Gideon Falter & the Campaign for Antisemitism.

 

Gideon Falter - Head of the Campaign Against Antisemitism

I've watched the footage of this altercation between a London police officer and Gideon Falter, a journalist and Chief Executive of the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA). That police officer was trying to prevent a "breach of the peace" and seems to have handled the situation correctly and reasonably. Falter, who was wearing a Kippah skull-cap, said he just wanted to cross the road. Where he wanted to cross, was directly where a pro-Palestinian march was taking place. The police officer told Falter, "You are quite openly Jewish, this is a pro-Palestinian march. I'm not accusing you of anything but I'm worried about the reaction to your presence." He accused Falter of trying to antagonise others by deliberately trying to walk "right into the middle" of the march. He also told him that he was being "disingenuous."

Falter was there to provoke a reaction for political purposes and the police officer suspected that. The police officer threatened to arrest Falter after he tried to push past police officers, but said he preferred not to do so. He then politely offered to escort Falter and his group, to a more appropriate crossing point, but Falter refused his assistance. After the incident, Falter told the BBC that he'd found the experience "frightening" and said he felt like he "was being treated like a criminal for being Jewish." He accused the Met's Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, of "curtailing the rights of law-abiding Londoners including the Jewish community to appease lawless mobs." He told ITV's Good Morning Britain, that his members often attend pro-Palestinian marches to "force the police to make sure these things are safe for Jewish people" - and he would turn up at the next one.

Although the Met have apologised twice to Gideon Falter and have offered to meet with him, he has called on Sir Mark Rowley to resign. A Downing Street spokesman said that the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, was "as appalled as everyone else by the officer calling Mr Falter "openly Jewish."

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, is understood to have full confidence in the commissioner. The CAA was at the forefront of antisemitism allegations against Labour under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. The organisation Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL), which has had dozens of members investigated by Labour for alleged antisemitism, has alleged that the CAA - a registered charity- is a "partisan political campaigning group." JVL have alleged that the CAA engages in "persistent conflation and equating of antisemitism with criticism of the state of Israel."

Charity regulations state that "an organisation will not be charitable if it's purposes are political." In 2023, the Charity Commission opened a regulatory compliance case against the CAA, after receiving complaints that the organisation was "politically partisan." The Labour MP, Margaret Hodge, a former CAA patron, tweeted that the charity was "more concerned with undermining Labour than rooting out antisemitism." In 2016, a number of British Jews wrote to the Guardian dissociating themselves from what they described as "the pro-Israel lobbyists of the Campaign Against Antisemitism" after the CAA criticised a report into antisemitism by Shami Chakrabarti.

Gideon Falter, is an Executive Board Member of the Jewish National Fund UK (JNF UK). which is believed to fund the CAA. The Jewish National Fund is Israel's quasi-governmental settler-colonial agency. Honorary Patrons include Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

Blaming the "Baby Boomers" As the age war replaced class war?

 

As one of the post-war generation growing up in the 1950s, nobody identified as a "baby boomer" or even used the term. These terms and concepts have been coined by sociologists, journalists, advertising men and generational theorists for their own purposes. The first recorded use of "baby boomer" is said to have be in January 1963 when it was used in a Daily Press article by Leslie J. Nason. He was specifically referring to a "tidal wave of college enrollments."

The term 'Generation X' has been attributed to a book of that name written by June Deverson and Charles Hamblett. Billy Idol, named a band after it. A Canadian journalist called Douglas Coupland is said to have popularized the term. In 1991, the authors Neil Howe and William Strauss wrote 'Generations' which included a discussion about another category called ' Millennials'.

All these catchy terms are used to categorise certain age groups and to try and depict certain historical social trends. I suppose it stems from our need as humans to understand and make sense of the social world in which we live and which we call history. But these classifications are also used in advertising to market consumer products.

Another way of categorising people is by 'social class' and socioeconomic status, which is still the master category for many sociologists and researchers. In a country like Britain, which always has been a very class-based stratified society, 'social class' is often derived from the occupation undertaken by a person and their income. But those that own the most wealth in any society are not necessarily those that earn the most, because they may live off shareholdings, capital and investment income, rather than work for an income. Social class is a useful tool and concept because it looks at how income, wealth, education, social connections and school, determine to a large extent social outcomes and perpetuate an intergenerational elite. For example, only around 7% of the UK population have ever attended a 'public school' or what the Americans more rightly call a private school. Yet, the former pupils of these schools occupy some of the most senior positions in British society. They are to be found in the higher echelons of the legal profession, politics, media and journalism. One school in particular, Eton College, has produced more British prime ministers than any other.

One of those old Etonians, was the former Tory prime minister, David Cameron, who gave us 'Brexit'. He would have us believe that he's got on in life by having 'sharp elbows'. He said he wanted to be the British prime minister because he thought he'd be "rather good at it." He was rather bad at it. He had to resign when he lost the E.U. referendum vote in 2016 which he called for reasons of political expediency. Cameron owes most of his success in life to the social class he was born into and to marriage. Cameron's mother-in-law, Lady Astor, pulled strings to get him a job at Carlton TV where he was director of corporate affairs for seven years. Lady Astor was a personal friend of Michael Green, the then executive chairman of Carlton. She suggested that he hire Cameron and Green complied. According to the Guardian newspaper, he was recruited on a salary of £90,000 a year. It's also claimed that Cameron landed a job with the Conservative Party in 1988, when he was 21, after someone claiming to be from Buckingham Palace, also pulled strings for him.

In one sense, you can't blame Cameron for using his class social connections to get on in life, but he really ought to be a lot more honest about it. As we say in Britain, it's not what you know but who you know, that matters.

It's easy to blame an older generation for the misfortunes of a younger generation, but this is just socially divisive, lazy thinking and wrong. It detracts from the real causes. Government policies which have led to greater inequality and more precarious employment for younger people, are more to blame. I saw the rot set in during the 1980s when it became far more difficult to get work and unemployment increased to 3 million under Margaret Thatcher from 1979 to 1983. There was also more deindustrialization, outsourcing of jobs abroad and privatizations. Thatcher's employment policies paved the way for zero-hour contracts and the gig economy.

The thirty or so years after WWII, are seen as the golden age of modern capitalism and welfarism. There was economic growth after the war in many western European countries and in America. This led to full employment, more opportunities, access to housing and a better standard of living for many people who are now called the "baby boomers." When I left school in 1970, it wasn't difficult to get a job or an apprenticeship, or to access higher grant-funded education. All that changed with the election of the Conservatives and Margaret Thatcher in 1979.

Are Britain's politicians turning politics into a subject of mockery, a kind of Brechtian farce.

 

Jake Austin

I've just received the Election Booklet for the Greater Manchester Mayoral Election 2024 and I pissed myself laughing when I read this.

The Liberal Democrats have nominated a comic strip character called Jake Austin, a Stockport councillor, as their Mayoral candidate. Jake's a 29-year-old 'project manager', whatever that is. He used this picture in his election address. The caption under the photograph reads: "Jake at home with his husband Andy, and their Corgi, Ritchie." Two of Jake's pledges are "tackling the sewage dumping crisis in our rivers" and "protecting everyone in our region (minorities) against harassment." Jake says: "Greater Manchester deserves real leadership" and this clown, with his pet dog Ritchie, believes that he can offer that real leadership. He's certainly not Napoleon. Unbelievable! You couldn't make it up. I wouldn't put him in charge of running a whelk stall. He could be a character straight out of a play by Bertolt Brecht or Monty Python.

In Brecht's 'parable play', called 'The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui', Arturo, a fictional 1930s Chicago mobster, tries to take control of the cauliflower trust (I wouldn't trust Jake to run that properly). The play is a satirical allegory of Hitler's rise to power, his Nationalist Socialist state and the disintegration of democracy in Germany.  Brecht referred to Hitler, as 'der Anstreicher' ("the House painter") and Arturo is a parody of Hitler. When Arturo comes knocking on the door of Mayor Dogsborough (Paul von Hindenburg), to blackmail him, the Mayor tells him, "there's no spoon long enough to sup with you Arturo."  Unfortunately, Hindenburg did sup with Hitler and thought he could control him and so did the German army. The German Communists and Socialists who could have united to defeat Hitler, but didn't do so, seemed to see the Nazi's as a temporary aberration before it was too late to stop them.

Being a Marxist and an opponent of Hitler, and married to a Jewish woman, the Nazis would've murdered Brecht if they could've got their hands on him but he left the country the day after the Reichstag fire. Before Hitler came to power, the Nazi Brownshirts in 1930, were trying to disrupt performances of Brecht's play 'The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny' which they eventually banned in 1933. They denounced it as a Marxist play.

Today, The Alabama-Song, which comes from Mahagonny', is the probably the only thing that most people know about this play. The song was covered by the Doors and David Bowie. It was even covered by Marilyn Manson, but I prefer the version by Jim Morrison and The Doors. 

World's oldest man says fish & chips and hiking are the secret of a long life.

 

The World's Oldest Man -John Tinniswood 

Mr John Tinniswood, from Merseyside, says that fish and chips and hiking are the reason for why he's lived so long. Having reached 111 years and 223 days of age, he's now the world's oldest living man.

John, who now lives in a care home in Southport, says that "exercising the mind" and "moderation" are beneficial to a healthy life. He also says "never over tax your system" and get along with other people.

Nobody really does know the secret of longevity, because it seems to be in the lap of the gods. As Gloucester says in Shakespeare's play King Lear, "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport..."  But Mr Tinniswood, might have a good point about the importance of moderation and exercising the mind and getting along with other people.

Adolph Zukor, a founder of Paramount Pictures, was once asked as he approached his hundredth birthday, if looking back there was anything in his life that he would have changed for the better. He replied that if he'd known how long he was going to live; he would have taken better care of himself. Zukor, a poor Hungarian immigrant to the U.S.A., died when he was 103 years of age.

Is Scotland's Hate Crime Act unworkable?

 

Scotland's First Minister -Humza Yousaf

Since Humza Useless brought in his Hate Crime Act, the Scottish police have said they've been inundated with complaints about hate crime and can't cope with the amount of extra work.

In the first week of the Act's introduction, the Scottish police received over 7,000 complaints about hate crime. Just 3.8% of these complaints, were considered legitimate and many were made anonymously.

Like some kind of Stasi, the SNP government have been urging the public to shop anybody they suspect of espousing "hate speech". Critics have said that the measure is likely to curtail free speech and could be weaponised by trans activists, to target gender-critical feminists or what some call, Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERF).

The Harry Potter author, J K. Rowling, has stated publicly that the Act is "wide open to abuse" by all sorts of cranks and disgruntled misfits, and she's invited the police to arrest her. The author has come under fire for stating that a "trans woman is not a woman."

 I suspect that the SNP's Hate Crime Act, is yet another nail in the coffin of Scottish independence and the Balkanization of the UK. 

"On Being Sane in Insane Places" - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

 

The 1975 film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, is a very interesting film. Randle P McMurphy is sent to prison for battery, gambling and statutory rape. To avoid having to do prison work on a farm he feigns mental illness to get sent to a mental hospital where he's evaluated. Although he's perfectly sane, I think he's diagnosed with anti-social personality disorder. McMurphy thinks he's the only sane patient in the hospital but he finds out the he's the only patient who has been committed and all the rest are voluntary patients. They can leave the hospital at any time.

Nurse Ratched is a control freak and McMurphy is a manipulator and recusant. He doesn't submit to any authority and there is a battle of wills between McMurphy and nurse Ratched. McMurphy attacks nurse Ratched and he's lobotomized and turned into a vegetable.

Psychiatry likes to portray itself as a scientific discipline but it can hardly be an exact science because much of it can't be subjected to scientific scrutiny and method. There have been numerous psychology experiments where psychology students have feigned mental illness to see if they could trick a psychiatrist and get sent to a mental hospital.

The famous Rosenhan or Thud experiment, was conducted to determine the validity of psychiatric diagnosis. The study was conducted by a Stanford professor of psychology called David Rosenhan. Rosenhan and eight other people feigned auditory hallucinations to try and gain admission to 12 psychiatric hospitals in five states in the U.S. The study "On Being Sane in Insane Places", was published by the journal 'Science' in 1973.

Kafka & Humza Yousaf's Hate Crime Act.

 

I read Kafka's 'The Trial' many years ago and wasn't that impressed with the novel. It took a while for the penny to drop and for me to realise just how profoundly important this book was. The utter alienation and despair that Joseph K finds himself facing is deeply shocking. He's arrested by two agents and prosecuted by some remote and vague authority and the nature of his alleged crime, is never revealed to him or to the reader. He's eventually stabbed to death while being strangled and we never really get to know what's going on or who is killing him or for what purpose.

We now talk about being caught up in a 'Kafkaesque' nightmare or experience. You're accused of something you know to be untrue but your denials are not believed and it's difficult to acquit yourself. In a totalitarian society like Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, they encouraged informers who would denounce people. It was unlikely that you would ever be told who'd denounced you. It became a good way of getting your own back on a rival, a person you dislike, a nuisance neighbour or somebody who is chasing you for money. You just denounce them as an "enemy of the people" or the party. Jealousy can be another motive for arousing a person's enmity towards you.

In the first week of Scotland's 'Hate Crime Act', the police received 7,152 complaints and judged that only 3.8% of the complaints were legitimate. I believe that many of the complaints were made anonymously. You can bet your bottom dollar that the Scottish police didn't investigate all these complaints because they don't have either the time or resources to do so, or because they considered many of these complaints to be frivolous and vexatious or motivated by animus.

There are serious concerns that these measures will be become weaponised by trans-rights activists to silence criticism by gender-critical feminist groups and that it will curtail free speech, because people will fear being denounced for 'hate crime'. The act could also be used against others including pro-Palestinian campaigners in Scotland. The Harry Potter author, J.K. Rowling has said the act is "wide open to abuse" and she's challenged the police to arrest her.

The Russian human rights campaigner, Sergei Kovalyov, spent seven years in jail under Brezhnev for something spuriously called "anti-Soviet agitation." He says that in the Soviet Union "we had jokes and people were sent to prison for them." He recounted one such joke in which several prisoners meet and begin to discuss their cases. One says, "I'm here for criticising Radik (one of Stalin's adviser's). The second says: "I am here for praising Radik." They ask the third prisoner what he is there for, and he replies: "I am Radik."

What happened in the Soviet Union was a tragedy of monumental proportions.  What is happening in Scotland under the SNP and Humza Yousaf' and his Hate Crime Act, is a farce, but just as ridiculous. 

What's wrong with public transport in Greater Manchester?

 

The bus service in Greater Manchester is atrocious. It must be sub-standard even by Lincolnshire standards.

Waiting for a Stagecoach bus can be like waiting for Godot. Many buses don't turn up or don't run on time. Sometimes two buses turn up at the same time. In the evening, some services are one an hour. I've met bus users who have told me that they've been waiting an hour in a freezing bus shelter to get a bus.

They haven't been able to run an efficient and punctual bus service in Greater Manchester for donkeys' years. In the early 1970s, the buses were as regular as clockwork and the driver didn't have to ask the passengers to direct him along his bus route because he knew where he was going.

I support Andy Burnham's bus reforms but the launch of the Bee Network has been fraught with problems. Bus users have complained of late and missing buses and apps that don't work. There have also been complaints about cancellations due to a shortage of bus drivers. Burnham says these are teething problems which will sort themselves out in the long run. I hope he's right, because at the moment it looks like business as usual.

 

Limerick and Angela's Ashes.

 

Frank McCourt -Angela's Ashes

Limerick is also known as "Stab City." The Irish/American writer, Frank McCourt, who was from Limerick but had been born in the U.S., has often been criticised for portraying the city in a bad light in his novel called 'Angela's Ashes'. The book is cracking read but some people say that McCourt invented things and was inclined to exaggerate the poverty and misery of his childhood growing up in Limerick's lanes.

One of his relatives was a 'Blue Shirt' called Laman Griffin. In his book, McCourt says that all Irish children are taught about how Ireland suffered under 800 years of English oppression. Yet, the miserable Irish childhood that McCourt describes, took place in a country that was an Irish Republic and which was dominated by the Roman Catholic church and the conservative nationalist politics of Fianna Fail and Eamon de Valera. It was a country that banned abortion and contraception and which subjugated women. It was country of Magdalene Laundries where unmarried mothers were incarcerated and their babies sold and then exported to the U.S. and Australia. Many of the "fallen women" who escaped from the laundries, were often returned by the local Gardai.

Sinead O'Conner was sent by her father to the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity laundry in Dublin, when she was just 14 years of age, when she was labelled a "problem child" and started to shoplift and play truant. Sinead claimed that she suffered horrendous physical and emotional abuse from her mother when she was a child, but this seems to have been covered up as was a lot of child sex abuse in Ireland. 

Gerrard Winstanley the Digger.

 

The Digger colony on St. George's Hill in Weybridge, Surrey, is now one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the UK. This is a gated community with a golf course, which is full of multi-millionaires, celebrities, and Russian oligarchs. It has been claimed that Vladimir Putin's daughter bought a house there.

Gerrard Winstanley and many of the others associated with the colony on St George's Hill, referred to themselves as the 'True Levellers' rather than 'Diggers' which was a derogatory term that was used by their detractors. They were agrarian communists. They started to cultivate the land on 1 April 1649 and were there for about 12 months. There were also Ranters among them who seem to have caused Winstanley a number of problems, believing in free sex, the virtues of sinfulness, and indolence. Initially, local people didn't take much notice of the Diggers but later on the colony was attacked by local residents, farmers and soldiers, who beat people up, stole tools and set fire to property. Much of the violence was instigated and coordinated by local landlords like Francis Drake, Lord of the manor of Walton. Court proceedings were also started for trespass and fines and costs were imposed. Some were even sent to prison.

Gerrard Winstanley and William Everard, two of the Diggers, appeared before General Fairfax on Friday 20th April 1649. Both men refused to take off their hats to Fairfax and after questioning both of them, Fairfax seems to have thought them harmless individuals and believed the local worthies, were overreacting. He considered Everard, a former soldier, slightly mad. Fairfax met the Diggers again at St George's Hill on the 29th May 1649 and although "he told them off", he seemed satisfied that they were no threat to public order and were for non-violence.

The groups position was one of passive resistance and they believed it was a social duty not to work for the rich. The idea of working for wages was anathema to them. The local property owners saw things differently. They saw the Diggers as a threat to their property and feared their ideas could spread further. The following month (June), the colony was attacked by soldiers who were hired by the local landowners.

The adoption of the name Leveller, by Winstanley and his group of communists, upset the leadership of the Leveller movement. They made it clear in several publications that they were not in favour of the expropriation of private property and didn't believe in the equality of social classes. In fact, they didn't support 'levelling' at all. The communists moved from St George's Hill to nearby Cobham Heath in early 1650.

Other Digger colonies were also established in other areas of the country in Buckinghamshire, Kent and Northamptonshire. In 1657, Winstanley and his wife Susan, were given a gift of property by his father-in-law William King. The property was called Ham Manor in Cobham. In 1659, Winstanley became overseer of the poor and in 1671, he was elected Chief Constable of Elmbridge, Surrey. He died in 1676, aged 66.

Lynching in the American Midwest 1930.

 

The lynching of Thomas Shipp & Abraham Smith

America seems to be full of abandoned and neglected areas like Gary in Indiana. Gary is the birthplace of Michael Jackson and his family. They call it the rust belt which stretches from New York to Chicago. These are areas that were reliant on certain industries such as steel and which suffer economic decline and urban decay because of deindustrialization. Gary's racial population is mainly black and it's 30 miles from Chicago.

The city of Marion, in Indiana, is 147 miles from Gary or a 2-hours, 45 minutes’ car drive. I believe the racial population of Marion is mainly white. It's the birthplace of the actor James Dean, but it's also notable for another incident.

In August 1930, two young black men, Thomas Shipp and Abraham Smith, were lynched by a group of thousands. They were taken from their jail cells, beaten, and hanged from a tree in the county courthouse square. They had been arrested as suspects in a robbery, murder and rape case. No one was ever charged over their deaths which was typical in lynching’s. Police officers in the crowd are known to have cooperated in the lynching. The crowd was estimated at 5,000 including women and children.

We usually associate lynching’s with the southern states of the U.S. but Indiana is in the American Midwest. As Billie Holiday sings in "Strange Fruit": "Southern trees bear a strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood on the root, Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees..."

The song is said to have been inspired by a poem written as a protest against lynching’s and in particular a photograph taken by Lawrence Beitler of the lynching of Shipp and Smith.

The American singer Paul Robeson tried to get the U.S. President Harry S Truman to take action to stop the lynching’s of black people, but Truman declined to do so, because he felt it would alienate southern voters.