Tag: establishment

The Right Attack

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

In an entirely predictable move the civil war in the Labour Party reared it’s ugly head once more. Rebecca Long-Bailey the Shadow Education Secretary was sacked from her position today by the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer after she retweeted an article which suggested the Minneapolis police had learnt the method of kneeling on someones neck to subdue them, from seminars in Israel by the the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). This was not the entirety of the article but was a point made within it. This reignited the anti-semitism debate within the Labour Party and Sir Keir was quick to show he wasn’t like the previous Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn who the British Press spent years smearing as anti-semitic. This being Jeremy Corbyn the anti-racism and anti-anythingthatdiscriminatedagainstanyone campaigner. Rebecca Long-Bailey was the main challenger to Starmer in the leadership race and represented the left wing of the party. Her position on the Shadow Cabinet no doubt being an attempt to placate those who didn’t support him and an attempt to present himself as a unifying force. Her sacking was always only ever going to be a matter of time.

It is impossible to cover everything in the space of five hundred words. This is an enormous issue. Sir Keir represents the right of the Labour party, or as is more apt the Tory-lite element. He has barely challenged the government on their negligent attempt at doing anything worthwhile in the fight against the coronavirus. The press now all of a sudden seem to have no problem at all with the Labour party after being positively terrified of them for the last few years. The Board of Deputies of British Jews who are a right wing group with connections to the Conservative party and who the British press decided represent the whole of British Judaism have decided they like him. Perhaps his politics is not that far from theirs? And not to mention the fact that they managed to get the definition of anti-semitism rewritten to include criticism of Israel. Which is ultimately all she did. I don’t know whether the Israelis trained the Minneapolis police but it doesn’t matter. The story can be factually inaccurate but she’s not been sacked for that. Various far right groups may use criticism of Israel as a thinly veiled excuse to attack the Jewish people but it’s pretty obvious when that is happening. This was not that. This was the silencing of any criticism of the Israeli State, and the culling of a political opponent in the process.

The problem with British politics is that it currently offers few differing options, the same as in America with the Democrats and Republicans. Ultimately they represent the same thing, as do the Tory Party, the Liberal Democrats and now Labour under Sir Keir. Whether you agreed with Corbyns politics, at least he offered a different approach and attempted to hold a corrupt government to account. That cannot and I doubt ever will be said of Starmer who is proving to be nothing more than another establishment stooge. I was devastated when Corbyn lost, like many were, but I won’t be voting for Labour at the next election. I most likely won’t be voting for anyone. You’re not voting for change when they’re all offering a continuation of the same thing, the very thing which is the actual problem in the first place. Today’s events merely underline this. It appears we’re back to the great fraud of Democracy.

Wild Eyed Crazy Bernie

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

It’s good to see Bernie is doing well in the Democratic primaries. He came second to Buttigeig in Iowa by less than a thousand votes but has won the next two in New Hampshire and Nevada. Today sees South Carolina before Super Tuesday on well Tuesday of next week. I don’t care what people people say, for anyone familiar with Sky Sports’ sensationalising of football, Super Tuesday sounds ridiculous and merely highlights through which prism we view the world now. I think I understand how their voting system works although I will admit there is probably bits I miss out on. They get votes in each state which leads to getting delegates and super delegates based on their share of the vote to represent them at the Democratic national convention or whatever it’s called, the one with the most wins will get the pleasure of going up against the big bad wolf Trump. I wonder how may Supers they can fit in that contest especially if it ends up being crazy Bernie the wild eyed Socialist running.

Having recent experience of elections and what turned out to be the inevitable disappointment of losing, Bernie going up against Trump makes me nervous. It is impossible to deny the parallels with British politics of recent times. The populist Socialist Corbyn against the populist right winger Johnson. Despite the fact anyone with any sense could see the folly of voting for Johnson and only three months down the line it’s already seemingly falling to pieces, although the same was said about Trump, the establishment and their media did anything and everything they could to keep Corbyn from coming to power. Better the devil you know who does your bidding than the devil you don’t who wants you to pay some tax. For this reason I am nervous then. Even publications like the Economist who I am finding myself starting to trust are focusing a little too much on unelectable Bernie. I have seen the power of the media in the UK and don’t doubt for a second that despite the partisan nature of American politics they would do anything in their power to prevent Bernie from coming to power, even if that means another four years of Trump and four years of him knowing he doesn’t need to worry about being re-elected. You can even see the parallels within the American Democratic and British Labour parties as those who hold the power try frantically to repeat their success of last time when they got Hillary Clinton in with the self-defeating behaviour of many within Labour who would rather their own party were not elected than one led by Jeremy Corbyn.

Politics and power is dirty. I am not American but their politics affects so much of the world and is covered so much in our own media that it is impossible not to take an interest. I hope I am proved wrong because I would love to see Bernie in The White House and Trump back in the penthouse of one of his failing towers, but we’ve already had a trial run for this exact situation and it didn’t end well. If you repeat enough times how unelectable someone is he may just end up being so. We had turkeys voting for Christmas, will they be voting for Thanksgiving this time around?

Corrupt Politicians

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

I have just been listening to a podcast on which the subject of the American Democratic candidates were discussed. I try not to talk too much about another countries politics because I am not from that country and there’s a chance I may miss some nuance I would otherwise get were I from there. There is one element of politics though that we can freely talk about no matter which country is the subject of discussion. The issue is corruption. Now I accept politics is not unique in suffering from this ailment, all countries have corruption in different forms. I’ve heard since Tuesday that the World Championship Scotch Pie Awards are fixed, not blatantly but there’s a reason the same few bakers seem to win everything. That is corruption. When people profess to being good moral honourable people though, they should be held up to higher standards. I will often criticise charities more than companies when they both do the same thing; there is no pretence with capitalism once you scrape below it’s wafer thin veil but the aid sector pretends something different.

The same situation exists with politicians and I can see why people like Trump because he doesn’t pretend to be a good guy, his whole act is about being a prick and that must be refreshing. People are tired of politicians, they don’t trust them and rightly the establishment is being called out and challenged. Trump of course is the establishment, just as Boris Johnson is, which shows the con job that has been pulled in both countries. However it’s when people like Elizabeth Warren come out with things like this absurd claim that Bernie Sanders told her in a private conversation that he didn’t believe a woman could be President. After giving it the whole good person who cares about people act for months, it is a legitimate response to want to tell her to go fuck herself. The mainstream media have jumped on the story claiming it to be fact, half of the supposed witnesses where not even there. It’s a hatchet job because he is threatening to upset the Democrats and actually get the nomination. It’s like Britain, the Neoliberals in the Labour party actively tried to sabotage the party and prevent it winning rather than see Jeremy Corbyn be elected Prime Minister. Elizabeth Warren has exposed herself as a dirty liar, she is corrupt and after playing the saint who cares card for so long she deserves the inevitable fallout. She doesn’t stand a chance of beating Trump, neither does Joe Biden, who is also corrupt as this Ukraine investigation exposed. Who knows about Bloomberg, but just ask Trump, you don’t get to become a New York real estate billionaire without embracing a little corruption along the way.

Yet we still follow these people. We accept them as our leaders, allow them to take all they want, subject us to a life of servility while not even leaving us with our dignity. Are we scared to stop and say we’ve had enough? Are we so scared of losing our lousy lot in life? Do we fear those below us taking our position? Has the old carrot lie of one day being them really deceived us that much? We vote for laws to protect billionaires but not poor people. That is fucked up. We will never become billionaires, it just won’t happen, we are not voting to protect our future selves. Let’s stop accepting and being complicit in their raping of society and the hurt that causes. Look after your neighbour and your neighbour will look after you, it’s time to come back together as a community. Having looked after politicians and billionaires all these years it seems there’s a distinct lack of them watching our back. Yet despite there being no genuine prospect of change we carry on making the same choice and expecting a different outcome. We continue to imagine that it will be all fine with this new one, he looks like the kind of guy who could lead this country and give us the life he’s promising. He’s definitely not like that other fella…what’s his name again?