The shocking truth about Saudi Arabia that Facebook doesn't want you to know

In March 2022 Facebook deleted one of my posts about the tyrannical government in Saudi Arabia, and accused me of "hate speech".

I was allowed to appeal, but only by clicking a button saying that I disagreed with their decision. There was absolutely no means of submitting evidence that what I'd said was true.

The deleted image, and
Facebook's warning

The deleted post made a number of claims about Saudi Arabia, which I will substantiate in this article.

"The Saudi tyranny just mass executed 81 people"

This is a completely uncontroversial statement of fact.

This barbaric mass execution was widely reported across scores of media sources, including the BBC, left-leaning outfits like Byline Times and hard-right broadcasters like GBNews (archived) It was also condemned by the United Nations, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. 

Saudi Arabia is "committing war crimes in Yemen"

Saudi Arabia's ongoing bombardment of Yemen hardly gets a fraction of the coverage of Putin's attack on Ukraine, but that doesn't mean that it isn't happening.

Human Rights Watch have documented multiple Saudi war crimes in Yemen, and it should be widespread knowledge that the Saudis have bombed all kinds of civilian targets from funeral gatherings, to children's school busses.

Saudi Arabia "fund and support terrorism"

In 2016 Hillary Clinton's leaked emails demonstrated that the US government were well aware that Saudi Arabia were funding terrorism in Syria.

Furthermore US President Joe Biden has openly admitted that Saudi Arabia provided "hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weapons" to Al Qaida's successor organisations in Syria.

Then there's Boris Johnson, who accused Saudi Arabia of "twisting Islam" and conducting proxy wars across the middle east.

Saudi Arabia have also provided funds to terrorist insurgencies in Afghanistan, which led to the creation of Al Qaida, and the 9/11 terrorist attack on the United States, in which 15 of the 19 attackers were Saudis.

Saudi Arabia "brutally repress political opposition"

Saudi Arabia's repression of political opposition is well documented. Amnesty International reports that in Saudi Arabia freedom of expression, association, and assembly are all repressed.  

Their repression of political dissent is so extreme that they've even sentenced a 14 year old child to death for attending a pro-democracy march!

It's hardly hateful conduct to point out that one of the most tyrannical regimes on earth is politically repressive.

Saudi Arabia "dismember critical journalists"

This is clearly a reference to the Jamal Khashoggi assassination, where the Saudi regime lured him to the Saudi embassy in Turkey, where they tortured him, murdered him, dismembered his body, and dissolved it in acid. 

The murderers then reportedly took Khashoggi's severed fingers back to the Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salmen as a trophy, because he'd boasted that he'd cut off the fingers of any writer who criticised him.

Khashoggi was just one of the dissidents and critical journalists targeted for assassination by the so-called "Tiger Squad".

Saudi Arabia are "misogynists and homophobes"

Saudi Arabia is one of the most repressive regimes on earth for women's rights, and they still have the death penalty for homosexuality.

Even when they don't condemn homosexuals to death, they dish out utterly barbaric punishments like public lashings, and long prison sentences.

Saudi Arabia "threaten terrorist attacks against western countries to get their own way"

The Saudi regime famously threatened terrorist attacks against Britain in order to get an investigation into corrupt arms deals shut down, and during a spat with Canada a verified Saudi Twitter account posted a photoshopped picture of a 9/11 style terrorist attack against Canada!

Boris Johnson went to Saudi Arabia to "grovel for more oil"

Johnson's grovelling trip to Saudi Arabia was widely reported. And the reason for his visit was repeatedly given as seeking an oil deal in an attempt to reduce reliance on Russian energy supplies.

Conclusion

I've substantiated every single assertion in the banned infographic, but the truth simply doesn't matter to Facebook.

They've set up reporting systems that are incredibly easy to game. Whether a post is true or not is completely irrelevant. The simple truth is that if the post gets mass reported, then it'll be deleted as hate speech, no matter how easy it is to substantiate literally all of the points.

What we're witnessing is an absurd weaponisation of liberal language in order to erase fact-based criticism of probably the most illiberal regime on earth.

Defenders of this disgusting regime are gaming Facebook's report functions, and using the language of anti-racism to pretend that truthful criticism of Saudi Arabia is racist hate speech.

And by going along with these tactics, Facebook are complicit in attacking the truth.

The deletion of my post came with a warning that the Another Angry Voice Facebook page is under threat of deletion, so if it does disappear, you'll know that one of the main reasons it was deleted out of existence was the fact that I chose to tell the truth about Saudi Arabia, and instead of standing up for the truth, Facebook stood with the tyrannical regime to attack me for telling the truth.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. Access to my online writing will always remain free. If you see some value in what I do, please consider supporting my work with a small donation/subscription.

OR

13 things every Newcastle United fan should know about the club's new owners

In October 2021 the tyrannical Saudi regime completed the takeover of Newcastle United FC, via the nation's sovereign wealth fund. 

Here are 13 things all Newcastle fans should know about their club's new owners.

It's the Saudi state

This isn't just some rich guys from Saudi Arabia who have bought an 80% stake in Newcastle United, it's the Saudi government's Public Investment Fund (PIF).

Their chairman of this fund the murderous tyrant Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), who is also the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.

No matter how much the Premier League tries to maintain the ridiculous pretence that they haven't, what they've done is allowed the nationalisation of Newcastle United, into the ownership of the world's worst regime.

Sportswashing

The Saudi tyrants have invested their oil money all over the world. They've got stakes in Facebook, Twitter, Formula One, Boeing, Bank of America, Disney, Uber ... Wherever you look in the capitalist system, the Saudi tyrants have probably got a stake in it.

The difference between these investments, and Newcastle United, is that their capitalist investments are aimed at making profits, while their investment in Newcastle United is aimed at improving their public reputation, at a massive cost.

Why do you think they've made that appalling wax-faxed woman Amanda Staveley the figurehead of their ownership, despite her only owning a tiny stake in the venture, rather than one of their own head-choppers?

It's all about massaging their public reputation, and putting a slick westernised veneer onto their barbaric autocracy, rather than making any kind of monetary profit.

We've seen it already with Manchester City, and the way huge numbers of Mancs immediately turned themselves into amateur unpaid PR operatives for the Abu Dhabi despots who took over their club.

MBS and the Saudi head-choppers expect to receive exactly the same kind of sycophantic fawning from Geordies.

War crimes

The despotic Saudi regime has been waging war in neighbouring Yemen since 2014, and they've shown absolutely no respect for the normal conventions of war. 

Probably the most famous war crime occurred when they conducted an airstrike against a bus full of school kids, but they've also used helicopter gunships to attack refugees, and deliberately bombed civilian targets across one of the poorest countries on earth.

One of the most despicable tactics the Saudi tyrants use is the targeting of water supplies and food distribution infrastructure, in order to use starvation and disease as weapons of war against the Yemeni people.

Their absolute disregard for human life in the Yemeni conflict has created what the UN has consistently described as "the worst humanitarian crisis in the world".

Terrorism-spreaders

Ever since the oil money started flowing in, the Saudis have been using it to spread their extremist version of Islam (Wahhabism) across the globe. Wherever you find barbaric Islamist terrorists, you'll find financial and logistical links back to Saudi Arabia.

15 of the 19 September 11th attackers were Saudi, and the ideological figurehead of Al Qaida was Osama bin Laden, who came from a wealthy family that's still well connected in the Saudi regime.

During the 2016 US election Hillary Clinton's emails about the Saudis were leaked, and in them she made it absolutely clear that the US administration knew perfectly well that Saudi Arabia funds terrorist outfits like Al Qaida and ISIS.

Jamal Khashoggi

In October 2018 the Saudi government lured the Jamal Khashoggi to the Saudi embassy in Turkey, where he was murdered and dismembered. The remains of his body have never been found.

The aeroplanes used to fly his murderers in and out of Turkey were owned by PIF, the very company used as a front to buy Newcastle United, and the CIA concluded that the murder was ordered by Muhammed bin Salmen himself.

The reason Newcastle United's new owners killed Khashoggi and hacked his body to bits, is that he was a critic of their regime. He was the son of a mega-rich Saudi arms dealer with connections to the Saudi regime, but he saw the light, recognised the vile tyranny for what it was, and began criticising their political repression, and their war crimes in Yemen.

He was a brave man who stood up for what he believed in, and for that, the owners of Newcastle United ended his life, hacked his corpse to pieces, and hid the remains to deny him a proper burial.

They kill journalists just for criticising their horrific regime.

Misogyny

Probably the most famous piece of folk knowledge about Saudi Arabia in the last half-century is the fact that they hate their own women so much, they wouldn't even allow them to drive cars.

Saudi Arabia is still a profoundly misogynistic society in which women barely have any rights.

They're not allowed to travel or get a passport without permission from their male guardian; they're not free to choose who they marry, and until recently Saudi girls as young as 8 were forced into marriages with adult men; they're barred from all manner of professions; they're banned from studying abroad without their male guardian's permission; they're discriminated against in family courts; and feminist activism in Saudi Arabia is treated as akin to terrorism.

Homophobia

Saudi Arabia is one of the most homophobic regimes on earth, which maintains the death penalty for homosexuality.

They kill people for being gay. Do we really need to say any more than that?

Anti-democracy

In 2019 the Saudi tyrants conducted a barbaric mass-execution of 39 people, including one death by crucifixion. Most of the victims were pro-democracy protestors (including a lad who was 16 at the time he attended a pro-democracy street protest!).

These absolute tyrants literally kill people for supporting the democratic rights that British people take for granted. 

Islamist extremism
 

We already know that the Saudi regime is responsible for spreading their violent, extremist Wahhabist interpretation of Islam across the planet, but within Saudi Arabia they're just as bad.

Apostacy (the "crime" of renouncing Islam) still carries the death sentence in Saudi Arabia. 

Most Saudis who renounce Islam are forced into exile, which is especially hard for women because of the travel restrictions they're subjected to. And even then, they're forced to continually look over their shoulders, because Saudi operatives obviously aren't remotely afraid to carry out extrajudicial killings overseas. 

Corruption

The Saudi regime is notoriously corrupt, and they'll do literally anything to get away with it.

The Saudis even threatened acts of terrorism against the UK in order to pressurise the UK government into scrapping a Serious Fraud Office investigation into the estimated £1 billion that Prince Bandar took in bribes from the British arms company BAE.

The threat of Saudi-orchestrated terrorist attacks on British soil was enough to convince Tony Blair to personally intervene to shut down the corruption probe!

Premier League greed

The reason Premier League approval of the Newcastle takeover took so long wasn't that they had any concerns about the corruption, homophobia, democracy-repression, murder of journalists, misogyny, war crimes, terrorism-spreading, Islamist extremism, or even threats of terrorist attacks against the UK ... it's because a TV company with links to the Saudi government had been broadcasting unauthorised streams of Premier League matches!

Once this company put a stop to their unauthorised streams, the Premier League quickly gave the green light to the worst regime in the world to take over one of England's most historic and storied football clubs!

If you're looking for anyone to blame for the absolute shame of these horrific tyrants taking over your club, look no further than greed-obsessed Premier League executives.

Forget whataboutery

"Whataboutery" is one of the weakest debating tactics known to humanity. It's just a distraction strategy aimed at completely derailing the discussion.

• What about other terrible football owners like UAE/Qatar/exploitative US capitalists/Abramovich?
• What about other repressive regimes like North Korea/Iran/Israel? 
• What about other Saudi investments in stuff like Facebook/Twitter?
• What about Mike Ashley's ruthless zero hours contract exploitation at Sports Direct?

All of these other things are varying degrees of bad. And very many people have consistently highlighted and criticised these other things in the past. But the subject of discussion now is the fact that Newcastle United has been bought out by the worst regime in the world. 

The only reason any Newcastle fan is going "what about ...?" is to distract attention and derail the discussion.

It's a shamefully poor debating tactic, which nobody with even a shred of moral decency would try to use.

Buying loyalty?

The Saudi tyrants believe that just because they've bought Newcastle United, they've bought the Newcastle fans' undying loyalty too.

It's up to the people of Newcastle to show them how wrong they are, and that buying the badge doesn't automatically buy them the respect of the Geordie people.

If Newcastle fans have any decency and dignity whatever, the next home game will be absolutely festooned with pride flags, Yemeni flags, women's rights banners, and pictures of Jamal Khashoggi.

Khashoggi was murdered and dismembered by the owners of Newcastle United at the age of 59, so the 59th minute would be a profound moment for the name "Jamal Khashoggi" to ring out around St James' Park, to tell these sick bastards that they might own your club, but they'll never earn your respect if they go around murdering and dismembering their critics.

Will Newcastle United fans put on a show of defiance against the absolutely horrific tyrants who now own their club? Or will the next home game have an absolute party atmosphere, featuring thousands of Geordies giving the worst regime in the world a heroes' welcome with tea towels on their heads?

The game against Spurs on Sunday October 17th will tell the entire world an awful lot about the true character of the Geordie people, won't it?

 

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. Access to my online writing will always remain free. If you see some value in what I do, please consider supporting my work with a small donation/subscription.

OR

Why are Twitter censoring criticism of Saudi Arabia?

With over 10,000 Tweets to my name I'd never been blocked by Twitter for 'misconduct' until today.

The offending Tweet I've been locked out of my account for was a sarcastic criticism of Donald Trump's sickeningly cosy relationship with the brutal, misogynistic, homophobic, head-chopping, terrorism-spreading, democracy-repressing, journalist-dismembering Saudi Arabia war criminals, putting it in contrast with the hate and lies he continually spreads about the socially liberal and progressive Muslim figure Ilhan Omar.

My Tweet was posted in reply to one by Medhi Hasan, which provides the context for my sarcastic reply.

And here's my response that Twitter have deemed to be so unacceptable that they've blocked me until I remove it:

I've already had one appeal rejected (they don't tell you why, just as they don't tell you what rule you've supposedly broken when they put you in Twitter purgatory in the first place). But I'm appealing again.

And suffering this Twitter censorship for the 'crime' of criticising Saudi Arabia has made me determined to redouble my efforts to criticise this disgusting regime, and the western politicians (like Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, and Emmanuel Macron) who support them.

 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

Theresa May's tears of self-pity

With tears in her eyes Theresa May announced that she will be resigning on June 7th.

Some people will feel pity for her, and believe the mainstream media hagiographies about how "she did her best", but the fact that she cried tears of self-pity as she resigned simply serve to illustrate her selfishness and callousness.

She cried no tears for the Windrush Brits she unlawfully discriminated against and even forced into exile overseas.

She cried no tears for the victims of the Grenfell fire when she rocked up to the scene and refused to even meet the survivors.

She cried no tears for the four million British kids growing up in dire poverty, and even sought to scrap their free school meals and replace them with a 7p per child breakfast.

She cried no tears for the millions of sick and disabled people that her government has systematically abused to the point of literally thousands of people being treated like idle scroungers and told that they're "fit for work" just weeks before their deaths.

She cried no tears for the millions of people who suffered the devastating consequences of Tory austerity fanaticism, and even lied through her teeth that "austerity is over" while continuing it.

She cried no tears for the Yemeni children blown to pieces by the tyrannical Saudi war criminals, in fact she kept on signing more and more arms contracts with them despite knowing that they're using British weapons to commit their war crimes.

Yet she cried tears for herself as she finally let go of her grip on political power.

No tears for the Windrush Brits she deported

No tears for the Grenfell fire victims

No tears for the disabled people her government has systematically abused

No tears for the 4million kids growing up in dire poverty

Tears of self-pity when she resignspic.twitter.com/4HQI78ZkiI

— Another Angry Voice (@Angry_Voice) May 24, 2019

Many people will argue that she was the worst Prime Minister ever, but in a way she was actually the perfect Tory Prime Minister. A perfect distillation of the utterly selfish, greed is a virtue, rob the poor to give to the rich, 'no such thing as society' Tory philosophy.

The only person she's ever felt sorry for is herself, so don't be fooled into taking pity on her.

If you want to feel sorry for anyone, take a moment to remember the millions of victims of her policies.

And if you don't want to do that, then have some pity on yourself and your fellow Brits, because whichever Brextremist the tiny clique of Tory party members pick out as our next Prime Minister is surely going to be even worse than she was.

 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

Meet the "more of the same" party

The Independent Group of 11 MPs who are squatting in parliament, refusing to call by-elections, and pinning their political hopes on begging Theresa May for an opportunity to prop up her pro-austerity government have announced the positions they've given themselves, and you couldn't have picked more inappropriate roles for several of them if you'd actively tried.

Heidi Allen - Welfare, social care, pensions, and business

Source: Heidi Allen on They Work For You

Heidi Allen is one of the three ex-Tories to join the parliamentary squatter group, and by putting her in charge of welfare and social care this lot are sending a very clear message to their financial backers that they're intent on continuing the savage welfare policies that Allen repeatedly voted in favour of during her time on the Tory benches.

Any "centrists" hoping this new group might adopt a more humane approach than the Tories to issues like disability, social security, and social care will surely be sorely disappointed to see this position handed to a Tory with a proven track record of voting in favour of savage welfare cuts and crippling reduced local government funding in order to fund lavish tax cuts on corporations and the super-rich.

Greedy businessmen hoping for more unearned handouts on the other hand, they'll be punching the air with delight that this new group is intent on continuing the same old "something for nothing" Tory agenda, and actively begging Theresa May to let them prop up her shambles of a government.

Mike Gapes - Foreign affairs and defence

It's difficult to think of a less suitable individual to take responsibility for foreign affairs than the unapologetic warmonger Mike Gapes.

This is a man who voted in favour of the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, and then repeatedly voted against investigations into the ensuing catastrophe.

The Iraq war caused hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, triggered a refugee crisis of millions, and created a lawless power vacuum that eventually gave birth to ISIS.

Mike Gapes refuses to accept any moral responsibility whatever for any of this, and remains 100% unapologetic.

Gapes is also a big fan of the tyrannical, homophobic, misogynists, head-chopping, journalist-dismembering, terrorism-spreading Saudi war criminals, and was one of 13 MPs to receive a share of over £100,000 of gifts and freebies lavished on British politicians by the Saudi regime in 2018.

Gapes knows that the Saudis use British weapons to commit war crimes in Yemen because he was a member of the foreign affairs select committee that admitted that this was the case, but he simply doesn't care.

By appointing Gapes to their foreign affairs and defence brief the group are sending a very clear signal to arms manufacturers and the military-industrial complex that they're setting up as a pro-war, pro-imperialist party that is willing to turn a blind eye to the sickening war crimes of disgustingly tyrannical regimes like Saudi Arabia in order to flog them £billions more in weapons.

Chris Leslie - Treasury and trade

One of Ed Miliband's biggest mistakes as Labour leader was to allow a bunch of hard-right austerity fetishists rule the shadow treasury which resulted in Labour's ridiculously unappealing "austerity-lite" agenda that ruined their chances at the 2015 general election.

The 'thinking' behind this ludicrous policy was that Labour could pinch a few thousand soft-Tory votes in marginal constituencies by imitating ruinous Tory austerity rather than actively opposing it. What they clearly failed to factor into this mind-bogglingly stupid plan was the fact that an explicitly pro-austerity agenda would end up driving away vast numbers of natural Labour voters for every "soft-Tory" they managed to entice.

Hence Labour's share of the vote collapsing from 35% in 2010 to just 29% in 2015, despite the Tories overseeing unprecedented collapses in workers' wages and living standards, trashing Britain's AAA credit rating, and spectacularly missing all of their economic targets!

Had Labour actually opposed devastating Tory austerity dogma in 2015, Labour would probably have beaten the Tories, Ed Miliband would have become Prime Minister, austerity would be over, Jeremy Corbyn would still be an obscure Labour backbencher, and there's be no such thing as Brexit!

Chris Leslie was one of the ludicrous hard-right wonks in the shadow treasury who helped to lay the groundwork for Brexit by outright refusing to oppose the Tory austerity madness that was trashing wages, living standards, and public services, and he's still a pro-austerity fanatic now, even years after right-leaning international bodies like the IMF and OECD have rejected austerity dogma as an economically damaging ideology.

Appointing a hard-right economic illiterate like Chris Leslie to their economics brief is a very clear signal to the mega-rich beneficiaries of Tory austerity dogma that this group intends to continue the Tory agenda of using austerity as a means of transferring ever more wealth from to poor and ordinary to corporations and the mega-rich.

Angela Smith - Transport, Local government, housing, energy, environment, rural affairs

Angela Smith is such a talentless incompetent that she managed to completely screw up the biggest day of her entire political career by referring to British Asians as "funny tinge" on live TV on the Independent Group launch day.

Afterwards she excused this racist gaffe by repeatedly claiming that she was "very tired" which is actually significantly more offensive than the original gaffe because it implies that racist attitudes are somehow so natural and inherent that they accidentally slip out when people are tired, drunk, or stressed.

The idea that we're all inherently racists and it only depends how tired, drunk, or stressed we get before we start spouting bigoted racist slurs is absolutely extraordinary, but not quite as extraordinary as this group putting a pro-privatisation ideologue and lobbyist for private water companies in charge of their transport, energy, water, and housing policies.

With a hard-right pro-privatisation ideologue running this huge brief, it's absolutely clear that this group are committed to defying the public will by cementing private profiteering ownership of the railways, national grid, water companies, and other public services.

Putting Smith in charge of this brief is a clear signal to the private profiteers who are gouging vast profits out of our housing, public services, and utilities that this group is absolutely committed to delivering "more of the same". 

Anna Soubry - Brexit and justice

Of all of the squatter MPs Anna Soubry is perhaps the most distasteful because of her outright and glaring displays of hypocrisy.

When she's not praising the devastating 2010-15 austerity policies that laid the groundwork for Brexit by collapsing UK living standards as "marvellous" Soubry often talks a good talk, but when it comes to the actions her parliamentary voting record stands as absolute proof that she repeatedly does precisely the opposite.

Take her continual grandstanding on Brexit to pose as some kind of noble Brexit-critic which is completely contradicted by her actions. She poses as a Brexit-sceptic, but in parliament she's repeatedly voted in favour of Theresa May's hard-right interpretation of Brexit.

Soubry's Brexit collusion including votes in favour of May's shambolic Withdrawal Bill in January 2018, votes against opposition amendments to protect workers' rights, environmental laws, equality rules, consumer protections and food standards, and even a vote of confidence in Theresa May after she humiliated Britain by postponing the scheduled "meaningful vote" for no reason other than the fact she knew she was going to lose it.

It's not just talking about opposing Brexit while repeatedly voting in favour of it either. When it comes to police cuts and violent crime she's also proven herself a despicable hypocrite too.

In response to Theresa May's ludicrous assertion that her policy of getting rid of 21,000 police and slashing police budgets has no relation with soaring rates of violent crime, Soubry stated that "of course there's a link between policing numbers and crime".

This Tweet is an admission that she knew that slashing police budgets would end up increasing rates of serious and violent crime all along, but she repeatedly voted in favour of Theresa May's ideologically driven assault on the police service regardless of the dire and deadly consequences she knew would happen. 

She blatantly put loyalty to the Tory party above the lives of violent crime victims, but now she's abandoned that party loyalty as worthless to join the parliamentary squatters, demonstrating that the victims of the violent crime wave she helped Theresa May to create are actually less than worthless in her estimations!

And she's got the absolute brass neck to start carping from the sidelines about the appalling consequences of the austerity fanaticism that she repeatedly and knowingly voted in favour of as if she's now some kind of heroic saviour!

Putting one of the most brazen hypocrites in the whole of parliament in charge of their Brexit brief is a signal to their financial backers that the group are actually extremely flexible on their Brexit position. If the secretive millionaires who are bankrolling this group want them to go all out for a referendum then that's what they'll do, but if the bankrollers decide that a hard-right Tory Brexit is actually in their interests, that's obviously what Soubry and the squatters will eventually vote in favour of.

Change Politics!

The parliamentary squatters' "change politics" slogan is every bit as Orwellian anything the Tory government have come up with over the years ("all in this together" - while transferring as much wealth as possible from the majority to the mega-rich minority, "making work pay" while overseeing the longest sustained collapse in workers wages in recorded history and slashing in-work benefits, "strong and stable" as their campaign slogan during the most shambolic and needless election in modern British history ...).

They repeatedly claim that they want to "change politics" but their actions demonstrate that on all manner of crucial issues from ruinous austerity dogma to war-mongering imperialism, and from privatisation mania to welfare policy, these are people who desperately want to keep things exactly the same.

 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

Don't let anyone trick you into feeling sorry for Theresa May

As Theresa May's catastrophically inept handling of her own party's Brexit mess has degenerated further and further into chaos, there's an ongoing campaign to elicit sympathy for her.

There's obviously not much sympathy to be found on left-wing sites like mine, but scroll through the comments on mainstream media outlets or the Tory blogosphere and you'll see a concerted effort to paint Theresa May as some kind of poor, innocent, defenceless victim of circumstances that are beyond her control.

Here are just a few of the most glaring reasons why this outrageous "poor Theresa" narrative is disgustingly warped, and why any feelings of sympathy towards her are catastrophically misplaced.

Perspective

If you're having these feelings just try to have a think about just some of the many victims of Theresa May's politics to restore your sense of political perspective to normality.

If you think Theresa May's having a hard time just consider:

• The families of Black British people who have been deported overseas thanks to Theresa May's grotesque "deport now, hear appeals later" Hostile Environment policy. Several of these black British citizens actually died abroad.

• NHS staff who are under enormous pressure thanks to 8 devastating years of Tory cuts and their deliberate ideologically-driven vandalism of the NHS. Winter is always the hardest and most stressful time for health workers, and this year's winter NHS crisis is likely to be the worst ever thanks to Theresa May and her Tory mates. Why not talk to someone who works in the NHS about how bad things have got if you've started to get feelings of misplaced sympathy towards Theresa May?

• Since the Tories came to power in 2010 they've overseen the worst collapse in the value of UK workers' wages in history. The percentage of workers suffering in-work poverty has absolutely skyrocketed. Just try to imagine what it's like actually having a job, but earning so little you can't even cover the basic costs of living (rent, utility bills, transport, food). This is a fate that Theresa May and her Tory mates are wilfully inflicting on millions of people so don't feel sorry for her.

• Remember when Theresa May turned up to prowl around the site of the Grenfell Tower fire, aloofly ignoring and avoiding the survivors and the devastated families of the victims? And remember how her government 'rewarded' the emergency service workers who dealt with the tragedy just a few days later by whooping and cheering as they won their parliamentary vote to continue with their malicious real terms cuts in public sector workers' pay?

• Theresa May and her fellow Tories have been condemned by the United Nations for their systematic abuse of disabled people, yet they just carry on with their despicable policies of cutting disabled people's meagre subsistence benefits, confiscating their mobility vehicles, and forcing them through degrading, dehumanising, and discriminatory assessment regimes. If you're tempted to feel a bit sorry for Theresa May, just try to appropriately direct your empathy by considering what it's like to be disabled in Tory Britain.

• Not only have teachers suffered huge real-terms pay cuts over the last 8 years, many are stuck working in incredibly dodgy private sector academy chains where the bosses pay themselves inflated six figure salaries by 'topslicing' the public funds that are supposed to pay for our children's education. Then there's the appalling scandal of teachers using their own money to provide food and clothes for the ever growing numbers of kids who are turning up to school dressed in rags and malnourished as a consequence of Tory austerity dogma.

• If you think Theresa May is having a tough time, just think about the victims of the crime wave she deliberately unleashed. Ask anyone who works in front line policing or youth services how Theresa May's ideologically-driven agenda of cutting the police force by 21,000+ and the Tory policy of gutting investment in youth outreach programmes have impacted areas like gang violence and violent crime. Or just look at the crime statistics. Violent crime is soaring out of control meaning thousands more muggings, thousands more stabbings, thousands more sexual assaults and rapes. Does your pity for Theresa May really outweigh the thousands of victims of violent crimes that simply wouldn't have happened without her extraordinary police-cutting agenda?
  
  Outside of Britain just try to imagine the suffering of innocent civilians in Yemen. Theresa May knows that the Saudi Arabian tyrants are committing war crimes there, and using the despicable tactic of spreading famine and disease as weapons of war too (resulting in the biggest humanitarian disaster on earth). But she keeps sucking up to them and selling them £billions more in British weapons to commit their war crimes with.

Insulation

Consideration of the tsunami of stress, poverty, and suffering Theresa May and her Tory mates have unleashed over the last 8 years provides a bit of valuable perspective for those who feel inclined to feel sorry for Theresa May, but there's another vital factor too.

Theresa May is an incredibly wealthy woman who is married to a multi-millionaire investor (who works for a fund with huge investments in arms manufacturers who profit from supplying weapons to the Saudi war criminals).

She's so rich that she could just walk away tomorrow and live the rest of her life stress-free in idle and extravagant luxury without having to lift a finger (completely unlike the circumstances of most ordinary workers, victims of her vile Hostile Environment policy, disabled people, emergency service workers, or the starving refugees fleeing the consequences of British foreign policy in places like Yemen).

Brexit

Then there's the fact that Theresa May has brought most of her problems on herself:

• She had a parliamentary majority to push her Brexit plans through, but threw it away last year in an unprecedented display of political hubris.

• She had the opportunity to run Brexit in the national interest from the beginning, but she chose to run it as a closed Tory shop exclusively for the benefit of her own political party, and now she's upset that all the people she excluded from the process are dissatisfied at the shambles she's cobbled together!

• She had the opportunity to develop a sensible Brexit negotiating strategy, but she resorted to toddler tantrum threats to trash the UK economy with a "no deal" flounce right from the beginning.

• She had the option of devising a coherent set of negotiating objectives before she set the Article 50 clock ticking, but she chose not to because she couldn't resist the allue of the glowing 'hooray for triggering Article 50' headlines in the right-wing propaganda rags.

• She had the opportunity to run Brexit in an open and accountable manner, but she hid the impact assessments, she hid the legal advice, she's hiding her post-Brexit immigration plan, and she's hiding the true cost of the "no deal" catastrophe she's threatening the nation with if she doesn't get her own way.

• She had the opportunity to abide by the parliamentary rules and conventions, but she has continually sought to sideline and ignore parliament culminating in the extraordinary decision to defy parliament and postpone the meaningful vote on Brexit for no reason other than she knew she was going to lose it.

• Theresa May could accept that nobody wants her shambolic last-minute farce of a deal, she could take the threat of "no deal" ruination off the table, she could walk away right now, or she could call a general election. But all she's interested in is desperately clinging to political power for as long as possible, no matter how much her selfishness and vanity damages the British national interest.

Conclusion

If you ever feel yourself beginning to slide towards having a bit of sympathy for Theresa May, just don't.

Theresa May isn't a character in some silly soap opera. She's an incredibly powerful woman with a horrifying track record of trashing the lives of people she perceives to be below her in the social pecking order.

When she imposes austerity dogma, inflicts social security cuts on the most vulnerable people in society, licences arms sales to war criminals, deports black British citizens to their deaths overseas,  vandalises our public services, triggers a devastating crime wave, and imposes wage repression policies - she knows that her status amongst the gilded establishment class protects her from all of the suffering she's inflicting.

And when it comes to Brexit, that's undeniably a mess of her own making. Yes David Cameron ran away when his gamble with the nation's future backfired and left the mess to his successor, but the primary reason the process has been even more chaotic than most Brexit critics could even have imagined back in the summer of 2016 is Theresa May's appalling combination of selfishness, hubris, control-freakery, strategic ineptitude, incompetence, and utter contempt for the concept of democratic accountability.

She's the one who made this farcical mess for herself, and she's certainly not going to have to pay any real price for it either when it all comes crashing down.

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