love* in the time of plague (and by love* i mean brexit* and other dreary matters of uk politics)

he was the publisher of 'asian babes' amirite? not sleazy at all that guy

he had a whole porn empire - mags, phonelines, videos, the lot

Andrew's post is a pretty good advert for not taking Twitter talking points as the starting point for discussions on things like this, because you end up discussing the noise rather than the signal. Everything gets distorted when your starting point is some crank with an axe to grind.

I'm not sure which half of my post you mean!

the other day Gopal was talking about how within the caste system in India her family would considered the white people within this fucked up hierarchy. But nazi pricks love stripping all nuance away and misquoting her to make her sound anti-white, because we all know white people have had a tough time recently!

it's quite annoying to see a good person who doesn't seem to care much for grandstanding twitter wankery getting sucked into a culture war shitstorm.

i was stupid enough to read some of the Twitter replies and tbh i'm down for abolishing whiteness by any means necessary now

"RLB taking a lot of shite for calling Peake a 'diamond'"

What's the problem with this?

xp I spent half an hour reading the replies and reporting them, some were for long standing accounts with plenty of followers

cos the price is two deer

Post has been slept on.

no I flagged it

What's the problem with this?

Oh sorry - it was the sentiment rather than the term chosen! The people giving her shite should not be.

did read as 'talking a lot of shite' at first!

The interview contains a line in which Maxine Peake explicitly links the killing of George Floyd with the Israeli secret service. Given the recent history of the Labour Party I might think twice before offering a glowing endorsement of her given how that endorsement is likely to be spun, and it makes me wonder whether RLB read it in its entirety before sharing it.

I don't think vote-shaming has ever worked and is probably counterproductive but that's the lesser issue here. I'd be surprised if it wasn't deleted.

Not that the Twitter thread itself isn't mostly a load of people joining in a pile-on for the sake of it, but then they nearly always are.

I retweeted Maxine Peake’s article because of her significant achievements and because the thrust of her argument is to stay in the Labour Party. It wasn’t intended to be an endorsement of all aspects of the article. https://t.co/3k6P3hcCgJ

— Rebecca Long-Bailey (@RLong_Bailey) June 25, 2020

xp

Maxine Peake is wrong on that point imo, nobody owes shit to the Labour Party and it isn't a football club and if they want to take people for granted again because they think they've nowhere else to go they might be in for a bit of mauling at the next election!

we did anyone but the Tories in '97 and look where it has fucking got us!

The interview contains a line in which Maxine Peake explicitly links the killing of George Floyd with the Israeli secret service. Given the recent history of the Labour Party I might think twice before offering a glowing endorsement of her given how that endorsement is likely to be spun, and it makes me wonder whether RLB read it in its entirety before sharing it.

I don't think vote-shaming has ever worked and is probably counterproductive but that's the lesser issue here. I'd be surprised if it wasn't deleted.

Yes there's an Amnesty report that says as much but as far as I'm aware it doesn't say that's where kneeling on the neck comes from and making a point of making that link in a national newspaper is a bit dodgy.

Regardless of the truth of it, it isn't a great idea for a Shadow Cabinet member to be seen to be enthusiastically endorsing someone making that point, especially when you come from a wing of the party where the words of every antisemitic prick will be used against you, and it looks like RLB herself has realised that and clarified it.

Also it's not like the US police were previously short of ways to kill black people - I dunno, I get the same feeling I got a couple of weeks ago when a load of people on social media were suddenly very keen to make sure people knew all about the Arab slave trade, it's very much "why are you pointing this out now? What's going on in your head that's made you decide it's very important to mention it now?"

Crazy how the same thing happens in Palestine but the world chooses to ignore it pic.twitter.com/7wddf9tUYb

— Mohammad Alqadi (@ALQadiPAL) May 30, 2020

Pointing out that the US police gets training / tactics directly from two occupying armies (its own and Israel's) seems relevant tbh.

Tankie twitter 🤝 ilx poster gyac

it makes me laugh even after the left of Labour have been completely nullified loads of these worthless pricks still feel the need to jump on a quite innocuous related-to-a-celeb-interview tweet by a minor shadow minister, what a bunch of fucking vindictive arseholes.

Until the left 1) articulate these issue properly and 2) actually expel the cranks out the things that were so difficult for Corbyn etc. will come out in an awkward form, hence RLB's posting today.

Pointing out that the US police gets training / tactics directly from two occupying armies (its own and Israel's) seems relevant tbh.

That's fine but that's different from saying "it was learned from seminars with Israeli secret services". I'm not even accusing her of antisemitism but the way in which you phrase these things matters.

Not exactly irrelevant to point out that police brutality is exported and practices shared worldwide. US police definitely took interest in the things that were considered acceptable for Catholic citizens in Northern Ireland, after all.

The rubber bullets that US police officers have been firing so freely were initially designed for use by the British security forces in Northern Ireland, where they killed 17 people. RUC patrols carried weapons, wore flak jackets and drove around in armour-plated vehicles, foreshadowing the militarisation of US policing.

they don't give a shit about Antisemitism, its just a game to them.

I thought we were supposed to be ignoring noise over content.

Easier said than done apparently.

YouGov polling of furloughed workers (total population of 8.4 mil):

65% are scared of losing their jobs
36% are scared of being unable to pay rent/mortgage

If their fears are even half-way justified, this will be an almost unparalleled catastrophe. pic.twitter.com/QEvZxA9qGL

— Callum Cant (@CallumCant1) June 25, 2020

Some of the biggest arseholes on Labour A/S Twitter are in a FB freelancer group I use for journalism and they are already very busy saying M Peake’s statement about Israeli military is really about All Jewish People, even though it...isn’t?

will be interesting to see how starmer handles the issues around human rights abuses by the israeli state given his strong connections to amnesty

and yes, the white brit rock crit people belittling mere *rolls eyes* ~actors~. jesus guys go and sniff your george harrsion records or something

I thought both Starmer and RLB seemed to make it quite clear they wouldn't even say boo to Israel at the Jewish Labour hustings back in Feb, although Starmer does have some form in tailoring what he apparently believes in to play to different audiences, like with Fabian Society knobbers or Scousers!

new party on my desk by 5pm pls

NEW: “This afternoon Keir Starmer asked Rebecca Long-Bailey to step down from the Shadow Cabinet. The article Rebecca shared earlier today contained an antisemitic conspiracy theory.

— Sienna Rodgers (@siennamarla) June 25, 2020

"As Leader of the Labour Party, Keir has been clear that restoring trust with the Jewish community is a number one priority. Antisemitism takes many different forms and it is important that we all are vigilant against it."

— Sienna Rodgers (@siennamarla) June 25, 2020

Lol first opportunity

🙄

not the sacking i expected to see when i woke up today tbqhwy

Cos he showed her so much respect in the role previously.

just an absolute idiotic kneejerk-off move, but predictable really she was odds to be the first to go. Hope Starmer dies tbh.

odds on!

finally some strong leadership

conspiracy theory my arsehole.

The worst you can say about it was that it was dumb and she should have seen the row coming but definitely not a sacking offence FFS.

and meanwhile...

https://www.hackneygazette.co.uk/news/racial-equality-commission-munira-mirza-against-banningbhate-speech-1-6717058

A video has emerged in which the woman leading the government’s commission on racial inequality challenges a Black youth on whether the use of the “N word” is different from calling someone “fat”, and questions whether he is playing the victim.

my hot take is that this makes total sense for Starmer from a realpolitik perspective but it's not like i was gonna vote for the lad anyway

what we really need now in this moment of crisis is a Party run by twitter furores and mortal terror of the media, a political home for the previously politically homeless category of 'cowards and wankers'

— Owen Hatherley (@owenhatherley) June 25, 2020