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Posts Tagged 'Channel 4'
Local Bristol MP Karen Smyth's Reply to Concerns about Privatisation of Channel 4
Just before Christmas there was the news that the Conservatives, as part of their war on state broadcasting and any network that didn't follow their line and serve as their propaganda outlets, were going to privatise Channel 4. I wrote to my local MP for south Bristol, Karen Smyth, and received the following kind reply.
'Thank you for contacting me about proposals to change the ownership model of Channel 4.
I am also concerned about this proposal, and have written a joint letter to the Secretary of State, along with the three other Bristol Labour MPs, to ask that the Government urgently reconsider these proposals. Great British TV belongs in the UK, and I do not wish to see Channel 4 lost to the highest bidder.
For nearly four decades, Channel 4 has created an endless list of brilliant, progressive and world-leading programmes. I believe it is a British success story which was established to provide distinctive output and to drive forward growth in the independent TV production sector, and it has far exceeded these goals. In addition, its sharp, challenging, diverse and entertaining programming does very well in appealing to a wider and younger audience.
The Government has said that now is the time to strengthen public service broadcasters, and that the consultation is to ensure that Channel 4 has a viable and sustainable future. It argues that changes in advertising will put its funding under pressure, as Channel 4 is paid for by advertising, and that it needs to adapt because of competition from streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon.
I believe that this misses the point, as Channel 4 was created to be different, diverse and daring, and to champion the under-represented voices of this country. It does not need to spend millions of pounds to compete, it needs to do what it does best and create fundamentally British content that speaks to and represents British audiences.
In my view, these proposals would also be catastrophic for the creative industry, particularly here in Bristol, because of Channel 4's investment in the sector and in regional television and production. The investment in regional creative industries – which Bristol fought hard to secure – is supporting local businesses and independent production companies and must not be jeopardised by an ill-considered change of ownership or model.
Thank you once again for contacting me about this issue. I can assure you I will continue to call for Channel 4 to be protected.
Karin Smyth MP
Labour MP for Bristol South'
I am very glad indeed that she shares my concerns and wishes to oppose the privatisation. I think she'll do it, as she does come across as a woman of principle and integrity, even if she is on the Labour right. But I don't trust the bureaucracy or the inept, vindictive, factionalist leadership of Keef Stalin to do the same, however.
Tags:Amazon, Bristol, Business, Channel 4, Conservatives, Karen Smyth, Labour Party, Netflix, Privatisation, Production Companies
Posted in Industry, Politics, Television | Leave a Comment »
Kunt and the Gang Sing their Obscene Song about Boris in the Style of the '70s
You may well be getting sick of me putting up version of Kunt and the Gang's frank and profane song about Boris Johnson. Swearing is neither big nor clever. But I am fascinated by some of the inventiveness in the performance. This version is of what Kunt and his band would have been like if they had been on the Top Of The Pops 1973 Christmas show. So it's all bright, Christmas colours, hippie fashions and glam rock. It fits the one or two line lyrics of stars of that period like Alvin Stardust and Gary Glitter, before he was finally caught as a paedophile monster. Of course, the actual chance of something with the amount of profanity of Kunt's little ditty, let alone his name, being performed on the Beeb at that time was absolutely nil. I can remember when Jules Holland was thrown off Channel 4's pop music show, The Tube, in the 1980s for dropping the F-bomb. Mind you, it was at six O'clock, well before the watershed. I think the attitude towards obscene language began to change in the '90s with Have I Got News For You as one of the major offenders. Paul Merton seemed to use it a lot at one time. This was just after nine O'clock. And I noticed that there was an increasing use of really foul language at the same time. I don't think Merton started it. It was the way the media was travelling at the time. Anyway, I hope to post a few more things today, which I hope will be rather more uplifting and with help to cleanse the palate after this assault on our sense of decency.
But they're right about Boris.
Tags:Alvin Stardust, BBC, Boris Johnson, Channel 4, christmas, Gary Glitter, Glam Rock, Have I Got News for You, Hippies, Jules Holland, Kunt and the Gang, Media, Paedophilia, Paul Merton, The Tube, Top of the Pops
Posted in Crime, Music, Politics, Popular Music, Television | 4 Comments »
Despatches: 2/3 of People Believe Disabled A Waste of Money
Okay, I only caught the tail end of the Despatches programme on Channel 4 Mike was recommending on his blog. This was a searing expose of the DWP's persecution and denial of benefits to disabled claimants. Mike was urging his readers to watch it, as it is exactly the kind of programme Bojob and his fellow privileged, elite band of murderers really don't want you to see. I heard the last few minutes of it, and that was enough. It included interviews with the relatives of people who had died after being thrown off the benefits they needed. One grieving mother, I remember, called the DWP exactly what they are: murderers. And then there were the stats of how harassment from the DWP had made disabled people's conditions worse, further damaging their mental health and even giving them conditions they hadn't had before. None of this is new or revelatory: Disabled rights groups like DPAC, doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists and carers have been talking about this for years, ever since the loathsome Iain Duncan Smith and the Esther 'Wicked Witch of the Worral' ran the DWP under Dodgy Dave Cameron and began their eugenic cull of the disabled. But what really shocked me was the closing comment. This was a statistic. A poll had found that 2/3 of the British considered the disabled a waste of money.
This is deeply shocking stuff. If it's true, I can only conclude that it comes from the incessant propaganda from middle-market tabloids like the Heil and Depress, not to mention the dregs of print media, the Scum, to convince voters to support further cuts in welfare benefits to allow the Tories give more tax breaks to the bloated superrich. It's no doubt related to all the propaganda that has convinced voters that most welfare claims are fraudulent, whereas such claims account for less than one per cent, a vanishingly small proportion.
More frightening still, it's the attitude behind the Nazi sterilisation of the 'dysgenic', the biologically unfit, and the murder of the disabled and mentally ill under Aktion T4. Social Darwinist doctrine across the world, including Britain and America, claimed that it was useless supporting the biologically unfit, which included those with learning conditions. This wouldn't solve their problems, and would only encourage them to breed, further contaminating the gene pool. The disabled should instead be isolated and prevented from breeding. The Nazis went further. The congenitally disabled and incurable schizophrenics were declared lebensunwertigen, 'life unworthy of life'. The SS set up a special ambulance wing, in which the disabled were gassed in a horrifying prefiguration of the murder of the Jews later on. They were also transferred to specific hospitals and clinics, where again they were murdered. This caused a massive scandal and there was a successful campaign to stop it by the Roman Catholic nobleman, Count Galen. This episode also shows that, had there been sufficient opposition by the Christian churches, the Nazis would also have been forced to back down and halt the Holocaust. Unfortunately, with the exception of a few heroic clergymen and Christian laymen, the churches largely cooperated with the regime, despite papal opposition expressed in the encyclical 'Mit brennenden Sorge' – 'With Burning Sorrow'.
This attitude should be completely anathema to Christians. Christian theology has traditionally been opposed to euthanasia, viewing it as murder, because it holds that all humans have an intrinsic essential worth that makes their lives precious. We are all, male and female, Black and White, Jew and Greek, made in the image of the Almighty. And I also disagree with it on rational, practical grounds.
Technology is increasingly able to give the disabled the opportunities to live better lives and hold down jobs that they otherwise may not have been able to do. Becky Taylor, one of the artists exhibited in Grayson Perry's Art Club exhibition at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, is an example of this. Left paralysed in a wheelchair and unable to speak naturally, she nevertheless is able to speak through the same kind of computerised voice synthesis used by Stephen Hawking. She was also able to paint a superb portrait of Perry through computer software that tracked the movements of her eyes. She is currently studying computers at university, and I predict she will have an excellent career ahead of her. Over a decade ago I met a similar young man at a social evening in a pub. This was a lad, who was also totally paralysed, though he still had the power of speech. But he was extremely intelligent, had a girlfriend, and, I learned later, held a very well paid job in computing. And I've heard of other disabled peeps in wheelchairs like him. Companies don't pay the kind of money he was earning to people who can't do the job. A waste of money? Nonsense! And nobody ever said that about Stephen Hawking.
I realise most disabled people aren't computer geniuses, but they can do other jobs, although it might mean that they have to use adapted equipment. Or that in the case of those left brain damaged through head injury, they just take a little longer than everyone else. Unfortunately, I got the impression that the economics crisis caused by austerity has led firms to lay off these workers, even though having a job allows them to support themselves and contribute to the economy through their expenditure. And then the DWP harass them as if it's their fault. And even those, who are unable to work, have an intrinsic worth that goes far beyond money. I was told years ago that some foster parents, for example, prefer to foster children with Down's Syndrome, because they are more loving. Caring for the severely disabled is not a job I could do, but nevertheless I am extremely impressed by those who do and find it rewarding.
How we treat the poor, the sick and the disabled is a vital measure of how genuinely civilised a society is. The Byzantine Empire, the Greek-speaking eastern Roman Empire, had public hospitals. As did Islam. According to the programme, What Islam Did For Us, one of a series of programmes which examined the scientific contributions of civilisations around the world present by Adam Harte-Davis back in the '90s, Haroun al-Rashid, one of the medieval Arab emperors, founded a hospital in Baghdad. Its staff included musicians, who were employed as it was believed their music would calm the shattered minds of the insane incarcerated there. Truly, a humane institution.
And unfortunately, these humane attitudes that have raised human civilisation up from the Dark Ages are being undermined by the vicious persecution of the disabled by the DWP and the vile propaganda of the right-wing press.
And the result of this is a return to the underlying attitudes of Nazi barbarism.
Tags:'Despatches', Adam Harte-Davis, Aktion T4, Austerity, Becky Taylor, Boris Johnson, Bristol Museum, Byzantine Empire, Carers, Channel 4, Christianity, Computers, Count Galen, Dave Cameron, doctors, DP:AC, DWP, Esther McVey, Eugenics, Fraud, Haroun al-Rashid, Holocaust, Ian Duncan Smith, Jews, Psychiatrists, Psychologists, Social Darwinism, SS, Stepyhen Hawking, The Express, The Mail, the Poor, The Pope, The Sun, Vox Political, What Islam Did For Us
Posted in Arabs, Art, Crime, Disability, Evolutionary Theory, Greece, History, Hospitals, Iraq, Islam, Judaism, Medicine, Mental Illness, Music, Nazis, Persecution, Politics, Poverty, Psychology, Roman Catholicism, Science, Technology, Television, The Press, Theology, Unemployment, Welfare Benefits | 4 Comments »
Rose of Dawn Attacks the Mythology of the Trans Genocide
Rose of Dawn is a transwoman, who uses her YouTube channels, one of which has the provocative title 'Trans Stupid' to attack and debunk some of the malign and violent parts of the trans rights movement. She is, unfortunately, something of a controversial figure among some gender critical feminists, such as Karen Davies. Davies does not want transwomen speaking for women because she considers them to be still men, and so are encroaching on women's proper territory, even when transwomen like Debbie Hayton and Blair White share much the same views and are welcomed by other gender critical types, such as Graham Linehan, as true allies.
In this video RoD attacks the mythology of the trans genocide. Some trans activists unfortunately believe that there is a mass holocaust of transpeople going on in Britain and America comparable to the Nazi murder of the Jews, gay men and the disabled, and that Britain's NHS is actively involved. This is monstrously grotesque. RoD has obviously faced prejudiced herself as a transwoman. But she states that society is far more accepting of transwomen now than it was ten years ago. She also believes that the rights of transpeople to compete in sport isn't a human right. To be fair, the gender critical feminists don't believe in stopping transwomen from competing in sport. They just don't want them competing with born women, because of the advantage they have in possessing bodies that were previously male. They feel that they should either compete with men, or in a special category for themselves.
I am very much aware that trans people haven't had it easy, and that there are large parts of British society that are definitely not as welcoming as white metropolitan liberals. Grayson Perry, the Turner Award-winning potter and presenter of the excellent Channel 4 series, Grayson Perry's Art Club, had a play broadcast on the Beeb. Entitled 'Mr. Msunderstood', it was about his own struggle to come to terms with his transvestism. Going back to the '90s, I remember how Jenny Randles, one of Britain's leading investigators of the UFO phenomenon, was deeply upset when one of the tabloids – I think it may have been the Scum or News of the Screws outed her as a transwoman. I am also aware that transvestism, at least in public, was considered gross indecency under the law, punishable by arrest and prison sentences.
However the murder stats for transpeople in the UK are very low. I think only one transperson has been murdered, thankfully, in the past few years. The murder rates in America are still higher, but still comparatively small. And I think that the country has a higher murder than Europe anyway. This has made the calls for a 'trans day of remembrance' in Britain rather ridiculous. The stats frequently used to show that transpeople are facing a wave of murder largely come from South America. These countries, beset by grinding poverty, have a massive murder rate anyway. But very man of the victims are sex workers, so it's unclear whether they were murdered because they were trans, or because they were sex workers.
It seems to me that the myth of a trans genocide has arisen because some militantly, and in my view mentally unbalanced trans rights activists, have read extensively about the Nazi Holocaust and the murder of the disabled under Aktion T4, and mistakenly applied it to themselves. One trans mixed martial arts fighter or boxer appeared wearing a shirt bearing the slogan, 'Stop the Trans Genocide'. This is not only profoundly mistaken but offensively so. As offensive and wrong as the various 'D' list celebs a few years ago promoting the anti-Semitism smears against Jeremy Corbyn, blithely joking with each other over whether 1938 had returned.
If there was a trans genocide comparative to the Holocaust, it would be very obvious. Transpeople would not be allowed on social murder to make the claim, there would be organised pogroms against them. And the BBC would very definitely not be allowed to show programmes or items presenting positive views of trans people and those fighting for their rights. Instead they would be rounded up by the police and security forces and sent to real concentration. There may be propaganda films, such as those made by the Nazis, suggesting that they were doing well in their new homes or successfully responding to treatment. There would also be propaganda campaigns against them as well as very public humiliation and ridicule promoted by the state. The statement 'transwomen are not women' or 'Scots women won't wheesht' are in no way comparable to Nazi anti-Semitic slogans like 'Die Jude is Euer Ungluck' – 'The Jews is your misfortune', if understand it properly and the viciously anti-Semitic content of Nazi rags like Der Sturmer. There are no special ambulances operating under the NHS, like those operated by the SS, which gassed the congenitally disabled, or took them to the clinics and hospitals where they were. This part of the mythology seems to me related to the obnoxious nonsense former Republican American presidential candidate Sarah 'Failin" Palin was spouting about single-payer healthcare. She didn't want Americans to have an NHS like Britain's because the elderly and severely disabled would have to face 'death panels' to decide whether or not they should live and have state funding spent on them. It's a monstrously grotesque lie which unfortunately some 'low information voters' in the Land of the Free were deceived by. It also seems extremely similar to what these trans rights fanatics are saying when they make the claim that the NHS is similarly involved in the organised murder of transpeople.
And RoD is clearly right to state that it is dangerous nonsense. It's clearly very harmful to tell genuinely vunerable people struggling with their gender identity and who may well suffer from a number of other mental conditions, to tell them that there is an organised campaign by the state and society to murder them.
Some of the comments to RoD's video are also well worth reading, such as this comment from Kaien Shiriyaku, a gay Polish man, who grew up in the shadow of the real Holocaust as well as the prejudice and persecution Polish gays faced.
'I was late for the premiere. Comparisons to holocaust are RI-DI-CU-LO-US! Since I'm from Poland, I wanna share something – when I was growing up I've met some people who survived the camps. It was a part of my school (the school was in the name of the victims from the area) and we had meetings once a year, when we were told how horrific those times were. People from the premiere chat already know – I grew up openly gay in the 90s. In Poland of all places. UK and US in the 90s were much more progressive than Poland at the same time. I've got my jaw dislocated once for being gay. Bullied constantly. My father kicked me out of the house once I was legal of age. I bet my acrylic nails those snowflakes wouldn't survive 5 min in Poland, even today. Yes, we have it better now, times had change, however if you meet someone who is homophobic – be prepared to fight. You're met with either acceptance, or vicious attacks here. All you need for the second one is to exit from a gay club during a football night at the wrong time.'
To be fair, this has occurred in Britain and America. Gays have been beaten up, and gay young people thrown out of their parental homes to live on the streets after coming out to their parents. But it isn't like Poland, where increasingly strict anti-LGBT legislation is being passed and several areas have declared themselves to be 'No LGBTQ' zones.
Society isn't perfect, but there is no trans holocaust in Britain and America, and such claims are actively harmful not liberating. They have to be stopped.
Tags:anti-semitism, Anti-Semitism Smears, BBC, Channel 4, Euthanasia, Feminism, Gay Rights, Gays, Genocide, Grayson Perry, Grayson Perry's Art Club, Holocaust, Homlessness, Jenny Randles, Jews, Kaien Shiriyaku, Karen Davies, Murder, News of the World, Pogroms, Republicans (American Party), Rose of Dawn, Sarah Palin, Social Darwinism, SS, The Sun, Transgendered People, Ufology, Violence, Youtube
Posted in America, Art, Crime, Disability, Education, Health Service, History, Hospitals, Judaism, Mental Illness, Nazis, Persecution, Poland, South America, Television, The Press | Leave a Comment »
Black Earthling Boy Meets White Alien in New John Lewis Christmas Ad
John Lewis have just launched their Christmas. This follows their failed advert for insurance, in which a White boy in makeup dances around the family home wrecking it and spraying glitter and paint everywhere. That was widely criticised for promoting the trans ideology amongst children and for false advertising, as apparently the insurance policy being sold didn't cover deliberate damage. In the new advert, a cute Black little boy sees an alien spacecraft fall out of the sky. He follows the contrail into the woods, where he sees a crashed alien spaceship and its humanoid pilot. The alien is White with white hair and rather feminine. The lad offers her some mince pies. The alien accepts them, and the two becomes friends. While fixing her craft the alien sets the electrics working so that the Christmas lights on a neighbour's house suddenly come on, much to the neighbour's annoyance. Having repaired her spacecraft, the alien gives the lad a peck on the cheek in farewell and flies off. The lad goes home to join his family for a festive meal, while looking into the sky. The sound track for the ad is a cover version of Phil Oakey's 'Electric Dreams'. I found this video of it put up on YouTube by the Guardian.
Alex Belfield has already posted a rant about it. He rightly points out that it doesn't contain much in the way of Christmas imagery. There's no Santa Claus, although it's possibly a pine forest so there might be Christmas trees. There also isn't much in the way of specifically Christian imagery either. I might be wrong, but there's no nativity scene. It's a very secular interpretation of Christmas. A decade ago there was controversy over what the Daily Mail and other right-wing papers and organisations described as a 'war on Christmas'. They were angry because some local councils appeared to be deliberately omitting or playing down any mention of Christmas because they were somehow afraid it would offend non-Christian minorities. Birmingham council was particularly attacked for its reinterpretation of the festive season as 'Winterval'. I've heard instead that, rather than replace Christmas, 'Winterval' was dreamed up as a marketing initiative by Brum's council to create an inclusive festive season that would also cover the festivals of other faiths near Christmas, like Hanukka and Diwali. Also, from what I saw, most if not all of the calls for the removal of any public celebration of Christmas came not from the members of non-Christian religions, but from atheists and secularists like the National Humanist Society. The framed their arguments on behalf of religious minorities, while I think they were far more motivated by the rise of a much more militant atheism following the publication of Dawkins' The God Delusion. I also think that the advert is secular simply from the sheer mechanism of capitalism, although John Lewis is organised as a partnership with its workers more like a cooperative. Capitalism and private industry exist to maximise profits. One way of doing this is seeking out new markets to you can sell your product to more people. About 15 per cent of the British population is Black and Asian, and many of the latter are non-Christians, like Hindus, Muslims and so on. Christians are now a minority in the general population. Hence John Lewis and many of the other firms advertising play down Christmas as a religious festival in order to appeal to a broader section of customers.
But Belfield also criticised the advert because he thinks that the alien in it is 'ambivilacious', his term for anything that is gay, non-binary, trans or generally sexually ambiguous. I can see what he means, though it seems to me that the alien is more like a pre-adolescent girl rather than anything more exotic and controversial. I might be reading it wrong, but it seems more like a tale of Earth boy meets alien girl in an innocent Christmastide romance.
Behind all this, I think the advert's been strongly influenced by a number of pop songs and seasonal films. It reminds me more than a little of the Chris de Burgh song about a visiting spaceman at Christmas, which really is a Christian metaphor. ET with its friendship between a human child, Elliot, and a cute extraterrestrial, is another one, although it also has its differences. The most significant of which is, in my opinion, ET was definitely nonhuman and alien, while the alien in this very humanoid except for her suit and the colouring of her hair. It also reminds me of the seasonal children's film, A Christmas Martian, a Canadian film that the Beeb screened one festive season over here when I was a sprog. Mercifully, the advert doesn't seem to have been inspired by the truly dreadful Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, which was screened over here one Christmas in the early '80s as part of Michael Medved's season of terrible movies, The Worst of Hollywood, on Channel 4. But if the alien is sexually ambiguous, I suspect it might be due more to the influence of David Bowie and Ziggy Stardust than the trans movement.
Or it might come from certain aspects of the UFO phenomenon itself. Among the various aliens supposedly visiting Earth and abducting people are the 'Nordics'. These are tall, blonde aliens, like Nordic White Europeans, hence the name. They are also sometimes described as having long hair and a feminine appearance. One of the early UFO contactees, Frank E. Strange, provides a picture of one in his book A Stranger in the Pentagon. Strange claimed that the US government has made a treaty with aliens from Venus. These aliens could provide us with a method of producing cheap, clean energy, but had been prevented from doing so by 'certain interests'. If nothing else, this shows that people were looking for alternative energy as long ago as the '50s and '60s, and the 'certain interests' sounds very much like a veiled reference to the oil industry. The 'alien' in the photo to me simply looks like a blonde, glamorous woman and not like anyone who arrived here from Venus, or anywhere else. The veteran Fortean, John Keel, author of the books The Mothman Prophecies, UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse and Disneyland of the Gods, stated that the Nordics were so feminine in appearance he wondered if they were gay. You can certainly wonder what was going on in Buck Nelson's encounter with the Nordics on his farm. He was going out to his barn one morning when a group of four of them, all with long hair, came out of his barn, stark naked. They told him they from Venus, and explained the nudity by saying that they wore no clothes in order to show him that they were as human as he was. Well, they might have been Venusians, but it seems to me they may also have been a group of ordinary men. They may have been gay, and looking for a quiet place for their activities because of the legal prohibition of homosexuality in America at the time. Or they may have been pranksters playing a joke.
It also reminds me of a supposedly true UFO encounter that happened in the 1970s at Christmas. A woman was in her kitchen baking cakes when a groups of small, winged aliens came in. They greeted her and asked for some of the cakes, which she gave to them. They made a few more remarks before finally departing. This is one of the stranger UFO cases which makes me definitely wonder if the UFO phenomenon isn't a more modern version of the ancient fairy phenomenon rather than anything genuinely extraterrestrial. This does not, however, mean that it isn't still paranormal, as Keel and Jacques Vallee have argued in their books.
Back to the advert, it looks innocuous enough. While I can't say that I like it's secularism, this seems to be a response to the changes in British society rather than an ideologically motivated attempt to foster such changes. And the values it embraces seem wholesome enough. Black and White people come together across the gulfs of space and the Black lad is shown at home enjoying a family meal. This is, in my view, definitely good, as the breakdown in the British and western family has done immense harm to both Whites and Blacks.
If I have a criticism, it's about the background music. The original song 'Electric Dreams' is a jolly, upbeat piece. It was, I believe, used in the 1980s SF film, Weird Science, about two teenage boys who create their idea of the perfect woman on their computer, who then materialises before them. Sort of like Beavis and Butthead meet Tron. And the perfect woman, clad only in bra and panties, says to them 'What would you little maniacs like to do next?' The version used here turns it instead into a plaintive ballad until the final few bars, more an expression of sorrow and loss than joy. But it seems to follow a general trend of reinterpretations of classic tracks. At the Commonwealth Games held in Scotland a few years ago the opening ceremony included a version of the Proclaimers' 'I Would Walk Five Hundred Miles'. This song is another upbeat hit in something very much like classic march time. But instead it was performed as another plaintive, soulful wail. I'm probably showing my age here, but is contemporary youth so depressed that they can only listen to depressing versions of great old songs? Or is it that the middle aged producers of adverts like John Lewis' are so depressed, that they can only listen to depressing versions of upbeat hits and so are unintentional contributing to the psychological and spiritual anguish of the rising generation. A generation that has enough problems of its own.
Anyway, even if the advert is intended to sell people stuff rather than anything deeper, it's a fun piece of trash culture with a bit of kinship to some genuine Ufological high strangeness. And that's always good for a festive tale of the paranormal.
And here's the trailer for Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, which I found on the DTFFmaryville channel on YouTube. In its way, truly a cinematic classic!
Tags:'Santa Claus Conquers the Martians', 'The Worst of Hollywood', 'UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse', A Christmas Martian, A Spaceman Came Walking, A Stranger at the Pentagon, Adverts, Aliens, BBC, Beavis and Butthead, Birmingham, Blacks, Buck Nelson, Capitalism, Channel 4, Children, Chris De Burgh, christmas, Commonwealth Games, David Bowie, Disneyland of the Gods, Diwali, DTFFmaryville, Electric Dreams., Energy, Fairies, Frank E. Strange, Gays, Hanukkah, Hinduism, I Would Walk Five Hundred Miles, Jacques Vallee, John Keel, John Lewis, Michael Medved, National Humanist Society, Oil Industry, Phil Oakey, The Guardian, The Mothman Prophecies, The Proclaimers, Transgendered People, Tron, UFOs, Weird Science, Whites, Youtube, Ziggy Stardust
Posted in Atheism, Canada, Comedy, Economics, Electricity, Film, Industry, Islam, Judaism, Music, OIl, Persecution, Popular Music, Scotland, Secularism, Space, Sport, Technology, Television, The Press | 4 Comments »
Email Campaign by We Own It Against Channel 4 Privatisation
I got this email yesterday from anti-privatisation, pro-NHS organisation We Own It about the government's latest sell-off. They're planning to privatise Channel 4. Their email explains that this is disastrous because Channel 4 are one of the few media outlets holding them to account. At the same time they have been instrumental in producing quality television, which is funded through the channel's advertising revenue. The government's proposed privatisation is such a terrible idea that even many Tories are protesting against it. To counter it, the organisation is asking people to write to their MPs using a form letter they have devised. Here's the email:
There is absolutely no reason to privatise Channel 4, but the government is planning to do it anyway.
You can take a quick, easy action today to stop them in their tracks.
Channel 4 News is one of the few news programmes that really holds this government to account, on issues from the NHS to the climate crisis. In fact, that's probably a big part of why the government wants to privatise it.
(Remember when Boris Johnson failed to attend the Channel 4 leaders' debate on the climate crisis, and they replaced him with a melting ice sculpture?)
If you want decent news coverage at the next general election, please take 2 minutes to email your MP, ESPECIALLY if they're a Conservative.
Email your MP now
Privatising Channel 4 would be an incredibly destructive act that would damage the UK film and TV industry. The creation of Channel 4 is the reason why the independent sector in film and TV exists today.
This matters
For the quality of programmes and films that get produced
For young people trying to enter the creative industry
For the UK's reputation in the world
There is no problem that privatising Channel 4 is the solution for.
Channel 4 has a unique business model, making a profit from advertising that it reinvests in good programming and nurturing talent. Channel 4 now has offices in Leeds, Manchester, Glasgow and Bristol, so it helps with the 'levelling up' agenda, boosting investment and jobs all around the country. They also support local production companies and outreach programmes in Cardiff, Belfast, Bournemouth, Norwich, Wolverhampton, Preston, Doncaster, Corby and Leicester.
That's why wherever you are in the UK, Channel 4 is a good thing for your area.
Take 2 minutes to take action now
Lots of Conservatives have come out against the proposed sale of Channel 4. Many celebrities, including very right wing ones, have too. This means we have a chance of persuading the government that privatisation is a bad idea.
As Kirstie Allsopp has said, the plan to privatise Channel 4 is incredibly destructive. "I am a fiscal conservative and I'm naturally conservative-leaning and I find [the sale of C4] to be a betrayal of conservatism. It's bonkers…I stood outside St Pauls when Margaret Thatcher's coffin went by, and she would be spinning in her grave if she knew what this government was intending to do. Because C4 produces money, it produces jobs, it fosters talent, it brings out the best in people, and it's very British."
If you have a Conservative MP, it's so important that you take this action! Your MP is EXACTLY who we need to shift. You will see that the template email is aimed at appealing to MPs like yours. Please send the text as it is, to maximise the chances of doing that! Thank you.
If you don't have a Conservative MP, your MP can still really help to raise this issue up the agenda.
I want to stop the Channel 4 sell off
Last time the government tried to privatise Channel 4 they failed – partly because of the campaign we were part of to stop them.
Let's win again this time around and protect this much loved, publicly owned asset.
Cat, Alice, Johnbosco, Matthew, Zana and Anna – the We Own It team
PS Thank you so much for the incredible response to our Halloween action to protect our NHS from the Health and Care Bill! If you've let us know that you'd like to take action locally, we're getting your action packs ready at the moment and we'll be in contact with you via email. Get in touch if you want to get involved – there's still time!"
I've supported their campaign, and duly sent a message to my MP because of the reasons they've laid out in their email. It's not just the government that Channel 4's held to account. They also gave Mark Regev a hard time when during the bombardment of Gaza. Regev tried to tell the British public that if they sent aid to Gaza through Israel, it would still get there. John Snow knew he was lying and told him he was. Which shows that Channel 4 has more backbone when it comes to tackling Israeli lies and atrocities than the rest of our craven media, or at least, they did then.
Channel 4 was set up in the 1980s to be an alternative to BBC 2. News was to be a particularly important part of its programming, and this has been consistently extremely good, even to Tories like former Mail columnist, now scribbling for the Times, Quentin Letts. The broadcaster was also going to offer programmes to minorities and groups not served by mainstream broadcasters. Hence when it started off it broadcast an adaptation of the Indian national epic, the Mahabharata, and a season of Indian films, All India Goldies. I also remember it having a news series of reports from Africa, fronted by Black reporters. It also helped launch a new generation of Black comedians with the series Desmond's. And then there was the awesome Max Headroom. Unfortunately, the quality did decline in the 1990s as the programme chiefs made it more mainstream, though even then it did broadcast quality material like the American import, Fraser. And it does support the British film industry, or what remains of it. If you've seen a British film, or a British/Irish co-production in the past few years, chances are that it's also been co-produced by Channel 4 films. Kirstie Allsopp is wrong about Margaret Thatcher not wanting it privatised. There were several times when the Conservative government tried to sell it off, or sold shares in it but it hasn't been totally privatised.
Now it seems it will be. For the same reasons the government is trying to privatise the Beeb. Because both are obstacles to private TV stations that don't have a public service commitment, and particularly because they're obstacles to the grasping power of Rupert Murdoch.
I've supported this campaign and emailed my MP as requested because I don't want the channel privatised. If you feel the same, please do so.
Tags:'Desmond's', 'We Own It', BBC, Belfast, Blacks, Boris Johnson, Bournemouth, Bristol, Cardiff, Channel 4, Channel 4 Films, Channel 4 News, Climate Change, Conservatives, Corby, Daily Mail, Doncaster, Gaza, Glasgow, Israeli Embassy, John Snow, Kirstie Allsopp, Leeds, Leicester, Mahabharata, Manchester, Margaret Thatcher, Mark Regev, Max Headroom, News, NHS, Norwish, Preston, Privatisation, Rupert Murdoch, The Times, Wolverhampton
Posted in Africa, America, Arabs, Comedy, Environment, Film, Health Service, India, Industry, Ireland, Israel, Persecution, Politics, Television, The Press | Leave a Comment »
Myles Power Attacks Holocaust Denier Fred Leuchter
Okay, I've attacked the fanatical Zionists for making false accusations of anti-Semitism against decent people, who make legitimate, reasonable criticisms of the Israeli state's ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Now to deal with people, who could be justly accused of genuine anti-Semitism: real Nazis and Holocaust deniers.
I found this excellent video on YouTube yesterday. Myles Power is a Brit, who appears to specialise in exposing real human rights abuses and genuinely terrible people. And a number of these genuinely terrible people are those trying to claim that the Holocaust never happened or was much smaller than real, mainstream historians believe. The target of his video was Fred Leuchter and one of Leuchter's friends, who were alleging that they'd been terribly libelled by Power. Power's video was his response, showing not only that he hadn't libelled them and adding even more, damning evidence against them.
Leuchter was an engineer who designed gas chambers and other execution machines for the American prison service. In 1988 he was hired by Canadian Nazi Ernst Zundl to go and examine the remains of Auschwitz and see if it really was a gas chamber. He did so, came to the conclusion that he could find little trace of Zyklon B, the gas used by the Nazis to murder 6 million Jews, and that therefore Auschwitz wasn't a gas chamber. It's nonsense. The evidence showing the reality of the Holocaust is, as an American judge ruled, so plentiful it cannot be sanely denied. And this applies very much to such infamous centres of the murder as Auschwitz.
Channel 4 screened a documentary following Leuchter on his journey and examination of Auschwitz, interviewing him and various others, including Zundl. The documentary also feature a Jewish historian of the Holocaust, who debunked Leuchter with genuine fact. The reason why there were few traces of Zyklon B in the brickwork was because the gas doesn't permeate very far into it. And after thirty years or so the majority of the gas that did would have been exhaled from it. There is also the problem in that what remains of Auschwitz is only a fragment of the historic death camp. After the War much of it was demolished by the Poles and the bricks used to build a housing estate nearby. Leuchter therefore only examined a tiny part of the original structure. Further proof of the use of the gas probably exists in the bricks used in the neighbouring homes.
Leuchter and his friends also claimed that there is little documentary proof to support the Holocaust. This was debunked by the Jewish critic as well. The Nazis were determined to hide their murder of the Jews, and so used coded language to describe what they were doing. This euphemistically referred to the mass murder as 'relocation to the east' or 'special operations in the east'. In fact, supporting the reality of Auschwitz is not only the testimony of the survivors, but also that of its Commandant, Rudolf Hoess. Hoess was unrepentant and really didn't see that he had been responsible for one of the most horrific crimes in history. His testimony has been published by mainstream publishers. I found a copy in Waterstones a few years ago. There are also speeches from Heinrich Himmler, the SS chief responsible for the Holocaust, including one at Auschwitz. Despite the euphemistic language used, the evidence to support the Holocaust's reality is plentiful and absolutely incontrovertible.
But evidence supporting Leuchter's expertise on the issue is far less impressive. Leuchter claimed to have been employed by six American states to design gas chambers and other methods of execution. Inquiries by a Ms. Shapiro of an organisation representing Holocaust survivors found that he had, in fact, been employed by only one, Missouri. He either hadn't been involved with the others, or had appeared briefly to make a few comments and offer his services, but hadn't been taken on. And some of the machines he produced were definitely dodgy. One machine he built to kill the prisoner using drugs would have paralysed the victim, as intended, but he would have been left in terrible agony by the chemical used, which would have produced a terrible burning sensation. After one state terminated his contract, he told them he had deliberately sold them a faulty machine, which would require servicing from time to time. Power goes on to say that he has found evidence that casts doubt on whether Leuchter is actually a qualified engineer as he claims. This will be the subject of a forthcoming video.
And lastly, there's the obvious point that it doesn't help Leuchter's credibility that the man with whom he is talking about the terribly way Power has libelled him is clearly a Nazi standing in front of a gold, Nazi emblem. You know the one – the eagle carrying the swastika. And Power isn't afraid of any legal action from these bozos, because not only is their case rubbish, people genuinely suing for libel don't usually tell their victims beforehand.
It's an excellent video and I wish Power all the best in exposing these goons and their assault on history to whitewash the Nazis.
Tags:anti-semitism, Anti-Semitism Smears, Auschwitz, Channel 4, Engineering, Ernst Zundl, Ethnic Cleansing, Fred Leuchter, Gas Chambers, Heinrich Himmler, Holocaust, Holocaust Denialm, Holocaust Survivors, Housing, Human Rights, Libel, Missouri, Myles Power, Palestinians, Prisons, Rudolf Hoess, SS, Videos, World War II, Youtube, Zionism
Posted in America, Arabs, Canada, History, Israel, Judaism, Justice, LIterature, Nazis, Persecution, Poland, Science, Television | Leave a Comment »
History Debunked on Black African Complicity at the Beginning of the European Slave Trade
This is another provocative video from History Debunked's Simon Webb. In it he describes how the modern European trade in African slaves began in 1442 with the Portuguese explorer, Antao Goncalves and a Black slave, Adahu. Goncalves, whom Webb calls Anton, had been commissioned by the Portuguese king, Prince Henry 'the Navigator' to acquire seal skins and oil. Eager to ingratiate himself with his royal master, Goncalves raided west Africa for slaves. One of those captured was Adahu, who spoke Arabic. Adahu explained that he was a chief and if he was set free, he would help the Portuguese acquire as many slaves as they wanted as he knew the local slave markets. Goncalves took him back to Portugal, where he impressed the king, and he and Goncalves went into partnership slaving. Although the Portuguese had acquired slaves through seizing foreign vessels before, and the Arabs had imported Black slaves into the Iberian peninsula for centuries before the beginning of the European trade in Black slaves, this marked the beginning of the modern slave trade.
Webb also points out that both Europeans and Africans attempted to cheat each other. Europeans attempted to pass off broken or substandard goods, like broken muskets to their African partners, while Africans adulterated the gold they used to purchase goods from the Europeans. Webb points out that this isn't a popular view now, as it conflicts with the image of Africans as helpless victims. But he argues that the simple logistics of operating a mass slave trade means that Europeans had to have African assistance. They simply couldn't have enslaved and carried off the large numbers they did if they had carried on capturing them directly, as they earlier had done. He also states that it is similarly mistaken that it was Europeans who brought slavery to America. Both the Aztecs and Maya enslaved their enemies, while in modern Alaska the Haida and Tlingit did the same so that about a quarter of the indigenous population may have been slaves.
I've said before that Webb is a man of the right, and that some of his facts may need to be checked. But as far as I can tell, he is correct. Hugh Thomas describes how Goncalves captured Adahu in his The Slave Trade, who says on page 55:
"These new captives included a local chief, Adahu, who spoke Arabic. He negotiated his own release, and that of a boy from his own family, on the understanding that if he were taken back to where he had been found he would deliver some black slaves in exchange."
Black African involvement in the transatlantic slave trade has been mentioned in museums and documentaries. The exhibition on the city's involvement in the slave trade at Bristol's city museum in the 1990s, entitled 'A Respectable Trade', included it, and there was a documentary about it in the same decade on Channel 4. More recently a programme on the history of that part of Canada and America also discussed slaving by the Tlingit and gave the same proportion of the enslaved indigenous population in that part of north America at the time.
However, I do think there is a very strong drive to place the blame for slavery solely on White Europeans. I don't think many Black Brits are now aware how their ancestors were enslaved by other Africans and there does seem to be a reluctance to state just how massively some African princes did profit from the trade.
Tags:'The Slave Trade', Adahu, Alaska, Antao Goncalves, Arabic, Aztecs, Blacks, Bristol Museum, Channel 4, Haida, Henry the Navigator, History Debunked, Hugh Thomas, Maya, Simon Webb, Slave Trade, Tlingit, Trade, Whites
Posted in Africa, Arabs, Armenia, Canada, Education, History, Languages, LIterature, Slavery, Television | 5 Comments »
Keef Stalin Purges Ken Loach from Labour Party as Part of anti-Corbynite Witch Hunt
This shows you how utterly contemptible, treacherous and unprincipled Keir Starmer is, and how he is completely unfit to lead the Labour party. Mike has put up a piece today reporting that Starmer has purged Loach from the party, because the great cineaste has refused to dissociate himself from others purged from the party without evidence. This is in accordance, as I recall, of one of the demands Starmer pledged himself to from the Board of Deputies of British Jews: that anyone in the Labour party who still retained contact with someone thrown out due to anti-Semitism would themselves be thrown out. Stalin used exactly the same approach to his victims during the Soviet purges of the 1930s. If you continued to remember or make inquiries about anyone 'disappeared' by the KGB, let alone dared to defend anyone who had been accused of anti-Soviet propaganda or being a capitalist agent or saboteur, you would also be arrested, tortured and shot or sent to the camps. The accused become, in Orwell's phrase, 'unpersons', erased from history.
I think Loach has probably been in Starmer's and the Board's firing line for a very long time. He was a prominent supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, and decades previously had produced a film or play about the Israeli occupation of Palestine. For which he was accused of anti-Semitism by, among others, the leading synagogue in Belgium. He was also warmly welcomed as a very honoured guest when he attended a gathering of Jewish Voice for Labour. I've no doubt they're also set to be purged along with the various other left-wing groups, like Labour Marxists and Socialist Appeal, because, according to Blairite Neil Coyle, they're 'Commies'. I doubt Coyle would know a true Communist if one came up and bit him. It's just a term of abuse the neoliberals have taken to using to smear anyone who wants a return to the social democratic consensus of the period from 1948 to 1979. And the ultra-Zionists of the Board of Deputies no doubt hate them because they're Jews, who're critical of Israel and its barbarous ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. The Board can't tolerate alternative forms of Judaism that criticise and reject Zionism, and Jewish Voice for Labour very definitely shows that by no means all Jews automatically and uncritically support the Israeli state. Simply by existing, they're a challenge to the Board's claim to represent all British Jews, when in fact the Board only represents the United Synagogue. And so I've no doubt that the Blairites will try to thrown them out next.
Loach himself is a very well respected film-maker. A few years ago when Cameron was infesting Downing Street, he made I, Daniel Blake, about how the DWP persecuted and maltreats the unemployed. Before then, he made Dirty, Pretty Things, about the despised underclass of immigrants who do the dirty jobs we don't want, like office cleaners. But he's best known for his film Kes, about a lad from a deprived northern working class community and his relationship with a kestrel. There has been a storm of protest against Loach's purge on Twitter, and one of those posting was a teacher in a comprehensive school in one of the towns devastated by Thatcher's pit closures. He describes the electrifying effect it had when it was shown to the schoolkids. Kes is one of the classics of British cinema. It has been shown on Channel 4, when that channel still took seriously its original founding mission of providing alternative programming. I think the DVD of the film is released by the British Film Institute.
Loach's social realism isn't to everyone's taste, and I can't say that his films really appeal to me. But he is a major figure in British cinema, and his purging by Starmer shows the latter's utter contempt for the cultural sector. It seems intended to show that it doesn't matter who the victim is, nor how important or respected they are in the arts, Starmer will throw them out. This will be taken as a threat by other left-wing film makers, theatre producers and directors. Who will be very justified in asking
"Is Starmer a fit person to run the country?"
Back in the 1980s there was an episode of Yes, Prime Minister, in which Hacker is irritated when the National Theatre, or a fictional version thereof, stages a play lampooning his administration. In revenge, and in order to secure their compliance, he threatens to close their premises down, turning them once again into 'strolling players' as in Shakespeare's time. People in the arts may well be wondering if this is how Starmer intends to treat any dissent on their part, by closing them down or depriving them of funding or finding some other way to discredit and silence them.
This is not just an attack on one man. It is a symbolic warning to other major figures in the arts.
Free speech is under attack in the UK from the Tories, who wish to ban all forms of public protest if they get the chance.
And Starmer seems determined to extend this silencing to movies and the arts.
Tags:'Dirty Pretty Things', 'I Daniel Blake', 'Kes', 'Yes Prime Minister', Board of Deputies of British Jews, British Film Institute, Channel 4, Conservatives, Gulags, Immigration, Jewish Voice for Labour, Keir Starmer, KGB, Labour Marxists, Labour Party, Margaret Thatcher, marxism, Miniing, Neil Coyle, Palestine, Protests, Purges, Schools, Socialist Appeal, stalin, the ARts, tony blair, Vox Political, Zionism
Posted in Arabs, Coal, communism, Democracy, Economics, Film, History, Israel, Judaism, Persecution, Politics, Russia, Stage, Television, Theatre | 6 Comments »
New Holocaust Memorial Announced for London – Sargon and Co Ask Why
First off, I'm sorry I haven't posted anything for a few days. I've been busy with other things down here, but normal service will be resumed as soon as possible. Yesterday, our Tory government announced that they were going to put a new memorial up commemorating the Holocaust. And Sargon of Gasbag, the man who broke UKIP, and his mate Callum over at the Lotuseaters Youtube channel have asked the obvious question: why? The proposed memorial has received widespread approval, especially from the Board of Deputies of British Jews, who were highly delighted. They claimed it was needed because Holocaust denial was growing in the UK and we needed to be reminded of our part in the Shoah, the great crime against the Jews, and also against the disabled, gays and the Roma. But as the commenters on the Lotuseaters video have pointed out, they said nothing about the Slav peoples of eastern Europe, who were also massacred. This is true. Hitler hated the Slavs, and in his Tabletalk he makes it clear he was looking forward to the extermination of the Czech. After the Jews, the Poles formed the largest number of the victims of Nazi massacre and extermination, particular Polish Roman Catholic clergy. Slavs were considered subhuman under the Nuremberg race laws. Their lands were targeted for German colonisation, and those Poles, Russians and Ukrainians lucky enough to survive were to serve as an uneducated peasant class producing agricultural goods for their German masters.
The Lotuseaters are men of the right, and the extreme right at that. I find their videos difficult to watch because of the idiot sneering at the Labour party, idiot 'woke' lefties and similar comments that also come out of the mouth of the mad right-winger, Alex Belfield. Particularly annoying in this video was all their jokes about Jeremy Corbyn and anti-Semitism, and how he especially wouldn't like the memorial and agrees with Holocaust denial. It's just right-wing libel. Corbyn, like George Galloway, has never denied the Holocaust and has a proud record of standing up for the Jews in this country, as he has done for Blacks and other ethnic minorities. His crime wasn't anti-Semitism, but standing up for the Palestinians. The Israeli state and the ultra-Zionists, like the Board of Deputies, can't justify it, so they smear those criticising their ethnic cleansing of Israel's indigenous population as anti-Semites. This include proud, self-respecting Jews, who are tarnished and demonised as 'self-hating'.
But the Lotuseaters are right to ask why we need such a memorial. They say we entered the War to stop the persecution of the Jews, when the Nazis and USSR had signed a non-aggression pact to divide Poland between. Callum even claimed that when the Soviets took over their part of Poland, they handed over its Jewish inhabitants to the Nazis to massacre. Well, I haven't heard that before and neither did Sargon, but it doesn't surprise me. Stalin was a vicious anti-Semite, and during the Weimar period western Communists were ordered to collaborate with Nazis despite the Nazis hatred of Marxist socialism and their persecution of the KPD under the Third Reich. It's wrong to say we entered the War to save the Jews. We didn't. We declared war on Nazi Germany because of our defensive alliance with France and Poland. Although there was little outright anti-Semitic persecution in Britain, low-level anti-Jewish sentiment was widespread and acceptable. There was considerable sympathy for Nazism amongst the British aristocracy, with various high-ranking individuals joining pro-Nazi organisations like the Anglo-German Fellowship. The father of Geordie Grieg, editor of the Heil, was a member of one such group. On the other hand, the Fascist parties and groups remained generally small. Britain passed laws banning the stirring up of racial hatred, and once war was declared Oswald Mosley, the head of the BUF, was sent to the Tower of London and his stormtroopers interned on the Isle of Man along with other enemy aliens. And our troops did liberate some of the concentration and death camps, along with the Russians and our other allies, and we did save the survivors from starvation, or as many as we could. There were Nazi sympathisers who served as auxiliaries in the Waffen SS, the British division of which served as the basis for neo-Nazi organisation the League of St. George. But as far as I know, there was absolutely no British state involvement with the Holocaust and I haven't heard of any British commercial involvement with it, either. I'm therefore puzzled when the Board says it was needed to remind us of our role in it.
As for anti-Semitism in Britain, only 7 per cent of Brits have negative view about Jews. The majority have positive views of them, and a smaller number consider them no better or worse than anyone else. The Lotuseaters state that the Holocaust is taught as part of the British history curriculum. There are Holocaust deniers knocking around, but there are very few of them, at least among the vast majority of severely normal Brits, who despise them. I wondered if behind the cloaked language which didn't name anybody in particular, the real fear was about the possible growth in anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial amongst Muslims. It's rife in the Middle East because of the Israeli colonisation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine, and the humiliation inflicted on the Arab nations during the Six Day War. I have the impression that the majority of British Muslims despise Israel for its maltreatment of the Palestinians. However, Tony Greenstein has pointed out that the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism offer no supporting statistics or information on their website for their statement that the majority of anti-Semites are Muslim.
David Cameron apparently approved the monument five years ago in 2016, but Boris has only just given it the go-ahead. My impression is that this has precious little about commemorating the Holocaust for itself, and everything to do with generating support for Israel. Peter Oborne in his documentary for Channel 4's dispatches 11 years ago described how the Israel lobby had effectively captured Britain's political parties, and especially the Tories, through parliamentary friendship groups, sponsored trips to Israel and donations from pro-Israel Jewish businessmen. Any British paper or broadcaster, including the Beeb, that dared to cover atrocities by the Israelis and their allies, like the Lebanese Christian Phalange, were attacked and smeared by the Board as anti-Semites. Hence the attacks on the Labour party and Jeremy Corbyn, and the capture of the party of Keir Starmer, who has declared himself to be '100 per cent Zionist'. Hence also the foundation of front organisations claiming to represent Jews and combat anti-Semitism, but which are really concerned with persecuting and smearing critics of Israel, like the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and the Jewish Labour Movement, previously Paole Zion, Workers of Zion. These two organisations were founded to combat the rise in anti-Israel sentiment following Israel's bombardment of Gaza. My guess is that Israel and it's satellite organisations and mouthpieces in the UK have been rattled by British support for the Palestinians following the riots around the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian districts in east Jerusalem ready for Israeli settlement. This all looks to me very much like the Israel state exploiting the Holocaust to garner support on the one hand, and the Tories using it to signal their compliance with Israel and its genocidal attitude to the Arabs on the other.
The Holocaust was a monstrous crime against humanity and it is entirely right that British schoolchildren are taught about it. But this new memorial looks like it has nothing to do with remembering the victims of the Shoah, but is simply a PR exercise to shame Brits into supporting Israel and its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.
Tags:'Dispatches', Adolf Hitler, al-Aqsa Mosque, Alex Belfield, Anglo-German Fellowship, anti-semitism, Anti-Semitism Smears, Board of Deputies of British Jews, Bombardment of Gaza, Boris Johnson, British Union of Fascists, Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, Channel 4, Colonisation, Concentration Camps, Conservatives, Czechs, David Cameron, Ethnic Cleansing, Gays, Gaza, Grypsies, Holocaust, Holocaust Denial, Internment, Israel Lobby, Jeremy Corbyn, Jerusalem, Jewish Labour Movement, Jews, Keir Starmer, Labour Party, League of St. George, Lotueaters, Massacres, Muslims, National Curriculum, Nazi-Soviet Pact, Oswald Mosley, Palestinians, Paole Zion, Peasants, Peter Oborne, Poles, Riots, Russians, Sargon of Akkad, Schools, Slavs, Soviet Union, the Disabled, UKIP, Ukrainians, Waffen SS, World War II, Zionism
Posted in Agriculture, Arabs, communism, Czech Republic, Disability, Education, Fascism, History, Islam, Israel, Judaism, Law, LIterature, Nazis, Persecution, Poland, Politics, Radio, Roman Catholicism, Russia, Television, The Press, Ukraine | 1 Comment »


text:
CultureMovie reviews
Love Is All You Need | Movie review
Sarah Milton
Arrow Films presents a Danish feature directed by Susanne Bier that brings together Trine Dyrholm and Pierce Brosnan as Ida, a woman battling with a cheating husband and the aftermath of chemotherapy, and widower Philip, protagonists in a romance that begins as they meet at their children's wedding.
The encounter takes place in Sorrento, Italy where Brosnan's character met his first wife who died several years before. The beauty and warmth of the setting naturally inspires a feeling of romance, but it all has a slight Mamma Mia air to it – minus the singing.
That aside, Bier instills a tenderness in Ida whose struggle with cancer functions as a sub plot, the focus being on her beauty and delicate, intelligent nature. Dyrholm is astonishing to look at on screen, and the grace that she brings to Ida is moving. Brosnan's Philip begins as a wounded, uptight businessman (recognisable from previous films like Remember Me,) but he gently and gradually weaves a vulnerability that proves his fine technique as an actor.
There are some glorious moments for Philip's desperate sister-in-law, Benedikte (Paprika Steen) as she is batted away in her attempts to woo Philip. Ida's husband Leif (Kim Bodnia) brings his new woman Tilde (Christiane Schaumburg-Muller) to the wedding unannounced, with both characters lending a comic naivety to the film. The reaction from Ida's children is a dream, particularly Kenneth (Micky Skeel Hansen) with his biting tongue and later, brilliantly well-placed left hook.
The focus of Love Is All You Need is of course on love, in a rom-com that is naturally charming and relatable. It doesn't sicken, and the story is plausible and raw. It explores sexuality, sensuality, and the nature of love in a way that is considerate and inquisitive. Susanne Bier has a clear vision with her directorial story, admitting that she is "very romantic" herself but insisting "you can't be heavy handed in a rom-com" – and this very human clarity works in the film's favour.
Emotionally engaging and a relatively easy watch, Love Is All You Need is subtitled, but not noticeably, with fluid scenes in English interjected throughout (our leading man understands Danish but never speaks it). It's gorgeously shot and a very open, appreciative film.
Love Is All You Need is released in selected cinemas on 19th April 2013.
Watch the trailer for Love Is All You Need here:
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