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THE FOLLY OF NEGOTIATING WITH DAESH

Owen Smith, the Labour MP who is now contesting with Jeremy Corbyn for the leadership of the Labour Party, has come forward with the bizarre and ludicrous notion that we should negotiate with Daesh (ISIS), in order to seek some kind of settlement to the crisis in Syria and the Middle-East. Of course he’s not the only one to come forward with such a bizarre notion. Some years earlier Jonathan Powell (who was a key foreign policy adviser to Tony Blair) came forward with the same idea. He even compared such a strategy to the negotiations the UK government conducted with the Provisional IRA that helped pave the way for the Good Friday Agreement. But such a comparison is utterly preposterous and risible. The Provisional IRA had limited objectives; and as a result of the negotiations Stormont was reopened, we had elections, and a power sharing executive was created that has ushered in a remarkable, peaceful era in Ulster. Such an arrangement is utterly impossible with a messianic, life denying, nihilist, totalitarian terror movement like Daesh. And if it was ever put forward, as a serious proposition, it would be a huge boost and fillip to that organisation, which would rightly see it, and exploit it – on their various websites – as a propaganda coup. Indeed it would be like negotiating with the Nazis at the height of the Second World War. It would show that the West was weak and craven and that they were getting the upper hand; and it would probably encourage more violent attacks and suicide bombs.

Who on earth would we negotiate with, in that crazed organisation? Indeed they would probably have to be body-searched before entering the negotiating chamber, to see if they hadn’t strapped on suicide vests, to take everybody out. (After all, why should that be off the agenda when they blow up wedding parties and murder captives?). And would they respect any agreements that might arise from such talks? It’s extremely unlikely. They would just cynically string us along, as Hitler did with his various gullible negotiating partners. You wouldn’t be able to trust a word they said. And any agreements that did arise wouldn’t be worth the paper that they were printed on. Indeed Herman Goering once remarked that all the treaties and non-aggression pacts that Hitler signed, were so much toilet paper. And of course he reneged on virtually every treaty that he, and his underlings, did sign. Indeed they were all an integral part of his war strategy. And Daesh would surely do the same. They would see their negotiating partners as so many useful idiots to exploit and bamboozle. What on earth would you negotiate with Daesh about? Helping them to set up some kind of state, and giving them diplomatic recognition? Trying to persuade them to give up their totalitarian, theocratic ideology, and their violent terrorist agenda. Well there’d be precious little hope of that happening. This is breath-taking naiveté, in the face of the terrible threat these fanatics pose.

Some people, particularly gullible youngsters, who were attracted and duped into joining Daesh, through glossy, lying propaganda on the internet, have seen the error of their ways. A number have returned, sadder and wiser, to their home countries; some have been murdered, in gruesome ways, for trying to escape from that terror organisation. But that organisation itself is evil and irredeemable; and must be destroyed as a menace to world peace. The only negotiations that organisation wants is for people to wave the white flag and surrender; and then it would probably murder, enslave or forcibly covert them to its demented ideology.

Daesh is like modern-day, religious version of the Khmer Rouge; which launched a reign of terror in Cambodia till Vietnamese intervention put a merciful end to that murderous entity. And Mr Smith’s arguments are as daft, today, as the comments that Margaret Thatcher once made, in a TV, interview, that there were moderates within the Khmer Rouge that the West could negotiate with. The only way to deal with Daesh is to combat it, as had to be done with the Axis Powers in the Second World War; though not by clumsy Western military interventions, which have just played into their hands, but through the use of intelligence and diplomacy, and by supporting and backing the people, and there are many of them, who are actually combatting this suicide cult, on the ground.

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SOME THOUGHTS ON FIDEL CASTRO

  SOME THOUGHTS ON FIDEL CASTRO

  Castro wasn’t a saint, and his government was responsible for human rights abuses; but what makes him such a revered figure around the world is that he was, as some commentators have pointed out, the David who stood up against the American Goliath. Though all too predictably, and dismally, he has been labelled as a despot and a tyrant by right-wing politicians and journalists. And along with the other character assassins, that paragon of virtue and fair play, Donald Trump, has chipped in with his tuppenceworth, denouncing Castro as a ruthless dictator who ruled through firing squads and oppression.

There were privations and difficulties in Cuba, under Fidel Castro’s government – and there were those who sought to leave the country, under pretty scarifying circumstances. But we should remember that this was a siege economy, under a relentless U.S. blockade, and that for much of that period Cuba lived under almost wartime conditions. If Britain had been blockaded for fifty plus years by the rest of Europe – because they didn’t like our political system, and wanted to impose on us another system, that they were more comfortable with – we’d be in a considerable economic mess as well.

Though the very fact that it came to power through a popular revolution against a hated regime – with people prepared to vote with their feet, and lay their lives on the line to oust the old order – shows that his movement and subsequent government did have a strong degree of popular, grassroots support. This wasn’t some system that was imposed by Red Army tanks, against the will of the people, as happened in Eastern Europe in 1945; this was a home-grown insurrection that had popular backing.

There’s a wise old adage, that you should never invade a revolution. That is the mistake which the reactionary European nations made when they invaded France after the toppling of the Bourbon Monarchy. It’s the mistake that some Western powers made when they supported the White forces in the Russian Civil War. It’s the same mistake that Saddam made when he invaded Iran. And the Americans made a similar mistake when they cobbled together an army of disgruntled Cuban ex-pats and sent them ashore at the Bay of Pigs. All of these things not only failed dismally, but they actually strengthened the very regimes they sought to damage.

Had the Bay of Pigs, by some incredible happenstance, succeeded, and the Castro government was overthrown, it would not have brought about democracy in Cuba, but the very opposite. Look what happened when American power overthrew Marxist or liberal regimes in Latin America – as in Chile, and Guatemala, and elsewhere. We had as a result fully fledged fascist regimes that ruled through terror; though without any complaints from Washington against their human rights abuses, and the absence of democracy. And of course had a similar regime-change scenario happened in Cuba, the same things would have occurred, and living standards and the mortality rate would have declined drastically as well. Cuba, because of Castro’s healthcare initiatives, has one of the highest mortality rates in the world. Indeed the ability to have a long and healthy life, is a human right as well. And one of the most important ones. Is it any coincidence that Honduras, which is an American client state, is also the murder capital of the world? Without a whisper of criticism emanating from the corridors of power in Washington. And in the event of an American sponsored counter-revolution Castro and his comrades would have been the first to be executed, and you would have had someone like Pinochet or Galtieri in charge. And on the subject of human rights abuses the noisy politicians in Washington would have taken a Trappist vow of silence.

And would Havana have kept its old world charm and character, if unregulated free market forces were let rip? Or would it have all been bulldozed to the ground to be replaced by something that looks like downtown Detroit.

Castro was criticised for declaring himself to be a communist and throwing in his lot with the Soviet Union. But did he have any choice in the matter? America, or rather the American political class (regardless of their party affiliations) was viscerally opposed to the Castro regime from the very outset, irrespective of how it labelled itself ideologically. Eisenhower wouldn’t even see him when he arrived in America after the revolution. They tried to destroy his government in a botched invasion. Then they repeatedly sought to execute Castro, by increasingly bizarre and demented means. It isn’t for nothing that Castro once remarked that if assassination attempts were an Olympic sport, he would be a gold medal winner. They even tried to slip him drugs that would make him mad, and others that would make his beard fall off. With all that going off it’s a wonder that he kept his sanity and didn’t descend into paranoia.

And on top of those assassination attempts and plots, and some people reckon they ran into the hundreds, there were regular acts of terrorism and economic sabotage to try, though thankfully unsuccessfully, to destroy the morale of the Cuban people, and to damage the economy. Sugar cane crops were burned in the fields and a ship was blown up in Havana harbour, with considerable loss of life.  And of course there were sanctions imposed on Cuba by America from almost the day of the Revolution, to the present time. And which are still, anachronistically in force, despite the renewal of diplomatic relations. Indeed at one point America arrogantly expected other Western nations to join in the sanctions too, in order to choke and cripple the Cuban state and to punish its people for having the nerve and temerity to defy the big brother to the North.

If Castro hadn’t thrown his lot in with the Soviets it is difficult to see how his regime would have survived at all. It was his lifeline, economically and military. That, and the fact that Cuba was an island, saved his regime from being obliterated.

Hypocritical American politicians solemnly tell us that they want to see democracy restored in Cuba. But it wasn’t a democracy before Castro and his associates appeared on the scene. Though to read some right-wing journalists you’d think that pre-Castro Cuba was some kind of paradise or utopia. The revolution succeeded, after Castro landed on the island with only a handful of comrades – in overthrowing the Batista regime, which had far greater forces at its disposal – in considerable measure, because of popular revulsion against the corrupt Batista dictatorship. Havana at that time was full of casinos and bordellos, and was a safe haven for half the gangsters and Mafia godfathers in America.

All too predictably the healthcare reforms in Cuba have been ignored by those purblind critics. The fact that Havana brokered a stunning peace deal between the government of Columbia and the Farc guerrilla army, to end a dreadful civil war that has lasted for decades and claimed tens of thousands of lives, was never mentioned by these ideological nay-sayers, though that deal was praised to the skies by the UN Secretary General, Banki Moon, and the leader of Columbia has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize as a consequence. And what of the meeting between the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Pope, that took place in Cuba, to try to reconcile the Eastern and Western branches of the Christian Church, after America and the Europe Union recklessly encouraged the violent overthrow of the democratically elected government of Ukraine and helped to plunge Ukraine into conflict between the Catholic West and the Orthodox East of that nation. That too has disappeared inside the Ministry of Truth. (Indeed the Pope, who is also a Latin American, has proved himself to be a good friend of the Cuban people). Cuban forces helped to liberate African countries from centuries of European Colonialism, and Nelson Mandela has lavished praise on Castro for all he did to help in the overthrow the racist, Apartheid regime, in South Africa. (Indeed because much of its population is descended from African slaves, shipped over by the Spanish colonialists, there are strong bonds of affection and friendship between Cuba and Africa). If words and ill-feelings could have assassinated Castro he would have been dead years ago. But despite that long death wish he has outlived all the politicians who vilified him and some indeed who sought to annihilate him – from Kennedy, who was himself assassinated, to Nixon, who had to resign in disgrace, and all the way up to the lamentable George W. Bush, whose own exercises in regime change have had such a catastrophic effect across the world. Some people have said that though he did survive all those Presidents, they were democratically elected in and out of office, while he was a dictator. That’s true. But he didn’t try to kill them the way that they, or at least a number of them, wanted to murder him. They didn’t want Castro merely ushered out of office, they wanted him ushered out of life – with a bomb, or a bullet, or a phial of poison – and into the graveyard, along with his government.

It is to Obama’s immense credit that he had the guts and courage to break the log-jam and restore diplomatic relations with Cuba. Constructive engagement is always better than ideologically driven megaphone diplomacy on the part of grandstanding politicians; which achieves nothing. Though how that hopeful development will fare under the highly unpredictable Mr. Trump, is anybody’s guess.

Castro, for all his flaws, is a towering and iconic figure of our age. And he will be remembered long after his petty political critics, and their journalistic compatriots, have been forgotten and entombed in oblivion.

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WHY SHOULD WE TRUST THE AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE SERVICES OVER CLAIMS OF RUSSIAN HACKING?

    One of the most preposterous claims I’ve heard in a while was written by the journalist Charles Moore in one of his regular columns in the Telegraph. He wrote that we must assume that the Americans have got it right in their allegations that the Russians hacked into Hilary Clinton’s emails – because ‘to lie about this would be reputational suicide’ on the part of the American intelligence community. He must think that his readership has just dropped off a Christmas tree if they blandly accept that blissfully assuring remark. The American intelligence services committed reputational suicide years ago when they claimed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, prior to the invasion and occupation of Iraq by the Bush Junior regime. It was in the words of the CIA chief at the time, George Tenet: ‘A Slam-dunk case.’ But it was just part of the big lies – along with the equally bogus claim that Saddam had links to Al Qaeda extremists – that were used as cynical propaganda to justify a war and occupation, which has had calamitous and disastrous consequences for the Middle-East and the wider world’s for that matter, down to this day.  And on top of all that we had that ludicrous theatre of the absurd, on the floor of the UN, where Colin Powell, the then Secretary of State, claimed, with the aid of dodgy photos and sound recordings, to have exposed part of Saddam’s deadly arsenal of WMDs; and which was later revealed to be a total fabrication, designed to mislead the public and world diplomats. Why should we trust the American intelligence services after that appalling record? And of course the CIA has earlier form as well. They told Kennedy that the Bay of Pigs invasion had every chance of toppling the Castro regime, when it ended in a humiliating debacle for America. The CIA and FBI have the tendency to comply with the wishes and aspirations of their paymasters in government, even if their political bosses are intent on reckless and illegal wars of regime-change. And how do we know that this allegation of Russian hacking, with Putin’s alleged connivance, is any different in character? These intelligence services are tools in the hands of power, not vessels of unadulterated objective information. Are we to believe that these hacking claims are as pure as the driven snow, now - when they coincide exactly with the sentiments of the Obama government and many of the politicians on Capitol Hill, and the established news network for that matter - when in the past some crucial American intelligence claims weren’t worth the paper they were written on?

          All this big fuss about these alleged Russian email hacks, which is agitating excitable politicians and pundits in America, and in the UK, will be seen in the months and years ahead, as a tiny footnote in the pages of the history books. And of course it will be virtually ignored by the Trump regime. If anything did swing it for Trump (and it should be recalled that it was Hilary who got the majority of the popular vote), it was the incredible statement by the chief of the FBI, literally days before the election, that Hilary might have to face criminal charges over the leakage of her emails. That was manna from the heavens for Trump, who even, laughably, said that it was a greater scandal than Watergate. And although the FBI man withdrew that statement some time later, the damage was already done, and it resulted in a significant percentage drop in her popularity, as rated by opinion polls. Was that a deliberately political act on his part, to aide Trump and stymie Hilary? We might never know. But it was probably more significant in the course of the election than anything that so called hackers did.

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THE FOLLY OF NEGOTIATING WITH DAESH

  Owen Smith, the Labour MP who is now contesting with Jeremy Corbyn for the leadership of the Labour party, has come forward with the bizarre and ludicrous notion that we should negotiate with Daesh (ISIS), in order to seek some kind of settlement to the crisis is in Syria and the Middle-East. Of course he’s not the only one to come forward with such a bizarre notion. Some years earlier Jonathan Powell (who was a key foreign policy adviser to Tony Blair) came forward with the same idea. He even compared such a strategy to the negotiations the UK government conducted with the Provisional IRA that paved the way for the Good Friday Agreement. But such a comparison is utterly preposterous and risible. The Provisional IRA had limited objectives; and as a result of the negotiations Stormont was reopened, we had elections, and a power sharing executive was created that has ushered in a remarkably peaceful era in Ulster. Such an arrangement is utterly impossible with a messianic, life denying, nihilist, totalitarian terror movement like Daesh. And if it was ever seriously put forward, as a serious proposition, it would be a huge boost and fillip to that organisation, which would rightly see it, and exploit it – on their various websites – as a propaganda coup. Indeed it would be like negotiating with the Nazis at the height of the Second World War. It would show that the West was weak and craven and that they were getting the upper hand; and it would probably encourage more violent attacks and suicide bombs. Indeed many of the Daesh terrorists aren’t even Syrian at all, and have no interest in that country, other than as a war zone where they can spread their demented ideology. On that basis alone they should have no place whatsoever in negotiations over the future of that country. Who on earth would we negotiate with, in that crazed organisation? Indeed they would probably have to be body-searched before entering the negotiating chamber, to see if they hadn’t strapped on suicide vests, to take everybody out. (After all, why should that be off the agenda when they blow up wedding parties and murder captives). And would they respect any agreements that might arise from such talks. It’s extremely unlikely. They would just cynically string us along, as Hitler did with his various gullible negotiating partners. You wouldn’t be able to trust a word they said. And any agreements that did arise wouldn’t be worth the paper that they were printed on. Indeed Herman Goering once remarked that all the treaties and non-aggression pacts that Hitler signed, were so much toilet paper. And of course he reneged on virtually every treaty that he, and his underlings, did sign. Indeed they were all an integral part of his war strategy; and were designed to deceive and confuse those nations that he was intent on conquering and plundering. And Daesh would surely do the same. They would see their partners as so many useful idiots to exploit and bamboozle. What on earth would you negotiate with Daesh about? Helping them to set up some kind of state, and giving them diplomatic recognition? Trying to persuade them to give up their totalitarian, theocratic ideology, and their violent terrorist agenda. Well there’d be precious little hope of that happening. This is breath-taking naiveté, in the face of the terrible threat these people pose. The only way to deal with Daesh is to combat it, as had to be done with the Axis Powers; though not by clumsy Western military interventions, which have just played into their hands, but through the use of intelligence and diplomacy, and by supporting and backing the people, and there are many of them, who are actually combatting this death cult, on the ground.

[acandidobserver-blog]

THE OLIGARCH AS POLITICIAN: Some thoughts on the Donald Trump election campaign

The Trump phenomenon has once again shown that businessmen, corporate bosses and oligarchs don’t make good politicians. We saw that with Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, whose term at the top in Italian politics was mired by charges of corruption; and where he showed a total contempt for opposition politicians and examining magistrates; and did everything he could to avoid being brought to trail, and jailed, for illegal activities.

Donald Trump has run as an opportunist populist, ready to fly any kite or create any bogeyman, if it will garner headlines and airtime and galvanise the redneck vote.  He has played on fears and prejudices, and his campaign has been a sustained exercise in xenophobia.  He has, in the course of the campaign, offended almost everyone, and created one scapegoat after another in order to pin the blame on them for all America’s ills and woes. He has blamed the Chinese for destroying the US economy by dumping cheap goods on the market. He has described Mexican illegal migrants as being rapists and drugs dealers; and even made the incredible claim that he would, as President, build a huge wall to seal the border with Mexico. And that he would then charge the Mexicans for the cost of its construction.  He has even insulted women in the course of his tub thumping campaigning. Nothing seems to be off limits or beyond the pale. He even criticised fellow Republican, Senator John McCain, for being captured alive during the Vietnam War. Though as far as I know Donald Trump has no combat experience himself.  And now he has said that, in the wake of the recent murders in California, Muslims should be prevented from travelling to America. (He even justified that latter proposal by invoking the memory of the internment camps where Japanese-American citizens were detained doing World War Two; which is now, rightly looked back upon as a shameful episode in American history). Aside from all that he has made brash claims that he would revitalise the US economy and destroy Daesh. Though it remains an imponderable mystery, how he would be able to destroy Daesh, when he has – in seemingly pandering to the Israeli lobby and the Saudis - described the recent, welcome US rapprochement with Iran, an implacable enemy of Daesh, as being one of the worst deals in diplomatic history, that he would throw in the trashcan, on becoming President.

He seems to be a one man band, making policies up on the hoof, and shooting from the hip – and coming up with outrageous, over the top statements, that have drawn fire, not merely from American politicians, but across the world. Indeed one Democratic Presidential candidate has likened Trump’s election campaign to that of a fascist demagogue. Even fellow Republicans have criticised his intemperate language. And one of his Primary rivals, Jeb Bush, has said that he is unhinged. Others have labelled him as a narcissistic personality, who will say anything and jump on any bandwagon, to get a round of cheap applause. Even Benjamin Netanyahu, no slouch himself when it comes to bellicose rhetoric, has been critical of Trump; and he has indeed had to call off a visit to Israel that he had planned to make. It makes you wonder if he has any advisers or ‘wise’ counsel that he listens to, before coming out with the ludicrous statements he has made? Or is he is running his election campaign as he did his business empire, in a high handed and autocrat manner, where only one view and opinion counts, and where everyone else are so many hired hands, ciphers and yes-men. He has shown himself to have all the human sensitivity of a rhinoceros. And his campaigning, in all its lurid absurdity, has outdone the skills of the satirist and the lampooner.

Though what does work in his favour, despite his wild rhetoric and ready insults, is the fact that he is not a part of the Washington, Republican establishment – and that he is, as he has repeatedly said, self-funding and financing, and not in the pockets of the big corporations that back the other candidates.

He may have an outside chance of winning the Primaries and becoming the Republican Presidential candidate – though most pundits and commentators seem to rule out that possibility – but one suspects that if he did become the Republican Presidential candidate, the subsequent election could become almost like a rerun of the 1964 election, where Barry Goldwater, the Republican, was viewed to be such a dangerous, divisive, right-wing extremist, with his menacing Red-scare rhetoric, that he led the Republicans to one of the greatest defeats in their history. Indeed, had he, by some fluke of circumstances, been elected then, would the world be still around to day? It’s a sobering thought.  Indeed a Trump candidature would no doubt delight the Democrats, and their most likely candidate, Hilary Clinton.

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WHY WE STILL HAVE THE CHORUS OF GLOBAL WARMING DENIERS DESPITE ALL OF THE RECENT AND ONGOING FLOODS AND INUNDATIONS

Even after the whole spate of recent floods we have had, and the strange and discordant weather patterns we have been seeing, all around the world, we still have the vociferous and self-righteous anti-Global Warming lobby, peddling their Panglossian views on this matter. The Republicans in America have always been in vociferous denial about Global Warming – and have derided people like Al Gore, as alarmists and panic-mongers - despite the catastrophic events they have witnessed over there, such as the Katrina storm that flooded New Orleans, with much loss of life. We are seeing that floods and inundations, that we were told were once in a hundred year events, or even unprecedented, are becoming regular occurrences. Indeed in Cumbria only recently, floods, of a kind that were said to occur only once in a hundred years, happened twice within the same week. And of course we no longer have proper winters in the UK, as we used to have, with snow that could last for weeks on end, and frozen rivers and lakes. And yet we still get propaganda articles in right-wing newspapers like the Mail, by Christopher Booker and others, telling us all that Global Warming is all an elaborate conspiracy, got up by environmentalists and on-message politicians. Though the overwhelming consensus amongst scientists and climatologists is that Global Warming does exist, is a threat, and that if something substantial isn’t done about it, it could have catastrophic effects for mankind. Indeed right wing politicians and journalists, with some honourable exceptions, have always been in heated, ideological denial about Global Warming; and have written it off as an institutional con trick, to put extra financial burdens on industry and commerce, and to raise more money from the tax-payer.

And no doubt, despite all these recent, horrendous floods – and the ones inevitably to some – they will still be in denial; just as in earlier years King Canute expressed similar stubborn doubts and denials about the force of the tide. They are denying, for purely ideological reasons, that there is indeed an elephant in the room. Though some of them seem to be so rigid and unyielding in their opinions, that you could imagine that if the earth was visited by another Noah's Flood, they would dismiss it as a fluke of nature, and a one-off. Though I don’t think that the people in Cumbria, Lancashire and Yorkshire, who have seen their homes, business and cars flooded, would share their complacent opinions, and the false optimism that they spread about the weather. There may indeed come a time when the denial of Global Warming might be seen in the same negative light, as we now, in retrospect, view those who denied the menace of Nazism in the Nineteen Thirties, and vainly hoped, that through shoddy deals and appeasement, the threat posed by Hitler and the other Axis leaders would somehow fade away. You can only confront an actual menace if you acknowledge that it is there in the first place. Indeed the appeasers, who sought peace in our time, only emboldened and encouraged the very menace they sought to contain, and ensured that it would take a terrible world war to vanquish it. And that is what we must do with Global Warming, both on a national and an international level. Just as Nazism was confronted, and then defeated, only when the rest of the world woke up, and recognized the threat that it actually represented. Indeed it represents a challenge, as well as a threat; and it could bring the world, and even antagonist nations, together, in the common fight to combat it. The dark cloud of Global Warming could yet have a silver lining.

[acandidobserver-blog]

THE OLIGARCH AS POLITICIAN: Some thoughts on the Donald Trump election campaign

    The Trump phenomenon has once again shown that businessmen, corporate bosses and oligarchs don’t make good politicians. We saw that with Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, whose term at the top in Italian politics was mired by charges of corruption; and where he showed a total contempt for opposition politicians and examining magistrates; and did everything he could to avoid being brought to trail, and jailed, for illegal activities.

Donald Trump has run as an opportunist populist, ready to fly any kite or create any bogeyman, if it will garner headlines and airtime and galvanise the redneck vote.  He has played on fears and prejudices, and his campaign has been a sustained exercise in xenophobia.  He has, in the course of the campaign, offended almost everyone, and created one scapegoat after another in order to pin the blame on them for all America’s ills and woes. He has blamed the Chinese for destroying the US economy by dumping cheap goods on the market. He has described Mexican illegal migrants as being rapists and drugs dealers; and even made the incredible claim that he would, as President, build a huge wall to seal the border with Mexico. And that he would then charge the Mexicans for the cost of its construction.  He has even insulted women in the course of his tub thumping campaigning. Nothing seems to be off limits or beyond the pale. He even criticised fellow Republican, Senator John McCain, for being captured alive during the Vietnam War. Though as far as I know Donald Trump has no combat experience himself.  And now he has said that, in the wake of the recent murders in California, Muslims should be prevented from travelling to America. (He even justified that latter proposal by invoking the memory of the internment camps where Japanese-American citizens were detained doing World War Two; which is now, rightly looked back upon as a shameful episode in American history). Aside from all that he has made brash claims that he would revitalise the US economy and destroy Daesh. Though it remains an imponderable mystery, how he would be able to destroy Daesh, when he has – in seemingly pandering to the Israeli lobby and the Saudis - described the recent, welcome US rapprochement with Iran, an implacable enemy of Daesh, as being one of the worst deals in diplomatic history, that he would throw in the trashcan, on becoming President.

He seems to be a one man band, making policies up on the hoof, and shooting from the hip – and coming up with outrageous, over the top statements, that have drawn fire, not merely from American politicians, but across the world. Indeed one Democratic Presidential candidate has likened Trump’s election campaign to that of a fascist demagogue. Even fellow Republicans have criticised his intemperate language. And one of his Primary rivals, Jeb Bush, has said that he is unhinged. Others have labelled him as a narcissistic personality, who will say anything and jump on any bandwagon, to get a round of cheap applause. Even Benjamin Netanyahu, no slouch himself when it comes to bellicose rhetoric, has been critical of Trump; and he has indeed had to call off a visit to Israel that he had planned to make. It makes you wonder if he has any advisers or ‘wise’ counsel that he listens to, before coming out with the ludicrous statements he has made? Or is he is running his election campaign as he did his business empire, in a high handed and autocrat manner, where only one view and opinion counts, and where everyone else are so many hired hands, ciphers and yes-men. He has shown himself to have all the human sensitivity of a rhinoceros. And his campaigning, in all its lurid absurdity, has outdone the skills of the satirist and the lampooner.

Though what does work in his favour, despite his wild rhetoric and ready insults, is the fact that he is not a part of the Washington, Republican establishment – and that he is, as he has repeatedly said, self-funding and financing, and not in the pockets of the big corporations that back the other candidates.

He may have an outside chance of winning the Primaries and becoming the Republican Presidential candidate – though most pundits and commentators seem to rule out that possibility – but one suspects that if he did become the Republican Presidential candidate, the subsequent election could become almost like a rerun of the 1964 election, where Barry Goldwater, the Republican, was viewed to be such a dangerous, divisive, right-wing extremist, with his menacing Red-scare rhetoric, that he led the Republicans to one of the greatest defeats in their history. Indeed, had he, by some fluke of circumstances, been elected then, would the world be still around to day? It’s a sobering thought.  Indeed a Trump candidature would no doubt delight the Democrats, and their most likely candidate, Hilary Clinton.

[acandidobserver-blog]

ART NEEDS A CONTEXT

  Great artists and creators, just as great scientists and thinkers, don’t create themselves. They need a background, a framework of reference; a ground to stand on. Indeed Isaac Newton said that he could only see so far because he stood on the shoulders of giants. And in a similar vein the great Irish playwright J.M. Synge said that all art is collaboration.     If there had been no existing artistic tradition, going all the way back to Antiquity, there would have been no Raphael and no Michelangelo; indeed there would have been no Renaissance. The great flowering of the arts that took place in the Italian city states, such as Florence, at the time of those great artists, needed the tangible existence of past artistic achievements and accomplishments, in the shape of rediscovered sculpture and statuary of Ancient Greece and Roman, as the springboard from which to launch its own aesthetic and creative endeavours.

          Genius feeds off the past; indeed, often re-interprets it for its own ends. It acts and expresses itself within the artistic culture it inherits, and adds its own unique weight to the tradition the next generation will inherit. The culture he is born into is the very lifeblood the artist feeds upon. When all this is taken into account, the recent myth of the heroic avant-garde artist, spurning and rejecting all connection with the past and even his contemporaries, is a puerile, self-serving fantasy. Indeed, the cult of originality, as a primary end in itself, has led us down an aesthetic blind alley.

          As we have seen to our cost, any old tripe or sensationalist gimmickry can be seen, at least for a time, to be original; though, as with the formulaic stuff that Damien Hirst churns out, all too soon it becomes deadly boring and repetitive. Indeed, ironically, nothing now seems so of its time, tied to its age and period – mummified by the past, old fashioned and retrograde – as avant-garde art of previous decades.

[acandidobserver-blog]

BRITAIN GIVES THE GO AHEAD FOR BOMBING DAESH IN SYRIA

    Of course we have the same old schizophrenic Labour Party – the  Parliamentary Labour Party that is – when it comes to matters of defence and foreign affairs; as was exemplified in the recent debate on the floor of the House, by the absurd situation of Jeremy Corbyn making a speech critical of the bombing of Daesh, and then the shadow Foreign Minister, Hilary Benn, in summing up, making a barn-storming speech in which he literally praised the Cameron bombing policy to the heavens. And with many Labour MPs, in defiance of party policy, entering the same pro-war lobby, with the Tories. Which indeed enabled the Tories to win the vote, and thus to bomb Syria.

Of course it was an absolute disgrace for Cameron to label those who, out of conscience and principle, opposed the pro-bombing policy, as being pro-terrorist. And it was equally unconscionable of him not to apologise - not merely to the politicians, in all parties, he had insulted; but millions of people across the country who don’t agree with his policy – and withdraw that remark. Indeed it was a curiously intolerant, one might say even an undemocratic remark, when one considers that he was seeking to drum up support for a war against people, namely, Daesh, because of, amongst other things, their intolerant and undemocratic character. The Tory commentator Peter Osborne said that that remark of Cameron, and his adamant and foolish insistence on not apologising for that comment, lowered the tone of the entire debate in the House. He was asked time and time again, during that debate, to apologise for that insulting comment. But he instead displayed that Bullingdon Club arrogance and pig-headed stubbornness that are such marked features of his leadership; indeed of his character. Had he apologised early, and frankly admitted that those remarks were totally out of order and uncalled for, it would have lanced the boil, and that would have been the end of it. But he didn’t take that option. Not having the humility and grace, as a true statesman would have shown, to back down and apologise, made him look small and petty, not tough or decisive. You’d think that as a former PR man - his occupation before entering politics - he would have avoided that PR disaster he made.

The star of the hour as far as the press was concerned, was the Labour Foreign policy spokesperson, Hilary Benn, for his passionate pro-war speech, with its vivid condemnation of Daesh. And though whether, as Alex Salmond was later to say, it would have been enough to have his late father, Tony Benn, rolling in his grave, it was certainly a speech his dad would not have liked at all, and would have taken issue with. Indeed you could imagine Benn senior making a similar, impassioned, barn-storming speech in the House – on the other side of the argument, altogether, in opposition to war and bombing. It was a very impressive speech. But as the Labour Shadow Chancellor, John MacDonnell, reminded us, the speech that Tony Blair made in the House, in 2003, on the eve of the Iraq War, was also a bravura performance that had parliamentarians and media commentators in awe. But it was in defence and justification of one of the most disastrous foreign policy blunders (though perhaps blunder is too mild a term in that case, and something like ‘crime’, would be more appropriate) in British history. Indeed it is the view of many commentators and academics that the rise of Daesh, which was indeed born and nurtured in Iraq, was a direct consequence of the Bush-Blair war against, and occupation of that country. Politics speeches shouldn’t be judged on their eloquence and passion alone; as if the House was a theatre and the politicians so many actors. It will be the consequences of our policies, in Syria and the Middle East – for good or ill – which will be the judge and jury; not grand oratory in the chamber. And why did the Speaker allow such sustained and lengthy applause for that speech – in blatant breech of the etiquette of the House, that prohibits applause – when, sometime before, when the Scottish nationalists applauded a speech, he read them the riot act? That was also a case of blatant double standards.

People are rightly concerned – just as public opinion (after all our other disastrous and failed interventions, in Iraq and Libya) is divided down the middle, about the bombing policy – about the wider strategic objectives of our bombing campaign. It is the common consent that an air campaign alone, though it will do a lot of damage to Daesh, will not defeat it, and that forces on the ground will need to take back territory that have been occupied by that malign terrorist army. And Cameron’s glib and facile rhetoric that we can rely on an army of seventy thousand, moderate fighters, in the so called Free Syrian army, to accomplish that task, has been met with incredulity and disbelief by many politicians, commentators and academics. It has already been labelled in the press as a ‘Phantom Army’. (The Tory MP, and critic of the Cameron policy, Julian Lewis, compared them to the ‘dodgy dossier’ before the Iraq war, and described them as ‘Bogus Battalions’). A Tory member of the Parliamentary Armed Forces Committee has said that there are no moderates in the Syrian civil war. Indeed any war of this length, ferocity and barbarity – cynically egged on and encouraged, as it has been, by regional and international powers – will inevitably encourage extremism and radicalism, at the expense of moderation. Experts tell us that aside from Daesh, many of the other armed groups, such as the Al Nusra front, are also of a similar extremist, Jihadist and Wahhabi character. And that they are reactionary, anti-democratic, if not downright medievalist and obscurantist in nature. Having those people rule Syria in place of Daesh and Assad would be no victory at all for human rights, democracy, or any form of humane and coherent governance. Though it would undoubtedly hearten Saudi Arabia and various reactionary sheikdoms in the locality. There are countless scores of armed factions across that war-stricken country, many of which are at war with each other. (Indeed an attempt by the Americans, at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, to raise and train a so called moderate Syrian rebel army group, of a very modest size, proved an abysmal failure, when, after crossing the border into Syria, those who didn’t defect to the Jihadists and handed over their weapons, were speedily defeated in battle). The non-Daesh rebels don’t speak with one voice. They have distinct aims and objectives and have no centralised or coherent character. And to rely on these, as Cameron and his minister’s do, in their speeches and interviews, to fill any void left by Daesh, is to succumb to a fantasy, that would be almost laughable if it wasn’t so tragic. As all too often in our foreign policy, especially over recent decades, the grand rhetoric and the stirring phrases that we get from the politicians, and the actual facts on the ground, exist in two separate worlds. The one coherent and effective force against Daesh – aside from the army of Assad, which America and the West stubbornly, one might say, ideologically, refuse to recognize – are the Kurds; who have, with Western help, retaken towns and territory from Daesh. They have fought Daesh far more effectively and courageously than the Iraqi army, despite the huge numbers and hi tech American military equipment the Iraqi army had.  But the Kurds, while they are valiantly fighting Daesh, in some cases with female troops, are also being indiscriminately and cynically bombed by our so called, NATO ally, Turkey. Without Obama and Cameron raising a whimper of protest. Indeed some regard the Islamist Turkish President, Mr Erdogan, as a back stabbing, double-dealer, who has in actuality – by leaving his borders open for terrorists to freely cross into Syria, and allowing the sale of oil to boost the Daesh coffers, so that they can carry on the murder and mayhem – encouraged this whole Jihadist uprising in Syria. He has also, foolishly and dangerously, brought down a Russian bomber; one of whose pilots was shot dead, in violation of all norms of war, while parachuting to the ground, by so called moderate rebels that are backed by the West. He claimed that it had strayed over a tiny strip of land that abuts into Syrian territory; though the plane crashed to the ground five miles inside the Syrian border. Though some time earlier when the Syrians had brought down a Turkish jet that had strayed into its territory, he denounced the Assad regime and said that when planes, by chance, happen to stray into other nation’s territory it’s no big deal – as indeed most military commentators agree - and that there is no excuse for shooting them down.

So much for our military and political strategy in that part of the world. The seven cogent and coherent questions that Jeremy Corbyn asked the Prime Minister, on the floor of the House, about his policy, of bombing ISIS, have not been answered. All we have instead is bluster and bravado. Cameron’s policy – as it was in Libya; which he rarely mentions now; though he crowed about it at the time – is more of a hope and a wish, than a certainty.  

[acandidobserver-blog]

DOUBLE STANDARDS AND HYPOCRISY FROM AMERICA AND THE WEST ON SAUDI ARABIA AND HUMAN RIGHTS

  Forty seven people have been beheaded in Saudi Arabia, including a prominent Shia cleric, whose only crime was being critical of the Saudi state, and to campaign for fairer treatment for the oppressed Shia population in Saudi Arabia. And yet there has been, all too predictably, the most muted and weasel-worded response to this from America and the West; though in Iran, Iraq and other Shia heartlands, it has evoked a wave of fury and anger that many commentators have said will only further destabilise the already precarious situation in the Middle East. Indeed the former Liberal leader Lord Ashdown has said that the growing rift between the Sunni and Shia states could pose an even greater danger to world peace than Daesh.

Indeed the Saudis were warned by the Iranians that the execution of such a prominent cleric would have untold negative consequences. And they still went ahead and did it. Of course Saudi Arabia has an automatic get out of jail card from America and other leading Western nations, when it comes to matters of human rights and democracy. They will berate other countries at the drop of a hat, but when it comes to Saudi Arabia – which has one of the ghastliest human rights records in the world - they turn a blind eye, and instead they praise that corrupt and autocratic country as a steadfast friend and ally, and rub their hands in glee over the billions of dollars’ worth of arms that they regularly sell to that barbarous regime. Arms that are now being used by the Saudi government to pulverise the dirt poor country of Yemen and to terrorise its people, so that some discredited old dictator, booted out of office by his own people, can be returned back to power; and which is indeed empowering Al Qaeda in that country. Silence over this from the West, is not only disgraceful and immoral, but seeing that the Saudis are using sophisticated, Western military equipment – from the US, France, the UK, and other nations - to carry out these attacks, in which civilians have been killed and injured, it makes the West complicit in these crimes. And it also makes nonsense of the claims that the leading Western nations have sought the violent overthrow of the Assad regime, because of concerns over human rights and democracy, when they breezily tolerate this Saudi war of aggression.

A former British Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, interviewed on the BBC, also, all too typically, said that we should back pedal on this crisis, created by those executions, and not make a big deal out of it; and that we should try not to offend or upset the Saudi rulers. Western leaders, like Cameron, have tip-toed around this crisis, with bland and anodyne statements that the relevant nations should seek to reduce and lesson tensions. They haven’t condemned, as they should have, those show trials and executions, and the whole regional crisis caused by the judicial murder of that Shia cleric, which has exacerbated the already fraught, and in certain places, murderous, relations between the Sunnis and Shias, even further. In an indication of just how sycophantic the relationship of the UK is with Saudi Arabia, it has been reported that Saudi Arabia has been left out of a UK list of states to be challenged by UK diplomats for their use of the death penalty; despite the fact that there were 158 executions there last year. It is left out of the list while countries that have carried out only a fraction of that number of executions are included on that list. This is yet another blatant case of Saudi exceptionalism, on human rights.

That execution of the cleric could also scupper the tentative peace talks that are taking place, between the warring parties in Syria, to seek an end to that appalling conflict. Indeed the sabotage of any prospective peace deal could have been an objective which the Saudis had in mind all along; as the Saudis have expressed vehement hostility to the recent deal brokered by Washington, along with other relevant nations, and Iran, over the Iranian nuclear programme. A deal which has been described as a game-changer by many commenters - which could see the removal of sanctions against Iran; and indeed see that nation, which is an important regional player, being brought out of the cold, politically and economically. And Saudi anger has been echoed by hostile, if not bellicose comments on that deal, from Benjamin Netanyahu, and Donald Trump and others on the Republican right.

Imagine if things had happened the other way round, and a prominent Sunni cleric, respected in Saudi Arabia, had been put on trial, on trumped up charges, in Tehran, and then beheaded. The reaction from America and the West would not have been the bland and muted response we got to the Saudi execution. Iran would have been denounced from the rooftops as a barbarous, reactionary regime, a sponsor of terrorism and a destabilising force within the region. The West hardly lays a glove on Saudi Arabia, whatever it does. But, and particularly from America (though this recent tentative rapprochement with Iran which Obama has endorsed, may have opened the curtain on a more positive relationship in the future) we have had decades of what one can only call Iranophobia; with constant bile and vitriol directed against that nation and its rulers, ever since the Shah – who was a universally hated figure in Iran - was overthrown, and the Islamic-Republic was declared. And of course it reached the pitch of utter, bonkers hysteria, and untruth, during the lamentable George W. Bush regime, where Iran was arbitrarily bracketed together with Saddam's Iraq and North Korea, as being part of a bizarre ‘Axis of Evil.’ (Though why they would have wished to be in an alliance with Saddam Hussein, who unilaterally launched a murderous war against them, with covert Western support, is anyone’s guess).

America and the West as always, pick and choose, on the basis of geopolitics and self-interest, who are the villains and who are the good guys. (Look how Putin was fingered and blamed, by America, other Western leaders, and on-message right-wing journalists, for the crisis in Ukraine; while they ignored altogether the role which the Right-Sector neo-Fascists played, in Kiev, in bringing down the democratically elected government of Victor Yanukovych, which plunged that nation into strife and chaos).

The West’s previous actions, in toppling secular dictators like Saddam and Gadhafi, has only benefited the jihadists and the fanatics, like Daesh and the Al Nusra Front, which want to impose a Saudi style totalitarian theocracy across much of the Middle East and the Islamic world - where Shias, Moderate Sunnis, and Christians, would face either death, forced conversions or exile. Indeed had David Cameron and William Hague got their way a few years ago, we would have been directly involved in the Syrian civil war, as an active armed participant, effectively on the same side as Daesh and other such fanatical groups; with who knows what disastrous consequences for the region. Indeed we’d have helped empower, however unwittingly, the very same groups which view people in the West, as the recent terrorists outrages in Paris have shown, as being enemies who can be attacked and killed, with impunity.

There is of course a new King in Saudi Arabia. And he might have wanted to prove his credentials as a hard-line Wahhabi, by giving the go ahead for that execution. And for many of the other executions and controversial judicial decisions that have preceded it. Much as the new North Korean leader started his rule by executing his uncle and some top military officers. The salient difference is that North Korea is in the dog house as far as America and the West are concerned, while Saudi Arabia is praised to the heavens as an ally and a friend.

As an Iranian spokesperson has said, Saudi Arabia exports extremism abroad and clamps down on criticism at home. It helped to orchestrate the war against the Assad regime that has almost torn Syria apart, and indeed, it is engaged in a proxy war, in Arabia, against Shia Iran, for dominance of the region. The purist and intolerant Wahhabi ideology, which is the creed of Saudi Arabia, is one of the motivating forces of the fanatical jihadist terrorists who are on the march in Syria, Northern Iraq, parts of Libya, and even in areas of Afghanistan. Indeed you could say that Daesh is just Wahhabism on steroids. Indeed there isn’t a great deal of difference between the Daesh ideology, and the Saudi system. Saudi Arabia regularly beheads and even crucifies people, as well as carrying out other barbarous punishments such as amputations and floggings; and it ruthlessly clamps down on dissent and criticism. It doesn’t allow expats, Christians and others, to practise their faith. And it funds religious madrassas around the world, that brainwash millions into such a narrow and fanatical version of Islam - with a concomitant enmity towards, if not downright loathing and distrust of, other creeds and religions - that many of those subject to that conditioning are almost on the conveyor belt to terrorism as soon as they get out of the other end. Though to be fair, Hilary Clinton, in one of her campaign speeches did warn about the malign and corrosive influence of these Saudi funded Madrasses.  It is about time that the benighted politicians of the West, confronted the Saudi state, over these matters, rather than hosing it down with unctuous and deceitful praise and flattery. The Saudis may, in the public statements of their politicians and diplomats, say that they are on board with the West in the fight against Daesh; but their activities, both within and without their borders, don’t quite live up to their words. There is more than a touch of appeasement in the West’s relationship with the Saudi regime. Like the fascists regimes of the Thirties and Forties or the old Soviet Union, Saudi Arabia is an ideological state. And it will, and it does, use all the means at its disposal, including war and aggression, to further the reach and influence of its narrow, Wahhabi ideology. And unfortunately for all of us, it has its gullible partners and useful idiots in the West – the American Congress, Cameron, Hollande and others – to help further its cause, to everyone’s detriment. And only an optimist would presume that these recent events will make any difference to that relationship.

[acandidobserver-blog]

THE FARCE OF POST-BREXIT POLITICS

    The Brexit has already had negative economic consequences. The Pound has fallen in value, business investment – in this now uncertain environment – is down, our credit rating has dropped, and there is even speculation that some businesses might move out of the UK altogether, in order to get readier access to the European market. We are in dangerous, unchartered territory, with an uncertain future ahead of us; and we have years of torturous negotiations with the EU to look forward to, in order to try to forge some kind of new relationship between them and us, which could create even further instability. (And the unpleasant, gloating rant that Farage made in the EU Parliament isn’t going to help our negotiating stance at all).  It was therefore up to people like Michael Gove and Boris Johnson, who got us into this predicament, to spell out to a confused, and even fearful populace, what they intend to do in these new circumstances, and what kind of deal they are going to make with the EU, in order to bring about some kind of stability. The ball is in their court.

And yet the people who brought it about are already falling out with each other, like bandits bumping each other off over the spoils of a robbery, as they jockey for position in the vacuum left by the imminent resignation of Cameron. In the sudden, unexpected volte-face that Gove has made, in which he said that Johnson was unfit to take over the reins of power, we’ve just witnessed one of the most lethal political assassinations since Brutus knifed Caesar on the floor of the Senate. Mr Gove not only rubbished Johnson, who he had worked hand in glove with on the Brexit campaign – he also announced that he would be a candidate in the contest to be the Prime Minister; though he has stated repeatedly that he doesn’t want the job, in any circumstances, and wasn’t up to it. And repeated press reports said that he was content merely to be the campaign manager in Mr Johnson’s election campaign. Mr Johnson was given word of this momentous decision, only minutes before he was to make a statement announcing he was running to be Prime Minister. It clearly knocked the wind out of his sails, as he then told an eager  gathering of his supporters, who were hyped up and expectant to the hear the news that he was declaring his candidacy, that he was pulling out of the race. The look on Nadine Dorres’s face at that sudden, unexpected announcement was priceless, and she was utterly deflated and almost in tears as a strange, subdued silence fell over a chamber that should have reverberated with applause and cheers. It was one of the most bizarre anti-climaxes in recent politics.

Johnson recently wrote a book about a politician he greatly admires: Winston Churchill. But his decision to throw in the towel at the last minute, and run for the exit door, didn’t show any kind of Churchillian spirit at all. He could have still run in the race, despite Gove’s last minute chicanery; but he chose not to. And that doesn’t reflect well upon him. Especially when one considers that his prominent role in the referendum campaign, and his cheeky chappie popularity with many members of the public, may well have swung that vote in favour of the No camp.

Cameron himself is probably having a laugh at all these unseemly discords and fall outs between the Brexiteers. Though of course he must take significant responsibility for this whole debacle. Having this referendum – for what many perceive to be internal, party reasons – was his idea. And then he conducted a second rate campaign, in support of the Remain side, which has prompted a far earlier exit from Number Ten than he had in mind.

Gove has said that it is only in recent days that he realised that Johnson didn’t have what it takes to be a credible Prime Minister. But he has known this guy for twenty years; he has campaigned with him for months for a No vote in the referendum. Its stretches credulity to believe that only now, on the eve of the contest to elect the new Prime Minister, have the scales fallen from his eyes and he as at last seen the light.

Though one thing that Gove was right about, was that Johnson is a half-hearted Brexiteer. Indeed that was clear from his backtracking in his recent Telegraph article. He was never a committed, ideological Outer, like Ian Duncan Smith. And if, as many believe, he joined the Out campaign, for purely opportunistic reasons, to oust Cameron and to claim the Tory crown for himself, then he is a shameless political conman on a par with Jeffrey Archer. Though all his scheming and manoeuvring have been blown out of the water by Gove’s sudden gambit; and all his lofty ambitions seem to be floating down to earth like a punctured barrage balloon.

It’s hardly surprising that the Tory grandee and Europhile, Michael Heseltine, has compared Boris Johnson to a general who has marched his men, in battle gear towards the enemy, only to turn on his heels and flee from the field before the battle began.

Gove has told us, despite all his previous statements to the contrary, that Johnson isn’t up to the job. But is Gove up to the job? He has proved to be a dodgy and unreliable character. Telling us he supported Boris, and then stabbing him the back and perhaps destroying his political career altogether. He said that he would write in his own blood that he would never run to be the Prime Minister; and now he has done precisely that. And during the referendum campaign he came out with the prosperous claim that leaving the EU would enable the government to spend an extra 350 million quid a week on the NHS. Though Nigel Farage said that such a claim was absurd and undeliverable. Indeed we’re heard precious little about it since. And I suspect we will hear very little of it in the future, since it has served its purpose as propaganda in the referendum campaign. Indeed if the economy tanks as a result of the Brexit, we might have hardly any extra money left to spend on anything, let alone the NHS. Indeed the Tory MP Sarah Wollaston –herself a former GP – was so incensed by that preposterous claim, that she jumped ship from the Out to the Remain campaign, as a consequence.

Mr Gove finished off Cameron’s Premiership, as a result of the referendum vote; and he has now got rid of his old buddy, Boris Johnson as well. On the basis of Gove’s previous claims, can you believe anything he says? And will any colleague trust him in the future. Indeed to knife a colleague, at literally the last minute, in the way he did, is pretty low and mean stuff, even in the dodgy world of politics.

A sinister, extra dimension to all these shenanigans was the email sent to Mr Gove from his wife, the journalist Sarah Vine, in which she stated that Johnson wasn’t to be trusted, and that Paul Dacre, the owner of the Mail, and Rupert Murdoch, had their doubts about Johnson; with the implication that Gove was a more reliable Brexiteer. Mr Gove, before entering politics, was a journalist on the Times. He has taken Murdoch’s shilling. And there will, in the light of that email, be the suspicion that he has made that extraordinary announcement, giving Johnson the kybosh - and telling the media that he now intended, despite all his previous assurances, to campaign to be Prime Minister – because of pressure from those powerful media Moghuls.  Is he allowing his loyalty to Murdoch, his former boss, to trump his loyalty to his old friend, and also to prompt him to run for the top job in politics? If there was any truth to those suspicions, it could reignite old fears that the mighty press barons have more influence over events than is healthy for a functioning democracy, and are pulling the strings behind the scenes; and that the Tory Party, under such influence, could become almost a branch office of News International. Indeed if the urgings of these News tycoons did prompt all this, then how can we be sure that he wouldn’t become a mere compliant catspaw for these same media barons, from inside Number Ten? One suspects that Gove’s treachery to a colleague will not afford him much credit in the contest to be Prime Minister. Indeed it will be ironic if, as a consequence of all these recriminations and back stabbings amongst the Brexiteers, someone in the Remain camp, like Theresa May – though she is clearly lukewarm in her pro EU tendencies, and didn’t play any distinctive role in that referendum campaign – was to win the contest to be Premier, leaving the Brexiteers to skulk in the background and lick their wounds. Even the Mail – which vociferously campaigned for the No Camp – has given its support to Mrs May, to be the next Premier.

The recent events in the Tory Party, and the Labour Party for that matter, have been like a cross between a Shakespeare drama and a Brian Rix farce. We have a lame duck Prime Minister in office. We have a Tory Party in disarray and a Labour Party in meltdown – with a virtual civil war between the Parliamentary Party and the Party membership – when we are facing the biggest constitutional and perhaps economic crisis, of modern times. If things get worse, then the heroes of the Brexit campaign, who were cheered to the rafters by their own supporters, and fawned over by their friends in the press, might be the villains of the future, who will bear the responsibility and take the rap for the consequences of their own actions.    

[acandidobserver-blog]

LESSONS FROM THE PARIS MASSACRE

   Everyone – except the people responsible, and the God fathers of the ISIS terror movement – has been outraged by the terrible terrorist attacks in Paris, with the large toll of dead and injured. However, if the  mayhem and bloodshed we have seen in Paris doesn’t cause a radical change of policy, on the part of France, and other leading Western nations, towards the Middle East, then these people may well have died in vain; and we will have more and similar outrages in various Western countries in the future.

In our foreign police we should stop listening to right-wing NeoCon warmongers like Senator McCain. His solution to every crisis is force and warfare, rather than diplomacy and negotiations; from the Middle East to the Ukraine. And Europe and the EU just seem to tag along, will-nilly, like a flock of sheep. Someone said of him that the never saw a war that he didn’t like. And if we listen to people like him – and there are people of similar views in the Tory Party, and on the right-wing, Atlanticist wing of the Labour Party and in the Murdoch Press;  – we will have war and conflict on the earth from now till doomsday. When we need, in these dark times, politicians of the calibre of Winston Churchill, General De Gaulle and Willy Brandt, we have ended up with David Cameron, Angela Merkel and Francoise Hollande. A political B-Team if ever there was one.

It's all very well President Hollande stating that he has declared war on ISIS. But his policies of removing Assad, come hell or high water, has helped to prolong and intensify the terrible war in Syria. Indeed if America and the West had been as keen on fighting ISIS as they were on removing Assad, it would probably have been defeated and eradicated by now. When or if ISIS is defeated I think it will be found that it had been tooled up with a whole armoury of American and Western weaponry. And of course the war has created a refugee crisis across the Middle East and Europe, of a Biblical scale. We have helped to create a Frankenstein Monster – which only believes in death, torture, genocide, destruction and Totalitarian intolerance – that has now turned against us.

ISIS are the new Nazis; and unlike Assad they pose a real threat to the West – as they do to Christians, Shi-ites and moderate Muslims in the Middle West. And just as in the Second World War, all the Allied powers, whatever their political disagreements and mutual suspicions, came together to defeat the malign menace of Hitler and the Nazi Party; we should be allies with all those fighting ISIS, including Russia and Iran. Or will, as before, pig-headed political stupidity and false pride stand in the way of common sense.

By stoking up and egging on the War in Syria – on top of the disastrous Iraq War, from which the ISIS phenomenon grew – we have been literally arming and emboldening our own enemies. As well as creating a Fifth Column of ISIS terrorists in Western nations, who are all too willing and eager, giving the opportunity, to carry out similar atrocities. And of course the ISIS terrorists and their sympathisers will regard the outrages in Paris as a huge propaganda coup; to hearten their foot soldiers and affiliates alike. 

[acandidobserver-blog]

ART NEEDS A CONTEXT

  Great artists and creators, just as great scientists and thinkers, don’t create themselves. They need a background, a framework of reference; a ground to stand on. Indeed Isaac Newton said that he could only see so far because he stood on the shoulders of giants. And in a similar vein the great Irish playwright J.M. Synge said that all art is collaboration.     If there had been no existing artistic tradition, going all the way back to Antiquity, there would have been no Raphael and no Michelangelo; indeed there would have been no Renaissance. The great flowering of the arts that took place in the Italian city states, such as Florence, at the time of those great artists, needed the tangible existence of past artistic achievements and accomplishments, in the shape of rediscovered sculpture and statuary of Ancient Greece and Roman, as the springboard from which to launch its own aesthetic and creative endeavours.

Genius feeds off the past; indeed, often re-interprets it for its own ends. It acts and expresses itself within the artistic culture it inherits, and adds its own unique weight to the tradition the next generation will inherit. The culture he is born into is the very lifeblood the artist feeds upon. When all this is taken into account, the recent myth of the heroic avant-garde artist, spurning and rejecting all connection with the past and even his contemporaries, is a puerile, self-serving fantasy. Indeed, the cult of originality, as a primary end in itself, has led us down an aesthetic blind alley.

As we have seen to our cost, any old tripe or sensationalist gimmickry can be seen, at least for a time, to be original; though, as with the formulaic stuff that Damien Hirst churns out, it all too soon it becomes deadly boring and repetitive. Indeed, ironically, nothing now seems so of its time, tied to its age and period – mummified by the past, old fashioned and retrograde – as avant-garde art of previous decades.

[acandidobserver-blog]

LESSONS FROM THE MASSACRE IN PARIS

  LESSONS FROM THE PARIS MASSACRE

    Everyone – except the people responsible, and the God fathers of the ISIS terror movement – has been outraged by the terrible terrorist attacks in Paris, with the large toll of dead and injured. However, if the  mayhem and bloodshed we have seen in Paris doesn’t cause a radical change of policy, on the part of France, and other leading Western nations, towards the Middle East, then these people may well have died in vain; and we will have more and similar outrages in various Western countries in the future.

It’s all very well President Hollande stating that he has declared war on ISIS. But his policies of removing Assad, come hell or high water, has helped to prolong and intensify the terrible war in Syria. Indeed if the West had been as keen on fighting ISIS as they were on removing Assad, it would probably have been defeated and eradicated by now. When or if ISIS is defeated I think it will be found that it had been tooled up with a whole armoury of Western weaponry. Much of it no doubt intended for the so called moderate opposition to Assad; but which has inevitably made its way into the ISIS camp (and to people of a similar radical ideology) because they are the most ruthless, fanatical and the largest of the opposition forces, who have made war upon rival opposition groups as well as the Assad regime. And of course the war has created a refugee crisis across the Middle East and Europe, of a Biblical scale. We have helped to create a Frankenstein Monster – which only believes in death, torture, genocide, destruction and Totalitarian intolerance – that has now turned against us.

ISIS are the new Nazis; and unlike Assad they pose a real threat to the West – as they do to Christians, Shi-ites and moderate Muslims in the Middle West. And just as in the Second World War, all the Allied powers, whatever their political disagreements and mutual suspicions, came together to defeat the malign menace of Hitler and the Nazi Party; we should be allies with all those fighting ISIS, including Russia and Iran. Or will, as before, pig-headed political stupidity and false pride stand in the way of common sense.

By stoking up and egging on the War in Syria – on top of the disastrous Iraq War, from which the ISIS phenomenon grew – we have been in effect arming and emboldening our own enemies. As well as creating a Fifth Column of ISIS terrorists in Western nations, who are all too willing and eager, giving the opportunity, to carry out similar atrocities. And of course the ISIS terrorists and their sympathisers will regard the outrages in Paris as a huge propaganda coup; to hearten their foot soldiers and affiliates alike. 

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WHAT IS THE POINT OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS

WHAT IS THE POINTOF NUCLEAR WEAPONS?

  Jeremy Corbyn, the new leader of the Labour Party, has been criticised – by fellow politicians, by journalists and pundits, and even by the head of the UK armed forces, General Sir Nicholas Houghton – for the statement that he made, that if he became the Prime Minister he could see no circumstances in which he would authorise the use of nuclear weapons. Though many have criticised him, there are others – such as the Tory MP, Crispin Blunt - who have agreed with Corbyn; and indeed who have questioned the very existence and the purpose of nuclear weapons. Considering that the nuclear weapon has not been used, thankfully, since the end of the Second World War, one is tempted to ask what is the use of this weapon at all. (Though of course if ever used on a large scale, and we came perilously close to that at the height of the Cuba missile crisis, it would probably be the end of mankind. The other time that they were close to being used was when, during the Korean War, General Macarthur, without any endorsement or permission from the politicians in Washington, threatened to use Nuclear weapons against Chinese cities. A prospect that the UK leader at the time, Clement Atlee, found so alarming, that he hastily flew over to Washington, for urgent talks with President Truman on that very issue. And eventually, to much relief, Truman relived Macarthur of command of the forces in the Korean theatre, and retired from the army). Not only have nuclear weapons not been used, they haven’t stopped or deterred any of the myriad of armed conflicts, all around the world, that we have had, and are still having, since the end of World War Two. The Nuclear bomb didn’t stop the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in New York; it didn’t stop or deter the Taliban and Al Qaeda in their aggressive, terrorist actions - including against American and Western military personnel - and it hasn’t and it won’t stop or deter one ISIS fanatic from carrying out a terrorist outrage. So what is the use of this weapon – which costs a fortune to build and maintain (indeed the tens of billions it will take to update the Trident missile system, and its submarine carriers in the UK, would deny the rest of the armed forces much needed money and resources to update and modernise their equipment) – which hasn’t been used, and one could almost say, which can’t be used, by any individual with a shred of sanity or humanity left, because of the dreadful, ongoing consequences of such a ghastly eventuality? ISIS, and other such malign groupings, will only be defeated by conventional armaments, and boots on the ground, not by lethal mushroom clouds raining down radiation upon the planet. Indeed perhaps one of the reasons nuclear weapons have never been used since the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – despite political and military threats and bluster we have had on occasion – is that even the most coldblooded and cynical politician (and we have had a number of those over the years: East and West) must know, that if he ever used such weapons, under almost any circumstances – and especially upon a large urban population – he would go down in history as another Hitler; and be damned for ever in the eyes of mankind. Indeed the nation that ever dared to use such weapons would too be damned in the eyes of the world; and whatever temporary benefits they might make, or think they might make, by their use, would be by far outweighed by the damage that would be done – not just in terms of the huge loss in human life, the radiation poisoning and contamination, and the massive material devastation – but to the reputation and standing of the nation which dared to do such a thing. Indeed it would be turned into a pariah state, that would be shunned by the rest of the world. The nuclear bomb is more of a sinister status symbol – even a bizarre icon of national machismo – than an actual weapon that can be used, or that can even deter war and aggression.

[acandidobserver-blog]

IS THE UK BEING RUN BY A BULLINGDON CLUB MAFIA We know that the Bullingdon Club has been, and probably still is, a pretty nasty outfit of young, rich upper class hooligans, who have gone in for noisy, drunken benders, trashing restaurants, debagging waiters and squirting soda siphons at bystanders. But are they now literally running the country? We know that hugely influential political figures such as David Cameron, George Osborne and Boris Johnson were members of that club; along with many other people who have gone on to high powered careers in commerce and finance, etc. Have these people been secretly networking together and scratching each other’s backs, to enhance each other’s careers in journalism and politics. Though the Tory financier and bankroller, Lord Ashcroft, who has furnished these revelations about Cameron's youthful shenanigans, doesn’t himself come out smelling of roses. It is seen by many as an act of vengeance on his part, for failing to wangle a top political job from Cameron, following the last election. If he got the job, he wouldn’t have spilled the beans, and people wouldn’t be reading about these revelations about the PM and the racy set he used to hang around with.

[acandidobserver-blog]

HUMOUR AND FANATICISM

   Some people, especially in the political and ideological spheres, really do deserve laughing it. Otherwise, if they were ever to have power or even influence, it would be no laughing matter for the rest of us. Humour is the necessary antidote to fanaticism, ideological intolerance, single issue orthodoxies, conspiracy theories, and collective delusions, which have arisen from time to time – particularly during periods of economic and social fragility – to hold mankind in thrall.

It is indeed often at times of economic and political uncertainty - such as, unfortunately, the period we are now living through, following the banking crash – when fanaticism and intolerance can come to the fore. We see this with the rise of reactionary, extremist and xenophobic parties in some of the Southern European countries – such as the Golden Dawn Party in Greece - that have been so badly affected by the crisis in the Euro Zone. Indeed we have seen something of a minor renascence in neo-Nazi ideology. Parties have emerged from relative obscurity, that deliberately blame and scapegoat immigrant communities and minorities for all the ills of society; and which try to pin on them the responsibility for a crisis that was generated, not by those targeted groups, but by the existing economic and political system.

Indeed it is highly probable that Hitler would never have come to power, and swept away the democrat Weimar Republic, if Germany in the late Twenties and early Thirties had not been hit so hard by the world economic recession that followed the Wall Street Crash in 1929. Indeed the fortunes of the National Socialist Party were mightily accelerated during that period, when it leapt from being a marginal, almost fringe party, to a serious contender for power. It was a time of course when faith in the existing parties and political structures took a nose dive and a desperate public, many of whom were unemployed, were vulnerable to the appeal of deceitful propaganda and simplistic, black and white solutions, to complex social and political problems. Indeed to ideas that might have been laughed to scorn and personalities that might have been dismissed as cranks and oddballs, in other, more prosperous and settled circumstances. Hitler’s fanatical and malign ideology, that scapegoated Jews, Gypsies, Blacks and others – and that elevated some entirely mythical Aryan race to superman status – could well have been subject to ridicule and derision, and left to flounder on the lunatic fringe, in other, more benign circumstances – rather than going on to create a totalitarian state, to carry out the Holocaust and plunge the world into a terrible war

On the subject of totalitarianism, and its inherent antipathy to humour, George Orwell once wrote, in one of his essays, that the goosestep – which, though first used in the old Prussian state, we now associate with military ceremonial in totalitarian countries - could not be used in England, because the people in the street would laugh. And that it can only be used in countries where the common people dare not laugh at the army.

Of course all the restrictions in Nazi Germany against free expression – with the ominous and sobering reality of the Gestapo and the concentration camp system lurking in the background to reinforce the censorship – didn’t prevent people in foreign nations from having a go at the Fuhrer. People such as the brilliant cartoonist David Low, and Charlie Chaplin, in his famous movie The Great Dictator, took Hitler to task in ways that wasn’t possible for those living in the fatherland – whatever they actually thought of him and his regime.

All fanaticisms – whether fascist, communistic, religious, or even free market fundamentalism – are hostile to humour and comedy, as they are to free speech in general. One doubts if there would be much room for humourists, comedians, satirists and mimics, in the grisly totalitarian theocracy which members of ISIS, Al Qaeda and other such fundamentalist and terrorist groups would like to create. The comedian could well be an endangered species in such a ghastly society. Indeed one can’t recall Bin Laden cracking many jokes. The political or religious fanatic believes he is helping to create a pristine, perfect society, beyond error or reproach. A society which cannot be improved upon, and in which criticism isn’t welcomed. In such a society - where all contrary views, beliefs and opinions, are not only wrong, but also dangerous, and sacrilegious; and indeed criminal in nature – the place of humour and wit would be very uncertain and perilous.

Indeed being a humourist in a totalitarian state is in itself a rather precarious and even potentially perilous occupation. I’ve only recently read an article in a newspaper about a comedian in North Korea who has been sentenced to six months hard labour down a mine for telling a risqué joke at some function. And this is the second such sentence that person has received. It seems that being a comedian in such an authoritarian state must be like being a medieval court jester to some prickly and suspicious monarch - who might laugh one minute and order your head to be chopped off the next.

The fanatic, the zealot, and the single-issue obsessive, only accepts   one side, one interpretation, of life. Humour, by contrast, embraces all aspects of life and humanity; including human flaws and weaknesses. It dares to say that the King has no clothes, when all the cringing courtiers and servile hangers on have deluded themselves into the opposite view. That is why humour is so necessary, to deflate pomposity, pride, arrogance, and hubris; which, as we have seen all too clearly from history - and as we are seeing now, all too graphically in Middle-East - can cause destruction and havoc if allowed to go unchecked.

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