13 of the best bits from Labour's 2019 manifesto

Before I get started, it's vital to say that you should definitely read the Labour Party manifesto for yourself rather than solely relying on other people's interpretations of it.

Don't let the right-wing billionaire propaganda barons and their mercenary hacks tell you what to think about it, don't fall for the Tories' fake Labour Manifesto website, and also remember that this article of mine isn't a comprehensive analysis either, it just covers some of the main themes.

If you don't have time to read it for yourself now, bookmark it and read it later: Labour Manifesto 2019

Investment not austerity

The Tory austerity ideology has failed.

The list of austerity failures is spectacular: the worst post-crisis economic recovery in centuries, the worst sustained collapse in UK workers' wages since records began, the lowest level of infrastructure development in the developed world, the UK's AAA credit ratings gone, the national debt doubled, collapsing public services, soaring violent crime, the lowest level of house building since the 1920s, and a plague of poverty spreading across the United Kingdom.

"Let's cut our way to prosperity" was always economically illiterate madness, when the tried and tested economic method has always been investment in infrastructure, education, transport, research and development, high-skill jobs, and affordable housing.

Labour will throw Tory austerity into the dustbin of history where it belongs, and actually invest in our economy to increase our future economic potential, rather than strangle it like the Tories have been doing for the last nine years.

The centrepiece of Labour's investment strategy is the development of a national investment bank, with the explicit aim of lending to businesses, infrastructure projects, and other productive sectors of the economy across all of the UK's regions, rather than just leaving investment to the private banks, who continually target the majority of their investments at property price speculation and gambling on the global derivatives casino.

If you want investment targeted at the engines of economic productivity, rather than used to re-inflate the house price bubble, or gambled on the kinds of junk bond derivatives that caused the 2008 economic crisis, Labour's economic strategy is the correct choice to make.

National Education Service

Education should be treated as a right which benefits everyone in society, not just the individual who receives it, not a commodity to be rationed out in order to maximise profits for the rich.

Labour's plan to create a National Education Service to provide free education to anyone who needs it, no matter their age, education level, or background is a truly transformative policy on a level with Labour's creation of the NHS back in 1948.

Things change so fast in the modern world that most people change careers multiple times in their working lives these days, meaning successful economies need flexible a flexible workforce.

Labour's education policy isn't just that young people get a good education without paying through the nose for it for their entire working lives, it's that anyone who loses their job, or chooses to change careers, can acquire the retraining and skills they need, at any age.

The National Education Service wouldn't just be for kids and young people at university, it would be for all of us.

Public ownership

Do you think that vital public infrastructure and services like the railways, water supply, Royal Mail, broadband infrastructure, national grid, and prisons should be operated by private profiteers as money-making enterprises, or as not-for-profit public services?

The overwhelming majority of British people believe in the not-for-profit public service option, however the unrepresentative Westminster establishment class have spent the last four decades defying the public will and transferring ownership of £billions in public assets to their wealthy mates.

Labour's 2019 manifesto represents a golden opportunity to set about reversing this process, and de-privatising things that should never have been given away to private profiteers in the first place.

Labour's manifesto includes commitments to de-privatise the water supply, the national grid, Royal Mail, the railways, broadband infrastructure, and prisons.

The privatisation fanatics will try to argue de-privatisation costs too much, but the way they come up with their ludicrous figures is to treat de-privatisation as an expense (money down the drain), rather than an investment (providing returns on investment).

A report from Grenwich University found that de-privatisation of key public services would pay for itself within the space of just 7 years.

Reverse Tory wage repression

The UK is the only economy in the developed world
where the economy has been growing but wages have
been falling in real terms.

Tory wage repression policies like allowing the spread of exploitative Zero Hours Contracts and years of below-inflation public sector pay freezes have resulted in a lost decade of wage growth for UK workers, and the longest sustained decline in the real value of workers' wages since records began.

Labour understands that workers with money in their pockets spend more, which creates economic demand, which creates more jobs, which creates more prosperity in a virtuous circle.

Henry Ford understood this in the 1930s, which is why he gave his factory workers good enough salaries that they could afford to buy his cars.

The Tories failed to understand this, and adopted the view that the best way to increase profits for the very rich, is to decrease the wealth of the very poor, as if the economy is a static balance sheet with a rigidly set supply of money to be carved up in the way that best benefits their mega-rich donors.

Labour understands that the economy is dynamic, and that there's actually more possibility for the wealthy to make money if workers have money to spend.

Thus Labour is pledging to raise the Minimum Wage to £10 straight away to give UK workers the pay rise they deserve, and to reverse the Tory public sector pay cuts in order to bring wages back up to the level they were before nine years of Tory austerity extremism.

Restore the NHS
 

If you haven't needed to use the NHS in recent times, perhaps you're unaware of how bad things have become after nine years of being deliberately under-funded, run-down, and ideologically vandalised by the Tories. If you really don't know, please take the time to speak to someone who works in the NHS about how much worse things have got since 2010.

Labour will give the NHS the funding it needs to pick itself up off its knees, they'll restore NHS Bursaries in order to combat the NHS staffing crisis, and they'll reverse the radically right-wing Tory NHS privatisation agenda that saw a record £9.2 billion in NHS services fall into private hands last year.

Labour will also ensure that all parts of the NHS, the treatment of patients, the employment of staff and medicine pricing are all fully excluded and protected from any international trade deals.

Housing

Four decades of right-wing "leave it to the market" ideology has created a housing disaster, with nowhere near enough homes being built to meet demand, and literally millions of people priced out of home ownership altogether.

Labour housing policies include: 

• Building more houses, with at least 150,000 new council houses per year by the end of the parliament.

• Rent controls and binding minimum standards for private landlords in order to prevent unscrupulous profiteers renting uninhabitable hovels at rip-off prices.

• Scrap the Tories' bogus definition of 'affordable', which is set as high as 80% of market rents, and replace it with a definition that is actually linked to local incomes

• A concerted effort to combat the homelessness epidemic that has absolutely soared since 2010

• New powers to allow local government to bring empty properties back into use.

• A £1 billion fire safety fund to ensure nothing like Grenfell ever happens again.

Rebuild local government

Some of the most devastating impacts of Tory austerity extremism have been felt at local government level, as a result of the extraordinary 67% cuts to local government funding.

If you've been wondering why your council tax bills keep going up, but your local services keep getting worse and worse, the Tory local government cuts are entirely to blame.

Labour's manifesto pledges to reverse these devastating cuts, and ensure local government funding is restored to pre-2010 levels.

Dignity for disabled people

Literally thousands of disabled people have died within weeks of being declared "fit for work" and thrown off their disability benefits by the Tory disability denial system, which isn't just an inhumane way of treating some of the most vulnerable people in society, it actually costs more to administer than it will ever save in reduced disability benefits.

Labour will end this systematic abuse of disabled people, adopt the social model of disability, and promote the acceptance of neurodiversity.

After a decade of unprecedented UK government hostility to disabled people (so bad it's been condemned by the United Nations), Labour are pledging to actually listen to disabled peoples desires, and care for their needs.

Public procurement

From Serco and G4S stealing hundreds of millions from the public through electronic tagging scams to the collapse of Carillion, there are countless examples of public procurement disasters.

Labour won't outlaw outsourcing, but they will dramatically reform the way government sources from the private sector.

Firstly Labour will end the current presumption in favour of outsourcing public services and introduce a presumption in favour of insourcing.

They will also stop the public getting ripped off by taking back all PFI contracts over time.

One key change will be the introduction of best practice public service criteria, meaning no more government contracts for companies based in tax havens, with poor environmental records, or who pay poverty wages to their employees.

Environment

Labour's commitment to the environment is written throughout their manifesto, from large infrastructure projects like the construction of 9,000 wind turbines and massive investment in solar technology, to legislative action like banning fracking and incorporating climate and environmental impacts into government budget forecasts so that the cost of not acting will be factored into every fiscal decision.

Green protesters will be disappointed that Labour haven't committed to making Britain a zero carbon economy by 2030, instead aiming for a net-zero-carbon energy system within the 2030s, looking for credible pathways to speed up the process.

This means Labour's zero emissions target is 2039 at the very latest, the Lib-Dems' target is 2045, and the Tories are intent on delaying until 2050.

Foreign Policy

One of the big reasons the political establishment class hate Jeremy Corbyn so much is that he's been proven right on foreign policy so many times, while they've been proven horribly and disastrously wrong.

Back in the 1980s Corbyn was protesting against Apartheid in South Africa, opposing UK weapons sales to Saddam Hussain, and encouraging peace negotiations in Northern Ireland. He was on the right side of history, and mainstream politics caught up with him in the 1990s in rejecting Apartheid racism, and finding a peaceful solution to the Northern Ireland conflict.

In 2003 Corbyn famously opposed the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and was proven absolutely right about his warning that this invasion would set off a spiral of conflict that will fuel the wars, the terrorism, the depression, and the misery of future generations.

The ISIS terrorists grew out of the lawless terrorism breeding ground the US and UK created in Iraq, and then in 2011 Corbyn was one of the minority of MPs who opposed doing the same thing to Libya, which turned out to be a policy with deadly blowback in Britain as the Manchester Arena bomber came back to Britain from the terrorism breeding ground that our political elites decided to create there.

Labour's manifesto commits to avoid imperialist war mongering, and to put human rights at the heart of Britain's foreign policy objectives, which obviously means ending the Tory policy of flogging weapons to tyrannies, terrorism-spreaders, and war criminals.

Final Say referendum

The Tory decision to gamble the entire future of the UK with a completely undefined option on the ballot paper has created an absolute shambles. 

There's obviously no easy way of clearing up such a calamitous and divisive Tory mess, and anyone who says there is is either an idiot, or lying through their teeth.

Labour's proposal is to get rid of Boris Johnson's bodge job Brexit (which is even worse than the proposal Theresa May cobbled together), renegotiate a Brexit that doesn't annihilate the economy, and then put the decision back to the public in a final say referendum.

It's far from ideal holding a referendum between a defined Brexit and remain, because this is how it should have been done back in 2016, but at least it offers a credible choice to both sides of the Brexit debate, and avoids totally screwing over the 48% (like Boris Johnson and the Tories are taking such delight in doing) or screwing over the 52% (like the Lib-Dems are threatening).

Workers' rights


Last but definitely not least is Labour's position on workers' rights, which you'd expect to be good from a party calling itself "Labour".

• Give British workers a well deserved pay rise with a £10 minimum wage, and the reversal of the callous Tory squeeze on public sector pay.

• Provide free education for all means British workers will be have a right to improve their skills on the job, or acquire new skills when moving between jobs.

• Strengthen protections for whistleblowers and rights against unfair dismissal for all workers.

• Scrap punitive Tory anti-trade union laws.

• Ensure no income tax rises at all for anyone earning below £80,000 per year.

• Ensure workers have a say within government by creating a Minister for Employment Rights

• Ban long-term Zero Hours Contracts and bogus fake self-employment contracts in the gig economy.

Conclusion

Labour's manifesto provides a blueprint for a better, fairer, healthier society in which all sectors of society enjoy the benefits of increased national prosperity, rather than just the mega-rich elitists.

Policies like investment in infrastructure and services, restoration of the NHS, de-privatisation of monopolies, action to combat the housing crisis, free education for all, and improved workers' rights aren't just abstract things that don't really matter. They're policies that have the potential to shape all of our lives for the better.

If this election is going to be fought on policies and which party has the better blueprint for what the UK could become in the future, this manifesto is a winner.

If however it's fought out in the political sewer, with deceptions, smears, lies, vacuous personality politics, fake websites ... then there's every chance these transformative policies will never see the light of day as the militant hard-right, ultranationalist, pro-privatisation, billionaire-bankrolled Tories spend the next five years trampling on ordinary people in order to rig society ever more in the favour of the billionaires who fund their entire operation.

We're at a crossroads as a nation, between what Labour have laid out here, and a very dark path indeed.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

We'd be worse off without them, but would they be better off without us?

When you look at the facts and evidence, it's pretty damned clear that quitting the EU without at least maintaining very close cooperation on the economy, security, citizens' rights and the environment would be a disastrous move for the UK.

When even Brexiteers like Jacob Rees-Mogg are claiming that Britain won't see any Brexit benefit for at least 50 years, it's hardly an uncontroversial point to say that Brexit is going to be disastrous until almost everyone of working age is a pensioner or dead.

However one point that is rarely raised is whether the EU would actually be better off without us.

You see the over-whelming British attitude towards the EU is apathy, while most of those who do express a view do so with so little regard for the actual structure and makeup of EU democracy, it's pretty much indistinguishable from contempt.

The turnout at the EU elections was just 37%, meaning two thirds of eligible voters didn't even bother to express a view, and of the minority who did bother voting, a massive swathe of them treated the election like a ridiculous proxy referendum on EU membership, with 31% backing the Faragist Brexit Party, and 20% backing the absurd single-issue "Bollocks to Brexit" Lib-Dems.

How many Lib-Dem voters know, or even care, that the Lib-Dems belong to the despicable ALDE group in the European Parliament, and by returning 15 of them, they've massively increased the power of one of the most toxic groups in the European Parliament.

If one thing is absolutely guaranteed in the European Parliament, it's that is some sickening pro-corporate piece of legislation, or an egregious attack on European citizens' rights and freedoms (the TTIP corporate power grab, banning people from using the term "veggie burger" at the behest of the meat industry, attacking Internet freedoms with Link Taxes and Upload Filters ...) comes along, ALDE will be cheering for it and voting it through.

So in order to say "bollocks to Brexit" like a bunch of political toddlers, literally millions of Brits voted for the European Parliamentary group that makes the EU so bloody bad in the first place, and literally millions more had an equally embarrassing political toddler tantrum in the opposite direction by voting for a bunch of lazy expenses-scamming far-right shit-stirrers to protest against the EU.

Aside from our woefully immature attitude to electing members to the European Parliament, there's also the fact that Britain is so often completely out of step with the general European Consensus.

I'll give just a few examples:

When the EU tried to clamp down on excessive bankers' bonuses, George Osborne was the only finance minister in Europe to oppose the proposals, using public money to fight a doomed-to-lose rearguard action in defence of bankers' rights to extract vast bonuses even as they drive their institutions into insolvency!

When the EU tried to protect the European steel industry by putting tariffs on artificially cheap Chinese steel flooding into European markets, once again the Tories were the only major ruling party to object to and obstruct these moves.

When the EU tried to discipline the far-right Orbán government in Hungary for their interference in the independence of the judiciary, the Tories were the only ruling party in Europe to align themselves with all the extreme-right and neo-Nazi parties in the European parliament to vote in favour of Orbán's anti-Semitic regime.

And it's not just limited to British obstruction against the European political consensus, there's a hard-right British mindset that just doesn't exist on the continent.

Even in countries like Germany, where the centre-right CDU have ruled the roost since 2005, publicly owned not-for-profit public services are commonplace and they've actually reintroduced free university education across the board.

In the UK Jeremy Corbyn is derided as some kind of dangerously radical extremist for espousing these policies that are absolutely commonplace on the continent. Policies like publicly owned rail, water, national grid, and mail system, free university education, and decentralisation of economic control and infrastructure investment funds.

What's absolutely commonplace and uncontroversial over there is derided as lunatic extremism over here, and then when it comes to UK government policy Europeans are genuinely shocked when you tell them what the UK government have been doing over the last nine years.

They're shocked when you tell them that they've privatised 3/4 of the schools in England into the hands of unaccountable private pseudo-charities who fill their own pockets at the public expense through bloated executive salaries and dodgy no-bid supply contracts to their friends and family.

They're shocked when you tell them that English kids are facing £9,000 per year university fees on rip-off inflation+3% repayment terms that mean 83% of graduates will never pay off their debts despite entire working lifetimes of paying 9% of their disposable incomes in "education tax".

They're shocked when you tell them that the Tory government has privatised prisons, and the probation service, and the forensic science service, and front line police operations, and absolutely gutted Legal Aid to turn the courts back into the playgrounds of the rich.

What is our normal is radical hard-right extremism to most of them.

And what's their normal is almost universally derided in the media as dangerously extreme Marxist nonsense when Corbyn proposes it over here.

On Brexit we're just an embarrassment hanging around in the doorway, threatening to leave the party in the most destructive way possible, with senior government ministers, right up to our soon-to-be-departed Prime Minister spreading bizarre anti-European conspiracy theories, and her senior ministers referring to our EU neighbours as "Nazi concentration camp guards".

Then after three years of threatening to shoot ourselves in the head if we don't get exactly what we want, we repeatedly rejected the departure deal that we ourselves negotiated, and then pathetically begged and grovelled for yet more time to sort ourselves out, because nobody here can even agree on how to actually do Brexit.

They've shown remarkable patience in the face of this unprecedented chaos and uncertainty, with all 27 remaining EU states coming together to agree their negotiating position, while we, on our own, remain pathetically divided over ours!

When it comes to foreign policy, once again we're completely out of step with the rest of the EU.

When Jeremy Corbyn appealed for calm, and asked to see conclusive proof that Iran were responsible for the tanker explosions in the Gulf of Oman, he was roundly derided in Britain as some kind of lunatic anti-British traitor for daring to question the suspiciously evidence-light assertions of US warmongers like Mike Pompeo and John Bolton.

But then you look at the European reaction to the same incident, and you see that far from being some kind of wildly deranged commie, Corbyn's just expressing the general European consensus.

Germany’s foreign minister Heiko Maas said the grainy video provided by the US is far from sufficient to prove that Iran was behind the attacks. 

France's foreign ministry called on all sides in the region to "act with restraint and towards de-escalation". 

And the EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini called for "maximum restraint".

Nobody in Europe is spitting abuse and shrieking "traitor" at these figures for saying the same kind of stuff Corbyn did, nor demanding that the European public unquestioningly accept the American's evidence-light assertions, and war-mongering rhetoric.

Whichever way you look at it, Britain is glaringly out of step with the general European consensus.

Of course a lot of Brits who believe in more liberal social values, and peaceful internationalist ideals, and the mixed economy social democratic way of doing things, would prefer not to leave the EU at all, but maybe it's just time for people like us to accept that (outside of Scotland) we're actually in the minority, surrounded by a majority comprised of tub-thumping hard-right little-Englanders and those who are outright apathetic towards European principles and ideals, which means that the Europeans might well be better off without us continually mucking things up for them.

The other option of course is for Britain to change course, to ditch the obstructionist British attitudes in the European Parliament, to adopt the European consensus on public ownership and affordable/free university education, to unwind all the egregious Tory privatisation scams that most Europeans are genuinely shocked by when they hear about them, and to seek de-escalation in volatile conflict zones rather than spitting undiluted hate at those who preach caution instead of jingoistic war-mongering bollocks.

But if we're going to take this other option, we've got a heck of a lot of work on our plates to reform the way we do things in Britain haven't we?

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

Tony Blair hasn't got a leg to stand on when it comes to "moderate values"

On September 6th 2018 the Tony Blair Institute published accounts that confirmed earlier reports of payments from Saudi Arabia of up to £12 million, then the very next day he was given a slot on Radio 4 to attack the Jeremy Corbyn and the current Labour Party leadership, and to pretend that the right-wing Labour faction are somehow "moderates".

What everyone should know about Saudi Arabia

• Saudi Arabia is one of the most tyrannical regimes on earth which is ruled over by a large extended family of royal figures who enrich themselves on the vast oil wealth of the territory, whilst slave labour is rife in the kingdom.

• Saudi Arabia is a profoundly misogynistic society. Until recently women were not even allowed to drive cars. Under current Saudi law all women are subject to the male guardianship law, which means they are barred from travel, education, access to public services, employment, opening a bank account, and even medical procedures without the permission of their male guardian (typically a father, brother, husband, or uncle).

• Saudi Arabia is one of the many extremely homophobic regimes in the Muslim world where homosexuality carries a death sentence. Even the UK government's own website makes it clear that it's incredibly risky for gay or transgender people to visit Saudi Arabia.

• Saudi Arabia is the epicentre of extremist Salafi Islamist terrorism. 15 of the 19 September 11th attackers were Saudis. Saudi Arabia supplies arms, fighters, finance, and supplies to Islamist terrorist groups across North Africa and the Middle East. Saudi Arabia is also the biggest source of pro-ISIS Internet propaganda. The Saudi's are also suspected of promoting and funding Islamist terrorism in the UK too (but Theresa May and the Tories are still hiding the report).

• The Saudi Arabian regime is violently opposed to democratic values and multiple Saudi citizens have been sentenced to death by beheading and/or crucifixion for the "crime" of attending non-violent pro-democracy protests.

• Saudi Arabia is currently committing horrific war crimes in Yemen. Aside from their use of British and American weapons to attack civilian targets, they're also using starvation and disease as weapons through their ongoing blockades of food and medical supplies, and their deliberate targeting of public facilities like water treatment plants.

The hypocrisy of Tony Blair

Just imagine having the brass neck to accept £millions in donations from probably the most illiberal regime on the planet, then attempt to lecture the British public on the importance of "moderate values" as an effort to get rid of one of the only political leaders in Europe who dares to stand up to the Saudi tyrants, rather than raking in donations from them like Blair does.

Despite knowing that the Saudi tyrants are using British weapons to commit war crimes in Yemen, the Tory government continues issuing £billions worth of arms export licences to them, something that Jeremy Corbyn says he would put a stop to if Labour come to power.

Conflict of interests

So here we have a man who has raked in £12 million from the Saudi tyrants actively propagandising against another man who is promising to harden Britain's relationship with them, and stop selling them weapons to commit their war crimes with.

Doesn't it strike you as rather a serious conflict of interests that a man who is essentially working for Saudi Arabia is pushing their interests by creating the fiction that the right-wing pro-Saudi faction of the Labour Party are the ones with "moderate" values, while Jeremy Corbyn and the majority of Labour Party members who are disgusted by Saudi Arabia's lack of human rights at home, and their war crimes abroad are the scary extremists?

Interestingly the BBC didn't quiz Blair over his £multi-million donations from Saudi Arabia during the interview, or ask him whether he considered it a conflict of interests that he's taking their cash whilst simultaneously propagandising against one of the only politicians in the western world who dares stand up to them*.

Reality-reversal

Aside from the hypocrisy and conflict of interests, perhaps the most remarkable thing about Tony Blair's latest attack of Jeremy Corbyn is the fact that it relies on such a transparent reversal of reality.

What Tony Blair is trying to convince us to accept is the idea that the kind of people who cause hundreds of thousands of deaths and a massive lawless terrorism breeding ground through the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq are moderates while those who opposed it are scary extremists.

That the people who take cash and gifts from the Saudi tyrants in return for supporting arms sales to the war crime-committing regime are the moderates, while those who oppose selling arms to tyrants to commit war crimes with are the disgusting extremists.

That people who support the orthodox neoliberal status quo that has enriched corporations and the incredibly wealthy at the expense of everyone else (through austerity dogma, wage repression, undermined workers' rights, public service cutbacks, financial sector deregulation, social mobility barriers like tuition fees, tax cuts for the rich, social security cuts for the poor) are the moderates while those who seek to make Britain a fairer place are the nasty extremists.

It just goes to show that Blair still hasn't moved on from the days of "weapons of mass destruction" and his contemptuous belief that people are idiots who can be lied to and tricked over and again without clocking the truth.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

* = Credit to Justin Trudeau in Canada who triggered Saudi economic sanctions and even threats of terrorism against Canada for daring to push them on their despicable human rights record. Also credit to the left-leaning Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez for cancelling the supply of 400 guided missiles to the Saudi tyrants.

Where is the media outrage?

After spending an entire week banging on about Jeremy Corbyn laying a wreath four years ago in a Tunisian graveyard where none of the Munich terrorists are even actually buried, you would have thought that the mainstream media might have expressed at least a tiny bit of outrage at the Tory Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt meeting up with and fawning all over a bona fide war criminal. But somehow no.

Henry Kissinger was the architect of some of the United States' most disgusting and deadly foriegn policy interventions. Here are a few of his most notorious:

Cambodia and Laos

During the Vietnam War Kissinger was heavily involved in the secret and completely illegal bombing campaigns against the non-combatant states of Laos and Cambodia.

Over two million tons of bombs were dropped during these illegal bombing campaigns. That's more than the total tonnage that the United States dropped on Japan during the Second World War, and yet the US never actually declared war on either Laos or Cambodia!

Hundreds of thousands of people were killed during these illegal US bombing raids, and people are still dying and being maimed today as a result of the thousands of tons of unexploded munitions, especially unexploded 'bomblets' from cluster bombs.

Latin America

Henry Kissinger was one of the chief architects of the US foreign policy of toppling stable democracies and replacing them with murderous right-wing military dictatorships.

In Chile the United States carried out a coup against the democratically elected President Salvador Allende that resulted in his death. Following on from the installation of the murderous Pinochet regime, Kissinger actively intervened to support Chilean political repression by cancelling a letter warning the Pinochet government not to carry out political assassinations.

In a grotesque letter to the Chilean dictator Kissenger actually portrayed the murderous coup-leading tyrant as a victim by saying "my evaluation is that you are a victim of all left-wing groups around the world and that your greatest sin was that you overthrew a government that was going Communist"!

In Argentina the United States turned a blind eye to an even more repressive right-wing dictatorship as they killed some 30,000 people (often by throwing them out of aircraft without parachutes). 

Thousands of others were detained in torture centres, and some 500 pregnant women had their babies stolen before being killed by the military junta. 

Documents declassified in 2016 revealed that Kissinger personally undermined the Carter administration's efforts to stop the killings.

The two most famous examples of US-backed Latin American military juntas were Argentina and Chile, but numerous other Latin American states were subjected to US-backed military take-overs during Kissinger's reign including Bolivia, Paraguay, Brazil, and Uruguay.

East Timor

In 1975 the brutal Suharto regime in Indonesia expressed their intention to annex the nascent state of East Timor. At a meeting in Jakarta Kissinger and the then US President Gerald Ford agreed to allow the annexation of East Timor with guarantees that US relations with the Suharto dictatorship would remain strong. Their only proviso was that the invasion be carried out after they'd Indonesian territory.

Suharto delayed the invasion by one day to allow time for Kissinger and Ford to leave, then invaded the territory. The death toll of the invasion and occupation was well over 100,000 (around one quarter of the Timorese population.

Bangladesh

When the US Consul in East Pakistan Archer Blood sent telegrams back to the US warning of "genocide" in the Bangladesh War of Liberation, Kissinger sneered at those who "bleed for the dying Bangladeshis". When Blood continued raising concerns he was stripped of his post.

During the period Kissinger also described the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi as a "bitch" and a "witch" and said "the Indians are bastards".

Russian Jews

During the flight of Jews from the Soviet Union to Israel in the 1970s Kissinger said "if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern".

Recent times

It's hardly outlandish to call Kissinger a war criminal given that he's incredibly careful of where he travels to, for fear of being extradited to to face charges for his war crimes, and his support for murderous right-wing dictatorships.

Where is the outrage?

Kissinger's involvement with the grotesque war crimes in Cambodia and Laos are beyond question. His support for tyrannical military dictatorships across the world are a matter of public record. His contempt for the plight of Jews in the Soviet Union and his racist comments about Indians are also a matter of public record.

So how on earth does the Tory Foreign Secretary get away with fawning all over this absolute ghoul, and then actually bragging about it on Twitter?

The answer is twofold. The first reason is that the mainstream media is shockingly biased towards the Tory party, meaning they're loathe to draw attention to anything that might damage them. The second is that Kissinger is an American, and it doesn't matter how many hundreds of thousands of people died in his illegal carpet bombing campaigns, or in the torture centres of the dictatorships he supported ... the professional scribes of the hard-right neoliberal orthodoxy that Kissinger promoted will never hold him to account for his actions.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

If anyone is Vladimir Putin's "useful idiot", it's Boris Johnson

We're well and truly through the looking glass now guys. 

It was bonkers enough to witness the incoherent (and quite obviously anti-Semitic) "wrong kind of Jews" vitriol that was spat at Jeremy Corbyn over the weekend for spending the Jewish religious festival of Seder with young politically engaged Jews, instead of shopping like Theresa May was, but this Boris Johnson stuff is getting truly Orewllian.

Boris Johnson scored a massive own goal  against his own government for Vladimir Putin by lying about what the British chemical weapons experts at Porton Down had said.

Whatever the British government says now, the Russians can retort with "look at the way the British Foreign Secretary and Foreign Office lied about Salisbury", and they've actually got a point, and it's all Boris Johnson's fault.

But then Boris Johnson posts a tweet crudely deflecting attention onto Jeremy Corbyn with a load of tired old "Russian stooge" nonsense, and then a load of Tory drones in the mainstream media obediently do as they've been prompted and set about deliberately switching the debate away from Boris Johnson's lie and onto Jeremy Corbyn.

So an unmistakably Tory scandal stemming from yet another Boris blunder is somehow transformed into a stick to whack Jeremy Corbyn with!

Suddenly the debate is no longer Tory lies vs Porton Down expert analysis, because it's been warped into pro-government patriotism vs Russia, Putin, treason, eek.

Of course gullible people are going to side with the government who just got exposed as liars when the mainstream media misrepresent the debate as an us against them, support the government or you're a Putin-loving traitor situation.
 

And then we have mercenary Rupert Murdoch hacks deriding anyone who criticises Boris Johnson for trapping himself in a lie as Vladimir Putin's "useful idiots".

The guy who scores a massive propaganda own goal for Russia gets a free pass, and anyone who criticises what he did gets derided as a "useful idiot" for Putin!

You couldn't make it up, except they did, and they expect people to actually fall for it!

And then to top it all off we've got the BBC pushing the kind of dangerous "scrutiny of the government is treason" type propaganda you'd actually expect to see in Putin's Russia.

The Tories and their establishment chums in the mainstream media are desperately trying to reverse reality to make people believe that:

The people who mindlessly bang the drum for war, lap up the government lies, and start playing ridiculous distraction tactic games when the government lies are exposed - they're the clear-thinking rational voices.

And the people who ask for evidence, scrutinise the government line, and criticise government ministers who get caught out telling lies - they're cultists, kooks, conspiracy theorists, traitors, Putin's useful idiots!

The thing is that there are an awful lot of people who are gullible enough to fall for this kind of Tory Orwellian reality reversal, otherwise they wouldn't try it, but then there's also another form of damage too.

Even those of us with the critical thinking skills to see through the bombardment end up disorientated and confused by the constant barrage of reality-bending propaganda. It's called "gaslighting", and it's a propaganda tactic that Putin and his cronies use in Russia in order to mindfuck their political opponents, and the public at large.

So we've got a Tory party who are bankrolled by Russian oligarchs and Putin cronies and a bunch of obsequious Tory-serving mainstream media hacks using Putin-style mindfuck techniques to disorientate and misdirect the British public, and we've got the BBC state broadcaster transmitting Putin-style pro-government anti-opposition propaganda into our homes, and now they expect us to believe that anyone who dares question any of this lunacy is a traitor and a Putin stooge!

It absolutely beggars belief that they think they can get away with it. Please just tell me that I'm not alone in realising that British political discourse has become such a ridiculously Putinesque farce.

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