We Must Follow The Truth

It is important to bear in mind that political campaigns are designed by the same people who sell toothpaste and cars. 
( Noam Chomsky )

The fact that, in the United States, there are people serving ten-year prison terms for growing marijuana plants in their backyards while Wall Street racketeers, who have defrauded millions of people and destroyed the global economy, walk free is a kind of bizarre hypocrisy that boggles my mind.
( Mark Haskell Smith )

Ex-UK Prime Minister David Cameron was the Director of Corporate Affairs at Carlton TV from July 1994 to February 2001.
Central TV made a documentary revealing Westminster paedophiles.
When David Cameron was with Carlton TV, he was the executive responsible for buying out Central TV and burying that documentary.

A Nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but it’s lowest ones.
( Nelson Mandela )

If you do not want to be lied to, then you need to stop following politics. 
( Steven Magee )

The Explosion Of The Prison Population In The USA ..
Most people imagine that the explosion in the U.S. prison population during the past 25 years reflects changes in crime rates.
Few would guess that our prison population leaped from approximately 350,000 to 2.3million in such a short period of time due to changes in laws and policies, not changes in crime rates.
Yet it has been changes in our laws, particularly the dramatic increases in the length of our prison sentences, that have been responsible for the growth of our prison system, not increases in crime.
One study suggests that the entire increase in the prison population from 1980 to 2001 can be explained by sentencing policy changes.
( Michelle Alexander )

Yes the truth is that men’s ambition and their desire to make money are among the most frequent causes of deliberate acts of injustice.
( Aristotle )

It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies. 
( Noam Chomsky )

NHS targets say 85% of cancer patients should begin their first treatment within two months of being urgently referred by a GP.
When Jeremy Hunt started at the Department of Health, 87.3% had started treatment in that time.
When he left, that had dropped to 78.3%.

During a radio interview about police probes into historical child abuse allegations, Boris Johnson said that money spent on the investigations had been “spaffed up the wall” and would have been better used putting officers on the street.

This Government is responsible for deaths, it’s responsible for starvation, it’s responsible for untold suffering and despair on a scale we have not seen since the Victorian era.
( Peter Stefanovic, 15.06.2019 )

Extremes to the right and to the left of any political dispute are always wrong. 
( Dwight D. Eisenhower )

Theresa May And The Tories Created A Hostile Environment ..
I can recall exactly where and when I felt most proud of the country I was born in.
The evening of July 27, 2012, in the London Stadium, watching Danny Boyle’s jaw-dropping Olympics opening ceremony, which ditched the usual jingoistic flaunting of our Empire-ruling history and told the world about another version of Britain that rarely makes the tourist biscuit tin lids.
It showcased this country’s humour, ingenuity, resistance, generosity and openness.
We saw NHS nurses, suffragettes, CND protestors, punks, Jarrow marchers and the first wave of Commonwealth immigrants from the Caribbean marching behind a huge model of their ship, the Empire Windrush.
It made most of us feel good about living in a successful multi-cultural country, an emotion that exploded in that stadium the following Saturday when half-Jamaican Jessica Ennis and Somalian-born Mo Farah helped give British sport its proudest night.
Many on the right despised Boyle’s show, though.
A daily Telegraph report attracted 800 angry comments, the first of which read:
“We don’t want that Marxist tripe vision of Britain”.
And Tory MP Aidan Burley called it “leftie, multicultural crap”.
Downing Street distanced itself from Burley’s comments, saying “Clearly we don’t agree”.
But how clear was that disagreement?
Months after those Olympics, the then Home Secretary Theresa May introduced a policy of creating a “hostile environment” for foreigners with a group set up to examine Migrant Access To Benefits And Public Services.
Their mission was to make it so hard for people to access the system without papers documenting their entire stay in the UK, they would be forced back to their country of origin.
To hammer home the message, threatening billboards were driven around London saying: “Go home or face arrest”.
May now denies this was a deliberate policy to deport people as she chased some mythical net immigration figure, but the then head of the civil service Lord Kerslake told the BBC that some ministers felt the hostile environment policy was “almost reminiscent of Nazi Germany”.
At the time, the Tories were panic stricken over their core voters defecting to UKIP due to immigration levels.
They had to appear tougher than Nigel Farage to win back those votes, so deliberately depicted immigrants as a problem rather than a solution to the nation’s skills shortages.
It was partly why David Cameron called a referendum on EU membership, which allowed the Nigel garage-led Leave EU camp to successfully play the xenophobic card, portraying dark-skinned foreigners as the enemy within.
The racist genie was out of the bottle.
Hate crimes went through the roof, anti-fascist campaigning MP Jo Cox was murdered by someone wanting “Britain First” and members of that Windrush generation, invited by the Crown to rebuild post-war Britain, were now losing their jobs and benefits, being denied cancer treatment, and sent to deportation centres unless they had detailed documentary proof they weren’t undesirable aliens.
Officials even destroyed their Windrush landing cards to make that act harder.
This has been a shameless period in British history as the bigoted and economically illiterate notion that immigrants are innately bad has become accepted wisdom.
The racist genie has to go back into the bottle.
We have to remove this lingering stench from the national conversation.
We have to remember that we’re all descendants of immigrants just like those who came over on the Empire Windrush.
We need to take our country back.
Not to some all-white, 1950s fantasy world that never existed, but to that inspirational evening in 2012.
When Danny Boyle made us realise that Britain’s greatest assets are its tolerance, diversity, defiance of oppression and desire to embrace.
( Brian Reade, 21.04.2018 )

You can’t keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbours.
You know, eventually those snakes are going to turn on whoever has them in the backyard.
( Hillary Rodham Clinton )

He is shallow, friendless, disloyal, deceitful, a womanising, mad-haired, narcissitic, liar.
( Brian Reade on Boris Johnson )

The only people truly bound by campaign promises are the voters who believe them. 
( Christopher Hitchens )

Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organisation of hatreds. 
( Henry Adams )

For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit. 
( Noam Chomsky )

The Relentless Smear Campaign Against Jeremy Corbyn ..
The Conservative Party, the Tory-supporting media, and Jewish activist groups, who some claim many have infiltrated the Labour Party by becoming members, seem to devote much of their time and energy attempting to discredit and blacken the reputation of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
The relentless rhetoric, unfounded allegations, propaganda and fear-mongering have persuaded many, both neutrals and Labour supporters, and some who should know better, to join the attack on Mr Corbyn.
The reasons for the prolonged smear-campaign, which started almost the moment Mr Corbyn was elected as Labour Party leader, are fairly obvious to smart and intelligent people.
The initial, ridiculous unfounded attacks were for being a threat to national security and befriending just about every terrorist organisation.
When this didn’t work, the meaning of anti-semitism was changed overnight.
Because Mr Corbyn is sympathetic to Palestine and criticises Israel, this has been the relentless rhetoric ever since.
The reasons, of course, is that the elite and the wealthy are worried (shit-scared, in fact) that if Mr Corbyn did take office as Prime Minister he would, without doubt, look closely at tax-havens, offshore bank accounts, tax-evasion, money-laundering, corruption, and the dodgy goings-on in the banking and financial sectors.
They simply want to stop Mr Corbyn becoming the UK Prime Minister, no matter what they have to do or say, or how dirty or low down in the gutter they have to go.
( Len Firswood, 27.06.2019 )

Propaganda campaigns in general have been closely attuned to elite interests.
( Noam Chomsky )

A person with true power doesn’t need to attack.
A person without power attacks constantly. 
( DaShanne Stokes )

Bullies are all the same.
They are thin-skinned and cannot accept criticism, but find nothing wrong with name-calling, insulting, undermining and humiliating the characters of good, honest people.
( Rose Winfold )

I think it only makes sense to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of life, and to challenge them.
Unless a justification for them can be given, they are illegitimate, and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human freedom. 
( Noam Chomsky )

Being poor is not simply a matter of lacking opportunities to convert one’s labour into a wage, or a living wage, for that matter, but rather of becoming indebted and, through the commodification of these debts, paying an ever-higher price for being poor. 
( Noelle Stout )

Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime. 
( Aristotle )

Try to look at causes and solve problems.
Do not concentrate on military solutions.
Do not seek military solutions.
Terrorism is a political problem.
Seek political solutions.
Diplomacy works. 
( Eqbal Ahmed )

Rewarding jaundiced Boris Johnson for self-serving Brexit fibs largely responsible for the current chaos would be like signing a weekly direct debit for the burglar who just ransacked your home and stole the family silver.
( Kevin Maguire, 28.04.2019 )

America cannot survive a regime as an international tyrant.
Only through cooperation of nations will the citizens of the world thrive.
( Kilroy J. Oldster )

The many are more incorruptible than the few.
They are like the greater quantity of water which is less easily corrupted than a little.
( Aristotle )

The Violated Treaties ..
Some years back Richard Nixon warned the American people that Russia was bad because she had not kept any treaty or agreement signed with her.
You can trust the Communists, the saying went, to be Communists.
Indian people laugh themselves sick when they hear these statements.
America has yet to keep one Indian treaty or agreement despite the fact that the United States government signed over four hundred such treaties and agreements with Indian tribes.
It would take Russia another century to make and break as many treaties as the United States has already violated.
( Vine Deloria Jr. )

When you hear and read prominent people and politicians continually criticising and attempting to blacken an opponent’s name or reputation, you can be sure it’s either jealousy, or more likely, fearful of that opponent.
( Dion Felsrow )

So casual is Boris Johnson’s acquaintance with the truth, assuming immediately that he’s lying saves time.
( Kevin Maguire, 16.06.2019 )

Both are strangers to the truth, guilty of odious racism and are Me-Me-Me egomaniacs elevating themselves first, second and third.
( Kevin Maguire on Boris Johnson and Donald Trump, 28.04.2019 )

Blind party loyalty will be our downfall.
We must follow the truth wherever it leads. 
( DaShanne Stokes )

Now it is evident that the form of government is best in which every man, whoever he is, can act best and live happily. 
( Aristotle )

More than half (165 of 323) of all magistrates courts in England and Wales have been closed since 2010, forcing defendants, witnesses, police, lawyers and judges to travel sometimes more than 50 miles to access local justice.
Seven more are set to close by September this year (2019).

Boris Avoided As Much Questioning As Possible ..
During his time as London Mayor, Boris Johnson bought water cannons for £320,000, although he never used them and sold them at a £300,000 loss.
He also wasted £46million of public money on his botched Garden Bridge without ever beginning construction.
He dropped targets for new affordable homes and slammed the ‘lefty’ idea of social housing as something that’s ‘not good for people’.
The Estuary Airport was a Boris vanity project.
He spent around £10million of taxpayers money on a scheme which was ultimately rejected by the Davies Commission.
When Ken Livingstone was London Mayor he took questions every week until the journalists had run out of questions to ask.
Boris Johnson avoided as much questioning as possible and took only one question per journalist with a strict half-hour cut-off time at his press conference, once a month.
Likewise, he cut the State of London Debate from a day at a weekend to two hours on a weekday evening.

Illegal immigrants have always been a problem in the USA.
Ask any indigenous American Indian.
( Rose Winfold )

I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people under the pretence of taking care of them.
( Thomas Jefferson )

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists. 
( Franklin D. Roosevelt )

No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious and charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.
( Kurt Vonnegut )

When you’re dealing with frauds and liars, listen more to what they don’t say than what they do. 
( DaShanne Stokes )

Boris Bikes Or Ken’s Cycles ? ..
He was a terrible Foreign Secretary in a rehearsal for No 10, laughing about dead bodies in Libya and cack-handedly extending a British-Iranian mother’s jail sentence in Iran.
Equally his eight-year reign as London Mayor was a complete failure compared with Labour predecessor Ken Livingstone’s innovative terms, the Tory scamster squandering £40million on vanity buses and a £43million luvvie unbuilt garden bridge.
Boris Airport was a pricey fiction and even the “Boris Bikes” network was inherited from Livingstone, “Ken’s Cycles” a more accurate eponymous tribute.
( Kevin Maguire on Boris Johnson, 16.06.2019 )

If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all. 
( Noam Chomsky )

A politician is a hog grateful to whoever is rattling the stick inside the swill bucket.
It is time to take the swill bucket away. 
( Mike Lofgren )

Most politicians are corrupt as they do not represent the masses that voted for them, but rather they choose to return numerous favours to the corporations that funded their election campaigns. 
( Steven Magee )

I have a problem with people who take the Constitution loosely and the Bible literally.
( Bill Maher )

A Stupid Person Is Dangerous ..
A stupid leader or politician is a dangerous enemy.
There is no defence against stupidity.
Facts, protests, reasons, even the truth, fall on deaf ears.
When presented with irrefutable evidence the stupid person will become irritable, critical and offensive, and just push the truth aside as inconsequential or incidental.
Great caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person, they are dangerous.
( Flori Swedon )

Everyone’s worried about stopping terrorism.
Well, there’s really an easy way: Stop participating in it.
( Noam Chomsky )

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
No one in this world, so far as I know, and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me, has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.
Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.
( H.L. Mencken )

Governments which have a regard to the common interest are constituted in accordance with strict principles of justice, and are therefore true forms.
But those which regard only the interest of the rulers are all defective and perverted forms, for they are despotic, whereas a state is a community of free men.
( Aristotle )

They declare that it is unpatriotic and disruptive to question the workings of authority, but patriotic to institute harsh and regressive policies that benefit the wealthy, undermine social programs that serve the needs of the great majority, and subordinate a frightened population to increased state control. 
( Noam Chomsky )

To Be Offended Is A Choice We Make ..
Certainly clumsy, embarrassing, unprincipled, and mean spirited things do occur in our interactions with other people that would allow us to take offence.
However, it ultimately is impossible for another person to offend you or to offend me.
Indeed, believing that another person offended us is fundamentally false.
To be offended is a choice we make.
It is not a condition inflicted or imposed upon us by someone or something else.
( David A. Bednar )

When Jeremy Hunt became health secretary, 95.4% of cancer patients urgently referred by their GP were seen by a specialist within two weeks, exceeding the national 93% target.
When he left in July 2018, the proportion seen in that time had dropped to 91.9%.

The NHS Constitution says at least 95% of patients attending A&E should be admitted, transferred or discharged within 4 hours.
When Jeremy Hunt took over as health secretary in 2012, 94.9% were seen in that time.
By the time he left 6 years later, that figure had dropped to 84%.

May I stress the need for courageous, intelligent, and dedicated leadership.
Leaders of sound integrity.
Leaders not in love with publicity, but in love with justice.
Leaders not in love with money, but in love with humanity.
Leaders who can subject their particular egos to the greatness of the cause.
( Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. )

We owe our loyalty to each other and to our children’s children, not to party politics.
( DaShanne Stokes )

64% has been slashed from Liverpool’s council budget and 3,000 staff lost since 2010.
Tory cuts are making it harder for local government workers to provide the public services we all rely on.
( Dan Carden, 17.06.2019 )

In 2015, Jeremy Hunt said, “we want 5,000 more GPs by 2020”.
Figures show that when Mr Hunt left the Department of Health in July 2018, there were just 162 more than when he made his commitment.
The government has now dropped the time limit on the commitment.

When he was Mayor what did Boris Johnson cost London?
Up to over £600million in poor decisions, ideological dogma and vanity schemes.
( Christian Wolmar, Independent, 08.09.2015 )