Elon Musk IS Dr Strangelove

The titular character in Stanley Kubrick’s dark comedy Dr Strangelove, Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb, is a senior advisor to the US President, who just happens to be a former Nazi who refers to his boss as “Mein Führer”, and whose right arm has to be restrained from giving Nazi salutes. Played by Peter Sellers, it was both dark and hilarious.

Because it was fiction. Otherwise, audiences might not have found the film’s ending, unavoidable nuclear armageddon, to be palatable. Fast forward more than 60 years, and yesterday came the moment when another senior advisor to a US President gave a Nazi salute in public, only for some who should have known better to pretend it was nothing of the sort.

Elon Musk, the unfeasibly rich and staggeringly unpleasant presence who has single-handedly turned Twitter of old into X, a cesspit of far-right intolerance, ignorance, paranoia, misinformation, flat-out lying, and malicious abuse, addressed a gathering in Washington, DC, after Combover Crybaby Donald Trump had been inaugurated as the 47th President of the USA.

As the BBC told, “Elon Musk has caused outrage over a one-armed gesture he gave during a speech celebrating the inauguration of Donald Trump. Musk thanked the crowd for ‘making it happen’, before placing his right hand over his heart and then thrusting the same arm out into air straight ahead of him. He then turned and repeated the action for those sitting behind him”.

There was more. “Many on X, the social medial platform he owns, have likened the gesture to a Nazi salute. In response, Musk posted on X: ‘Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The 'everyone is Hitler' attack is sooo tired.’” So, O Great One, why the need to edit it out of the video clip posted later?

The Mirror has noted “Elon Musk's Twitter account edited a moment from his Donald Trump inauguration speech where he appeared to give a 'nazi salute.’ … To many it appeared Musk had performed a fascist salute … [but] by the time Musk posted video of his speech to his X/Twitter account, the moment had been replaced by a crowd shot”. And there was, again, more.

“Last week, Musk hosted an online interview with Alice Weidel, the leader of AfD, Germany's far-right party. During the exchange, Weidel made the repeatedly debunked claim that Hitler wasn't far-right, but a communist or socialist - to which Musk agreed”. Which manages not to explain why socialists and communists were one of the Nazis’ first targets. Also, “Musk has often praised AfD, saying: ‘only the AfD can save Germany.’”

Those who specialise in this kind of thing were in no doubt. “Claire Aubin, a historian who specializes in Nazism within the United States, said Musk's gesture was a ‘sieg heil', or Nazi salute … Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University, said: ‘Historian of fascism here. It was a Nazi salute and a very belligerent one too.’” Cue the excuses.

It was “an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute” was the ADL’s offering. Others claimed that “Elon” - because they’re all on first name terms with The Great Man - had autism. The increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph called it an “odd-looking salute”. The people were urged not to believe their eyes and ears.

Grace Blakeley was unimpressed. “Elon Musk, Henry Ford … Two men who made billions making cars … Two men who preach about free markets but rely on huge government support … Two men who went to war with their unions … Two men who idolize the Nazis … These are the leaders of 'free market' capitalism.” And one of whom has a twitchy right arm.

Even Steve Bannon has denounced Musk as “racist” and “truly evil”, vowing to “take this guy down”. Waitman Beorn, who you can tell as he’s a doctor, was in no doubt what had happened. “Holocaust historian here. Let me see if I can help. That wasn't a ‘weird salute.’ It was a Hitler salute. Because Elon is a fucking Nazi … Hope that helps”. Musk showed us who he is.

Maybe we should believe him that one time. Worrying and disturbing.

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Labour - A Study In Cowardice

Once more we are informed that Rachel Reeves is asking spending departments of Government for cuts. There have been tax rises, but little investment. Pensioners, the disabled, those on or below the poverty line, and most recently WASPI women, all have been turned away. They will have to make do with less. It does not have to be this way, and well she knows it.

Someone bereft of ideas, versus ...

The Starmer Government has itself stuck in what Simon Fletcher called a “Right wing doom loop” in a recent Byline Times article (read it HERE). Ms Reeves has pinned her hopes on growth, but growth is not forecast to occur any time soon. Her embrace of economic orthodoxy means more needless austerity, more wasted years of poor economic performance.

That it does not need to be this way has been known for more than 85 years, since the first publication of The General Theory Of Employment Interest And Money. John Maynard Keynes’ ideas, and, indeed, his prediction of where over-reliance on economic orthodoxy would lead, were not lost on a new generation of economists, as J K Galbraith later observed.

He later put this directly in The Age Of Uncertainty: “In 1937, recovery from the Great Depression was slowly under way; production and prices were rising, although unemployment was still appalling. The men of sound judgment now asserted themselves. They moved to cut spending, raise taxes and bring the federal budget into balance”. There was more.

“The few Keynesians protested; our voices were drowned out in the roar of orthodox applause. As the budget moved towards balance, the recovery came to a halt. Presently there was a new and ghastly slump, a recession within the Depression. It was entirely as Keynes had predicted. The men of sound judgment had made our case”. Pages 219 and 220 in my edition.

What is Ms Reeves doing? It looks very much like “cut spending, raise taxes and bring the … budget into balance”. And the forecast result, no growth in the foreseeable future, or even a recession, is, once again, exactly as Keynes would have predicted. The mistakes made in the USA in the late 30s were only countered by increased spending, this time on war.

... someone who was never thus constrained

The Keynesian remedy - running a deficit when the economy needs supporting - is known to any economist, or economic thinker, in the UK, Europe and elsewhere. It is available to any economy with control of its own currency - like the UK. For a country whose infrastructure is in such a run down state after fourteen years of Tory neglect, it seems a no-brainer.

Yet Starmer and Ms Reeves appear unable, or unwilling, to embrace the approach that served the Labour Government of the immediate post-war years so well. Britain was virtually bankrupt by 1945, yet Attlee and his team brought the Welfare State into being, along with a series of nationalisations, and of course the NHS. Plus, yes, more or less full employment.

Instead of actually taking action, though, we are assailed by a deluge of press releases masquerading as policy. One day it is the deeply dislikable Wes Streeting telling how he is transforming the NHS; today has brought Lucy Powell claiming, and as Treeza might have said, I am not making this up, “We're turning the tables to put ordinary people at the front of the queue”.

One slice of meaningless drivel after another. What does Powell’s assertion even mean? And all the while, there is a daily slew of bad faith knocking copy emanating from our free and fearless press. In a routine show of hypocrisy, they slate anyone they deem to be “talking the country down”, while they constantly talk the country down. But only when Labour are in charge.

As Simon Fletcher has observed, Labour is “relying on an argument that growth in the future will deliver a resolution to the country’s problems”. But what they are doing is not bringing growth, and in the timescale required, is most unlikely to bring growth. Thus they are talking themselves towards defeat, and worse, enabling the far right con men of Reform UK.

Keynes had the answers. His legacy still has them. Hello Rachel Reeves.

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BBC Farage Promo BLOWS BACK

Whether well-intentioned or not, what the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason did, live on air last week, was to polish the political turd that is Reform UK’s self-appointed Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage to the point of apparent endorsement, or at the very least, acceptance of his legitimacy. It did not take long for reality to intrude on this establishment love-in.

Chris Mason

Here’s what Mason said: “Never before have we seen a man as rich, with a megaphone as large, so willing to get stuck in to politics not just at home but abroad, and that is pretty profound in its consequences. Little wonder Nigel Farage’s domestic political rivals are fretting, frankly, about just how influential he’s proving to be at the moment”. Added to that was another telling remark.

“Nigel Farage is a man who is a master of political storytelling”. The problem with that comment, and Mason should know how serious a problem it is, is that Farage is, as I have concluded after observing so many of his claims, a congenital liar, in addition to being a racist bigot and a con man.

Worse, Mason’s knowledge of media history is woefully lacking. Maybe he never heard of Max Beaverbrook. Or perhaps he forgot about Rupert Murdoch. Maybe he also missed who is handing Farage that large megaphone of which he speaks. That would, whisper it quietly, be the BBC, which has once again given Mr Thirsty a seat at the Question Time table to dispense his lies, bigotry, and worst of all, his false prospectus.

What Farage is so keen to dispense to his all too easily persuaded followers was demonstrated in the aftermath of a deadly attack on a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg. A man drove his car into the crowds attending the market: thus far, five have died, and more than 200 have been injured. The suspect was originally from Saudi Arabia. Cue Farage.

“We have allowed people who hate us and our values into Europe. Christmas is their target. Any guesses why?” he mused on Twitter, X, or whatever his pal Muskrat is calling it this week. He’s not making accusations, you understand, he’s just a concerned citizen asking the kinds of questions that lead those being dog-whistled to the conclusions required by Himself Personally Now.

The problem for Farage was that, although the suspect was Saudi Arabian, he had arrived in Germany to take refuge because he was an ex-Muslim, someone who had renounced Islam. Worse still for the occasional MP for Clacton, the suspect had endorsed German far-right party AfD, and had spoken approvingly of Stephen Yaxley Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson.

This mildly inconvenient fact has been brought to us by, among others, Shashank Joshi, defence editor at The Economist, who has told "German attack suspect: 'I can say from experience, everything that [Tommy] Robinson says, what Musk says, what Alex Jones says, or anyone who is called radical or right-wing extremist by mainstream media - they are telling the truth’”.

Joshi goes on to quote further from Der Spiegel. “The alleged perpetrator A. is obviously a fan of the AfD, according to an evaluation of … his social media accounts by the SPIEGEL. Eight years ago, he wrote on Twitter that he wanted to start a project together with the AfD: an academy for ex-Muslims”. Musk has endorsed AfD. Farage has endorsed them too.

Even former Murdoch editor Andrew Neil has urged caution: “The Saudi doctor behind last night’s deadly Christmas market massacre in Magdeburg appears to be not quite what many on social media rushed to assume”. And why target a Christmas market? Isn’t Christmas a Christian thing? So it is. But Jesus of Nazareth is also a revered prophet in Islam.

So those killed and injured could quite easily be non-Christians. None of this helps get Mason and the wider BBC off the hook, of course: they keep giving Farage the megaphone, then say “look, he’s got a big megaphone”. Overnight, Farage has shown the BBC who they are promoting. Lying, dog-whistle racism, and the con that is Reform UK. Not a good look.

Nigel Farage has scored more than five million views with that Tweet. The dogs have been whistled; more rabbit holes dug. Hello BBC Farage fans.

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Chagos Islands - More Faux Outrage

If ever an example were needed to show the yawning chasm between the reporting on Tory Governments, and that on Labour ones, once more the opposition has come riding to the rescue, as the right-leaning part of our free and fearless press marks the transfer of the Chagos Islands’ status from that of British Overseas Territory to part of the Republic of Mauritius.

The recent history of the Chagos can be put directly: Mauritius, which included the islands, was seized by the British in 1810, and as recently as 1965, the Chagos were split off from Mauritius and the islanders expelled so that an airbase could be built there. Mauritius was then given its independence from its former colonial masters in 1968.

More recently, to quote the Wiki entry, “Ruling on the sovereignty dispute between Mauritius and the UK, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea has ordered the return of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius”. So they have now been returned, effectively minus Diego Garcia, the atoll where the UK/US air base has been built. So what do those Stateside say?

As the BBC has reported, “US President Joe Biden welcomed the ‘historic agreement’ … He said it secured the future of a key military base which ‘plays a vital role in national, regional, and global security.’” Then comes one more item to consider: when he was Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly was moving towards a very similar deal with Mauritius.

So what has Cleverly said when what was essentially his deal was signed off? As if you need to ask. He called his own deal “weak”. His fellow Tory leadership candidate Tom Tugendhat “argued the deal had been ‘negotiated against Britain's interest’ and it was ‘disgraceful’ that such talks had begun under the previous Conservative government”. His own party was poo!

But the whining of what Robin Day memorably and correctly called Here Today And Gone Tomorrow Politicians was nothing when put alongside the barrage of spiteful bad faith emanating from the Tory press. The Murdoch Times dispensed with reality as it whined “PM defies US to cede Chagos”.
That’s the same US whose President just backed the deal.

Equally clueless was the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph, claiming “Fears for future of Gibraltar after Chagos Islands giveaway”. The deal has Sweet Jack to do with Gibraltar, or indeed any of the other British Overseas Territories. But the pièce de résistance was excreted by the inmates of the Northcliffe House bunker, in today’s Daily Mail.

Here it comes: “The Chagos Islands have belonged to Britain since 1814 and include the strategically vital Diego Garcia military base. Yesterday, in a deal condemned as a shameful and dangerous capitulation, Labour agreed to hand them to Mauritius - which lies 1,300 miles away and is an ally of China … STARMER’S SURRENDER”. Why oh why oh why oh why oh why?!?!?

A headline selecting its facts very carefully: the UK and US keep control of Diego Garcia, the islands were part of Mauritius before the UK’s act of splitting them off in 1965, and Mauritius is free to make alliances with whom its democratically elected Government wishes. Cue another nay-sayer.

Yes, the Mail has exhumed the punditry career of Dan, Dan The Oratory Man! “Labour are surrendering to a Chinese puppet state” he claims. Jonathan Portes has corrected this flat-out lie, “Mauritius is pretty much level with the UK on the Economist Democracy Index, and ahead of US”, adding “I see Dan Hannan's self-proclaimed devotion to democracy and the rights of nation-states to make their own decisions doesn't extend to Africans”.

And all the while, one thought enters time and again: had this deed been done by a Tory Government, the Murdoch and Rothermere press would not have said boo. Nor would the Telegraph, whoever ends up controlling it. Also, the BBC report explains what the press doesn’t want us to know: “Brexit left many European nations reluctant to continue backing the UK’s stance in international forums”. The weakening effect of leaving the EU.

The Tories and their press pals are full of crap. But you knew that already.

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BBC Bozo And Laura K Shame

The BBC is not having a good time of it right now: quite apart from our free and fearless press relishing putting the boot in over anything to do with Huw Edwards, and the steady flow of claims about what may or may not happen behind the scenes at Strictly, there has been an entirely avoidable foot-in-mouth episode involving new political editor Chris Mason.

Mason discovered that Keir Starmer’s chief of staff Sue Gray was being paid more than the PM. Armed with this information, he continued as if in possession of the Scoop of the Century until Peter Oborne asked him, as one might, “How much do you get paid, Chris?” To which the answer was, rather more than either Ms Gray or Starmer, as Oborne proceeded to tell.

“The BBC political editor (260K pa) thinks it's a story that the Downing Street chief of staff (170K pa) earns more than the PM (167Kpa). Welcome to political journalism! PS Laura Kuenssberg is on 325K, Nick Robinson 340K and Fiona Bruce even more”. And with mention of Ms Kuenssberg, we arrive at the Beeb’s crowning moment of current abject shame.

Yesterday, she proclaimed “One for the diary”. And what would be an event of such major import that it might be added to the diary? This is where the BBC once again generates more questions than answers, because that event is “Boris Johnson - The Laura Kuenssberg Interview”, which gets the prime time slot of 1930 hours on Thursday 3 October. Aren’t you all lucky?

Here in Portugal, there are the more appealing alternatives of rolling news channels (that’s factual TV, as opposed to Bozo’s propensity to talk well, but lie badly), or the latest edition of O Preço Certo. Sadly, the UK will be subjected to disgraced former alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson indulging in another bout of self-promotion and justification.

Mike Galsworthy was unimpressed. “Kuenssberg always seems unhealthily close to Boris Johnson. Given also Robbie Gibb’s continued role at the BBC - this interview smells of chums of Boris Johnson using our licence payer money to promote the man as his new book is coming out”. New book? What that? It is, imaginatively, titled simply “Unleashed”.

Harper Collins wants us to know “Unleashed is a candid, unrestrained, and revealing book by Boris Johnson, the Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. In Unleashed, Johnson takes readers through all the big decisions during his time in power and why he took them. The challenges and crises, how they were resolved - or not - and how he nearly died from COVID”.

Will it be available in the fiction section of one of the public libraries that have survived all those rounds of Tory cuts? Bozo, after all, is a congenital liar whose ability to generate spontaneous trouser ignition is matched only by Reform UK Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage. How long, one has to wonder, has it taken to legal Bozo’s bumper book of lame excuses?

Moreover, how much insight will Ms Kuenssberg bring to events such as turning 10 Downing Street into Party Central during the pandemic, or lying to the Queen in order to improperly prorogue Parliament, or bung eye-watering amounts of money to those providing dodgy PPE, or indeed tens of billions spaffed up the wall, to use Bozo’s happy phrase, on Not Testing And Tracing?

What about a Brexit deal that is slowly but inexorably turning the UK economy into a basket case? What of his trying to whitewash Chris Pincher’s behaviour, the event that finally exhausted the patience of even the Parliamentary Conservative Party? And what will we learn about the role of the press in covering the not inconsiderable Johnson arse?

But those are not reasons for the BBC promoting Bozo; quite the reverse. The real scandal here is that the Corporation is willingly making itself an accomplice to another Johnson money-making scheme, and, worse, an effort to promote someone who has already proved himself to be an utter failure as a politician, and indeed, a failure as a professional human being.

The BBC board should hang their heads in shame. But you know they won’t.

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Farage - The Con Man Returns

As if there were not enough charlatans, spin merchants, one trick ponies, habitual liars, and other practitioners of self-aggrandisement in play during the run-up to next month’s UK General Election, yesterday brought one more con man into the mix. Reform UK’s self-appointed Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage was back in the swimming pool. As the resident turd.

The inevitable news came as Mr Thirsty told his adoring followers yesterday “I will be making an Emergency General Election announcement at 4pm today”. He would take over as head man of Reform from Richard Tice. And, as ITV News then told, he “has said he will stand as the Reform UK parliamentary candidate for Clacton, Essex, in the General Election”.

Thus performing two functions likely to move the dial: One, taking votes from the Tory right, and Two, frightening Muslim voters, and indeed many others who are not white, back to Labour, or, in some areas, the Lib Dems. The net result of all that, whether Farage is elected or not, will be to move the Tories closer to Absolute Wipeout. And probable third party status.

That, though, was not a good enough excuse to plaster Mr Thirsty all over the media, something that has carried over onto many front pages this morning, with the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph proclaiming “I’m back to lead the revolt”. What intercoursing revolt? More accurate was the Guardian’s “Tory alarm as Farage takes control of Reform UK”.

What a difference Combover Crybaby Donald Trump’s conviction makes: Farage was on his way to the USA to lend his backing to the increasingly incoherent orange lump; 34 unanimous Guilty verdicts later, no he isn’t. So what would his USP be? Same as before. He’s dog whistling potential voters with scare stories of Scary Muslims™. Same old racism.

Having accused British Muslims of “split loyalties” (recycling an anti-Semitic trope as Muslim bashing to make it acceptable), of their being a “fifth column”, and more recently claimed that a Muslim proclaiming “Allahu Akhbar” was something deeply sinister, rather than merely saying “God is Great”, which he wouldn’t complain about if the speaker were Christian. Or Jewish.

(c) Steve Bell 2016

By this morning, the habitual lying had kicked in, as he told Mishal Husain on the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme that there were entire streets in Oldham where no-one spoke English. But Ms Husain, like the Beeb’s Ben Thompson, was not persuaded this time round of Farage’s righteousness. Which caused The Great Man to get tetchy and even abusive. It won’t get any better for him.

Not when he is on record as saying “Richard Tice probably does want me to replace him. But do I want to be an MP? Do I want to spend every Friday for the next five years in Clacton?” As the previously best placed candidate, Labour’s Jovan Owusu Nepaul should have that one ready to roll out to any and every voter who even hints at voting for The Thirsty One.

What Reform UK’s opponents should also point out is that this is a party that still wants to dump the country’s problems on migrants, wants to leave the ECHR (why? Oh, I dunno, maybe cos it’s FORRIN), and even wants to leave the World Health Organisation, because Covid Lockdown Conspiracy Theories. What next, leaving the UN? Leaving NATO?

And why do so many media opportunities open up to someone whose party has (for instance) no MPs and just eight councillors, when (for instance) the Greens can muster a regularly re-elected MP and hundreds of councillors? Why pay attention to Farage, who has no plan, and will take responsibility for nothing? Why take any notice of this flap-mouthed con artist?

He gets to take part in the TV debates. Then he’ll most likely lose - for the eighth time - and work to use his newly heightened profile to drag the Tories even further to the right. Screwing over the UK through advocating for leaving the EU was not enough for him: now he wants to screw over UK politics as well.

Which means he needs to be held to account, and exposed for the Spiv he is, and always was. He has no solutions, no plan, and no right to shit on us all.

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France Has A New Fash Hero

The Right Wing Excuse Me Site otherwise known as UnHerd has ponied up another fash hopeful, this time from France. Cole Strangler (crazy name, crazy guy?!?!?) tells “Can Jordan Bardella seduce France?” followed by the claim “He is detoxifying the Le Pen brand”, which is interesting, as Bardella’s domestic partner is the grand-daughter of, er, Jean-Marie le Pen.

Jordan Bardella, the new fash ...

But let’s hear more of the excuse note. “The MEP and head of the party’s ticket for June’s elections to European Parliament is young and handsome. He hails from an emphatically non-elite background. And most important, perhaps, his surname isn’t Le Pen”. “Non-elite”, in this case, meaning he attended Paris-Sorbonne University, but failed to graduate.

But do go on. “Gone are the references to Frexit or leaving the eurozone. Such promises have been replaced by a string of grievances over the EU’s agricultural and energy policies, framed in terms of restoring French sovereignty”. Like André Ventura in Portugal, who has made leaving the EU subject to so many conditions that he wouldn’t do it, even if he got to power.

There is more: “the credo that unites the delicate cross-class coalition … is a deep hostility to immigration … Invoking the old-time religion, Bardella fired out a list of ills supposedly caused by foreigners: crime, Islamism, terrorism, declining public services and the loss of French identity … ‘This election will also be a great referendum on mass immigration’”. It’s the Forrins’ fault!

What helps Bardella is the rightward lurch of the media. “This is partly thanks to ultra-conservative billionaire Vincent Bolloré who, since 2016, has acquired prominent media outlets and transformed them into vehicles for Right-wing commentary: radio station Europe 1, newspaper Journal du Dimanche, and most famously, TV channel CNews, often likened to Fox News”. Go on.

“The network’s most famous pundit, Éric Zemmour, went on to run for president in 2022 and now heads a party even further to the Right of the RN: Reconquête, which polls at around 5% for the European elections and boasts Marine Le Pen’s niece, Marion Maréchal, at the head of its ticket. Compared with figures like these, the RN can come across as somewhat moderate”. Yes, the increasingly alt-right Spectator likes Bardella too.

... not unconnected with the older fash

Despite him saying “he didn’t like the term ‘Great Replacement’ … but nonetheless ‘it points to a reality that’s correct’”. And, oh look, “In 2021, he posted statements of support for Génération Identitaire, a far-right organization that had been dissolved by the French government”

Any hate crime in the CV? “After Ali Rabeh, a Muslim, was re-elected as mayor of Trappes in 2021, Bardella described the city as an ‘Islamic republic’ on the radio station Europe 1. He then announced on 2 February 2022, that he was indicted for this statement, saying ‘I am disappointed that the French justice system pursues the same goal today as the Islamists, to silence those who denounce real issues and those who oppose the transformation of countless neighbourhoods in France’”. Europe 1? See above.

But Bardella’s party is, meanwhile, trying to clean up its image in other ways. “Ever sensitive of their image, RN leaders have tossed to the wayside an impressive number of former idols and allies: Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are no longer celebrated for obvious reasons”.

Which may look like A Very Good Thing, but this is all with a singular purpose: to achieve power. As with criticism of Germany’s own chapter of the fash, AfD, because the latter is claimed to be too close to Moscow. This enables the RN (the new and cleaner FN, honestly) to appeal to more voters.

But the fash is still the fash, whether it’s the RN, Reform UK, AfD, Vox in Spain, or Chega in Portugal. It claims to be mainstream, in touch with the public mood, listening to the concerns of those that other politicians have allegedly ignored. It arrives as your friend. But in reality, it has no more idea of how to improve the electorate’s lot than anyone else.

So why the media interest? You may ask that. I couldn’t possibly comment.

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Israel - Isolated And Friendless

Tens of thousands of innocent civilians dead, many of them women and children. A healthcare system systematically and gratuitously trashed. Apartment blocks reduced to rubble. Allegations of torture. Signs of some dead having been summarily executed. And not a flicker of regret from those doing the killing, but increasingly angry defiance and smears.

Israel’s conduct in its widespread flattening of Gaza has not merely been exposed as a potential genocide, it has ended the era when the country got a free pass by default. A small and young state, a democracy too, surrounded by so many hostile, and less than democratic neighbours. Whatever happened, Israel was the good guy and all the rest were bad guys.

So when Adolf Eichmann was lifted from his bolthole in South America, yes, that was OK. Hunting down those responsible for the Munich Olympic Games massacre was also nodded through. Those were understandable and arguably justifiable actions. Even the lifting of Mordechai Vanunu, still forbidden from leaving Israel, generated little in the way of complaints.

But the treatment, especially the recent treatment, of the Palestinians, has become a running sore for Israel, one that has progressively tarnished its reputation. Talk of a “two state solution” is meaningless while more and more settlements, in violation of international law, are built on the occupied West Bank, and Gaza has been, for decades now, an open air prison camp.

Worse, the arbitrary arrest of Palestinians across the West Bank, together with allegations of torture, and high rates of death in custody, accompanied by excessive use of force against those not deemed to be yet suitable for arrest, long ago took the shine off the supposedly “most moral army”. So now that free pass is no longer on offer to Israel. Its supporters are not happy.

And so the fight back has gathered momentum, but sadly, has had little success. Smearing peaceful protests as “hate marches” has not worked, nor has any attempt to deflect from the large and growing Jewish contingent within those marches. Recently, a Green Party councillor has been called out for anti-Semitism … for saying Allahu Akhbar. He said God Is Great.

Worse for the complainant, this was someone in the Jewish Labour Movement. I say, Green Party people, pay attention, do as we say, don’t get uppity with us, or else. Someone is displaying their assumed entitlement just a little too obviously. And getting ridiculed for it: Israel and its supporters are increasingly being judged on the merits of their behaviour. Or lack thereof.

We can now see what the Israelis are up to. Like the sickening attempt to stop aid getting through to the Palestinians. Like the deliberate bombing of residential areas, even those where the only protection is a tent. Like the refusal to accept responsibility - any responsibility - for the carnage.

The responses have shown how that free pass is a thing of the past: Shola Mos-Shogbamimu, who you can tell as she’s a doctor, put it directly. “Israel’s persistent, pervasive, cruel, genocidal collective punishment on Palestinians is with deliberate intent and depraved indifference to life & liberty. Israel wants Palestinians completely & utterly destroyed. This is genocide”.

And now has come an intervention from a previously unexpected quarter, Match of the Day lead presenter Gary Lineker, who, in conversation with Mehdi Hasan, has told “The minute you raise your voice against what [the IDF] [are] now doing [in Gaza], you get accused of being a supporter of Hamas … So there is … a lot of heavy lobbying on people to be quiet. So I understand why most people refrain.” And there was more.

“But I’m getting on a bit now … I’m fairly secure, and I can’t be silent about what’s happening … I think it’s just so utterly awful. And now they’re talking about ‘Oh, it looks like it’s happening, going into Rafah’, when they’ve sent everybody down there … It’s not anti-Semitic to say that what Israel is doing is wrong”. He is right. And the entitled of the JLM are plain flat wrong.

Plus the UN General Assembly has, despite all that lobbying, voted in favour of granting full membership to Palestine, granting the state new rights and privileges, by 143 votes to 9, with 25 abstentions. The Guardian noted that the vote signalled “Israel’s growing isolation on the world stage”. Many EU member states are moving to recognise an independent Palestine.

Sadly, the leadership of the Labour Party, and in an election year most likely, has been caught out. Excusing the inexcusable shows a lack of empathy from shadow cabinet figures. It drives yet more voters away from the fold. It may not lose the party the General Election, but it will shrink its majority. Over time, this will only go one way. And not the way those heavy lobbyists want.

Israel has lost its free pass. Maybe for ever. Maybe not what they wanted.

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Tory Losses - Media In Denial

They lost 472 council seats. All bar one of the elected Mayoral elections were lost: despite the presence of an independent candidate in the West Midlands, who took votes from Labour, the Tories still lost the Mayoral poll, and in London, Sadiq Khan recorded his largest winning margin in the teeth of a hostile right-wing press. There was also a Parliamentary by-election loss.

Even with the host of negatives facing Labour - hostility among Muslim voters to the party leadership’s stance on Gaza, Keir Starmer’s flip-flopping in the face of press hostility, the welter of bad faith knocking copy aimed at deputy leader Angela Rayner, and fiddling of electoral system in a vain attempt to hobble Khan - the Tories were trounced across the country.

In London, a last-minute attempt to sow doubt among the public, claiming that polls were tighter than predicted, and some even claiming that Tory Susan Hall might even win, was exposed as a sham. The worse news is that a supposedly senior BBC figure - Laura Kuenssberg no less - had joined in this momentary voyage down the rabbit hole. That was bang out of order.

The offending entry on Twitter, X, or whatever Muskrat’s calling it this week, is still there: “What's going on in the London Mayoral race? No votes have been counted yet, so hold on to your hats.. but it is clear tonight that the race is much much closer than some polls had suggested”. No votes have been counted, but “it is clear … that the race is much much closer”.

That’s what you get by promoting someone who appears to prioritise getting sources to actual analysis, to filter out the wacko crap. Ms Kuenssberg continues to, as Peter Oborne put it, “just shovel it on”. But there will be no carpeting from Robbie Gibb, oh no. That’s just a bit more “both-sidesing”.

Also not getting carpeted is political editor of the Murdoch Sun on Sunday, Kate Ferguson, putting out prejudicial crap like “Sadiq Khan has had a strong showing in the postal votes in London....sources say”, having claimed “Sounds like Tory Susan Hall is ahead in the voting in Camden / Barnet patch” when counting had not started, and the priceless “Senior Tory sources saying it’s looking good for Andy Street in West Mids”. Street lost.

Over at Gammon Broadcasting™ News (“Bacon’s News Channel”), an idiot called Ben Leo mused “Is today when Sadiq Khan is finally toppled in London? Are the whispers, the rumours, the sources correct that the Labour man has been run to the wire by Susan Hall? Is this the day England reclaims its capital city from Net Zero chief zealot mayor Khan? Let’s see”. Let’s not.

There was much talking up of Reform UK, who scored, er, two council seats. As opposed to the Greens, who gained 73 seats to leave then with a mere 179. Or the Lib Dems, whose gains totalled 105 seats, to give a total of 520 councillors, more than the Tories - for the first time since 1996. And we know what happened at the General Election after that.

Still the media is obsessing about the Tories, and looking even further right to speculate whether con-man and congenital liar Nigel “Thirsty” Farage will return to become Reform UK Oberscheissenführer. The BBC is once again not covering itself with glory, as Ms Kuenssberg persisted in asking Labour’s Pat McFadden about the party’s problem with the Muslim vote.

While she allowed the appallingly wacko Suella Braverman to smear Labour as “hard-left maniacs” who would “open our borders” and “indoctrinate our institutions and schools with PC madness”. Meanwhile, losing West Midlands Mayoral candidate Andy Street has reminded anyone listening that the way for the Tories to win is from the centre ground (now occupied by Labour).

Our free and fearless press, and too many in the broadcast media, are yet to understand one very straightforward fact: the wider electorate is not listening to them. They’re sick of being told how wonderful everything is, how the Tories’ cunning plan is working, and how all will be well as soon as a few of those horrible brown people are dispatched to Rwanda.

What was it that LBJ said “seems hot to you, but it never does to anyone else”? That was Pissing Down Your Leg. Hello media people.

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Mail, Anti-Semitism, And Hypocrisy

Opportunist to the last, the Mail titles have maximised the claims of Gideon Falter, head man at the so-called Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, that when marches in solidarity with the Palestinian people took place in central London, this made the area unsafe for Jews. This opportunism has required some highly creative writing, plus the old standby of talking well, but lying badly.

Falter had gone after the Metropolitan Police, demanding the resignation of Commissioner Mark Rowley, but after the full video of the CAA man’s encounter was revealed, Rowley not only stayed in place, but gave his backing to the cops featured in the incident, and told Mr F he wasn’t going to give him an interview. Which is more or less telling Falter to fuck off.

But those who might have thought that was that reckoned without the creativity, and indeed rank hypocrisy, that come easily to the inmates of the Northcliffe House bunker. So it was that today’s Mail on Sunday brought us a package of righteousness, cop-bashing, and flat-out lying.

“After officer warns campaigner for being ‘Openly Jewish’ … POLICE ARE SO COWED BY THE ANTI-SEMITIC MOB, THEY EVEN COVER UP THE HOLOCAUST … Shameful insult to the Six Million” thunders the headline, the photo helpfully captioned “NO RESPECT: An etched boulder [you don’t capitalise after a colon, Mail mutts] at Hyde Park’s Holocaust Memorial Garden was hidden by a blue tarpaulin yesterday, to protect it from pro-Palestine protesters”. Sadly, the cops had nothing to do with that.

As the Met’s feed on Twitter, X, or whatever Muskrat’s calling it this week told, “This is an inaccurate headline that will only fuel community concerns. The decision to cover the memorial was taken by park authorities, not the police. As the paper’s own article makes clear, it is a precaution Royal Parks have taken for a number of different events”. Police in no cover up shock horror.

Meanwhile, some Mail watchers may be wondering what a paper that has dabbled so extensively in anti-Semitism, and not just in the years leading up to the outbreak of war in 1939, is doing playing the other side of the field. But then, that’s all part of the opportunism and hypocrisy. It was the Mail, after all, that launched an anti-Semitic attack on the memory of Ralph Miliband.

Which f***er's calling me out for anti-Semitism, c***?!?!?

The father of David and Ed was called “The Man Who Hated Britain”, thus recycling one of the oldest anti-Semitic tropes, that of the “Disloyal Jew”. To head off the inevitable criticism, the name on the by-line was that of Geoffrey Levy - “it can’t be anti-Semitic, a Jewish journalist wrote it, see?”

Miliband Père is dismissed as a mere “Jewish immigrant”. At the Jewish Chronicle, Martin Bright mused “I have always been wary of calling this dark undercurrent ‘antisemitism’, but the Daily Mail’s leader about the Milibands and Marxism (headline: ‘An evil legacy and why we won’t apologise’) dripped with the nastiest kind of prejudice”. So blatant, even John Mann noticed.

Could it get more blatant? Don’t ask. The Mail, this time wanting to kick anyone not invested with the idea of the UK leaving the EU, told its readers “Angry scenes as police separate Leave and Remain protesters at anti-Brexit rallies across Britain (and Eddie Izzard has his pink beret knocked off) … Typically British scenes included gentleman in tweed waving a Union Flag”.

Except anyone reading the article today won’t see the “gentleman in tweed”. The photos have been removed. But Zelo Street screen grabbed them. They featured one Jeremy Bedford-Turner. He is a rabid anti-Semite. So rabid, in fact, that the Guardian later told “A far-right army veteran has been found guilty of stirring up racial hatred after the Crown Prosecution Service was pressured to reconsider its decision to not bring charges against him”. Go on.

“Jeremy Bedford-Turner, 48, called for his ‘soldiers’ to liberate England from ‘Jewish control’ in an address outside Downing Street and blamed Jews for issues ranging from both world wars to Jack the Ripper … Under cross-examination, he admitted that he wanted all Jews to leave the UK”.

The Mail. Hot on anti-Semitism. Except when it doesn’t want to be.

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Farage Does Another Racism

Fresh from his attempt to smear former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has come another racism from former Brexit Party Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage. Nige has seen that Jeremy Hunt (the former Culture Secretary) has allocated public funds for a memorial honouring the sacrifice of Muslims who fought for Britain in two world wars, and elsewhere.

In another example of He Wouldn’t Have Said That About Jews - not even Farage would have gone there - The Great Man told his audience of adoring Gammonati “At 12.30, up got the Chancellor of the Exchequer. His opening sentence I simply could not believe”. The offending passage was played back. “Well, here is my response. I went to the local cemetery” said Nige.

“Over 100 years ago, we had men of more brain and foresight than our Chancellor. They decided at the end of the First World War, and continued it through World War 2 as well, that everybody, regardless of race, rank or religion, would be buried beneath the same headstone. The principle was equality in death, recognising the contribution of all”. There was more.

“Indeed, if you go to a big Commonwealth war graves cemetery in France, or elsewhere, what you’ll see is a stone of remembrance that says ‘those of all faiths and none’. We thought about this more than 100 years ago. We do not need Jeremy Hunt putting forward the idea of a memorial to a specific religion. It is just plain wrong”. Cue fervent Gammonati applause.

Yeah, that’s telling all those Scary Muslims™! Who do they think they are, eh? But, as Captain Blackadder might have observed, there was only one thing wrong with Farage’s argument - it was bollocks. For starters, if you go to a big Commonwealth cemetery, as Farage suggests, you will soon see that his claim about “the same headstone” is yet another from his roster of lies.

The "same headstone" in practice

Christians generally have a headstone in the shape of a cross. Jewish soldiers have the Star of David on theirs. And Muslims? At the very minimum, the crescent moon and star will be present, and most likely with some Arabic script. So Farage couldn’t find any examples in Whitehaven, where he was presenting his burst of straight-talking bluster and intolerance?

Maybe the area didn’t have many non-Christian soldiers billeted there, or indeed, living there before and during two World Wars. But I have news for Mr Thirsty: the British Indian Army, which by 1945 had grown in number to around two and a half million, is agreed to have contained around a million Muslims. Of which tens of thousands gave their lives for the Empire.

Indeed, the National Muslim War Memorial Trust has pointed out “By World War II, the British Indian Army had grown significantly to 2.5 million. Of this approximately 1 million were Muslims. Muslims mainly from India and African countries fought on three continents and played a decisive role in Britain's first major land victory against Nazi Germany in North Africa”.

Winston Churchill told, in a letter to Franklin Roosevelt at the height of the Second World War, “We must not on any account break with the Moslems, who represent a hundred million people, and the main army elements on which we must rely for the immediate fighting”. They fought to liberate us from totalitarianism. Farage missed that. Why might that be?

You might wish to ask that question. I couldn’t possibly comment.

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Traitorous Reality Bites Tories

Last week, Tucker Carlson, formerly a host for Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse), was granted an interview with Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, leader of the gangsterist régime in Moscow. Carlson trowelled on his scoop, accusing other journalists of not bothering to interview The Great Man. In reality, others were refused interviews, or they later came to some harm.

The interview was a campaign destined to develop not necessarily to Carlson’s advantage, as Putin went off on an ahistorical rant, pausing only to call out Carlson for applying to join the CIA, another less than successful episode in his past. Also, it was made clear to Carlson that too many attempts to interrupt his interviewee might not be viewed in a favourable light.

One of those gloating over Tucker’s lack of luck was disgraced former alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, dashing off a column for the Mail headlined “Putin's interview with his fawning stooge Tucker Carlson was straight out of Hitler's playbook. I pray Americans see through this unholy charade”. Hitler gave interviews? You learn something every day.

But do go on. “He was to be the stooge of the tyrant, the dictaphone to the dictator and a traitor to journalism … In his fawning, guffawing, slack-jawed happiness at having a ‘scoop’, he betrayed his viewers and listeners around the world … He didn’t ask tough questions”. Says the clown who hid in a fridge and chickened out of a sit-down with Brillo. And there is more.

In his conclusion, Bozo tells his audience “remember Charles Lindbergh, remember the America Firsters, remember how many American legislators at first opposed involvement in the war with Hitler … You cannot make America great again by selling out Ukraine and allowing Putin to use violence to rebuild the Soviet empire”. Make America Great Again? Who does he mean?

Yes, Bozo is aiming at those enamoured of Combover Crybaby Donald Trump, especially Republican members of Congress who have blocked further US aid to Ukraine. But here a problem enters for both Himself, and several of his fellow Tories: they haven’t exactly been hostile to Trump, and one leader Trump’s actions may help the most is … Vladimir Putin.

For those countries not paying into NATO at a rate that meets with The Donald’s approval, there came a chilling message yesterday. “Trump says he would encourage Russia to attack NATO allies: ‘I said I would not protect our NATO allies. In fact, I would encourage Russia to do whatever the hell they want’”. Trump backs a dictator. Cos he wants to be one himself.

In the past, the UK may have been supportive of Francisco Franco, the Greek Colonels, Augusto Pinochet, Suharto’s “New Order”, Ferdinand Marcos, and other leaders disinclined to test their popularity with the electorate without being able to fiddle the result. But such support would take place behind the scenes, be less than vocal, even that given Pinochet by Mrs T.

But now, Tories are lining up to back Trump, which means they are at the very least willing to go easy on Vlad, a warmonger whose aggression, in case they hadn’t noticed, is happening on the eastern fringe of Europe. Bozo goes to Kyiv to be supportive of Ukraine one minute, then backs Trump, a stooge for Putin, the next. Another of George Smiley’s “unfortunate chains of events”.

Jacob Rees Mogg, the member for times long past, has asserted that Trump is “a friend of the UK”. Miriam Cates has claimed that the world was a “safer place” when Trump was in the White House. And Jake Berry declared that Trump would make a “much better President than Biden”. The Tories’ candidate for London Mayor, Susan Hall, has been positive on Trump.

Maybe this does not matter so much because the Tories, even with the fawning support of most of our free and fearless press and the phalanx of Astroturf lobby groups in and around Tufton Street, are about to go down to a monumental General Election defeat. But it should be borne in mind the next time they start banging on about patriotism, and, indeed, democracy.

The reality is that the Tories are not as patriotic as they want us to think.

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Fascism Arrives As Your Friend

The new month begins with a warm afternoon - by English standards, that is - and the temperature at 19º. It is quiet and peaceful in Pinhal Novo, part of the Setúbal district, a historically big left-voting area, the place where the then Mayor refused to turn out to greet The Queen in 1985. But outside the north entrance to the station, a loud and hectoring voice can be heard.

An innocuous looking awning ...

Campaign mode has arrived: there are elections to the Assembly of the Republic, the Portuguese Parliament, on March 10. The previous Parliament was dissolved by President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa when long-serving Prime Minister António Costa resigned last November after being made a suspect in a corruption investigation into contracts for lithium mining.

Had this been the UK, and the Tory Party, there would most likely not have been a resignation, but Costa was adamant: he had not been charged with any wrongdoing, but the mere suspicion of impropriety meant that he had to do the decent thing. This has played into the hands of the The Fash: the far-right in Portugal is seeking to emulate its sister parties elsewhere.

And thus the audio being broadcast from a makeshift awning outside Pinhal Novo station. This is of selected speeches made by André Ventura, who leads CHEGA (“enough”), third largest party in the 2022 elections, which is running on a single issue, “LIMPAR PORTUGAL” ("To Clean Portugal").

... is part of his journey ...

Ventura contends that, more or less, all the other parties are corrupt. He alone can clear out the corruption. Allowing those accused the benefit of due process seemingly does not enter. We are not told the method by which the cleaning takes place. And those who know what demagogues sound like may have a serious problem on hearing Ventura’s broadcast words. Gone is the video showing a clown-like, Chaplinesque, figure. Only the audio remains.

It sounds chilling. The howling tone, the repetition of phrases and initial parts of sentences, the clearly rehearsed screaming rhetoric, the staged pauses for applause, all sound reminiscent of a range of dictatorships, most notably that of 1930s Germany. If Ventura claims not to have listened to Hitler’s oratory, he is most likely lying. His party has already begun using another Nazi tactic.

As in the staged Parliamentary walk-out: the NSDAP made increasing use of this as it gained seats, the idea being to delegitimise the relevant assembly. The idea that “only he can deal with the problem” is also out of the dictator playbook, used regularly in Portugal by Antonio de Oliveira Salazar to justify his continued presence, along with rigged, or absent, elections.

... from figure of ridicule ...

The effect of Ventura’s hectoring on those passing on their way to and from the station can be gauged by those looking after the CHEGA stall not repeating the playback, thus sparing their audience. And, apart from scarves being given away to unsuspecting schoolkids, few seemed bothered. But come the election aftermath, their parents just might be.

Ventura has previously called for a new dictatorship. He wants to proclaim the Fourth Republic, which is more or less the same thing. His party conference passed a motion declaring that women who have abortions should have their ovaries removed. He told a black Deputada that she should be returned to her country of origin. He wants to put Portugal’s Roma population in camps. He has been caught making a Nazi salute. But there is one saving grace.

Like former Brexit Party Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, Ventura talks the talk, but when it comes to taking responsibility for anything, will be Absent Elsewhere. The idea of him pursuing power is as a dog chasing a car: were he to catch it, he wouldn’t know what to do with it. But he wants to be a kingmaker. Someone else will exercise power. And it will all be their fault.

... to a very bad place indeed

Nor will he be comfortable with being asked whether he will celebrate 50 years of the Revolution in April. Or if his cleaning up his country will entail summary judgment on anyone accused of misconduct. Or to whom his brave new world will be accountable. Or to confirm that those Who Are Not White are still considered equal in the world of his overwhelmingly white party.

Why that might be is clear: Ventura has stood behind a banner proclaiming “Portugal Não É Racista” (“Portugal is not racist”), but his own pronouncements demonstrate that he is just that. CHEGA is the name, and scratching the racist itch is the game. Would the voters care to play?

It is not only in the USA that democracy is on the ballot this year. Like Farage, another fringe loudmouth amplified by a complicit media for ratings, Ventura will claim he is just voicing the people’s concerns. In reality, both are bad faith actors whom their respective countries could well do without.

Remember well that howling rhetoric. Remember whence it came. That is where CHEGA is headed. Ventura does not have the answers he claims.

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The Real Victims Of War

Few in the media establishment, those tasked with opinion-forming, or others in and around the press and broadcasters, give much thought to those who actually suffer the most from, and have the least say in, campaigns of warfare. That might cast doubt on the idea of going to war as some kind of just and defensible act. It did not deter the late Pablo Picasso.

Picasso's Guernica, at the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid. My picture

The painter had been asked to produce a mural by the Republican Government in Spain. This would help raise awareness of the civil war being fought against the fascists under Francisco Franco. Not long after that, Franco asked the Nazis to help his cause by bombing a town in the Basque country called Guernica. This they did. Guernica burned; civilians died.

Most of the town’s men were away fighting. Those who remained were, overwhelmingly, women and children. They bore the brunt of the attacks; their homes burned around them. Some who took refuge in nearby fields were machine-gunned by fighter aircraft. Picasso was horrified. He made Guernica the subject of his mural; just 35 days later, he had finished the work.

From the Wiki entry, this is part of what is depicted: “The scene occurs within a large room. On the left, a wide-eyed bull, with a tail suggesting rising flame and smoke as if seen through a window, stands over a grieving woman holding a dead child in her arms. The woman's head is thrown back and her mouth is wide open. A horse falls in agony in the centre of the room, with a large gaping hole in its side, as if it had just been run through by a spear”.

“A dead and dismembered soldier lies under the horse. The hand of his severed right arm grasps a shattered sword, from which a flower grows. The open palm of his left hand contains a stigma, a symbol of martyrdom derived from the stigmata of Christ”. Moving along to the right.

“To the horse's upper right a frightened woman's head and extended right arm reach through a window. As she witnesses the scene she carries a flame-lit lamp in her right hand, and holds it near the bare bulb. Below her a woman in shock staggers from the right towards the centre while looking into the blazing light bulb with a blank stare”. Blazing light from the sky.

Francisco Franco, another fascist untroubled by human suffering

“To the bull's right a dove appears on a cracked wall through which bright light from the outside shines. On the far right of the room there is a fourth woman, her arms raised in terror. Her wide-open mouth and thrown back head echo the grieving woman's. She is entrapped by fire from above and below, her right hand suggesting the shape of an aircraft”.

Most of those suffering are women and children. The soldier carrying a sword is unable to protect them. Those ordering and carrying out the bombings and machine-gunning in Guernica did not have to see any of the human death and suffering they had unleashed, and so they did not.

That is not to say that to receive and comprehend the universal humanist message of Picasso means the recipient is supporting one side over another in any of the conflicts in progress as 2023 moves into 2024. Death, suffering, the inhumanity of warfare, all made worse by advances in technology, do not depend on any particular culture, tradition, ethnicity or religion either to deliver them, or be delivered into them. Innocent civilians are just that.

Guernica was exhibited for many years at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, whose management was most reluctant to let it go. But go it had to do, to Picasso’s native Spain. It can now be viewed on permanent exhibition at the Museo Reina Sofia, in central Madrid, just across the road from the palm house at the Estacion Puerta de Atocha.

Pablo Picasso died 50 years ago, while other wars were raging. There have been other conflicts since he painted Guernica; hardly has there been any time during which arms dealers have not been marching in lockstep with politicians and the military, while not concerning one another with the women and children who form that euphemistically termed Collateral Damage.

Have a peaceful New Year. And don’t forget the real sufferers of warfare.

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Gaza - Starmer Behind The Curve

A quote attributed to Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin, one of the leaders of the 1848 Revolution, was the probably apocryphal “There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader”. The leader who is behind the curve, only making their mind up after everyone else has made up theirs. The quote could so easily have been attributed to Labour leader Keir Starmer.

There are ever louder calls for a ceasefire in the Israel and Hamas conflict, which would mean, mostly, the IDF desisting from its round-the-clock rocketing, bombing and shelling of Gaza, where whole neighbourhoods have been levelled and over 7,000 killed, including more than 3,000 children. But here Starmer is as the proverbial rabbit in those approaching headlights.

It has been claimed that he is reluctant to move until the USA has joined the ceasefire call. This may dismay some, but is understandable: ever since the Suez débàcle, Israel has known to which country its wagon should be hitched, and that country is not the UK or France, with whom it joined in the deception that ended the brief premiership of Anthony Eden.

Eden thought he could win over Gemayel Abdul Nasser; he learned some of the language, had done that sort of thing before. He won no-one over: Egypt seized the Suez Canal, Eden, the poshest of PMs, denounced Nasser as a “fah-sist”, and cooked up the deception with the French and Israelis, which was bust when US President Eisenhower told them all to desist.

It was a re-election year; Ike wanted to present himself as a man of peace. From that point on, the UK followed the US, sometimes managing not to look too slavish, but on occasion, as with Tony Blair backing Dubya Bush over Iraq, showing just how far, and at the expense of a serious amount of credibility, UK Governments were prepared to go to please Washington DC.

Starmer has already shown himself to be less than totally nimble when challenged on the behaviour of Binyamin Netanyahu and his pals. We are now being told that when he said Israel was within its rights to cut off power and water to Gaza, he was misrepresented. He was not. The audio is out there. Cutting off water and power to an occupied territory is a war crime.

That’s as in Section 33 of the Geneva Convention. Not only have Starmer and his team tried to rewrite reality, they are now in the Ledru-Rollin camp over calls for a ceasefire. One by one, senior Labour figures are calling out their leader, and with the certainty of night following day, are stating unequivocally that a ceasefire has to be called for.

Starmer’s latest headache has been induced by London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who has demonstrated his considerable abilities by getting his own ducks in a line first. Like the Community Security Trust, who met Khan and later Tweeted approvingly “Thank you, Sadiq Khan, for challenging antisemitism and all forms of hate crime.” They could hardly denounce him after that.

And so it came to pass that the Mayor told earlier today “Thousands of innocent civilians have already been killed in Israel and Gaza. With the humanitarian crisis set to deteriorate even further, I’m calling for a ceasefire”. Full stop, no ifs, no buts. Which puts his party leader in one of those Very Difficult Positions. He can hardly suspend Khan. What does he do?

His minders can’t retrospectively redefine reality: the claim he was “misrepresented” will join other chin-stroking moments on shows like HIGNFY and be repeated relentlessly. He can’t sit this one out. On Israel and Gaza, he cannot get away with standing for nothing. 7,000 dead in Gaza, 1,000 unidentified bodies buried under the rubble, and counting. DO SOMETHING.

Remember Galbraith’s definition of leadership. “All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership”. Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has now confronted that anxiety. He has called for a ceasefire.

Quit waiting for the USA. Get off the fence and show some leadership.

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