Local by-election candidate Charlie Abel, pictured with ALBA Party leader Alex Salmond
Charlie Abel, ALBA candidate for the upcoming local by-election in Dyce, Bucksburn and Danestone, has taken Aberdeen City Council to task over their lack of preparedness for the current icy conditions. Speaking with ALBA Party leader Alex Salmond, Mr Abel made the point about the dangerous icy walkway by the Don alongside Riverview Drive.
According to the ALBA candidate, it was no better in the housing estates nearby with parts of Gallowhill Terrace like an ice rink.
Mr Abel went on to say:
“The walking conditions are treacherous due to the ice, but look around. The council have not provided grit bins.
“It is time the council started caring for this area and the safety of its residents. Grit and grit bins are basic requirements at this time of year and there is no excuse for not providing them.”
Mr Abel, well known as accordian player in popular local ceilidh band, Iron Broo, has already put his audio-visual skills to good use in the creation of a campaign video podcast on local issues.
Alex Salmond commented:
“Charlie is a natural as a candidate and would make a great local councillor.
“He probably gets his campaigning verve from being a performer with local ceilidh band IRON BROO and as his podcast videos show he has his ear to the ground in local issues”
“Crazy how white Republicans got other white Republicans scared of Muslims and Mexicans when all along they needed to be scared of other white Republicans…” – Cyrus McQueen, author, Tweeting Truth To Power: Chronicling Our Caustic Politics, Crazed Times, & The Great Black & White Divide.
“Anti-vax conspiracy theories and COVID-19 denial are gateway drugs that introduce well-meaning people to the far right. Before they know it, large numbers are hooked on QAnon.”
– George Monbiot
Trump spent decades inciting violence, culminating in rioting and deaths in Washington DC on 6 January 2021. Now he says he won’t condone violence (or is that what he’s really saying?)
Suzanne Kelly, Aberdeen Voice contributor and campaigner explains why the leopard has not changed his spots.
Armed, angry white men and women were invited by Trump to a rally in DC. Trump told the mob to march on the capitol and he’d be with them (he wasn’t).
The warning signs were ignored. The violence was pre-planned, orchestrated. The National Guard was held at bay. Five people are dead, more were injured.
Trump watched the violence unfold on TV; he would not speak to aids or answer requests to stop the forces he invoked.
His after-the-fact denunciation of ‘political violence’ is perversely being taken as a call to arms by the extremists – who are openly calling for more such events. His impeachment is essential; he is a danger to us all.
Signs of his disordered mental state, his contempt for people and the environment were visible at Aberdeenshire’s Menie Estate before his election. Aberdeen Voice, Tripping up Trump, Aberdeenshire councillors including Martin Ford, Debra Storr, Paul Johnston and film maker Anthony Baxter all could have attested this man was the last person to be put in charge of a multicultural country.
Aberdeen Journals Ltd told you Trump was going to bring 6,000 permanent jobs and millions into the local economy annually and ‘enhance’ the irreplaceable environment.
Fast forward, and there are less than 93 permanent jobs, the course is permanently in the red, and the unique SSSI areas are destroyed.
Aberdeen Voice’s many calls over the years to local and national officials and official bodies as to where he got the money for the purchase from fell on deaf ears.
Here are some of my thoughts on why Trump is in power, why people still believe him, and what we need to address in order to stop more carnage.
Trump: the most damaging, divisive president ever.
It takes honour and integrity to own mistakes and Trump has neither quality. His youth included allegations of draft-dodging (he was healthy enough despite alleged bone spurs to play collegiate basketball) and sending in ringers to take exams in his stead.
He is credibly accused of preventing non-white people from obtaining leases for his Manhattan properties. He wanted the innocent, framed ‘Central Park Five’ to be executed.
His fondness for capital punishment saw him reinstate the death penalty; as rights watchers will tell you, many US death row inmates were denied due process, have mental health issues, and some have been found to be innocent after their execution. Some were black – convicted on circumstantial evidence by all-white juries.
Trump has invoked violence many times, whatever he may be saying now.
Trump told an assembly of police that it was OK with him if they harmed suspects.
He called for hecklers at his rallies to be ‘roughed up’.
He called journalists – the very people tying to tell the truth about the man –‘enemy of the people’ and said they should be ‘roughed up’.
When I spoke on The O’Reilly Factor about my petition to ban Trump from the UK under our hate speech laws, I was cut off before making many of my points and with no warning: but the last point I got in was that Trump planned to execute terrorists and their relatives. I still can’t believe this didn’t shock more people.
America is supposed to stand for justice, not ex-judicial execution of innocent people.
Trump is a racist (the KKK endorsement of his 2016 bid for the presidency is a clue); he lacks empathy, and will deceive without remorse. He has no regard for law, fairness or human life. He frequently calls for violence and fails to speak out against it when it comes from the far right and the white supremacist: his lack of condemnation encourages them.
Hate speech, racism, neo-Nazism: how the ignorant, angry and easily-led are funnelled
Claiming Muslims should be banned from air travel ‘until we figure out what the hell is going on’, Trump threw unjust suspicion on Muslims, including the seven to 14 million Muslim Americans.
This was not a dog whistle; this was Trump prejudicially linking all Muslims to terrorism. Those who thought my desire to ban him for hate speech might do well to remember his ban which unfairly harmed many. And as any observer of American terrorism can confirm, most of America’s terrorists have been white males.
Hate crimes are at their highest levels for 16 years according to the FBI.
Responding to Trump’s many calls to hate and violence, people like William Celli decided to build bombs to target Muslims. Trump’s comments about Mexicans and Hispanics have led to many assaults; in one case two suspects told police ‘Trump is right’.
Trump fanatic and would-be bomber Cesar Sayoc targeted Democrats and CNN. His defence lawyers wrote that:
“in this darkness, Mr. Sayoc found light in Donald J. Trump.”
Sayoc ‘Found light’ in Donald; sadly, so do many disaffected people, opportunist evangelical preachers, the NRA, GOP climbers, and racist groups like the KKK.
David Duke is the ridiculously-titled ‘grand wizard’ of the KKK. It endorsed Trump as their presidential candidate, and Duke said the Charlottesville rioting which took Heather Heyer’s life was ‘a turning point’.
From the time Trump said of the white supremacist march ‘there are fine people on both sides’, he’d given a clear signal he would condemn neither violence nor racism. He deliberately fanned those flames, even if he didn’t manage to overthrow the government.
It’s Christianity Jim, but not as we know it.
There is no doubt that MAGA rallies created a community of like-minded Trump followers. These events called together every person who wanted a saviour, and the extremist evangelists used the far-right version of Christianity that these Trump acolytes had been raised on.
Artwork showing Trump as a Christ-like figure (as if); photos showing Trump surrounded by adoring televangelists – all this helped those who were already trained to be obedient to their preachers be obedient to the man their preachers endorsed and called saviour. It made Sayoc a terrorist.
The lunatic hypocrisy of claiming to be a follower of Jesus while simultaneously toting semi-automatic weapons, chanting ‘lock her up’, assaulting rally hecklers, and calling for death to the press doesn’t occur to any of these people. Their preachers are asking for donations, not soul-searching.
Here is a hilarious take on her absolute madness of Paula White
Compliant? The evangelical child in some of these sects grow up believing by constant reinforcement they are the only people who will be saved, that the superior race is white, and the superior sex is male.
Home-schooling is prevalent, and I believe plays more of a part in the radicalisation of people than many will admit.
The girl children? Many are trained to be subservient like our rushed-through newest Supreme Court Justice Coney Barrett. For many extremist evangelists, girls are to get married, be servants and be fruitful and multiply. Sex before marriage is strictly out.
All these QAnon extremists protesting about invented satanic child abuse? They need look no further than child marriage, legal in 46 states. When was the last time a QAnon protestor targeted this abuse?
Do these evangelists and Trump really believe one of their key recruitment planks – that all abortion is wrong? Trump asked his girlfriend to get one. Trump also raped Ivana per her written statement by the way. Very Old Testament.
If I had my say, every school age person would spend at least a few months in a non-home-school setting to mix with children of other backgrounds. Ensuring no one is schooled only in a vacuum might help end the vilification of other religions, other races and nationalities.
If nothing else, the evangelical girl child could be shown it is illegal to be married off against her will, and she can have a career other than as a mother.
And if I ran the world, there would be no marriages in America for anyone under 18, and all parties under age 21 would have to be seen alone before the ceremony to confirm they are not being coerced, and offered support if they are.
Tele-preachers and the NRA also insist an AK is a ‘God-given right.’ The hell it is.
Gun culture: how the NRA fuels paranoia.
A Senate subcommittee declared the National Rifle Association to a Russian asset, awash with Russian money. NRA chiefs gave illegal operative Russian Marina Butina and Putin pal Alexander Torshin access to members of Congress.
What was once an educational tax-exempt organisation now pumps tens of millions of dollars into Congress, some of that from Russia.
It will not brook any changes to US gun law. NRA-funded Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell prevented the Senate from voting on bipartisan gun law bills. Did America’ founders know automatic weapons existed – yes, as the NRA says, claiming all guns should be legal.
Did the founders have weapons that could kill 58 and wound 527 others from a great distance as we tragically saw in Las Vegas? No.
Should every incel, every angry racist own an assault rifle?
The NRA says yes.
The parents and loved ones of the over 40,000 shot in 2019 and 2020 say no.
In terms of ‘cancel culture’ – gun deaths cancel thousands of voices each year, and Mitch McConnell cancelled the Senate’s right to even vote on the matter. If he were confident the American people and the Senate did not want gun laws changed, he would have let the two bills be heard.
There is supposed to be a well-regulated militia: instead we had teen Kyle Rittenhouse driven to a protest by his mother where he killed.
‘Do you wanna be in my gang?’ Psychological manipulation.
Lonely? Friendless? Not promoted at work? Involuntary celibate? QAnon wants You.
A whole world of similarly-damaged souls awaits and you will be welcome, whether or not you’re a preposterous self-styled shaman who live streams from mom’s basement. If you’re feeling the financial pinch, it can’t be because of people like Trump, paper billionaires whose many bankruptcies have sent small businesses to the wall; it must be because a woman or a non-white person ‘took’ your job.
It is easier and cheaper to get recruited by QAnon than it is to either get mental health help, get involved with making positive change, or make real friends in the real world. The USA needs urgent medical health care reform, the kind Trump has tried to dismantle.
I have done as much of a dive into this culture as I care to. In fringe websites the insurrectionists share whispers of violence to come on Biden’s inauguration day.
Some think Trump is the messiah. They are happy, some of them, to wear Nazi regalia – and in doing so align themselves with the horrors visited on adults and children alike, despite QAnon using the fictitious pizzagate child abuse conspiracy as a recruitment tool.
The message seems to be that Nazi concentration camps were either invented or the children abused and murdered on an industrial scale somehow don’t count (viz the detestable ‘Camp Auschwitz’ shirt and Nazi symbolism worn by the insurrectionists).
However, invent a child abuse scandal now 100% discredited involving Satan and Hilary Clinton, and crying people will take to the streets holding signs about pizza parlours and baby-eaters while sporting a swastika tattoo.
These people don’t seem aware Trump did all he could to catch teen beauty queens naked at his pageants, or that he’s accused of many cases of sexual assault. There is no logic, no joined up thinking.
These echo chambers that sprang up following Q Anon’s overdue defenestration from Twitter, YouTube, Facebook reinforce the camaraderie, the anger of these misfits. They goad each other into more and more extreme views and actions. Something needs to be done.
As I am writing, Reuters confirmed that the mob intended to ‘capture and assassinate’ members of Congress. We must find, arrest, try every single one of these people.
Hate Speech.
Enacting laws concerning hate speech – like the UN and many countries have will help stop the abuse which has led to violence throughout this country’s history.
This is nothing to do with freedom of speech. The right to free speech has many exemptions. The founding fathers foresaw some of the potential future misuses – but none of them can have dreamed of it being used to remind Jewish people of the horrors of Auschwitz.
Trump spurred me to try to ban him from the UK under our hate speech laws. As a New Yorker living in Aberdeen, watching this man being treated as a star made me feel ill.
I knew of his discriminatory policies, his greed, his xenophobia. I didn’t care if I looked like a fool. Over 586,000 people agreed with me and we got a debate.
Who knows? We might even have got the Home Secretary to apply the law to a billionaire that had already been applied to more than 100 other hatemongers.
In the end, the night before the debate, MP Paul Flynn, slated to chair the debate decided to call the press to slate my petition (without letting me know he was doing so). ‘We might make Trump a martyr’ he told me. Parliament did deliver a good smackdown – but the Home Secretary did not apply the law to Trump.
JK Rowling made a joke about the petition at a New York literary gathering.
I was invited to write a riposte piece, and I did so, even knowing all of Harry Potter fandom would attack me to support her. I wonder if she sees the difference between hate speech and free speech now; I’d like to hope so, having been the target of hate speech herself of late.
What I didn’t get is that in her books the magical government was being taken over and most people were afraid to stand up to the spread of hate speech, but there you go.
Every time someone flies a confederate flag; every town that has a memorial to a civil war figure who tried to preserve slavery is a declaration of hate to black citizens from white supremacists. Every glorification of those who slaughtered Native Americans is a hate crime. I can’t shake the feeling that while all this division rages, the billionaires are laughing at the rest of us.
Billionaires like Trump (wherever his money is actually coming from; happily, there are signs it may be drying up).
If a Native American child or an African American child cannot wear their hair in a way reflective of their culture in school, then why are we letting people wave symbols celebrating slavery or concentration camps in gestures designed to intimidate and provoke fear and anger? I don’t understand.
The speech turns to violence, and these symbols have power.
If anyone wants to cry how unfair it is Trump’s been removed from social media for repeated rule breaking, fake news and hate speech, think again. He’s deliberately gagged people with lawsuits, confidentiality agreements (even extending to cooks in Scotland) and used his massive press connections to mock and ridicule opponents from Biden through to farmer Michael Forbes.
Can we please make Justice blind again?
Some of the argument against doing so aside from Flynn’s Chamberlain-esque appeasement was ‘Trump may be president someday’.
This alarming use of future potential is seen in America, where it gets many privileged white male offenders released from serious charges eg Brock Turner.
What if we had banned him from the UK? Would the GOP still have seen him as being presidential material? Perhaps not. Would things have been worse had the UK banned Trump? Worse how? – I’d like to know.
We’re seeing more flawed illogic applied to the insurrectionists by their sympathisers in the GOP: ‘Don’t impeach Trump, it may make insurrectionists angry’.
They are already angry. And armed. The law is not supposed to care how rich you are or if applying the law equally to all will make white supremacists angry.
The self-styled shaman is being given the organic meals in prion he demanded because of his ‘religion’. Meanwhile, as noted by various Native American groups, when Native people wind up in US jails, they are absolutely laughed at and ignored.
Symbols of hate belong in the trashcan.
The confederate flag shows the bearer approves of slavery, and wants it back.
Statues of confederate generals towering over parks and town centres show deference to the people who tried to preserve slavery and contempt for descendants of slaves.
A swastika patch or tattoo, or a ‘Camp Auschwitz’ shirt shows the world the bearer hates everyone who’s not a Nazi.
A MAGA hat suggests the wearer wants to ‘Make America Great Again’. It shows support for a KKK-endorsed white supremacist who ridicules minorities and incites violence against virtually everyone who is not a white male. It is the symbol of the Trump rally, a sign you would suspend your logic and values (if any) to be part of a mob.
The far right, the conspiracy believer, etc have also commandeered symbols of the crusaders, arcane symbols and invented symbols. This is all part of the ‘I need to be in a crowd and be one of the mob’ mentality we saw running through the Capitol.
Can we chuck these and other such inflammatory, hate-provoking emblems now? Other countries have.
We don’t need miseducation.
If there were a better, balanced system of education that also taught tolerance and life skills (I mean, we even have people who now believe you can fall of the edge of our flat world), we would all be better off.
It would not be so easy to convince people that Bill Gates is a reptile from another dimension who is trying to forcibly inject nanobots and trackers by unleashing a fake virus scare.
When I was in school, I remember ages devoted to names and dates of the Revolutionary War. About a quarter of that amount of time was spent on the history and culture of the rest of the world. Mistake. It was later I learned of the atrocities committed against Native Americans (including by Lincoln) and slavery.
When we studied slavery in school – and this I remember to my dying day: we read two different accounts of women who had been plantation slaves.
One was entitled ‘Lordy Them was Awful Days’ and she told of being whipped and salt being rubbed in her wounds. The other woman said slavery wasn’t so bad: I kid you not. And then we moved on.
It was as if every coin has two sides – a flaw seen in current day news reporting.
Slavery does not have another side. We also had in our textbooks the horrific photos of lynched black Americans, with white people standing under them socializing. Did my teacher explain how horrific this was? If so, their words are lost on me though that photo remains burned in my head.
Do the confederate flag-wavers even know what the reality was for so many? Do they even want to? A better, complete education that shows America’s many flaws could help. Teach logic, how to frame arguments, critical thinking, and how not to be a racist.
What are we going to do today? Pending violence.
As mentioned, I’ve been going on these twisted far-right sites to see what is going on. These people do think, as reported in the news, that Trump wants more violence and has sent secret messages to QAnon in his latest word salad of a speech.
They and others point to his saying ‘I cannot emphasise that there must be no violence…’ as a call to arms.
With Trump having established that he is barely literate, we don’t know what he actually meant. Hilariously, he says he can never condone violence, despite having called for violence on many occasions.
However, the conspiracy theory force is strong with these insurrectionists.
Some claim he tapped out in Morse Code the letter ‘Q’. Really? The man can’t spell ‘coffee’.
These people are looking for signs. If you look for signs, the brain will find them even where they don’t exist. A decent education could have taught the ‘I saw the Virgin Mary in my slice of toast’ brigade how the mind works to create images and patterns, but there you go.
These people want a violent, bloody revolution. They want to take over America. They are using internet sites to make their plans. Many of them are police and/or former armed forces members (we need a Venn diagram of white supremacists who have been in the police and who have needlessly killed non-white suspects).
Some of their helpers are congresspeople. They cannot win, but they can certainly harm and kill.
Ignoring them and hoping they will disappear is not an option. I am not an expert, but I think my suggestions have some merit for the future. The present needs to be the focus now.
In my opinion, we need to: immediately declare QAnon, the KKK, other hate groups terrorist organisations and remove terrorism supporters from Congress. Any congressperson/police officer who gave the insurrectionists help must be removed from office and charged.
No one gets into Congress without going through the metal detector. No guns get into Congress.
Every single insurrectionist from Trump down to the last one needs to be charged with all applicable charge from sedition and insurrection through destroying federal property.
We need to shore up what the 1st and 2nd Amendments mean.
We need to change the laws so there are no more Kyle Rittenhouses.
Anyone who is in QAnon or the KKK is not fit to be in law enforcement or law-making, and needs to be removed from office. We need more scrutiny of how these ideas are getting into the heads of the violent, and address the root causes (extremist evangelism, poverty, poor education etc).
We cannot just forget this happened and heal without cleaning up the source of infection and getting rid of the poison. We need to have Biden and Harris stabilize our country and Make Hate Hateful Again.
Unfortunately, we need to do this about 80 years ago at a minimum. But let’s start today.
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Popular mythology would have it that the original Dick Whittington, born 1354 was born of poor parents; this simply wasn’t true.
Dick was wealthy and became mayor of London; that’s as far as it went.
Popular mythology would have it that Boris Johnson, born 1964, was born of average parents; this simply isn’t true.
Boris is wealthy and became mayor of London and PM: that’s further than it should have gone. Now read on.
A long time ago there was once a poor boy called Boris Whittington whose parents were so poor not all the children could go to English prep schools.
People at his school made fun of his great poverty and his foreign ancestry. He would learn from this.
Our hero was so poor he went to Oxford to study, well – maybe he studied less than some. He did however cut a fine figure for a poor foreigner in the Bullyton Club. He spent all his parents’ pieces of gold on the £3,500 outfit he needed to wear to go to Bullyton Club dinners.
Soon this awkward, sensitive outsider was accepted as being ‘almost one of us’ when he proved what he was made of, and burned a £50 note in front of a homeless person (who might have even been from ‘Bongo Bongo land’ as Boris called some countries).
Poor Boris wanted to better his life, and his fellow Bullyton club members told him of London, where the streets were paved with gold.
“Cripes!,” thought Boris
“I say, that sounds like the place for me, what?”.
So off Boris Whittington bravely strode to London town, carrying in a little handkerchief tied to a steamer trunk in a flotilla of moving vans all of his meagre worldly possessions. He was determined that he would go there and dig up enough gold from the streets to make his fortune.
One day he met a friendly hedge fund manager who was going to London who said he would give him a lift there, so off they went. When they reached the big city Boris couldn’t believe his eyes, he could see horses, carriages, hundreds of people, great tall buildings, lots of mud, but nowhere could he see any gold.
What a disappointment. How was he going to make his fortune? How was he even going to buy a four-bed flat?
“But corrr! Look at all this Totty!” He thought, and set off to better himself.
By then he had married a pussycat who grew up in a castle in Perthshire; she was called Allegra Mostyn-Owen. This was very useful for a time. They both toiled in the news business for a time. But Boris realised he was destined for greater things, so he sold her on.
Being a man of great character, he decided to start at the bottom and deigned to take a trainee job at Ye Times newspaper.
Alas! Boris thought he would add a little excitement to one of his stories, and surprisingly Ye Times took a dim view of this, so much so that they gaveth him ye sack. The Times then continued its unsullied mission of printing the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth: well truth as The Digger (who was a sorcerer from the land of Oz) saw it.
After a few days he was so hungry that he collapsed in a ragged heap on the doorstep of a rag merchant owned by two twins Barclay Dee and Barclay Dumb.
Out of the house came a crook:
“How would you like to be a weekly columnist for the Daily Telegraph? We can pay you £275,000 for one column a week – but it’s a start.”
Boris thought long and hard of the sacrifices he’d have to make.
“I’ll do it! Jings! Crivens!” he said.
He suffered. Boris even had to cover an event full of Lefties in 1996. Now the Lefties were not really our sort of people, don’t you know. Some of them weren’t even white; they even let girls be Lefties, and some of those girls ‘dressed up like letterboxes’.
Worse still – the Lefties allowed ‘bum boys’ to join! Cripes! What would Boris write for the Daily Torygraph about this horrible scene?
“The unanimous opinion is that what has been called the ‘Tottymeter’ reading is higher than at any Labour Party conference in living memory,” he wrote.
And the Torygraph readers loved him all the more.
Alas! Boris was notorious at the rag merchant for writing his column during a brief window on Sunday afternoons before sending it to the printing press only just in time.
This left little time for editors to make changes and fact-check his claims, but happily, fact-checking was not high on the Barclay twins’ agenda. So, on Boris toiled, dreaming of better days. He started to wonder if he wasn’t destined for better things and an easier life, like going into politics.
Boris was ever so grateful to the Daily Torygraph’s Barclay Dee and Barclay Dumb but, alas, the editor was always very bad tempered and, when no one was looking, used to beat and pinch him.
Now while Boris was slaving away day in, day out toiling at his demanding job, he acquired a pussy. Her name was Miranda.
London was full of rats and fat cats. Boris realised that the more rats and fat cats he could catch, the richer he’d get. But Miranda really wasn’t much cop for improving Boris’ social standing, so she had to go. Verily he got shot of Miranda, which opened the cat flap for lots of other pussies, and lo, they verily did make use of it; they were Petronella, Helen (with whom he had a litter of kittens) and most recently Carrie. Carrie and Boris are so fond of each other that to this very day, the sounds of cats screaming and breaking things can be heard from their happy home.
Soon Boris was attracting lots of pussies, fat cats and rats. And lo it came to pass that with the blessing of the Tories, the help of the Barclay twins, and a whole bunch of rats, Boris became Mayor of London.
But our story does not end there.
Boris spent millions on a garden bridge in old London Town; it was never built. The people didn’t care.
One day Boris met a very important fat cat – and the most true Brit in all of Britland: Nigel Farage.
Nigel hated the people from ‘Bongo Bongo land’, people who wanted to come to Britain (except Boris’ ancestors of course!), and the Lefties. And pretty much anyone who wasn’t a white British man.
Nigel made his fortune by representing Brit land in the Union of Europe. This Union of Europe was an evil organisation that allowed people to trade goods throughout European countries, work in other countries, live in other countries, and gave them something called Human Rights.
Worse still, it wanted to harm the fat cats and rats by not letting them give their money to seafaring merchants to take away to the lands of Island of Virgins and Bahamas and verily the lands where the Barclay Twins lived in the Island of Channels. Nigel took a big salary from Europe, and will take a big pension from Europe.
Nigel hates Europe. And so does Boris.
The two of them hired a great big red coach, and painted on it that Europe was costing 350 million gold pieces each week, which should be used to heal the sick instead. Verily the people who had read Boris’ wise words in the Barclay twins’ rag believed every word, and felleth for this hooketh, lineth and sinkereth.
Alas, it was not strictly speaking true.
How the people loved his racism, sexism, lying, propaganda and anti-Europe positions! Yes, Boris was destined for greater things still.
The evil, ageing hag-queen of London was clearly losing her ability to govern. Sometimes when she had to walk across a stage, she had odd convulsions that some mistook for dancing. The Queen of the May had held power for some time now, and had many accomplishments.
She buried news about a disastrous, expensive failure of the Trident rockets, had cut all services to the poor, and made the dying travel to centres where they were told they weren’t dying at all. Who could possibly pick up where she left off?
Yes, you guesseth correctly: Boris soon became the Prime Minister of all of England!
Now, being Prime Minister was even less work than being mayor was. There was always someone with a bag of gold or a perk or a pussy or two who wanted to help him out and do the work for him.
“Cripes! This is great!” Boris thought, as his collection of gold doubloons and totty continued to increase. But it was never enough.
Not long after, Boris heard the merchant twins and other fat cats he knew asking everyone in the Houses of Parliament if they wanted to send anything on board their ship, they thought they could sell. The ship was going on a long voyage to the other side of the world to a place called America and the captain would sell everything on the ship so they could all make some money.
Poor Boris, what could he sell?
Suddenly, a thought came to him
“Please sir, will you take the National Health Service?”
Everyone burst out laughing, but the merchant smiled and said:
“Yes Boris, just what I was thinking, I will, and all the money from her sale will go to you – and to all of us.”
After the merchant had left from the city Dick found there was a small group of peasants who were revolting because they were such smelly oiks.
They somehow objected to selling off the NHS, to Boris’ little white lies about the gold going to the NHS, to leaving Europe, to having their ill and dying being made to work, and their air and land being poisoned.
How would Boris deal with these rabble – especially as the captain of the guard had decided that Boris couldn’t just sweep them all away with the water cannons he’d ordered years before. So, he just closed Parliament down a few times instead.
Boris knew he had to do something to make himself more popular again, so he could keep being the Prime Minister.
He invented an immigration points system to keep the wrong sort out of the UK, threw people out who had come in the Windrush period, and this kind of thing made his peasant fans, Mr Yaxley Lennon and his mates very happy.
Verily, this distracted such peasants from caring about the honey and plenty of money wrapped up in a five pound note the fat cats were sheltering in the Offshore Trusts. But it wasn’t quite enough, and Boris had secret plans underway.
One such plan would happen right here in England; the other was being put into action by the merchant captain at the fat cat’s bidding.
Boris had denigrated women, grabbed them (in an English way – by the thigh, not their pussycats so that was OK); and said women in burkas looked like letterboxes. Sure, he had also said that seeing groups of black kids made him nervous, and black people had watermelon smiles.
But here was the genius plan: He’d just say everything he’d ever said or done was satirical, and the real racism was in the Labour party. After all, the oiks in the streets wouldn’t know what satirical meant and wouldn’t care as long as white people – white men – were still top of the food chain, what?
His old friends the twins and his old newspaper jobs would be delighted to print this story, and so it came to pass. BoJo (as he was unaffectionately known) and his press baron friends painted Labour as being villainous racists, while Boris was made to look like a saint.
Unsurprisingly, this pleased his peasant fans – like Yaxley-Lennon who was also known for violent arguments with women, hating non-whites, and blatant lies. Success! Result!
Across the other side of the world, the merchant captain and his ship had arrived at their destination, Washington.
King Trump and Queen Melania (who had been so poor she could only afford to wear boots, handcuffs and guns before her rise to power) were so delighted that they invited them all to a feast.
The captain had heard that like Boris Whittington, King Trump was a self-made man. Set out into the world on his own with just six million dollars in the 1980s and a family Ku Klux Klan background, Trump had to fend for himself with just a few mafia figures to help him – and that all turned out OK.
Except for a few bankruptcies, people losing their homes and jobs when Trump went bust, black people not being able to own homes in Trump castles, and the odd rape accusation or two (including from his wife Ivana).
But, believe it or not, when the food was brought in none of the ship’s crew nor captain would eat it.
“Oh dear” said the king stuffing a chicken leg into his mouth and wiping his hands on his golf trousers,
“Dontcha like KFC and Chick fil a?”
“No offense your majesty” said the captain,
“but we don’t allow growth hormones in our beef and bleach in our chicken. We don’t allow ground-up bugs in our chocolates (well, not in as high quantities as you do), and we don’t put lots of non-food chemicals into our food. Nothing personal – we just like to live.”
“Not to worry!” laughed King Trump,
“Everyone is healthy here – I’m 6’3” tall and only weigh 185 lbs… or is that 185 stone?”
Chewing on a KFC family bargain bucket, Trump continued:
“To show our appreciation for your country, we’ve agreed to take on the NHS contracts, and as a bonus, when you leave the Union of Europe, we’re going to be your new food trading partner. Everything’s all arranged – just ask President Boris.”
And they all laughed, and the real feast of edible foods was brought out.
The merchant ship captain looked at the huge banquet dais where Trump sat, and behind his thrown was a curtain.
Behind that was an athletic chap, shirtless, sitting on a horse. He seemed to be pulling levers and strings.
Before the merchant ship captain could ask, Queen Melania hissed in his ear:
“Pay no attention to zat mehn behind ze curtain!”
“But it looks like he’s really the one running the show and pulling the strings!”
“I really don’t care, do you?” she purred.
Clinking his plastic cola bottle with a plastic fork, King Trump signalled for the room to be silent for one of his speeches. The captain thought some of the King’s aids rolled their eyeballs.
“Welcome friends from Englandland! We’ve decided to help you out of the NHS – I mean help the NHS.”
“Right, we have even more gifts we want to give youse guys in Englandland” Trump continued.
“The reason you have these terrorists is because you let people immigrate – that means come in – to your country. You gatta do what we do here – when they get to the border, put ‘em in cages.
“Lots of money for getting the little ones adopted – believe me! And the amount of money you can get for keeping these vermin sleeping on concrete floors under foil blankets – ya wouldn’t believe me.”
The captain felt his smile recede as Trump continued:
“Then, you’d also be much better off if you’d all jes get yerselves some guns – yeah, good guys with guns. Not having guns is un-American ain’t that right Mitch McConnell?”
At this several old white men stood up; many clutching fists full of roubles. The man behind the curtain with no shirt laughed.
“You’re too nice over there too” Trump told the captain,
“The press – well, not Boris and his friends – the other press, and these foreigners, these people not following the right religion – you know you have to rough ‘em up a little bit, right?”
The captain felt some colour drain from his face as he started to make his goodbyes. He and all the fat cats had been happy to do a bit of profiteering off the NHS – who wouldn’t be?
But surely England would never stand for people being deported, mistreated and dying in custody? And no one in their right minds would want to see guns on London’s streets: what kind of a maniac would even propose such a thing.
Over 40,000 people were shot in this crazy Trump land last year alone; synagogues, churches had been burnt or vandalised, women were prevented from making decisions about whether to have children or not – with some even going to jail for miscarrying.
“But the worst thing about those Lefties?” Trump asked,
“They wanna get rid of Christmas! That’s right – no ‘Merry Christmas’, no trees!”
At this a group of TV preachers and evangelists ran to the king, and put their arms around him, proclaiming him ‘the chosen one’.
Whether it was the cockroach-infested chocolates or the bleached chicken, the captain felt his stomach turn.
After the feast, the captain and crew made their way to the harbour. They walked the streets of Washington, where dozens of homeless people slept or begged for alms. Some had been soldiers; some lost everything they had due to paying for medical bills.
Shots rang out; school children covered in blood and crying ran through the streets. The brave captain and crew barely made it back to the ship, and they weighed anchor, immediately setting sail for home.
As they sailed into the east, the captain sighed, safe in the knowledge such far-fetched things would never happen; Boris wouldn’t allow it.
When the ship returned to London, the captain was making his way to Boris’ humble home in Downing Street when a newspaper caught his eye.
“Legalise Handguns now! Says Farage”
“NHS will improve under US contracts!”
“Point system for foreigners Boris proposes!”
“Windrush man facing deportation kills himself!”
“Boris leading in polls!”
The captain stood looking at the headlines for a few minutes.
“Maybe the Union of Europe wasn’t such a bad thing after all.” he thought.
Slowing his pace, losing his desire to race to No. 10, the captain saw one ‘Leftie’ newspaper before he left the newsstand which read:
“Don’t forget to vote on Thursday 12 December!”
“No, no I won’t forget that” thought the captain, as he slowly turned from his course to No. 10, and headed home to ensure his voter registration card was at the ready.
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Long-serving councillor Martin Ford was re-elected last Thursday (4 May) for a fifth term as a member of Aberdeenshire Council.
With 18 years on Aberdeenshire Council, Martin Ford is now the longest serving councillor in the Garioch Area.
Cllr Ford represented the Newmachar and Fintray ward from 1999 to 2007.
With the introduction of the single transferable vote system and multi-member wards in 2007, Martin Ford became one of the three councillors representing the East Garioch ward.
Further changes to electoral arrangements this time were down to a revision of council ward boundaries undertaken since the 2012 election by The Local Government Boundary Commission for Scotland. As of 4 May, the East Garioch ward (which includes Newmachar, Fintray, Blackburn and Kintore) is now larger than it was before.
The ward has been extended to the west by moving its boundary much closer to Kemnay and Inverurie. Reflecting the increase in population, the number of councillors representing the East Garioch ward has also been increased – from three to four.
Cllr Martin Ford said:
“I would like to thank all 4,559 residents of East Garioch who voted in the election last Thursday.
“I am tremendously pleased to be starting my fifth term on Aberdeenshire Council. It’s a great privilege to have been re-elected again after 18 years as a councillor. So I would like to express my special thanks to those who put their confidence in me to continue as one of their local representatives.
“Locally, there are a range of priorities within the East Garioch ward. The Council has a key role to play in the delivery of the planned rail station in Kintore. Decisions are required about additional school capacity in Newmachar. The new school in Blackburn is due to open in August 2018.
“With the election last week, there has been a considerable change in the membership of the Council. Moving forward, I hope the Council as a whole will have effective working relationships between councillors of different colours, so there is a preparedness to accept suggestions and good ideas from all sides. There are undoubtedly going to be some tough choices during the next five years, so we need a Council that takes its decisions on the basis of evidence and in the public interest.”
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After famously standing a mannequin in the 2012 Aberdeen local elections, Renée Slater is back as a candidate in her own right, standing in the Torry & Ferryhill ward for the Scottish Green Party.
The mannequin, Helena Torry, emerged as an activist figurehead in 2010 in campaigns against the destruction of Union Terrace Gardens, and soon became popular in anti-austerity protests.
As Renée witnessed the effects of cuts to services for disabled people and young people, she wanted to bring these issues into the spotlight and challenge the antagonistic political climate with humour.
In the 2012 council elections, she registered Helena as a candidate to represent ‘the voice of the silent majority.’
When authorities realised that Helena was not a real person, Renée was arrested. She was held until a prisoner exchange took place, and Helena was locked up for a year. The story was covered across the UK, and further afield [links below]. After Renée’s acquittal, Helena continued to support local causes, including the campaign for Scottish Independence.
Renée has been involved in local politics and activism for more than 40 years, and she joined the Scottish Greens in 2014. In standing for Aberdeen City Council in 2017, she hopes to help address issues across the city, from housing and jobs to local pollution and public health.
After years of bitter conflict between Labour and the SNP, Renée and other Green candidates want to bridge the divide and work constructively across parties.
Renée said,
“I’m concerned about inter-party bickering. It’s time we pulled together for all the people of Aberdeen. It’s time to make a change.”
Local resident Heather Coull has been selected by SNP members in Westhill & District ward to join Councillor David Aitchison in seeking election to represent the ward on Aberdeenshire Council.
Councillor Mandy Allan, who has represented the Ward since 2007 is stepping down at the forthcoming election owing to work commitments.
Heather Coull was born in Aberdeen and has lived all her life in Aberdeenshire. Heather, aged 38, is married and is the youngest daughter of two school teachers.
Heather is committed to lifelong learning. She studied at RGU where she successfully achieved both BA and MSc degrees.
As a former oil and gas industry worker, Heather has the experience and background to identify with a large number of residents in and around the Westhill area.
A member of Westhill & Elrick Community Council, one of Heather’s main priorities and areas of focus if successful in being elected will be in supporting and championing community groups in Westhill and the surrounding villages to achieve their ambitions via community choice budgeting.
Commenting, Heather Coull said:
“I am delighted to be selected as an SNP candidate for the Westhill & District ward and if elected I aim to carry on Mandy Allan’s good work and work together with David, and indeed the other Westhill councillors, as a strong team for our local area.”
David Aitchison was elected as a councillor at the 2012 election and was formerly a surveyor in the civil service. David who is married with 3 children grew up in Eyemouth and worked in Edinburgh, Nottingham and Durham before moving to Westhill over twenty years ago.
Since being elected David has served on the Infrastructure Services, Scrutiny & Audit and Education & Children’s Services Committees. Since June 2015 he has been Chairman of Aberdeenshire’s Infrastructure Services Committee and Vice-Chairman of NESTRANS, the North-east transport partnership.
Commenting on his selection David Aitchison said:
“It has been a privilege to represent Westhill & District and I am delighted to be a candidate to represent the ward again.
“In my two years as an administration senior councillor I have been able to oversee policies on regeneration, planning and economic development which will benefit Aberdeenshire.
“Westhill is now at a crossroads in terms of its development. It is time to consider what we want our community to look like in the future. If re-elected I will continue the dialogue that I am already having on this issue and work with partners and residents to create a vision for the future which Westhill deserves.”
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Old Suzannah relects on the result of the US Presidential Election. By Suzanne Kelly.
Trump is in as POTUS elect – cue gushing from Spokesperson Sarah Malone saying what a ‘visionary’ he is. There is celebrating among the racists, and wailing and gnashing of teeth from those who care about the environment, about others, and the future in general.
I spent way too much time on Facebook before and after this catastrophe. There were articles to write, research to do, and crazy attitudes to try to understand and counter. Mostly I learned that countering people who are stuck in a mindset, particularly one they acquired in childhood, is a non-starter.
Facebook was essential for my trying to figure out what people were thinking and why. I failed.
Some people even more left-leaning than I (it’s possible) have gone down the conspiracy theory hole. Hillary was an evil blood-sucking monster who the white knight Julian Assange was trying to slay. The fact that some US publications had actually printed celebratory ‘Hillary Wins’ programmes and magazines was proof positive that the election result was fixed.
I tried to counter this BS only to be told I that in effect I was naïve and had no idea what was really going on in the world. There are powerful people like the Rockefellers and Rothschilds you see – I had no idea – had you?
The diehard Bernie supporters were filled with ‘I told you so’ rhetoric. Great stuff, but hardly productive or useful against Trump.
Third party voters before the election were adamant it didn’t matter what they were doing with their vote, and that any of the candidates were able to win this horserace. There were only two people who were ever likely to win. Pity that the one with the most popular votes did not actually win the election. After the votes were counted, these third party voters were keen to deny any involvement in Trump’s victory.
The simple, black-and-white fact that they elected to vote for someone other than HRC was in effect the same as not voting at all is lost on them, and they are not going to admit they had a chance to vote against racism, sexism and nationalism – and they decided to, in effect anyway, remain neutral.
Then we come down to the far right. The only people making threats, attempting to denigrate political opponents and sharing bigoted bile were on the far right. Trump has made it acceptable to be a hate-filled, xenophobic nutter. We are going to do something about this, because unlike these hatemongers, we actually know where this kind of hatred takes the world. Is evil too strong a word for someone who hates others who are from different cultures, countries and races? Not for me it isn’t.
The most worrying aspect of this and media coverage is how dumbed down we all are, myself included. Any news report these days, however transparent the truth may be on a point, seems to have to include a counterpoint. If the sky is considered to be blue, someone will source an ‘expert’ somewhere who will explain that the sky is actually yellow, and they are given equal air time.
That’s the media. The real worry for me is the way education in the USA’s Trump-supporting states is turning children’s minds into mush. I’m not the only to worry about this phenomenon, but to illustrate, there are schools which will present Creationism and ‘Intelligent Design’ as being equally valid theories as Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.
Ignoring the fact there is no evidence for apple-wielding snakes and plenty of evidence the world is just a little older than 6,000 years, pupils are taken to creation museums and taught creation as fact, fact as equally valid as the evidence-based Evolutionary theory. Not only are we filling their heads with superstition masquerading as fact, we are training them to fear a god at the same time.
Oh, and the hours spent on this blatant indoctrination, dumbing-down, and conformity-inducing dogma, we are losing the time we could be spending on teaching them to gather evidence from a variety of sources (yes, even those outside of Fox News), researching (in libraries not just on Wikipedia), and how to take information and form valid conclusions.
This is my greatest fear – we are moving away from the Renaissance values of seeking enlightenment and many people are now seeking comfortable beliefs and comforting fables to wrap themselves in. While Roma is most assuredly burning.
I’m afraid; many people are. But there are things we can do, and this is not the time to give up, but the time to redouble efforts. Figures out what you want to fight for – a better environment, biodiversity, fairer governments around the world, a decent Southern Railway service – whatever it is – and get about trying to fix it.
On a rather personal note:
This has been a crap week for me. My friend Vanessa tells me that the three main areas of your life – love, home, and money/work never seem to be in balance – get any two right, and the other falls apart.
At present, well let’s just say that I’ve no idea where I’m going to be living in the near future, I need to find my next paid stable work gig yesterday, and the love life is now a Shakespearean comedy – without the laughs.
The trump triumph hardly fills me with glee, I feel a responsibility to act as cheerleader to others when I can barely find reasons to cheer, and I can’t honestly decide if the futile hopes that exist – that DJT gets KO’d by the courts over his racketeering charge (or other charges) – are life buoys to cling to, or are sirens calling me to drown with false promises.
And while I am trying to outwardly be strong and cool, my asthma’s gone into hyperdrive, and the medicine I usually need once or twice a month to fend off an attack of CVS (you really don’t want to know), I’m eating by the handful. You can try to tell yourself you’re not stressed, but if you listen to your body, well, you can’t fool it.
Then, I momentarily feel worse because I realise how selfish I am to even think of myself and my first world problems.
I have the option of finding work (even it if’s just as likely to be stacking shelves or flipping flipping burgers at this point). I can see, hear, walk and think (well, after a fashion). I won’t starve anytime soon. Most of all, I know some excellent people, and call many of them friends. It’s a bad week or so at present, but it’s going to get better.
No one’s firing plastic bullets at my face while I’m trying to stop a pipeline going through Lakota sacred land. No one’s bulldozing the forest I live in. I’m not forced into marriage (like to see anyone try), and I can still come and go as I please (Canada remains an option).
My first world problems – your first world problems – are all things we can either fix, or try to fix. And even when we don’t succeed in our goals, be they protecting water supplies, the environment, stopping Trump’s March of the Giants – the fact that someone, somewhere tried to do some good and made any progress at all in this matrix we’re living in – may yet provide the building blocks and/or the inspiration for those who will come after us.
Then I think – it’s hard fighting against the things that need to be combatted today – but it’s a hell of a lot easier to do so than it will be for the next generations.
We have a POTUS elect who doesn’t believe in climate change, and who will have surveillance powers over – I suppose – just about everyone. He will in theory have access codes to nuclear weaponry, and once asked why don’t we use them if we have them?
He may yet lose his POTUS elect status if he goes down for the felony offense of racketeering for his ‘university’.
Students in Utah are working to find legal ways to debar him from the presidency – and there may indeed be grounds. Michael Moore is creating action lists and people are responding. There is always something I can do; there is always something you can do. Whatever it is, however big or small, please consider fighting for something now.
‘We much each of us tend to our own gardens.’
Figure out what is wrong in your own neighbourhood be it your back garden, town, country or world – and there will be something you can do to raise the issue, fight the problem, and make others care. You may not always win; you may never win, but there is much satisfaction in trying, and who knows – if enough people roll up their sleeves, things might just get better.
STOP PRESS: The DJT Resistance wants you: https://www.thedjtr.com/
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Director Anthony Baxter catches up with Aberdeen Voice about his film being released for free before the US elections. With thanks to Suzanne Kelly.
Just the ticket. Director Anthony Baxter relaxes following the UK premiere of You’ve Been Trumped Too at Aberdeen’s Belmont Filmhouse.
A soaring number of Americans tuned in Sunday night to a special live streaming of two films Donald Trump has battled to suppress – multi award winning You’ve Been Trumped and the critically acclaimedYou’ve Been Trumped Too.
Official figures show that more than half a million potential voters tuned in to watch one or both films over the course of two Facebook live events, with over 3 million more reached through Facebook shares, twitter and other social media.
Trump has reacted furiously to the content of You’ve Been Trumped Too – threatening to sue cinemas showing the film – adding to previous blistering attacks on both the film’s director launched on Twitter and lashing out at local residents branding them ‘morons’.
Following Trump’s legal threats, the filmmakers took the unprecedented decision to get the films out to as big an audience as possible through Facebook.
Director Anthony Baxter, who is currently touring Scotland’s cinemas with You’ve Been Trumped Too took part in a groundbreaking Q&A live to Facebook viewers from Inverness last night. Thousands of viewers reacted with fury to revelations contained in the film, that 92 year old Molly Forbes had been without a working water supply for 5 years, ‘all because of Trump’.
Now with just hours to go before Americans go to the polls, some UK cinemas are busy planning special You’ve Been Trumped Too events in defiance of Trump’s threats. For example, At Nottingham’s Broadway theatre a distinguished panel of political experts has been assembled to discuss the film following tomorrow night’s screening. They’ll also be hosting a presidential quiz as the first results come in.
Described as ‘a ticking timebomb’by Indiewire and ‘the most important film of the year’by The Irish Times, You’ve Been Trumped Too continues to stream live at trumpedfilm.com and at the film’s Facebook page. The film is also playing at a growing list of cinemas despite Trump’s legal threats.
Among those showing the film are London’s Picturehouse Central, the GFT Glasgow (where Baxter will be present for a Q&A tonight at the 8.45 screening), the Eden Court in Inverness, St Andrews New Picturehouse, the MacRobert Centre Stirling, Dundee DCA, Aberdeen Belmont Filmhouse and Edinburgh’s Filmhouse. The film has also been playing in theatres in the United States and Canada.
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Donald Trump is using legal threats to prevent a new documentary from reaching American voters – according to the producers of ‘You’ve Been Trumped Too’, which opened in New York on Friday and began in UK cinemas this week.
You’ve Been TrumpedToo contains footage showing Donald Trump wanting to ‘get rid’ of houses and building Mexico border style walls around homes in Scotland.
It also explores the 5-year long saga of a 92-year-old widow who went without proper water supply for half a decade after having it cut off by Trump workers.
But the Trump Organization has issued a legal challenge threatening to sue if anyone dares show the film, and is pledging to take a frail pensioner to court over claims made in the film.
Montrose Pictures, a small Scottish based company, has completed a successful Kickstarter campaign – attracting more than thousand backers, aimed at bringing the film to as many American voters as possible ahead of the election through a digital or TV platform.
Director Anthony Baxter added,
“Mr Trump tried the same approach with the BBC back in 2012. But the corporation aired YOU’VE BEEN TRUMPED anyway, to widespread critical acclaim. We’re now looking for an American broadcaster or streaming platform willing to get the truth out there. According to the critics, this is a film all Americans need to see.”
The film been called ‘a ticking timebomb’ by Indiewire, ‘laced with enough maddening new material for it to feel like a valuable addition to the most hollow house of cards in the history of American politic.’ The New York Times said the film was ‘timely’ and added:
“this time the “you” in the title is the United States.“
According to Variety:
“the movie raises a valid question…how would Trump, if elected, treat the American people?”
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Old Susannah turns her head awa frae Aberdeen this week as her lugs pick up gunfire in the States – again. By Suzanne Kelly
Land of the Free, Home of the Brave, Bastion of Gun Worship; Americans witnessed another senseless bloodbath this past week. It was an American born Muslim extremist
in Orlando, Florida, with an automatic assault rifle in a nightclub. Which politicians will try to use these deaths to score points and whip up a bit more hatred (give you three guesses as to one of them)? Where will it be next time?
America needs some new slogans. ‘Land of the Free, home of the brave’ just doesn’t cut it anymore.
It seems to me that no one’s genuinely free. Minority groups, women and the poor have one set of laws to govern them, and freedoms are more than a little limited.
The more money you’ve got, the better illusion of freedom you can afford, and the better protected you will be. Policing is biased in many places, and as we’ve seen from the Brock Turner rape case, Justice peeks from behind her blindfold, and can tell when there is some gold on her scales. Law and law enforcement have long since gone their separate way from Liberty. ‘Truth, Liberty and Justice for All’ no longer reflects the reality.
Aside from if you were a Native American, it all seemed such a good idea at the time.
The American experiment if taken literally would see people today free to choose where and how to live, collecting their own rainwater without fear of prison, living off the grid if they felt like it, and dare I say it – using whatever plants (including cannabis) however they chose to.
Funny, no one wants to take the freedom, equality and rights-concerned sections of the Constitution literally – but the NRA certainly wants to ensure that we take very literally ‘the right to bear arms’ (which of course was in the context of having a militia and when muskets ruled, not semi-automatics and Saturday Night Specials).
In the USA there are those who take the bible literally too, and are at great pains to prove the world is only 6,000 years old and the righteous will float up to heaven in the Rapture (NB this is a US invention, not that most of the bible belters will admit that). The only parts of the bible they don’t want to take literally (while they build ‘creation museums’ showing dinosaurs romping with humans) is the ‘love one another’/ ‘do unto others’ bit.
What a selective species we can be. Interpretation of Truth and Liberty have been warped by special interest and greed to the point they’ve broken.
When I moved to the UK from New York people would ask me why, and I’d half-jokingly reply ‘because I don’t want to get shot’. Some would look at me funny; I’d explain handgun proliferation and gun culture to the interested. But no one I met in the UK could really understand why some Americans are dead set on ‘protecting’ themselves with guns.
From all the evidence (accidental misfire killings and wounding;, parents shooting children arriving home late, etc), I don’t understand how a gun ‘protects’ the average Yank either.
One reason I’m going to try and write on this topic (once more) was a post Nick Tesco (a founder of The Members, but you know that) made on Facebook in the wake of Orlando:
“Dear American friends, do these mass murderers see children, church goers and gay people as tools of the tyranny that they’ve been obliged to take up arms against as demanded by your Second Amendment and like your NRA say? Or is that something you might need to take a look at when you’ve finished giving women a hard time about abortion?”
21st Century – Still tribal after all these years.
In his post Tesco seems to be asking for an American re-examination of values, guns, the meaning of freedom, and where the focus of securing freedom should be.
Tesco’s since qualified his post; he well knows that not all Yanks are the problem, and if you look at the UK through a similar lens, you might not see a pretty picture either.
For instance there is some unnecessary, ugly violence going on over the beautiful game in France at present. Nationalistic fans clash with nationalistic fans in the streets and bars of France on some primitive tribal quest to prove who’s the most warlike (and I suppose to their minds this makes them superior, manly, desirable). Things aren’t different in the US. Scenes at pro-Trump rallies make thinking-people cringe, and that’s before the violence starts.
What is the American Republican/Democrat push-pull if not mindless tribalism? Everyone wants their side to win, and most people stick with whichever party their parents belonged to. No one looks at what their elected officials’ backgrounds are or what entities fund them and chooses – just whether the elephant or the donkey wins.
You might be living in a trailer park on benefits in America, but if mom and dad were Republicans, you’re likely to vote for a billionaire because he’s in the Republican livery, however exploitative he is of you and your fellow poor Americans. The ingrained desire to be a ‘winner’ overrides logic, fact, and common sense for some.
There is a lot to love about America – most of the people, the environment, and the idea of liberty.
How, when and why did a country which declared the notion of freedom being its core value turn into a racist, sexist, elitist police state governed by the rich for the benefit of the rich and their richer multinational masters? Perhaps being formed on top of, rather than along side of, Native American rights and values, and on the back of slavery meant the American dream was always going to become a nightmare, but the bloodshed and inequality has to be countered before it’s too late.
Ultimately I don’t think it’s too late to turn it around (or I’d not bother writing about it) but this must happen now before more ground is lost to the crooked cop, the bent judge, the lobbyist-controlled congressman and the multinational.
An observation which may or may not be a non-sequiter came to mind. I’ve a good number of intelligent American friends and acquaintances; most far more intelligent than I am. A few have put their brains into music, art, politics; the majority have harnessed their talents to making money. I can’t help but think if they hadn’t been conditioned to think that money equalled success that such talent could have been applied to creative, political and humanitarian ends.
I also can’t help but think for some people, they’d be a lot happier if they hadn’t been worried about being a lot richer.
You might think you are freer in the US than in other places. Gun-loving Americans clutch their guns and decry they will use them to guard their freedoms. They think this is freedom; they think it is a free country. I beg to differ. Here are a few thoughts on how freedom is doing these days.
Free Elections?
Turning back to gun violence, there are many worthy groups fighting to get guns under some form of control. Why don’t people just vote for congressmen who will deliver gun control, and that will be the end of the problem?
In order to run for office, a candidate needs millions of dollars. Perhaps candidates start out with high hopes and best intentions. I respectfully suggest that with a few notable exceptions, by the time they raise this money, they will get their hands dirty. They will owe favours. Will they owe the National Rifle Association, arguably the most powerful lobbying group in America? More than likely.
“According to OpenSecrets, a site that tracks money in politics, the NRA spent $984,152 on campaign contributions during the 2014 election cycle. It also spent more than $3 million on lobbying in both 2013 and 2014. The NRA also spent $28,212,718 on outside political contributions during this period, which includes ads paid for directly by the NRA. That makes it the tenth biggest spender when it comes to such political spending.” http://fortune.com/2015/12/03/san-bernadino-nra-political-spending-gun-violence/
There are those who want to vote – but get turned away in increasing numbers for spurious reasons. Names go missing from electoral rolls. Last minute demands for photo ID sends some away. In a paradox, questions were raised about some of the votes delivered from Florida by Governor Jeb Bush to clan Bush member Dubya – were all of those who voted: alive, able to vote, received postal votes themselves that they alone completed – questions remain.
Can elections be rigged? Of course. Does that only happen in the third world? Of course not.
So, we are not free to select the best candidate to run for office; we are selecting from candidates pre-selected by vested interest groups who give their candidates enough money to run. We are not free to vote if we are turned away because of unconstitutional practices, and racism does still stop people from getting to the ballot box:
“Thousands of black electors in Florida were disenfranchised in last November’s [2000] election by an electoral system tainted by “injustice, ineptitude and inefficiency” a leaked report by the US civil rights commission says. It accuses Governor Jeb Bush, the president’s brother, and his secretary of state, Katherine Harris, of “gross dereliction” of duty, saying they “chose to ignore mounting evidence” of the problems.
“The eight-strong commission, whose report will be published on Friday, found that black voters were “10 times more likely than white voters to have their ballots rejected”, and pointed to the use of a flawed list of felons and ex-felons to purge the voting rolls. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/jun/06/uselections2000.usa
So – while I must vote for Clinton – as a vote against Trump – it is not because of any woman solidarity, and it’s certainly not because I approve of her Monsanto links.
She is clearly the better choice over Trump. A nation of 260 million people – and it comes down to this. I might well write in George Takei who has always spoken out against violence and intolerance, or for heroic filibustering senator Chris Murphy whose stamina has forced a congressional vote to ‘close the terror gap’.
In the end, I will vote for Clinton, to avoid the Trump presidency, and the catastrophe that would spell. (besides which, I’d like to be able to visit the US in the next 4 years without winding up in a boiler suit on my way to GitMo). As far as I know, unlike Trump, Clinton’s not racked up 3,500 lawsuits, hasn’t opened a fleecing operation posing as a ‘university’ and doesn’t want everyone armed. She’s no plans to ‘take out’ people related to terrorists, or to ban Muslims / American Muslims from travel.
Free to have guns.
Anything you need to know about the illogic and insanity of having automatic weaponry freely available can be found in Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine documentary. The sad thing is that this film was made in 2002. Oh, and the wealth and power of the NRA tells you why the country is like this.
Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness.
At the same time we Americans are telling ourselves how ‘free’ we are, and how we want to bring freedom to other countries (frequently those with resources NB), liberty is getting a beating at home and abroad. The same ilk of senator who will keep automatic guns on sale is legislating to give American water not to Americans, but to sell or give it to companies like Nestle, which is bottling it up and signing lucrative deals to take water in states like Oregon.
There are places where you will be mauled by a police dog, beaten to a pulp or beaten to death – or shot for offences like having a tail light out on your car, driving too slowly, running, or just being non-white in a white area. The police are brutal in some states. There is no other way of putting it.
I’d add a description of how Native Americans have been treated past and present – but I cannot do it justice at all. Here is a good place to look at one issue though – the veritable kidnapping of Native children who are chemically coshed and placed with white, extreme ‘Christian’ families for no good reason other than money is made from it, and families and culture is destroyed in the process. This is the tip of the iceberg for Native issues.
It’s lunacy, and as far as the eye can see, the root causes are greed and self-interest.
Does this make me a conspiracy theorist?
Does it serve the interests of those in power when these incidents happen? It doesn’t always hurt. You’ve got Trump insisting if everyone had a gun, Orlando wouldn’t have happened (so no hostage or crossfire casualties in his world I suppose). When the serial killer in question is non-white and non-Christian – then the authorities insist we have an Islamic jihad problem that can only be served by the rest of us giving up more of our freedoms and… by panicking the suggestible into buying guns to protect themselves.
We know how well that works out.
CODA
Just as I finish this piece, Jo Cox MP has been shot and stabbed; she supports the Remain campaign, and works to help Syrian refugees. Allegedly the assailant yelled ‘Britain First.’ [17 June: Jo Cox has been murdered. Britain First’s Facebook page has a BF ‘news’ item that the murderer didn’t shout ‘Britain First’ – they shouted ‘Put Britain First’. A trivial distinction which ignores the fact she is dead, and those who have worked tirelessly to ratchet hatred up several notches are at least in part culpable.]
If the reports prove true, and they are a Britain First supporter, they have shown BF in its true light. Despite its many Facebook posts using click bait such as veterans, dog fighting, elderly issues – they are only nationalistic, white supremacist violent thugs. If this is how their followers try to advance their cause, let’s ensure we stop sharing their posts at the very least, and let’s make sure they don’t get a foothold.
The US is rapidly becoming ruled by gunpower – let’s ensure that never happens here.
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Armed, angry white men and women were invited by Trump to a rally in DC. Trump told the mob to march on the capitol and he’d be with them (he wasn’t).
Suzanne Kelly presents her annual Christmas tale.
Nigel hated the people from ‘Bongo Bongo land’, people who wanted to come to Britain (except Boris’ ancestors of course!), and the Lefties. And pretty much anyone who wasn’t a white British man.
Across the other side of the world, the merchant captain and his ship had arrived at their destination, Washington.
With thanks to Aberdeenshire SNP.
Trump is in as POTUS elect – cue gushing from Spokesperson Sarah Malone saying what a ‘visionary’ he is. There is celebrating among the racists, and wailing and gnashing of teeth from those who care about the environment, about others, and the future in general.
With thanks to Suzanne Kelly.