TAX THE RICH. HISTORY PROVES THAT ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ MAY BE RIGHT

This article from Counterpunch  totally destroys the Conservatives pitch that taxing the rich causes economic catastrophe. Highly recommended read.

Hypocrisy and lies.

 (Mossad Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In 1973 whilst working as a desk officer at GCHQ, I was posted for one week to the Middle Eastern Branch. I was in charge of reporting on Egypt.
 On my desk, one day, landed a telegram from the Egyptian government to their embassy in Jordan detailing what Kissinger had been telling them during his shuttle diplomacy. He was a serial liar telling different governments in the middle east what they wanted to hear, and as well as Nixon's Secretary of State our Henry, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, had a nice little earner in selling weapons of mass destruction. I was very pleased with the report that I had drafted BUT it was never published. I asked why?
"Spiked" ,was the reply from the head of branch, -"Why",  I politely asked - "because you need to know that everything that we get on the Arabs is passed to the Israelis and that also Kissinger has an agreement with us, as well as the US government, that enables him to veto any intelligence that he doesn't like from being published ", (e.g. from being forwarded to the Joint Intelligence Committee and The Prime Minister and other Security Services in Whitehall). He thinks this casts him in a bad light and does not want it published.  I was given no apology for not having been given this information on joining the Branch.
On grounds of conscience I asked for a move, because I had not joined GCHQ to have the results of my analyses given to the Israelis. At that time I was totally neutral on the ongoing Arab Israeli dispute. I was moved the next day. I believed that my human rights had been breached because I had not been given this information before starting to produce intelligence reports that may have resulted in brutal Israeli actions against Arabs. For all I knew innocent Palestinians may already have been killed by Israeli Mossad terrorists as the result of information that I had produced, which I  thought would only be distributed to Whitehall and our intelligence partners which I had been told about when I joined what the BBC euphemistically described in 1984 as "a Spy Centre". So much for British sovereignty and our neutral stance in the Middle East.
 The terrorist states are alive and well, and asking for your vote at a polling station near you.

           BBC coat of arms

Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

The Boycott, Divisions and Sanctions movement  (BDS) was formed many years ago to oppose the illegal building of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land and initially asked traders not to purchase Israeli produce or products grown or made in these illegal settlements. At that time one of the organisations who supported the BDS movements aims in the U.K. was the Cooperative who would not stock items from these illegal settlements in their shops.

 In parallel with the unjust attembpts, last summer, to smear Jeremy Corbyn as anti semitic in the U.K. (a disgrace against a principled man who has opposed injustices and racial and religious discrimination all his life) there have been similar attempts recently in the U.S.A. to discredit politicians and organisations who oppose Israel’s illegal and growing number of settlements on Palestinian land. It is no coincidence. Israel, or more correctly Netanyahu-the Prime Minister, Mossad his secret service, and Israeli supporters in the west, including British MPs and American Congressman and Senators and the media have been conducting a ruthless smear campaign against anyone who sympathises with the Palestinian cause by branding them as anti-semitic. Anti semitism  is evil but to critisise Israel’sattempt to Exterminate Palestine is not, indeed it becomes more and more justified  as more and more Palestinians are murdered and their land occupied.  It is unsurprising therefore that BDS itself is now under extreme attack. I have supported them with small financial donations for many years, since I served the Coop-erative retail movement. I was, however, more than a little surprised to read the dirty tricks being used against them described in a recent newsletter that I received from them, an extract from which I include below:-
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Dear supporter, 

I write with a personal message from the BDS movement in Palestine. 

Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts. 

We are overwhelmed, and deeply touched, by your generous response to our fundraising appeal.

On December 21, a front for the Israeli government with ties to the Mossad deployed McCarthyite legal threats and bullying tactics, forcing a U.S. company to suspend our fundraising software account.

Within days, we managed to bring our fundraiser back online.

Israel’s desperate, possibly criminal, attempt to prevent us from challenging its decades-old system of military occupation and apartheid has backfired.

Many more than ever before have responded by making this fundraiser a record breaker!

Your donations have shown that Israel cannot silence us.

In 2019, we shall need your help to keep growing our BDS movement for Palestinian rights while simultaneously defending it against Israel’s mounting war of repression. 

Whether you are a BDS organizer, a supporter of progressive causes, or simply a decent person who is sick and tired of powerful systems of oppression trampling on freedom of expression, your support helps our nonviolent movement for Palestinian freedom, justice and equality to grow like never before.

Warmly, 

Hind Awwad 
Palestinian human rights defender, member of the Steering Committee of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI).

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Banksy

 So much of the Palestinian West  Bank is now occupied by the settlements, and the wall that the Israelis built,  that the two state solution ( which envisions a Palestinian state made up of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem existing alongside an Israeli one. It has been the government of Israel's stated policy, but Palestinians accuse the government of negotiating it in bad faith because it has allowed settlements to grow)  probably now will never be implemented because some much Palestinian. land has been taken that their territory only exists in pockets. And the extreme right Israelis have got such a foothold in the territories, which they feel is part of  greater Israel and is defended by their own armed vigilantes and the Israeli Defence Force (IDF).

 

Anni Difranco’s interpretation of Phil Ochs When I’m Gone

The War is Over - Phil Ochs

Rehearsals for Retirement.

The Scorpion Departs, But Never Returns.