How To Enjoy Birds All Summer All About Birds
‘Timescapes’ may explain why animal species perceive events so differently Phys.org
Cervical cancer deaths among young women in England fall to zero following HPV vaccination Down to Earth
Climate/Environment
Huge rain along the Gulf Coast with big #flooding. 2 feet of rain in spots with a return interval of 200 years. #Arthur pic.twitter.com/96OYpd9IAY
— Jeff Berardelli (@WeatherProf) June 19, 2026
This is the kind of heat/humidity combo that should get your attention.
South Texas observations supported heat indices above 130°F in spots today.
Alice reached 97°F with an 86°F dewpoint, which gives an estimated wet-bulb temperature near 90°F / 32°C.
Not theoretical. Not… https://t.co/Uy3uAwu1Ix pic.twitter.com/f0RdKVt78Q
— The Global Warmer🔥🌏 🔥 (@TheGlobalWarmer) June 18, 2026
India faces twin threat of extreme heat and a slow moving monsoon Intellinews
Scorching Heat for the Summer Solstice: The Dangerous Longevity of Europe’s New June Heatwave Severe Weather Europe
Pave Paradise, Relocate a Gopher Tortoise bioGraphic
Hacking the atmosphere: Geoengineering gets a reality check MIT Technology Review
Ebola
Ebola cases increase almost 40% in a week as death toll passes 200 AP
Pandemics
Risk of COVID-19 infections at the workplace: Lessons learned from OSHA investigations Journal of Safety Research
China?
Why Xi is walling in China’s money – and why it won’t work Asia Times
Does China Covet Siberia? Cliodynamica by Peter Turchin
Syraqistan
Iran cancels Swiss trip due to Israeli attacks on Lebanon: Sources Al Mayadeen
Hezbollah deals heavy losses to invading troops as Israel rejects withdrawing from Lebanon The Cradle
Internal Debate Rages in Tehran Over Deal with Trump Drop Site
“Deals” and “Ceasefires” in an Age of Ambiguity Sawahil
When Presidents Clashed with Imperial Israel Sam Husseini
Wanted: War-Zone Divers to Scrape Barnacles From Ships in Persian Gulf Bloomberg
European Disunion
EU leaders demand von der Leyen tools up against China Politico
Hegseth announces review of US forces in Europe as he lambasts NATO allies in Brussels meeting Euronews
Civilians in War (III) German Foreign Policy
Poland and Germany sign defence cooperation agreement Notes from Poland
Africa
UN chief warns Sudan’s El Obeid risks repeat of Al Fasher horrors TRT World
Old Blighty
Andy Burnham wins huge majority in Makerfield byelection, paving way for Starmer leadership challenge The Guardian
New Not-So-Cold War
Zelensky Launches Mass-Attack on Moscow to Impress His Brussels Curators Simplicius
Infowars Events in Ukrainę
The Resumption Of US Sanctions On Russian Oil Could Disrupt Putin’s Sino-Indo Balancing Act Andrew Korybko
Von der Leyen proposes curbing EU protection for Ukrainian refugees DPA International
South of the Border
Hyper-militarized ‘war on narco-terror’ is not stopping drug flows Responsible Statecraft
Charlie Kirk
Israeli foreign agent took over The Charlie Kirk Show days after his killing The Grayzone
FARA DOCS: ISRAEL IS SPYING ON MILLIONS OF CHRISTIAN AMERICANS IN THEIR CHURCHES Mint Press News
Trump 2.0
A tremendous birthday present Molly White
OMB FISCAL YEAR 2025 MEMOS PART 1: THE FIRST TEN MEMOS Notes on the Crises
Trump administration reverses decision to scrap ocean monitoring system The Guardian
Trump administration to end PEPFAR funding for South Africa Semafor
Pentagon tells lawmakers it needs $80B to cover costs from Iran war, other bills: Report Anadolu Agency
GOP Funhouse
GOP embraces speculation about China’s role in data center backlash The Hill
Groypthink The Baffler
Democrats Suck
‘Would You Rather Go Back to War?’ Critics Ask Democrats Fuming Over Trump’s Iran Deal Common Dreams
Obama Legacy
Obama library dedication turns presidency of war, Wall Street bailouts into Democratic Camelot WSWS
The Uniparty
A Tale of Two Cancers – The Last Decade of American Politics Truth & Balance
Police State Watch
HOW DID THE FEDS GET INTO ANTI-ICE ACTIVISTS’ SIGNAL MESSAGES? The Intercept
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
State Digital Surveillance Risk Landscape Insikt Group
MAHA
The Pro-Pandemic Administration Bug-Eyed & Shameless
Sports Desk
FIFA’s Haiti jersey ban echoes the long campaign to discredit and downplay the Haitian Revolution The Conversation
AI
Bernie Sanders’ New AI Bill Would Pay Americans $1,000 a Year Gizmodo
Exclusive-Meta lobbies Congress for protection from child-harm lawsuits Reuters
Healthcare?
OIG findings raise questions about PE’s role in Medicaid Private Equity Stakeholder Project
Immigration
The forgotten fugitives of US forever wars Responsible Statecraft
THE VISA EMPIRE: BORDERS AS A BUSINESS Lighthouse Reports
Right-wing MPs in the EU Parliament chant ‘send them back’ after passing a directive that will make it easier to deport illegal migrants
Liberal MPs (mostly women) chant in response ‘shame on you’ pic.twitter.com/zuxaiqP2qc
— Daily Romania (@daily_romania) June 17, 2026
The Bezzle
Waymo recalls nearly 4,000 robotaxis to stop them driving into highway construction zones TechCrunch
Class Warfare
Corporate America’s Secret Courts Are Stealing Your Rights The Economic Populist
Union workers at Seattle Hilton strike amid World Cup Hotel Dive
Meta is Increasing the Snack Budget After Staff Morale Plummets PetaPixel
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
“Meta is Increasing the Snack Budget After Staff Morale Plummets”
Big Zuck getting cheap with the workers that he hasn’t fired yet. Saw one tweet about him that fits-
‘Stop the Forever Wars
@DoctorFishbones
Mark Zuckerberg seems genuinely surprised that his employees don’t like getting fired, even if it benefits him.’
https://xcancel.com/DoctorFishbones/status/2067663653856227368#m
I’m thinking Meta is going to end up like Big Tobacco. Now that governments are starting to ban young children from their products, they’ll lose customers, and their user base will decline. And importantly, like smoking bans for those below the age of 18 in the 80’s, those kids will never get hooked on their product.
Zuckerberg is going to have to fire a lot more of his minions to keep Wall St. happy. Maybe the stock will pay a dividend in 2035.
Here in Australia the Albo government banned social networks for under 16s. I am not sure how the enforcement side of that directive is going. I haven’t followed the issue. I am certain that it is going to fail the ostensible objectives, so I can’t be bothered to give it a second of my attention.
It surely has created a lot of policing work for some institutions like schools and breakfast clubs. After bullshit jobs, someone should write a book about bullshit tasks – although, perhaps it is not necessary, since plenty of comedy has already been written about that…
Typical management. All the pizza party memes exist for a reason.
Re: ‘Would You Rather Go Back to War?’ Critics Ask Democrats Fuming Over Trump’s Iran Deal
Schiff, big surprise, not. His whole political career has been stage-managed by AIPAC. I’ve often thought the mania of his focus on Russia in the 2016 election, amplified by the Rachel Maddow brigade, was to distract from far and away the biggest foreign culprit, Israel. From the Adelson millions to, as James Bamford wrote up in The Nation, conducting espionage to benefit the Trump campaign, Schiff, Blumenthal and Booker refused to connect the dots. It underscores the importance of making money from AIPAC and affiliates a litmus test for dropping recipients through a trap door.
The belligerence is bipartisan and global, not just Iran.
See https://www.laprogressive.com/foreign-policy/bipartisan-war-on-venezuela.
“How to Enjoy Birds All Summer”
For those that live in the UK, here is a handy website which includes sound clips of those birds-
https://www.garden-birds.co.uk/
Regarding Eisenhower’s successful forcing Israel to leave the Sinai after seizing it during the 1956 Suez crisis, he threatened major economic sanctions in addition to obtaining an UN General Assembly resolution.
This is a corrected link to a lengthy YouTube video documentary about this previously posted.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQIHmQ7bAQk
Simplicius: Zelensky Launches Mass Shower of Drones as a Coinkydink to Insisting on EU Membership and Attending G7 with the Big Boys and Girls and even Mark Rutte.
Yep. Noting Simplicius: “And secondly, the strikes were clearly meant to coincide with Zelensky’s ongoing European Council summit in Brussels where he needed to sell a version of Ukrainian “victory” over Russia to his comprador-masters in order to receive further funding. The Summit was used to project all the needed optics.”
Distorted message received: I buy La Stampa on Fridays. The TorinoSette section on events and openings and new foodshops across the Undisclosed Region (plus a goofy horoscope) is handy. So is the Cronaca of events and crimes in the Region.
The first twenty pages or so of La Stampa, which is now on life support, having been dumped by the Agnelli-Elkann, is propaganda. Today, the triumphalism about the attacks on Moscow was on full, florid display. Why, one would think that the Ukrainian armed forces themselves will be in Moscow in a week. As ever, the main triumphalist propagandists were the usual gang of lady warmongers that La Stampa keeps around for “diversity.” I’m thinking of Z, T, L, and P, each more lunatical than the other.
So give Simplicius a read.
It’s the same in the US media. NBC News, which has barely mentioned Ukraine at all in recent months, had a segment on this “devastating” Ukrainian attack on Moscow, complete with very impressive video. The videos shown on the news were the same ones included by Simplicius here, which he says were the result of an errant Russian AD missile and debris from an intercepted drone. Among the general public here, my sense is that Ukraine has become a forgotten war, much like Afghanistan for much of that conflict’s history. And we don’t actually have troops on the ground there (at least not regular forces), so the interest is even lower. Given its potential for triggering WWIII, I don’t think this ignorance and apathy is a good thing. But what else is new? The Iran conflict has taken up most of the mainstream news space here. We’ll see if the Atlanticists want to drum up more “interest” in this front.
Tulsi Gabbard leaves a little going-away present for all of us on her last day as DNI:
https://x.com/i/trending/2067223957036757310
I thought/hoped she would expose machinations of the fiat intelligence state. Instead she went after biological warfare supported by the USA, arguably the worst manifestation of villainy. Kept punching up.
She has also confirmed that there were US bioweapons labs in Ukraine just as the Russians contended. Defenders of the scientific research establishment please take note.
Not that the Fauci revelation is particularly new. After all there must have been some reason Biden gave him a blanket pardon.
Fauci may have been pardoned, but I doubt he was the only scientist involved in GoF research. Research that Obama made illegal with his executive order that Fauci flouted.
The addled octogenarians in the US Senate could practice memory care by calling some hearings, but I doubt they will be bothered to divert their rapidly dwindling energy away from grumbling about the Iran-US MoU and drooling into their napkins.
“Wanted: War-Zone Divers to Scrape Barnacles From Ships in Persian Gulf”
Sonar 21 had an article recently about this problem that goes into much more depth. Some tidbits-
‘In addition to fouling hulls, sea chest boxes are grated openings in the hull that draw in seawater for recessed compartments supplying seawater for cooling, ballast, firefighting, and other systems. They have lower water velocity than hulls, making them susceptible to biofouling.’
‘Some tankers have drafts over 80 feet, which create decompression risks for divers and slow work due to safety rules.’
https://sonar21.com/persian-gulf-oil-shipping-crisis-deepens-as-barnacle-fouling-hits-idled-supertanker-hulls/
Also includes an 8:08 min video on this topic.
Divers have been replaced for years by robots. Which do a better, lots faster and cheaper job especially on the massive ships of today, bulk carriers, tankers snd container ships. They use either magnets or suction to attach themselves, and they move really fast. Hard to reach places like those intakes do often need to be done by hand but it’s a very small portion of the job.
The Raven as antidote and oracle. The Raven has a distinguished history of bird of memory and foresight and oracle. Livy mentions a general, Marcus Valerius Corvus (note that cognomen). When Valerius was young, a raven helped him in battle to defeat a Gaul. The raven went after the face of the Gaul. In Italian, a raven is still called a corvo imperiale. The Imperial Crow. Dandy.
Just one of the sacred birds, along with hoopoes (the king of birds, according to Aristophanes) and the woodpecker (sacred to the Umbrians and Latins and others in central Italy).
So what is this photographed Raven saying? “Human being, do I have to explain to you one more time that you aren’t the be-all and end-all of existence? I can walk and fly and talk. My duck friends can walk, fly, and swim. And youse think youse are hot stuff because you invented spreadsheet software.”
Love Corvids and respect their intelligence, but get Uber-pissed and upset when they eat our little house finch babies just as they’re ready to fledge.
WSWS: Obama Ziggurut Dedication.
Where is that darned Raven when there is so much self-congratulation in the air?
The A list: “In attendance were former presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Joe Biden, along with Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush and Jill Biden. The presence of Bush, the war criminal responsible for the invasion of Iraq, who came to power through the theft of the 2000 election, underscored the fundamental unity of the two parties of American imperialism.”
Noting (my Raven is whispering in my ear): Dismemberment of Yugoslavia. Twin Towers. Great War on Terror, with death of millions. The Patriot Act, seed of U.S. destruction. Iraq and weapons of mass propaganda. Libya, now torture chamber of North Africa. Genocide in Gaza and the West Bank. Poking the Bear, with cookies, tee hee hee. Iran — let’s obliterate them!
And in a reminder of Alda Merini’s prophetic aphorism, “Why do flies never pause? Because there is so much shit around.” Ta da! Scroccone internazionale: former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi
And as a writer for the page and the stage, I have some highly serious doubts about artists as partisans. Sure, I’m a playwright, and all playwrights are prostitutes, but: “Also in attendance were Tom Hanks, David Letterman, Stephen Colbert, Bono and the Edge of U2, Christina Aguilera, Marc Anthony, Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, Tems and Eddie Vedder.”
Come on. There’s a limit to what artists should do to get free food. On the other hand, I note that every one of them, except for maybe Aguilera, is over 65 years old.
I recommend reading the whole report by Jacob Crosse.
Was Tom Hanks there to lend some credibility to Obama?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xYQ1lgkxac (46 secs)
The building looks like the base of a flak tower.
…and just as brutal.
A monument to Himself, it has all the grace and warmth of a mausoleum, and stands on land expropriated from the public.
Sounds about right for one of the biggest frauds of our time.
I can ignore this spectacle and the ugly building it was held in, but I can’t ignore all the claptrap I will be forced to read and hear in soundbites and headlines shoved in my face in the next few days. The Obama’s are the greatest thing since sliced bread and then some. We should bow at their feet and worship their greatness. And many do…
Those people are why our political system is a mess and doesn’t work for the vast majority of people. Because so many to this day, even given the history we now know, absolutely WORSHIP these two creatures of slime and tell us they are the greatest of all time.
And it’s not just one side… I really don’t get it.
Yes, the clips I saw of that celebration were infuriating. This WSWS overview captured my own reaction quite well.
The post ‘A Tale of Two Cancers’ in today’s Links is an excellent companion piece. In it the author describes our “two cancers” as the “dominant Establishment strain” of the neocon/neolib war party, and its “mutant Trumpian strain.” For reasons noted by the author, it is the dominant Establishment that is actually more all-encompassing in its evil effects on the world, though this is obscured by its more “humanitarian” (i.e. less honest) rhetoric. It is this cancer that was on full display at the Obama worship session.
“Cervical cancer deaths among young women in England fall to zero following HPV vaccination”
This vaccine is one of those big success stories and was originally developed here in Oz-
https://www.cancercouncil.com.au/news/australian-success-story-hpv-vaccine/
But when that vaccine went to the US, it did not take long for opposition to rise because they thought that this vaccine would let girls have sex earlier or something. Eye balls rolled so hard that you could hear the clicks.
Until two, three years ago, health insurance in Germany would only cover that vaccine for young women (I don’t remember, <25? <30?). Because cancer that you catch after prime childbearing age will be cheaper to treat and not kill you, apparently.
I was in one of the first cohorts for the vaccine in Canada and I remember kids saying things like “if you get it that means you’re a slut”. Since we were like 11 at the time they must have been getting that from parents or other siblings. Most girls in my class got it from what I remember and even now as a male I’m wondering if I should get it since they’ve increased the range of eligibility quite a bit. It’s an amazing success story for sure.
WSWS/Obama
Of course they were. At least self styled mayor of Hollywood Tom Hanks and Springsteen still have jobs. Ok the others have as well although in Colbert’s case it’s his oh so ironic appearance on Michigan public access channel.
All however were basking in the glory of the former runway foamer. Sarah Palin once described Obama’s 2008 Chicago opener as a coronation so why not the end result as well?
Maybe in decades to come they could rededicate that building to other uses-
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/OP9gMs0ySgY
It would be the natural evolution of the Epstein class rulers.
This was the political essence of the ceremony. Obama presents Trump as an interloper, a temporary departure from the “arc” of American democracy. In reality, the fascist Trump embodies the financial oligarchy that rules the US. He is the product of the very social order Obama rescued after the 2008 financial crash.
This can’t be repeated enough.
Half the population won’t believe it and never will.
$1,000 a year is pathetic.
You might be surprised at how many people are teetering on the edge, for whom $1k will be lifesaving
It should offset the higher electricity bills, maybe a little more, maybe a little less. And if you live in your car it will help with the high gas prices. Sounds like win for the peoples…
I knew that reading this article would get me going. Of course Bernie believes AI will loose an unprecedented wave of growth and prosperity. Perhaps we’ll have fully automated luxury communism around the time the last aquifer west of the prairie is sucked dry.
Nevertheless, I persisted–
What will be shared will be the costs of an industry that is not sustainable in any conventional sense, including, of course, the costs of further enriching the principals. How does anyone not see this?
At this stage of American history, the state is incapable of anything except redistributing wealth upward.
Bernie may at least get a grand for the plebes when the inevitable bailout happens.
Environmental damages of the top ten percent consumers exceed global climate and biodiversity funding gaps
“FIFA’s Haiti jersey ban echoes the long campaign to discredit and downplay the Haitian Revolution”
‘In August 1791, enslaved men and women rose up in revolution. It was the world’s first and only successful slave revolution: Within two years, they forced the French to abolish slavery.’
Two facts of geopolitics. Europeans will never forgive the Russians for freeing them from fascism and the West will never forgive Haiti for staging a successful slave revolt.
A tiny religious minority will never forgive the Russians for freeing themselves from some of their ancestors in the time of the Czars and the West will never forgive Haiti for staging a “successful” white genocide. Fixed it for you.
re: philosophy vs. science
fb post
“”Although philosophers may have a way of asking profound questions about truth or reality or cause — it just isn’t helpful to the work of a scientist. Historically, I think it never has been.”
— Steven Weinberg
The example he always reached for: Newton.
When Newtonian mechanics arrived on the continent, Cartesian scientists didn’t reject it because the math failed. They rejected it because action-at-a-distance violated their philosophical priors. The sun pulling Earth across 93 million miles of vacuum? Philosophically inadmissible. Descartes had taught them that causation required local contact: pushes, pulls, nothing spooky. Philosophy didn’t refine Newton. It resisted him. British empiricism, and eventually the sheer predictive success of the theory, had to do the work of clearing the doctrine away.
Weinberg wasn’t being anti-intellectual. He was being precise. His argument, as I read it, wasn’t that deep thinking is useless. It’s that the specific tradition of academic philosophy has rarely been the thing that moved science forward, and has occasionally been the thing that held it back.
Whether that’s too harsh, I’m genuinely not sure. But the Newton case is hard to argue with.”
Consider Einstein’s internal struggles to accept the uncertain nature of quantum mechanics; “God does not play dice…”. Would he have advanced farther, or science, if the idea of fundamental randomness was more palatable to a mind inculcated with that very empiricism that pushed Newtonian mechanics through Cartesian priors.
Personally I find Weinberg’s statement to be rather ridiculous, but this entirely depends on one’s definition of “philosopher” and “scientist.” Turning Skip Intro’s example around a bit, was Einstein a “scientist” or a “philosopher”? One could argue that some of his most important insights were intuitive, derived from “asking profound questions about truth or reality or cause.” Yet they did allow for eventual empirical verification by *guiding* the questions empirical “scientists” set up experiments to answer. One could also say he (along with a few others) moved physics by introducing a new paradigm (yes, I’m purposely using Kuhn’s hated term here). Regarding the appeal of “British empiricism”: some of the most dogmatic people I’ve known have been “scientists” – both social scientists and the “real” kind (as they themselves would hold, though not always admit out loud). I’ve known many. And some of the “real” ones (i.e. the “hard” scientists) have been technicians who, while perhaps very competent in their jobs, had such an unsophisticated understanding of epistemology and held such simplistic positivistic views of what they were doing that they had little more understanding of their own social context than the average lay-person. The questions we ask, our means of observation, our decisions on what to observe, the categories by which we divide up these observations and measure them, etc. are never – never – neutral or purely “objective.” And as the British “critical realists’ pointed out, the fact that “reality” is multi-leveled and often involves interaction between open systems is a basic insight affecting scientific inquiry to which many “empiricists” seemed oblivious (they were “philosophers” of “science” though, so there’s that). Understanding the *limits* of our particular scientific endeavors requires being cognizant of these issues. Are these “philosophical” issues? At the least they are relevant issues in the sociology of knowledge to which many scientists I’ve known are also oblivious.
My apologies to those scientists reading this comment. The very fact you are reading Naked Capitalism indicates that you are more sophisticated than many of the scientists I’ve known over the years.
Driving into floods, passing school buses with the stop sign deployed, construction zones…but my tech obsessed brethren will continue to claim algo driving is safer than human driving. Still waiting for the automatic driving semis to hit an ice storm in Oklahoma. This timeline is moronic.
Don’t be too hard on the Robotaxis. Plenty of people in Phoenix drive into CLEARLY marked washes that aren’t big enough for a bridge but could be filled with water up to 4-5 feet deep and roads that just flood for whatever reason during the jungle rainstorms in the monsoon. There are permanent warning signs posted saying do not enter the roadway if water is present, posts that show water depth and there are usually the orange and white barricades that say the same thing. A few inches of water can be bad news. Same with school busses and construction zones.
GOP embraces speculation about China’s role in data center backlash
Part of the problem with current American government is that when you have an entire political class that takes manifestly foolish decisions because they are being paid off by AIPAC, they can only believe that any political opposition can only be on account of the opposition being paid off by another foreign government. Its similar to cheaters always accusing their partners of infidelity.
re: World Cup vs. Iran team
Considering the ongoing harassment of Team Iran by US authorities I would expect the huge and wealthy soccer nations issue an ultimatum to the US – if this behaviour won´t stop to boycott the Cup.
Of course not gonna happen even though those players alone have millions and all the leverage.
Geoengineering–
David Keith is still at it. The geoengineering advocate “left” Harvard for the University of Chicago after his stratospheric geoengineering test, that was so liberally scheduled to take place over the lands of Scandinavian aboriginal people, the Saami, ran into stormy weather. When the Saami very cleverly complained loudly, the university that has a Sackler Museum and a Les Wexner building at the Kennedy School, decided that Keith’s experiments were too much of an embarrassment. Now that Keith is peddling geoengineering in Hyde Park, Harvard cancelled the Gates-funded experiments officially, to the justified joy of the Saami.
Here’s the “logic” of geoengineering:
That’s a “warm the Earth to cool it” approach that rhymes with something dimly recalled from Vietnam.
And directing it at the poles? Somebody recognizes what losing the albedo effects of the poles entirely will mean. They’re trying to regain some of the albedo effect already lost in order to forestall the rate increase as long as possible–and sea rise with it. And it’s without having any decent understanding of what a targeted approach will do to weather and rainfall patterns. I’m sure some zillionaire, maybe Gates himself, thinks it will help him.
Waymo recalls nearly 4,000 robotaxis to stop them driving into highway construction zones – TechCrunch
Way mo’ problems on the road.
Re: Poland — from DD Geopolitics:
So, imho Burnham is another acceptable (to whoever runs the world) candidate with a golden parachute. When I saw Starmer’s meteoric rise from political nowhere to PM, you could see the same thing.
So no matter what Burnham is saying to get elected, he will most likely be a copy of Starmer, with more personality and electibility.
ie a better job fit for the job he was selected for, making sure the Zionists and the wealthy aren’t troubled much by anything, and are given whatever they “need”.
Part of the stable – Starmer, Ardern, kallas, etc
AS far as I know – and I’ve checked this out pretty thoroughly on more than one occasion, prior to more than one election – Andy Burnham has never been a member of Labour Friends of Israel, and that Zionist outpost in the PLP has never offered him much support in any of his bids to become Leader. And guilt by association, gossip and rumor doesn’t cut it.
Neither can I see a Burnham prime ministership insisting that a host of 80+ year old “terrorists” be arrested and incarcerated for simply holding up signs saying they support Palestine. And I certainly can’t imagine him being silly enough to ban teens from whatever internet sites they might use to incentivise themselves to sprain their wrists or middle fingers wanking their brains into the consistency of watered down mashed potatoes. Why do you think we have the NHS?
As someone who spent much of his young life in Manchester, it was obvious that Jewish Manchunians had – and still have – electoral significance, and they have interests and needs not dissimilar to those from an Irish background. Both groups had a cultural identity – and identifiable accents – as did Boltonians and the pit families of Ancoats.
Politicians oop Nawth have to deal with many groups, some of which have competing interests, and very often the supposed “members” do not see themselves as a part of that group. I was christened in a Methodist church and went to Sunday school until I seriously lost interest along with any semblance of belief when I was ten years old.
All the adult males in my family had been through war and they had lost whatever faith they might have had because of that experience. The women hadn’t been through war and were still believers – apart from my mum who did war work, and went through bombing raid after bombing raid. However, all the members of my immediate family were identified as being Methodist and every council election a Methodist candidate would call round to get my folks out to a Labour party meeting to support their nomination. Better the Devil you know, so they did.
Very few people are single interest voters, let alone campaigners, but they have always been well financed groups seeking to secure political support – whether it was for joining Europe, support the US in Vietnam, outlaw vivisection, or to advance – or halt – the floridation of the water supply. Israel has been very successful, so far, in capturing members of the PLP and Labour members of the House of Lords. It will be interesting to see how many will be forced to go through the process of re-nomination in a couple of years and be forced to compete with an anti-Israel candidate waving Palestine’s bloody flag.