In the normal run of things this hallowed site wouldn’t give time of day to Murdoch’s British outlet, TalkTV. Forget Piers Morgan. He’s wisdom and courtesy incarnate at the side of fellow presenters of Nadine Dorries and Jeremy Kyle stripe.
And then there’s Julia Hartley Brewer.
But with the world watching daylight genocide on Gaza, these aren’t ordinary times are they? The normal run of things has been cancelled in favour of mass murder whitewashed by the leaders of the collective West while our systemically corrupt media run the gamut from blaming the (true) victims to hand-wringing, and seek at every turn to drag the focus back – “will you or will you not condemn those heinous acts?” – to Hamas and October 7.
And then there’s Julia Hartley Brewer.
And then there’s Julia Hartley Brewer.
Egregiously unprofessional doesn’t begin to cover her interview of a Palestine MP in the wake of Israel’s murder of a Hamas leader on Lebanese soil. Nor does smugly ignorant. Tacitly but transparently accusing her calmly respectful guest of misogyny – on no conceivable basis but his ethnicity – is the ugliest display of thuggish media entitlement I’ve seen in years. Which is saying something.
But judge for yourself.
I had the dubious ‘honour’ of engaging in a short conversation with this sorry excuse for a human being a few years ago.
Someone I know – can’t remember who – passed me a ticket for a Radio Four ‘Any Questions’ broadcast in some private technical academy situated near where the old Don Valley Stadium used to be in Attercliffe.
JHB was one of the panel. At some point the discussion touched on the thorny issue of AI and employment. However, as with all such staged media events they only really skirted around the issue. Following such broadcasts the production company who has the sub-contract for the broadcast puts on a buffet and drinks etc in which the public can mingle with the panel.
Most of the audience tends to leave immediately but I stopped behind for a drink and some food before departing home and found myself near the bar asking JHB about the economic impact of AI on the ability of a societies populace to earn sufficient wages to sustain a functioning society (given the equation that one persons expenditure is another persons income) as a result of the pace of technological replacement of people in what passes for a productive process (or words to that effect).
Her response was both instructive and dismissive at the same time. The matter was un-troubling for her on the grounds that there has always got to be someone in charge. Clearly those like JHB see themselves as part of that unchanging and unchangeable elite who make the rules and give the orders. The people permanently ‘in charge’.
Which neatly segues into this recent broadcast published by naked capitalism with Micheal Hudson…..
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/01/prof-michael-hudson-world-predictions-for-2024-usa-un-palestine-russia-and-brics.html
….where he argues that the attitude and approach is one in which “there can only be one economy and one state favoring one group of people. ”
Whilst Hudson’s context here is what he calls ‘the apartheid state’ – Ukraine, Israel – in terms of how Washington sees the world economy with its ‘rules based order’ permanently favouring Washington, it has a wider Class based application seen most clearly in JHB’s response.
The latest posting by Simplicus……
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/update-on-palestine-idf-claims-gaza
…..takes up the point:
“when left to their devices, when a people’s most cruel and malign inclinations are left totally unchecked without any pushback or repudiation, it creates an enabling effect that essentially communicates to those people: “Keep going, what you’re doing is totally normal and acceptable.” Israel has been the favored son for so long, its most transgressive acts ignored and tacitly allowed for such a length of time, that it has simply developed a natural sense of entitlement and divine exceptionalism. Now, when the world suddenly stands up to it for the first time, Israel is dumbstruck with feigned shock like a child caught with its hand in the cookie jar.
This is not to say Israeli people are somehow bad by nature or genetically. No, just like the current Ukrainians, Israelis are to an extent being used by western colonialist powers. And in order for their colonialist-outpost to thrive, the powers that be must ensure that the puppet state has full immunity from any sort of accusations of wrongdoing or prosecutorial blowback. This is why Ukrainians are given full sanction to be Nazis and commit mass murder and genocide on Donbass, and it is why Israelis get the same allowance. It has nothing to do with race and everything to do with great power politics and how colonialist outposts are conditioned and molded in order to further the geopolitical ends and interests of their sponsors.”
Point being that the sponsors in the ‘Garden’ themselves have had their way with no effective internal or external push back for so long, for so many generations, it is inconceivable to them that there can be any other way. Hence narratives like ‘the end of history’, ‘the clash of civilisations’ and similar.
Hudson, in his most recent published tome ‘The Collapse of Antiquity’, see’s a similar outcome to that of the same hubris which collapsed the previous Roman system which had the same dynamic.
A synthesis of the system which JHB shills for which analyses the comparisons between the Roman Oligarchy and the Collective Western ‘Garden’ in every detail save one – a comparison of the failure of the alternatives within the Roman Plebeian Class to internally effect the necessary change to prevent the collapse with the same failure of the ‘Garden’s’ Class based alternatives.
“Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad” – in the case of the ‘leadership’ of the collective west madness equates to blinkered arrogance, greed, conceit and blindness. Actually, I find it quite astonishing how demented and detached from reality these people are – Biden, Blinken, Scholz, Von Der Leyen, Sunak etc. plus all the lower level flunkies and assorted barefaced liars in the media – they make Liz Truss look only like a crazed eccentric aunt. It’s their only (un)-saving grace, and I hope it has the desired destructive effect as soon as possible.