President Trump: This Is No Aberration

In the year that I was born, African Americans were being lynched with impunity. When I was in my teens, the American military was in the process of dropping more explosives, including lethal cocktails of chemicals, on the peasant farmers of South East Asia than had been used in the entire Second World War. Three million Vietnamese and more than a million Cambodians and Laotians were to be murdered by the US military-industrial complex for the crime of wanting to be free of European and American colonialism. By the time I had reached my mid-twenties, that very same military-industrial complex was in the process of wreaking bloody havoc across Central and South America, repeatedly overthrowing democratic governments and installing in their place vicious dictators propped up by US trained death squads. Read More…

Fake News; Just another Fake Story

What is all this nonsense about fake news? We live in a world of fake news. Always have done and dare I say it, probably always will. Only it used to go by a different name; propaganda. As national elites struggle for supremacy, over both the general populous, and over other competing elites, propaganda has been one of their essential weapons. George Orwell brought this dramatically to our attention in his dystopic novel, 1984. War became peace, hate became love, plenty was the cover word for starvation and the Ministry of Truth was responsible for disseminating an endless stream of lies. This Orwellian world is pretty much the world we have always had since civilisation began. Read More…

President Trump: Wrong Person with the Wrong Agenda.

That Trump is totally unfit for public office is blindingly obvious. All the opprobrium that has been hurled is way is, without the slightest doubt, justified. He is a demagogue of the worst kind. Playing to the economic insecurities and basest instincts of a largely marginalised American working class, Trump has shown himself to be a bullying misogynist, a crude racist, a vile narcissist and in all probability, a tax evading crook. But his personal characteristics, such as they are, pale into insignificance when we consider his political agenda. But, it’s not true that everything he has been saying is totally off the planet. Far from it. Like the infinitely more reasoned and socially responsible Bernie Saunders, Trump has accurately highlighted the deteriorating plight of the American working class at the hands of global capital, but, unlike Saunders, Trump’s proposed solutions are socially toxic and economically fanciful, bordering on the fascistic. To make America great again, will necessitate triggering a global trade war, in which there can be no winners. And trade wars, as we should have learnt from the bitter experience of the mid twentieth century, can all too easily morph into a full-on military war. Read More…

British Values – Which Ones Would They Be Then?

Swearing allegiance to any set of values is a mighty tricky game. Best to be avoided at all costs. But Tory Minister Sajid Javid has different ideas. He wants the whole nation to swear allegiance to a set of British values. But this seemingly innocuous proposal quickly becomes a philosophical minefield. Who, for starters, will dictate what’s in and what’s out? And who’s to say which interpretation of any given value is the correct one. Take for example the right to one’s own religious faith. That seems eminently straightforward and enlightened enough on the surface. Far from it. What if one person’s faith directly contradicts another person’s faith or indeed the law of the land? Take for example the highly contentious medieval practices of honour killings, female genital mutilation and forced arranged marriages. Should tolerance of religious cultural diversity trump secular law or should secular law always and everywhere trump deeply held religious custom? This raises the intractably thorny question: where does tolerance of cultural diversity start and where should that tolerance absolutely finish? And what of the myriad grey areas in between?

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Simon Jenkins: Union Basher

Our liberal media commentators are lining up to condemn the strike action of the RMT and others. Last month it was Matthew Syed in The Times. This month it is Simon Jenkins writing in the London Evening Standard 9/1/17. Both papers I should add are owned and tightly controlled by billionaire media barons who always and everywhere side with the global corporate interest. And when we look at the actions of these billionaires, we should never, ever forget that behind every great fortune is a great crime. Read More…

Even The Dogs by Jon McGregor

Christmas is the season of good cheer. It is also the season of forced gaiety and consumerist frenzy. It is also the season of bleak homelessness, addiction and other forms of individual and family disfunction. And should you wish to get an insight into the latter condition, you could do no better than to read Jon McGregor’s, Even The Dogs. I am currently mourning Jim Crace’s decision to retire from novel writing but praise the gods, Jon McGregor has miraculously arrived to fill the vacuum. And he does so with all the literary genius that we had come to love and expect from Jim Crace. Two literary geniuses proving, as if proof was necessary, that the centuries old art of novel writing is not dead.

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The Invention of the Jewish People by Shlomo Sand

At a time when there is a relentless campaign to equate legitimate criticism of the colonial expansionist policies of the Israeli government with anti-semitism, this text from Shlomo Sand, history professor from Tel Aviv University, is nothing short of explosive. From within the belly of the beast so to speak, this Israeli academic has produced a thesis that gets to the very heart of the greater Israel project. But it does so much more. In the process of demolishing the ludicrous notion of Israel being God’s promised land to God’s chosen people, Shlomo’s well documented thesis works to deconstruct the whole notion of pure biological races emanating from some misty god inspired times. Even a cursory investigation of history shows that most nations are relatively recent constructs, and even the more ancient nations turn out to be little more than an accumulation of successive waves of invasions, migrations and social intermingling, England being the perfect example.

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The Crown, Netflix TV Series One

When I saw this one being advertised, I was determined not to touch it with a barge-pole. It was almost certainly going to be a slavish, grovelling tribute to an aristocratic, parasitic family of European in-breeds, better known as Britain’s Royal family. I’ve always despised the very notion of monarchy, religious hierarchy or any form of hereditary power. I certainly was not going to voluntarily buy into this latest chapter of mindless deference to this archaic medieval institution. But I was badgered into giving this latest Netflix offering a go and hey presto it was quite intoxicating. Not without a few historical errors but intelligently portrayed and anything but deferential. In one of the early episodes Prince Phillip denounced the entire House of Windsor as a bunch of hyenas with ice cold blood in their veins. Now I can go along with that.

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Fidel Castro: An Historical Hero

Sam Leith (Evening Standard 28th November) and Zoe Williams (The Guardian) were tripping over each other and themselves in their endeavours to brand Fidel Castro a ruthless, bestial dictator. And anyone who dared to think otherwise was guilty of naive 6th form politics. Both are competent enough journalists, and on their day, damn good ones. A pity then, that on this occasion they, along with dozens of other liberal commentators, were guilty of the same bourgeois journalistic failing that of allowing themselves to become divorced from the material reality of their subject. It’s not that both Leith and Williams do not make some valid points they do. Arbitrary thuggish state repression is just that, no matter whether it comes from the right or the left particularly if one is on the receiving end. But criticisms of Castro, like any great historical figure, becomes totally devoid of meaning if divorced from the concrete reality from which they emerged. This is as true for Castro as it is for all the great socialist revolutionaries of the 20th century. When you read the above-mentioned articles it transpires that it is our esteemed liberal journalists who are guilty of high school journalism and not those that seek a balanced assessment. Read More…

Trump and the Brexiteers – Exploiting the victims of corporate globalisation

I think it fair to say that capital always and everywhere, if unregulated, moves to the point of highest return. The odd ethical exception here than there is soon negated by the relentless tide of self-interest. And in that pursuance of maximum return, capital has long since slipped its national leash. Capital has long since gone global and so too has the manufacture of goods, services and people both those that are able to profit from the system and those that are desperate to be part of it.

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An interview with Tony Blair – Alex Bilmes

I don’t recall ever having read a copy of Esquire but the name does ring a bell. I’ve always imagined it as some tacky men’s magazine’, that is if I’ve ever actually thought of it at all. Not quite porn, but a bit seedy nevertheless. Certainly, not a serious political journal. But it was being given away as a complimentary copy by my holiday hotel and the front cover did look intriguing.

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I Daniel Blake, Film Review, Ken Loach, October 2016

A gut-wrenching and politically explosive powerhouse of a film for sure, but one that is unlikely to have the same devastating effect on the nation that Loachs first film, Cathy Come Home, had some fifty years ago. Whereas millions of Brits were once shocked by Loachs expose of British homelessness and the heartless bureaucracy that went with it, I Daniel Blake, is going to have to fight tooth and nail to get itself heard in this new multi-channel, multi-media era. Whereas once, just two terrestrial channels competed for our attention, now there seems to be hundreds. I Daniel Blake is a film that deserves to be watched by the entire nation though somehow I very much doubt that it will. Read More…

Bob Dylan- Nobel Prize Winner at Last

Mr Zimmerman is a moody sort of guy. But I mean that in the best possible way. For fifty years or more this extraordinary poet and musician, and all round song and dance man, has been exploring the many contradictory moods of the human condition and doing so with the fine skill of a master wordsmith. I don’t profess to know much about previous winners of this supposedly prestigious literary award so I am unable to make comparisons, but I can say emphatically that BD has the enduring ability to coin a phrase that stays with you for the rest of your damn life. There can be few men or women of words that can claim that sort of mantle. And still today, an event may present itself in the news, and one of those poignant Dylan lines pops into mind that seems to perfectly sum up the situation no matter how devilishly complex that situation may be. For that alone I would suggest that the award is well deserved. Read More…

Theresa May – Britain is Open for Corporate Plunder

Despite those stirring, noble words from Theresa May in her first twenty-four hours, Prime Minister May has gone on to shown her true corporate colours. Prime Minister May has consistently backed the corporate interest over and above the interests of the country and its citizens. May, with her promise to reinstate Grammar Schools and the debilitating selection that goes with them, started off badly and has proceeded to go from bad to worse. In fact, so reactionary has her record been so far, she has almost succeeded in making her predecessor look like a social reformer. Almost. In virtually every decision she has made, she has backed the global corporates over and above the public good. May’s administration is shaping up to be every bit as reactionary as the Thatcherite governments that preceded her.

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War Criminals – We need to look closer to home

There is little doubting that Russia is in the hands of a gangster mafia. The once state owned commanding heights of the old Soviet Union have been sold off to a gang of thieving oligarchs, many of whom were former Communist Party apparatchiks. Whilst this oligarchic elite has grown obscenely rich, the Russian economy has contracted, buffeted as it is by falling oil prices, endless wars around its periphery, western sanctions and criminal government ineptitude. Socially, Russia has become intolerant and repressive. And now, encircled as it is by an ever expansionist NATO, Russia under Putin, has decided the best form of defence is attack. And the Western powers, unable or unwilling to extend its own military operations, can only resort to name calling. Russia is declared the war criminal for its actions in the Crimea, Ukraine, and now Syria, but western politicians and commentators should look closer to home for those most culpable for spiralling decent into war and mayhem.

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Don’t worry my Liberal friends. President Donald Trump was the best outcome possible… really

Yes that’s what the headline says, and no I am not looking for attention. This election was about the American people versus American politics, and the people won. Don’t get me wrong. This is going to be the ultimate in Pyrrhic victories. The people who are going to suffer the most will be Trumps voters when they realise that they have been sold the biggest bill of goods in American political history.

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The GMB – Is this one of the most reactionary organisations in Britain?

Before I get going, I should declare a personal interest. Many moons ago, whilst holding the post of Convenor of Stewards at a very large hospital, I recommended that the portering staff should shift their union membership from the GMB to that of NUPE (now Unison) in order to create a more unified trade union presence. We put the issue to the vote and the porters unanimously approved the recommendation. And then all hell broke loose. The GMB threatened NUPE and me in particular with hell, fire and damnation. They even threatened to invoke the Bridlington agreement. NUPE stood their ground and eventually the wounded GMB officials crawled back into their respective holes, though I guess, in retrospect, they were only trying to protect their patch.

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Corbynistas – Is it time to revamp the old co-operative movement?

I have to confess that I actually know precious little about the old co-operative movement, though I’m doing a little background reading right now. What I have learnt is that the movement is still alive and well across Britain and in many other countries as well. However, the last time the Co-operative Movement hit the headlines, it was far from being a sun-drenched moment. The Co-operative Bank, it turned out, was mired in bad debts and bad management. Hardly a ringing endorsement for the next generation to aspire to. My only other contact with things cooperative is the C-ooperative supermarket, which to be honest, seems little different to any other supermarket. Just another piece of the usual suburban high street. But I do know that the Co-operative Movement had radical origins and a philosophy that at least challenged the prevailing dog-eat-dog ethos of modern capitalism. So, with millions of people, both young and old, looking to break with the neo-liberal global agenda, now might just be the time to revisit our cooperative past.

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John Harris: Does The Left Have A future?

Here is an excellent article; comprehensive, insightful and coherent. But it is an article that is crying out for some sort of conclusion. However, Harris is either unwilling or unable to provide one. Of course, in his defence, there are no glib conclusions to the fragmentation and demoralisation of the old European working class any more than there are easy conclusions to be drawn from the relentless march of globalisation and automation. These are the trickiest of subjects. Harris, like the rest of us, does not have a crystal ball, so he can be forgiven for not offering his readers too many definites. But he could have made some tentative suggestions as to where the left should be heading. Read More…

The Rio Olympics: The Usual Unpalatable Truths.

The Rio Olympics are taking place in the middle of a carefully orchestrated domestic political coup against the Brazilian Workers Party, a coup that the world media, including the Brazilian media itself, have singularly refused to comment on. This is the same Brazilian monopolistic media empire that openly supported the military coup way back in 1964.

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Angela Eagle – A Bit Part in A Very British Coup

On the 24th of June 2016 I finally woke up in a foreign country. I had lived and worked in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland for twenty-eight years, up until that morning. In all those years it had never felt like an alien place but on that Friday all of a sudden it did. The Brexit vote had come and gone and it seemed to me that more than half of the country had just told me to pack my bags. It felt very personal.

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