Freesteel Blog » Supermarkets and murder

Supermarkets and murder

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010 at 2:09 pm Written by:

This Max Wind-Cowie dude at the wank-tank Demos has come out with a publication: Civic streets, the big society in action which includes questionable stats decorating some amazing corporate PR marketing speak, like:

End ‘brand deserts’

Mainstream, high-street corporations should be encouraged to pursue corporate social responsibility through ‘doing’ – by expanding their presence to deprived areas in order to deliver jobs and confidence, and reduce the stigma of ‘brand deserts’…

Much has been written about the negative effects that brands can have on deprived people and communities. The sense of dissatisfaction that can spring from being presented with strong, aspirational brands to which one does not have any hope of access is very real and can be incredibly damaging to individuals’ wellbeing…

Of course, it is important to strive to ensure balance, but we should not actively prevent large, mainstream corporations from extending the benefits that they provide to poorer communities – we should embrace their potential to deliver economic and social change and to bring high-quality, affordable produce into the hearts of deprived areas.

The newspapers gleefully reprinted this rubbish.

Wind-Cowie’s twitter feed is: Myscular Liberal. A very recent post states:

Great article from Melanie Phillips on why Cameron needs 2 be more robust in defending #Israel http://bit.ly/aW0oSf

The words “great article” and “Melanie Phillips” are so incompatible, I had to check it out:

David Chamberlain and the reprise of historical infamy

For those who still don’t get it, let me spell out just why the response by Cameron, Clegg and Hague to the Turkish terrorist flotilla incident is so despicable and so terrifying. At a time when much of the western world has turned itself into a kind of global Nuremberg rally – this time with not Jews as people but as a collective people being singled out for attack while those who are gathering to destroy them are appeased, rewarded and strengthened — the British government has refused to defend the Israeli target of this appalling reprise of historical infamy and has instead placed itself squarely on the side of this truly diabolical inversion of reality and justice.

The convoluted pieties of Cameron Clegg and Hague, professing to support Israel’s need for security while denouncing it for defending its troops from kidnap and butchery, constitute in fact the most stomach-turning hypocrisy. For these men are not merely condemning Israel for its flotilla interception which, although undoubtedly botched, nevertheless saw Israel under attack from Islamists – you know, the kind which Britain and America are killing in their thousands in Afghanistan and elsewhere, along with countless civilians about whom no-one ever says a word because no-one cares a tuppenny damn if Israel isn’t in the frame — but are also calling for an end to the blockade of Gaza.

And so on, including the regulation Hitler reference that appears in every one of her articles.

This apologist for Tesco’s also retweets from a fellow neocon Tim Montgomerie:

RT @TimMontgomerie: The ugly truth about the “aid agency” that attempted to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza http://is.gd/cwWYQ

That’s a link to the pure propaganda site Terrorism-Info.IL (Israel).

Montgomerie also mentions among his other favoured articles this one:

Krauthammer: Israel’s blockade is doing to Gaza what JFK did to Cuba; stopping a deadly enemy acquire lethal weapons http://is.gd/cDPbK

Charles’ Krauthammer’s statements on Gaza were featured on The Daily Show last week, which is why his name caught my eye. Here is the amazing clip from Murdoch’s Fox News:

Krauthammer: The fundamental deception here is the use of the word “Humanitarian”. As we say, humanitarians don’t weild iron clubs and would have killed the Israeli’s had the Israeli’s not drawn their pistols in self-defence.

But there’s a larger issue here.

What exactly is the humanitarian crisis that the flotilla was addressing? There is none. There’s no one starving in Gaza. The Gazans have been supplied with food, social services, education by the UN for 60 years, in part with American tax money.

This is high-grade, unadulterated, unashamed lies and propaganda. Not spin, not opinion, but lies.

It fits with my MP’s categorical statement that “there is no blockade of Gaza”. It’s just a little local difficulty that’s happening in the waters off the coast.

Meanwhile in the real world, the dead bodies were returned:

Israel was tonight under pressure to allow an independent inquiry into its assault on the Gaza aid flotilla after autopsy results on the bodies of those killed, obtained by the Guardian, revealed they were peppered with 9mm bullets, many fired at close range.

Nine Turkish men on board the Mavi Marmara were shot a total of 30 times and five were killed by gunshot wounds to the head, according to the vice-chairman of the Turkish council of forensic medicine, which carried out the autopsies for the Turkish ministry of justice today.

The results revealed that a 60-year-old man, Ibrahim Bilgen, was shot four times in the temple, chest, hip and back. A 19-year-old, named as Fulkan Dogan, who also has US citizenship, was shot five times from less that 45cm, in the face, in the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the back. Two other men were shot four times, and five of the victims were shot either in the back of the head or in the back, said Yalcin Buyuk, vice-chairman of the council of forensic medicine.

The findings emerged as more survivors gave their accounts of the raids. Ismail Patel, the chairman of Leicester-based pro-Palestinian group Friends of al-Aqsa, who returned to Britain today, told how he witnessed some of the fatal shootings and claimed that Israel had operated a “shoot to kill policy”.

He calculated that during the bloodiest part of the assault, Israeli commandos shot one person every minute. One man was fatally shot in the back of the head just two feet in front him and another was shot once between the eyes. He added that as well as the fatally wounded, 48 others were suffering from gunshot wounds and six activists remained missing, suggesting the death toll may increase.

What does this say about some wingnut’s lunatic concern for the poor and their “brand deserts”? Not a lot.

Except it sheds light on his general level of intellectual dishonesty in relation to his ideological fetishes. Inconvenient reality clearly doesn’t get in the way for him.

There’s no need to waste any time on his useless output.

1 Comment

  • 1. Ayesha replies at 11th June 2010, 11:37 pm :

    awesome. good to read up on this. I hadn’t wanted to see what stupidity Ms Philips had been spouting this time…

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