Protestor showers Starmeroid with glitter.

 

The Labour Party leader, Sir Kier Starmeroid, literally shit himself when a protestor rushed on the stage at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool and sprinkled him with glitter. For some considerable time now, critics have said that Starmeroid is badly in need of some sparkle.

Watching this made my day. I was immediately reminded of what the writer, Christopher Hitchens, once said about the American pastor Jerry Falwell. "If they gave Jerry Falwell an enema, you could bury what's left of him in a matchbox." The same could be said of Sir Kier Starmeroid, he's so full of shit. 

George Orwell's invisible wife.

 

I've just finished reading the book 'Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell's Invisible Life' by Anna Funder. This book contains some useful information about both Orwell and Eileen Blair but it's written from a feminist perspective.

Anna Funder observes that throughout his life Eric Blair relied on women to help him out and they did so. They brought him up, provided financial help and accommodation, and provided contacts to literary agents and publishers. However, Funder argues that Eric Blair treated women badly, including his wife Eileen, who was little more than skivvy for him.

Although Orwell, gave instructions that he didn't want biographies to be written about him, there have been a number of biographies written about him since his death in January 1950. Funder quite rightly points out that many of the biographer’s erase and obscure facts about the women in George Orwell's life and Orwell does the same.

In Homage to Catalonia, Orwell's refers to his 'wife' but he doesn't say anything about her or what she was doing in Spain. Anna Funder says: "I had read Homage twice and never registered that Eileen was in Spain. No one I ever asked remembers her. How can you read a book and have no memory that a person was not in a place alone, but with their spouse? Orwell seems to have written her out of the story himself."

What Eileen Blair made of being erased and forgotten and plunged down the memory hole, we will never know, because she's not here to tell us and nor is it mentioned in her letters. Funder says of Eileen, “At no point in her life does Eileen seem to have felt she deserved more than she got.” She adds, “Wifedom is a wicked trick we have learned to play ourselves.”

When Orwell got shot through the neck on the Aragon front, one of the stretcher bearers reported Orwell saying, "Please tell Eileen that I love her", but this isn't mentioned in Homage to Catalonia. It might well be that this omission, simply reflects English stoicism and a hesitance to display feeling. Yet, Orwell's publisher Fred Warburg, said: "He (Orwell), was as secretive about his private life as any man that I ever knew."

People who knew Eileen Blair describe her as 'sophisticated', 'fastidious', 'highly intelligent', and 'intellectual'. Apparently, she didn't suffer fools and didn't spare anyone. By all accounts, she could give you a good tongue lashing. Neither Eric or Eileen were in good health but it didn't stop him from pursuing other women. Orwell hardly ever told anyone that he had TB.

Funder seems obsessed with Orwell's sex life or lack of it. While we're told about Orwell's extra marital relationships, his frequenting of brothels in Paris, Burma, and Morocco, and attempted sexual assaults that Orwell allegedly made on a number of women, Funder also thinks that he might have been a repressed homosexual. She writes: "Numerous friends of Orwell thought his virulent homophobia odd. No biographer deals plainly with the possibility of Orwell's homosexuality."

Funder thinks that Orwell possibly inhabited a world where "desire and disgust mingle." Personally, the best of the book are the sections on Burma and Spain. Orwell served as a colonial policeman in Burma and grew to despise the British Empire and British colonialism. His first novel was called ‘Burmese Days’ and he wrote: “You see louts fresh from school kicking grey-haired servants.” Orwell admitted to kicking his own servant, a houseboy, who he’d taught to wake him by tickling his feet. Funder says that when the governor’s wife in Burma campaigned for British men to marry their concubines or stop sleeping with them, the response was “no cunt no oil.”

As both Eileen and George Orwell were working with the Marxist POUM, they were constantly spied on by Communist agents who had infiltrated the POUM and their lives. English men like David Wickes and David Crook, who were reporting to Alexander Orlov, Stalin's man in Spain, who was quietly compiling a kill list. Both Eileen and Orwell had to get out of Spain in a hurry to avoid being liquidated by Stalin's goons. 

How Israel went from helping to create Hamas to bombing it!

 

Hamas

I recently watched an appalling BBC interview with the Israeli journalist and author, Ronen Bergman, of the New York Times. He called the Hamas attack on Israel an "intelligence failure" and claimed that Israel was caught by surprise.

Yet, we've heard reports that Egypt told the Israeli's of an imminent attack on Israel days before it happened. I first heard of this on BBC 2 Newsnight. The Israeli government spokesman being interviewed denied this.

The Texas Republican Congressman and former attorney, Michael McCaul, who heads the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, told the press that he'd been told at a "closed door" intelligence briefing, that Israel had been forewarned of an attack. Yet none of this was put to Bergman.

Israel initially supported Hamas because they saw the Islamic fundamentalist as a useful tool against the more secular Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). This isn’t some ridiculous conspiracy theory but perfectly true.

Brig. Gen, Yitzhak Segev, who was the Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s, told a New York Times reporter that he’d helped to finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a ‘counterweight’ to the secularists and leftist Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat. The PLO leader had referred to Hamas as “a creature of Israel.” The retired brigadier general confessed: “The Israeli government gave me a budget”, and the “military government gives to the mosques.”

In 2009, Avnar Cohen, a former religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for for twenty years, told the Wall Street journal: “Hamas, to my regret, is Israel’s creation.”

If what Congressman Michael McCaul says is true, why didn't the Israeli government act to thwart the attack by Hamas?

Starmer says Israel has the right to cut off water and energy to Gaza.

 

Keir Starmer - "A Zionist without qualification."

The Labour Party is led by a man who has said, "I'm a Zionist without qualification."

Although the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, has declared Israel to be "The nation-state of the Jewish people, and the Jewish people alone", and is "not a state of all its citizens", Keir Starmer, refutes the charge made by Amnesty International that Israel is a racist apartheid state.

The same charge was also made by the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who in 2014, urged U.S. Presbyterians to vote in favour of divestment from companies that assist "apartheid" Israel's occupation of the Palestinian people.

On Monday, the Israeli Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, called the people of Gaza, "human animals".

Some 1.6 million Palestinians still live in Israel and account for 20% of the population. The international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, to be illegal under international law.

Starmer has been condemned for saying that Israel has the right to cut off water, energy, and food supplies, to two million people in Gaza - almost half of whom are children. They have been unlawfully 'imprisoned' in Gaza for the last 16 years which is blockaded. This has been denounced as collective punishment for the attack by Hamas on Jewish settlers. Starmer was once a human rights lawyer but he seems to have a blind side when it comes to Palestinians and their rights.

Experts from the U.N. have accused both sides in the Israeli/Hamas conflict of possible war crimes where innocent civilians have been targeted. They've accused the Israel government of Indiscriminate bombing in Gaza. The deliberate withholding of water, energy, and food supplies, can also constitute a war crime under international law.

Both the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, and Keir Starmer, believe that displaying a Palestinian flag in the streets of Britain may be a criminal offence. Nevertheless, Starmeroid has suggested that the Wembley arch should be lit with the colours of the Israeli flag during England's friendly against Australia on Friday.

Russian dissident hospitalised after suspected poisoning.

 

Marina Ovsyannikova

The former Russian TV journalist, Marina Ovsyannikova, has been hospitalised after falling ill in a suspected case of poisoning. She was prosecuted for staging a live on-air protest against Russia's invasion of the Ukraine in March 2022 and was fined.

After her home was raided and she was put under house arrest, she fled Russia and now lives in Paris with her daughter. Earlier this month, a Moscow court sentenced the 45-year-old to eight and a half years’ imprisonment in absentia, for spreading false information about the Russian army.

"Why Do Some Jews Spit on Gentiles"?

 

Israeli Jewish attacks on mosques, Palestinian religious sites and Palestinian worshippers, are well documented. Palestinian attacks on Jewish synagogues and Jews, also occur. Graffiti can often be seen scrawled on walls declaring, "Gas the Arab's."

 Attacks by Israeli Jews on Christians and Christian sites of worship, are also on the rise, since the ultra-Orthodox and religious Zionist parties, formed a hard-right Israeli government. Christian priests are often spat on and harassed by Israeli Jews and Christian grave yards are being desecrated. 

Earlier this year, a conference organised by the Open University of Israel entitled, "Why Do (Some) Jews Spit on Gentiles", was denounced as anti-Semitic and cancelled after intervention by a key aide to the mayor of Jerusalem. The conference was organized in response to a rise in attacks on nuns and priests in Israel.

 The Israeli National Security Minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, has said that "Israelis spitting on Christians is an old Jewish tradition." It might well be, but I'm pretty sure it's not good for Israeli tourism or for Christians.

 Jonathan Reynolds MP, who represents Stalybridge & Hyde, in Greater Manchester, manages to sit with his arse on both sides of the same fence. An invertebrate, he's both Chair of 'Christians on the Left' and vice-chair of 'Labour Friends of Israel' A mealy-mouthed Christian and a languid Labour politician, Reynolds is unlikely to publicly condemn attacks on either Muslim or Christian religious sites by Israeli Jews.

 Amnesty International have accused Israel of committing the crime of apartheid against the Palestinians and enforcing a system of oppression and domination against them. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, denounced Israel as an "apartheid state" and urged Presbyterians to divest from companies that support apartheid Israel. Yet, deluded Reynolds, believes that Israel is the only real democracy in the Middle East and the only country where minorities have full equality before the law. Reynolds conveniently overlooks the fact that much of the West Bank has been under illegal Israeli occupation since 1967 and that many Palestinians have had land stolen from them and their homes demolished by the Israeli army, supporting illegal Jewish settlers.

 The Israeli's have also turned the Gaza strip, into the biggest open-air jail in the world. In 2014, the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, defended the Nation-State bill and declared Israel to be, "The national-state of the Jewish people and the Jewish people alone." Despite Israel being a racist apartheid state and violating international law, the leader of the Labour Party, Sir Keir Starmeroid, says he supports "Zionism without qualification." 

Fox arrested on suspicion of conspiring to commit criminal damage!

 

Mr. Nasty - Laurence Fox

Politically, I would have thought that Laurence Fox, has made much political capital out of a recent police raid at the home he shares with the actress, Billy Piper. He wants to advance the cause of himself and his 'The Reclaim Party' and this police raid has just done that.

I haven't seen the comments that are alleged to have been made, so I can't comment on this. According to this Guardian article, Fox was arrested by the police "on suspicion of conspiring to commit criminal damage to Ulez cameras and encouraging or assisting offences to be committed." In a video that appeared on Twitter, Fox, seems to be suggesting that Britain is becoming a police state.

His opposition to Ulez (ultra low emission zone charges) and his arrest are going to be politically popular with some voters in the capital who don't like Ulez. Incidentally, who set up the camera? The police don't normally announce a raid and Fox seems to be acting a part in a film script. He's certainly not a poor man and he's got some political clout, so he’ll have no problem making himself heard.

Ipso rules that Braverman misled public on ethnicity of 'grooming gangs'!

 

Home Secretary - Suella Braverman

The press regulator Ipso, has ruled that the Home Secretary Suella Braverman, misled people when she falsely claimed that child grooming gangs in the UK were "almost all British-Pakistanis." Ipso said that what Braverman had claimed had contradicted data from her own Home Office department. Although a number of high-profile child grooming gangs have involved British-Pakistanis, research published by the Home Office in 2020, showed that offenders are "most commonly white" and come from diverse backgrounds.

The Mail on Sunday who published Braverman's "significantly misleading" comments, said they had double checked Braverman's decision to single out 'British-Pakistanis' with advisers to the Home Secretary and the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, who confirmed they had 'no concerns with this particular line" and were happy for it to be published.

This is not the first time that politicians have used racism to further their own political agendas and to mislead the public. Both Braverman and her predecessor at the Home Office, Priti Patel, have claimed that most migrants who cross the English Channel in small boats are economic migrants and not genuine asylum seekers. In 2021, Patel told parliament, "70% of individuals on small boats are single men who are effectively economic migrants." In December 2022, Braverman backed the assertion, saying: "There is considerable evidence that people are coming here as economic migrants, illegally."

When the Home Office was asked to confirm what Patel and Braverman had said in March 2023, they were unable to do so, stating that they did not hold "the information requested." However, Home Office data does confirm that of those people who reached the UK by small boat in 2022, some 60% would've been recognised as refugees. In the year to June 2023, some 70% of asylum claims made by people wishing to enter the UK, were successful.

Politicians like Cruella Braverman, need to be reminded of what the 18th century satirist Jonathan Swift said: "where falsehood flies, truth comes limping after it."

The Marx Family.

 

Paul Lafargue and Laura Marx

Karl Marx's maternal uncle was the Dutch tobacco merchant Lion Philips, the grandfather of Gerard and Anton Philips, who founded Philips Electronics. Leon Philips was a financial supporter of Karl Marx. Laura Marx and her husband Paul Lafargue, committed suicide together in 1911. Marx's eldest daughter, Jenny Marx (Longuet), died of bladder cancer in 1883 aged 38.

 In the 1970s, the British Socialist Worker Party (SWP), used to organise 'Right to Work' marches or as some of us, argued at the time, the right to be exploited marches. The Cuban-born, French revolutionary Marxian socialist, Paul Lafargue, believed in the right to shirk. He wrote an interesting book entitled 'The Right to Be Lazy' where he opposed the labour movements fight to expand waged labour or (wage slavery). He argued for its abolition or at least its limitation.

 Marx's youngest daughter, Eleanor (Tussy) Marx, committed suicide in March 1898 aged 43, after drinking prussic acid (cyanide). She lived with a slime ball called Edward Aveling. Eleanor discovered that he'd secretly married another woman while he was living with her. He'd also squandered most of the money that she'd inherited from Fred Engels.

 In 1886, Eleanor Marx visited the USA with Aveling and campaigned for the Chicago Anarchist who had been sentenced to death for a bomb attack during a meeting at the Haymarket in Chicago in May 1886. The bombing was believed to have been done by an agent provocateur. She visited the men in gaol. After their execution, they became known as the 'Chicago Martyrs'. Eleanor also helped to set up with Will Thorne, the General Union of Gas Workers and General Labourers founded in 1889. This became the GMB trade union.