Showing posts with label Socialism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Socialism. Show all posts

Sunday 25 June 2017

A Timeline of the Extremist links of Jeremy Corbyn and his close allies

Jeremy Corbyn and his close allies - John McDonnell, Diane Abbott, Seamus Milne, and Andrew Murray - have spent the last 40 years promoting conspiracy theories, meeting with, and speaking in support of, a remarkable array of communists, dictators, terrorists, extremists and fascists. Some people refuse to believe this but the documentation is massive and easily available.

The following is a Timeline covering their activities and statements over the last 40 years. Others have done excellent work on twitter and elsewhere raising awareness of this stuff, and here I have collated as many verified reports as I can to give a clear historical overview of the material. What follows are just historic facts, with specific references linked in the dash '-' at the start of each line, and listed at the bottom. The only commentary, to explain some wider historical background, is given between asterisks * . . . *

The question is, what does this history say about their wisdom, their judgement, their loyalties, their beliefs and their convictions? A week from now, these people could be the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Home Secretary, and the Government's Head of Communications.

1976 - Andrew Murray, Corbyn's 2017 Election Co-ordinator, and close friend in Stop the War Coalition and other left-wing campaign groups, joins the Communist Party of Great Britain, working for the 'Straight Left' faction that attacks the party for not being Pro-Soviet enough.

1979-1981 - Seumas Milne, appointed by Corbyn as his Communications Director in 2015 (chief Spin Doctor), also works for 'Straight Left' while at Oxford .

1982 - The fascist Argentine military Junta invades the Falkland Islands to distract from their failing regime at home. Cllr Corbyn opposes a motion supporting British troops and attacks the British operation to liberate the islands with a conspiracy theory saying "The whole thing is a Tory plot to keep their money-making friends in business."

1983    - Jeremy Corbyn elected as MP.
            - Throughout the 1970s and 80s Corbyn supports the NI Republican movement and the hard left 'Troops Out' movement calling for immediate British military withdrawal from Northern Ireland.

*The Republican movement was the political wing of IRA terrorism and it was well known that its senior figures were aware and supportive of the IRA military campaign. Its aims were to force a British withdrawal from Northern Ireland through terrorism and violence against the wishes of the majority of its people. Beyond this the 'Troops Out' campaign, demanding immediate, unilateral British withdrawal from Northern Ireland, would almost certainly have led to a complete break-down of law and order, open civil war between Loyalist and Republican paramilitaries, and vastly more deaths*

1984 - Diane Abbott, while a Cllr, endorses the IRA in an interview with pro-Republican journal 'Labour And Ireland': "Every defeat of the British state is a victory for all of us. A defeat in Northern Ireland would be a defeat indeed."
- After the IRA Brighton Bombing kills five and injures 31 people, London Labour Briefing, a hard-left journal that Corbyn regularly contributed to and sat on the editorial board for, publishes a letter stating "'What do you call four dead Tories? A start!' Next to a picture of Lord Tebbit, who was seriously hurt (and whose wife was crippled for life) it added: 'Try riding your bike now, Norman!'" It also writes that "“We refuse to parrot the ritual condemnation of ‘violence’" and states that "Britain only pays attention to Northern Ireland when it is bombed into it".
- Two weeks after the Brighton bombing Corbyn invites two IRA terrorists to the House of Commons, he is criticised heavily by the Labour Chief Whip.
- Irish Republican terrorists kill a total of 48 people this year.

1985 - Corbyn attacks Anglo-Irish agreement, key early plank of the Peace Process, saying it “strengthens rather than weakens the border between the six and the 26 counties, and those of us who wish to see a united Ireland oppose the agreement for that reason.”
- Irish Republican terrorists kill 48 people this year.

1986 - At an event to commemorate 8 IRA terrorists who died launching a bombing and shooting attack on Loughgall Police Station, Corbyn is says "I'm happy to commemorate all those who died fighting for an independent Ireland,"
- Andrew Murray works for Soviet News Agency Novosti for over a year.
- In parliament Corbyn complains that "British foreign policy has been a furious hatred [...] of the Soviet Union" and insists the Soviet Leaderships pursued "policies of peace and disarmament". He accuses Conservatives of "pretending that the Soviet Union is our enemy" and blames this idea on a conspiracy "put forward by NATO and the Marshall Plan".
- Corbyn arrested protesting outside the trial of Patrick Magee, convicted for murdering five people in the Brighton Bombing.
- John McDonnell Cllr, attends event with Sinn Fein representatives where he calls for “ballot, the bullet and the bomb” to be used to unite Ireland, and 'jokes' about kneecapping Labour cllrs opposed to the event.
- Irish Republican terrorists kill a total of 40 people this year.

*The Marshall Plan was an American Aid programme that gave billions of dollars to Western European governments following WW2 to pay for rebuilding and strengthen Western Europe against the threat of Stalin's Soviet Union, which was busily crushing democracy in Eastern Europe*

1986-1992 - Corbyn, at this time a well-known Republican partisan in parliament, attends seven annual Republican events to honour dead terrorists and active “soldiers of the IRA", with the slogan "Force of arms is the only method capable of bringing about a free and united socialist Ireland". In 1988 the event's programme states "in this, the conclusive phase in the war to rid Ireland of the scourge of British imperialism… force of arms is the only method capable of bringing this about.”, in 1991 parroting this language Corbyn attacks "British imperialism” and praised Bobby Sands, the IRA terrorist.

1987 - Diane Abbott elected as MP
 - IRA bomb a Remembrance Day service, killing eleven civilians. Corbyn and Abbott sign EDM declaring Britain "primarily" responsible for terrorist bombing due to its "longstanding occupation" and calling for immediate British abandonment of Northern Ireland.
 - Corbyn calls for withdrawal from NATO during the 1987 General Election

1989 - The Morning Star, the communist Newspaper of which Corbyn is a long-time contributor and regular reader, famously reports the fall of the Berlin Wall with the headline "GDR unveils reforms package" and quotes material supplied directly by East Germany's communist dictatorship.

1991 - Corbyn states that he "did not believe in" the Cold War, claims the threat from the Soviet Union was "imaginary", and calls for the abolition of NATO.

1993 - Corbyn repeats that he "[does] not believe the former Soviet Union presented a threat", and claims that NATO meant that "this country's defence policy [...] was taken over by a group of generals sitting in [NATO HQ]" and criticised the "arms race promoted by NATO", which he blamed for the breakup of the USSR.

1995 - Corbyn condemned the NATO intervention in Bosnia against the Serbian forces responsible for the Srebrenica genocide as "one-sided" and "breathtaking" and insisted NATO should take no action to bring an end to the ongoing war.

1996 - Abbott makes racist statements arguing that "blond, blue-eyed" women should not be employed to provide medical care to black people.
       - IRA bombs Manchester injuring 200. Weeks later Corbyn tries to host the launch of Gerry Adams's autobiography in the Commons, which includes an account (allegedly fictional) of killing a British soldier, and which declares 'It might, or might not, be right to kill, but sometimes it is necessary.'

1997 - John McDonnell elected as MP

1998 - McDonnell attacks the Good Friday Agreement that ended the NI Troubles in the IRA's official newspaper, An Phoblacht saying "An assembly is not what people have laid down their lives for over thirty years…the settlement must be for a united Ireland."
  - The Omagh car-bombing, carried out by the Real IRA, kills 29 people in a town centre, and injures over 200. Other Republican terrorists kill 9 people this year.

1999 - Corbyn criticises NATO action to prevent Serbian ethnic cleansing of the Albanian Kosovars, labelling it "criminal" and claiming "the real issues were the grabbing of resources and weapon sales".
 - Andrew Murray, long-term member of the pro-Soviet British Communist Party, writes defending Stalin in the Morning Star, the Communist newspaper for which Corbyn also writes. He finishes by saying, "against imperialists, we are all Stalinists".

*Stalin was the totalitarian dictator of the USSR from 1924-1953, he was incredibly ruthless, cold and treacherous. Over several years he built the most totalitarian, repressive regime the world has probably ever seen, betrayed and executed almost all his former colleagues and friends, murdered around 15 million people through mass shooting, death through forced labour, mass deportations, deliberate famines, etc. His regime brutally repressed democracy across the whole of Eastern Europe for 40 years. His evil and death-toll was only surpassed by Hitler.*

2000-2006 - Corbyn campaigns for release of pair of terrorists convicted of car-bombing the Israeli Embassy in 1996.

2000 - Corbyn opposes the 2000 Terrorism Act, introduced by the Labour government, which gave a broad definition of terrorism for the first time. The Act also gave the police the power to detain terrorist suspects for up to seven days and created a list of proscribed terrorist organisations.

2001 - Abbott and Corbyn vote against proscribing al-Qaeda as a terrorist organisation. Also on the list was ETA, Tamil Tigers, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Salafist Group for Call and Combat, Harakat Mujahideen, etc. One of 30 occasions where they both opposed anti-terror legislation.
 - Two days after 3,000 people are killed in New York on September 11th Seamus Milne writes an article about America titled "They can't see why they're hated". He claims Americans "simply don't get it" and have a "record of unabashed national egotism and arrogance" because they can't see how attacking the Communist puppet and Taliban regimes in Afghanistan, fascists in Yugoslavia, and Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq drove anti-Americanism.
 - Corbyn jointly founds the 'Stop the War Coalition' with others including Andrew Murray of the Communisty Party of Britain. He campaigns against NATO intervening in Afghanistan to bring down the Taliban regime and destroy Al Qaeda in the country after they killed 3,000 people in New York City.
 - Corbyn votes against the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, passed by Labour after the September 11th attacks to counter terrorist threats to the UK.
 - Seamus Milne writes in the Guardian attacking efforts to try Slobodan Milosevic at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. He accuses the democratic Serbian government of  "digging up corpses to order" to support the war crimes trial, attacks the tribunal as a US tool, makes no mention of Serbian war crimes, and smears the post-Yugoslav states.

*Slobodan Milosevic was an extreme nationalist leader in Serbia who engineered the breakdown of Yugoslavia into ethnic War, and the campaigns of genocide, ethnic cleansing and mass murder that followed, as part of efforts to carve out an ethnically pure Greater Serbia. The most notorious, and largest crime was the massacre of 8,000 Bosniak Muslims at Srebrenica.*

2002 - The Al-Qaeda Bali bombing kills 202 people. Corbyn writes excusing the bombing. "The bomb was tragic, but it follows a history of great atrocity in Indonesia", "The CIA inspired a coup in Indonesia in 1968".
- Corbyn attends anti-Israel demo in Trafalgar square alongside hundreds of members of the proscribed terrorist organisation "Al Muhajiroun" who chant "Skud, Skud Israel" and "Gas, gas Tel Aviv", along with their support for bin Laden."
- Milne writes in the Guardian attacking a biography of Stalin, Koba the Dread for being too critical of Stalin. He denounces attempts "to bracket Stalin and Hitler as twin monsters of the past century - "Mao and Pol Pot are sometimes thrown in as an afterthought" and complains that it is "commonplace to equate communism and fascism as the two greatest evils of an unprecedentedly sanguinary era".

*Corbyn's statement about Indonesia is false, there was no coup in Indonesia in 1968, though there was a coup in 1965 that had nothing to do with the CIA.*

2002-2016 - Jeremy Corbyn is an active supporter of the 'Cuba Solidarity Campaign', a left-wing group actually devoted to solidarity with Cuba's repressive Communist government. It campaigns against US, or other country's sanctions against Cuba, but not against the government's complete repression of democracy, it's devastating economic policies, nor its harassment, imprisonment and murder of political opponents, religious dissenters, and others.

2003 - John McDonnell calls for IRA terrorists to be 'honoured', adding: "It was the bombs and bullets and sacrifice made by the likes of Bobby Sands that brought Britain to the negotiating table."
- Andrew Murray, member of the Stalinist aligned Communist Party of Britain expresses his party's support for the totalitarian dictatorship of North Korea stating "Our Party has already made its basic position of solidarity with Peoples' Korea clear".
- Murray is appointed Chair of 'Stop the War'.
- Corbyn writes opposing action against North Korea: "The declaration of North Korea as some kind of threat is [...] a pretext for stepping up economic and military pressure on that country. [...] I suspect this will be used to weaken or destroy the North Korean economy to force some kind of integration between North and South Korea. Then we may see the spread of free market capitalism into North Korea.” He also blamed the West for the Cold War stating the Soviet Union was “no real threat” and was opposed because “the West has sought to politically attack socialist systems”.
         - Abbott sends her son to a £12,700 a year private school in Westminster. She had previously attacked Tony Blair and Harriet Harman for sending their children to selective state schools, saying (about Harman) "She made the Labour Party look as if we do one thing and say another." In 2010 she defended her decision with the racist argument that "West Indian mums will go to the wall for their children" and argued that white colleagues "would never understand" because she came "from a culture where whatever you can do for your children you do."

*McDonnell's statement above is false. Britain offered a reasonable settlement in NI as early as 1973, in the Sunningdale Agreement. By 1985 Britain's enforcement of the Anglo-Irish agreement demonstrated it was prepared to impose a reasonable solution over Loyalist objections. The IRA chose to fight in an attempt to force the British out of NI through terror and violence, against the wishes of most of its population. Only when it became clear as the years wore on that the British would keep fighting back and could not be forced out did the IRA consider accepting a negotiated solution.*

2004 - McDonnell receives award for "unfailing political and personal support he has given to the republican community" from an IRA terrorist who in 1973 bombed the Old Bailey, killing one and injuring almost 200.
- 'Stop the War', which Corbyn stands on Steering Committee for, issues a statement supporting the Iraqi “struggle” against British troops “by any means necessary".

*The Iraqi 'resistance' was made up of assorted Baathist fascists, Islamist extremists and criminal gangs, and was responsible for mass murder, kidnapping, torture and huge destruction of the nation's infrastructure, representing around 85% of those killed in Iraq from 2003-2014*

2005 - Corbyn becomes a regular columnist for the far-left Morning Star, the newspaper that officially supports the Communist Party of Britain and its political platform. From the 1940's to 1980s it was infamous for its support for Soviet dictatorship and oppression in Eastern Europe, including show trials of anti-Communist patriots, repression of pro-democratic protests in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, and for being directly funded by the Kremlin.

2006 - John McDonnell runs for Labour Leader against Gordon Brown.  His campaign manager, one Owen Jones, tells the Weekly Worker, the paper of the Communist Party of Great Britain, "I am a Marxist and I am involved in this campaign". "The fundamental thrust [...] is the fight by Marxists to win over larger sections than themselves to Marxism." and when asked "in the meantime, you are keeping your Marxist powder dry?" he answers simply "Yes, I am."

2005-2015 - Corbyn and Abbot help found the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign, a pro-Govt lobby group, still active today.  Corbyn is a strong supporter of Chavez's Venezuela, repeatedly praising it with statements such as "Chavez showed us that there is a different and a better way of doing things", and "It’s called socialism, it’s called social justice".

2007 - The organisation Deir Yassin Remembered is expelled from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the largest British Pro-Palestine organisation, for its support of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, an event announced by an article in The Guardian. Jeremy Corbyn has supported DYR events in previous years and continues to attend meetings with them until 2014.

2008 - Diane Abbot argues that Mao Zedong did "more good than harm" on BBC's 'This Week' politics programme, saying "He led his country from feudalism, he helped to defeat the Japanese and he left his country on the verge of the great economic success they are having now".
 - Seamus Milne speaks at an 'anti-War' demo blaming "the West" for causing war from "Pakistan to Palestine" in order to "defend its interests" and praises the anti-Semitic, Islamist terror group Hamas for fighting against Israel.
- McDonnell launches a parliamentary Early Day Motion supporting IJAN, an anti-Zionist group that attacks Zionism for "perpetuat[ing] European racism and colonialism" and claims "Zionism is racist" because it "make[s] Jews white" by adopting "white racism". It also claims Zionism has a "shared Islamaphobia" that "call[s] for the persecution of Muslims" and "continues a long history of Zionist collusion with repressive and violent regimes, from Nazi Germany to the South African Apartheid regime".

*Mao Zedong probably ties with Hitler for being responsible for more deaths than any single person in modern history. His regime 1949-1976 killed millions directly through shootings and re-education camps in the anti-landlord, anti-counterrevolutionary and anti-Rightist campaigns, and killed tens of millions indirectly through the famines caused by his 'Great Leap Forward'. His 'Cultural Revolution' resulted in millions more deaths and the widespread destruction of irreplaceable, historical Buddhist, Taoist, Christian and other religious buildings, artifacts and art, as well as the murder of those practising any religion. Only after his death when Deng Xiaoping reversed his policies and reformed the Chinese economy on Capitalist lines did China's remarkable economic growth begin.* 

2009 - Corbyn invites Hamas and Hezbollah to the HoC saying "It will be my pleasure and honour to host an event in Parliament where our friends from Hezbollah will be speaking. And I’ve also invited friends from Hamas to come and speak as well."
 - One of the 'friends' at this meeting from Hamas is Dyan Abou Jahjah, who has promoted Holocaust denial, talking about "hoax gas chambers", and has said he "considered every dead British soldier a victory".
- Corbyn campaigns for Hamas to be removed from the list of terrorist organisations calling it "a big, big historical mistake" and calling Hamas an organisation for "social justice and political justice" in the Middle East.

*Hamas is a terrorist, anti-Semitic, extremist Islamist organisation that currently runs a brutal military, Islamist regime in Gaza. Its tactics include frequent use of torture, human shields, random bombing of civilians, and mass extra-judicial executions. It's fundamental charter includes anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and refers approvingly to the anti-Semitic forgery the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion'. Hezbollah is a similar terrorist organisation banned by the Arab League, United States, France, the Gulf Cooperation Council, Canada, the Netherlands, Israel, The EU, New Zealand, the UK, and Australia *

2009-2012 - Corbyn is paid £20,000 for appearances on Press TV, the propaganda arm of the Iranian Islamist State, a channel banned in the UK for its part in filming and broadcasting the forced confession of an Iranian journalist who had been arrested and tortured. Corbyn last appears 6 months after OfCom withdraw their UK licence.

*The Islamist Govt of Iran is a Shia fundamentalist regime notorious for imprisoning dissidents, executing homosexuals, imprisoning and torturing Christians and other religious minorities, and funding and supporting a range of Shia militias and terrorist groups across the Middle East, fuelling wars from Syria to Yemen*

2009 - Seumas Milne writes in the Guardian defending the Stalinist Soviet Union and attacking any claim that Stalin's regime bore responsibility for World War 2. He attacks East European politicians for comparing Communism and Nazism as similar evils. He attacks Britain and France and claims they are far more responsible for WW2 than Stalin's Soviet Union.

*Stalin's regime concluded an Alliance with Nazi Germany in 1939, the famous Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. This alliance divided Eastern Europe between the two dictatorships. Stalin jointly invaded Poland with Hitler and conquered the Baltic States. Hundreds of thousands of Poles and Balts were murdered by the Stalinist secret police by shooting or in the Gulag over the next two years, a preliminary to the suppression of democracy and campaigns of murder that would engulf Eastern Europe after Soviet Victory in 1945, and keep Eastern Europe under repressive, totalitarian regimes for 45 years*

2010 - At a Labour Leadership GMB Union hustings John McDonnell 'jokes' about murdering Margaret Thatcher during the 1980s.

2011 - Corbyn addresses Press TV, the Iranian propaganda channel, and calls the death of Bin Laden “an assassination attempt, and yet another tragedy upon a tragedy, upon a tragedy.”
- Corbyn becomes Chair of 'Stop the War', taking over from Andrew Murray of the CPB.
- Corbyn votes against the 'Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Act' that was designed to replace Control Orders with more focused and targeted measures.
 - Corbyn attacks NATO, demanding that the radical left "have to campaign against NATO's power, its influence and its global reach"
- McDonnell praises violent riots the previous year saying "students kicking the shit out of Millbank [...]  that's the best of our movement". He defends a student jailed for endangering police lives by throwing a fire extinguisher from a tall building at police, saying "he’s not the criminal. The real criminals are the ones [...] increasing the fees". He supports further rioting saying "We’ve got to encourage the direct action, [in] any form it can possibly take"
- Corbyn and McDonnell sign a parliamentary Early Day Motion calling for Holocaust Memorial Day to be renamed 'Genocide Memorial Day – Never Again For Anyone', which would erase the specific link to the Nazi targeting of Jewish people in the Holocaust.

2012 - Abbott is criticised for racist statements on twitter - "White people love playing 'divide and rule' We should not play their game"
 - On Press TV, the Iranian State TV channel banned in the UK for filming and broadcasting the forced confession of a tortured Iranian journalist, Corbyn praises the release of Hamas terrorists convicted of killing 570 Israelis. He refers to them as "brothers" says he's "glad they were released" and claims "you have to ask the question why they are in prison in the first place", while never mentioning the crimes they were convicted of.

2013 - Corbyn writes on Twitter and Labour websites praising Hugo Chavez of Venezuala on the event of his death.
 - Corbyn leads a panel at a Stop the War alongside a conspiracy theorist who claims the Syrian uprising against Assad was a "destabilisation campaign created in London, Washington and Paris" and that "demonstrations were used as cover for launching imperialist proxy war against Syria".
- Corbyn votes against the 'Justice and Security Act 2013', designed to allow private trial of a limited number of terrorist cases where public trial would endanger secret intelligence sources.
- McDonnell welcomes the 2008 economic crash at an anti-cuts meeting. He says "I've been waiting for this for a generation!" and "I'm straight, I'm honest with people: I'm a Marxist." He later claims this was a 'joke'.
- Corbyn attends an event organised by Deir Yassin Remembered, an organisation run by multiple, open Holocaust Deniers.

2014 - McDonnell 'jokes' about people wanting to murder a female MP, Esther McVey, at a Labour fundraising comedy event, Corbyn and Abbott are also there. He later calls her a "stain on humanity".
- Corbyn argues against "legal obstacles" for fighters returning from fighting with ISIL in Syria unless it can be judicially proved a crime has been committed, despite the obvious problem of collecting such evidence for crimes being committed in Syria. He argues we should not make “value judgments”, or take action against those who express support for terrorism. *At this time it is well known that ISIL are committing genocide, slavery, mass rape, etc.*
- Corbyn attends an event in Tunisia to hear speeches from members of Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, both proscribed terrorist groups responsible for murdering civilians in Israel and Palestine. He also hears from Ramsey Clark, a genocide denier and vocal supporter of Slobodan Milosovic, the Serbian dictator primarily responsible for genocide and war crimes in the Yugoslav wars of the early 90's. While there he also lays a wreath and takes part in prayers at the memorial to Black September terrorists responsible for organising the kidnap, torture and murder of 11 Israeli Olympic athletes in 1972.
- Stop the War, of which Jeremy Corbyn is Chairman, issues a statement attacking efforts to save Yazidis and Christians on Mt Sinjar and on the Ninevah plains from genocide at the hands of ISIL, referring to "“a false story”, “largely mythical”, “a false story of a massive Yazidi crisis” and “a non-existent siege”.
- Corbyn calls for NATO to be shut down and claims "Nato is an engine for the delivery of oil to the oil companies" and that "NATO was founded in order to promote a Cold War with the Soviet Union". Later once Labour Leader he refuses to state that he would come to the aid of another NATO country under attack.
- Milne writes repeatedly in the Guardian defending the Russian invasion of Ukraine, attacking the Ukrainian government as fascists, and attacking western govts for provoking Russian aggression by expanding NATO, in articles such as "Crimea is the fruit of Western Expansion".
*Needless to say Corbyn's comments on the history of NATO are Stalinist propaganda, and Milne's comments are all current propaganda lines of the authoritarian, quasi-fascist Russian state*.
 - Jeremy Corbyn speaks at a seminar called "The All Encompassing Revolution" celebrating the 35th Anniversary of the Islamist Revolution in Iran, an event organised by supporters of the Shia Fundamentalist Iranian Government, alongside representatives of Shia militias in Iraq.
 - Jeremy Corbyn again holds a meeting with board members of Deir Yassin Remembered, an organisation run by Holocaust Deniers and supporters of anti-Israeli terrorism.
- Venezuala enters Recession. As of 2018 it is still in continuing recession, with extreme poverty, malnutrition and death due to basic healthcare shortages increasing rapidly.

2015 - Corbyn becomes Leader of the Labour Party, appoints McDonnell as Shadow Chancellor, appoints Seumas Milne as chief spin doctor.
- Corbyn asked to condemn IRA murders can say only "I condemn what was done by the British Army as well as the other sides."
- Stop the War, the organisation Corbyn helped found, and had been chair of since 2011, issues article praising the "internationalism and solidarity" of ISIL, and compares them to anti-fascists fighting in the Spanish Civil War.
- Corbyn calls the Communist newspaper The Morning Star, for which he is a contributor, “the most precious and only voice we have in the daily media”. He ceases being a contributor after becoming Labour Leader.
- Corbyn speaks out in support of the Venezuelan government at an event held by the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign. Later this year he deletes articles supporting the Venezuelan regime from his website as that country slides deeper into violent oppression and recession.

2016 - Andrew Murray leaves the far-left Communist Party of Britain after 40 years as a member and joins Labour. Corbyn appoints him as 'Election Coordinator' with responsibility for preparing the party for a future General Election. After the 2017 general election he is re-employed as a Consultant on strategy for Jeremy Corbyn.
  - The Morning Star, the Communist newspaper of which Corbyn is a regular contributor and reader, reports in support of the criminal, fascist Assad Regime's final reconquest of Aleppo in Syria with the headline "Final Liberation of Aleppo is in sight".
- Corbyn praises Communist Dictator Fidel Castro on his death, commending his "heroism", and calling him "an internationalist and a champion of social justice." He sidesteps questions about Castro's decades of violent dictatorship, his oppression of democratic protests, his murder of political dissidents, and his ruinous economic policies that continue to impoverish Cuba.
- Venezuela increasingly falls into a socio-economic crisis caused by the Regime's hard-line Socialist policies, increasing poverty, unemployment, rampaging inflation and political violence.
 - Corbyn is questioned by a Select Committee about his association with Deir Yassin Remembered, an organisation run by multiple Holocaust Deniers. He lies about meeting them in 2013 and 2014, claiming he cut ties with them when they revealed their views a decade earlier.

2017-19
-As of 2017 Venezuela is in deep recession, with soaring poverty rates, hyperinflation, and terrible shortages of many basic commodities including food. Over 160 protesters have been killed in recent months in large scale protests, and many opposition politicians arrested, jailed and, it has been claimed, tortured.
-  As of Summer 2018 there are 2 million refugees from Venezuela, massive malnutrition and poverty within the country, hyperinflation of 46,000%, and continuing political violence. Corbyn and Abbott supported the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign, a pro-govt lobby group until 2015, after the country had begun its current recession. Corbynite MPs such as Chris Williamson continue to support the VSC until at least 2017, as well the pro-Cuban dictatorship Cuba Solidarity Campaign..
- In Jan 2019 the number of refugees from Venezuela reaches 3 million.


Sources
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4571924/Corbyn-s-30-years-talking-terrorists.html
https://order-order.com/2017/05/31/top-irish-historian-corbyn-didnt-support-ira-ceasefire/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/Jeremy_Corbyn/11924431/Revealed-Jeremy-Corbyn-and-John-McDonnells-close-IRA-links.html
https://www.pressreader.com/uk/daily-mail/20170605/281788514026288
https://order-order.com/2017/06/08/100-times-jeremy-corbyn-sided-terrorists/
https://order-order.com/2017/06/06/corbyn-addressed-hundreds-of-al-muhajiroun-members-at-rally/
https://order-order.com/2017/06/05/corbyn-mcdonnell-abbott-voted-to-allow-isis-fighters-to-return-to-britain/
https://order-order.com/2015/06/15/corbyn-invited-terrorists-and-war-criminals-into-parliament/
https://order-order.com/2017/05/29/corbyn-attended-terror-conference-honouring-munich-killer/
http://www.thetower.org/5054-the-extremist-ties-of-labours-jeremy-corbyn/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/Jeremy_Corbyn/11924431/Revealed-Jeremy-Corbyn-and-John-McDonnells-close-IRA-links.html
https://order-order.com/2015/12/07/14-times-stop-the-war-did-not-call-it-right/
https://www.thesun.co.uk/archives/news/133949/labours-problem-for-women-is-vile-sexist-mcdonnell/
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1985/nov/27/anglo-irish-agreement#S6CV0087P0_19851127_HOC_294
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11837454/Jeremy-Corbyn-campaigned-for-release-of-Embassy-bombers.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3829660/Diane-Abbott-opposed-proscribing-Al-Qaeda-20-terrorist-groups-shortly-September-11-terror-attacks.html
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/election-2017/abbott-declared-support-for-ira-defeat-of-britain-rp79dvvmk
http://www.markpack.org.uk/136129/stop-the-war-mount-sinjar/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Abbott
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McDonnell
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3704408/jeremy-corbyn-championed-venezuelas-hard-left-politics-which-has-seen-the-country-descend-into-chaos/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Murray_(campaigner_and_journalist)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11951587/Seumas-Milne-will-finish-Labour-off.html
https://capx.co/the-inconvenient-truth-about-corbyn-and-the-ira/
https://twitter.com/stephen_wigmore/status/656881048836579328
https://www.parliament.uk/edm/2004-05/392
https://medium.com/@JRogan3000/the-main-point-of-all-this-is-not-that-jeremy-corbyn-john-mcdonnell-and-london-labour-briefing-b67b3a2ed2be
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/mar/01/ukcrime.humanrights
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/sep/09/second-world-war-soviet-pact
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3837299/Putin-s-useful-idiots-Corbyn-s-support-Russia-shames-party-country-writes-DOMINIC-SANDBROOK.html
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/05/clash-crimea-western-expansion-ukraine-fascists
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_Star_(British_newspaper)
http://www.conservativehome.com/leftwatch/2016/04/does-corbyn-still-admire-venezuela.html
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/British-MP-Jeremy-Corbyn-Speaks-Out-For-Venezuela-20150605-0033.html
https://twitter.com/make_trouble/status/731444748578357248
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/11/26/fidel-castros-cuba-beacon-light-says-ex-london-mayor-ken-livingstone/
http://www.cuba-solidarity.org.uk/news/article/34/108-british-members-of-parliament-sign-motion-to-defend-cuba
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/8994263/Diane-Abbott-no-stranger-to-controversy.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/14/jeremy-corbyn-claimed-nato-danger-world-peace-arrested-ira-linked/
http://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/coaker-distances-himself-from-mcdonnell-s-ira-kneecapping-joke-1-7090102
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/Jeremy_Corbyn/11893986/Jeremy-Corbyns-top-team-encouraged-street-riots.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/11/27/diane-abbott-said-on-balance-mao-did-more-good-than-harm_n_8660910.html
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/aug/02/warcrimes.serbia?CMP=share_btn_tw
http://standforpeace.org.uk/uk-extremist-groups-commemorate-iranian-revolution/
https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/646/keeping-marxist-powder-dry/
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/john-mcdonnell-video-labour-marxist-economic-crash-jeremy-corbyn-a7309651.html
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/sep/13/september11.britainand911
https://twitter.com/SirBasilBrush/status/1019633893690003456
http://www.ijan.org/who-we-are/charter/
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/aug/01/john-mcdonnell-praised-anti-zionist-network-ijan-accused-antisemitism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilad_Shalit_prisoner_exchange#Released_prisoners_engaged_in_new_attacks
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/jeremy-corbyn-praised-release-of-hamas-terrorists-hh90cctgp
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6048807/Photos-Labour-leader-Corbyn-tribute-event-Palestine-martyrs-linked-Munich-massacre.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6115547/Jeremy-Corbyn-accused-misleading-Parliament-holding-private-meeting-Holocaust-denier.html
https://twitter.com/TimesCorbyn/status/1196153375911534592
https://twitter.com/TimesCorbyn/status/1202680794159837185/photo/1
https://twitter.com/TimesCorbyn/status/1202679287700246528
https://twitter.com/TimesCorbyn/status/1202679771920027648
https://twitter.com/hurryupharry/status/1202559726690562048
https://twitter.com/magnitsky/status/1203252784277204998
https://twitter.com/TimesCorbyn/status/1145255691785031680

Wednesday 3 August 2016

Robots stealing all the jobs? - Nationalisation is the Answer, not a Basic Income


In the last year there has been increased discussion about introducing a 'Universal Basic Income' (or UBI). A Universal Basic Income would be a replacement for welfare where everyone gets an amount of money, say £100 a week, from the government as a right, just for being a citizen of the country. Unlike current welfare there are no conditions to meet to get it, either of age, or income, or anything else, and everyone gets the same. It is much simpler than current welfare, and the idea is to give people enough money to live on, just, to free people from the fear of destitution regardless of circumstances.

It is a rather expensive idea, but one that has significance advantages in areas such as simplicity and reliability. Recently, a perhaps unexpected source of support has come in the shape of various internet and technology billionaires, millionaires, etc. These captains of cyber-industry are worried about what happens if robots take all our jobs. They think, as do some others, that the rapid development of artificial intelligence and robotics will, over the next few decades, rapidly put most people out of work, not just in manufacturing, agriculture or low skilled services, but even in previously safe white-collar professions like Law, Medicine, Accounting, or whatever. They fear this will lead to a society where an increasingly tiny group of capitalists own all the robots, and everyone else is unemployed and penniless.

(Credit: Shutterstock/Salon)
Funnily the main negative thing our app-overlords have noticed about this is that if we're reduced to a vast penniless underclass there will be nobody who can afford to buy the products their army of robots and AIs produce. Hence their support for a UBI, to re-close the circle between production, purchase and consumption. Coincidentally, apart from the UBI part, this is exactly what Karl Marx thought would happen to Capitalism in the late 19th Century, but quite obviously didn't. Hence the failure of Marxism.

Ignore for a moment the obvious problem with this vision: that technology has been wiping out jobs en masse since 1750 but we haven't run out of jobs yet. The 'Tech' crowd's response is still ludicrously complicated when you think about it. UBIs are horribly expensive, so this would require massive taxation to pay for it. But if most of the population are penniless then the tax burden will have to fall heavily on the people with the money i.e. the tiny number of hyper-capitalists. So these people would be paying massive taxes, so the money can be distributed to everyone, so they can buy stuff, so the tiny minority can make massive profits on their capital, a large proportion of which would go in massive taxes, so the money could be redistributed, and so on.

It's worth noting at this point that the contemporary world is historically unique in that our aristocratic elite is both socially and economically liberal. That means they all like to think of themselves as nice, progressive people, but they also love venture capital, initial public offerings, and, oh yes, hate taxes. So I'll let you guess how long this re-distributive scheme would last before the elite decide that serfdom isn't so unthinkable after all.

But anyway, back to our dystopian future. So almost everyone has lost their jobs because robots can produce and provide goods and services of all kinds cheaper than human beings can. This means there pretty much is no problem of scarcity anymore, because AI can do basically everything. In this case there is a simpler solution than UBI, and it's called Socialism.

If we ever reach the point where most jobs disappear and capital is concentrated among a tiny elite who own all the robots and software, then we should just nationalise the robots and the software. That cuts out the ludicrous circularity of the UBI scheme (giving money to people, so they can give it to plutocrats, who give it back to the people, so, the whole process can go round again).  This all seems designed purely to keep money and power concentrated within a tiny, pseudo-aristocratic elite after real competitive capitalism has ended. Just nationalise them and then, once the robots are in common ownership, just use them to make stuff and provide services and just credit everyone directly from the output thus cutting the fat-cats out of the loop entirely. Problem Solved.

Now, I'm a right-wing, conservative, free-marketeer, so why am I suggesting socialist revolution if things go a certain way? For the answer we have to go back to Marx. The main problem with Marx's prediction that socialist revolution was inevitable was that it was based on assumptions about how economic development would occur . . . that were all wrong. A pretty large flaw. Marx thought capital would be consistently concentrated in fewer and fewer hands while wages were driven down more and more, until the whole system collapsed under its own inequality. But even his own data in Das Kapital showed that wasn't happening, real wages for workers were rising, as was their wealth (albeit from a very low base) and by the time of the Russian Revolution history clearly wasn't panning out how Marx predicted. According to his own theory revolution should happen in the most advanced societies. According to Marx Russia was the last place revolution should occur. Even more contrary to Marx Capitalism has chugged along more-or-less happily for the last 130 years, spreading wealth and raising incomes dramatically. But should this process go dramatically into reverse in the future then Marx's solution might be the right idea after all.

Free-market capitalism relies on competition among agents to generate the best prices and direct consumption and investment to best deal with the problems of economic scarcity. In all western societies this private, competitive mode of operation is balanced with democratic state control in areas where free-market provision can't cope. But in the robots-steal-all-the-jobs scenario competition and scarcity have rapidly vanished. Software putting everyone out of work would imply a massive increase in productivity had been achieved, as machines do the jobs cheaper than humans could so there would be little danger in damaging further economic growth. Economic growth doesn't matter so much if everyone has plenty anyway, while the democratic argument, that we can't allow the economy to be dominated by a handful of Mark Zuckerbergs while everyone else sinks into poverty, becomes far stronger as capital is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.

At this point we should just nationalise companies as they reach a certain size and stability and effective competition recedes (Google, Facebook, Microsoft, anyone?). This could potentially even just take the form of nationalising certain patents or pieces of intellectual property, in terms of software. The original owners should be reasonably compensated but control should  pass into democratic hands, cutting out the fat-cats, and ensuring general control of the economy remains with the wide public. The economy would generally remain private, and competition would remain because nationalisation would be piecemeal, rather than by whole economic sectors (e.g. the Steel Industry). Businesses would remain managed much as before, allowing employees to research and develop improvements to products, and the state could allow them to shrink and go bust if necessary, because there would be a pool of further businesses or inventions to be nationalised. This should largely avoid the problems faced by classical post-war 'mixed' economies. The main difference would be that once a company or piece of intellectual property had been sufficiently developed, instead of owners being able to just sit back and live off a stream of profits perpetually, they would be effectively bought out by the state in a one-off, reasonable payment.

The majority of people would enjoy comfortable existences doing some limited work but largely supported by a vast army of robots and AI. Thus we would fulfil Marx's dream and eventually, as technology developed further, glide gently beyond Socialism to a state of prosperous democratic control, communism in the sense Marx originally meant it. Bliss.

Or alternatively the soothsayers may be wrong. Mass unemployment may not rapidly spread over the next few decades due to a shortage of work to do, and ownership of capital may not become rapidly concentrated among a plutocratic elite. If that happens we should not embrace Socialism and should just carry on more or less as we do now. Sorry.