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package com.graphhopper.api.model;

import com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonIgnoreProperties;

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

/**
 * Contains the results of a geocoding request.
 * This is a copy of: https://github.com/graphhopper/geocoder-converter/blob/master/src/main/java/com/graphhopper/converter/api/GHResponse.java
 *
 * @author Robin Boldt
 * @author Peter Karich
 */
@JsonIgnoreProperties(ignoreUnknown = true)
public class GHGeocodingResponse {

    private List<String> copyrights = new ArrayList<>(5);
    private List<GHGeocodingEntry> hits;
    private String locale = "en";

    public GHGeocodingResponse() {
        this(5);
    }

    public GHGeocodingResponse(int no) {
        hits = new ArrayList<>(no);
    }

    public void setCopyrights(List<String> copyrights) {
        this.copyrights = copyrights;
    }

    public List<String> getCopyrights() {
        return copyrights;
    }

    public GHGeocodingResponse addCopyright(String cr) {
        copyrights.add(cr);
        return this;
    }

    public void setHits(List<GHGeocodingEntry> hits) {
        this.hits = hits;
    }

    public void add(GHGeocodingEntry entry) {
        hits.add(entry);
    }

    public List<GHGeocodingEntry> getHits() {
        return hits;
    }

    public String getLocale() {
        return locale;
    }

    public void setLocale(String locale) {
        this.locale = locale;
    }

}


and Kate soon realises that her questions are putting their lives in danger. Stalked by an unknown and sinister enemy, she must use her tough journalistic instinct to find the answers from the past – before she has to say goodbye to her future.
In the 1920s, in a beautiful Italian villa called Il Piacere, the playwright Galeazzo D'Ascanio lived for Celia Sands. She was his muse and his mistress, his most enduring obsession and the inspiration for his most original play. But the night before she was to perform the leading role, she disappeared. Some sixty years later, a theatre in the grounds of Il Piacere, Alessandro D'Ascanio is preparing to stage the first performance of his grandfather's masterpiece. A promising young actress - who shares Celia's name, but not her blood - has agreed to star. She is instantly drawn to the mysteries surrounding the play, and to her compelling employer. And even though she knows she should let the past go, in the dark - in her dreams - it comes back.
"Powerful, atmospheric, enthralling, and simply mesmerizing, [ The Winter Sea ] is one of the best books you'll read this year!" -Singletitles.com "Susanna Kearsley's obvious love of history is infectious... The Winter Sea is an acknowledgement that so many of us are haunted by the deeds of our ancestors, perhaps literally..." -Gail Anderson-Dargatz, international bestselling author of A Recipe for Bees History has all but forgotten... In the spring of 1708, an invading Jacobite fleet of French and Scottish soldiers nearly succeeded in landing the exiled James Stewart in Scotland to reclaim his crown. Now, Carrie McClelland hopes to turn that story into her next bestselling novel. Settling herself in the shadow of Slains Castle, she creates a heroine named for one of her own ancestors and starts to write. But when she discovers her novel is more fact than fiction, Carrie wonders if she might be dealing with ancestral memory, making her the only living person who knows the . . .
Compelled to help, Nicola turns to a man she once left, and still loves: Rob McMorran, whose own psychic gifts are far greater than hers. With Rob to help her "see" the past, she follows a young girl named Anna from . . .


Mr Pond was a small, neat civil servant. There was nothing remarkable about him at all - except a pointed beard. However, he tells the most fascinating stories and has the most unorthodox way of solving crimes and mysteries. These eight short stories include the extraordinary 'The Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse' about a Marshal's plans which go tragically wrong because, paradoxically, his soldiers obey him.


Print quality, range of applications, reliability and simple operation are the criteria that the ideal press must meet to gain a competitive edge. The Heidelberg Quickmaster 46 excels across the board, incorporating features--many unprecedented in its class--such as program-controlled printing, fully-automated plate changing with Autoplate, central sheet-size adjustment, monitored sheet control, self-regulated inking and dampening systems, inching and crawl speed modes and automated wash-up devices. With its inherent flexibility, ease of use and numerous automated features, the Heidelberg Quickmaster 46 effortlessly achieves reliable, superior quality.


Welcome to Mercedes-Benz Superdome Stadium Hotel Guide. The expert guide to finding the best hotel rooms online near the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, New Orleans. Guests of our hotels will discover comfortable accommodations, friendly services, and a distinct styled ambiance, all offered at affordable rates. Find, compare and book great hotels at great prices, all at Mercedes-Benz Superdome Stadium Hotel Guide.


The South Beach Tanning salon is located at the corner of 8th Avenue and Alton Road, in the heart of South Beach. Just minutes from either Lincoln Road or the beaches and resorts. Whether just visiting or a local resident stop in where the celebrities go when they are in town for your choice of multiple levels of state of the art tanning and sunless equipment.


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BATMAN V SUPERMAN: Jesse Eisenberg Confirms He'll Be at Comic-Con
by Adam Chitwood June 18, 2015
During the Warner Bros. panel at last year's San Diego Comic-Con, filmmaker Zack Snyder took the stage to briefly preview the very first footage from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. He subsequently brought Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, and Gal Gadot out to wave to the crowd, but just as quickly as they appeared, they turned and walked off the stage. As he was exiting, Snyder added, "We'll see you guys next year," hinting at a much larger Batman v Superman presence at San Diego Comic-Con 2015.
While Warner Bros. has yet to announce what it will be showcasing at Comic-Con next month, there is obviously going to be something significant for Batman v Superman. The panel will no doubt include Snyder and the return of Affleck, Cavill, and Gadot, but who else?
Perri spoke with the film's Lex Luthor, Jesse Eisenberg, recently in anticipation of the excellent drama The End of the Tour, and she took the opportunity to ask the actor if he might be gracing Hall H with his presence:
"I'll be there…I think I'm there for the hour I'm on the stage."
While it was a pretty safe bet that Eisenberg would be taking part in what's sure to be a memorable panel for Batman v Superman, we now have it straight from the horse's mouth that he'll be attending Comic-Con 2015. Moreover, when asked what DC movie Eisenberg is looking forward to besides his own, he had high praise for Batman v Superman screenwriter Chris Terrio:
"I like what this writer does, this guy Chris Terrio. He wrote this movie we did and I just think he's so great. He's such a good writer. I like what he does with characters, I like what he does with wordplay and cleverness. I like anything he writes."
Terrio, who won the Oscar for writing Argo, was brought in to rework David S. Goyer's initial draft of the screenplay for Batman v Superman, and it sounds like his contributions were significant. It's certainly encouraging to see Eisenberg describe the script as full of wordplay and cleverness.
Expect many more details on Comic-Con panels over the next few weeks, and be sure to tune in to Collider for our extensive coverage from the event. San Diego Comic-Con 2015 runs from July 8—12th.
Look for the full interview on Collider soon:
Jesse Eisenberg just confirmed to us that he'll be on the 'Batman v Superman' stage at Comic-Con. #LexLuthor #SDCC #BatmanVSuperman
A photo posted by ColliderNews (@collidernews) on Jun 18, 2015 at 12:47pm PDT
To catch up on all of our Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice coverage, click here. Peruse the recent links below.
BATMAN V SUPERMAN's Batmobile Outfitted with Dual Engines, Harpoons, and Sonic Repellent
BATMAN V SUPERMAN: Over 30 Pictures of Wonder Woman, Batman, and Superman Costumes
BATMAN V SUPERMAN Official Synopsis Revealed
Warner Bros. Exec Outlines DC Movie Universe Plans; Courting "Master Filmmakers"
Armie Hammer and Henry Cavill Talk MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. and BATMAN V SUPERMAN at CinemaCon
Henry Cavill Says BATMAN V SUPERMAN Is Not a MAN OF STEEL Sequel
Take Another Look at the BATMAN V SUPERMAN Batsuit
First Posters for BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE
Over 30 Images from the BATMAN V SUPERMAN Trailer
BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE Trailer Teases Clash of Superheroes
Image via Warner Bros.
INSIDE OUT Review: You Can Cry, and That's Okay
ANT-MAN Posters Go International with Paul Rudd
• 2015 San Diego Comic-Con • Batman v Superman • Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice • Batman vs. Superman • Chris Terrio • Comic-Con • Comic-Con 2015 • Jesse Eisenberg

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
class Array
  # fold from left to right (it just like inject)
  def foldl func, init; inject init, &func; end
end

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Below you fill find all funeral homes and cemeteries in or near Clear Spring.
Suburbs of Clear Spring: Big Spring.
Zip codes in the city: 21722.
It was written by Hagerstown Morning on May 22nd, 2013 that John Vernon Alexander Mullendore passed on in Clear Spring, Maryland. Mullendore was 83 years old. Send flowers to express your sorrow and honor John Vernon Alexander's life.
It was reported by Hagerstown Morning on April 20th, 2013 that David "Robby" W Robinson died in Clear Spring, Maryland. Robinson was 62 years old. Send flowers to share your condolences and honor David "Robby" W's life.
It was reported by Hagerstown Morning on April 12th, 2013 that Nelson Eugene Sr Kline died in Clear Spring, Maryland. Kline was 71 years old. Send flowers to express your sorrow and honor Nelson Eugene Sr's life.
It was noted by Hagerstown Morning on April 8th, 2013 that Alice Marquez (Cohill) died in Clear Spring, Maryland. Ms. Marquez was 100 years old. Send flowers to share your condolences and honor Alice's life.
It was reported on March 15th, 2013 that Robert E Faith passed on in Martinsburg, West Virginia. Faith was 79 years old and was born in Clear Spring, MD. Send flowers to express your sorrow and honor Robert E's life.
It was noted by Hagerstown Morning on March 5th, 2013 that Alma Victoria Simpson-Hollinger (Beale) perished in Clear Spring, Maryland. Ms. Simpson-Hollinger was 92 years old and was born in Ridgeley, WV. Send flowers to express your sympathy and honor Alma Victoria's life.
It was revealed by Hagerstown Morning on January 31st, 2013 that Raymond E "Jay" Golden passed on in Clear Spring, Maryland. Golden was 79 years old. Send flowers to share your condolences and honor Raymond E "Jay"'s life.
It was reported by Hagerstown Morning on January 31st, 2013 that Raymond E "Jay" Golden passed on in Clear Spring, Maryland. Golden was 79 years old. Send flowers to express your sorrow and honor Raymond E "Jay"'s life.
It was reported on January 17th, 2013 that William Seibert Boyd passed on in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. Boyd was 85 years old and was born in Clear Spring, MD. Send flowers to express your sorrow and honor William Seibert's life.
It was reported on November 18th, 2012 that Jason Alan Long perished in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Long was 36 years old and was born in Clear Spring, MD. Send flowers to express your sympathy and honor Jason Alan's life.
The population was 467 as of the 2007 United States Census Bureau estimates . Clear Spring is a town in Washington County, Maryland County, Maryland, United States. . . .
78, of Hancock, Md., died Tuesday, Nov. 2 ... He is survived by children, Linda Startzman and husband, Steven, of Clear Spring, Kenneth McCusker Jr. and wife, Lora, of Artemas, Pa., Barbara Hornbaker and husband, David, and Sharon A.
When the funeral was over and everyone went home ... By then, after a double mastectomy, Karen was declared clear of cancer and was told that if it didn't reappear in a year, she was in the clear. She was cancer-free for nine months.
Find a Funeral Home inClear Spring, Maryland MD to provide the caring burial and ceremonial services your family deserves.
The finest roses, gifts and Mother's Day flowers delivered fresh. Serving Clear Spring, Maryland, surrounding suburbs and the entire country.
We work with local florists and flower shops to offer same day delivery. You will find budget sympathy flowers in Clear Spring here. Our funeral flowers are cheap in price but not in value.


Be sleek and stylish while on-the-go. Trust us, you wouldn't want to leave home without your new flask.
Double-walled stainless steel keeps your beverage warm and cold.
Cozy up with our winter flower series. Our simple yet sophisticated floral design truly is the epitome of grace and elegance.


Opioid abuse and addiction are exacting a grave toll from communities in Colorado and across the country. The death rate from overdoses increases annually, as does the number of babies born with drug dependency. The estimated annual cost of this epidemic to the U.S. economy has reached an astonishing $504 billion.
On average, 91 Americans die each day from an opioid overdose.
In Colorado, deaths due to opioid overdose comprised 57 percent of all drug-related deaths statewide in 2016.
The epidemic has also had a devastating effect on children: Every 25 minutes a baby is born in the U.S. suffering from opioid withdrawal, also known as Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS). Between 2012 and 2016, Colorado recorded a 91 percent increase in its NAS rate.
Adverse Child Experiences such as parental substance abuse can impact a child's health and well-being throughout their life. Among adults in Colorado, 62 percent experienced at least one ACE during childhood, while 15 percent report having experienced 4 or more ACEs as a child. Individuals who experience more ACEs in childhood began using opioids at a younger age, and had a higher likelihood of opioid overdose.
Every community in Colorado has been hit hard by this epidemic and unfortunately, we are seeing more and more babies born with chemical dependencies. We need to get parents the help they need in order to reverse this trend and save lives.
This report discusses how home visiting can help prevent Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome, reduce the amount of Adverse Childhood Experiences, and reduce substance abuse later in life.
Prevention is a critical component of the battle against the opioid epidemic. To meet the opioid challenge, the federal government should maintain its commitment to MIECHV and Early Head Start, which fund home visiting programs across the country. Additionally, Colorado should continue its support of the Nurse-Family Partnership program, and policymakers must work together to develop a funding solution for substance abuse treatment to ensure families get the help they need.


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Tag Archives: black soldiers
by jeffvhc | March 13, 2015 · 9:24 am
"If slaves will make good soldiers, our whole theory of slavery is wrong."
March 13, 1865/2015
Desperate, Confederate Congress Permits Slaves to Serve as Soldiers in Return for Freedom. Says One Opponent: "If slaves will make good soldiers, our whole theory of slavery is wrong."
March 13, 1865. As early as January 1864 Confederate Major General Patrick Cleburne had proposed that freed slaves be used as soldiers, but the notion had been summarily rejected by President Davis. By the fall of 1864, however, the South's situation was dire, and some felt that desperate times called for desperate measures. Even in January 1865 there were hold-outs: Howell Cobb of Georgia, former Speaker of the US House of Representatives and secretary of the treasury under President Buchanan, and one of the founders of the Confederacy, opposed the measure, writing to President Davis, "If slaves will make good soldiers, our whole theory of slavery is wrong." Nonetheless, on March 13, the Confederate Congress passed and President Davis signed a law permitting slaves to serve as soldiers.
Historian Margaret Wagner adds, "Amid arguments and mutual finger-pointing with President Davis, the Confederate Congress adjourns it[ed] last session on March 18th."
The military order putting the law into effect was issued March 23, 1865, but only few African Americans were enlisted, and the war ended before they saw combat.
The American Civil War 365 Days, Margaret E. Wagner, pp. April 27, March 18.
Confederate Law Authorizing the Enlistment of Black Soldiers, as Promulgated in a Military Order, Freedmen & Southern Society Project
Lincoln Assesses His Second Inaugural Speech
On March 15, eleven days after his Inaugural Address, President Lincoln wrote to New York newspaper publisher and Republican politician Thurlow Weed that he believed the speech would "wear as well as—perhaps better than—anything I have produced; but I believe it is not immediately popular. Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them."
President Lincoln, 1864
This last comment presumably refers to the following passage: "Both [parties, North and South,] read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. 'Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.' If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' . . ."
Lincoln biographer Harold Holzer writes, "One newspaper of the day thought the concluding sentiments [of Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, "With malice toward none, . . . "] deserved to be 'printed in gold.'"
Harold Holzer, Lincoln in the Times: The Life of Abraham Lincoln, as Originally Reported in The New York Times, p. 222.
Freedman's Bureau Established
On March 3, 1865, federal law established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, or Freedman's Bureau for short. It was created to help both African Americans and Southern whites who had been displaced or impoverished by the war. It distributed food and clothing; provided medical care; oversaw a school system for former slaves; helped reunite lost family members, and more. The Freedman's Bureau was established for one year, but it quickly became clear that its work would be more difficult than had initially been thought due to the establishment in the South of Black Codes that placed stringent restrictions on African Americans' freedom and forced them to work for low wages. Their purpose and effect was to maintain white supremacy. When, in 1866, Congress renewed the charter for the Bureau, President Andrew Johnson vetoed it, and Congress failed to override his veto.
– All entries were submitted by Vermont Humanities Council Executive Director Peter A. Gilbert
Tagged as Abraham Lincoln, black soldiers, Confederacy, Freedman's Bureau, Howell Cobb, Major General Patrick Cleburne, Second Inaugural, slavery, Thurlow Weed


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Posts Tagged 'Internment'
BoJob States He Is Prepared to Break Law For Brexit
Yesterday Mike put up the ominous news that BoJob has confirmed in parliament that he would break the Benn Act in order to bring about a no-deal Brexit. Mike comments that this seems to confirm that he is indeed in the pocket of financial speculators, who stand to make billions from the economic and social chaos and misery that would result. Jeremy Corbyn and the SNP have also made it clear that they will not support Johnson's new attempt at a deal with the EU. It appears that they only course left open is a vote of No Confidence, followed by a caretaker government led by Corbyn. If that fails, Mike speculates that John Bercow may seek to delay Brexit again in preparation for a general election. Mike goes on to wonder if Johnson actually wants that, as well as the Lib Dems, who seem to be ready to support the Tories back into power once again. He concludes
Perhaps he thinks the Brexit-supporting public will put him back into Number 10 with a majority.
But after a series of failed attempts at Brexit, is anybody really stupid enough to think he has anything to offer us?
WATCH: Johnson confirms he's ready to break the law to leave the EU without a deal
By stating plainly that he is prepared to break the law to get the Brexit he and his backers want, Johnson has made it blatantly clear that he is not fit to be prime minister. While I've no doubt his toadies and lackeys in the right-wing press would try to claim that this would be the action of a strong prime minister against a weak, divided and traitorous parliament – and where would we have heard that kind of rhetoric before? Oh yes, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy – it's the actions of an autocrat. We have such laws binding the powers of prime ministers and the head of state because we have constitutional government. It's evolved over centuries through turmoil and revolution to protect British people, their liberty and property, from arbitrary, tyrannical government. That's it's point. Johnson and his supporters are willing to break that. It puts the lie to the old Tory claim that they represent democracy and the British constitution. In reality, as this shows abundantly, they are increasingly keen on autocratic one-man rule, with BoJob as the new Duce or Fuhrer.
If BoJob does violate the Benn Act, then I believe that he should be arrested and impeached as a clear and present threat to democracy. Perhaps we could put him and his supporters in the internment camp the right-wing forces plotting a coup in the 1970s wanted to put Harold Wilson, trade unionists and left-wing activists and journalists.
Tags:'No Deal' Brexit, Benn Act, Boris Johnson, Brexit, British Constitution, Conservatives, Coups, General Election, Harold Wilson, Hedge Funds, Impeachment, Internment, Jeremy Corbyn, John Bercow, Lib-Dems, Parliament, SNP, Vox Political
Posted in Banks, Crime, Democracy, European Union, Fascism, Germany, Industry, Italy, Law, Nazis, Politics, The Press, Trade Unions | 1 Comment »
Private Eye: Government Plan to Draft Army as Local Government Officials in Event Brexit Crisis
There's a very worrying story right at the beginning of this fortnight's Private Eye. It's page 7, where the actual text of the magazine starts right after the first few pages of advertising. Titled 'Privates on Parade', it reveals that Project Yellowhammer, the secret government plan for dealing with mass shortages caused by Brexit, also includes provisions for drafting the army in as local government officials. The reason they'll be needed there is because there aren't enough civil servants in the national administration to deal with the crisis, and if it happens, they're going to have to draft in local government officials. The article runs
The government has spent the past fortnight trying to play down the leaked Operation Yellowhammer document about preparations for a "no deal" Brexit. Ministers initially pretended it was an old plan; when it emerged that the document was dated August 2019, they claimed preparations had alread moved on since then.
But the ramifications of the plans are extraordinary. To fill the thousands of extra civil service posts required the government has arranged for a rather unorthodox shuffle: if/when a "no deal" Brexit happens, thousands of local government officials are to be reallocated to Whitehall departments to fortify Sir Humphrey.
Who will run town and county halls in their absence? This is where matters become surreal. The army – including territorial volunteers – are being issued with instructions to take over local government posts, in a civilian capacity, in the event of "no deal".
One officer, who admitted he was uncomfortable at the optics of all this, observed to the Eye that this involved putting soldiers in charge even when they lacked basic literacy and numeracy. Quite how they would get on in calculating council tax, or providing adult social care and children's services, remains to be seen…
There are several remarks to be made about all this. The first is that it shows how stupid and destructive successive Conservative administrations have been in their determination to slim down the civil service. This has now reached the point where there are too few of them to run the country effectively in the event of a national crisis, like a 'no deal' Brexit.
The second is the massive implications this has for democracy in this country. I would imagine that one reason the unnamed officer felt uncomfortable about the 'optics' of the army moving into local government is that it looks very much like the beginnings of a military coup. And events don't have to go much further before it really would amount to a military take-over of civilian government. I think that Operation Yellowhammer also provides for emergency legislation to deal with possible civil unrest in the event of shortages of food, medicines and other essential services. After a wave of rioting up and down the country the government could declare a state of emergency, draft in the army and put in force martial law.
Given Boris' personal authoritarianism, as shown in his prorogation of parliament, I can imagine that he may even wish to dispense with parliamentary supervision in such an emergency. With the very loud support of the Tory press, he dissolves parliament again, which will only be recalled in after the restoration of order. And it probably isn't so far-fetched to see some of the Tory right and British press demanding the arrest of left-wing subversives. If the unions call a strike, I imagine they'd be delighted. They could go back to Maggie's tactic of posing as the nation's champion against the bullying of the union barons. Further legislation would be passed or invoked to break up the strikes, ban trade unions and arrest trade unionists. At the same time, allegations of Communist connections and sympathies would be used to justify the arrest and detention of left-wing activists and trade unionists as threats to national security. This might be going too far, but I could also imagine the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the right-wing Zionists of organisations like Herut handing over lists of names of 'the wrong sort of Jews' in order to make sure Jewish critics of Israel and Conservatism were also arrested and detained. Because after all, they're a threat to Israel, one of the West's major outposts in the Middle East.
I'm not saying this will happen, only that it could. Back in 1975 the Conservative party and parts of the press, including the Times and the Mirror, were also pressing for a coup to overthrow Harold Wilson's Labour government. Because industrial unrest had got out of hand, and he was supposed to be a KGB spy. See Francis Wheen's book on paranoia in the '70s, Strange Days Indeed. It's also described in Ken Livingstone's 1987 book, Livingstone's Labour, in which the-then mayor of London discusses how there were plans to round up left-wing activists, MPs and journalists, and have them sent to concentration camps on one of the Scottish islands.
The plan to draft soldiers in to local government also reminds me of the very strong position of the armed forces in the economies in many developing countries. In Pakistan, for example, the army also runs businesses, like cement factories. I've heard that the same is true of Egypt. The military is deeply entwined with large sectors of industry. Now Johnson and co.'s plan only involves drafting the military in to deal with a shortage of civil servants. But Zelo Street posted a piece recently showing that the government was also considering buying up the surplus food produced by our farmers if they could not export to the continent, and asked whether they would also provide financial support to the British car industry, another part of the economy that's under threat. If the government decides that they, too, will have to be given over to army management or staffing, then Johnson and the Tories will really have turned this country into a third world nation. He'll have a created a real military dictatorship, like those that have afflicted Pakistan and other nations. And they will be cheered on in this destruction by the right-wing press, like the Times, the Mail and the Scum. Lurking behind this threat of a coup, is the danger of a return of real Nazism from Social Darwinists like Toby Young and Dominic Cummings, who fear that giving education and welfare support to the poor and disabled is a threat to our racial stock and the proper running of our society by the upper classes. You can see them demanding legislation once again to sterilise the disabled and those on benefits.
The Tories and the right-wing media, including the Beeb, are now a real threat to democracy, whatever Boris and the Polecat now say about holding elections. We have to get them out, even if that means that Corbyn and the rest of the opposition have to bide their time for the moment. The future of our country and its people really is at stake.
Tags:'Livingstone's Labour', 'No Deal' Brexit, 'The Mirror', Armed Forces, Board of Deputies of British Jews, Boris Johnson, Brexit, Businesses, Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, Civil Service, Concentration Camps, Conservatives, Council Tax, Coups, Developing World, Dominic Cummings, Food, General Election, Harold Wilson, Herut, Internment, Jeremy Corbyn, Jews, Journalists, Ken Livingstone, Local Authorities, Margaret Thatcher, MPs, Private Eye, Rioting, Shortages, Social Care, Social Darwinism, Sterilisation, Strikes, the Poor, The Times, Toby Young, Zionism
Posted in Agriculture, communism, Democracy, Disability, Economics, Education, European Union, Evolutionary Theory, Factories, Industry, Israel, Judaism, Law, LIterature, Medicine, Pakistan, Persecution, Politics, Poverty, Radio, Russia, Scotland, Social Services, Television, The Press, Trade Unions, Welfare Benefits | 4 Comments »
Embarrassment for Army as Squaddies in Afghanistan Filmed Shooting at Corbyn Poster
This is another little scandal that's Mike reported on today. The Ministry of Defence has ordered an urgent inquiry following the release of a video on social media showing squaddies from 3 Para in Afghanistan shooting at a poster of Jeremy Corbyn. Mike's piece includes the video embedded in a tweet from Alistair Bunkall, a reporter at Sky News. Bunkall said that the MoD has confirmed that the footage is legitimate, and quoted an army spokesperson, who said
We are aware of a video circulating on social media, this behaviour is totally unacceptable and falls well below the high standards the army expects, a full investigation has been launched.
Burkall also said he'd been told that the rounds fired were simulated paintball round, rather than real bullets. But nevertheless a senior defence source said it was 'a terrible look'. Mike also states that there were figures of other celebrities at the range, but they were there to be protected, not shot at.
Mike states that this footage raises the serious issue of whether British soldiers are being trained to consider one of their political leaders as an enemy. Thus, we need to know who authorised it and why, and what the soldiers, who took part in it thought they were doing. He states that at a time when the Labour leader has already suffered one physical attack, other politicos have received death threats and it is only three years after the brutal assassination of Jo Cox, the possibility of the British military being trained to consider him an enemy could be considered a threat to British democracy. Mike asks if this means that the army will turn on Corbyn if he becomes Prime Minister.
He goes on to state that any squaddie firing on Jeremy Corbyn, even in effigy, is a security risk as they should be trained to defend all citizens of the UK. Anyone who can't should be drummed out of the forces. He also wonders how many British soldiers may also be shooting at Corbyn in effigy, and fears that it may be just the beginning of the scandal.
See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/04/03/soldiers-in-afghanistan-were-filmed-shooting-at-a-poster-of-jeremy-corbyn/
This comes after another nasty political scandal a month or so ago, when a group of squaddies were filmed with former EDL supremo and now UKIP special advisor, the notorious islamophobe Tommy Robinson. This raised questions about whether the army shared or endorsed Robinson's vicious hatred of Muslims, and wished to have in its ranks squaddies, who shared his Fascist views.
Mike also speculated in his piece that the soldiers involved would just claim it was all ill-judged humour. That wouldn't surprise me either. A few years ago squaddies in the German army were caught making a video in which they play acted at committing atrocities, raping and killing civilians and so forth. This obviously caused a massive scandal because of the horrific atrocities committed by the armed forces during the Third Reich. But there has also been a more recent scandal following this, in which it was revealed that the German army had discreetly cleared out a faction of real Fascist officers and men, who were secretly plotting a military coup. It's possible to ask the same question here: does this bit of squaddie 'humour' hide something much more serious, a faction in the British army that would prefer to see a military dictatorship than a Corbyn government?
It's a serious question. A month or so ago Mike reported on his blog that Tweezer had passed legislation providing for the deployment of the British army on the streets in the case of civil unrest following Brexit. Mike speculated then that she might be planning a military coup in order to retain power. And members of the Tory party and media have begun to speculate about forming a government of national unity to avert a crisis with Brexit. Tom Watson showed once again how treacherous he was by stating that he would be willing to serve in it, rather than let the government fall. The Skwawkbox made the point that by stating his willingness to collaborate with the Tories, he was betraying his own party and its aim of overthrowing May and putting Corbyn into No. 10.
See: https://skwawkbox.org/2019/03/30/as-skwawkbox-predicted-watson-now-talking-national-unity-govt-and-its-grounds-for-expulsion/
The last time I can remember a government of national unity being discussed, it was back in the mid-1970s when the CIA, MI5 and the Tory right were convinced that Harold Wilson was a KGB spy and the country was suffering a wave of industrial discontent resulting in a series of strikes. Papers like the Times were proposing that the only way to solve the crisis was for the overthrow of Wilson's government in a coup and the installation of a government of national unity, which would include moderate Labour MPs like Shirley Williams. Who later left with David Owen, Roy Jenkins and other splitters to form the SDP. Along with this were plans by the secret state to round up left-wing activists, trade unionists and journalists and intern them. This plot is discussed by Ken Livingstone in his book, Livingstone's Labour.
Sky News in its report about the squaddies using Corbyn for target practice included a statement by the Tories' Mark Harper about Corbyn lacking necessary security credentials, and stating that the army held similar views. Their reporter, however, stressed that the British army still had to be apolitical.
See: https://skwawkbox.org/2019/04/03/video-sky-news-responds-to-soldiers-shooting-corbyn-effigy-by-repeating-security-concerns-smear/
We are therefore entitled to ask if something similar to the 1970s plots is going on here. Is the establishment hatred of Jeremy Corbyn so great, that sections of the political-media and military complex really are conspiring to use armed force to overthrow British democracy and keep Corbyn and a genuinely socialist government from taking power?
Tags:'Livingstone's Labour', Alistair Bunkall, Armed Forces, Assassinations, Assault, Atrocities, Brexit, CIA, Coups, EDL, Harold Wilson, Internment, Islamophobia, Jo Cox, Journalists, Ken Livingstone, KGB, Massacre, MI5, Ministry of Defence, Muslims, Rape, SDP, Shirley Williams, Sky News, The Times, Theresa May, third reich, Tom Watson, Tommy Robinson, UKIP, Videos, Vox Political
Posted in Afghanistan, Crime, Democracy, European Union, Fascism, Germany, History, Islam, LIterature, Nazis, Persecution, Politics, Socialism, Television, The Press, Trade Unions | 3 Comments »
Zelo Street: LBC's James O'Brien Turns Tables on Tories over Racism and Anti-Semitism
Yesterday the good fellow at the Crewe-based Zelo Street blog put up a post discussing how LBC radio's James O'Brien had attacked the Tories for their hypocrisy in criticising the Labour Party. for supposed anti-Semitism, while all the time allowing venomous racism to flourish in their own. This came after the blogger Racists4ReesMogg revealed a long series of tweets from internet groups set up to promote Boris Johnson and Rees Mogg as leaders of the Tory party.
The tweets were truly vile. The members of these groups discussed burning Qu'rans, throwing Muslims off bridges, bombing and closing down mosques, sterilising immigrants and the poor, debarring Muslism, and particularly Sajid Javid and Sadiq Khan from positions of government, 'cause their Muslims, along with ethnic cleansing of such ferocity that the 'SS Einsatzgruppen would look like a Boy Scout's picnic'. There were racist attacks on Diane Abbott and Sayeed Warsi, along with speculation that a civil war was coming and they should all get guns and licences. And almost inevitably there were the weird conspiracy theories about the Jews. Some of them seem to believe in all that nonsense about the 'Kalergi' plan, a secret Jewish conspiracy to import Africans and Muslims into Europe to destroy the White race.
As a result, Tory deputy chairman James Cleverly suspended 14 members, boasting on politics live that his party takes action, unlike Labour in its handling of the anti-Semitism crisis. But Zelo Street speculates that this is just the tip of the iceberg, and that Racists4ReesMogg seems to be finding more all the time.
And then James O'Brien sharply contrasted the Tory tolerance, and even encouragement of frothing racism and islamophobia, with their sharp intolerance of supposed instances of anti-Semitism. Zelo Street quoted him as saying
"Imagine if the New Statesman published an article by Owen Jones stating baldly that there is not enough anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. What would happen? Imagine if Diane Abbott or John McDonnell came forward with comments about Jewish women being like letterboxes, or made a joke about the wigs that orthodox Jewish women wear. Made a joke that invited people to mock and condemn them".
"Imagine if John McDonnell made a joke about … the locks that Orthodox Jewish men grow, or the Yarmulkes that many, many Jewish men choose to wear. Imagine if, for example, John McDonnell said 'Why do all these Jews walk around with frisbees on their heads?' Explain to me how that would be substantially any different from what Boris Johnson said about Muslim womens' sartorial choices".
"The ones that make them look like letterboxes. D'you see what I mean? That's not even controversial, that comparison. Just imagine Owen Jones wrote an article on there not being enough anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, and then how the hell Rod Liddle gets to write an article arguing that there's not enough Islamophobia in the Conservative Party. And he'll still get invited on to programmes and into studios, and Andrew Neil can still claim when he's covering these issues that he's impartial".
"And Fraser Nelson can host an event at the London Palladium with Jacob Rees-Mogg, whose fans are so vile that 14 of them have been suspended from the very party. Now just swap all of those phrases. Swap Islamophobia for anti-Semitism. Swap Rod Liddle for Owen Jones, swap Fraser Nelson for Jason Cowley … and swap Jacob Rees-Mogg or Boris Johnson for John McDonnell or Tom Watson. And you tell me that we don't live in a country that is utterly upside down".
Zelo Street states that the Tories have got away with it for so long because the press has been actively complicit in promoting such venomous bigotry. Like the Scum, which started off whipping up hatred against the Irish, then it was Blacks, and now it's 'Scary Muslims'. This press is only now stopping to think about what they're doing. But it's too late for the Tories, as the lid is being taken off this ugly can of worms. The Tories have every reasons to try to misdirect people to the anti-Semitism allegations against Labour. Because when this stops, people will turn and see where the real racism is. And it will not end well for the Tories.
http://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/03/tory-islamophobia-action-not-enough.html
There always has been a section of the Tory party whose members and views have overlapped with the real, horrific Fascists of the NF and BNP. Like Paul Staines, AKA Guido Fawkes and the Libertarians links to Latin American death squads and apartheid South Africa. But the rantings of Rees Mogg's and Boris Johnson's supporters reminded me in particular of the weird, paranoid conspiracist views of the Nazi ideologue, Alfred Rosenberg. Almost by definition all the Nazis were paranoid conspiracy theorists, as the whole party was based on the assumption that Jews control capitalism and communism and were working to destroy the Aryan race as a whole and specifically Germany. But in the case of Rosenberg the paranoia was particularly acute. Rosenberg was bitterly anti-Christian, and his book The Myth of the Twentieth Century was suppressed by Hitler because it was an embarrassment at the time the Fuhrer was trying to gain the support of Christian Germany. Apart from Jews, Rosenberg was also paranoid about Freemasons, Communists and nearly everybody else. At one point he was convinced that there was a secret Roman Catholic plot to seize control of Germany and install the old Catholic princes. In a party of murderous paranoid nutters, he was one of the most paranoid and nuttiest. But looking at the paranoia and frothing, venomous racism of Johnson's and Rees Mogg's supporters, he'd have fitted in very well there.
These people are genuinely frightening. During the mid-70s there was a plot by the editors of the Times and Mirror, as well as the British intelligent agencies, to overthrow the minority Labour government. Left-wing MPs, trade unionists, activists and journos would be rounded up and interned, possibly on one of the Scottish islands. It never got off the ground, as leading members of the civil service and the staff at Sandhurst weren't interested and told the plotters where to go.
But it shows how fragile British democracy really is. This was during the mid-70s, when the country was experiencing inflation, strikes and the energy crisis. Thanks to Thatcher, the unions have been smashed and inflation kept low, which is why there is so much poverty. But May's botched and incompetent Brexit threatens to make the problem much, much worse. And as the case of Nazi Germany shows, in times of severe economic and political crisis, people look for scapegoats. We could see a massive expansion of bitter, murderous racism in this country too, accompanied demands for the full instruments of Fascist repression – internment, mass arrest, and death camps if people like the denizens of these sites and the threat they pose are not taken seriously.
Tags:'The Mirror', 'The Myth of the Twentieth Century', Alfred Rosenberg, Andrew Neil, anti-semitism, Blacks, Bombngs, Boris Johnson, Brexit, British Army, Christianity, Civil Service, Concentration Camps, Conservative Party, Conspiracy Theories, Coups, Crewe, Death Camps, Diane Abbott, Ethnic Cleansing, Eugenics, Fraser Nelson, Freemasons, Inflation, Internment, Irish, Islamophobia, Jacob Rees-Mogg, James Cleverly, James O'Brien, Jews, John McDonnell, Journalists, Labour Party, LBC, Mosques, Muslims, New Statesman, Orthodox Jews, Owen Jones, racism, Racsts4ReesMogg, Rod Liddle, Sadiq Khan, Sajid Javid, Sandhurst, SS, Sterilisation, Strikes, The Sun, The Times, Women, Zelo Street
Posted in Africa, communism, Democracy, England, European Union, Evolutionary Theory, Fascism, Germany, History, Ireland, Islam, Judaism, Persecution, Politics, Roman Catholicism, Scotland, The Press, Trade Unions, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Tweezer's Threat to Post-Brexit Democracy
Last Wednesday, the 19th December 2018, Mike put up a truly alarming article. May, he reported, was planning on putting 3,500 squaddies on the streets of Britain if the country crashed out of the EU without a deal.
Mike in his article made the point that it looks like the Tories are desperate to get the country out of Europe before new tax legislation comes in, which would force the millionaires she serves to pay more tax. It's a very strong argument. The only reason we are due to leave the EU on the date May set is because May set it. If negotiations with the EU take longer to secure a deal, it's possible for May to postpone it. But she clearly doesn't want that. And Tory policy, and for that matter, New Labour's, has been for us to become a low wage tax haven off Europe, for the benefit of the extremely rich. Hence the continuing scandal of the City of London becoming one of the major centres of global money laundering. For further information, see the 'In the City' column in Private Eye.
Mike also commented that May appeared to be deliberately running down the clock to Brexit, perhaps due to being deliberately influenced with the hard right European Research Group and Jacob Rees-Mogg. And low taxes mean that not enough money is available for social policies that benefit ordinary people. Mike therefore concluded that
Put these elements together and it may be easier to understand why Mrs May is planning to deploy 3,500 soldiers onto the streets of the UK in the event of a "no-deal" Brexit. Martial law would preserve her government – sorry, dictatorship – against the civil unrest that her policies seem certain to provoke.
Mike then supports his conclusion with further arguments – that Tweezer knows she's on borrowed time, but is determined to cling on to power, that the government wishes her to stay in power to continue the harm she's doing to our country and society, and the complicity of the media in this, distracting the country in order to stop them realizing how they are being stripped of their rights and forced into debt.
Mike's commenters are also extremely alarmed at the idea of Tweezer calling in the armed forces, and some of their comments are very well worth reading. Dan Delion, for example, said
If you want to know what may be in the pipeline, I urge you to read part 2 (Emergency Powers) of the Civil Contingency Act 2004 (it's not long ~ 10pp) which describes the legislatiion that already exists – set up by Tony Blair, as it happens.
This is nothing to do with the replacememnt for Emergency Planning (that's part 1 of said Act), but is intended to deal with any form of civil strife – just like Brexit.. Makes me wonder if May found what was up her sleeve and has been planning to keep the law in reserve, just in case Remoaners (or any other bodies) get uppity!
See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2018/12/19/brexipocalypse-may-threatens-martial-law-if-she-doesnt-get-her-contradictory-way/
This really is monstrous. The last time I can remember the army being called on to the streets of Britain was back in the 1970s, when there was a widespread fear that the country was on the verge of collapse, mostly due to strikes. And members of the establishment, including the Times and the editor of the Mirror, were definitely planning a coup in the mid-70s to overthrow Harold Wilson's minority Government. This was partly because he was feared – and smeared by MI5 – as a KGB agent. Ken Livingstone discusses the proposed coup in his 1987 book, Livingstone's Labour. Left-wing activists, including journalists, were to be rounded up and interned in one of the islands off Scotland. This was no mere fantasy. Francis Wheen also describes the proposed coup and the plotters in his book, Strange Days: Paranoia in the '70s. And Lobster has discussed several times MI5's smears against Wilson.
The plotters did try to get the generals at Sandhurst interested, but they did their duty to Queen and country instead and send them packing. but there is nevertheless a real threat there. The Trotskyite writer, Ernest Mandel, in his book From Stalinism to Eurocommunism (New York: Schocken Books 1978) argued that democratically elected socialist and Marxist regimes have always been prevented from fully carrying out their dismantlement of big capital by the military. Mandel's book is an attack on the 'Eurocommunist' direction western European Marxist took as they broke from the Stalinism and rigidly bureaucratic politics of the Soviet Union and turned instead to democratic elections and multiparty politics. It was a strategy intended to avoid a violent confrontation between the workers and capital. Mandel writes
Now, the essential aim of the Eurocommunist strategy is precisely to avert this confrontation at any price. Its capacity to influence the behaviour of the bourgeoisie, however, is virtually nil. The coups of Kapp, Mola-Franco, De Gaulle, Pinochet and Eanes have never been warded off by the pledges of Ebert-Noske, Otto Wels, Prieto, Thorez, Allende, or Mario Soares that the army is 'national' and 'democratic' and 'stands above the class struggle' and 'respects the constitution'. (pp. 196-7).
The Kapp putsch was an attempt by parts of the army to overthrow the Weimar coalition government of post-WW I Germany headed by Ebert, the head of the SDP, the German equivalent of the Labour party. Thorez was the head of the Communist party in France when De Gaulle briefly seized power to govern by decree. Allende was the democratically elected Marxist president of Chile who was overthrown by Pinochet. General Franco was the Fascist leader of Spain, who overthrew the Republican government. I'm not familiar with the other names. Mandel is here discussing Marxist politicians, who were unable to stave off coups or coup attempts. Jeremy Corbyn very definitely isn't a Marxist, but the Tories and mainstream media have been trying to smear him and his followers as Communists, Trotskyites and Stalinists. I can easily believe that some Tories would want him overthrown militarily if he did become prime minister.
I was talking a few months ago to one of the priests at our church, who also has strong left-wing beliefs. He lived and ministered for a long time in Australia, and told me that he wondered if Corbyn would ever be allowed to take power. He considered it possible that the Tories here would do what their counterparts Down Under did. They invoked the Queen to have the definitely democratically elected Gough Whitlam removed from office. I think if that happened here, it would utterly discredit the monarchy, though I can see a very carefully crafted story being concocted by the political establishment and the media to justify such an outrageous abuse of the monarchical prerogative.
And even if May's preparations to put the army on the streets in the event of a No Deal Brexit is only to prevent rioting, there's still more than element of self-interest about it. It was rioting over the poll tax in 1989 that forced Thatcher to retire, even though she won the vote of No Confidence in the Tory party with a slightly higher majority than Tweezer. And she nearly went eight or nine years previously, in 1981-2, with the rioting then.
And she clearly is concerned that rioting will occur if Britain leaves the EU without some kind of deal. Rioting no doubt caused by lack of food, medicine and other essential services caused by her shoddy negotiations with the EU.
May is a direct threat to British democracy, and the lives and livelihoods of Britain's citizens. She works only for the rich, and would like to use the army to keep herself in power. Just like Thatcher's friend, the mass murderer and torturer General Pinochet, and the other Latin American fascists the Tories supported.
Tags:'Livingstone's Labour', 'Strange Days', Armed Forces, Brexit, City of London, Conservatives, Coups, Dan Delion, Ebert, Eurocommunism, European Research Group, Food, Francis Wheen, General Franco, General Pinochet, Gough Whitlam, Harold Wilson, Internment, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Jeremy Corbyn, Journalists, Kapp Putsch, Ken Livingstone, KGB, Lobster, Margaret Thatcher, Martial Law, marxism, Media, MI5, Money Laundering, New Labour, Offshore Tax Havens, Poll Tax, Private Eye, Riots, Salvador Allende, Shortages, Soviet Union, stalin, Strikes, Tax, The Queen, Theresa May, tony blair, Trotskyites, Vox Political, World War I
Posted in Australia, Central America, Chile, communism, Democracy, England, European Union, Fascism, France, Germany, History, Industry, LIterature, Medicine, Persecution, Politics, Poverty, Radio, Russia, Socialism, South America, Television, The Press | 3 Comments »
Rees Mogg Senior's Support of Pinochet's Fascist Coup in Chile
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the rising Tory star and archaic 'minister for the 18th century', as he's been dubbed, last week seemed to show very clearly the extent of his ambitions. He bought a townhouse overlooking Downing Street. Despite his denials that this showed his intention of occupying No. 10, everyone else took it as a clear sign that he very definitely does have his sights on becoming Prime Minister.
Rees-Mogg is a true-blue Tory aristo, who began his career by campaigning to keep the unreformed, and unelected House of Lords. He has consistently voted to increase spending, tax cuts and other privileges for the rich, and to cut and deny state aid, welfare benefits and spending on the poor, the unemployed and the disabled. He has a vast income provided by his investment firms. And he's also the son of William Rees-Mogg, the former editor of the Times and later columnist for the Independent.
I found this passage quoting and commenting on a piece Rees-Mogg senior wrote at the time, welcoming the Fascist coup by General Pinochet which overthrew Salvador Allende, in Colin Sparks' article, 'The Media and the State' in James Curran, Jake Ecclestone, Giles Oakley and Alan Richardson, eds., Bending Reality: The State of the Media (London: Pluto Press 1986). Allende was a democratically elected Marxist, who enraged his country's ruling elite by wishing to expropriate land from their estates to give to the peasants. He was also a danger to the American-led global campaign against Communism, simply because his regime had taken power through popular elections. It contradicted the view that Communism could only gain power through very undemocratic means, like revolutions and coups. And so the CIA backed Pinochet's coup against Allende, which plunged the country into a brutal Fascist dictatorship that lasted from c. 1974 to the early 1990s.
Before quoting Rees-Mogg senior, Sparks also describes how the elite will try to bring down any government genuinely trying to create a more democratic, equal society, and eliminate poverty using ideological as well as other weapons, one of which will be the establishment press. He writes
Any government which seeks to get rid of poverty and inequality will come up against the opposition of those whose life has been built upon the fruits of poverty and inequality. Any government which seeks to establish democracy as the common norm for the conduct of human affairs will come up against the opposition of those whose whole life has been built upon the exercise of irresponsible and unaccountable power. The people who run the state, the media, industry and the banks will not just let us get on with changing the world because a temporary majority in the House of Commons tells them to. They will fight us with ideas and with weapons. It was, after all, that organ of ruling class opinion, the Times, then edited by the shameless Rees Mogg, that welcomed the bloody overthrow of Salvador Allende and the Chilean government with the words:
The failure of the Presidency of Allende was also a tragedy for Chile herself, not because the coup put an end to a government which never had a majority either in the country or in congress, but because it marks the end of a long period during which Chile's peaceful and democratic political traditions were the envy of her neighbours. To apportion blame for this is no easy matter. Many Chileans will argue that the Unidad Popular government had itself made the coup inevitable by its hopeless mismanagement of the economy leading to a breakdown in public order, and at the same time had provided justification for it by its own unconstitutional acts. On the whole this would be our judgement; there is a limit to the ruin a country can be expected to tolerate…
At this state what a foreign commentator can say is that, whether or not the armed forces were right to do what they have done, the circumstances were such that a reasonable man could in good faith have thought it his constitutional duty to intervene.
No doubt Rees Mogg had discussed just such 'circumstances' with 'reasonable military men' at Pirbright and Aldershot. (Pp. 94-5).
The last sentence presumably refers to the attempts various members of the elite, including the Times and the then editor of the Mirror, to organise a coup in Britain against Harold Wilson's minority Labour government in 1975. If this had gone ahead, the result would have been the mass internment, not just of MPs, but also of other political activists and journalists. The proposed location for their imprisonment was either in the Shetland Isles or the Hebrides. Ken Livingstone discusses this in his 1987 book, Livingstone's Labour, as does Francis Wheen in his book about 70's paranoia, Strange Days. As for Pinochet's coup, this resulted in the mass imprisonment, rape, torture and execution of 40,000-60,000 people. Parents imprisoned and murdered by the Fascists had their children taken away, to be raised instead by members of Pinochet's Fascists, who were childless.
And Sparks is absolutely right when he states that those, whose power and social position is built on poverty and inequality will try to bring down those governments trying to end it. The Conservatives' entire economic strategy, and that of the ruling elites they represent, is based on increasing poverty through austerity, welfare cuts, the privatisation of the NHS, and the creation of insecure, low paid work with little, if anything, in the way of workers' rights like pensions or sick pay. And he's also right about the way the same elite uses the press in this. We've seen the way the British press and media has consistently vilified Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters as everything from Trotskyites and misogynists to anti-Semites, in order to prevent a genuinely reforming Labour government coming to power.
And the quotation from Rees-Mogg senior also shows how Jacob Rees-Mogg turned out the way he is. He's the child of privilege, whose family owed its position to inherited wealth and inequality, and whose father dutifully supported the same establishment elite with his ideas and editorship of the Times. And Rees-Mogg senior's approving comments about Pinochet's coup also shows how easily other parts of the Tory party supported other Fascist thugs in Latin America. Like the Libertarian group, of which one Paul Staines, now Guido Fawkes, was a member, which invited the leader of one Central American death squad to be their guest of honour at their annual dinner.
Tags:'Bending Reality: The State of the Media', 'Guido Fawkes', 'Livingstone's Labour', 'Strange Days', 'The Independent', 'The Mirror', Alan Richardson, Aldershot, anti-semitism, Anti-Semitism Smears, Aristocracy, CIA, Colin Sparks, Conservative Party, Coups, Death Squads, Francis Wheen, General Pinochet, Giles Oakley, Harold Wilson, Hebrides, House of Commons, Internment, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Jake Ecclestone, James Curran, Jeremy Corbyn, Job Insecurity, Journalists, Ken Livingstone, Labour Party, marxism, Misogyny, Murder, NHS, NHS Privatisation, Paul Staines, Peasants, Pensions, Pirbright, Salvador Allende, Shetland Islands, The Media, The Times, Torture, Trotskyites, Unidad Popular, William Rees-Mogg, Workers' Rights
Posted in Agriculture, America, Central America, Chile, communism, Democracy, Disability, Economics, England, Fascism, Health Service, Industry, Libertarianism, LIterature, Medicine, Persecution, Politics, Poverty, South America, The Press, Unemployment, Wages, Welfare Benefits, Working Conditions | 1 Comment »
George Galloway: Torygraph Publishes Piece Speculating on Coup to Overthrow Corbyn
This is an excerpt from George Galloway's Talk Radio Show, which I found on YouTube. He begins with talking about a conversation he had with James Whale, a fellow presenter, about the dangerous situation in the Middle East, where Israel is now facing an Arab, Russian and Iranian enemy. He pours scorn, however, on the juvenile scribblers, as Galloway sees it, who claimed that the missiles shot at the Golan Heights had entered Israel. Galloway states that the Golan Heights were illegally seized by Israel from Syria, and so are not part of Israel, no matter what the hacks say.
He then goes on to talk about Theresa May's volte face, which has meant that victims of the Grenfell Tower fire will now be allowed onto the board investigating it. After that, he moves on to talking about how the Brexit negotiations are an appalling mess, and the whole affair something which all of us will have difficulty getting out of.
But the main subject of his ire is a piece published by Paul Carter in the Torygraph the day before, which may be 10th May 2018. The Torygraph had speculated on the possibility of a military coup against Corbyn. Galloway describes the article as chilling, and states that its author, Paul Carter, has no footprint in social media. The article claims that this coup would occur if the labour leader was elected to power and proceeded to enact to enact three particular policies. These were conducting a referendum to abolish the monarchy, taking us out of NATO, and taking us out of the western foreign policy consensus. Galloway himself wishes Corbyn would do all these, but the Labour leader will certainly not do any of them. The proximate cause of the Torygraph article is that it is 50 years since Mountbatten and the editor of the Mirror met to plan a coup against the Labour prime minister, Harold Wilson. Galloway states that Wilson was a political giant, who dominated the sixties and much of the seventies. He was right-wing Labour, a social democrat. But he had his house burgled and his mail intercepted because it was suspected that he was a Russian secret agent. If the coup had gone ahead, the country would probably be led by Mountbatten from the Despatch Box, probably from the House of Lords, unless he resigned and fought a bye-election. Not that such constitutional niceties would bother people, who had just overthrown their democratically elected leader.
He also makes the point that there were plans to intern 4,000 other leftists, including journalists, on the Shetland Islands. Galloway himself was too young at the time, but if they did launch a coup against Corbyn, this would be the last you'd hear of him for a long time, unless he managed to get onto Radio Free Shetland. He notes one expert, who has said that it would be much harder to launch a coup now that people have mobile phones and social media. It was easier fifty years ago when it was the editors of the newspapers to overthrow the government. But Corbyn would be wise to keep his mobile phone handy. If they did launch a coup, then millions would pour onto the streets to defended their elected leader? Or would they? Galloway leaves this as a matter of discussion for later in the programme. He says that eventually the plans for the coup were abandoned, because the conspirators thought better, including the government's scientific advisor, Solly Zuckerman. But Galloway thinks this is false, and that they simply got cold feet.
Galloway then closes the segment with a piece about how popular the woman presenting the weather reports is becoming.
This is worrying, as it looks like a combination of smear piece and speculation by the Torygraph. Corbyn hasn't any intention of trying to abolish the monarchy, taking us out of NATO or acting against the current foreign policy consensus, so it's a smear to suggest that he might. The absence of any social media footprint for Paul Carter suggests that this is a pseudonym. And this in turn invites speculation that it's someone from MI5 or another branch of the security services.
This wouldn't be the first time MI5's been acting against the government, if this is the case. The agency was convinced Wilson really was a KGB spy, and Stephen Dorril and Robin Ramsay, the editor of Lobster, have suggested that it was behind the smears circulating then about the Labour leader.
As for the coup they're discussing, the plotting occurred later than the article claims. Mountbatten and the editor of the Mirror were making their plans in the mid-70s. And the Times was also looking forward to Wilson being toppled, though replaced by a civilian government of trusted members of the Labour party, like Shirley Williams, as well the Tories. These plots are discussed in Francis Wheen's book, Strange Days Indeed: Paranoia in the 1970s, and by Ken Livinstone in his book Livingstone's Labour. The date's out, but otherwise everything that Galloway's said about the proposed coup is correct. One of the reasons it failed is because one of the plotters approached Sandhurst, to ask if the old colonels there would help. They said they wouldn't, and sent him away. Hurrah for Sandhurst!
Galloway says at the beginning of his discussion of the article that no-one else was talking about it. Which suggests that this is purely speculation and wishful thinking by the Weirdo Barclay Brothers and the paper's managing director, Murdoch McLellan, and whoever is now the editor of this wretched rag. The paper's been running articles attacking Corbyn, claiming that he's an anti-Semite and so on, along with the Daily Mail. But this shows more than a hint of real desperation. For all the Tory and media talk about 'peak Corbyn', it seems they really afraid he'll win the election. In which case, they want the troops to overthrow him. Not because they're afraid he'll do all the things they claim he will, but because his very mild socialist programme will cause the end of the Thatcherite consensus. The corporate rich could no longer look forward to a privatised NHS and railways, and parts of the electricity grid would also be renationalised, would which would also upset corporate profits. Not to mention that they could no longer rely on having a cowed, cheap workforce of the desperate on poverty wages, on zero hours contracts and kept in line by the threat of benefit sanctions and starvation.
This is all too much for the Torygraph and its scribblers. So they've started fantasising about the possibility of a coup. Just like the British stock exchange cheered the Fascists when they revolted against the Republican government at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.
The Torygraph has just about gone full Fascist with this article. And its publication is more than a bit hypocritical for the Tories. Not after they went berserk and accused Hilary Mantel of encouraging terrorism when she published her short story, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher. But this shows just how far Corbyn has rattled the Tories, and shown how some of them, at least as for the Torygraph itself, have started hankering after a coup to stop him.
Tags:'Livingstone's Labour', 'Paul Carter', 'The Mirror', 'The Telegraph', anti-semitism, Anti-Semitism Smears, Barclay Brothers, Benefit Sanctions, Brexit, British Army, Conservatives, Coups, Daily Mail, Electricity Grid, Espionage, Foreign Policy, Francis Wheen, George Galloway, Grenfell Tower Fire, Harold Wilson, Hilary Mantel, Internment, Jeremy Corbyn, Journalists, Ken Livingstone, Labour Party, Lobster, Lord Mountbatten, Margaret Thatcher, MI5, Mobile Phones, Murdoch McLellan, Nationalisation, NATO, NHS Privatisation, Parliamentary Inquiry, Privatisation, Railways, Robin Ramsay, Sandhurst, Shetland Islands, Shirley Williams, Smears, Social Media, Solly Zuckerman, Spanish Civil War, Starvation, Stephen Dorrill, Stock Exchange, Strange Days Indeed: Paranoia in the 1970s, Talk Radio, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher', The Monarchy, The Times, Theresa May, Workforce
Posted in Arabs, communism, Democracy, Electricity, England, Fascism, Health Service, History, Industry, Iran, Israel, LIterature, Medicine, Politics, Radio, Russia, Scotland, Socialism, Syria, Technology, The Press, Wages, Welfare Benefits, Working Conditions | 2 Comments »
After the Secret Flights to Deport Windrush Migrants, No-One Is Safe in Tory Britain
Mike in his articles attacking May and her truly foul decision to destroy the evidence needed for the Windrush migrants to show their right to live in our wonderful country also mentioned that poem by Martin Niemoller. Niemoller was one of the scandalously few Christians in Nazi Germany to oppose the regime. You know the poem. It's become something of a cliché – It opens with the various groups the Nazis came for, with the refrain 'I did not speak out, because I was not' whichever group was being attacked. It ends with the line that when they finally came for him, there was no-one to stand up for him. This was the reality in Nazi Germany. The Nazis attacked group after group, not just Jews, but also Gypsies, Socialists, Communists, trade unionists, the disabled, and other political and religious dissidents. And it had an effect. The Catholic Centre Party, which could have voted against the Nazi seizure of power, actually voted for it because they were afraid that the Nazis would come and attack them and the Church. It didn't help. The Nazis had no qualms about dissolving them, along with the other political parties. The only parties that voted against the Nazis were the SPD – the German equivalent of the Labour party, and the Communists.
The victims of Nazi persecution vanished into 'Nacht und Nebel' – 'Night and Fog'. They were snatched from the homes, and vanished without trace, to be tried before special courts, in secret. The secrecy was quite deliberate. It was done to create fear and deter anyone else from protesting against the Nazi regime. Or in the case of Jews, Gypsies, and the congenitally disabled, simply being. One of Hitler's most notorious comments is his line 'The people need fear. A healthy fear is good for them'. Torquemada, the science-fictional galactic Fascist villain of the Nemesis of the Warlock Strip in 2000AD, said the same, except he dropped the 'healthy' bit. I'm sure the line was a deliberate quote by the writer, Pat Mills, and shows the research he did on the Third Reich that influenced the war stories in Battle and his other strips against racism and Fascism. 'Nemesis' was a fantasy, but based solidly in fact and addressing a real issue.
The knock on the door in the middle of the night and arrests by secret police weren't unique to the Nazis. It was done in Stalin's Soviet Union, and by authoritarian regimes across the world, right up to the present day. Like Communist China and Israel's persecution of the Palestinians, to name just two. And I wonder how long it will be before the Fascist, anti-Semitic Fidesz government in Hungary starts doing the same, after their prime minister declared a list of 200 organisations to be subversive followers of George Soros. Who is, of course, a Jewish financier, exactly like the villains of Nazi conspiracy theory.
But we can't be complacent. Blair tried to introduce secret courts in this country, and Dave Cameron and Nick Clegg did. These are special courts for those charged with terrorism, and where public disclosure of the evidence is judged to be harmful to that old chestnut, national security. Under the legislation, these trial may be held in secret. The accused and their lawyer may not know the identity of their accuser, or the evidence against them. Or even what the charge is.
It is exactly like the perverted judicial systems of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. And once again, literature got their first. Franz Kafka described all this in his novels, The Castle and The Trial. Kafka, however, had a peculiar sense of humour. He said once that these tales are meant to be funny, in an ironic way. I can remember being told at school that irony plays a big part in the German sense of humour – OK, Kafka was a Jewish Czech, but he wrote in German, and I guess he shared their sense of humour. But it wasn't a joke under the Nazis and the other totalitarian regimes, and it far from a joke now.
The people unfairly deported were thrown out of this country on secret flights, often shackled in contraptions like leg and hip restraints. This follows the 'secret renditions', in which foreign nationals accused of terrorism offences were secretly flown out of this country to others as a way of evading our laws banning torture in interrogations. The Tories clearly felt that after doing it successfully to one group, they could do it to others. So from terrorist suspects, they moved on to entirely respectable people, who came here to work and make a better life for themselves. People who endured massive racism and shouldn't have to put up with any more of it.
If the Tories can do it to one group, they will do it to others. Food banks are another example. They started out to help asylum seekers waiting for adjudication on their right to stay in the UK, who were banned from claiming benefits. But Ian Duncan Smith and his boss, David Cameron, expanded them to cover ever person thrown off benefits under their murderous sanctions regime.
The Tories start by picking on unpopular outgroups, like terrorists and coloured immigrants. And then they push their policies into the most vulnerable groups of mainstream society.
Remember, in the 1970s large sections of the Tory party really thought that Harold Wilson was a KGB agent and the Labour party was riddled with Communists taking orders direct from Moscow. And leading members of the establishment, including Times journo Peregrine Worsthorne, wanted a coup and the internment of those judged to be dangerous radicals. This included not only politicians, but also trade unionists and journalists. You can read about it in Ken Livingstone's 1987 book, Livingstone's Labour.
You are not safe, no matter how long you've lived here. Even if your a tradition, White Brit. On this evidence, if the Tories continue with their arrests and secret deportations, they will eventually come round to making us vanish into their equivalent of 'Night and Fog'. Just like the Nazis.
And if we don't act against this and the other injustices, no-one will stand up for us. Just like no-one stood up for the Jews and the other victims of the Nazis in Niemoller's poem and real life.
May and the Tories are a clear and present threat to democracy and the security of decent people. Racism and the persecution of immigrants is the start. Get them out, before they turn this country into something very close to Nazi Germany.
Tags:'Battle', 'Livingstone's Labour', 'Nemesis the Warlock', 'The Castle', 'The Trial', 2000AD, Adolf Hitler, anti-semitism, Asylum Seekers, Benefit Sanctions, Catholic Centre Party, Christians, Conservatives, Conspiracy Theories, Coups, David Cameron, Deportations, Fidesz, Financiers, Food Banks, Franz Kafka, George Soros, Gypsies, Haraold Wilson, Ian Duncan Smith, Immigration, Internment, Jews, Journalists, Ken Livingstone, KGB, Labour Party, Martin Neimoller, Moscow, New Labour, Nick Clegg, Palestinians, Pat Mills, Peregrine Worsthorne, racism, Secret Courts, Secret Police, Secret Renditions, Soviet Union, SPD, stalin, the Disabled, The Times, Theresa May, third reich, tony blair, Torture, Vox Political, Windrush
Posted in Arabs, Banks, Charity, China, Comics, communism, Czech Republic, Democracy, Disability, Fascism, Germany, History, Hungary, Israel, Judaism, Law, LIterature, Nazis, Persecution, Politics, Poverty, Roman Catholicism, Russia, Socialism, Terrorism, The Press, Trade Unions, Welfare Benefits | 4 Comments »
The Corporate, Geopolitical Reasons Dragging Us to War in Syria
Now May and the other western leaders are clamouring for air strikes against Assad in Syria following a chemical weapons attack in Douma, which has been blamed on the Syrian president. The dangers of such strikes are immense. Russia has said it will shoot down any American missiles launched against its military. There's a very real danger that this could flare up into a full-scale confrontation with Russia.
Which may be what our leaders want. After all, various NATO generals were predicting that by May last year, we'd be at war with Russia. One even wrote a book about it with that as the title.
I'm not even sure Assad was responsible for the poison gas attack. I don't doubt he's capable of it – he is a thug, and ruthless dictator. But I've written several times about false flag attacks involving chemical weapons, which have been staged by the Syrian rebels in order to bring America into the war on their side. And let's not forget who the Syrian rebels are: the al-Nusra Front, which is the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, and ISIS. They aren't democrats, or people who have any respect for western notions like 'human rights'. They're Islamists, of the type responsible for 9/11 and who have, with western armed forces, turned Iraq into a bloodbath.
And whatever humanitarian reasons are being piously spouted by May, Boris, Trump and the others, the real motives are very definitely coldly economic and geopolitical. The Neocons and Israelis have wanted Assad's overthrow since the beginning of this century. They put together a list of the countries they wanted to invade, which included Iraq, Libya, Somalia and Iran. The Israelis hate Syria because they see it as a threat to their national security, while the Neocons want to do the same to the country as they did to Iraq – seize its oilfields and loot its state industries for the benefit of American multinationals.
And then there's the Arabs. There's a coalition of Arab states, led by Qatar, who want to build a gas pipeline up from the Arabian peninsula, through Syria and into Turkey. But Assad's an ally of Russia, and this would hurt their oil pipeline coming from the east. And so Assad has blocked it. Hence the Arab states have demanded Assad's overthrow. They even offered to pay the Americans the expenses of going in.
This is a confrontation purely for corporate profit. It has nothing to do with humanitarianism, especially as the rebels have shown themselves more than capable of butchering civilians themselves.
And it is already becoming a real threat to domestic democracy. Theresa May has declared that she wants to declare war unilaterally, without consulting parliament. Mike and the Tweeters, whose opinions he reblogs, have already discussed this and made the obvious point. Kanjin Tor has made a graphic, reblogged by Mike, stating that if May succeeds, then it will be the end of British democracy. We will then become an authoritarian dictatorship exactly like every other.
And I have no illusion that some in the British military will be highly delighted. Going through the history and politics shelves in the Cheltenham branch of Waterstone's a year or so ago, I found a book by another British general arguing that we needed to give our prime ministers the authority to launch an immediate military response without being burdened with the need for parliamentary debate and scrutiny. Because, you know, national security, and the need for swift action to protect Britain. And so on.
Which, in these circumstances, starts to sound like the kind of things the Nazis said following the Reichstag Fire and Hitler's declaration of a state of emergency.
Which also raises the awkward question: if she does unilaterally declare war, does that mean that, like the Nazis, she's going to round up and have protesters interned, as a threat to 'national security?'
This is all about corporate profit, and in May's case, trying to turn her into a great warleader like Thatcher and the Falklands. She's risking a global nuclear holocaust purely for her own electoral advantage and the profits of the multinationals. She's also a menace to British democracy.
Stop the war, before May and the corporatists kill us all.
Tags:9/11, al-Nusra Front, al-Qaeda, Cheltenham, Chemical Weapons, Douma, Falklands War, Internment, ISIS, Kanjin Tor, Margaret Thatcher, Massacres, Multinationals, NATO, Neocons, Nuclear War, Oil Pipelines, OIlfields, Parliament, President Assad, Protesters, Qatar, Reichstag Fire, Somalia, State Enterprises, Theresa May, Twitter, Vox Political, Waterstone's
Posted in America, Arabs, Democracy, History, Industry, Iran, Iraq, Israel, LIterature, Nazis, OIl, Politics, Russia, Syria, Terrorism | 2 Comments »


text:
Q: How to rename a class with ASM and stay in the same classloader? I'm trying to rename a class using ASM 4.0:
ClassReader reader = new ClassReader(
    loader.getResourceAsStream("test/MyClass.class")
);
ClassWriter writer = new ClassWriter(reader, 0);
ClassVisitor visitor = new RemappingClassAdapter(visitor, new Remapper() { /* skipped */ });
reader.accept(visitor, 0);
return new ClassLoader() {
    public Class<?> load(final String name, final byte[] bytes) {
        return this.defineClass(name, bytes, 0, bytes.length);
    }
}.load("test/MyClass", writer.toByteArray());

I skipped the renaming part intentionally. A new class should be an exact copy of the original one. It is, but it can't be used any more as an old one:
java.lang.ClassCastException: test.MyClass cannot be cast to test.MyClass

How to stay in the same class loader?

A: In the JVM, each class is identified by it's fully qualified name AND the class loader which loaded the class. This explains your ClassCastException.
Once you rename the class, you should be able to load your renamed class in any classloader. Use reflection to get hold of the "ClassLoader.defineClass()" method and use it to call it on getClass().getClassLoader();
Method m=ClassLoader.class.getDeclaredMethod("defineClass",
 String.class,byte[].class,int.class,int.class)
m.setAccessible(true);
m.invoke(getClass().getClassLoader(), ... )

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Q: Are closed geodesics the prime numbers of Riemannian manifolds? I wonder to what extent one can support the analogy that primitive closed geodesics are the prime numbers of Riemannian manifolds? ("Primitive": traced once, as opposed to $m$-fold for $m \ge 2$.) In fact, primitive closed geodesics are also known as "prime geodesics," and there is a "prime geodesics theorem" whose count of "primitive conjugacy classes" is analogous to the prime number theorem.
But I am especially interested in whether the analogy can be supported by characteristics of geodesics and of prime numbers
that could be understood by those who are neither experts in number theory nor in
Riemannian geometry. I once rashly claimed to students in a class that "closed geodesics are the prime numbers of Riemannian manifolds," but in fact I couldn't flesh out the
analogy in much detail.

A: There is work in this direction by Alexander Reznikov and in a different vein by Christopher Deninger, but perhaps the most accessible analogy is in terms of the Selberg trace formula. The role closed geodesics play in determining the spectrum of the Laplacian is parallel to the role that prime numbers play in determining the Riemann zeta function.

A: This is just a long comment (as I do not know much about number theory). First, I think you need some curvature assumptions for this analogy to work, since it breaks down in the case of the round spheres and product tori (you do not want continuum of "prime numbers", I suppose!). You probably should assume that the sectional curvature of the manifold is negative (maybe constant) and the manifold is complete and either compact or has finite volume. You should also stick to closed geodesics which are not multiples of other closed geodesics (since they would be analogous to composite numbers of the form $p^k$). On the other hand, I have no idea what an analogue of the product of two distinct prime numbers would be under even most favorable circumstances. One suggestion for this would be to restrict to compact hyperbolic surfaces and declare that "prime" geodesics are the same thing as simple geodesics. Given this, the first analogy (that anybody can understand) would be that there are infinitely prime numbers and for every compact hyperbolic surface there are (countably) infinitely many simple closed geodesics.