Verbal

The grievance psychosis that drives the Islamist killers is more generalised. Think of the some of the most recent targets with the heaviest casualties. The Bataclan in Paris, during a music concert (130 dead). Manchester, during a pop concert (23 dead). Pulse, in Florida, a gay nightclub (49 dead). These are venues that were full of young people enjoying themselves - a HUGELY transgressive act in the eyes of a religious sect hell bent on viciously bullying people into cowed silence and retreat. They target venues like these with no thought about some vague concept of solidarity with other Muslims - in fact, MOST of their victims are actually fellow Muslims. So it's even more depressing, after Manchester, to hear people like Corbyn winding themselves up with their tedious 'kill us, we deserve it' speeches. He not only misses the point spectacularly; he manages to find one of several points of agreement with ISIS themselves. The Alt Left absolutely revel in the unspecified accusation that 'the West' is to blame for everything - an argument repeated ad nauseum by the ISIS media centre. Aside from everything else, this victim-blaming of the West is unintentionally racist - because it denies agency to Iraqi dictators or ISIS killers or Syrian death squads, who apparently only do unspeakable things because we made them do it.

Is the wrong answer. Britain's Muslim population is under 3 million, or around 4.4% of the total population. From time to time, the country experiences Islamist violence, usually 'home grown'. India's Muslim population is around 172 million, or just over 14% of the total population - even though it's predominantly Hindu, it's the second largest Muslim country in the world. The country rarely experiences Islamist violence, and when it does, it is almost always rooted in activities across its borders with Pakistan. Terrorist attacks from Islamists is almost never 'home grown'. There is no correlation between Muslim population size and the incident of home-grown Islamist violence. Nor is there a correlation between 'multiculturalism' and Islamist violence. France pursues a diametrically opposite philosophy of a single national identity, and its rate of Islamist violence is higher than the UK's.

A awful lot of mosques and imams already do this, and it's usually ineffective. Unlike, say, Catholicism, Islam is a religion without leaders. There is no 'government' in the literal sense of something like the Vatican, and there is no Muslim equivalent of the Papal hierarchy. However, the Saudi government presides over the two most important sites in the religion, Mecca and Medina. As guardians, the Saudis have enormous moral authority. The Saudi government has frequently condemned Islamist terrorism, and has led many crackdowns against Al Qaeda and ISIS offshoots. But what they haven't done is say that the underlying ideology of the terrorists, Salafism, should be shunned. Without this active discouragement, Salafism will continue to flourish. It is an ideology that amounts to a death cult, but more especially fuels deeply corrosive psychosis of grievance - a hatred that's off the scale. (This is at least one point of contact with the Alt Left, who espouse the 'kill us, we deserve it' meme, by sneering that 'the West' is the first and final cause of Islamists' hatred). Salafism is, at its heart, a repudiation, not of the West, but of the tiniest perceived deviation from a brutally medieval interpretation of Islam. It is a cover for violent bullying, torture and murder - all justified in the name of 'cleansing' the religion of its inadequate believers. In the wake of that ideology lies an epic trail of dead and broken bodies. Will the Saudis repudiate Salafism? Of course not. The hate that threatens them is also the hate that protects them.

It's being reported that Abedi's father used to work for Gaddafi's internal 'security' but fell out with the regime and went to Saudi Arabia, where he was indoctrinated by Wahhabi extremists. It's likely he infected the rest of his family with this vicious garbage. Donald Trump just signed off on a colossal $110 billion arms deal with the same Wahhabi-dominated Saudi Arabia, which has been exporting its murderous ideology since 1979. Trump removed from his speech announcing the deal any mention of a connection between the Saudis and terrorism. On the same visit, Trump sabre-rattled at Iran as a vast exporter of terrorism. Whatever one might say about a brutal regime, Trump was saying this just as more progressive forces this week won a general election there. He might also have to think hard to come up with any Iranian state-inspired terrorist assaults in New York, Paris, Washington, London or Manchester. Wahhabism is the problem - Wahhabism and its Salafist variants are almost always the problem when people in shopping malls, hotels and concerts are cut down by nail bombs and other paraphernalia of mass killing.

OMG! I never leave home without mine! http://www.leftwardtendency.co.uk/product-page/jeremy-corbyn-pop-art-tote-bag One size fits all ****wits.

I'll just leave this here for the inevitable scumbag freak-out. https://vimeo.com/216501161 As so often, documentaries have the most interesting things to say...

Just give it a rest for a little while.

Thanks for the bulletin, Brian. I’m not utterly surprised to hear that the humourless homunculus has become a fulltime member of the cult. One or two of his **** holsters evidently post on here – no idea how they could stoop so low.

Quite so, Brian. But are you going to tell the fanboys or am I, that they and May are on the same page re: Corbyn's annihilation/ascension on 8 June?

I feel terribly sorry for Nia Griffith. Like Clive Lewis before her, she's espoused and defended the longstanding and recently reaffirmed Labour party policy that Trident will be renewed. She's also defending an explicit Labour party manifesto commitment made only a few days ago. But she's been thoroughly undermined by Corbyn and Lady Nugee - the exact same culprits who chopped Lewis off at the knees and whose behaviour led to his resignation. Until that point, remember, Lewis was a committed Corbynist. So the fact of the matter is that Labour is fighting on a key manifesto pledge which the leader of the Labour party and the shadow foreign secretary both reject. Perhaps fanboy, in his long awaited in-his-own-words explanation as to why anyone should vote for Labour, would care to include an explanation of this complete mess?

Instead of this lazy trolling, why don't you make a detailed case for anyone to vote for Corbyn's Labour. No cutting-and-pasting, no deathless one-liners - just you, all alone with your own thoughts, expressed in your own words. Go...

If only it didn't require a shower to vote for Labour, given its deeply morally corrupt leadership, egged on by cultish, doe-eyed dimwits. John McDonnell's contribution to the peace process - which no doubt in your mind was profound - was to say in 1986 that 'the ballot, the bomb and the bullet' would reunite Ireland. He also took aim [sic] at some local Labour councillors in London who objected to meetings by saying ('joking' was his get-out) that they were 'gutless wimps' whose minds would be changed by knee capping. Diane Abbott, in 1984, said in an interview that 'Ireland is our struggle - every defeat for the British state is a defeat for all of us. A defeat in Northern Ireland would be a defeat indeed.' This is aside from Corbyn's own declarations in support of Republican violence, which can be read from numerous incidents, including a statement by Labour Briefing, which he helped run as an editorial board member, 'the British only sit up and notice Northern Ireland when they are bombed into it.' He also attended commemoration services of dead IRA terrorists for seven years running. If this is 'dialogue' then it's the dialogue of the deaf conducted by the terminally stupid - unless you can post on here even the slightest bit of evidence that Corbyn really was engaged in dialogue, which invariably means talking to BOTH sides. How would it be 'dialogue' otherwise? Got any links to all those meetings he MUST have had with Loyalist militia leaders? Or with anyone other than his 'friends' in Hamas and Hezbollah who might be, you know, Israeli? It's not just that Corbyn, Abbott and McDonnell - the leading triumvirate of the party now - are grandstanding, narcissistic virtue signallers. They took it upon themselves to attempt to normalise terrorist violence, and even to praise it. All fine - if you defend freedom of speech you have to defend their right to say what they said. But don't expect British voters to trust them with the levers of the very power they wished was destroyed. To be clear, there are plenty of good people in Labour. It's tragic - especially given the banal horrors of May - that none of them are in the leadership of the party.

That in a 30-year career defined by non-achievement, Corbyn was as usual merely a grandstanding, self-aggrandising waffler, who invited senior Republicans on to the Commons terrace to polish his right-on credentials. See also: his protest at the trial of the IRA men actually found guilty of the Brighton bombing. (Seen the file.)

None of the three twitterers in that article are Democrats. Louise Mensch is a former Tory MP, and Taylor and Schindler are registered Republicans. What they represent is a quite traditional Cold War wing of the Republican party, allied with a deferential stance towards what the call the 'IC' - the FBI, CIA NSA, etc. So for them, Trump is a monstrous offence for one thing only - the Russia thing, and his defence of Flynn and Manafort in particular. They've turned a story about Trump's inveterate corruption, and his dealings with equally corrupt lobbyists, into a story about Trump's non-existent traitorous Machiavellism. Nothing to do with 'liberals' and Democrats. Just another right-wing conspiracy theory which, like all conspiracy theories, tells you more about the 'theorists' than anything else.

He might say the same about you.

The cover of this week's Time magazine. This is pretty staggering. https://twitter.com/BraddJaffy/status/865164921054666752 There's an animated version, with sound, that's even better (for those with better posting skills than me...)

Not just Gove. Maybot herself was at it this week as well. Since when was incompetence evidence of 'strong and stable' government? And as for the Tory party manifesto - talk about missing an open goal. It's a truly terrible piece of work that in any other election would have Tory candidates watching the polls with their nails bitten down to their wrists. As it is, May's missed open goal is easily than matched by Corbyn's and his front-bench's repeated own goals.

The Corbynists are getting their excuses in early. There's already widespread paranoia among the more fanatical doe-eyed dimwits about the 'MSM' having fixed the election. Now, Len McCluskey, the de facto muscle behind Corbyn, is saying that if Labour wins 200 seats that will be a - I quote - 'success'. It will also be the worst electoral result for Labour since the 1930s. Some success. It's clear now that the Corbynistas aren't even pretending they can win a majority, or come remotely close to the number of seats they presently have. So McCuskey's intervention is merely part of a strategy to keep Corbyn in power until a rule change at the September party conference will ensure a locked-in and permanent majority for Corbynism, regardless of who the actual leader is. En Marche.

Yes, you're right. Nit combs and sun creams have brought the NHS to its knees. God only knows what the backlash will be like when NHS managers finally get around to rationing them - if they dare.

This is a common fallacy. The reason that such a small percentage of the population in the UK pay such a large proportion of taxes is because we live in a staggeringly unequal society, where historically unprecedented piles of cash and assets are held by the wealthy. It's also distorted by blatantly regressive taxes on other things than income - taxes that penalise the poor and favour the rich. VAT is a huge tax burden on the poor as a proportion of weekly income, and a negligible one on the wealthy. Property (council) tax is absolutely minuscule for the wealthy (£1500 a year for a £50 million mansion in Mayfair) and a severe burden on the poor (most in the private rental sector pay it, not just property owners). Taxes are so regressive that even the land of the free can, in a very few respects, look more equitable than us. Take a look at annual property taxes in the US if you want to see how 'lucky' wealthy property owners in the UK really are.

It's all just gone seriously south for Trump. The Washington Post has revealed that he stupidly shared highly classified information - the highest classification of all - about ISIS with the Russians in the controversial Oval Office meeting the other day. In so doing he's badly compromised 'an ally', presumably in the Middle East. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-revealed-highly-classified-information-to-russian-foreign-minister-and-ambassador/2017/05/15/530c172a-3960-11e7-9e48-c4f199710b69_story.html?tid=a_breakingnews&utm_term=.90fd0e184349 One thing is for certain - Trump is now firmly heading towards impeachment. Bets on when he's out? I'd guess early 2018. And Russia will be the cause of it.

Today's YouGov poll makes grim reading. It breaks down Tory vs Labour support by region - and Labour is ahead in only two of those, London and the north east. The map is basically blue with just two tiny patches of red. Corbynists remain convinced of two things: that no one has ever been given a chance to vote on a proper socialist manifesto (forgetting 1983, and the disaster that followed); and that the polls are always wrong (forgetting that when they are they always over-estimate the Labour vote). I honestly don't know why May bothers leaving home during the election - it's that easy. https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/05/15/voting-intention-regional-breakdown-apr-24-may-5/

This is the wrong circle to suddenly divert to. The number of doe-eyed Corbynists on here is limited to fanboy. Corbyn's appointment of Murray is exactly the kind of thing many in the Labour party deeply resent. He only joined the party in November 2016 after resigning his Communist party membership. It's just another sign of the utter uselessness of Corbyn that he would offer such an easy target for the Tories to attack. Just to be clear about how repulsive Murray is, he has argued that the deluded backing of Stalinism by British communists was defensible - even through the Great Terror of the 1930s and the show trials of the 1950s (many against 'Zionist' - i.e. Jewish - opponents). The real value of Murray to Corbyn is that Murray is a senior figure at UNITE, Corbyn's main financial backer - Murray doesn't even work for Labour, despite being in charge of the election; he's merely on secondment from the union. Again, it's an easy target for the Tories in their narrative that the party is being led by the nose by union bosses. So back to those wages...

So what's your prediction, fanboy? Corbyn going to sweep into No10 with all those shy socialist votes?

A clue, as ever, is in what lie is being told on the campaign buses. On the Tory bus, there's only mention of May, not of the party she leads. On the Labour bus, there's only mention of Labour, not of the party leader. The Tories know their party brand is toxic to many former Labour voters, so the appeal is to vote for her rather than the Nasty Party. Labour know their leader is toxic, so the appeal is to traditional loyalties rather than to the wholly inadequate party leader. The Tories know they'll win if they keep to this message because May's appeal transcends the party base. Labour know they won't win so are appealing to their traditional party base not to desert them. For the Tories, the aim is to win an election. For the Corbynists, the aim is to be close to Miliband's share of the vote so that Corbyn can make the awe-inspiring claim he's not terminally toxic. However you look at this - whether you're a supporter of May or are horrified by her - she's going to win big, and win with effectively one-party control over British politics: A) because she's popular, and B) because Corbyn would rather be the Tory party's historic enabler than relinquish power.