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When the left sleeps the right wins
The Tea Party protested in support of cuts. There was no answer from the left in America. The largest protest group in the US, with the exception of Wisconsin is the Tea Party, campaigning for their own redundancy notices.
When the Tories attacked social security in the UK there was no protest, sure the middle class and rich protested against student fees (which actually benefit the poorest) but welfare, nowhere.
Austerity budgets lead to more austerity. The great plan for Europe was to ride the wave of a resurgent US and a growing China. Say goodbye to the idea of a resurgent US.
The only budget that would have actually started to cut into the US National Debt would have been that proposed by the Progressive Caucus. It still makes that passed by the right wing UK look “far left” (UK top rate taxes of 50% and a partial removal of the National Insurance (Social Security cap). It was however completely ignored in media debates. The left was represented by the “middle”, that of President Obama. The right was the Tea Party and the middle was somewhere in between the two. A position far more right wing than anything Bush could have proposed.
We can not and should not blame the President for this. The message from November was clear from those selling that message. Cuts are wanted. That is the message that was sent to the President. That is the message Washington heard. That is the message the IMF and the Credit Agencies are forcing down the throat of European Nations.
We scream only at our own side. There has been no effective answer to the right.
There are real alternatives to austerity. Germany reduced their working week. Everyone took a hit but few became unemployed. They are now booming. They have no need to cut their social programmes and they have absolutely no desire to cut their social programmes to bail out Nations who did not do what they did.
In our great Anglo-American Economy, the richest 1% have had their incomes grow massively while those at the bottom are being forced to pay. The top end market for house prices in London has never been higher. The bottom end has collapsed because ordinary people can not get mortgages. Who paid to bail out the banks to save the wealth of the top? Ordinary every day workers.
An Empire died 20 years ago because they gave a higher priority to military spending than spending on their own people. Another Empire is now coming to an end.
Protest in peace, Brian Haw. May you always be remembered.
Peace campaigner Brian Haw has died after “a long hard fight” against lung cancer, his family has announced.
In June 2001 Brian Haw set up Parliament Square to protest against UK and US foreign policy towards Iraq.
Initially, the protest was against the sanctions against Iraq. His vigil started after seeing the images and information produced by the Mariam Appeal, an anti-sanctions campaign. Haw justified his campaign on a need to improve his children’s future. He only left his makeshift campsite in order to attend court hearings, surviving on food brought by supporters and well-wishers.
He later extended the protest to include opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The protest became part of the scenery of London, despite numerous attempts to remove him and the posters. Among the artwork displayed was a Banksy stencil of two soldiers painting a peace sign and Leon Kuhn’s anti-war political caricature 3 Guilty Men. It was a symbol of protest for a decade.
Westminster City Council attempted to prosecute Haw for causing an obstruction to the pavement in October 2002 but the case failed as Haw’s banners did not impede movement. The continuous use of a megaphone by Haw led to objections by Members of Parliament who have offices close to his protest. The House of Commons Procedure Committee in 2003 heard evidence that claimed permanent protests in Parliament Square could be used by terrorists to disguise explosive devices, and resulted in a recommendation that the law be changed to prohibit them.
The Labour Government passed a provision banning all unlicensed protests, permanent or otherwise, in the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 (sections 132 to 138); however, because Brian Haw’s protest was started before the Act was passed his protest a judicial review ruled that his protest could not be banned on a retroactive basis.
The Government appealed to the Court of Appeal, which decided “that Parliament intended that those sections of the Act should apply to a demonstration in the designated area, whether it started before or after they came into force. Any other conclusion would be wholly irrational and could fairly be described as manifestly absurd”.
While the Government was appealing the decision, Haw made his protest compliant with the Serious and Organised Crime act by applying for permission to protest. The police granted the application but only on condition that his display of placards was no more than 3 m wide.
Brian Haw's anti war protest
In the early hours of 23 May 2006, 78 police arrived and removed all but one of Haw’s placards citing continual breached conditions of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 as their reason for doing so. This police operation against one man cost over £27,000.
The police prosecuted for his breach of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005. Brian refused to enter a plea. The Court entered a plea of not guilty on his behalf.
Haw was acquitted on the grounds that the conditions he was accused of breaching were not sufficiently clear, and that they should have been imposed by a police officer of higher rank. District Judge Purdy ruled: “I find the conditions, drafted as they are, lack clarity and are not workable in their current form.”
The placards were returned.
In January 2008, seven people were arrested, outside the Downing Street gates, including Brian Haw because they were protesting the Serious and Organised Crime Act.
He was injured, while “filming the students lying down in the road when one officer stepped forward, as I was walking back, and pushed the camera with his hand. It struck my face.” He added that he was “dragged” by police into a police van, who pushed “my head close to the ground with my arms handcuffed high above my back”.
In May 2010, Mr Haw was charged with obstructing police during searches of tents on the green. Speaking after a court appearance, he set out his intention to remain in the square for the rest of his life.
The Conservative Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, won a possession order to evict Mr Haw and other campaigners from Parliament Square Gardens, which is owned by the Greater London Authority (GLA). He moved the protest on to the pavement, which is owned by Westminster City Council.
The driving force of his protest was his love of his own family. He said the children of Iraq and other countries were “every bit as valuable and worthy of love as my precious wife and children”.
“I want to go back to my own kids and look them in the face again, knowing that I’ve done all I can to try and save the children of Iraq and other countries who are dying because of my government’s unjust, amoral, fear – and money-driven policies,”
The whole of the British government, from the Mayor of London to Parliament and the Courts could not silence that message. He will be missed and never forgotten.
Hell freezes over, Rush Limbaugh praises President Obama
Rush Limbaugh did he rarely, if ever does: he praised President Obama on his Monday show for the death of Osama bin Laden.
We need to open the program today by congratulating President Obama,” he said. “President Obama has done something extremely effective, and when he does, this needs to be pointed out.
The effectiveness, he said, came from President Obama’s decision to send a Special Forces team to kill bin Laden–something he said, citing news reports, that none of the president’s military advisers had thought of doing.
Our military wanted to go in there and just scorch the earth…but President Obama single-handedly understood what was at stake here. He alone understood the need to get DNA to prove the death…it was President Obama single-handedly and alone who came up with the strategy that brought about the effective assassination of Osama bin Laden,” he said, adding, “thank God for President Obama.
Wow. Well, not really, he was being a sarcastic blathering idiot.
Well done Seal Team 6, a job well done. They deserve the credit, as do the troops in Afghanistan.
President Obama came into office with the promise that if he ever got the chance to pull the trigger and capture or kill Osama, he would not hesitate to do just that and that’s exactly what happened, he got information on the whereabouts of Bin Laden and gave the order to kill; a true Commander in Chief.
Teabaggers hate when you present them with facts.
Did the bugles sound The Last Post in chorus?
I can’t tell this story any better than the AP – besides, I don’t have the heart right now. Rest in peace, brother. See ya on the other side. (The post title is a line I took from a celtic song, The Green Fields of France.)“He really was looking for someone to tell him what it was he went over to do and why those sacrifices were made.”
Using his military training, he went to Haiti several times and Chile once to help with the countries’ earthquake relief efforts. He proudly told his parents of splinting an infant’s leg, and after meeting a young orphaned boy in Haiti named D’James, tried to persuade his family to adopt him. “If I had one thing to say to my fellow veterans, it would be this: Continue to serve, even though we have taken off our uniforms,” Hunt wrote in an online testimonial for Team Rubicon. “No matter how great or small your service is, it is desired and needed by the world we live in today.” Hunt’s friends say he was an idealist and voiced frustration that he couldn’t make changes overnight. He also questioned why troops were still dying. “He really was looking for someone to tell him what it was he went over to do and why those sacrifices were made,” Wood said. Last year, Hunt’s life took a downward spiral. His marriage ended, he dropped out of school and he began to have suicidal thoughts, his mother said. She said Hunt sought counseling from the VA and moved in temporarily with Wordin in California. Things seemed to improve for Hunt in recent months after he returned to his hometown of Houston to be near family. He got a construction job, leased an apartment, bought a truck and began dating. He called friends to discuss the possibility of re-enlisting. In the days before he died, he hung out with friends, and he had plans the following weekend to do a Ride 2 Recovery bike ride. He even told Garza he couldn’t wait to see him at a Fourth of July reunion with other Marines. Then he was dead. “Clay was always a fighter,” Wordin said. “He was always a guy to stick things out and he basically quit life, and I was mad that he felt he had to do that at that particular time.” Hunt’s friends and family count him a casualty of war — just like his buddies who died in the battlefield.
“Civilian Ways” I hold the cold steel of my rifle as I dream of foreign lands And I promise myself I will cherish every moment I can But there’s ghosts that follow me around Everywhere I am When I say goodbye I try to be strong Now I’m going back to the U.S. where I belong
I ain’t never alone The war seems to follow me home No longer an active soldier When I walk down the street I’m shaking hands with everyone that I meet And I watch everyone wondering what they see
Civilian ways are now what’s foreign to me I came off a long tour I left this place in two o three May we never forget the sacrifices My friends made for me
I live in Marysville out on the county line And my Brother and my Mother both visit me all the time And visions of you are always running right through my mind We always talk about what we’re gonna do when the war is won We’re gonna fix up them old cars and ride them into the sun When I heard you’re no longer with us Man I was done
Civilian ways are now what’s foreign to me I came off a long tour I left this place in two o three
May we never forget the sacrifices My friends made for me.
Meet Nick Clegg – the man who makes bad things “progressive”.
I was a semi-supporter of the coalition, although I voted for no-one in the General Election. I looked forward to the end of the database state and the bureaucracy. I was very happy to see New Labour go but I was not happy with the other choices available to me. Nothing has convinced me about the wisdom of my non-choice at the election and not one Party has since convinced me that they are worthy of my vote.
I kind of wanted to believe that the Liberal Democrats were a bit more of a Party than their image of being Labour without the War. I also kind of wanted to believe that the Conservative Party was no longer the nasty party.
The problem with this coalition is that we will never know what the true identities of the two Parties are. What we have now is a Conservative Government able to operate further to the right than it would have on its own due to their Liberal Democrat enablers.
As a direct result of this coalition, Osborne can be as far-right as he wants, without any consideration of consequence. It is after all not the Conservative Party losing popularity. Everything proposed by Osborne is given an orange glow of approval by the ever so compliant and complicit Clegg.
This morning Nick Clegg was explaining why it is fair to stop the benefits of those who refuse to take up jobs for the fair and progressive period of 3 years.
A few days ago we had Nick Clegg explaining why a tripling of student tuition fees was extremely progressive and fairer than say a graduate tax.
Last week Nick Clegg explained why massive cuts to Housing Benefit that effect over 95% of those claiming were fair and progressive.
If George Osborne appeared on television tomorrow eating and killing the second child of all families, Nick Clegg would be on breakfast tv explaining why such a move is progressive and “fair”. After all such an action would help poor families save on childcare.
As the coalition haemorrhages popularity, it is not the Conservatives losing ground it is the Liberal Democrats.
According to the latest polls, the Liberal Democrats now command only 9% support. Well they hold around 9% of the seats in Parliament and they have always been supporters of proportional representation, so now they have it, by default.
Everyone knows that the Liberal Democrats are the junior partner. They are still however supposed to be a partner. Partners in a relationship can say no. If junior can not say no, he is not a partner, he is being abused.
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