The Revolution will not be televised due to cancellations!

Opinion

Paul Knaggs

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November 17, 2018

The Revolution will not be televised due to cancellations!

The entire referendum and process is been played out like a badly conducted social experiment.

It as shown the political glass for what they are and the people for what we have become. From the point of first calling the referendum, it was a game, a game of politics within one political ideology that of the Tories that than extended encompassing the entire nation.

like most games the elites play, it went too far and they lost control but slowly through social control, misinformation, truths lies and fear they are regaining bringing us all back to the fold.

It has broken the nation the extent of which is far far more than a mear monetary cost families have divided, friends lost, trust broken.

We were never meant to leave the EU and the chances are one way or the other we never will.

It’s all charades, the pretence by Tory Brexiteers at their outrage to the remain deal. Theresa May looking vulnerable, the country feeds a drip, drip drip of fear.

Fear of no deal and what that could bring if we don’t accept the deal.
No time for a leadership challenge, no time for a GE. A People’s vote would more likely result in the same decision.

But an unacceptable deal is the worst of all deals. This will be the mantra of the day!

It’s all a show, soon we will hear even the staunchest of Brexiters saying “we would be better off remaining at least if we remain we can still…”

The entire thing has been a Tory shit show that got out of hand when the referendum went the wrong way that decision was to ‘Leave the EU’. It should have been that Remain won, UKIP should have been kicked to the forgotten realms and we all carried on like before. The only thing that did work was the plan to rid us of UKIP ‘leave’ meant their “raison d’être.” had been achieved.

Now the Path back to the status Quo begins!

Just watch out for the ‘bait and switch’ from a bad deal to remaining in the EU becomes a reality the excuse of the “Bad Deal” will not pass parliament and the alternative is the

“fear of no deal.”

See how Theresa May will sell it like some sacrifice for the good of the nation, for the good of the unity of all.

Some patriotic bullcrap spouting on how: “The union of this nation forging together in what is our best interest overall our national interest. Sacrificing at this moment only to become stronger together…” or words to that effect!

BASICALLY, A LOAD OF BOLLOCKS TO KEEP THE SYSTEM EXACTLY HOW THEY WANT IT.
UNCHANGED!

We are looking ever more closely to capitulating to the establishment’s reassertion of the status quo, the reality of what Corbyn said referencing the rigged system!

“the establishment versus the people” as he promised to overturn a “rigged system” that allowed the rich and powerful to extract wealth from the nation. -Jeremy Corbyn

The illusion of democracy!

The lack of leadership and vision required to take the UK out of the EU setting its own course speaks volumes about our entire political class.

The continued rhetoric of accepting the result of the referendum was meant to calm the masses while a plan could be brought into play. The result of that plan was a 500 page draft with one word printed boldly across every page.

“REMAIN IN THE EU!”

The shame is for all the Leave supporters of 2017 that voted Tory expecting that party of lies to actually do what they promised to do.

Corbyn would have been the man to take us out of this system into a new model that would be fit for the People, Building Britain. A model fit for the 21st century. But we all know how he is hampered both externally and within his own Party.

Pesky people thinking their own way! How dare they want anything different? How dare they think anything could change?

Labour’s Socialist Realism

Guest Author

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November 16, 2018

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Our economy is rigged in favour of a wealthy elite. We need a new approach: an economics for the many.

LUKE SAVAGE. A new book of essays edited by UK Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell makes the case for economic democracy and charts the increasingly transformative thinking of Corbyn’s Labour Party.

“. . . A New Britain where the extraordinary talent of the British people is liberated from the forces of conservatism that so long have held them back, to create a model 21st century nation, based not on privilege, class or background, but on the equal worth of all. And New Labour, confident at having modernized itself, now the new progressive force in British politics which can modernize the nation, sweep away those forces of conservatism to set the people free.” – Tony Blair, 1999

“Economics are the method: the object is to change the soul.” – Margaret Thatcher, 1981

Though they didn’t know it at the time, those who observed Britain’s 1979 general election and the Labour Party’s defeat were witnessing far more than a simple change of government. The Thatcherite ascendency that followed would not only reconfigure the institutions of the British state but establish — through a combination of luck, guile, and brute force — an entirely new political consensus that would consciously reshape British society in the process. By the time Labour returned to power nearly two decades later, a wholesale ideological counterrevolution was underway and its own leaders were among its most zealous partisans.

Perhaps no other European country in the postwar era (with the possible exception of Russia) has experienced a comparably drastic ideological shift, and certainly no working class has suffered such bitter repression and defeat in such a short time. After 1990, much of the global left faced a period of retrenchment but Britain’s political sclerosis, and the widespread sense of defeat it engendered, was particularly acute.

What the late Mark Fisher called “capitalist realism” — the pervasive sense that “capitalism is not only the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it” — reigned supreme, simultaneously afflicting the Left and animating partisans of the new order. Henceforth, “progress” was to imply only an ever-more dizzying advance into a global capitalist modernity from which no escape was conceivable and “conservatism” was anything that even momentarily stood in the way.

As a consequence, parliamentary socialists — those who survived — were forced to assume an increasingly defensive posture in a (sometimes futile) effort to preserve welfarist institutions or at very least mitigate damage. Within the Labour Party itself, the initially promising leadership of Ed Miliband ended in disappointment and defeat. Outside the electoral sphere (with a few exceptions) the Left grew more abstract in its analysis of power and less programmatic in its prescriptions for confronting or reconfiguring it. While individual causes and struggles like the anti–Iraq War movement and the 2010 student protests inspired heroic activism, its overall position was nothing short of dire and the malaise ran deep.

As many socialists immediately understood, therefore, Jeremy Corbyn’s surprise 2015 election as leader of the Labour Party opened up horizons of political possibility previously unimaginable. Gone would be the former leadership’s triangulating positions on austerity, immigration, and welfare policy and back on the table were familiar social-democratic objectives around taxation, redistribution, and public ownership.

But as the party’s left celebrated a stunning turn of events amidst historically weak fortunes, critics of Corbynism overwhelmingly saw something primitive and atavistic at work. “A return to the 1970s” quickly became a favorite theme of Britain’s right-leaning press, which cast Labour’s new leadership as both a pre-Blairite and pre-Thatcherite throwback: the desiccated corpse of the “Old Labour” anachronism born anew. Even after the party’s success in the 2017 general election, versions of the narrative have persisted, as has likeminded opposition from the “modernizers” on its now diminished right flank.

Much in this genre of analysis can undoubtedly be put down to poor historical memory, political opportunism, or simple bad faith. But its ubiquitousness, particularly in commentary on the center and center-left, is evidence of how just deeply the dogmas of the 1990s — and the conservative modes of thinking they reflect — ultimately run.

Economics for the Many

“To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.” – Clause IV, Labour Party Constitution, 1918

If the Labour Party’s 2017 election manifesto emphasized somewhat familiar (though nevertheless bold) themes like nationalization and redistribution, its next one promises to be considerably more expansive — encompassing, among other things, different forms of public ownership and industrial democracy.

Radical thinking of this kind has only grown more urgent. By virtually any imaginable standard — even those its adherents have set themselves — Britain’s ruling economic consensus has been a failure. Austerity has not, as successive Tory chancellors have insisted with such fanatical certitude, delivered the promised economic recovery. The legacy of the Conservative government’s deflationary fiscal policies can instead be seen in human costs that can only be called catastrophic: stagnant wages, dire and rising levels of poverty among both childrenand adults, crumbling public services, and a corroded social fabric alongside an ever more gilded existence for Britain’s economic and cultural elite.

The underlying problems, of course, predate both austerity and the 2008 crash. A bloated financial sector with its talons deep in the Treasury has produced lopsided and regionalized growth heavily favoring metropolitan London and largely servicing unsustainable consumption at home and environmentally destructive extraction abroad. Precarity and high levels of household debt for ordinary families, meanwhile, have followed an overall shift from the older manufacturing economy to one structured heavily around services and global finance.

Economics for the Many — a new collection of essays edited by Labour’s shadow chancellor John McDonnell — is simultaneously an intervention into these realities and a programmatic sketch of radical left thinking for the twenty-first century. As its title suggests, the book is also an effort to reclaim economics for the Left, an easily stated though admittedly daunting task amid neoliberalism’s persistence as the economic lingua franca.

Simultaneously localist and internationalist in scope — and encompassing everything from trade, the environment, and alternative models of firm ownership to fiscal policy and the challenges posed by platform monopolies and the data economy — the essays are accessible and minimally abstract, both in their concern with the practicalities of policy and their awareness of the difficulties of implementation in the face of political constraints.

This, however, makes them no less innovative. In chapters on democratic alternatives to private enterprise, for example, Rob Calvert Jump, Joe Guinan, and Thomas M. Hanna explore cooperatives, community-based systems of ownership, social entrepreneurship, and workplace democracy, their analyses including case studies from across Europe, North America, and within the UK. Building on Labour’s 2017 manifesto, which promised to make workers the first potential buyer should a company go on sale, Guinan and Hanna propose active investment by local authorities in the cooperative sector.

In a richly researched chapter on taxation, Prem Sikka observes that the global rules governing corporate taxation date from the colonial era and considers the various ways they could be reformed to crack down on the epidemic of avoidance by plutocrats and big businesses alike. Essays by Nick Srnicek and Francesca Bria explore how platform monopolies like Google extract value from users to generate private profit and endanger individual privacy in the process, ultimately making the case for social ownership and the treatment of such platforms as public utilities. Antonia Jennings and J. Christopher Procter, meanwhile, grapple with the dominance of neoclassical orthodoxy in the study of economics and set as an urgent task for the Left the democratization of economics discourse itself.

Localism and decentralization figure prominently throughout the collection, both as potential correctives to the UK’s own lopsided distribution of wealth and necessary checks on the power of global capital. The contribution from Grace Blakeley and Luke Raikes, for example, forcefully argues for devolution of various fiscal prerogatives from the central state to regional authorities while another chapter explores how Preston City Council has successfully employed locally based economic and investment strategies as an alternative to bureaucratic state management.

If a single theme unites the book’s various essays it is, simply stated, a belief in democracy as a moral but also a practical necessity.

While neoliberal intellectuals of the late 1970s and 1980s championed the market as the crucial sphere of individual freedom and expression over and against the state, the success of their project has largely come at the expense of all but a privileged few. Vast concentrations of wealth, it turns out, do not empower ordinary people or allow a “property-owning democracy” to flourish and, far from even rolling back the state, simply capture and configure it to promote their own narrow, often destructive, interests.

Amid a global consensus that continues to champion this flawed model, the contributions found in Economics for the Many forcefully make the case that the solution lies neither in an intensified neoliberal capitalism or a bureaucratized state, but in the sweeping application of democratic principles to our economic thinking, activities, and institutions themselves.

Socialist Realism

The transformative course sketched in Economics for the Many channels the growing confidence and determination of the Labour Party’s now-dominant left heading into an undoubtedly decisive forthcoming general election. But it also distinguishes itself in showing how real, dynamic, practical alternatives to dominant economic thinking can be imagined and promoted in a world where global capitalism and its orthodoxies still reign supreme.

In this way, it stands out as a particularly potent repudiation of the once-dominant Blairite vision of progress and the dispiriting ethos of capitalist realism it exemplified. Insofar as the thinking of today’s Labour left does reflect the “return to the 1970s” its critics like to charge, it is the 1970s of labor militancy, radical shop stewards, and the industrial democracy once imagined by Tony Benn as a means of modernizing Britain’s increasingly imperiled Keynesian welfare state.

Echoing Benn’s 1973 call for “a fundamental and irreversible shift of the balance of power and wealth in favor of working people and their families,” Economics for the Many boldly announces the following on its cover:

We are seeking nothing less than to build a society that is radically fairer, more democratic, and more sustainable in which the wealth of society is shared by all.

Just as Benn once did, this language plainly breaks from the technocratic mindsets of such Old Labour figures as Herbert Morrison, Anthony Crosland, or Hugh Gaitskell and the corporatist proclivities of Harold Wilson or James Callaghan. McDonnell has himself sought to distance Labour’s emergent economic thinking from its past experiences in government, saying in a 2016 lecture:

The old, Morrisonian model of nationalization centralized too much power in a few hands in Whitehall. It had much in common with the new model of multinational corporations, in which power is centralized in a few hands in Silicon Valley, or the City of London. It won’t work in a world in which technological change is providing opportunities to decentralize power. We cannot turn the clock back to 1945 either.

Whatever its challenges, this is a Left both steeped in classical socialist values and consciously concerned with the practical problems faced by modern economies and the ordinary people who inhabit them: the worsening climate crisis, the tyranny of multinational firms, the global epidemic of tax avoidance; the advent of new surveillance and information technologies and the more menacing forms of exploitation and monopoly they have enabled.

While the future of Labour’s right and the ossified consensus it still champions remains uncertain, and the Conservative Party reels through the chaos of Brexit negotiations, the Labour left is discovering a coherence and a sense of militant purpose that might be called “socialist realism.” It is neither the utopianism of the early and mid-twentieth century nor the more austere capitalist realism of the Blairites who, in the 1990s, identified the path of least resistance and sold it as a bold and revolutionary, though ultimately inevitable, course.

Instead, it is the realism of a left that has quite suddenly emerged from an unfathomably disadvantaged position and found itself in one of radical possibility; of a left once again capable of imagining real alternatives to capitalism; and of a left which understands something its critics still invariably fail to grasp: that amid impending environmental disaster, crippling global poverty, and rising authoritarianism and oligarchy, neoliberalism has been a monumental disaster which hollows out our present while imperiling our future. If we are to hope for better, envisioning and realizing a democratic, socialist society is our most urgent task.

As the familiar expression goes, there is no alternative.

BY: LUKE SAVAGE

“The United Nations’ special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights is touring not Bangladesh nor Sudan but the UK”!

Economy
UK

Guest Author

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November 16, 2018

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“The United Nations’ special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights is touring not Bangladesh nor Sudan but the UK”!

The UN Special Rapporteur’s preliminary findings on the UK. During our 12-day visit, the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights has investigated the Government’s efforts to tackle poverty in the UK, the impact of austerity measures, Universal Credit, Brexit, and an increasingly digital government on people living in poverty.

Professor Philip Alston is the current Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. The Special Rapporteur is an independent expert appointed by the Human Rights Council and undertakes the following main tasks: (1) conducting research and analysis to be presented in separate thematic reports to the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly; (2) undertaking country visits and reporting on the situation in those countries in relation to the concerns of the mandate; (3) sending letters to governments and other relevant entities in situations in which violations of human rights of people living in extreme poverty are alleged to have taken place.

The mandate on extreme poverty was first established in 1998 by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and was taken over by the Human Rights Council in June 2006. It is one of a number of mandates that together form what is known as the United Nations system of special procedures. For more information on those procedures see: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/SP/Pages/Welcomepage.aspx

The findings are damming!

Ministers are in a “state of denial” about poverty, a UN expert has said following a 12-day tour of the UK.

Philip Alston, special rapporteur on extreme poverty, said despite being in the one of the world’s richest countries he had encountered “misery”.

Levels of child poverty are “staggering” and 1.5 million people were destitute at some point in 2017, the Australian said.

The government rejected his analysis, pointing to rising household incomes.

Prof Alston, an expert in human rights law based at New York University, visited locations including Belfast, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Essex, Glasgow, London and Newcastle on a fact-finding mission.

He met people affected by poverty as well as government officials, discussing the impact of austerity, changes to benefits and local government funding.

At a news conference in London, he said he witnessed “a lot of misery, a lot of people who feel the system is failing them, a lot of people who feel the system is really just there to punish them”.

Quoting figures from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, he said that more than 1.5 million people were destitute at some point in 2017, meaning they lived on less than £70 a week or went without essentials such as housing, food, clothing or heating.

A fifth of the population, amounting to 14 million people, are living in poverty, Prof Alston said.

How is poverty measured?

Prof Alston used a new measure by the Social Metrics Commission to come up with the figure of 14m people in the UK in poverty.

It is a measure of “relative poverty”, meaning it looks at the percentage of people living with less than 55% of the median income, taking into account costs such as childcare, housing, debt and disability.

But the government has preferred to use the measure of “absolute poverty”.

This counts the number of people in households with less than 60% of the median income as it was in 2010/11, so it shows how living standards of low-income households have changed over time.

By that measure, the government says there are a million fewer people in absolute poverty than there were in 2010.

Among experts in the media, think tanks, Parliament and organisations such as the National Audit Office, Prof Alston said there was “close to unanimity” that Britain was not doing enough to combat poverty.

But he said the view from ministers was the opposite.

“Ministers with whom I met told me that things are going well that they don’t see any big problems and they are happy with the way their policies are playing out,”

Prof Alston said.

He said the government was preoccupied with reducing welfare dependency but said he could not believe ministers were as happy with the results as they claimed to be.

Prof Alston said: “The era of connectivity and the era of social media makes it much less sustainable to have this dramatic difference between people living the high life, a higher life than has ever been lived before, and at the other end, people who can’t afford a tin of beans, can’t afford the seventh meal of the week.”

The approach to benefits was “punitive, mean-spirited, and often callous”, he said.

He gave the example of “draconian sanctions” which shut people out from the benefits system for weeks or months at a time, sometimes for minor infringements such as missing an appointment.

Prof Alston claimed many of the “harsh” policies could be ended “overnight” at little cost.

These included the delay of five to 12 weeks before Universal Credit was paid, the single household payments which give more leverage to controlling or violent partners, and the two-child limit for benefit claimants.

Prof Alston compared this limit to China’s notorious one-child policy and said it was “a perfect way to punish families”.

He warned that the poor would “bear the brunt” of the expected impact of Brexit on the UK economy, and said the fall in the value of the pound had already cost low-income families £400 a year.

“In my meetings with the government, it was clear to me that the impact of Brexit on people in poverty is an afterthought,” he said.

Prof Alston’s report will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva next year.

A spokeswoman for the Department for Work and Pensions said: “We completely disagree with this analysis.”

She said that household incomes have “never been higher”, income inequality has fallen and there are one million fewer people living in absolute poverty compared with 2010.

It is not the first time the UK has been criticised by UN special rapporteurs, who are are independent human rights experts appointed for fact-finding and monitoring missions around the world.

In 2014, urban planning expert Raquel Rolnik said the “bedroom tax”, which meant social housing tenants with spare rooms had to pay more rent or move somewhere smaller, undermined the right to adequate housing.

On that occasion, ministers said her report was a “misleading Marxist diatribe” and made an official complaint to the UN.

Press Conference of the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights – Preliminary findings on the UK

UK leadership challenge: How does it work?

Paul Knaggs

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November 15, 2018

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UK leadership challenge: How does it work?

What is the 1922 Committee? How Jacob Rees-Mogg and other backbenchers could overthrow Theresa May.

What needs to happen?

A challenge can be triggered if 15 percent of the Conservative MPs write a letter to the chairman of the influential “1922 Committee” [the parliamentary group of all backbench Conservative lawmakers] demanding a vote of confidence in the leader. The party currently has 315 MPs, so 48 would need to submit such letters.

Have any done so already?

Leading eurosceptic Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg submitted his letter of no confidence on Thursday. “It is of considerable importance that politicians stick to their commitments or do not make such commitments in the first place. Regrettably, this is not the situation,” he wrote.

Although lawmakers do not have to reveal their intentions, a total of 14 MPs have publicly confirmed they have sent their letter. Others may have also already done so privately. Only the chair of the committee, Graham Brady, knows the exact number.

What happens during a confidence vote?

Once the required number of no confidence letters is reached, Brady would announce a vote of no confidence in the prime minister. All Conservative MPs can vote, either in favor of or against the leader staying on. May would need a simple majority to win. That would currently mean 158 votes.

What happens next?

In the event of a victory, she remains in office and gets immunity from another formal challenge for a year. If she loses, she has to resign and is barred from standing in the ensuing leadership election. Her successor would also become prime minister.

A general election would not automatically be triggered.

The 1922 Committee, also known as “the 22”, is a committee of all backbench Conservative MPs that meets weekly when the Commons is sitting. Its chair, usually a senior MP, is elected by committee members and has considerable influence within the Parliamentary Party.

The 1922 Committee takes its name from a meeting of Conservative MPs in October 1922 which led to the end of the party’s coalition government with the Liberals.

What is the 1922 Committee?

The 1922 Committee’s main function is to keep the leadership of the party informed of the mood of Conservative backbenchers. The group meets every week when Parliament is in session and gives backbench Tory MPs the chance to air their concerns, report on constituency work and coordinate legislative agendas.

Its chair, usually a senior MP, is elected by committee members and has considerable influence within the parliamentary party.

Conservative cabinets and shadow cabinets are expected to take the views of the committee very seriously. If a Conservative leader were to lose the support of the committee, it could leave them in a vulnerable position.

“It is the committee that assesses, organises and ballots on leadership challenges – meaning its power, when called upon, can be huge.”

Who chairs the 1922 Committee?

The current chairman is Sir Graham Brady, MP for Altrincham and Sale West, who was appointed in May 2010. Graham has previously served as a shadow minister, holding the schools, employment and Europe briefs.

UK’s backup power subsidies are illegal, European court rules

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November 15, 2018

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UK’s backup power subsidies are illegal, European court rules

Britain’s main energy policy for keeping the lights on has been thrown into chaos after a European court revoked state aid clearance, raising fears about security of supply.

The government said its “capacity market” scheme, which pays power plant owners subsidies to guarantee they are available to generate electricity through winter, had been suspended immediately following the ruling.

Up to £1 billion in payments that were due to be made this winter now cannot be made, denying many energy companies a major source of income and casting doubt on whether their plants can still be relied on if needed.

The ruling also calls into question plans for future winters, for which billions of pounds in subsidies have been awarded. Further auctions to award more payments…

On Thursday, the ECJ ruled that the European commission had failed to launch a proper investigation into the UK’s capacity market when it cleared the scheme for state aid approval in 2014.

The ruling renders the capacity market unlawful for a “standstill period” while ministers seek state aid approval from the European commission. It is not clear how long that will take, but it could be many months.

The court’s surprise judgment was an embarrassment for Greg Clark, the business secretary, who hours later outlined his vision for the future of the power market to energy executives at an event in London.

Industry watchers said the decision would send shockwaves throughout the sector.

“The consequences are absolutely huge. Immediate cessation of payments is going to have immediate consequences for electricity generators that were relying on them,” said Ed Reed, head of research at analysts Cornwall Insight.

While electricity supplies were unlikely to be at risk, he added, companies may seek to recoup lost capacity market revenues through wholesale power prices instead.

“The lights are not going to go out. We certainly have enough power stations. But the consequence is the market price might go up.”

“Consumers know it pays to be flexible – we’ve been using off-peak trains for years. The energy system is exactly the same. Off peak power should mean off-peak prices… If the government is serious about decarbonising energy at the lowest cost to the customer, it must design a market that encourages, not stifles, environmentally friendly technology. The energy transition is about supporting smart technology and equipping the consumer to manage their own energy – not funding fossil fuels.”

Energy UK said it is “extremely disappointed” by the decision as the scheme “has proven” it can successfully deliver security of supply at the lowest cost to consumers.

Chief Executive Lawrence Slade added: “We are already working closely with BEIS and are fully supportive of their efforts to work with the European Commission to reinstate future auctions and continue the Capacity Market scheme. Given the serious financial implications for capacity providers as well as the need for investor certainty and security of supply, this issue needs to be resolved as soon as possible.”

Clark said the government was already in contact with the European commission and seeking state aid approval, so the capacity market could be reinstated. The business secretary used his speech to celebrate the rise of renewables. “Cheap power is now green power,” he said.

UK and EU negotiating teams have agreed on a Brexit withdrawal deal

Paul Knaggs

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November 13, 2018

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UK and EU negotiating teams have agreed on a Brexit withdrawal deal which Theresa May will present to her Cabinet on Wednesday.

The UK government has confirmed reports that May’s most senior ministers will read the details of the agreement this evening before a special Cabinet meeting at 14:00 (GMT) on Wednesday.

An agreement between the UK and EU over how to prevent a hard border with Northern Ireland over Brexit was reached during intensive negotiations held on Monday and Tuesday, sources told BI.

Brexit talks had been at an impasse for weeks over the question of how a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic can be avoided no matter what the outcome of negotiations.

U.K. Cabinet ministers will be given copies of the draft text of a Withdrawal Agreement between the U.K. and the EU later on Tuesday ahead of a full Cabinet meeting to discuss the provisional agreement on Wednesday, a U.K. government official told POLITICO.

An agreement has been reached at “technical level” between negotiators in Brussels, the Press Association reported, citing a U.K. government source. The BBC also reported that technical agreement had been reached at that a special Cabinet meeting would be called, citing a Cabinet source.

The first government official said that ministers would be called in to to see the draft text “imminently” ahead of a meeting the following day. If Cabinet approves the text, it could open the door to the EU calling a special Brexit summit to finalize a withdrawal agreement.

U.K. government officials had considered the end of Wednesday to be the deadline for securing such a summit in November.

A spokesperson for the European Commission declined to comment.

Other news:
No EU Vsas for up to 90 days visits.

Brexit: EU says British citizens will not need visas to visit member states in event of no-deal
European Commission recommends UK be placed on visa-exempt list of countries

British travellers will not need visas to visit the European Union for short stays even if there is a no-deal Brexit, the European Commission has said.

Commissioners made the recommendation to put the UK on the visa-exempt list at a meeting in Strasbourg on Tuesday. The policy is dependent on the UK continuing to offer reciprocal visa-free access for EU citizens.

Travel advice issued by the Commission says: “The European Commission has proposed to the EU legislator to exempt UK nationals from visa requirements for short-term stays”.

Myths, lies and the strange rise of ‘Tommy Robinson’

Guest Author

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November 12, 2018

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Myths, lies and the strange rise of ‘Tommy Robinson’

LOUISE RAW looks at the reality behind the far-right activist of many identities

WE used to no-platform fascists in this country: now, it seems, we build them platforms.

At the Old Bailey on the 23rd of last month, far-right poster boy Tommy Robinson strutted and fretted his hour upon the stage — in this case, a literal one, complete with powerful sound system audible streets away, and constructed right outside the Central Criminal Court by permission of the City of London’s Corporation and Police.

All the flotsam and jetsam of the far right were gathered for Robinson’s mini-Nuremberg moment: Ukip and zionist flags flew high, and I saw too the emblem of the White Pendragons, the bizarre white supremacist group which brought a home-made gallows to Sadiq Khan’s speech to the Fabian Society in January, and tried to perform a “citizen’s arrest” on him.

There, too, was far-right organiser Daniel Thomas, just out of prison for attempted kidnapping, but with whom the City Police apparently thought it appropriate to work.

Robinson himself looks different these days from the Luton thug of yore: with new teeth, new suits and a marginally better haircut, he looks affluent.

And he is — the “Free Tommy” campaign intended to pay for his defence when he was in prison on the same contempt charge garnered him an estimated £2 million in donations from the general public; he then sacked his legal team and represented himself. After protests, PayPal announced on the 8th of this month it would no longer process payments for him.

But how has this happened? A couple of years ago Robinson looked washed up. The English Defence League (EDL) he co-founded was on the way out, thanks to determined anti-fascist action; his attempts to establish a British branch of German anti-Islamic movement Pegida (Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the Occident) was a dismal flop.

We need to know how he did it; not just because he represents the new rebranded, well-funded far right we face in Britain but because we all now urgently need to play our part countering far-right misinformation wherever we find it — in our families, pubs, schools and streets but also online: this is also a culture war.

Here is some of what we need to know in order to challenge the myths and lies behind Robinson’s rise.

Who is Tommy Robinson?

Even at face value, this is surprisingly hard to answer — Robinson himself says his name “just depends on when you met me.”
Born Stephen Yaxley, he double-barrelled to Yaxley-Lennon when his mother remarried, though sometimes also used “Stephen Lennon.”

When he helped form far-right United Peoples of Luton in 2009, Robinson was quoted as a spokesman under the name “Wayne King” — disappointingly he doesn’t appear to have adopted this in a moment of self-awareness because it sounds like “wanking” when you say it fast.

He also used the alias “Mickey King.” Robinson went on to work with far-right violent football gang Casuals United, and this seems to have been where the alias Tommy Robinson was first employed. It was homage to a real-life Tommy Robinson, well-known ultra-violent Luton town football thug.

Before long, Yaxley-Lennon-as-Robinson had become a key figure in the newly formed EDL.

He tried to enter the US illegally (having been refused a visa) in 2013 under yet another name — Andrew McMaster, a real-life associate of his. This led to another fraud conviction.

But sentencing Robinson, Judge Alistair McCreath opened another can of worms when he told him: “I am going to sentence you under the name of Stephen Lennon although I suspect that is not actually your true name, in the sense that it is not the name on your passport.”

The name on this, apparently legitimate, passport was in fact Paul Harris. Despite his much-vaunted commitment to up-front “honesty,” Robinson has declined to explain this when asked, and it’s unclear whether he’s ever used that name in real life.

Myth: He was radicalised in response to paedophiles or extremists

Again, we can’t look to Robinson for a reliable account. He has said it was the grooming and abuse of a female cousin by Asian paedophile gangs that first motivated him. Pressed on this by the Huffington Post, however, he amended this to “cousin’s cousin.” To date, I have been unable to find any proof either way.

Elsewhere he has also claimed Muslim anti-British army demonstrations in his hometown drove him to the far right — however, these occurred in 2009. Robinson had joined the BNP five years beforehand.

His former aide Lucy Brown, sacked by Robinson earlier this year after what had been a very close relationship, argues Robinson has little or no genuine political interest, and his career is in essentially a “get-rich-quick scheme.” People’s outrage, she claims, is being stoked and then “monetised.”

Myth: His comeback was the will of the people

By 2015, even the far right was sick of Robinson’s egotistical, irascible and rather immature behaviour.

While co-founding the EDL got Robinson name recognition (disruptive and violent demonstrations, costing an estimated £10 million to police over four years, hit the headlines) he was never a sufficiently unifying figure to seem a potential mass leader, particularly after he was caught on camera assaulting a fellow EDL member on one march.

The EDL was collapsing, after patient and relentless anti-fascist action, and Pegida UK went the same way.

But just as he seemed washed up, Robinson reappeared in 2016, reincarnated as a “journalist” for hard right US website Rebel Media.
The site described him as a “Shillman Fellow.” It transpired this meant a five-figure lump sum had been paid to him by billionaire US businessman Robert Shillman (whose clients include Asda in Britain).
Shillman has sponsored competitions to draw cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, and funded pro-Israeli organisations.

He’s active on the board of the David Horowitz Freedom Centre (DHFC), classified as a hate group by the US Southern Poverty Law Centre.

DHFC associates include Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who has called for a ban on the Koran, which he compares to Mein Kampf, and all non-Western immigration to Europe.

Wilders is also backed by right-wing, pro-Israeli think tank the Middle East Forum (MEF), which paid his legal fees when he was last accused of inciting racial hatred. Robinson has recently thanked the MEF for its support.

MEF founder Daniel Pipes was pushed out of the Bush administration in 2003 after protests over his Islamophobia. Pipes has since spoken several times at the DHFC, and explains his aims thus: “I would like to see an Israeli victory and a Palestinian defeat.

“The Middle East Forum calls this the Israel Victory Project … we’re building an intellectual base, working with allies in think tanks, sponsoring research.”

Rebel Media founder Ezra Levant also receives funding from the MEF. Levant was cleared on Wednesday of taking photographs inside a court of law, leading to concerns charges against Robinson would also be dropped.

The MEF has claimed victory “freeing” Robinson, after paying his defence costs and funding a Free Tommy rally in London.

Almost inevitably, Trump’s former ideologue Steve Bannon also backs Robinson to the hilt, and monitors believe he may be looking to set him up as a leader in some kind of new ultra-right, anti-European movement.

Myth: He’s an anti-Establishment hero

All manner of dodgy blokes, from Richard Nixon to Donald Trump and Nigel Farage, have invoked the concept of a “silent majority” shut down by the Establishment and/or liberal elite. The invoker, in contrast, represents this majority, and is accordingly a true “man of the people.”

Robinson has spun his working-class roots and time in prison as evidence for all of the above.

Bannon pushes it too: Theo Usherwood, political editor at LBC, relayed Bannon’s off-air tirade at him a few months ago: “Fuck you. Don’t you fucking say you’re calling me out. You fucking liberal elite. Tommy Robinson is the backbone of this country.”

Paul Sillett, national organiser of Unite Against Fascism, points out “anti-Establishment” Robinson is also supported by Ukip leader Gerard Batten, with whom he dined in the House of Lords after his triumphant rally on October 23 — instead of celebrating with “the people.”

Sillett adds that joining them, and signing Robinson into the Lords, was his close friend Lord Pearson of Rannoch, a man so “anti-Establishment” he owns swathes of Scotland.
Far from being silenced, as they falsely claim, this toxic far-right alliance is being normalised and allowed to grow.

Myth: We shouldn’t call the new far-right fascist

Robinson says he’s not even racist, and indeed “left-wing” in some of his views.

Well he would, wouldn’t he, to quote trenchant observer of humanity, Mandy Rice Davies. We should remember that even Oswald Mosley eventually realised the word “fascist” played badly, and ditched it, while never changing his views or aims.

It’s true that what constitutes “fascism” is highly contentious, and over-use of the term doesn’t help anti-fascists’ cause.

However there is general agreement that a movement doesn’t have to actively advocate concentration camps to be fascist-minded.
US scholar Christopher Vials delineates fascism as a strain of right-wing politics, distinct from conservatism. It will usually focus on a “strong man” leader; the scapegoating of outsiders; a dislike of equality; racism; misogyny (a key and overlooked factor), and a vocabulary which is “warlike,” aggressive, and anti-democratic.

A lot of boxes are ticked here by Robinson and his supporters.

Myth: Robinson is a campaigner against paedophiles

Robinson has personally exposed not a single grooming gang, but has merely bandwagoned on existing court cases.

If his motivation was sincere, he would obviously not want alleged paedophiles walking free: yet evidence suggests Robinson’s contempt of court stunts actively aim to achieve this.

According to legal teams involved and those close to Robinson, his intention was to enact contempt of court to force a mistrial and aggravate racial tensions when defendants had to be released.

What is clear is that Robinson knew what contempt of court was when he committed it and that he knew mistrial was a likely result.

Before his first offence, he had recently been given media law training by none other than Ezra Levant through Rebel Media. No further action was taken, but police carefully explained exactly what constituted contempt of court, and the threat to the justice system, to Robinson on that occasion.

Strange to relate, then, that it was at this time — when Robison was free and had undertaken to commit no further contempt offence — that Levant bought and registered a “Free Tommy” website. Only later did Robinson commit the further contempt offence which led to his arrest and imprisonment.

Unite against Fascism also notes: “…Robinson and his supporters claim to support women and children subjected to rape, sexual abuse and exploitation [yet] are silent when those such as EDL member Peter Gillett, sentenced last month to 18 years in prison for child sex offences, and Leigh McMillan, jailed for offences against a 10-year-old, are found guilty of these serious crimes.”

Robinson’s EDL also launched a campaign in 2011 to free their organiser Richard Price from jail on a violence charge, when they were well aware he had also been convicted just the year before for making indecent images of children.

In 2012, Robinson tweeted a 15-year-old girl that she was “pretty fit for a Muslim” and made no comment when told her age.

Myth: Robinson is a defender of free speech

Outside the Old Bailey on October 23, Robinson (in words echoing both Trump and nazi propagandist Goebbels) described the media as “enemies of the people” while his supporters shouted “scum” at journalists.

Robinson has form for harassing not just anti-fascists (friends of the late Antifascist Action activist Edel “Lola” Carroll tell me he and his associates repeatedly targeted this young woman and her family) but journalists exercising their “free speech,” turning up at homes as well as workplaces.

In an online video, he has warned: “If you’re a journalist and you think your office or your home is a safe space … It’s not.”

It hardly needs saying that the far right in power has never acted as a defender of free speech, but quite the contrary — today in Germany, the AfD (Alternative For Germany) party recently advocated setting up online portals to enable schoolchildren to anonymously report teachers who “speak against” the party.

Myth: Social media isn’t important in anti-fascism

Online and non-mainstream media have been hugely important to the international rise of the far right this time around; Trump doesn’t spend half his life online for no reason: he knows Breitbart and Infowars in the US have his back.

Alex Jones, conspiracy theorist-in-chief at Infowars, who infamously claimed the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax, this summer hired the lawyers of the neonazi Daily Stormer website to defend him when victims’ families sued.

As I was researching this issue, Infowars co-founder Kelly Jones responded to me on Twitter echoing my concerns.

She says she has cut ties with the site, horrified at what it has become, and now feeling it is incumbent on her to “make it right.” The same day, she tweeted a statement: “‘I’m [a] former owner of Infowars. America — the only conspiracy is the propaganda of fake news Infowars, which was instrumental in getting Trump elected and aims to destroy the Free Press so that fascism can take control. United we must stand.”

Nor is this just a US problem — websites like Stormfront (“White Pride, World Wide”) get huge traffic from Britain.

It seems it’s now possible for people to become radicalised entirely online (as Finsbury Park mosque killer Darren Osborne apparently was, through the propaganda of Robinson, among others).

So we must now fight them on the retweets, and engage with misinformation on all the platforms we use.

How to defeat today’s far right

We can take comfort from the fact we’ve done this before – we can again. Britain has seen off the Blackshirts, National Front, British National Party and EDL among others.

But there are no guarantees. We have to act immediately, repeatedly, and in unison. There’s no place for sectarianism in this struggle — we are in a world of nazis and the rest of us, and have to pick our side.

Unite against Fascism agrees: “Working with traditional anti-fascist allies like trade unionists, key individuals and groups in the Muslim community and with the energy of young people round Love Music Hate Racism (inspired by Rock Against Racism) saw off the EDL and Pegida UK. Robinson will be beaten again by the anti-fascist majority which will take time, skill, and persistence.”

As late, great anti-fascist activist and Cable Street veteran Max Levitas, who sadly died on Friday November 2, put it: “Through Cable Street, people learn of the struggles that happened in the ’30s. That has got to be applied today. People have got to be brought together in the struggle against fascism and racism.”

Join the National Unity Demonstration next weekend, Saturday November 17, central London at noon. Visit www.standuptoracism.org for more information.

Morning star: LOUISE RAW.

Labour Heartlands supplement.

Tommy Robinson: The little divider.

Robinson names himself “The Enemy of the state” but in reality, he is “The tool of the state!” Tommy Robinson is a product of our times and his ilk can be seen repeated throughout history, their modus operandi is to exploit the issues that affect the working class and divide them by the lowest common denominator.

He highlights people’s ignorance and fears exploiting the real or imagined issues often brought about by bad government policies and lack of corrosion in meaningful integration, his job is to blame others within our class to focus peoples real issues into a false doctrine of a bigoted argument to create a boogeyman of ‘us and them’ then exploit people’s fears anxieties real or imagined.

Robinson or Yaxley-Lennon or whatever his name is? In actual fact is the tool of the establishment directly or indirectly. His exploitation of people’s fears allows the creation of the division that in turn allows the establishment free rein to continue in its assault on the working class. Robinson leads the Pitchforks People against the Torch People convincing the Pitchforks that the Torches are to be blamed.

The tool of the State!

The whole charade of Left working class vs Right working class leaves the entire establishment classes the system laughing at the desired results.

The whole charade of Left working class vs Right working class leaves the entire establishment and the system laughing at the desired results.

Divide and conquer!

Divide and conquer the age-old rule that keeps us weak. Robinson facilitating this exploiting in every opportunity… The case of the young cadets is latest in a line of cynical attempts and we should never expect him to do any different.

The way to combat Robinson and his Pitchfork People is not to publicise his endeavours to divide but to call out the establishment along with politicians the very system that creates the environment for people like Robinson who thrive on the discontent, oppression, fear and austerity the systems weapons of oppression.

The revolution is not happening on the streets in protests, nor is it happening in parliament – the revolution is happening right now in the minds of man.

…..and it’s highly contagious!

“The race issue based on skin colour is a deeply emotional one among many, that has caused unimaginable separation and was used very craftily to position large groups of people against each other.

This is a wake-up call to all those who believe they are free because of race or class or wealth.

We have all been denied freedom and dignity, trapped in a life of servitude to the banking families and their economic stranglehold on our planet – no matter what colour our skin may be.”

― Michael Tellinger

Let’s make this the last Robinson Post. No-platform fascists!

Supplement: Labour Heartlands, Paul Knaggs

Jeremy Corbyn ‘We Can’t Stop Brexit”We Can’t Stop Brexit’

Guest Author

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November 10, 2018

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Jeremy Corbyn ‘We Can’t Stop Brexit”We Can’t Stop Brexit’

Interview with Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn believes that politics have left young people behind. In an interview with DER SPIEGEL, he speaks about Brexit, the crisis of social democracy in Europe and the uphill battle to unite his party.

Interview Conducted by Jörg Schindler

The man upon whom the hopes of young men and women in Britain rest enjoys taking pictures of drain covers and making jam. He wears baggy blazers and, when necessary, smuggles English cheese into his Mexican vacation lodgings. In other words, he leads the averagely eccentric lifestyle of your standard British retiree.

Except that Jeremy Corbyn, 69, has his sights set on becoming the next prime minister of the United Kingdom. Ever since the man from the London borough of Islington became the surprise Labour leader in 2015, the party has been experiencing an unprecedented boom. Not unlike Bernie Sanders in the United States, Corbyn’s decidedly socialist and pacifist positions have been received enthusiastically by mostly young voters. With its 540,000 members, Labour is now the largest political party in the European Union. In the 2017 election, it received 40 percent of the vote, despite significant attacks on the party from the British media and a bitter internal battle. Since then, left-wing and social democratic parties from across Europe have been making pilgrimages to London to learn the secret to Corbyn’s unlikely success.

DER SPIEGEL: Mr. Corbyn, when you look across Europe at the moment, do you fear that social democracy is doomed?

Corbyn: Not at all. Look at Portugal where the Socialist Party has formed a successful left-wing government. Also the Swedish Social Democratic Party did comparatively well in the last election.

DER SPIEGEL: These are the last bastions. In Germany, France, the Netherlands and elsewhere, social democrats are on their way to becoming splinter parties. Why are they doing so poorly?

Corbyn: I think the main point is how you deal with the economic crisis of 2008. Do you continue to allow austerity to dominate and manage an economy which, in effect, is redistributing wealth in the wrong way or do you offer an alternative? I think left parties that are putting forward a coherent anti-austerity alternative will get huge support.

DER SPIEGEL: At the moment, though, it is right-wing populist parties across Europe that are getting significant support.

Corbyn: When communities become disillusioned with politicians and politics, it can be extremely dangerous. And hence, I find the rise of the far right in Austria and Germany very troubling and very concerning. At least the AfD (Germany’s right-wing populist Alternative for Germany party) didn’t hasn’t grown any further in the polls recently, but I do find the rise of this party quite frightening.

DER SPIEGEL: The decline of social democracy started after figures like Tony Blair and Gerhard Schröder were in government. Is that just coincidence?

Corbyn: What Tony Blair wanted to do was turn the traditional social democracy into what he called a third way.

DER SPIEGEL: Which led to him winning by a landslide in 1997.

Corbyn: Yes, but he moved the Labour Party to the right. I was never a supporter of this path. I supported the investment in health and education, which was very good. I disagreed on the Iraq War in particular, but also on the idea that you could run public services through private finance.

DER SPIEGEL: Your answer is a sharp turn to the left?

Corbyn: What we’re offering here are coherent policies. It’s the values behind it that are so important. The values that you work for the entirety of society and don’t blame minorities, that you invest in education, but above all, that you give people hope. I really think many people across Europe need the perspective that they will be able to achieve something in their lives because the levels of depression in post-industrial areas is huge. The levels of underemployment, short-term employment and insecure employment are huge. And I think that is very dangerous to society. What we’re saying is that there has to be a realignment of wealth within our society.

DER SPIEGEL: Yet the current level of unemployment in Britain is the lowest it has been since 1975. Despite Brexit, the economy is growing.

Corbyn: That masks the fact that there are 1 million people on zero-hour contracts (Eds. Note: contracts that do not guarantee a minimum amount of work) and that real wages have been frozen now for 10 years. Almost 4 million people accessed food banks last year in the sixth richest country in the world. The Conservatives tend to measure everything by the prosperous parts of London and the southeast. It’s simply not the case with the rest of the country. We have the lowest levels of wages paid in the East Midlands, which is less than two hours from London by train. The lowest levels of investment are in the northeast.

DER SPIEGEL: Is that why Labour received 40 percent of the vote in last year’s election?

Corbyn: We addressed the worries of the majority in our manifesto, yeah. And we’re campaigning in a different way. We’re doing community campaigning, we involve our members much more in policy making. Together, we’re developing ideas like an overarching national education service. It’s a completely novel idea in Britain, where education has traditionally been atomized between school, local authority, quasi-independent universities and so on. And we obviously work to get our message across in any way that we can.

DER SPIEGEL: By bypassing the mainstream media, as you refer to it.

Corbyn: The most hostile area for us is the mainstream print media, which has been unbelievably hostile. Since I became Labour leader three years ago, 86 percent of reporting about my leadership has been negative by the mainstream media. We challenge that in whatever way we can. We do much better on social media and on broadcast media.

DER SPIEGEL: To be fair to the print media, you don’t need journalists to badmouth you. Some of your fiercest adversaries can be found among Labour delegates to the House of Commons.

Corbyn: The party is more united than you think. Almost 14,000 people came to our last conference in Liverpool. That’s the biggest attendance ever to a political conference in Britain. And the party came to fairly agreed positions on most things. There isn’t a huge split.

DER SPIEGEL: Which is why I referred specifically to Labour MPs, a group collectively known as the Parliamentary Labour Party. A significant number of them would like to get rid of you sooner rather than later.

Corbyn: Some members of the Parliamentary Labour Party have been slower to come onboard than others, shall we say?

DER SPIEGEL: Why does the old guard despise your left-wing politics so passionately?

Corbyn: I am afraid you’ll have to ask them that question, really. I reach out to all — all the time.

DER SPIEGEL: Rumor has it that old Blairites and Labour centrists are in the process of forming a new party. Would it be easier for you if your adversaries within the party were to leave?

Corbyn: No, I don’t want the party to be split because any split would be dangerous for the future of all of us. I want them to stay together and recognize that, unless we offer an inclusive radical alternative to what this Tory government is doing, we’re not going to win the election. We’re offering that radical alternative.

DER SPIEGEL: It is one that includes the nationalization of the railways and the electrical grid, more workers’ rights and a massive redistribution of wealth from the top to the bottom.

Corbyn: Our policies are sensible, inclusive, and they are actually quite mainstream. A majority of Britons support bringing the railway back into public ownership.

DER SPIEGEL: In your 35 years as an MP, you have gained a reputation for being a party rebel. You have voted against your own party 400 times.

Corbyn: Oh, I think much more than that.

DER SPIEGEL: Yet under your leadership, Labour rebels have occasionally been sanctioned quite harshly. Is that not a paradox?

Corbyn: Nobody has been sanctioned for their votes. We are not into sanctioning people for their views. We sanction people for their behavior and for false allegations.

DER SPIEGEL: Members of your own party have also accused you of tolerating anti-Semitism. Do you?

Corbyn: No, absolutely not. Anti-Semitism is a disgusting form of racism. I am implacably opposed to it. There is no place for it in our party and it must be eradicated from society. We will take whatever measures necessary to tackle anti-Semitism head on and guarantee the security of Jewish life in the UK.

DER SPIEGEL: Not just Labour, but the whole country is extremely divided at the moment — not least because of Brexit. If you could stop Brexit, would you?

Corbyn: We can’t stop it. The referendum took place. Article 50 has been triggered. What we can do is recognize the reasons why people voted Leave.

DER SPIEGEL: And they are?

Corbyn: I think a lot of people have been totally angered by the way in which their communities have been left behind. We had high Leave votes in the most left-behind areas of the country. In a lot of deprived areas, working conditions have deteriorated over the decades, protected by European legislation. Indeed, we would enhance workers’ rights, where the Conservative Party wants to go in another direction of a largely deregulated economy.

DER SPIEGEL: Wouldn’t you face pretty much the same problems as Prime Minister Theresa May if you were in charge of the Brexit negotiations?

Corbyn: No, because we wouldn’t be trying to face towards the deregulated economy of the United States, which the one wing of the Tory Party is trying to do all the time. We would want to make a new and comprehensive customs union with the European Union, one that would obviously protect the Irish border — that’s crucial — but also ensure that our supply chains worked in both directions. People voted Leave, or they voted Remain, but nobody voted to lose their job. Nobody voted to reduce their living standards or working conditions.

DER SPIEGEL: Some people have argued that if Labour had had a pro-EU leader, the result of the Brexit referendum would have been different. What would the EU have to look like for you to support it?

Corbyn: I’ve been critical of the competitions policy in Europe and the move towards free market, and obviously critical in the past of their treatment of Greece, although that was mostly the eurozone that did that. My idea is of a social Europe with inclusive societies that work for everyone and not just for a few.

DER SPIEGEL: Less neo-liberal?

Corbyn: Well, as you probably gathered from following me, I’m not really in favor of neo-liberal economics.

DER SPIEGEL: Looking at the almost impossible task facing Theresa May, that of sealing a deal not only with Brussels but also with her own party, do you sometimes feel sorry for her?

Corbyn: I am a decent human being, I feel sorry for anyone in distress. But the best way for anyone to alleviate distress is to take yourself away from the source of it.

DER SPIEGEL: No offense intended, but both you and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders are older politicians …

Corbyn: I can’t believe you just said that! (laughs)

DER SPIEGEL: Why is it that so many young people flock to you?

Corbyn: It’s not a personal thing. It’s about us as parties and movements offering some hope. Young people never turned off politics. Politics turned off young people because it didn’t offer anything to them. I grew up in the 1950s and ’60s and I always believed that I would probably have a better life than my parents had. And my parents were not poor. The turning point was the politics endorsed by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Their message was that the young had to pay for education, pay for health, pay for pensions, that society doesn’t really care about them. And that it’s all a race.

DER SPIEGEL: And now you want to go back to the future?

Corbyn: What we’ve been saying on both sides of the Atlantic is about redistribution of wealth and power. Bernie Sanders has quite a good line. He says: “America can afford anything except the inequality it’s got.”

DER SPIEGEL: You will turn 70 next year. Are you planning to stand in the next general election?

Corbyn: I’m very young. I’m very healthy. I run. I’m a vegetarian. I eat porridge every morning. I don’t smoke. I don’t drink. I don’t do anything bad. I am sorry if that makes me sound boring.

DER SPIEGEL: Mr. Corbyn, thank you very much for this interview.

Macron criticizes ‘ultra-liberal’ Europe

Paul Knaggs

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November 9, 2018

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Macron criticizes ‘ultra-liberal’ Europe

Macron performs political somersault and bashes the EU for failing to protect workers.

WORKER-BASHING French President Emmanuel Macron did a political somersault, attacking the European Union for failing to protect the less well off as it pushes its neoliberal agenda.

In his first appearance on a radio talk show since he was sworn in, the increasingly unpopular French president came out swinging against an EU he is better known for defending.

His scarcely credible change of heart followed a humiliating national opinion poll signalling that his Republique En Marche party is running second in voting intentions in the run-up to next May’s elections to the European Parliament behind the Rassemblement National of fascist leader Marine Le Pen.

Before today’s outburst, Mr Macron’s stance in recent months has been to frame the EU elections as a battle between anti-immigrant nationalists and pro-EU “progressives.”

He stated:

The EU is letting down its middle classes, ignoring their legitimate fears and exposing itself to a populist wave that could ultimately submerge the bloc, Macron told Europe 1 radio a few months before his centrist La République En Marche starts campaigning for the European Parliament election.

“Europe, without a doubt, has become too ultra-liberal,” he said, adding: “We need a stronger Europe that protects.”

The criticism made it sound like Macron, who used the European Union’s “Ode to Joy” anthem as the soundtrack to his inauguration at the Louvre in 2017, might be turning against the EU. In France the expression “ultra-liberal” is not a positive one — it refers to unrestrained capitalism that crushes the common worker and enriches elites.

But the chances that Macron has suddenly morphed into a Eurosceptic are next to nil. What’s more likely is that the French president, whose approval score has plummeted to around 20 percent in some polls, was lashing out at his opponents in the European Union, naming his enemies and setting the stage for a campaign to grab power in Brussels.

His target was not the right-leaning populists who oppose him face-to-face. By railing against European “ultra-liberals,” Macron was pointing to all the factions that have resisted his plans, articulated during his presidential campaign and during a landmark speech at the Sorbonne in Paris, to make the EU a more “protective” bloc via tighter security cooperation, taxes on digital giants and tougher restrictions on state-aid takeovers.

To an extent, that resistance has come from within the European Commission, where proponents of free trade never embraced Macron’s theory of “smart protectionism” in trade. But even more so, it’s come from countries including the free-trading Nordics, the market-friendly Netherlands, the libertarian Baltic states and, increasingly, conservative-led Germany, which oppose his plans.

“We need to hear the fear and anger. There’s anger against a Europe that has become too ultra-liberal,” the president, who has been a major advocate of this pro-corporate policy, told France’s Europe 1 radio.

“This anger is directed at an ultra-liberal Europe that no longer allows our middle classes to live decently,” he said using the US formulation for working people.

An Ifop survey published on Sunday showed that the far-right Rassemblement National has moved ahead of Mr Macron’s party for the first time.

The French leader linked Britain’s vote to leave the EU to similar working-class disenchantment with the EU and the City of London.

“When Britain decides to leave Europe, it’s the middle classes that say:

‘This Europe that you’re selling me makes the City better off but I, in the country or industrial towns, I’m worse off,” he said.

“We need to hear that, so we need a Europe that protects workers more.”

On Tuesday he addressed voters’ concerns that have boosted support for far-right and eurosceptic parties in France, and drew parallels with Britain’s departure from the EU.

It seems he is trying to play both sides of the coin scrambling to holt the drop in his plummeting popularity.

Macron’s plan to pay tribute to Nazi collaborator Pétain

world

Paul Knaggs

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November 8, 2018

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Macron’s plan to pay tribute to Nazi collaborator Pétain

President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday it was “legitimate” to pay tribute to Marshal Philippe Petain, who led the French army to victory in World War One’s Battle of Verdun but decades later collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War Two.

With the country poised to fall to German forces in the second world war, Pétain was appointed prime minister of France. His administration, based in the unoccupied part of the country known as Vichy France.

The French Vichy turned back the clock on emancipate Jews and collaborated with the Nazis and their deportation and extermination of the Jews.

French background

After the 1789 Revolution, France was the first European country to emancipate Jews, and despite periodic resurgences of anti-Semitism the country had Europe’s second biggest Jewish community – 330,000 – by 1939. About half were recent refugees from elsewhere in Europe, convinced that they would be protected by France’s commitments on political and religious asylum.

A virulent racist campaign intensified in 1936, when the Socialist Popular Front government was led by a Jewish prime minister, Léon Blum. His appointment added to the fears of those convinced that France was on the verge of a Bolshevik revolution, aided by Jews. These fears intensified, and dominated the French administration during the years of World War Two.

The lightning defeat of the French army by the Germans in June 1940 brought down the democratic Third Republic, which was replaced by a French state, headed by 84-year-old Maréchal Philippe Pétain, who had fought in World War One. He set up his capital at Vichy, a spa in the Auvergne. The Germans had divided France into occupied and non-occupied zones, leaving Pétain’s administration in charge of about two-fifths of the country – including the cities of Lyon and Marseille.

Jewish Statute

Despite autonomy from German policies, Pétain brought in legislation setting up a Jewish Statute in October 1940. By then about 150,000 Jews had crossed what was known as the Demarcation Line to seek protection from Vichy in the south – only to find they were subjected to fierce discrimination along lines practised by the Germans in the north.

Jews were eventually banned from the professions, show business, teaching, the civil service and journalism. After an intense propaganda campaign, Jewish businesses were ‘aryanised’ by Vichy’s Commission for Jewish Affairs and their property was confiscated. More than 40,000 refugee Jews were held in concentration camps under French control, and 3,000 died of poor treatment during the winters of 1940 and 1941. The writer Arthur Koestler, who was held at Le Vernet near the Spanish frontier, said conditions were worse than in the notorious German camp, Dachau.

During 1941 anti-Semitic legislation, applicable in both zones, was tightened. French police carried out the first mass arrests in Paris in May 1941 when 3,747 men were interned. Two more sweeps took place before the first deportation train provided by French state railways left for Germany under French guard on 12 March 1942.

The July 1942 Vel’d’hiv Round-Up

In July 1942, the French police, under the orders of René Bousquet and his second in Paris, Jean Leguay, organized, along with responsibles from the SNCF train company, the Vel’d’hiv raid which took place on July 16 and 17 July. The police arrested 12,884 Jews — including 4,051 children which the Gestapo had not asked for — 5,082 women and 3,031 men, all sent to Drancy. By its own, this action represented more than a quarter of the 42,000 French Jews sent to Auschwitz in 1942, of which only 811 would come back after the end of the war. In 1995, president Jacques Chirac recognized the responsibility of the French state for this raid.

In total, the Vichy government helped in the deportation of 76,000 Jews, although this number varies depending on the account, to German extermination camps; only 2,500 survived the war

On 16 July 1942, French police arrested 12,884 Jews, including 4,501 children and 5,802 women, in Paris during what became known as La Grande Rafle (‘the big round-up’). Most were temporarily interned in a sports stadium, in conditions witnessed by a Paris lawyer, Georges Wellers.

‘All those wretched people lived five horrifying days in the enormous interior filled with deafening noise … among the screams and cries of people who had gone mad, or the injured who tried to kill themselves’, he recalled. Within days, detainees were being sent to Germany in cattle-wagons, and some became the first Jews to die in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

Vichy crimes

Photograph of German troops riding horses down the Champs D'Elysee in Paris German troops parade down the Champs D’Elysee in Paris, 1940 ©Many historians consider that an even worse crime was committed in Vichy-controlled southern France, where the Germans had no say. In August 1942, gendarmes were sent to hunt down foreign refugees. Families were seized in their houses or captured after manhunts across the countryside. About 11,000 Jews were transported to Drancy in the Paris suburbs, the main transit centre for Auschwitz. Children as young as three were separated from their mothers – gendarmes used batons and hoses – before being sent to Germany under French guard, after weeks of maltreatment.

During 1942, officials sent 41,951 Jews to Germany, although the deportations came to a temporary halt when some religious leaders warned Vichy against possible public reaction. Afterwards, arrests were carried out more discreetly. In 1943 and 1944, the regime deported 31,899 people – the last train left in August 1944, as Allied troops entered Paris. Out of the total of 75,721 deportees, contained in a register drawn up by a Jewish organisation, fewer than 2,000 survived.

After the war..

After the war, Pétain was sentenced to death for treason, though President Charles de Gaulle, a longtime admirer of Pétain, reduced the punishment to life in prison.

“It is shocking that France can pay tribute to a man deemed unworthy of being French in a trial held in the name of the people,” said Francis Kalifat, the president of Crif, the body that represents France’s 400,000 Jews.

Jean-Luc Melenchon, the head of the hard-left France Insoumise (France Unbowed) party, wrote on Twitter: “Marshal Joffre was the military victor of the 1914-18 war. Pétain was a traitor and an antisemite. His crimes and his betrayal cannot be erased from history. Macron, this time, you’ve gone too far.”

Pétain died in prison in 1951 aged 95.

Macron’s plan to honour Petain alongside seven other French marshals who directed military campaigns during World War One, which ended 100 years ago on Nov. 11, has unleashed criticism from Jewish groups, political opponents and on social media.

In the eastern town of Charleville-Mezieres that once lay on the front line between French and German troops. Macron said

“I consider it entirely legitimate that we pay homage to the marshals who led our army to victory,”

Jean-Luc Melenchon, the head of the left France Insoumise (France Unbowed) party, wrote on Twitter: “Marshal Joffre was the military victor of the 1914-18 war. Pétain was a traitor and an antisemite. His crimes and his betrayal cannot be erased from history. Macron, this time, you’ve gone too far.”

Jean-Luc Melenchon, the head of the left France Insoumise. French socialist Party.

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French background

Jewish Statute

The July 1942 Vel’d’hiv Round-Up

Vichy crimes

After the war..

French Nazi Collaborators Are Tried & Executed | War Archives

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