Farage’s decision to pull out of the panorama interview comes after the BBC revealed one of his Reform candidates at the General Election had argued that the UK should have remained neutral while Adolf Hitler’s Nazis stormed Europe.
The leader of Reform UK, Nigel Farage, has pulled out at the last minute from his party leader’s interview which was scheduled to be broadcast on the BBC later today.
Farage was due to be grilled by BBC journalist Nick Robinson, however it has been cancelled, with Reform UK blaming a ‘diary mix up’. The Daily Mail reported Reform sources have insisted that Farage would still be doing the interview.
A source close to the Reform UK leader told The Mirror: “The first Nigel’s team heard of it was when it [the date] was press released by the BBC”.
…
Farage’s decision to pull out of the panorama interview comes after the BBC revealed one of his Reform candidates at the General Election had argued that the UK should have remained neutral while Adolf Hitler’s Nazis stormed Europe.
Ian Gribbin posted in a blog that the country would be “far better” if it had “taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality” instead of fighting the Nazis in World War Two, leading to widespread outrage and condemnation.
The BBC reported that Gribbin, the party’s candidate in Bexhill and Battle, made the posts in 2022. He also wrote online that women were the “sponging gender” and should be “deprived of health care”.
Student workers of Columbia organized in UAW 2710 participate in May Day rally. Photo: Wyatt Souers
On International Workers’ Day, workers around the world continued to join hands with the student movement to stand with Palestine
On May Day, workers around the world mobilized for the liberation of Palestine. “This May Day, workers of the world are called to declare their solidarity with Palestine, to denounce the Israeli Genocide, and to call for an end to all aggressions in the region and to all wars,” wrote the International People’s Assembly.
“Beyond the call for a ceasefire we must say no to the transportation of arms and arms caches to Israel. Workers in all industries – especially workers in the transport sector – that can withhold their labor in order to halt the continued slaughter of the people of Palestine are emphatically called to do so!”
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa released a statement calling on workers around the world to mobilize for Palestine. “The working class are the creators of wealth, and it is the united power of the working class that has the power to overthrow hateful, brutal regimes like Apartheid Israel,” wrote the union. “On this Workers Day, we call on workers of the world to unite in defense of Palestine so that its people can be free, from the river, to the sea!”
“The working class in South Africa must celebrate the defeat of Apartheid, because its destruction was due, largely to the unity of workers, who used their labor power to collapse the system through rolling mass action, strikes and protest,” the union added.
Several Palestinian union formations have called the people in the world to action against the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza. This includes the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions, which in March called on US unions in particular to “be our voice and advocate inside and outside America.”
“What our people are experiencing and what workers and unions in particular, are exposed to is the most horrific catastrophe known to humanity in recent decades,” the PGFTU wrote. “We ask that you convey our message and give voice to the suffering of hungry, starving workers and their families—not just to the American people, not just to your unions, but to the entire world.”
Palestinian trade unions have also responded in support of the student movement for Palestine that has taken the world by storm. “The Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) in Palestine extends our deepest solidarity to you, the revolutionary youth who are changing the world,” reads a statement of support from a prominent Palestine farmworkers’ union, addressed to the students movement around the world that is taking action in solidarity with Gaza. “We write to you from Palestine to tell you that your actions are resonating across oceans. In you, we see the echoes of our struggle, the echoes of our resistance, and the echoes of our hope.”
“Our people, along with all the workers and free people of the world, commemorate the first of May this year, at a time when they are subjected to the most brutal and fierce campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing, surpassing in savagery and bloodiness the fascists and the Nazis, at the hands of a group of murderers calling themselves an army for an invasive replacement entity, under the leadership, partnership, support, cover, and complicity of the American administration and the colonial Western imperial powers, the enemies of humanity,” wrote the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in a pre-May Day statement. “We send a salute of respect and pride to the university students all over the world, especially to the students at American universities, who are protesting against the crimes of the occupation and the support of the American administration for it, and who demand a halt to the aggression against the Palestinian people.”
Within the student movement in the US, university workers are mobilizing their unions to stand with their students in solidarity with Gaza. On April 29, within the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at the City College of New York in New York City, university workers organized under the Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY) held a town hall meeting to deliberate on how to use their labor power to support the five demands of the student encampment. The members attending the town hall organized a wildcat sick-out, in which union members will call in sick en masse to disrupt business as usual at the larger City University of New York (CUNY) system. Workers in the United States face a variety of strike prohibitions, including a nationwide ban on striking for political reasons rather than economic issues such as wages and benefits under the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947.
Nevertheless, the PSC faculty at the town hall voted overwhelmingly to stage a sick-out. “At UT Austin, faculty did a one day job action in support of their students. Palestinian trade unions, National SJP, and National Faculty for Justice in Palestine have called for a mass job action on May 1st,” faculty wrote in a statement. “Our students are taking incredible risks to support the Palestinian people. They have asked for our help. We must stand ready to struggle alongside them, and to take these risks.”
Workers organized with the United Auto Workers, which also represents many graduate student workers across the country, staged a rally in Washington Square Park on April 26 in support of their students staging Gaza Solidarity Encampments at NYU, Columbia, and the New School.
Workers engaged in mass mobilizations around the world on May 1.
Thousands took to the streets in major US cities including Washington, DC and Los Angeles. In DC, demonstrators marched to the Gaza Solidarity Encampments at George Washington University.
— Party for Socialism and Liberation (@pslnational) May 1, 2024
✊🏽🇵🇸RIGHT NOW: A massive May Day march is en route to the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at George Washington University pic.twitter.com/esXOVUrhqv
— Party for Socialism and Liberation (@pslnational) May 2, 2024
In New York City, unions such as the United Auto Workers and the New York Taxi Workers Alliance expressed explicit support for the Palestinian cause in a march of 20,000, which ended at the New York University Gaza Solidarity Encampment.
Havana, like every year, was flooded with huge crowds on May Day as President Miguel Diaz-Canel sent an explicit message in support of Palestine and the pro-Palestine student movement. “All our solidarity with the students in the United States, who have taken the side of justice, have come out to support the cause of the Palestinian people, and are brutally repressed on their own university campuses. Today our [May Day] is also going through Palestine,” Diaz-Canel wrote.
In Bogota, President Gustavo Petro made a special announcement during the May Day celebration in front of thousands of Colombians: the nation would officially cut all diplomatic ties with Israel.
A Palestinian man holds a child as he mourns the death of twin babies Naeem and Wissam Abu Anza, killed in an overnight Israeli air strike, during their burial in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on March 3, 2024. (Photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP via Getty Images)
The Palestinians, facing down the most powerful countries in the world, left virtually alone even by their allies, have suffered immeasurably. But they have won this war.
The following is a statement written by Arundhati Roy and delivered on her behalf at the meeting of Working People Against Apartheid and Genocide in Gaza, at the Press Club, New Delhi, on Thursday March 7, 2024. The remarks were first published by Scroll, an independent media outlet in India.
The richest, most powerful countries in the Western world, those who believe themselves to be the keepers of the flame of the modern world’s commitment to democracy and human rights, are openly financing and applauding Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The Gaza strip has been turned into a concentration camp. Those who have not already been killed are being starved to death. Almost the entire population of Gaza has been displaced. Their homes, hospitals, universities, museums, and infrastructure of every kind has been reduced to rubble. Their children have been murdered. Their past has been vaporized. Their future is hard to see.
Even though the highest court in the world believes that almost every indicator seems to meet the legal definition of genocide, IDF soldiers continue to put out their mocking “victory videos” celebrating what almost looks like fiendish rituals. They believe that there is no power in the world that will hold them to account. But they are wrong. They and their children’s children will be haunted by what they have done. They will have to live with the loathing and the abhorrence the world feels for them. And hopefully one day everybody – on all sides of this conflict – who has committed war crimes will be tried and punished for them, keeping in mind that there is no equivalence between crimes committed while resisting Apartheid and Occupation, and crimes committed while enforcing them.
They and their children’s children will be haunted by what they have done. They will have to live with the loathing and the abhorrence the world feels for them.
Racism is of course the keystone of any act of genocide. The rhetoric of the highest officials of the Israeli state has, ever since Israel came into existence, dehumanized Palestinians and likened them to vermin and insects, just like the Nazis once dehumanized Jews. It is as though that evil serum never went away and is now only being recirculated. The “Never” has been excised from that powerful slogan “Never Again”. And we are left only with “Again”.
Never Again.
President Joe Biden, head of state of the richest, most powerful country in the world, is helpless before Israel, even though Israel would not exist without US funding. It’s as though the dependent has taken over the benefactor. The optics say so. Like a geriatric child, Joe Biden appears on camera licking an ice-cream cone and vaguely mumbling about a ceasefire, while Israeli government and military officials openly defy him and vow to finish what they have started. To try and stop the hemorrhaging of the votes of millions of young Americans who will not stand for this slaughter in their name, Kamala Harris, US vice-president, has been tasked with the job of calling for a ceasefire, while billions of US dollars continue to flow to enable the genocide.
And what of our country?
It is well known that our prime minister is an intimate friend of Benjamin Netanyahu and there is no doubt where his sympathies lie. India is no longer a friend of Palestine. When the bombing began, thousands of Modi’s supporters put up the Israeli flag as their DP on social media. They helped spread the vilest disinformation on behalf of Israel and the IDF. Even though the Indian government has now stepped back into a more neutral position – our foreign policy triumph is that we manage to be on all sides at once, we can be pro- as well as anti-genocide – the government has clearly indicated that it will act decisively against any pro-Palestine protestors.
President Joe Biden, head of state of the richest, most powerful country in the world, is helpless before Israel, even though Israel would not exist without US funding. It’s as though the dependent has taken over the benefactor.
And now, while the US exports what it has in abundant surplus – weapons and money to aid Israel’s genocide – India too is exporting what our country has in abundant surplus: the unemployed poor to replace the Palestinian workers who will no longer be given work permits to enter Israel. (I’m guessing there will be no Muslims among the new recruits.) People who are desperate enough to risk their lives in a war zone. People desperate enough to tolerate overt Israeli racism against Indians. You can see it expressed on social media, if you care to look. US money and Indian poverty combine to oil Israel’s genocidal war machine. What a terrible, unthinkable, shame.
The Palestinians, facing down the most powerful countries in the world, left virtually alone even by their allies, have suffered immeasurably. But they have won this war. They, their journalists, their doctors, their rescue teams their poets, academics, spokespeople, and even their children have conducted themselves with a courage and dignity that has inspired the rest of the world. The young generation in the Western world, particularly the new generation of young Jewish people in the US, have seen through the brainwashing and propaganda and have recognized apartheid and genocide for what it is. The governments of the most powerful countries in the Western world have lost their dignity, and any respect they might have had. Yet again. But the millions of protestors on the streets of Europe and the US are the hope for the future of the world.
Arundhati Roy Arundhati Roy was born in 1959 in Shillong, India. She studied architecture in New Delhi, where she now lives, and has worked as a film designer, actor, and screenplay writer in India. Her most recent book, a novel, is: “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.” Her other books include: “Listening to Grasshoppers: Fields Notes on Democracy,” “The God of Small Things,” and “The End of Imagination.
This blog is named after and in tribute to Roy’s 2002 article which now seems difficult to find. She made a speech at the World Social Forum on 27 January 2003. “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” I consider that this article answers and satisfies the question I posed in my recent Coming Soon: Should it properly be called Fascism?
This article considers Boris Johnson’s remarks about terrorist onanism and proposes two alternative terrorist profiles – one of terrorists and one of their agents.
Privilidged Mayor of London Boris ‘Bullingdon idiot’ Johnson claims that ‘If you look at all the psychological profiling about bombers, they typically will look at porn. They are literally w***ers.’ Johnson’s comments – like Johnson himself – don’t contribute much of anything to anything.
Firstly, a[ed:o}nonists and watchers of porn are accepting of and uninhibited in their sexuality. The most accepting of and uninhibited in their sexuality are gays and bisexuals. The intended slur is actually an insult to gay and bisexual sexuality.
Secondly, this issue of psychological profiles is equally BS. Psyschological profiles are of little use and little used because terrorists are so diverse. Later media stories cited psychological profiles by MI5 after I did some searches. That’s useful for rich ass Boris because researchers don’t have access to mythical psychological profiles by MI5.
Terrorism follows patterns. For example, there’s usually an exercise ongoing, it occurs at politically salient times and employs number symbolism. It is also often facilitated by local authorities – lucky there wasn’t any traffic, cops with radios or cars or motorcycles or helicopters in Paris, eh? We have police cars with lights and sirens and full of technology in the UK and they keep big guns in the back.
Once you accept that the actual terrorists are state actors and that terrorism serves political purposes for the rich elite, you can understand that MI5 itself serves these interests and that any profiles are profiles of political opponents labelled as terrorists.
To help, I’ve prepared two simple profiles – one of the terrorists and one of their servants, assistants or foot-soldiers.
Terrorist profile
Priviledged wealth. I mean in the top 1% of the wealthy. Born into it.
Privilidged position e.g. Mayor or former Mayor of London or New York, Prime Minister, former President, Home Secretary, Minister of Defence, etc.
Priviledged education. Notice that I’m not saying well-educated. public school, Cambridge, Oxford, Yale, etc
Neo-Con political orientation. I’m coming to realise that Neo-Con is not at all distant from Fascist or Neo-Fascist. Neo-Cons are using the same methods of terrorism, misdirection and victimisation as the Nazis that they financed.
Member of a privilidged fraternal organisation e.g. Bullingdon Club, Skull & Bones (formerly the Brotherhood of Death), Bavaria Grove, etc
Temporally and spatially local to Benjemin Netenyahu or Rudolph Giuliani.
Terrorist foot-soldiers profile
Employeed by a three-letter acronym e.g. CIA, FBI, MI5, MI6, SAS, FIU, SRR, MPS, Sad, Bet. (and the exception QinetiQ on 7/7, QiQ?).
Promoted for failure e.g. Ian Blair, Cressida Dick, Tony Blair?
Temporally and spatially local to Benjemin Netenyahu or Rudolph Giuliani.
With thanks to Webster Tarpley for the promoted for failure item. He discusses Hurricane Katrina and the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center facilitated by the FBI here.
I’ve had a book by Webster Tarpley infiltrated and confiscated by terrorist agents just recently. I guess – though I’ll admit that I’m uncertain – that it would be my local police. I ordered 911 SYNTHETIC TERROR through amazon.uk two weeks ago on 19 January. The terrorists don’t want me to read it.
8/8/15: I did intend to clarify that Johnson’s remarks are regarded as an attack on alt soc. but then that should be clear.
This article considers Boris Johnson’s remarks about terrorist onanism and proposes two alternative terrorist profiles – one of terrorists and one of their agents.