Jackie Walker suspension and reinstatement

After a short break its back to politcs, this time its the recent re-instatement of leading Momentum campaigner Jackie Walker back into the Labour party.  She was suspended for comments she made on social media about the role of Jews and the African slave trade.  Walker is of Black African and Jewish descent.In the remark below, Walker calls the African slave trade the "African holocaust", thereby linking its severity with the Nazi Holocaust.

“As I’m sure you know, millions more Africans were killed in the African holocaust and their oppression continues today on a global scale in a way it doesn’t for Jews.”

Couple of things

• Although shocking, the African slave trade was not the destruction of a race of people, which was the aim of the Nazi holocaust.
• Even though she does not mention it, she is likely to be referring to the trans-Atlantic slave trade. White Europeans did not have a monopoly on the slave trade, there has been an Arab slave trade in East Africa and it still exists today.  This is even mentioned in some strategy games.
• In the Nazi holocaust it was non-Jews killing Jews but in the African slave trade it was black Africans who captured and sold their fellow black Africans to both the Arabs and the Europeans.  Yep, you heard it, black Africans are even more culpable in slavery than both the Europeans and Arabs put together.  How did it happen? The black slaves would be prisoners of war in tribal battles.  According to anthropologists different tribes would trade slaves amongst themselves.  When the Arabs and later the Europeans arrived, this was ramped up.  

Walker then describes Jews as "chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade". And as a follow up asks, ‘what do you think the Jews should do about their contribution to the African Holocaust? What debt do they owe?’. My reply is nothing.  If one group is uniquely held responsible for its very small role then that surely is racist, which is ironic coming from an anti-racism campaigner.  Especially a Jewish one.

Me thinks this woman has self-hate issues and is using her blackness to act them out.  This is prevalent in a small part of the Jewish community especially amongst 'antizionist Jews' who are using the 'plight' of the Palestinians to act out their self hate.

15 Million Degrees: A Journey to the Centre of the Sun by Lucie Green

I have just started reading "15 Million Degrees: A Journey to the Centre of the Sun" by physicist, writer and broadcaster Lucie Green. So far I have found it very readable and technical bits are very well explained. It has a very good primer on what light is and how it works on us.

Project Fear going into overdrive

Now that the EU referendum is in full swing, the Remain campaign has come up with some very spurious reasons to vote in.  One thing that caught my eye today is the idea that foreign holidays and roaming charges will increase in the event of a Brexit.  This was based on David Cameron's claim that a typical family holiday in Europe will be 230GBP more expensive.

Even if that was true, then so what?  Britons can always take their holidays at home, which will be good for the UK tourism industry.  As for the roaming, one has to ask how often do people make phone calls abroad and are there any alternatives such as a pay phone.

Paul Mason doing mental cartwheels on BBC Question Time this week

Paul Mason is a left wing economist who was economics editor for Channel 4 news, and someone on the left I have alot of time for, but maybe not for much longer after this item.  Like some on the left he admits that the EU is undemocratic and unworkable but despite this he says he is unlikely to vote Brexit as it would hand power to "crazed, rightwing Conservatives" in the UK.  Paul, old bean, these "crazed, rightwing Conservatives" were actually elected by the people last year and can be voted out in a few years time, which is more than can be said for the EU commission.

Spectator EU referendum debate

At the end of last month the Spectator magazine hosted an EU referendum debate featuring former Labour leadership contenders Chuka Ummana and Liz Kendall, along with Lib Dem MP and former deputy PM Nick Clegg for the remain side. Whilst MEPs Daniel Hannan(Tory) and Nigel Farage(UKIP), and Labour Eurosceptic MP Kate Hoey batted for the Brexiters.  Andrew Neil was the host.

Even though I am a moderate Brexiter, I definitely agree that Hannan, Farage and Hoey won the debate.  The Remainers kept using fear tactics such as the loss of trade and the loss of social chapter and environment protection policies that came out of the EU. Trade is based on satisfying need, if the EU countries need UK goods and services then those countries will still buy those goods and services regardless. As for the social chapter policies, these can be legislated post-Brexit.

Ummana made the disingenuous statement that the USA and Australia has higher immigration than the UK, this was promptly dealt with by Farage who reminded Chuka that the US and Australia are substantially larger than the UK.

Hannan was the standout debater. Kendall was the best of the Remainers and Clegg managed to make strategy gamers sound articulate(I'm a strategy gamer BTW). Even though Hoey was the weakest of the Brexiters, she grasped the facts better than all of the Remainers put together.

The main problem for the Remain side was that they could not put a positive case for remaining inside the EU.  This is kind of depressing as it should be based on the intellectual argument rather than fear.

Weak measurement

I watched again an episode 'Through the Wormhole', presented by Morgan Freeman dealing with whether time is eternal or not. In it mentioned a form of quantum entanglement where future measurements affect past measurements.  This is certainly a very intriguing concept but I thought that making a measurement would collaspe the wave function in the first place.  In any case the idea of the future affecting the past came from Israeli theoretical physicists Yakir Aharonov.  However after some background reading Aharonov's theory is itself based on something quite controversial called weak measurement.  My view is that if you want to measure something its best to measure it properly or not measure it all.

David Ward

Few things depress me in life, but one of them is how nasty people keep rearing their ugly heads in public.  A few weeks ago that just happened.

Former Bradford East Lib Dem MP David Ward was elected as a councillor in Bradford.  During his tenure as MP, he made several horrendous anti-semitic comments about Jews in relation to Israel Palestine conflict, including the one below on Sky news.

He was then suspended from the Lib Dem whip and followed it up with this little titbit that compared the Palestinian situation to the holocaust

Ward lost his seat in the 2015 general election but now despite all of this the citizens in a part of Bradford have elected him as a councillor.  In the midst of the Labour antisemitism scandal, Nigel Farage said that Labour antisemitism was to do with Labour appealing for Muslim votes due to the institutional antisemitism in the Muslim community.  It seems that this appeal to a very low common demoninator is happening in the Lib Dems and in the left generally.

Vintage BBC Sky at night - Voyager's fly past of Uranus.

I can't believe this is more than 30 years old, and I vaguely remember seeing this on the news at the time.  Here are the late Sir Patrick Moore's thoughts on it.  This is BBC at its best again.

Amir Khan vs Saul Canelo Alvarez

On the same day that Leicester City were crowned EPL champions, Amir Khan lost his latest fight to Saul 'Canelo' Alvarez of Mexico for the WBC middleweight championship belt by way of a 6th round knockout.  

Khan has certainly come a long way since winning the Olympic silver medal in Athens in 2004 and has won a lot of fans both inside and outside of boxing.  I remember at the time he was held up as positive feature of multiculturalism.  However, as a boxer, he has definitely under achieved.  I believe we seen the limit of this talent, at the end of the day we all have our limits somewhere.  Khan for his health should consider quitting since 3 of his 4 losses have now come from serious knockouts or stoppages.

Finally caught Mr Montabalan

After much frustration and enjoyment, I have finally captured my enemy Mr Montabalan on Sid Meier's Pirates on the Sony PSP.  On the easiest level, the game does tell you the goals you must achieve each step of the way before it reveals the location of Montabalan.  Once I found his hideout I had to win a turn based land battle and then defeat Montabalan himself in a sword fight which was easily done.  Capturing him does not end the game, although it does give your character 100k gold coins.

One bug I did notice was that even though I captured historical pirate Roc Brasiliano, it was saying that he was at large.  Ho hum!