The Dark Right

Not since the grim 1930s have we seen such a rise of the Far Right in politics around the world. Black shirts have been replaced by national flags in European countries, and by assault rifles and military clothing in America.

All the usual signs are there. Demonizing minorities and immigrants. Blaming foreigners for the pandemic and natural disasters. Denying the past, flocking to fundamentalist Christianity and ultra-orthodox Catholicism. Attacking other religions and customs as ancient and barbaric, and calling on past glories as justification for new horrors.

This is more than the Far Right though, this is the Dark Right. The Right that rules without conscience or caring, the Deep Right that wants a return to old values and restriction of personal freedoms. Workers with no contracts on poor wages, and immigrants driven out, or ‘sent home’. The Right that asserts that everyone should fend for themselves, pay their own way, or just fall by the wayside.

It is building everywhere, and no longer hiding its intentions or policies. It sneers at ‘ordinary’ people, and laughs at the distress of those less able to cope. It seeks strong leaders; father figures, strong men who say what they think without reserve, and the women who are content to play a traditional role in the background.

You only have to read a history book to see what will happen.

Dark times are ahead.

Second Wave: Or Still The First?

Covid-19 is still making the news. A huge percentage of the British population is enduring a second lockdown, and President Trump has gone into hospital for treatment.

They are now talking up the ‘second wave’. Is it any wonder, when the bars and pubs opened here, and we were treated to videos of groups of (mainly young) people enjoying parties and fun-filled gatherings? Or when Mr Trump thought it was okay to have a presentation in the Rose Garden with nobody wearing masks, and all of the cuddling or chatting close together. Or when the schools were forced back, resulting in large numbers of infections almost immediately.

Then we have the various conspiracy theorists who claim it doesn’t exist, or if it does, it is not that serious. Yes, more people still die from cancer, heart attacks, and even road fatalaties all over the world. But is this a reason to blatantly ignore the advice of medical professionals, or to overturn the hard work of so many medical staff since January?

I doubt this is a second wave, as the first wave never went away. We now have the winter flu season to deal with, when so many people will have the symptoms associated with Covid-19. That will mean more demand for testing, and possibly more deaths being counted as Coronavirus related.

So please stay safe. Carry on abiding by the commonsense rules not to spread the virus, or contract it. And above all, don’t believe it isn’t real.

(This post was created using the new block Editor. I was unable to work out how to insert any images, but wil use this blog to try to learn how to use this pesky, hateful thing!)

UPDATE: Royal News Blackout

beetleypete

Following my posts on here and on my other blog https://redflagflying.wordpress.com/ yesterday, Fraggle did some digging in the You Tube comments, and discovered that the video was filmed in 2018. Before posting yesterday, I watched numerous clips on Twitter, including one with a date/timer running on the screen. I didn’t use that one, as it was so shaky.

So it would seem likely that the date I saw was ‘inserted’, and the demonstration mentioned happened two years ago when Prince Andrew was initially implicated in the Epstein scandal.

Thanks to Fraggle for discovering this, and I wanted everyone to know.
This will be reblogged on my other blog too.

Of course, that changes nothing about Andrew’s refusal to testify, or to accept extradition to America. Or his well-documented friendship with Epstein and his visits to parties at Epstein’s house where young girls were flown in for the use of guests.

View original post 13 more words

Royal News Blackout

*** UPDATE ***

Please see Fraggle’s comment below. This clip is supposedly from 2018 according to comment by those who posted it, and not yesterday.

Unless you have seen it featured on Twitter, you will be unaware of a loud protest by a fair-sized crowd outside Buckingham Palace in London today.

This is a protest against Prince Andrew’s involvement in the trafficking of underage girls for sex, part of the Epstein scandal in America. The Prince has also declined to appear in court in America, where he might face charges of sex with underage girls at the Epstein mansion.

Not that Andrew is in the palace. The Queen isn’t there either, and has decided ‘not to return for some time’. I doubt anyone is in there, except the poorly-paid staff, and royal lackeys who keep the whole thing going at the taxpayer’s expense.

That in itself is disturbing enough, the fact that Royal privilege means he is exempt from being extradited to America to give evidence. He cannot be arrested by US Federal agents in Britain on an international warrant, for the same reason. This is an even bigger deal than Diplomatic Privilege, which can be revoked.

Of greater concern to me, is today’s event has NOT been mentioned on any news broadcast, by any of the various news channels operating in the UK.

The people working for those companies, and they call themselves ‘journalists and reporters’, should hang their heads in shame.

Much is written about Fake News these days, but this is the reality of Real News going unreported, on the instructions of the rich and privileged who run everything in this country, even the information supply.

Now not only can we no longer believe what we are told is the news, we are deemed unfit to be told what is happening in front of our own eyes.

Has It Come To This?

For all of my life, America has considered itself to be the Cradle of Democracy. The Land of The Free, where free speech is ingrained in the Constitution, and even the right to own and carry lethal weapons is supported by ancient rights.

Over the years, harsh treatment of Civil Rights protestors made the news, as did the violent reaction to Vietnam War protestors at times.

But the recent actions of the authorities in Portland has seen a worrying turn of events. Federal officers wearing Army uniforms and carrying Army equipment have arrived in the city to break up protests there. This is against the wishes of the city’s mayor, who did not ask for assistance.

These ‘Feds’ are using unmarked vehicles, wearing no identity tags or serial numbers. They are dragging protestors off the street and taking them away in those same unmarked vehicles. They are not reading them their rights and arresting them, and in many cases they are beating them hard with clubs, or using pepper spray on them.

I am not an American, and I do not know everything there is to know about the actions of the demonstrators.

But this cannot be right. Not anywhere, and certainly not in ‘The Cradle of Democracy’. Those agents involved are little more than ‘Trump’s Stormtroopers’, and if this was happening in Britain, France, or a hundred other countries, the rest of the world would be calling for sanctions to make it stop.

Only 41

The government here is celebrating. Only 41 deaths from coronavirus notified in a 24-hour period. That confirms their intention to reopen the hospitality sector, and reduce the supposedly ‘safe distance’ from 2 metres to 1 very soon.

Only 41! Hurrah!

Think about that 41. Those people had husbands, wives, children. Relatives including aunts, uncles, and cousins. They had work colleagues, as well as lifelong friends. For every one of those 41, you can add at least 100 people who will be affected by their death, for the rest of their lives.

So to my mind, that should read 4,100, not 41.

And if you see it the same way as I do, you will surely agree.

41 is still too many.

Eliminating Inconvenient History.

Recent events in America have unleashed a storm of protest against the treatment of black people all over the world. Not just current treatment, or the recent actions of the Police and other authorities, but historical ones too. This is understandable, and it has been suggested to me that the George Floyd incident was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

In the last week, numerous corporations and organisations have felt it necessary to make public statements and even apologies on the issues of Black Lives Matter, and the long history of institutional racism in the western world. Laudable perhaps, and possibly also necessary for marketing purposes and attracting customers in future. Both Nike and Apple have been involved, ignoring the fact that they are happy to exploit Asian labour by paying the workers in countries like China a pittance for long hours, compared to salaries in the West. Is that not also a form of racism, and one that is acceptable to most customers who buy i-phones, or the latest trendy trainers?

So if this is just the beginning, then where does it end?

Pulling down and defacing statues has caught on quickly, following on from the same thing happening to Confederate Statues and war graves in America a couple of years ago, as well as this week. One commemorating an 18th century slave trader in Bristol was thrown into the water, and those in honour of Cecil Rhodes and Churchill in London were defaced last weekend. Having statues that supposedly honour such people (Churchill was a well-known racist) is questionable, I agree. But is it not better to learn from their mistakes in the past, and allow them to remain to remind us?

I would suggest it is.

Because when you begin to eliminate history, you start to re-write it. You conveniently forget that African and Arab trade slavers existed long before any white men became involved with them. In fact, many still exist in some countries today. I don’t see anyone protesting about that history, or those current events. What about the Egyptian and Roman empires? Both were built on slavery, and expanded by the use of slaves. Should we pull down The Forum in Rome? Demolish The Coliseum? Have any of those demonstrators pulling down statues ever enjoyed a holiday to Rome, or Egypt?

The Pyramids are said to be one of the seven wonders of the world. Mausoleums to pharoahs, built on the blood and sweat of countless slaves. We know that, we learn about that, and when we go to look at them, we appreciate that. Let’s blow them up though, because surely they commemorate cruelty and slavery? Let us topple the statues to Tiberius and Caligula, and cast them into the Tiber. If it’s good enough for one slave empire, why not for all of them?

How far back is far enough?

And what about churches, and western religions? Most built with the huge wealth of countries who dealt in slavery, or stole natural resources like gold from countries in South and Central America. They killed the people there that opposed them, (who were also slavers of course) before enslaving others to work in their mines and goldfields. The wealth generated was given in large part to the Catholic Church, who actively used to oversee all those operations on the pretext of bringing religion to heathens. So when we admire European cathedrals, and the amazing statues and relics stored within, let’s not forget where the money came from. Exploitation, and slavery.

Time to pull them down perhaps?

On the news today, I heard that the film ‘Gone With The Wind’ is no longer to be allowed to be shown on television in Britain. How long before they start banning others? What about all those Hollywood epics about Egypt? And the films ‘Young Winston’, or ‘The Darkest Hour’? They are about Churchill, so let’s ban those too. And what about books? How long before Margaret Mitchell’s book of ‘Gone With The Wind’ is banned too? She got an award for that, so let’s take that back hile we are at it. Then it would seem logical to ban ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’, ‘Huckleberry Finn’, and any historical book that has a contemporary view on black people that has since been identified as racist?

An Asian reporter on BBC News declared this morning that he feels ‘uncomfortable’ about reading the ‘Tintin’ comic books with his young son, due to the way some characters are portrayed. Save his embarrassment, just ban them. Then everyone can start to forget history, and begin to change the facts to suit this new and different agenda.

Fortunately for me, I will likely be dead before all that has happened.

How anti-China stories are concocted: On bio-chemical weapons

China has been accused of being responsible for the outbreak of Covid-19. I thought for a long time that the proximity of biological research laboratories to Wuhan was no coincidence. This article offers a very different theory, and is worth reading.

My American Friends: A Question

I hold no brief for any side in American politics, as I generally consider the Republicans and Democrats to be as bad as each other when it comes to looking out for the interests of big business over the welfare of the average American. But the recent behaviour of President Trump has me confused as to how he has been allowed to remain in office, without being removed by anyone with an iota of commonsense.

However, I know that almost 50 % of Americans still support him, and many even consider that his handling of the Covid-19 crisis has ‘gone well’.

This is a man who has suggested using anti-malarial drugs, because he has financial connections to the company that makes them. He has gone so far as to suggest that ingesting or injecting bleach or disinfectant might help to kill the virus, or that inserting a light inside your body might work too.

These are not the actions of a statesman, and definitely not of a president. They are not even the actions of a madman, as a madman might actually believe that what he was saying was true. They are incomprehensible, and are not only dangerous, but potentially fatal. To my mind, those statements should warrant criminal charges of wilfully endangering life.

Like our own ‘hideaway leader’, Mr Trump seems to consider the significant loss of life is a fair price to pay for business continuing to profit at all costs.

Since the beginning of this pandemic, he has appeared to be cynical, heartless, flippant, and uncaring. He has offered support to armed demonstrators intimidating politicians, and even nurses. If I hadn’t seen and heard all this with my own eyes, I would have considered it to be the stuff of a tragic comedy.

So my question is this.

Given all this, are you still intending to support him, and vote for him at the next election? And if so, why?

I would genuinely like to know.