Who murdered Jo Cox?

It is sometimes said that nothing happens by accident.  Nevertheless, we do not have to delve too far into history to find examples of events which appear not to have been orchestrated.  Consider two momentous events in the history of western Europe: the English reformation and the French revolution.

The English reformation began in 1534 when Henry VIII abandoned the Roman Catholic Church, and England officially adopted protestant christianity.  The main reason for this appears to have been the refusal of the Pope to allow Henry to divorce his wife.  Henry wanted to divorce his wife because she had failed to provide him with a male heir.  She was pregnant many times, but produced only one child that lived, and that one child was a girl.

The French Revolution describes a series of events which began in 1789.  It appears that there was a lot of political unrest in France in the years leading to the revolution, but it appears also that the main cause of the popular uprising of 1789 was a hail storm which destroyed crops in many parts of northern France, and particularly in the vicinity of Paris.  As a result, the citizens of Paris were short of food, and this shortage of food prompted many of them to rebel.

In short, a major event in European history took place because of one woman's reproductive difficulties, and another took place because of inclement weather.

As I write we are just two days away from the referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union, and the major news story in the United Kingdom is the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox.  Jo was not well known, and I cannot recall having heard of her prior to her death.  She was however the mother of two young children.

It is hard to think of any MP whose murder would have affected the mood of the public in quite the same way, and it is not at all surprising that many people in the Remain camp are using her death as a political weapon.  The whole thing has been so convenient for the Remain vote that it is also not surprising that at least some political bloggers are arguing that her death was orchestrated.

It is still early days, and I don't want readers of this blog to leap to any conclusions, but consider these points:

• Early press reports suggested that Jo Cox was attacked after intervening in a fight between two men.  It was later reported that she was set upon by a lone man.
• At least one witness has reported that the killer repeatedly shouted the name of a political party, whereas at least one other witness has said that the killer did not yell anything.
• Jo Cox was supposedly shot three times, but at least one witness has denied hearing any gun shots.
• The man charged with her murder is supposed to have been an avid reader of political material, whereas not one person who knew him was aware of him having any political leanings.
• Video footage of the alleged killer being arrested does not show any blood splashes on either him or his clothing.

Successive governments in this country - whether Labour or Conservative or coalition - have shown quite substantial disregard for the sanctity of human life, and it would not surprise me at all if it transpires that the establishment sacrificed one of its own in a bid to influence the outcome of a critical referendum.

But then, successive governments in this country - whether Labour or Conservative or coalition - have also shown quite substantial disregard for the truth, and I wondered at an early stage whether or not Jo Cox had in fact died.

Please take some time to watch this video analysis of the murder:

Two more analytical videos can be found on these two links:
Were bankers involved?
Jo Cox murder false flag

Related previous posts include:
We can't trust chameleon Dave

Does the EU maintain peace?

As I write there is less than one week to go before Britain votes on whether or not to remain in the European Union.  Many years ago I read a profile of a man called Madron Seligman who at the time was a Member of the European Parliament for the evil Conservative Party.  He was also a close friend of Ted Heath, who was the Prime Minister who took Britain into what is now the European Union.

Seligman recounted how he and Heath had holidayed in Europe shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War.  They knew that war was imminent, and felt that something should be done to prevent the outbreak of another such war.  To cut a long story short, the European Union was viewed by many people as a way to ensure that there would never again be a war in Europe.  In addition, Germany passed a law banning any political party from associating itself with Hitler's regime.

I decided many years ago that the whole idea of the European Union preventing another war was absolute nonsense.  One of the main effects of the EU has been to undermine national identity.  This has had the effect of increasing what might be termed nationalist sentiment in many of the EU's member states.  This has been confirmed by a recent study by the University of Leipzig, which reports the following:

• One third of people in Germany think the country is dangerously overpopulated by foreigners.
• More than twenty percent think that Germany needs a single strong party which embodies the national community as a whole.
• Twelve percent believe that Germans are by nature superior to other people.
• Ten percent want Germany to be led by a fuhrer - the title adopted by Hitler while serving as both the president and chancellor of Germany.

None of the above implies that anyone in Germany wants another war in Europe - or does it?  I hope not, but I have been wrong before.

Related previous posts include:
Britain First and the fiction of a free country

Is holocaust denial a bad thing?

A national newspaper has reported on the Vote Leave campaign as follows: The campaign for Britain to leave the EU has been infiltrated by dozens of far-Right extremists with racist views.

I interpret the word infiltrate to imply deception, and the Merriam-Webster dictionary currently defines the word in terms of secrecy.  Therefore I fail to see how a young woman with a large swastika tattoo can be said to have infiltrated any organisation.

At the time of writing, the newspaper identifies Vote Leave campaigner Mark Collett as a senior BNP official, but earlier today I typed his surname into the search box on the BNP website, and it produced no results.

The newspaper also has an issue with another Vote Leave campaigner, Richard Edmonds, having attended a conference of holocaust deniers - that is, people who deny that Hitler's National Socialist regime deliberately exterminated millions of Jews.  This conference was reported on by the same newspaper, although with some subsequent modification.

Some readers might find it curious that many people in the press and on television seem to regard holocaust denial as a sign of bad character.  There are many academic disputes about supposed historical events, and we are not normally expected to demonise people who take one point of view rather than another.

I hope to write in more detail on this subject in future, but then I have said that before.  I will however draw the reader's attention to two quotes from the newspaper report:

Its underpinnings in the realm of historical fact are non-existent – no Hitler order, no plan, no budget, no gas chambers, no autopsies of gassed victims, no bones, no ashes, no skulls, no nothing.

I want the Jews and whoever else is spinning this story to answer certain questions concerning the technology.

I have two questions.  First, why are we expected to despise people who question a supposed historical event when the evidence to support it is lacking?  Second, is any national newspaper proposing at any point to answer the questions concerning the technology?

Related previous posts include:
The denial of Stalin's holocaust
Treason and hypocrisy
The Jews are afraid, but what about the rest of us?

A sense of the inevitable

A lot has changed since I began writing this blog more than three years ago.  One change is that I am now far more likely to believe in the power of the inevitable.

When Leo Tolstoy wrote War and Peace, he believed that all of history is an inevitable process which people cannot influence - not even supposedly powerful people like kings and emperors.  On the one hand, this might seem an utterly bizarre notion, but on the other hand there are always exceptions to just about any rule.

Consider football.  Suppose Everton play Swansea.  It is easy to envisage either team winning the match.  Now suppose that Tottenham play Chesterfield.  It is hard to imagine any realistic outcome other than a victory for Tottenham.

Tolstoy wrote his novel about the French invasion of Russia in 1812.  The invasion was a complete disaster which proved to be the beginning of the end for the Emperor Napoleon.

It is hard not to see a strong sense of inevitability about the events of 1812.  Napoleon led a very large army into Russia with little in the way of supplies.  It had apparently not occurred to him that it would be very difficult to keep such a large army supplied by foraging.  Many of his troops were killed in battle as he marched towards Moscow - notably at the Battle of Borodino - and many more died of hunger.

Eventually the French captured Moscow, but found that almost the entire population had fled.  As winter began to draw in, the French abandoned Moscow, and began the long march home. Tens of thousands of soldiers died from the effects of hunger and extreme cold, while many others were either killed in battle or murdered by Russian civilians.

But enough of history.  As I write, the British people are looking forward to the long-promised referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union.  I have not so far spoken out about this, partly because I have a sense of inevitability.

I have previously said confidently that I expect Scotland to leave the United Kingdom at some point in the future, and now I confidently expect Britain to leave the European Union.  Even if the outcome of the referendum is a victory for staying in, then I still think it would be only a minor setback.  Nothing is more likely to bring the European Union to its knees than its own continued exisence.

As a final points, the European Union has nothing to do with the European Court of Human Rights.  That is an agency of the Council of Europe, an entirely separate body.

Related previous posts include:
Austerity versus democracy in Greece

Jeremy Corbyn is close to the truth

There has been a lot of fuss in the press recently about allegations of anti-semitism in the Labour Party.  If I've got it right, three councillors have been suspended because of remarks they made which were deemed to be unacceptable.

I don't know the full facts, but it appears that in at least one case the supposed anti-semitism revolves around a quite reasonable although tongue-in-cheek criticism of Israel.  I interpret anti-semitism to mean an irrational dislike of Jews, and therefore I will not use that particular label about criticism of the terror state of Israel.

I remember how a year or two back a famous newspaper columnist asserted that people who criticise Israel also want Britain to have sharia law.  Am I perhaps the exception which proves that particular rule?

More recently another newspaper columnist asserted that people who condemn Israel for its various crimes are unwilling to condemn other countries for similar crimes.  However I will happily condemn any government in any country which perpetrates acts of terror.

While Jeremy Corbyn has reacted to the negative press coverage about his party by expelling a few people, his response has still been dismissed as inadequate by many people in the media.  Apparently Jeremy Corbyn said publicly just before the local elections that there are more important issues facing the country than anti-semitism, and so there are.

What exactly is a Jew?  A few months ago I read an essay on the internet about the causes of anti-semitism which argued that Jews are not a race, which is absolutely correct.  Nevertheless the law in the United Kingdom on inciting racial hatred does protect Jews - but how many people in the Jewish community ever protest about this?  It seems that the non-race of the Jews are quite happy to be treated as a race when it suits them.

Pretty well anyone can become a Jew because pretty well anyone can pretend to follow a religion based on the Old Testament.  Once you have asserted that you are a Jew, you acquire a privileged status whereby you apparently have the right to label anyone who annoys you as an anti-semite.

Of course being Jewish - or claiming to be Jewish - does not exempt you from being unemployed or homeless or hungry.

Jeremy Corbyn was right to say that there are more important issues facing Britain than anti-semitism.  If you dispute that, then maybe you should try going without food for a couple of days.  It might help you to reassess your values.

Related previous posts include:
Starvation Britain
Are you anti-semitic? 

Mutual defence is evil

The Polish government wants NATO to help defend it against possible Russian aggression.

NATO was founded in 1949 as a mutual defence organisation.  Mutual defence is fundamentally wrong, although I can't think of anyone other than the fictitious Edmund Blackadder ever saying so.

Is there any evidence that mutual defence discourages wars from happening?  I can't think of any, although comments are welcome.  What I do know is that the past twenty years have witnessed wars in such countries as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria - and neither NATO nor any other mutual defence arrangement prevented a single one of those wars from happening.

Rather than preventing wars, mutual defence treaties tend to make wars - when they occur - much larger and far more destructive than would otherwise be the case.  The two world wars would not have happened had it not been for the insane and immoral belief in mutual defence.  Wars would still have happened, but they would not have been grotesque calamities on a global scale.

I often wonder what right the United Kingdom - or any country for that matter - has to go to war against another country which every other country in the world does not equally enjoy.  For example, Britain took part in the bombing of Libya in 2011, shortly after David Cameron became Prime Minister.  If Libya were ever to bomb Britain, then David Cameron would either have to condone the bombing, or else be guilty of monumental hypocrisy.

Of course we are often expected to believe that certain countries have not merely a right but also a duty to go to war.  Maybe the people who hold to this point of view could explain in what circumstances another country might have a duty to go to war against Britain.  For example, should any country have gone to war against Britain in 2011 in order to punish the British for waging war against Libya, and murdering Libyan civilians?

Related previous posts include:
George and Baldrick
What is a patriot?

Is the steel industry worth saving?

As I write, there is a lot of comment in the national press about whether or not the British government should try to save jobs in what is left of our steel industry.

Allowing our steel industry to close would leave Britain dependent upon imports of steel from other countries.  We would have to accept what those other countries offered us in terms of price and quality.

I am not advocating a return to the days of state ownership, with its flair for incompetence. After all, how many people nowadays regard British cars from the 1970s as design classics?

Nevertheless I cannot see how a country which can afford to squander billions of pounds on vanity projects like HS2 cannot also afford to require that the steel used in constructing HS2 be produced in this country.

Britain has lost its coal industry.  Money that was once spent on keeping the coal industry afloat is now spent on other things, and yet I cannot help but wonder if we are really better off for having lost our coal industry.  If the coal mines were such a drain on our economy, then their closure ought logically to have heralded a new era of prosperity.  If that happened, then I for one failed to notice.

Britain has yet to return to the low levels of unemployment last seen in the 1960s, and many people still queue for food banks.  I wonder if that situation could really be improved by the loss of our steel industry.

Related previous posts include:
How important is manufacturing?
The end of coal