hours a day for peanuts is very wasteful. It’s like over-exploiting the soil. However, given that individual capitalists themselves won’t do anything about it for fear of losing their competitive advantage over their rivals, the state as the representative of the capitalist class as a whole is forced to step in.

This brings me back to the wisdom implicit in the Nick Hanauer quote at the beginning of this article. Hanaeur’s argument about the necessity of the United States government to substantially increase the legal minimum wage across the board in order to save capitalism from itself, is in principle, no different from the minority of capitalists in 19th century Britain who argued in favour of the introduction of the Factory Acts of the 1830s and 1840s which set down a maximum length for the working day.

An advanced low wage and minimal welfare provision capitalist state like Britain is the modern equivalent of its counterpart during the industrial revolution prior to the introduction of the Factory Acts. What is required is a radical re-think with regards to our current direction of travel.away from the failed neoliberal economic model of austerity which economist Paul Krugman describes as:

A con that does nothing but harm to the wealth of this nation. It has been discredited everywhere else: only in Britain do we cling to the myth.[6].

It’s in Britain where the redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top continues at apace, much of it as a result of huge subsidies paid to the richest landowners [7]. As inequality continues to rise so does the potential for public disorder. At present, the richest tenth pay 35% of their income in tax, while the poorest tenth pay 43% [8]. Is it too much to ask that those with the deepest pockets pay their way, thus creating the potential for the kind of equitable society in which everybody wins?

This is not pie in the sky stuff but a pragmatic solution to the problems we face. Individuals as politically and ideologically as far apart like Jeremy Corbyn, Caroline Lucas, Nick Hanauer, Joseph Stiglitz, and other top economists and capitalists, understand what’s required to get us out of the mess we’re in. It’s a pity that people like Duncan Smith, Cameron and Osborne prefer to put ideology before pragmatism.

10 reasons NOT to vote for Jeremy Corbyn to be leader of the Labour party

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Jeremy Corbyn

Jeremy Corbyn (Pic: Garry Knight)

Newspaper columnist Cyril Waugh-Monger has warned repeatedly about the ‘dangers’ of Jeremy Corbyn becoming Labour leader.

THE BIG political story in the UK this summer is undoubtedly ‘Corbynmania’. How a 66-year-old antiwar activist and socialist has gone from being the rank 200-1 outsider in the Labour leadership contest election to be the red-hot favorite.

Jeremy Corbyn, a modest, unassuming man who wears an open necked shirt and slacks instead of the usual politician’s suit and tie, has really proved a big hit with the public, who have grown tired of slick politicians who are always ‘on message’, and who don’t seem at all sincere in what they’re saying. Large crowds have turned out to hear Corbyn speak: last week he had to give his speech from the top of a fire engine as an election rally spilled out into the street.

Not everyone though has welcomed Corbyn’s advance. One man who has made repeated warnings about the ‘dangers’ of Jeremy Corbyn is Cyril Waugh-Monger, a ‘Very Important’ newspaper columnist for the NeoCon Daily, a patron of the Senator Joe McCarthy Appreciation Society and the author of ‘Why the Iraq War was a Brilliant Idea’, as well as ‘The Humanitarian Case for Bombing Syria’.

Below are Mr Waugh-Monger’s ten commandments to Labour members to not, under any circumstances, vote for Jeremy Corbyn. Remember, we need to take what he has to say very seriously – as, after all, he did reveal to us that Iraq possessed WMDs [Weapons of Mass Destruction] in 2003.

1. Jeremy Corbyn wants to ‘stop the war’.

Jeremy Corbyn opposed the bombing of Yugoslavia. He opposed the invasion of Afghanistan. He was against the invasion of Iraq. He was against bombing Libya and also voted against military action in Syria.

I ask you – is this the sort of man who is fit to be in charge of one of Britain’s leading parties?

If Corbyn – heaven forbid – had been British Prime Minister in 2003 he would not have committed British troops to the invasion of Iraq. Just imagine what would have happened if we hadn’t invaded Iraq! Well, I’ll tell you what would have happened – the Middle East would now be a haven for terrorist groups which would be targeting British tourists on beaches when they go on their summer holidays. The whole Middle East would now be in turmoil. We’d be facing a refugee crisis with people fleeing all the countries that we hadn’t destabilized.

2. Jeremy Corbyn is a dangerous leftist.

Just look at the sort of policies this man supports. He wants to re-nationalize the railways which have the highest fares in Europe.

He wants to scrap university tuition fees which consign students to a lifetime of debt. He would like to make housing affordable for ordinary people.

He wants an economy to suit the needs of the majority and not the 1%.

He wants to keep the Sunday trading laws as they are and not introduce 24/7 shopping. He is opposed to illegal wars which kill hundreds of thousands of people and he does not want to bring back fox-hunting. Quite clearly the man is some kind of left-wing nutcase.

3. Jeremy Corbyn has been critical of the US and Israel.

Outrageously, Corbyn has criticized US foreign policy and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. He seems to think that the US and Israel have to abide by international law – and should be held accountable for their actions. The man is quite obviously a communist and as such should be barred not only from standing for Labour leader, but banned from the Labour Party too.

Jeremy Corbyn: Why He’s Got Britain’s Anti-Democratic Democrats Worried

4. Jeremy Corbyn has extremist links.

Not only is Corbyn a dangerous radical himself, he also associates with dangerous extremists. He once spoke at a meeting where one of the other speakers had once shared a platform with a speaker who had once shared a platform with a speaker who had once shared a platform with a speaker who had once praised Joseph Stalin – proving undeniably that Corbyn is a Stalinist.

Also on Twitter, Corbyn once retweeted a person who had once retweeted another person who had once retweeted another person who had retweeted a tweet from someone who I don’t approve of – proving once again Corby’s extremism.

5. Jeremy Corbyn is unelectable.

Jeremy Corbyn wants to do things which the majority of the British public wants, such as re-nationalize the railways and keep Britain out of Middle East wars. This makes him unelectable because politicians are only electable if they want to do things the public doesn’t want.

At the last election, Labour lost heavily to the anti-austerity SNP in Scotland and also lost lots of votes to the anti-austerity Greens. So it’s obvious that to get these votes back, Labour needs a leader who supports austerity, and not someone who opposes it, like Corbyn.

I’m a very wealthy right-wing, pro-austerity warmonger, but believe me, I only want the best for Labour – which is to be a right-wing pro-austerity, pro-war party – barely distinguishable from the Tories.

Having two main parties who have identical views on the main issues is what democracy is all about. If Corbyn wins then Labour would be very different from the Conservatives, which would obviously be very bad for democracy as it would give the electorate a real choice.

6. Jeremy Corbyn wants to take us back to the 1970s.

In the 1970s the gap between the rich and poor was at its lowest in the UK’s history. Living standards for ordinary people were rising all the time and large sections of the economy were in public ownership. The banks did not run the country and the taxation system was steeply progressive.

Corbyn wants to take us back to these times! Think how disastrous that would be for rich people like me who would have to pay much higher rates of tax which would be redistributed to horrible working class-type people and people on middle incomes. The 1% would really suffer and the most talented people – like myself – and my neocon friends, would leave the country. That’s what lies in store for us if Corbyn succeeds!

7. Jeremy Corbyn would leave Britain defenseless and open to invasion.

Corbyn has promised to scrap Trident.

If Trident was scrapped there’s no doubt that the Russians, Iranians, Syrians and Hezbollah would launch a full scale invasion of Britain within 45 minutes.

Britain would be carved up between the ‘Axis of Evil’, with the Russians taking England, the Iranians Scotland and the Syrians, Wales (and Hezbollah in charge of Northern Ireland).

Just imagine, Aberystywyth under the control of the evil dictator Bashar al-Assad. Russian troops patroling the streets of Godalming. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard marching in Sauchiehall Street. A nightmare scenario indeed, but all this would be the reality if Corbyn gets his way. The very future of our country is at stake.

8. Jeremy Corbyn once welcomed an article by John Pilger.

In 2004, Jeremy Corbyn was one of 25 MPs who signed an Early Day Motion which welcomed a Pilger article on Kosovo.

How outrageous! To think, a man is standing for the leadership of one of Britain’s major parties who once welcomed an article by John Pilger!

No one who has ever cited John Pilger with approval – let alone signed a motion supporting him – should be allowed to stand for high public office in Britain. The freedom to hold and express views and opinions in a democracy should only apply to opinions and views that myself and fellow elite neocons approve of! And we most certainly do not approve of John Pilger!

9. Jeremy Corbyn opposes austerity.

Austerity is working brilliantly at the moment.

It’s provided a great excuse for the government to flog off remaining state assets at below their true market value to ‘the right people’ in the City. The welfare payments of lower-class people who have far too many children are being cut. Libraries and local authority services are being closed. Yet, guess what? The bearded one opposes all of this. He says that “austerity is a political choice, not an economic necessity.”

He wants to protect public services and libraries from cuts – and instead wants to crackdown on tax evasion and increase taxes on the very wealthy! I ask you – is this the sort of man we want leading Labour – or worse still, the country?

And finally, but most importantly, the tenth commandment:

10. Jeremy Corbyn is very popular.

…And if he succeeds – which seems very likely – it’s game over for me and my little clique of elite warmongers. We won’t get our wars and we’ll have to pay more taxes and it’ll be all perfectly horrible! So, don’t vote for Jeremy Corbyn, because although he’ll be very good news for you – his success will be terrible for us!

Source: Sott.net

That joke isn’t funny anymore: from Tories4Corbyn to a Very British Coup

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corbyn2

One day, someone like the Glasgow Media Group, will do an analysis of this leadership election and how the attitude of the right-wing press has changed towards Jeremy Corbyn. It will be fascinating. 

Stage 1: Laughter

It seems like an age ago when it was all jolly larks and #Tories4Corbyn. Smugly and patronisingly, they laughed into their sleeves, safe in the knowledge that Corbyn even being on the ballot would show that the loony left (guffaw) was very much alive and kicking and the Labour Party at large hadn’t changed. By not having changed, of course, they mean not accepting all the tenets of the disgustingly unequal and brutal society that their chums in the city had created. That self-satisfied superiority complex, which seemingly couldn’t be shifted, had been aided and abetted by the Labour Party in Parliament, filled with New Labourites who did just that – who had “changed” and had accepted the rules of the club.

Stage 2: Confusion

Then came the period of incredulity, as the madness of “Corbynmania” seemed to be sweeping the country. What on earth was going on, they wondered? Hadn’t this stuff – like collective values, solidarity, compassion – been left behind in the 80s where it belonged? Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall they understood: they too played by the rules. The deal was, they would let us keep the fundamentals of the Thatcherite settlement in place as long as they could play with the ball occasionally. The “fun” being had at the Labour Party’s expense became a little less sure footed. #Tories4Corbyn faded and turned into “Shock! Horror! Look what the oiks are up to!” They actually believe this crap? Rent controls? Public ownership? Democracy in our education system? Whatever next? Fake indignation and incredulity ruled, but now with a frown.

Stage 3: Anger

Latterly, the terms of reference have turned around completely. As arrogant bullies do, no public acknowledgement of this volte face was to be allowed. But to anyone who has been paying attention, it’s obvious that things have shifted dramatically as the election campaign has gone on and Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign has gathered real momentum, not just in the Labour heartlands, but in the Tories’ own backyards. The chuckles have been swallowed back and been replaced with anger. What the hell? As the movement around Jeremy Corbyn has become a “thing”, evidenced by the enormous crowds turning up all over the country and the rapturous welcome that Corbynite policies were receiving, things have taken a nasty turn. Quietly at first, but then gathering momentum, the word was put out that “this has to be stopped”. As that lad from Manchester once said:

“That joke isn’t funny anymore. It’s too close to home and it’s too near the bone.”

At the time of writing, this latest phenomenon has morphed into an almost a pathological obsession for many in the right wing press. Whereas previously, the writings on Corbyn positively oozed condescension, now you can smell the fear and a strange lack of confidence. It’s starting to resemble something out of a Very British Coup, but every smear story, every outright lie and every petty, personalised attack on Corbyn, his family, or his army of supporters betrays how petrified they are at the thought that, for the first time in three decades, they might actually face a real opposition to their project – not just to this detail, or that policy, but to their whole individualist, consumer-orientated, callous ideology.

Thanks to Ben Sellers

The Rich Get The Carrot And The Poor Get The Stick

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The juxtaposition and double standards in our society between those at the top and those at the bottom is stark. The gap between the rich and poor continues to increase to the extent that the top earners in the footsie 100 companies’ earn a massive 183 times more than the average earner [1].

The argument of some of those who attempt to justify this massive discrepancy is that the top of society have to be incentivized in order to increase their performance. That’ll be news to the bosses of the publicly subsidized privatized railways and loss making banks whose performances in many instances are found wanting.

Nevertheless, those at the top are invariably given inducements to work better. But that rule of thumb never seems to apply to those at the bottom. Why don’t we try, as Jeremy Corbyn has proposed, “a bit of quantitative easing” for the poorest instead of the richest [2] so that the former will be incentivized to kick start the economy?

But to do so would be an admission of defeat and would therefore undermine the ideological consensus that exists between the New Labour hierarchy and the Tory establishment. If there are good and well paid jobs for people to go into, it would mean that the Tories proposed introduction of their inappropriately named “boot camps”, would not be necessary.

Chris Grayling, the Tory welfare spokesman, has stated that these “boot camps” are in reality compulsory community service programmes for young welfare claimants aged between 18 and 21 aimed at improving work discipline and giving them basic skills to get a job [3].

The term “boot camp” is intended as a soundbite whose aim is to give reassurance to the Tories’ natural constituency of middle England Daily Mail reading voters that they intend to come down hard on “benefit scroungers”.

Why does the establishment always appear to give the impression of using the “stick” approach when it comes to inducing a prescribed behaviour among the poorest in society, whilst the rich are incentivized with the carrot?

If you were to look beyond the headline, the boot camp proposals are, to a limited extent, likely to be beneficial to young people who have difficulty with numeracy, literacy and basic communication skills. But that’s as far it goes. The boot camp idea, in other words, is necessary but not sufficient.

What the concept does not address is the fundamental issue relating to the lack of government investment in proper training and apprenticeship programmes that lead to the opportunity for stable, skilled and well paid jobs, thus giving hope to our young people instead of alienating them.

The Tory language is invariably about “toughness” and “coming down hard” on young people as opposed to the language and policies of hope. Not so for the richest in society who are always offered the “carrot”..

Cathy Newman’s Hatchet Job

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An indication of how desperate the mainstream media have become over Jeremy Corbyn’s runaway lead in the opinion polls was no better illustrated by Cathy Newman, the Channel 4 journalist who went into a panic on social media for implying in February that the mosque she visited displayed (falsely) a culture of intolerance and sexism [1]. Newman has been criticised on Twitter by attempted to dig up dirt in her smearing of Corbyn in relation to reports he had links with Holocaust deniers and people with anti-Semitic views.  The Independent reported that:

“The Channel 4 journalist interviewed the Labour leadership hopeful in an alleyway about his connections with Deir Yassin Remembered, a group founded by self-declared Holocaust denier Paul Eisen, and the cleric Raed Salah, who was convicted for inciting violence and racism after accusing Jews of using children’s blood to bake bread.

Corbyn denied her repeated suggestion that he had made “misjudgements” by attending events by Deir Yassin Remembered and describing Salah as an “honoured citizen” some years ago, accusing Newman of putting words in his mouth.

He insisted that Eisen was not a Holocaust denier when he met him 15 years ago, telling Newman: “Had he been a Holocaust denier, I would have had absolutely nothing to do with him. I was moved by the plight of people who had lost their village in Deir Yassin.

Corbyn said he was unaware Salah had been convicted of racial incitement when he met him. The interview, which was broadcast on Monday evening, quickly sparked a backlash against Newman, with many accusing her of trying to smear him.” [2].

TrutherTom in the Independent comments section commented:

“Now Jeremy Corbyn has dozens of Jewish academics writing a open letter to the Jerusalem Chronicle stating that he is not anti-semitic and so another expose backfires against anti Corbyn media. I did not see him getting angry but I was certainly feeling it myself as she kept repeating “Was it a misjudgement Mr Corbyn” ad nauseum.

Totally pathetic attempt to try and stitch him up while hoping to make a name for herself but all she has done is make herself look foolish and unprincipled and extremely arrogant. Full marks to Jeremy Corbyn for keeping his cool when others may have reacted hastily but his constant denial and refusal to be baited, made her look very superficial and rather stupid.”