Tag Archives: dead cat

Dictator Johnson responds to his critics: ‘Look at this dead cat!’

Boris Johnson: If we had to judge a man by his gestures, this would give us an accurate understanding of his opinion of us.

Boris Johnson has responded to claims that his decision to prorogue Parliament has ended UK democracy – by claiming that he needed to do it to get a Brexit deal.

It’s a classic “dead cat” strategy, in that he is trying to distract us from what he has done by directing our attention to something different.

It’s also complete and utter nonsense.

His decision to prorogue Parliament denies MPs the chance to have any meaningful discussion of Brexit before the UK drops out of the EU without a withdrawal agreement on October 31.

Asked how this squared with the claim that leaving the EU would allow Parliament to “take back control”, he completely failed to answer the question.

Instead, he suggested the move to prorogue parliament was part of the government’s attempts to show the EU that it was serious about leaving with or without a deal on October 31.

He said: “It is by getting ready to come out anyway that we have greatly strengthened our position with our friends and partners in the EU, because they see that we are serious.”

Nobody has ever considered Boris Johnson to be a serious politician.

“What I want to do now, which is I think what most people in the country want the government to do, is get on and try and get an agreement.”

We have no reason to believe that this is happening. The EU says it is not changing its position and Mr Johnson has given no indication that he is going to do so, leaving us all in deadlock – still.

So we are left with the fact that Mr Johnson is denying Parliament a voice on this matter, and the default position is still that the UK leaves the EU with no deal at Hallowe’en.

In fact, BoJob’s comments seem more like a “normalisation” strategy – an attempt to say that nothing is wrong and to claim as a falsehood what we all know to be the fact of the matter:

“Calm down. The government has acted to strengthen its hand in negotiations with the European Union. It is wrong, and hysterical, to speak of a coup.” Does anybody believe that, from that most complicit of the Tories’ media outlets, The Times?

Oh, and by the way, we know a few other national leaders who wanted to “get on” with their policies without the aid of a democratically-elected Parliament:

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/

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Media bias, fake news – and why you should support our campaign against false anti-Semitism claims

Distraction techniques: The Tory media don’t want you thinking about Islamophobia in the Conservative Party so they have been making up false stories about anti-Semitism by Labour members.

The Mainly Macro blog by Oxford professor Simon Wren-Lewis, in its latest article, discusses the shocking and shameful bias of the national press in reporting anti-Semitism and Islamophobia – and comes to some forthright conclusions about the irresponsibility of the right-wing press.

This Site would support those conclusions, as This Writer has been a victim of right-wing press irresponsibility on this matter.

I am waiting for the green light to make a major announcement about my own case, but in the meantime, consider this:

“The antisemitism story was notable for two important reasons. First religious organisations had publicly complained. Second these complaints had been supported by prominent Labour figures. However exactly the same applies to Islamophobia,” the Mainly Macro article states. “But to suggest equivalence between the two stories is misleading. The Conservatives’ Islamophobia problem is a much bigger issue for two reasons.”

The first is that Conservatives including Home Secretary Sajid Javid (who comes from a Muslim background but does not practise the religion) have attacked the Muslim Council of Britain – attacked it, claiming it harbours members with unacceptable views on extremism and is not representative of British Muslims. Labour has not attacked any Jewish organisations but has engaged in discussions with them.

Secondly, the Conservatives ran an anti-Muslim campaign in their attempt to win the most recent London Mayoral election, which was won by Sadiq Khan, a Muslim. As Professor Wren-Lewis notes: “David Cameron even libeled an ex-Imam in his attempts to link Khan to Muslim terrorism.”

So the news story about the Conservative Party and Islamophobia is more serious than that of Labour anti-Semitism because the attitude of the Tory leadership has been demonstrably anti-Muslim. But, as Mainly Macro has it, “the balance on the BBC has been the other way around, with far more coverage of the latter than the former.”

The reason appears to be that “BBC News tends to ‘follow the story’” – meaning it follows up articles in the pro-Conservative national newspapers. They have suppressed the Tory Islamophobia story and – as readers of This Site know – fabricated lies to boost their claims of Labour anti-Semitism.

We are left with an obvious conclusion:

The right-wing press is supporting Tory religious bigotry and racism – and will continue to do so unless you help put a stop to it.

One way of achieving this is to support my campaign to clear my own name of the libellous accusations of anti-Semitism that have been falsely made by the right-wing press.

If we can undermine their claims about anti-Semitism, we will strengthen questions about their silence on Islamophobia.

It seems to be a ‘dead cat’ strategy. When concerns about Tory Islamophobia come up, the Tory press starts agitating about anti-Semitism – metaphorically throwing a dead cat on the table and saying, “Never mind that – look at this!”

It’s not an argument – especially when the ‘dead cat’ on the table isn’t real, such as the false claim of anti-Semitism against me.

So please visit my crowdfunding page and pledge as much as you can spare.

You will be supporting justice, fighting Tory lies and helping to promote honesty in our hate-filled right-wing media.

Visit our JustGiving page to help Vox Political’s Mike Sivier fight anti-Semitism libels in court

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This is NOT the state of British politics, but you should still be sickened [STRONG LANGUAGE]

Clive Lewis has apologised for the words he used a month ago. [Image: ANTONY KELLY].

You can tell the Conservatives are in trouble – one of their most fervent supporters on the social media has just whipped out a month-old ‘dead cat’ to distract us all from the Tory disasters about Universal Credit and Brexit, among all the others.

You’ll recall that ‘dead cat’ is a term for a tactic in which a dramatic, shocking, or sensationalist topic is introduced into any kind of discourse (in this case UK politics) in order to divert attention away from a more damaging subject.

In this occasion, it is an incident in which Labour MP Clive Lewis is heard saying, “Get on your knees, bitch,” at a Momentum-hosted game show running alongside the Labour Party conference last month.

He said it to Mr Sam Swann, a 28-year-old actor who was kneeling on the stage to take the score, and who clearly did not take offence. He told The Independent, “It is clearly jovial… I think Clive Lewis is an absolute legend.”

So no hard feelings. And let’s face it, if it was such a terrible thing to do, surely an outcry would have been kicked up immediately – right?

After all, the entire event was filmed by Novara Media and has been on that organisation’s Facebook page since September 28. There are only two comments and neither is a complaint about Mr Lewis.

But a week is a long time in politics, let alone a month – and the revelations about Harvey Weinstein broke between then and now. Suddenly it became possible for a remark made in poor taste but that was “jovial” to be considered entirely beyond the pale.

And then the Tories had a bad, bad couple of weeks. Clearly someone thought it was time to distract us all with a dead cat disguised as a “bitch” – so a cropped clip appeared on the Guido Fawkes blog.

This is not where British politics is at the moment – it’s just where certain people want us to be looking, instead of at the failings of the minority Conservative government.

It didn’t take long for rent-a-quote Labour MP Jess Phillips to stick her knife in, apparently assuming Mr Lewis said the offending words to a woman:

Novara’s Aaron Bastani clarified:

Tricky point, this, as brosocialism is a word that can be weaponised against the people to whom it refers. People identified as such are said to see the political discourse as being entirely about the class struggle, with problems of racism and sexism arising from that. There is an argument for it – referring back to Weinstein, you can see that his crimes (if he’s guilty of them, which has yet to be proved in court) arose from the fact that he was in a position of power over others, which is exactly what the class struggle is about.

Mr Bastani’s point is that accusations of sexism against him can’t apply as he and Novara do not discriminate on grounds of gender. Fair point?

If all her mates are women, then doesn’t that mean Ms Phillips is sexist? And besides, what about the upper-class elephant in the room?

It seems clear that Ms Phillips is mistaken to bang the sexism drum, as the following suggests:

https://twitter.com/ScouseGirlMedia/status/921502577816203264

That seems to be the attitude from those who were there:

Meanwhile, people are calling out Guido Fawkes blogger Paul Staines for hypocrisy, as he freely uses the word “bitch” in his own writing. Examples follow:

And what about the way followers of the Guido Fawkes blog have treated Dawn Foster? Read this:

The misapplication of the sexism label has incense many commentators. Let’s go back to Aaron Bastani’s comment, pointing out that Mr Lewis was talking to a man. Here’s the response from Guido Fawkes:

Brace yourself for the following responses:

It seems some Tories and Tory supporters have been trying to get on the bandwagon, but they’re being shot down:

https://twitter.com/SeemaChandwani/status/921384113772298240

Finally, let’s have a dose of reality:

And:

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