Statement by eleven Berwick-upon-Tweed elected officers is damning indictment
Recent months have seen a growing exodus of members from the Labour party, with more than 200,000 already gone compared to the membership under Jeremy Corbyn of around 600,000 – and recent weeks have seen a series of dramatic departures by elected officers running local parties (CLPs), with many resigning both their positions and their membership of the party in protest at Keir Starmer’s war on members and their democracy and the racism he has allowed or even encouraged to burgeon under his tenure.
And last night in Berwick-upon-Tweed in the north-east of England, eleven out of thirteen CLP officers stood down from their roles and most left the party altogether, issuing a damning statement of the reasons for their decision:
On Friday 11th March eleven of the thirteen elected Officers on Berwick-upon-Tweed CLP Executive Committee stood down with immediate effect. The majority simultaneously resigned from the Labour Party.
This has been coming for some time given the current leader and his team have:
– betrayed leadership campaign pledges including the one to unite Labour;
– suppressed the Forde Report investigating racist, misogynist and Islamophobic behaviour in the Labour Party as described in the “leaked report” from April 2020;
– removed the whip from Jeremy Corbyn, despite him being a member of the Labour Party;
– eroded democracy within Labour Party national and regional structures to beyond worthless;
– expelled friends to the Party, like Ken Loach, and fantastic member activists across the country, on ludicrous and often retrospective, grounds;
– muzzled socialist councillors and MPs such that they may not utter a single word of disagreement with the current Leader without being threatened with losing the Labour whip and/or being deselected.
The very last red line crossed was the expulsion of the Berwick-upon-Tweed CLP Chair, Ian Chapman, for frankly spurious reasons. Trish Williams, former CLP Secretary and 2019 Parliamentary Candidate for Berwick Constituency, explained:
“Ian has worked tirelessly to elect Labour representatives in Berwick, Northumberland and North of Tyne. He epitomises the true socialist Labour values the Party ought to stand for. We are outraged at how Ian has been treated and cannot stay actively involved in a Labour Party without him in it. We stand in solidarity with Ian and thank him for his tremendous support and comradeship to us, and all the officers and members of Berwick-upon-Tweed CLP, and across Northumberland, over the last five years.“
In 2015 hundreds of thousands of Labour members started to hope and believe that a better world was possible. But given the issues listed above, and the lack of any meaningful opposition to the worst government in history, it seems the current regime does not have the same political priorities we do.
This Labour Party prefers to adhere to the establishment status quo and has no intention of implementing the radical and transformational change required to achieve social, economic and environmental justice in the UK or the world. We are therefore not prepared to volunteer another moment of our precious time and energy to support it.
It’s upsetting that it has come to this but there is also a sense of relief to have distanced ourselves from the hostile environment currently being experienced by socialists in a toxic Labour Party. But those of us who have left Labour are not going anywhere. You will still see us campaigning to improve people’s lives in our communities and with the wider grassroots labour movement; the difference is we will not be campaigning for a craven Labour Party that has forgotten its roots in working class solidarity and seems hell bent on self-destruction.
Keir Starmer, his cronies and sidekicks have gutted a party that was just recently the greatest force for positive change in this country and in much of Europe – and have left it a corpse rotting from the head in an unforgivable betrayal of the suffering millions desperate for a real political alternative.
Solidarity with the principled socialists of Berwick who have taken a decision to stand for something rather than fall for the vapid nonsense that passes for policy and leadership in the Starmer regime, or tolerate the unpunished racism and war on human rights that now run rampant through what used to be the Labour party and is now competing with the Tories for the title of most poisonous and hypocritical.
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All going to plan then, eh, Herr Starmfuhrer!
And the polar opposite of evil men (and women) like Starmer, who shine the light of truth on their darkness and deceit and falsehoods, their devastation and destruction and greed:
Waltzing Towards Armageddon with the Merchants of Death
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/03/15/waltzing-toward-armageddon-with-the-merchants-of-death/
Reply to Allan Howard
Yes It is absolutely clear that Starmers remit is to neuter Labour and make it unelectable for the next 10 years or so and then when the electorate are fed up to the back teeth with the Tories they will elect a Socialist free Zionist Labour party which will be distinguishable from the Tories only by the colour of the rosettes they wear.
Yeah, but 13 is an unlucky number anyway.
Amirite, wee fella??
Starmer is a TORY. He does not care if he destroys Labour or turns it Conservative. Either way he ensures ongoing government y his favourite Party – the CONSERVATIVES.
Jonathan Cook…..
‘The West’s hands in Ukraine are as bloody as Putin’s’
Every death in the current war – Ukrainian and Russian – could almost certainly have been averted had the US and its NATO allies not led Ukraine up the garden path. Had Ukrainians not believed that with enough pressure they could force NATO’s hand in their favor, they would have had to accommodate Russian concerns well before any invasion, such as by committing to neutrality.
Russia would have had no grounds – or pretexts, depending on how you wish to look at it – to invade. The media’s “madman” and “Hitler” scripts are needed now to turn reality on its head, suggesting that Putin would have invaded whatever actions NATO and Ukraine took.
But if that is not true – and there is no evidence it is – then the blood of the victims of this war is most certainly on the West’s hands, just as it is in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Gaza, Yemen and elsewhere…..
Of course, the conclusion even Westerners would draw, if we weren’t so propagandized by the media, is that neutrality for Ukraine is inevitable – unless we are willing to risk the alternative of a World War III. Any delay in achieving neutrality for Ukraine as an outcome simply causes unnecessary death and suffering.
The US, by contrast, wants a long, proxy war of attrition, openly and covertly supplying Ukrainian forces – indifferent as to whether they are “nice ones” or neo-Nazis – to bog Russia down in years of difficult guerrilla warfare and counter-insurgency. The bloodshed will feed the hostility (and unthinking racism) of Western publics towards Russia and Russians, providing the pretext for Washington to sustain the West’s parallel economic war on Russia.
Ukrainians will pay the price as the US tries to wear down Russia, just as Syrians, Libyans, Iranians, Yemenis, Venezuelans and Palestinians have paid the price as the US has sought elsewhere to attain the goals of its globe-spanning imperial project.
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2022-03-10/west-ukraine-bloody-putin/
You have got to admire these former Labour party members who out of necessity have left the Labour party and will still be working in the wider labour \socialist movement to put the working class first instead of last as the fascists labour party.
There’s a lot to be said for doing “apolitical” grassroots work in the community — which builds up a community, while also building trust in the people doing/initiating that work.
Allan …Italian loaders in pisa have uncovered aid for Ukraine in boxes.On closure inspection they have uncovered weapons and ammunition to bolster the Ukraine fire power.The Italian unions are now involved with the orders for members to refuse loading arms for Ukraine and exporting death.
Cook is missing quite a fair bit of history here.
Every drop of blood spilt is purely on the shoulders of US/UK/NATO.
The West promised not to go further than Germany if it was allowed to reunify. The West lied.
In the following years, the Russians swallowed two expansions. The third announcement of expansion was met with “That’s not going to happen” from Russia.
What would you do at this point? Constructive dialogue or keep egging the pudding?
May I suggest you read the transcript of Nuland and Pyatt? The infamous F&@# the EU one. That conversation alone is admission of interference in foreign government.
And no one’s really talking about how or why the west is our to destroy itself with sanctions.
Keep buying dry foods cos you ain’t seen nothing yet!
NVLA, I’m sure that Jonathan Cook is well aware of the history!
The following are a few clips from an article Jonathan wrote, published on Feb 28th:
The same predilection for the simple-minded “madman” narrative has once again pushed us squarely into another international crisis. And once again, it has served as a way to avoid examining the real background to, and reasons for, what is happening in Ukraine and wider eastern Europe.
Russia has realistic objections to the behaviour and bad faith of the US and Nato over the past three decades.
Russia expects a so-called “sphere of influence“, in the same way that the US demands one. What’s been going on instead for the best part of 30 years is that the US, as the world’s sole superpower, has expanded its own sphere of influence right up to Russia’s doorstep.
But Putin has other reasons – from his perspective – to act. He also wants to show the US that there is a price to be paid for Washington’s repeated broken promises on security arrangements in Europe.
And Jonathan also links to the following MEE article:posted on December 22nd:
How to avert a global conflict between China, Russia and the West
If the US aims to reach a managed competition, as Biden claims, it has to learn to respect its opponents’ red lines
Every nation has its red lines: a series of wholly arbitrary and mobile boundaries which, if crossed, permits it to unleash the four horsemen of the apocalypse on its enemy…..
In the past three decades, the US and its allies have given the strong impression that they consider their red lines to be the only legitimate ones.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/us-china-russia-global-conflict-avert-how
All true,America sees itself as the only moralistic machine on the planet when in fact the opposite applies!
They have spilled more blood looking for world domination than any other nation!
Well said Allan Howard. I have already read this by Jonathan Cook. His work is always mandatory reading for me.
One aspect which has not yet been addressed can be found from timeframe 15 minutes 30 seconds of this video interview of Scott Ritter by George Galloway:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lh4ClXnv9w8
What Ritter highlights here is the very real prospect of blowback in Western Europe from arming these people, along with Jihadists, with Stinger and other weapons.
His point is that we have already experienced some serious atrocities committed against civilian populations from extremist groups we have armed and supported in Wars of choice over the past thirty years.
With every likelihood of these people being on the losing side their dispersal across Europe is a certainty.
Ritter cites the plausible case of the German Chancellor or POTUS/Airforce One being potential targets by people we have armed with stinger missiles which could take down Airforce One or the Chancellor’s motorcade.
What Ritter leaves unsaid is that plausible case is not limited to those examples. Any holiday charter flight, cruise ship or passenger ferry/train becomes a potential risk. With no one having any idea when or where.
I remember coming home on leave from the BAOR – with a recognisable Forces plate on my car – during the IRA bombing campaign on the UK mainland (a campaign which had included the M62 coach bomb – I was in the military hospital that day having just had my appendix removed). Having to inspect the underside of the vehicle every time I needed to access it; crawling under coaches at Victoria coach Station in London to inspect them before everyone got on; checking everyone out all the time whilst in transit.
When we have armed complete head the balls with such sophisticated weapons as this a home made bomb on the tube/concert or someone waving a rifle around in the street will feel like nostalgia in comparison.
The US/UK Axis has just injected a continuous time bomb into the European mainland. When the general populace twig this things like foreign holidays, for one, are likely to become a thing of the past.
As if to emphasis the more general point of Ritter’s analysis here is the World Socialist Web Site on the arming of these Nazi’s across Europe:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/03/05/xpbb-m05.html
“Jonathan Brunson, a former political analyst for the US embassy in Ukraine, bluntly told Newsweek that before Russia’s invasion, “aid to the far-right was plausibly accidental. “But that may no longer be the case, because ‘all hands on deck’ means just that—and enables Ukraine’s far right to play a heroic role they otherwise wouldn’t.”
Not just the Ukrainian far right, but neo-fascist forces from all over the world, including the US and Europe, will now receive combat experience with the most advanced weapons in the world. They will also be able to continue developing their international networks, to which the Ukrainian far right, and especially the Azov Battalion, have long been central.”
And when those surviving flee and return home with their sophisticated weapons provided by Western Governments using our money it will be the far easier civilian targets whom they will turn those weapons on. Whether its Berlin, Hamburg, or Amsterdam; Brussels, Paris, The Costa Del Sol; London, Manchester, or Glasgor there will be no hiding place.
And the suckers who fall for our Official Narrative propaganda and whose taxes and other voluntary contributions pay to arm these fascists will be bleating like mardy arsed five year olds when they end up reaping the fruits of what they have willingly committed to.
Does anyone have details of Ian Chapman’s expulsion?
I don’t know Paul Smith and have no idea why he was expelled but I’d bet my last penny it was for “antisemitism” the catch all accusation for justifying the expulsion of Socialists Anti Zionists and people not willing to be nodding dogs.
Sorry Paul My post should read I don’t know Ian Chapman
As a member of Berwick CLP I dont know either and it would have been a complete stitch up, Ian Chapman is 100 % stay and fight
Has anyone not cancelled their Direct Debit yet and remember don’t tell them
And speaking of the Forde Report, Unite have give a detailed and damning submission, which asks question about Labours conduct during the 2017 GE. Including (taken from the submission) –
“Misappropriation of funds According to the communications cited in the report, it seems that this fund was established, that money, (at least £175,000 is mentioned in the report) was transferred to it, and that it was operated by Labour Party staff headed by Sam Matthews; and it is further alleged that this was done deliberately without the knowledge of the Leader of the Party or his senior staff, of the National Executive Committee. It is unclear who, or on what basis, beneficiaries of this fund were chosen. It is also alleged that Mr Matthews sought extra payments from the Party over and above his salary for undertaking this clandestine work.
It is clear from the report that a number of staff were involved in or aware of this project, and there was also
an understanding between them that the project was secret.
If this fund was under the management of Sam Matthews, to whom did he account for the expenditure? Was Mr Matthews personally paid additional sums over and above his existing salary and grade for administering
this fund? Were any such payments met from the fund he had himself administered? Who made the decision to create the fund and on what date?
Who was responsible for directing staff to relocate to Ergon House to participate in the running of the secret fund?
Which other staff were involved in working on the Ergon House project?
Were any of these staff breaching their employment contracts by their involvement in this unapproved use of funds?
Who was responsible for devising and approving the budgets from which the Ergon House funds were drawn, and were they aware that the funds were being used for this purpose?
Who was responsible for creating the bespoke budgetary instruments used in conducting the Ergon House scheme? Were any individuals responsible for establishing or vouching for the accuracy of the budgetary
instruments used in the scheme, and did they do so know that they were established outwith the Party’s normal structures?
Precisely how much was diverted, and on what dates, from the Labour Party’s budget to the Ergon House scheme?
Did any participant in the Ergon House scheme knowingly create or file misleading or false accounting records that had the effect of misleading the Labour Party as to the expenditure of funds belonging to the party”?
These questions not only raise serious questions about the subverting of Labour party, possibly influencing the out come of a general election, but also Labour’s financial mismanagement of the 2017 GE.
https://unitealliance.org/unite-the-union-submission-to-the-forde-inquiry/
Reply to Nemtona
I hope Unite reports this to the police so that the financial mismanagement and potential fraud can be fully investigated.
In an email of 14:56, Sunday 23 April 2017 from our Branch Chair at the time to the Branch vice Chair we were informed that “nationally our constituency has been chosen for additional support so we can fight to hold onto it.”
The email of which this statement was a part was submitted to the Forde Inquiry with copious numbers of other evidence substantiating the claims in the leaked LP Report which triggered the Inquiry.
The Constituency was that of Angela ‘Tinge’ Smith. Who spent that entire campaign issuing campaign literature littered with statements such as:
-The need to hold the constituency to “have a strong presence in the House of Commons.”
– “Angela promises she will continue to hold the government to account on your behalf.”
Observation: Like we were fighting a by election.
– “Angela will always support out NHS and, if re-elected, will fight Tory cuts.”
Observation: Clearly wanting to lose nationally rather than have a Corbyn Government
– “It is important that
we don’t give Theresa May a free hand, if we are to end the assault on localservices.” and
“Penistone and Stocksbridge needs an MP who will stand up to the Tories.”
– “-but it is more important than ever that strong voices are elected on June 8 to
prevent the Tories from wreaking more damage on our region and our local services.”;
– “Angela will stand up to the Tories………A deal that is good for the region
and the constituency will not be a priority for Theresa May with her focus on traditional Tory heartlands.”
– “to fight against the Tories cuts….”
Here was someone, along with her husband Agent, Steve Wilson, intent of saving their seat, along with that of others undermining the Party with funding from an illicit slush fund with the intention of ensuring the LP was not elected to Government.
I was even stopped by a lady at a local village fayre after the election – whilst collecting signatures for a petition against fracking – that Smith had told her on the doorstep that if she voted for her she would “get rid of Corbyn.”
Smith even, in desperation, wrote to local Lib-dem members asking for their support.
These are the people now in charge running a shell of a Party. Reduced to doing back room deals with the Lib-Dems which may well require the Lib-Dems to supply campaigning boots on the ground because everyone who does all the donkey work in the LP has either been witch hunted or has downed tools.
SteveH and those like him , if they ever bother to get off their idle backsides, are likely to be on their own during this LA campaign.
There is absolutely nothing to choose between Sir Keir Johnson and Boris Starmer.
BREAKING NEWS -NAZANIN IS ON HER WAY HOME TO HER FAMILY
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian woman detained in Iran nearly six years ago, has been released and is on her way back to the UK.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60756870
Further News
Anoosha Asgoori has also been released
Oops Typo – Anoosheh Ashoori
Tulip Siddiq
@TulipSiddiq
·
9m
It’s been 6 long years – and I can’t believe I can FINALLY share this photo.
Nazanin is now in the air flying away from 6 years of hell in Iran.
My heart goes out to Gabriella and Richard, as her long journey back home to them gets closer by the minute.
#NazaninIsFree ❤️
https://twitter.com/TulipSiddiq/status/1504085551145787393?cxt=HHwWgoC9vd_1yt8pAAAA
Apparently they are due to land in the UK at 10:30 this evening
I thought the subject was the mass exodus of CLP officers Berwick, wee fella? 🤔
Toffee – Thanks for drawing attention to my posts. Don’t you think that this is brilliant news.
MY posts…me…Me…MEEEEEEEE.
I see nobody else has replied in relation to your continual distraction and irrelevance.
Further proof that you’re nowt but a boring, one-trick pony.
Now do one, you self-absorbed two-hat
Toffee – “I see nobody else has replied in relation to your continual distraction and irrelevance. Further proof that you’re nowt but a boring, one-trick pony.”
Really ?
…… and yet you couldn’t resist giving me your critique 🤔
A critique and a truth
You desperately sad little attention whore.
Toffee – I love you too. 😘
Christ, but you make the idea of being stuck in a lift with michael aspel, nigel mansell and andy murray positively irresistible ffs.
https://images.app.goo.gl/PZjP8hnarYa8QB586
Toffee – How sweet of you to say so. 😘
Dave Hansell at 9:43 am
In an email of 14:56, Sunday 23 April 2017 from our Branch Chair at the time to the Branch vice Chair we were informed that “nationally our constituency has been chosen for additional support so we can fight to hold onto it.”
In 2017 our CLP was the 17th marginal and a supposed target seat and one we had to win if Corbyn was to form a government. The Tory majority was 806, so very winnable. We got little help from the regional office other than what had to be done to give an illusion of solidarity.
From the moment our PPC was imposed by the NEC we had opposition from several members of our own campaign team. So much so, that members of a neighbouring CLP stepped in to fill the posts abandoned by our own and Momentum helped. We had sabotage of our facebook page, one member told volunteers for canvassing they had to be party members and saying party cards to be shown (this was knocked back). The CLP secretary resigned, came back, resigned at least three times in the 5 weeks of the campaign. There was continuous back biting (I’ve got emails that show the hostility). We knew something wasn’t right, but would never have thought it was organised and targetted.
We did our own thing and we won with an almost 4k majority. Since 2019 it’s in the region of 500.
Unite donated approx £5m to the 2017 campaign. As a Unite member, I want answers to the questions raised. And as you say, those like our resident troll will have to get off their backsides and do some work. This time not with the help of the members who have left, in fact I know members who say they will not even vote Labour with Starmer in charge (nominallly), but with many of us actively campaigning for other parties and against Starmers Labour.
Nemtona, just another of Boris’s useful idiots?
please stop the childish offensive language.
goldbach – Can you think of a more appropriate description for someone who campaigns for another Conservative government.
Yes – a LP officer, Angela Smith, Chuka Umunna, Sam Matthews, Iain McNichol, Tony Blair (all during the 2017 election) – there are one or two other names too, if you recall.
Its called ‘going canny’. Working without enthusiasm.
However, the fact that you once again cannot muster any coherent argument and have to resort to school playground level name calling tells us all we need to know.
You’ve go nothing son. Not a single argument or answer to anyone. Just sat there alone in the dark handling themselves with nothing more than an empty cartridge case and an intellect with no firing pin.
We wouldn’t even have had people like you in the Pioneer Corps.
Dave – Whilst you ‘take the high road’. 😏
“Nemtona, just another of Boris’s useful idiots?
No. That’d be Sir Keir Rodney Starmer
And it’s not Boris he’s supporting – it’s Claus Schwab.
It has nothing to do with any kind of road. Its about what works and what does not work.
Someone who has to resort to deflection, projection, avoidance and similar practices because they cannot refute facts and realities presented represents a prime example of something which does not work.
In short they are a complete waste of space. The living embodiment of a bodge job.
Campaigning for what passes for the LP right now is campaigning for a Tory Government you numpty.
Right now all three main UK party’s, along with the SNP in Scotland, are interchangeable. The Tories are simply Continuity New Labour, whilst New, New Labour are the Continuity Conservatives.
No genuine member of the Labour Movement would be seen dead campaigning for Red Tory’s.
Dave – Oh dear, yet another of Boris’s useful idiots trying to justify their actions.
Not simply David Gower, but also the little dog in the Asterix cartoon strip.
goldbach – Don’t be a wimp, if you’ve got something to say then say it,
I’m sorry, I had assumed that someone of your erudition would have read Asterix in French.
The little dog is called Idéfix. Shall I translate.
goldbach – You obviously think you are impressing somebody, but I haven’t a clue what you are prattling on about.
Ah, well now you understand what it’s like for everyone else when they read your comments.
The offer to translate still stands.
goldbach – Whatever? 🙄
goldbach – Whatever?
How profound.
(The English name was dogmatix IIRR)
Toffee – Thanks 😘
Still don’t get it, do ya, wee man?
And you try to palm us off with your delusion that you think you know things.
https://miro.medium.com/max/1024/0*D4ru6dYOVafusjqk.gif
As for your sorry effort at popcorning…. Ho-hum. 🙄 I’ll refer you back to the link in this post.
Yes, Toffee.
The name “Idéfix” is a play on words of the French term “Idée Fixe” which means “fixed idea”.
goldbach – Really, how ‘fascinating’.
No. Just appropriate.
Run this by me again?
You are crediting wee stevieH with the ability to have ‘ideas’?
You’re ‘avin a larf mate!
Back on the main story of resignations in solidarity with the expelled CLP chair: Too their shame not a single Socialist Campaign Group MP has ever done anything remotely like this for Jeremy Corbyn.
I imagine that they have all talked about the way to deal with JC’s PLP suspension.
Replying to the post which criticised the notion
that Putin is insane – he is certainly irrational.
Posters have claimed that the invasion and the
blood shed is partly or mainly about the expansion
of NATO and Putins concern about it – but what
has happened after it? Any country with a border
with Russia has applied to join NATO and who can blame
them – and this is something that Putin could easily
have predicted .. Not only that but the idea that the US
and or NATO would invade a European country after
its disastrous adventures in the Middle East
(Afghanistan., Iraq .. and on-going) just does not compute.
Speaking pragmatically – the expansion of NATO
has given Putin an excuse for doing what he did
when the real reason was likely his pride in a Greater
Russia – which the US could have predicted ..
Putin was apparently upset at the split up of the USSR
from its very start. Remember at the beginning of 1991
he was a very senior officer in the KGB but he resigned
to take part in politics. Whether he was REALLY interested
in politics – who knows but he has certainly taken advantage
of the USSR split-up to enrich himself immensely. In
the UK they talk of the “revolving door” between senior govt
positions to senior positions in a relevant Industry. There was a
similar “revolving door” between the KGB and oligarchy. In
an excellent BBC documentary on Putin we saw a meeting
of senior Russian Politicians – many of them very rich sitting
round a table and one of them said incredulously to Putin
“You have lost all your ideals haven’t you?” There was no
need for an answer
Are you sure that one of the “very rich” said “You have lost all your ideals haven’t you?”
One thing you can be sure of is that the very rich don’t understand the concept of having ideals.
Oh I see that Holby is shilling for the US and European fascists! Yet AGAIN! Yes, of course Holby, the reason Putin has been condemning NATO expansion for the past twenty years wasn’t because he was bovvered about THAT, and it was just a ruse, contrived to disguise the fact that ONE day, he was gonna invade Ukraine, and then the rest of Europe, and then the whole planet, and his ultimate goal is to conquer the WHOLE galaxy and, as such, become Emperor of the Milky Way.
And needless to say, all the experts and all the independent thinkers like Jonathan Cook and Caitlin Johnstone and Chris Hedges have got it all completely wrong!
Probably.
Jack Matlock. Scott Ritter. Ray McGovern.
Just picked this up.
“Despite U.S. pressure, no Arab states are participating in the economic war on Russia by imposing sanctions, joining most of Latin America and Africa, as well as Iran, India, Pakistan and China. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have resisted U.S. pressure to pump more oil to make up for the U.S. ban on Russian oil imports. Most significantly, Riyadh is in talks with China to trade some of its oil in yuan, which would deal a blow to the U.S. dollar, which is used in 80 percent of world oil sales. Until now, the Saudis have exclusively used the dollar.”
Good night.
One might add the eminent John Mearsheimer, Professor of Politics, University of Chicago and Ted Postol to the names referenced by Allan and Goldbach.
John Mearsheimer, Ray McGovern, Jack Matlock, and Ted …https://www.youtube.com › watch
(Ted Postol that is.)
Not to mention Henry Kissinger, George Keenan, William Perry, CIA Director William Burns, Former US Defence Secretary Bob Gates, and former Reagan man and member of the anti-soviet ‘ Committee for the Present Danger’ Paul Craig Roberts to name a few.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1498491107902062592.html
Prediction of the Week: wee stevieH will now go silent and say sod all about all these experienced and knowledgeable Cold War Warriors being ‘off message’ and not with ‘The Official Narrative’ (TON).
Dave – Don’t be silly, I was still fast asleep when you posted this at (AST)04:51
Sorry – back on the mass resignations from Berwick CLP –
anyone any idea about what is happening concerning the
dissatisfaction with Evans in the upper echelons of the
Labour Party ?
Surely the loss of revenue resulting from all these resignations
and lack of campaigners and subsequent blame on Evans
must have dawned even on these people?
No it has not and it never will. Spent decades at work watching and experiencing this mindset in action.
Its the hierarchical pips on shoulder syndrome. In terms of practical objective reality this mindset will always without fail choose to be in control/charge and wrong rather than accept anything outside their own manufactured reality and be right. Accepting ideas from below is anathema because to do so undermines their perceived authority and the pips on their shoulders.
The only people who thrive in such an environment are wee sycophantic toe-rags. Met a few of those as well.
No one on the left should vote for New New Labour
I’m not sure they do anymore.
Good grief the resident Chief Turd Polisher is having a meltdown…..Probably because he realizes his job description will now include leaflet delivery and local campaigning come election time. All the decent active Labour members have left.
Really?
Do you have any evidence of this supposed meltdown?
I am surprised that nobody appears to have raised this live issue on these pages
Future of P&O
17 March 2022
RMT Press Office:
RMT demands protection of UK seafarer jobs amid speculation that hundreds of UK seafarers are to be sacked and replaced with foreign labour.
Responding to reports about the future of P&O and speculation that hundreds of UK seafarers employed by the company could be replaced by foreign labour RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch said,
“We are deeply disturbed by growing speculation that the company are today planning to sack hundreds of UK seafarers and replace them with foreign labour.
“We have instructed our members to remain onboard and are demanding our members across P&O’s UK operations are protected and that the Secretary of State intervenes to save UK seafarers from the dole queue.”
https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/future-of-pando/
Well, well. Some interconnections here.
1. On the first day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Abramovich flew, in his private jet, to Tel Aviv. He had taken out Israeli citizenship in 2018.
2. Over a number of years, he has donated over $100M to Elad, a violent settler group.
3. Here’s what Haaretz says about them:
https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-right-wing-israeli-group-elad-received-millions-from-shadowy-private-donors-1.5413604
So, it seems, his financial support for ethnic cleansers was not enough to prompt our government to place any sanctions on him, but the fact that he is Russian can draw sanctions within a couple of weeks of the start of the war in Ukraine. One more reason why the global south appears to have cottoned on to the duplicity and double standards
of western leaders.