The Iron Wall - in 1923 leading Zionist Ze'ev Jabotinsky wrote about the impossibility of a Two State Solution, because he understood the nature of colonialism.

Ze'ev Jacobintsky

-

The Iron Wall is an essay written by Ze'ev Jabotinsky in 1923. It was originally published in Russian, as he was born in Russia as Vladimir Yevgenyevich Zhabotinsky and wrote for the Russian press.^[1]

Written in 1923, by Ze'ev Jacobintsky, in the same year as The Beer Hall Putsch, also known as the Munich Putsch, which was a failed coup d'état by Nazi Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP) leader Adolf Hitler, Generalquartiermeister Erich Ludendorff and other Kampfbund leaders in Munich, Bavaria, on 8–9 November 1923, during the Weimar Republic.

He wrote the essay after the British Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill prohibited Zionist settlement on the east bank of the Jordan River, and formed the Zionist Revisionist party after writing it.^[2]

Jabotinsky argued that the Palestinian Arabs would not agree to a Jewish majority in Palestine, and that "Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population – behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach."^[1] The only solution to achieve peace and a Jewish state in the Land of Israel, he argued, would be for Jews to first establish a strong Jewish state, which would eventually prompt the Arabs to "drop their extremist leaders, whose watchword is ‘never!’ and pass the leadership to the moderate groups, who will approach us with a proposal that we should both agree to mutual concessions."

A week following the publication of this essay, Jabotinsky followed with "The Ethics of the Iron Wall," in which he argued that morality comes before everything else, and that Zionism is "moral and just," since it subscribes to "national self-determination" as a "sacred principle," which Arabs may also enjoy

The Iron Wall.

Full essay

https://en.jabotinsky.org/media/9747/the-iron-wall.pdf 

I recommend my readers to read it, it is a short read, 8 minutes or 10...

In what follows I make my own comments on the meaning of this essays and it's impact upon the shituation in Palestine.

"The Iron Wall

Original in Russian, Razsviet, 4.11.1923

Colonisation of Palestine

Agreement with Arabs Impossible at present 

Zionism Must Go Forward

"It is an excellent rule to begin an article with the most important point. But this time, I find it necessary to begin with an introduction, and, moreover, with a personal introduction.

I am reputed to be an enemy of the Arabs, who wants to have them ejected from Palestine, and so forth. It is not true.

Emotionally, my attitude to the Arabs is the same as to all other nations – polite indifference. 

Politically, my attitude is determined by two principles. 

First of all, I consider it utterly impossible to eject the Arabs from Palestine. There will always be two nations in Palestine – which is good enough for me, provided the Jews become the majority. 

And secondly, I belong to the group that once drew up the Helsingfors Programme, the programme of national rights for all nationalities living in the same State. 

In drawing up that programme, we had in mind not only the Jews , but all nations everywhere, and its basis is equality of rights.

I am prepared to take an oath binding ourselves and our descendants that we shall never do anything contrary to the principle of equal rights, and that we shall never try to eject anyone. 

This seems to me a fairly peaceful credo.

But it is quite another question whether it is always possible to realise a peaceful aim by peaceful means. 

For the answer to this question does not depend on our attitude to the Arabs; but entirely on the attitude of the Arabs to us and to Zionism."

----

In this last paragraph in this section Jacobintsky lays all the responsibility for any difficulties the Zionists might face squarely upon the Palestinian people and their resistance to being colonised. The Zionists are innocent.

He then states the following.

----

Voluntary Agreement Not Possible

"Voluntary Agreement Not Possible.

There can be no voluntary agreement between ourselves and the Palestine Arabs. 

Not now, nor in the prospective future. I say this with such conviction, not because I want to hurt the moderate Zionists. 

I do not believe that they will be hurt. Except for those who were born blind, they realised long ago that it is utterly impossible to obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting "Palestine" from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority.

My readers have a general idea of the history of colonisation in other countries. 

I suggest that they consider all the precedents with which they are acquainted, and see whether there is one solitary instance of any colonisation being carried on with the consent of the native population. There is no such precedent.

The native populations, civilised or uncivilised, have always stubbornly resisted the colonists, irrespective of whether they were civilised or savage."

----

Jabotinsky admits that Colonialism always generates a fierce resistance amongst the people who lands are to colonised. We all know that Colonialism is inherently an evil process, a cruel and bloody one.

As he processes into this essay he makes it quite clear what the true stance of Zionism is, all the time seeking to absolve the Zionist project of any culpability.

The phrase 'the most moral army in the world' is drawn from this essay. Read on to see it’s roots, and the soil in which that false flag is planted.

----

Colonisation.

"It does not matter at all which phraseology we employ in explaining our colonising aims, Herzl's or Sir Herbert Samuel's.

Colonisation carries its own explanation, the only possible explanation, unalterable and as clear as daylight to every ordinary Jew and every ordinary Arab.

Colonisation can have only one aim, and Palestine Arabs cannot accept this aim. It lies in the very nature of things, and in this particular regard nature cannot be changed.

The Iron Wall 

We cannot offer any adequate compensation to the Palestinian Arabs in return for Palestine. And therefore, there is no likelihood of any voluntary agreement being reached. So that all those who regard such an agreement as a condition sine qua non for Zionism may as well say "non" and withdraw from Zionism."

----

Two State Solution as a strategic weapon of hopeless hope.

The Two State solution was always dead in the water. It was never at the centre of Zionist aspirations, from the get-go, and the aspirations of the Two State Solution promoted to Western Audiences was always a strategic tactic, designed to enable the colonisation to move ahead, protected by Hope. The Hope of The Western audiences.

Zionists, and importantly, the Ruling Class in the West fully understood this strategic tactic and played along, delaying the necessary awakening amongst the western electorates, to buy the Zionists time to 'change the facts on the ground' through mass immigration of Jewish people, and settlement, and then by conquest and occupation, and now by total destruction of Palestinian civil and social and economic and political infrastructure.

---

Jabotisnky proceeds.

Here Jabotinsky sets ups the claim that Zionism is inherently Moral, and that outside forces should back it all the way.

——

The Iron Wall

"Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population. 

Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population – behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach.

That is our Arab policy; not what we should be, but what it actually is, whether we admit it or not. 

What need, otherwise, of the Balfour Declaration? Or of the Mandate? 

Their value to us is that outside Power has undertaken to create in the country such conditions of administration and security that if the native population should desire to hinder our work, they will find it impossible.

And we are all of us ,without any exception, demanding day after day that this outside Power, should carry out this task vigorously and with determination.

In this matter there is no difference between our "militarists" and our "vegetarians". 

Except that the first prefer that the iron wall should consist of Jewish soldiers, and the others are content that they should be British.

We all demand that there should be an iron wall. 

Yet we keep spoiling our own case, by talking about "agreement" which means telling the Mandatory Government that the important thing is not the iron wall, but discussions. Empty rhetoric of this kind is dangerous. And that is why it is not only a pleasure but a duty to discredit it and to demonstrate that it is both fantastic and dishonest.”

Zionism Moral and Just

“Two brief remarks:

In the first place, if anyone objects that this point of view is immoral, I answer: It is not true: either Zionism is moral and just ,or it is immoral and unjust. 

But that is a question that we should have settled before we became Zionists. Actually we have settled that question, and in the affirmative.

We hold that Zionism is moral and just. And since it is moral and just, justice must be done, no matter whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmet agree with it or not.

There is no other morality."

----

This then lays out the coffin of Palestinian self determination, the sarcophagus of their human rights, the entombment of their land tenure and polity, the grave that is the erasure of their culture and their peoples from those lands, and ultimately the denial of their natural right to live peacefully on the land they have lived on for thousands of years, long before the advent os Judaism, Christianity or Islam.

The question then becomes how many nails must be used to ensure that the coffin lid is firmly shut, and cannot be re-opened.

The assault on Gaza is one of those nails. 

The settlements across the West Bank are another bag of nails.

USUK unconditional support for their pet colonial project is another. That support is strategic in that it is designed to enrage, divide and destabilise the entire Arab polity.

The lack of detailed understanding of the history, the genesis of the so-called Israel -Palestine 'conflict' amongst the voters of the Western Christian Colonial States is another nail.

My task here is to describe those nails, to describe the hammer striking those nails. 

The hammer is the collective Euro-Centric commercial interests, operating under the false flag of race superiority. Blair's odious 'clash of civilisations' articulated this in blatant terms, albeit misunderstood by Western audiences, as intended. 

Our task as a democratic peace loving population is to ensure our Governments do not facilitate the hammer, that the nails already hammered in are removed, gently and with care, such that the Zionists (and all colonialists and Neo-colonialists) are isolated from our collective legislatures where they wield undue influence and that they are eventually placed where they cannot harm the Palestinian people or any other people, for that matter.

Free Palestine! 

Free Western Democracy!  

Free us all from the abject, venal and cruel Ruling Class Establishment who have operated the colonial process for centuries.

The two are inextricably linked.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

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The Problem of Adversarial Politics.

The Problem of Adversarial Politics - Bullying as a modus operandi.

a brief overview

Adversarial dynamics and struggles for power tend towards bullying as an underlay for the flooring of 'debate' - the point is to win, rather than to arrive at an accurate understanding that informs and reassures all involved.

"In good conversation, there is neither victor nor vanquished - there is only better informed and reassured participants."

quote from Tim Field.

https://www3.gmu.edu/programs/icar/ijps/vol1_1/Burton.htm

"The party political system is historically adversarial. It evolved out of past feudal landlord and commoner confrontations. 

It became even more politically divisive with industrialization. 

It retained consensus support and remained viable as long as its authorities were in effective control.

The hierarchie's political adversaries and grass roots activists could be criminalised and exiled. Poverty and poverty based crime could be contained by criminalising the impoverished, building more jails and by 'transportation' of the convicted poor and many more impoverished people as indentured workers to build colonies on foreign lands, at the expense of the native peoples.

But with communications that help to establish a separate culture for the under privileged, and with the availability of weapons, effective control of the alienated became ever more difficult.

With economic growth in industrialisation and their democracies there has evolved a dominant middle class. Its members have no desire to be caught in the cross fire of any historical we-they confrontation. 

The press, radio and television and, more recently, social media have brought to its attention the absurdities of party political debate as a decision making process. 

Furthermore, the members of the dominant `capital' and `labour' parties are now seen to be in conflict largely for personal career reasons, not because of policy differences. 

There is a growing consensus that the problems civilization face must be tackled by less adversarial processes in which analysis and reason prevail."

Political Grooming and 'wedge' politics are designed to exacerbate the adversarial dynamics.

Use of dehumanising language targeted the perceived adversaries and marginalised groups within society is evident everywhere.

The 10 stages of Genocide - Sprouts Schools

The term 'sheeple' is a good example of that process, in that it inspires a sense of superiority among those who would use the term to describe others, who are deemed inferior.

We are all familiar with political and vernacular use of the words animal, cockroach, rat, vermin, monster, ape, snake, infestation, parasite, alien, savage and 'hate marches' as weapons. 

The lack of humane understanding, the lack of empathy and the reliance on incomplete or inaccurate 'information' bias and curated bigotry are all stimulated by the term 'sheeple'.

This is one example familiar to me within my own situation and I cite it here because so many among my contemporaries, left and right, feel it is fine to use that term. I have always been appalled by that term.

I find that when I challenge it, I experience push back, dismissal and derision and an unwillingness to explore the meaning of use of such terms.

'Sheeple' is no less dehumanising than 'towel heads' or 'faggots' or 'dykes' or any number of similar terms.

Debate or Discourse?

Adversarial dynamics and struggles for power tend towards bullying as a underlay for the flooring of 'debate' - the point is to win, rather than to arrive at an accurate understanding that informs and reassures all involved.

"In good conversation, there is neither victor nor vanquished - there is only better informed and reassured participants."

How bullying works: projection and scapegoating.

Written by Kitty S Jones

https://politicsandinsights.org/2015/01/22/how-bullying-works-projection-and-scapegoating/

"Very few people, when put to the test, have the integrity and moral courage to stand up against bullying, harassment, abuse, threats and corruption. The targets of adult bullying are selected often because they DO have the moral courage to challenge; many people will pass by on the other side.

A target of adult bullying is most often chosen because of their strength, not their weakness. Research shows that targets of bullying tend to have highly developed empathy, and sensitivity for others, a high degree of perceptiveness, high moral values, a well-developed integrity, a strong sense of fair play and reasonableness, a low propensity to violence, a reluctance to pursue grievance, disciplinary or legal action, a strong forgiving streak and a mature understanding of the need to resolve conflict with dialogue. 

Often, targets of bullying are independent, self-reliant and “different” in some way. Weak people often disingenuously confuse these hallmarks of character with weakness.

Bullies aim to inflict psychological injury more often than physical injury. Their main aim is to control, discredit, isolate and eliminate their target.

The word “victim” also allows disingenuous people to tap into and stimulate other people’s misconceptions and prejudices of victimhood which include the inference that the person was somehow complicit in the abuse. (See just-world fallacy and victim-blame narrative). 

I use the word “target”, which is also accurate because bullying involves the intentional singling out of a person or group for abuse.

Bullies, who have no integrity, are vindictive, aggressive, demanding, and regularly violate others’ boundaries; displaying aggression does not respect peoples’ rights, and a bully’s “requests” come with a negative consequence if the course of action demanded by the bully is declined. 

A bully’s bad behaviour is entirely his or her responsibility, they intend to cause their targets harm, to undermine them and damage them socially, emotionally, psychologically and sometimes, physically. And they often do."

Corbyn - making an example

Jeremy Corbyn and the false anti-Semitism, ‘friend of terrorists’, ‘communist spy’, ‘protest politician’ and ‘he’s unelectable’ charges laid against him present a recent and very well documented example of this dreadful behavioural dynamic. It’s sole purpose was to prevent a genuinely honest politician with a track record for integrity, honesty, empathy and a good understanding of the issues facing the body politic and society at large from gaining the position of Prime Minister, with  a majority in the House of Commons.

That bullying campaign was perpetrated within the Labour Party by a group who were aligned with Blairism (and its wars) and this was replicated throughout the News Media and online, through social media micro targeting campaigns, funded and supported by those concerned with Wealth Extraction and their power to protect Wealth Extraction from accountability for the avoidable harms it refuses, repeatedly, to avoid. 

Healthy Governance - avoiding avoidable harms.

The function of a healthy governance system is to maintain and support the population in living well and at peace.

Part of that process is the deployment collective resources to avoid avoidable harm and to prevent preventable harms.

There are harms that cannot be avoided and there are harms that can be avoided.

War can be avoided. War can be prevented. 

However as we see, again and again War is not avoided and we know too well that within war the murder of civilians and the destruction of civil infrastructure which form the essentials for ‘living well’  - schools, health care facilities, housing, roads, utilities - which are the basic human right of a civilian population caught in the crossfire of warfare - tends not to be avoided, more often than not by conscious choice.  The destruction is intentional, not accidental.

Collateral Damage :  A euphemism designed to throw a veil over the realities of warfare.

We cannot stop a violent hurricane from causing destruction - we can however build infrastructure designed to withstand the impact of such natural catastrophes. We could deploy resources to protecting the affected people’s welfare, supporting them in the recovery process. 

Resilience

Rather than raw personal human resilience,  we could choose to build in resilience as an infrastructure policy and thus offer more effective and efficient support for the people made vulnerable by the storm.

Likewise, regards Climate Disruption, we cannot stop the process underway because it is the result of a few centuries of build up of Carbon Dioxide and other pollutants into the atmosphere that will take centuries to reverse. We can reduce or stop further pollution yet the effect of such action will take decades to be felt.

What we can do is design resilience into infrastructure, social care, wealth sharing, aid systems and so on to offer best support and protection of the people made most vulnerable by Climate Disruption - that would be a matter of avoiding avoidable harms in the near, medium and long term.

Bullying in politics is lethal.

Bullying in politics undermines all these objectives and more by at attacking the proponents of equitable industrial, social and economic policy as a method of defending the status quo, a status quo born of adversarial violence as described in the beginning of this piece.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

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The English Christian Ruling Class perfected Holy War as a Colonial process. Weaponising internalised identity.

The English Christian Ruling Class perfected Holy War as a colonial process.

Weaponising internalised identity.

Entirely innocent children, now scarred by Genodical assault upon their homes.

Christians Roming (sic) and then anti-Roming all over the place. 

An unforgivable pun, my dear reader. Please bear with me.

The British Empire perfected Wholy (sic) War as a tool of Colonisation. Another pun bites the dust.

The three 'C' propaganda - Christianity, Civilisation, Commerce. Whole War. Total War.

1159. The Norman regime Invades Ireland because they are Christian Heretics, to offer them conversion and Salvation or death. (permit to do so received from the Pope).

1600s Protestant Plantations in Ireland to remove the Catholics and building Protestant settlements to bolster English Dominance - deliberately foster internalised hatreds that become multigenerational and almost impossible to resolve peacefully.

1640s White Supremacy Racism as a legalised form of oppression, in the English American colonies. Superiority as an identity, passed from one generation to the other, an endless supply of weaponised hearts and minds.

When we as ordinary people internalise a religious identity and we are told that we are superior and that others are inferior, and that the Religion is under attack, we become weaponised objects of the Hierarchy that manipulates us.

Our internalised sense of identity enters into a permanent state of flight or flight, which we now know causes the emotional reactive parts of our brain to over ride the calming logical forebrain. 

Tony Blair’s ‘clash of civilisations’ tactic. He knew exactly what he was doing. The racists and xenophobes took the bait. The bystanders did not understand what was being done, and remained as bystanders. Many protested. Their protests were acknowledged to some degree - freedom of speech, democracy etc., - and their demands for peace and justice repeatedly denied within the Legislature. Muslims were stereotyped as Jihadi's or Misogynists in this 'war of values'. 

Middle class faux-Feminist pundits rallied to the cause, very likely well aware of how this issue was being manipulated.

Examine the history and see the patterns, and what I understand from my wide reading of the history and observation of what happens is that the Israeli colony was and remains an English Empire project built around the same principles .

They Empire expected  it will last long enough to prevent the Arab world (which was always multi faith, multicultural, multi linguistic, and always occupied) from ever developing an independent economic policy.  

It is not, as the Western conspiracy theorists assert that the Israeli State is influencing the British or the Americans, it is that all three are walking, hands joined, to maintain the process of  de-populating lands for expansion,  targeting already vulnerable and oppressed populations, who once had a thriving polity and socialist self determining aspirations.

Economic dominance was the objective. By force.

The English Diplomatic Corps worked to favour some groups and Arab polities, promising them a bright future, and oppressed others, by denying them that promised future, and that created the sectarian identarian tension that lasts generations, sustained by trauma that remains unresolved. 

Gaza in 2023/24 is the direct result of all that. Naqba to Naqba.

Racism is a tool of the hierarchy.

Sectarianism is a tool of the hierarchy.

Misogyny is a tool of the hierarchy.

Bigotry is carefully curated.

Ant-Semitism is a European phenomenon, a curated hatred of a vulnerable population designed to deflect anger at the hierarchy and re-direct it at those most unable to protect themselves.

The Ableism of our times is part of that dynamic. When Government minister undermine supports for disabled people and then suggest too many are leaching off the tax payer and that the disabled should ‘do their duty’, bigotry against a vulnerable population is weaponised as a political tool.

Churchill's 'Dog in The Manger' speech is instructive.

I used to alter the tag line from Star Wars - The Empire Strikes Back - to 'Empower, it never strikes back.'

And every empowered people who are given the space, the resources and the tools of peaceful, democratic, equitable political, social and economic development to progress their general welfare will not strike back in violence. They have no need to. Until something happens to change that situation. Afghanistan prior to US Cold War interventions that brought down a nascent Socialist State. 

Russia was asked by the beleaguered Afghani socialists for assistance and protection from the USUK inspired counter-revolutionaries.

Russia made the error, went in with combat brigades, and the USUK created the Taliban to wear them down. 

All of this to prevent an independent non-aligned popular socialist state from emerging.

The resolution of the shituation in Palestine is in empowering both Arab and the Zionist colonialists to live together as humane beings, and that requires the dismantling of the Empire's interests in the region... in full. 

There's more that we who live within the Empires polity and have democratic voting rights and political rights of free association can do to help this progress - we can and must hold our Ruling Class to account for the harms that they have caused and are enabling. 

British support for Israel must be re-visioned by the British voters taking back control of their legislatures to legislate for peace and de-militarisation of foreign policy.

In essence the people who can best confront the British Establishment  and its depravity are the people who live within the borders of the United Kingdom, by democratic political action that removes the war makers from our legislatures and places a majority of peace makers and justice advocates in that body to uphold International Humanitarian Law and the UN Charter.... after all it is the British people whose taxes are being deployed to support an ongoing Genocide.

Clearly, the English Establishment will not voluntarily stand down.

This is no easy task, and it is much much easier than living in Palestine or the West Bank.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

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Letter to my MP on the failure of UK Parliament to uphold International Humanitarian Law and the interests of Peace.

The facts laid out in a meme.

The Undemining of Peace, by a pro-War activist Lawyer (the persecutor of Julian Assange)

To Gareth Thomas, MP

Following the clearly adversarial approach of Labour and Conservatives this Wednesday last, in the UK Parliament in Westminster, London, an approach that disabled the SNP Opposition Day Motion calling for an 'immediate ceasefire in Gaza', and the 'ending of the collective punishment of the Palestinian people by the Israeli State', a reasonable motion by all standards, and then replaced it with a watered down, conditional motion that sought to avoid a 'rebellion' within the Labour Party back benches, a move that does not serve the interests of Peace, but instead protects the interests of Israeli Military State, and Keir Starmer’s clearly undemocratic leadership of the Labour Party, I write to you to, respectfully, to demand that the Labour Co-operative MPs who are genuinely active in seeking Peace  and Justice step away from the Labour Party.

The same Labour Party that has repeatedly refused to hold Tony Blair et al to account for their War crimes, even when we had the evidence before us.

The country re-elected him in 2005. The country failed in it’s basic duty of care.

Since then both Labour and Conservatives  have launched or supported a series of amoral Wars in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere and have ordered Military action beyond our borders, in contravention of the Laws of War.

This means, in real terms, that the Parties and Parliament are de facto War Criminal Entities that remain unindicted.

This failure has led directly to the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, in that Russia used false claims similar to the way Blair et al have done, with the real politick understanding that in practice International Law does not apply to the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council.

The obvious hypocrisy of the different stances the UK Government has taken in relation to that War and all the other wars mentioned above is now clear, and presents a constant threat to world peace and co-operation.  

It is worth noting that in a world that permits and enables warfare, the co-operation required to meet the challenges of Climate Disruption is not possible.

You must understand, as a member of a co-operative, that mutual aid is an essential component of developing healthy policy and that the adversarial dynamics of the current Govt. vs Opposition run counter to the meaning of healthy governance.

With that in mind, I am calling on you to uphold Humanitarian Law and International Law and the Laws prohibiting War.

Jeremy Corbyn in 2015 indicated that he would, if he gained the position of Prime Minister, order that War Crimes Investigations be initiated.

That was the primary (unspoken) reason for the Establishments vicious slanderous attack upon him, and upon the pro-peace policies he supported. 

That was driving emotional reaction behind the internal Blairite Campaign within Labour to undermine his leadership.

That Campaign succeeded, because Labour MPs and Members refused to stand up for International Law. 

Blair walks free, on a healthy state pension. He is amassing a large fortune as a direct result of all of this.

That failure is unacceptable, intolerable and utterly repugnant.

Please confirm that you will move to uphold International Law, distance yourself and your Party from these abject War criminals and stand with the peaceful people of Earth in your role as a politician, as a community leader and as an official whose wages we pay.

I advise you that my future, your future and all our children’s futures would be better served were you to align with the Green Party and all other genuine progressives and work to hold the war criminals to account, be they British, Russian, Syrian, Ukrainian or Israeli, or any other.

Failure to respond positively to this request will place you in a position that history will deem adverse the the interests of the people, and of peace.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

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Starmer, Pope Benedict, Rishi Sunak and that gross election 'advertisement'. Bullies Exploiting Survivors.

In 2010 I took part in street demonstrations held in London. on a sunny Autumn weekend.

A demonstration, directed at The Vatican and towards Pope Benedict and his entourage, who were on a state visit to England. I was there as a Survivor. The march comprised a wide range of The Vatican's critics in Society, from Feminists to Anarchists, Atheists to Pagans, Wizards, Witches, Elves and Trolls, Queers, Lesbians, Communists, Philosophers and Physicists, and Protestants. The rally of the angry comprised all ages, all classes, it was colourful and it was witty. The atmosphere was friendly.  Then there was David Icke fan-club. Ick.
Survivor groups from across the UK, Ireland and elsewhere participated. There were many representatives of survivors concerns. As one would expect. They have work to do.

Historical Context
By 2010 the Irish State and population had already spent 20 or so years unveiling a sordid history of 'historical child sexual abuse' - so called to discern it from any child abuse still happening- a story of some seventy years of common place child abuse across multiple State and Church operated residential institutions. Somewhat hard to digest. 
Incomprehensive.
Four public Inquiries revealed widespread harm, at scale. Patterns of abuse of children, women and men held in 'care settings' where the State handed the operational care of vulnerable children and adults to the Church and their various Orders, paying the institutions fees, taxpayers cash, for the services provided. The State had oversight duties and neglected them. Both State and Church are liable.

The Irish State offered political and economic support for the Church and The Vatican before offering anything to Survivors.  "You back me, I'll back you.." and then defend themselves accordingly against living witness testimony?
Those inquiries focused on Industrial Schools, Mothers and Babies Homes, Magdalene Launderies, and the response from Church and Civil authorities to cases of child abuse in some dioceses. The people of Ireland reeled in shock, and attitudes changed swiftly. The people supported the Survivors. The Government was forced to take action, to establish recognition and redress. It drags it's heels still, pulling against the perceived leash of honesty and evidence, not understanding that honesty and evidence is what will liberate the Government and the State from it's burden, and transform it into a work of social nurture, political equity, justice and humanity. Yes, I know. I'm way too romantic, optimistic and naïve.

I am pointing at the healthy place, that's all. I know it's there.
These inquiries revealed that Church and State authorities knew of the abuse, and that they allowed the Church to cover up these crimes, to move offending clerics from site to site, often leaving them in supervisory contact with vulnerable people, only for them to offend again, and again, and again.
This enabled life long repeat offenders to subsist within the Church systems. This caused even more harm, upon harm.
The agenda was to protect the good name of the Church, justification for handling this criminal activity internally, under Canon Law, thus evading Civil and Criminal Law.

They rationalised offering survivors and their families settlement, out of court,  with confidentiality agreements in exchange for cash, as an act of Christian mercy, whilst they made sure that it was backed by setting out on an offensive, adversarial stance backed by expensive legal counsel. Nudge Theory in practice.

Impact
The impact on the children and the adults harmed due to all of this evasive action was set aside. Not considered important.

The effect was to enable widespread sexual and emotional abuse, to the extent that abusers recognised that they had a relatively free hand, that the Church convinced themselves and everyone else that the offenders were committing sins, and that was to be taken at face value by Church authorities, and their offences were not therefore treated as crimes, under the criminal code. They had been indicted by God, and absolved. God is merciful.

What that status offered the predatory ones as they operated within the Church Canon culture was real world impunity - they would not face legal, criminal accountability, and the Church's name would be protected. Penance was paid in prayer, and a new location was happily accepted.
That strategy - to protect and uphold the status of The Church and The Vatican, was fully supported, in full awareness, by the Irish State, the Irish Government and the Irish political establishment as an ethnic cultural necessity.

The Impact II

Tens of thousands of lives destroyed by predatory men assaulting vulnerable children. Degrees of repeat offending suggestive of a 'life style choice' embedded in Church mores.

Traumatised children, often over extended periods of time, multiple assaults, who grow up silenced, managed, ignored, abandoned, who somehow found the strength to live well, who succeeded, by degree, and those who did not. Those who suffered in silence or noisily. The suffering as those children aged and became parents, traumatised parents doing their best. And seeing the impact play out into the next generation. Because a true harm was covered up. A harm was not resolved, and the pain perpetuated. A lot of people. A lot of people.
For seventy years.

There's an inquiry or two yet to be had on the matter of historical institutional care of children and predatory abuse in Ireland. It's not over yet.
There has not yet been any public inquiry in Ireland, into the many Church run boarding schools and day schools across Ireland, in which the same patterns of adverse harmful behaviour have been played out, over those seven decades, from 1922 - 1992. This is a serious matter. That is a large population of children, over an extended period. Wow.
A public inquiry is being scoped out, finally - but only after three survivors spoke out on RTE's live Saturday night premium talk show, The Late Late Show, an appearance in public to unveil the story, which flowed from efforts of the past pupils of one elite boarding school, a small group of alumni who sought to listen to the voices of survivors, to hear what they knew, who reached out to the survivor community and to the wider school community to allow people to bear witness to their experience and provided a forum for those involved to share their concerns.

This was part of their process designed to try to leverage a public demand for a formal apology from the school Authorities involved.
Their efforts - and the response of survivors to their efforts, supported by other Survivors advocacy groups and individuals -finally opened to the public discourse in Ireland the reality of seventy years of Irish School systems and Clerical CSA. 
Many survivors had long been demanding such an inquiry, but have been rebuffed by Church and State, ignored by the News media, time and time again. Somehow, boarding school survivors remained invisible.
Last November, 2022,  as I wrote above there occurred live witness testimony of three survivors, to the Irish nation, presented on live TV in such manner as made it impossible for the nation to evade the matter. This public witness statement flowed from the work described above.

The courage, humility and humanity of the three survivors who presented themselves and shared some of their stories, as witnesses, was abundantly clear, as was their years of suffering, which continues and will continue until justice is fully met, until the unmet needs of the children, and the adults they are now are being materially met. 
The things they spoke of, their experiences as they were, appalled the listener, and the nation, to the core. One could sense an audience in shock, upright and angry, and determined to see this through.  "How could that even happen? They must find justice to the full!" That was the feeling at the end of that presentation, the feeling from the presenter and the audience, intensely so. The stood and gave the three Survivors a standing ovation, for eight minutes. 
Time will tell how this plays out. These matters take time, patience and persistence is our daily fare. 

Progress

It is to be hoped that justice, accountability, honesty will flow from this process. Reparations, including end of life support at every level of need, in recognition of the unmet needs of all those children at the time of the assaults, and ever since. Meeting the unmet needs of the children they were, as they present in the adults they are today. That sort of care, in detail.

They deserve no less.
Bearing in mind that this dynamic ran for seventy years, and that many Survivors have passed away, without relief, without recognition, validation or support. Every year of delay reduces the numbers of living survivors, many of whom die earlier than the average. 
There is much work to be done, and it is serious work that must stand on evidence, honesty, empathy and a robust justice that allows closure for all concerned. 
The reactionary self-defence of the institutions must be mediated and diffused so that justice can prevail, and peace be restored.
Then we can move on.
So, to go back to 2O1O and the Pope
Before the demonstrations, I met with a gathering of people, organising to make placards, preparing leaflets, you know the usual paraphernalia  of street demonstrations, to plan our demo, finding people to team up with in smaller groups for the afternoon's action. 
I gave a short talk on the story of Irish Survivors recent history from my perspective. I had read The Case of The Pope, by Geoffrey Robertson. I understood the ground I and other Survivors were standing on. Well , at least I knew what I stood for. 
I wanted the Vatican to be courageous,  to be Christ-like, to be honest, transparent and to open their files - to share what they know - to survivors, to submit all allegations to inspection and investigation, to record the accurate history as far as those records reveal - for The Vatican to stand aside from dealing with such offenses under Canon Law, to allow civil and criminal law process to proceed, unhindered, to make reparations and to make future policy commitments in areas of child protection, reporting etc. Not too much to ask, considering the scale of the criminality, historical attitudes argument set aside.
I made a small placard with the words - Protect The Children, Not The Church - written in bold type. I knew what I was doing. I knew why I was there, and what little impact I would make. I was not there alone. Those numbers held meaning and hope, a route towards correct action. Hope springs eternal in my heart and mind. I do not apologise for that. Far from it. Anyways...
While I was doing that, making my placard, I noticed one group who were making a series of signs, alleging that The Pope was a paedophile. I went over to them, and asked them if they had read any evidence that Pope Benedict was a paedophile, because I had not, and I would be really interested to read such evidence.  I mentioned there was evidence of his involvement in maintaining the policy of covering up the reality of predatory men operating within institutions caring for vulnerable populations.
They mentioned various authors, youtubers, notable writers of hypothetical scenarios. They suggested that the allegation was obviously true. 'Just look at him!'  They had read no such evidence. Some mentioned 'Illuminati,' and various other conspiracy hypotheses. Others stated the obvious - that The Vatican was corrupt, a political action religion, wealthy and powerful and guilt of many crimes - and therefore the slander was justifiable. Rage!
I told them that they were protesting against the Vatican, as a political attack, rather than demonstrating support for survivors and for the necessary work survivors are seeking help for.  Survivors work is not a political attack. Survivors have no need for that. Survivors need justice. Period.
I told them that exploiting Survivors tragedy - packaging the pain, fear, suffering, despair, the lived experienced lives and suicides of so many innocents -  as an emotional trigger to make a political point in that way confuses the discourse, introduces hatred as a political utility, makes survivors look like they make false allegations was a profound and dangerous error in their case and a standard tactic of authoritarian regimes.
"All of this undermines Survivors struggle for justice, because it does not help them. It confuses the situation."
I told them that what they were doing was therefore hindering the work of Survivors. I told them that making false allegations of that nature, in public, allegations that were blatantly un-evidenced, directed at The Pope was stupidly reckless.

"Stick to the known, evidenced verified facts or get off the pot!"
When used as a political weapon, such allegations de facto seek to exploit both the disgust of decent people and the lived experience of the harm and trauma and suffering and pain that survivors have endured, leveraging a caricature as a sensational, manipulative and false dog whistle, riding roughshod over the most pertinent  people in this matter - the Survivors. 
Making false claims undermines survivors efforts, and all survivors know this.
For a genuine survivor activist this weaponisation of child sexual exploitation is an insult to the work they are undertaking. 
Exploiting the pain and suffering implicit in the experience, exploiting the reactionary disgust of bystanders as they avoid really understanding Survivors lived experience, exploiting survivors efforts, piggy backing on their struggle, to launch a political weapon, for an entirely different agenda, making no progress for Survivors in the process.
That pissed them off
I knew in that moment, by their reaction, that they were not here for me, as a Survivor, as someone who had just given a talk on what being a Survivor means. I knew that people like that are not there for the Survivors at all. They do not have our back.
They started to argue with me and I with them. And I stopped. There was no point in this. The outrage in my heart needed a big sky.

I said to them: "You do what you want to do, I cannot associate with what you are doing. I've made my point. You now know what you did not know a few minutes ago".
And with that I left them, and went to the demonstration more or less on my own. I met up some of them later, and the Pope Allegation signs were absent.  I noted that, and lauded them for that wisdom, that understanding. Grudges held post resolution are a self dug hole.

Digging Holes
The recent ads crafted by The Labour Party, one of which is featuring Rishi Sunak, implying the smiling Rishi is not at all bothered by convicted child sexual abusers current freedoms, with Labour's empty promise of a land of Law and Order where child abusers will tremble in fear! 
Fake slur, appeal to disgust, cite statistic out of context, trigger a reactionary, gain a voter.
Here's another way to look at it, from the perspective of a Survivor - "Labour are deploying a vote chasing tactic - publishing content that exploits the reaction to the trauma of children who have been so profoundly harmed, exploited violently by adults for sexual purposes, using it as a trope to exacerbate disgust, in pursuit of a political agenda. Presenting a manipulative slur that has not one shred of evidence to it, that presents a very different proposition than the one at hand - organised child sexual exploitation is well established and pretty much has a free hand in England because neither the police nor the judiciary are on top of it, and the Legislature is clearly failing it it's core duties and responsibilities in this matter today, as it has been doing for decades.

This is not a partisan matter. Labour does not want to look at this honestly. So let's sling some mud! After all, it's what THEY do"

Actually, it is what bullies do. Period. Bullies do this kind of shite. All of them.

I'm not anti-Labour.  I am anti-bullying in politics, local, national and international. It's all bullshit.
The Labour Ad implies that smiley Rishi Sunak, the Asian PM, does not care much about prosecuting or punishing adults guilty of child sexual abuse and incarcerating them - GRRRRRRR!  and that New Clean Labour does, and will indeed prosecute and punish all those guilty of child sexual abuse. YAAAY! Vote For Labour!"

Intermixed with this is the Race card, the insinuations prevalent across English political public discourse. Systemic means systemic. Dog Whistles all over the shop.
The ad is a targeted intentional lie. It is bullshit. It has racist dog whistle overtones. It has a light blue background. Red is dead, at Labour HQ! 
It's an appalling ad. And it is one of several, a series. All doing the exact same tactic.
Public facing content targeting a known bias, vulnerability, fear, hatred, exacerbating the emotional reaction of the target, in order to nudge the target in to behaviour that can be exploited.
This is truly cruel behaviour.
1. It does nothing to ameliorate and balance the bias, the vulnerability, the fear, the hatred. It stokes emotions and misdirects attention,  it does nothing to address the reality of the issue, the problem of child sexual exploitation functioning as a multi-million pound industry across the UK.
2. The it exploits the target, not in the targets best interests, not even in the victimised demographics interest, but in the targeteers interest.
A treble cruelty.
Dodgy. There ought to be a law against this kind of behaviour.

Both Labour and the Conservatives are digging holes for themselves, in their exhibitionist bullying. They have no credibility left, whatsoever.







Kindest regards

Corneilius

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