Labour MP's harassment

But not if they've removed some of the articles.

Just listened to this between Chris Lineham and James Bloodworth. Lineham didn't deny that the stuff Bloodworth said was on the StW site was there. Why?

Brilliantly chaired, btw. Well done that woman!

Probably because it was there before it was removed. Nobody has denied it being there, just that it was not written by StoptheWar, which is why it was removed.
However, Nineham said that Stop the War does not support Assad, quite a few times, which is what Bloodworth accused him of, and did not support Russia in the Crimea, which they were also accused of, and lots of other things. I'm not sure why he used a paraphrase of a speech by Churchill to condemn StoptheWar, either. That was a ridiculous soundbite.
Should I really find out what Churchill did say, or should I just think that Churchill would not have been able to say anything about StoptheWar as it only started in 2001.

Ana It seems you think that the article in the Telegraph, which contains the following diatribe dressed up as a representation of Corbyn's views, is an example of good journalism - I don't:

" At which point the leader of the Labour Party will rise to his feet and begin his address to the Stop The War Christmas fundraiser. And he will say the following:

“To the Labour Party – the party I lead – I have this message. Screw you. To the members of Parliament I lead I have this message. Screw you. To those hundreds of thousands of Labour Party members and former Labour Party members who didn’t vote for me, I have the same message. Screw you. And for the millions of people who voted Labour at the last general election, and who yearn for a Labour government, I have a very special message. Screw every single one of you.”

"Obviously, Jeremy Corbyn won’t use those exact words.......... But his message could not be clearer: “I don’t care what the voters think. I don’t care what my colleagues think. I don’t care what my party thinks. These are my real friends. And if you don’t like it, screw you................”

Who knows? maybe he does secretly think along those lines.

I don't think Bloodworth was quoting what Churchill said about StW. As you say, how could he? He was using something Churchill said to illustrate his point.

Having listened to that exchange between them, I find that I think both of them have taken a point of view and cannot see anything in between. It strikes me as black and white thinking again, with no subtlety and no allowance for things like human error. One man's word against another's, so I'll take neither of them as gospel and carry on learning about both sides of the issues.

A much more appropriate Churchillian quote would be "A lie gets halfway round the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."

That applies to Eloethan's post as well. Not everyone reading that Telegraph article would realise it wasn't what Corbyn said. I bet some Telegraph readers would even now be slagging off Corbyn for what he said about the Labour party and parliament.

OFGS don't be ridiculous! At no point does the article say 'he said' and it was published before the event. Do you really think Telegraph readers are so stupid?

Perhaps you should read the comments after the article, Ana.
An awful lot of the Telegraph readers appear to have taken it seriously. Dd I say that Telegraph readers are stupid.........?

Perhaps you should have read the comments after your link to the Veterans Today article which you posted on the 'Should we bomb Syria' thread.

www.veteranstoday.com/2015/12/07/coalition-air-attack-hits-syrian-army-base-16-dead/

Rather more nasty than, wouldn't you say?

Plus, the author of that piece, Gordon Duff, says (in a recorded interview)

“About 30% of what’s on Veterans Today is patently false. About 40% of what I write is at least purposefully partially false. Because if I didn’t write false information I wouldn’t be alive. I simply have to do that.”

I thought Mark Twain was the 'originator' of the quote 'A lie can travel half way round the world while the truth is putting it's shoes on'.

The fact Stop The War happily promoted the article by Floyd is the point. Stop The War elected to agree with his article and happily promoted it on their website. Then the 'Reaping the Whirlwind' comment caused a backlash and Stop The War decided to delete the article. Had there not been a backlash then presumably it would still be on their site to date.

If for example Donald Trump produced an article stating all Muslims should be barred from free movement and , for 'pure arguements' sake nothing more, UKIP elected to put it on their website I can assure you the connection would be made that UKIP obviously agrees with Trumps comment, unless they clarified points made in the article.

The problem here is some are trying to disassociate Stop The War from the article but it is impossible to do so. I have heard John Rees from Stop The War giving interviews and he sticks to what I call a 'wooly' 'ildefined' rhetoric when he says the article was removed because Stop The War did not agree with it's content and yet he only says so because the victims are wholely innocent 'but not the state'. This is an attempt to distance Stop The War from the 'Reaping the Whirlwind' comment but agreeing in part with the comment. Cake and eat it time I'm afraid.

I wish people would post succinct précis of articles rather than posting endless blue links. I often suspect the posters haven't always read them .

I like links, just a summary of for example the Telegraph article would take ages to type out , with links one can pass if not interested

It could just be "He seems to be in favour of XXXXX because of YYYYY" It is hard work though, to read a whole article and condense the gist of it into a sentence without losing anything important - if the original author could have done that maybe they would have. Often you wish they had!

stopwar.org.uk/index.php/news/john-rees-sky-interview

A link to John Rees explaining various criticisms of Stop the War.
I refuse to precis it, as it would not be enough and important words might be left out; I have read it twice.

Oh, and you do not need to read it if you do not want to, but he does complain about people criticising when they do not know and do not want to know the full facts.

In that link, not very far down the interview, John Rees says why he thinks Corbyn should not have allowed Labour MPs a free vote on the Syrian bombing:

" I stand by the idea that if you join an organisation then there should be some kind of collective discipline within it otherwise why join it? Why not stand as an independent?"

His argument is that, as Corbyn is the leader of the Labour Party, and as he supports Stop the War, all other Labour Party members should vote with him or else why are they members of that party.

Shoddy thinking. Most Labour MPs have never been supporters of STW and did not join the Labour Party on a pacifist stance. There will always be differing views about some party policies. You don't have to agree with the current leader on everything to be a member.

At the end there is an ad for joining STW which describes STW as "The campaign against the British government's war policies" as if all the British Govt's war policies were the same! They are not so that's a very simplistic thing to imply. Over-simplification of complex things always acts as a put-off for me, however much I might agree with various parts of the whole.

He was talking about whether there should have been a free vote, not saying that everybody in the Labour party should support stop the war.

In a way, he was criticising Corbyn for giving the free vote, saying that the majority of the Labour Party membership voted for Corbyn, so the parliamentary party should support Corbyn or become independent.
Sorry, but I think you are guilty of shoddy thinking there.

Stop the War was set up in 2001, and all government policies since then have been pro war.

' I think that’s an internal matter for the Labour party and Stop the War Coalition is a multi-party and no party organisation, there are people from the Greens, people from the Liberals, people from Labour, people from the far left, so it is not really up to us to say that but I’d be surprised if Labour party members didn’t want to see a leadership which more fully agreed with a leading member who they overwhelmingly voted for in the leadership election.'

Did you miss reading this paragraph, bags?

Well I did watch that interview durhamjen and I liked the fact he was honest in saying Stop The War wanted a whipped vote on Syria but understood the reason why it did not happen was because of the possibility there would be resignations including some high profile shadow cabinet members and that would be more damaging to Corbyn than allowing a free vote.

A couple of points regarding that , I don't think the Parliamentary Labour Party should be told what to do by Stop The War and second those who have hailed Corbyn as some kind of saint for allowing a free vote should listen to Reese's point as that is closer to the truth of the matter as to why Corbyn allowed the free vote. Most people I would hazard a guess thought was the case anyway and nothing to do with a 'new kind of politics' nor Corbyn being kind it took him days to say what he was going to do and in the end he was pushed into making it a free vote.

The link you provide actually confirms why I said Rees uses 'wooly' 'ildefined' rhetoric when he answers Murnighan over the decision by Stop The War to take down the article commonly known as 'Reaping the Whirlwind ' over the Paris slaughters. I made reference to it in my post Sunday 13Dec 15.15. Rees says on one hand the article was removed because Stop The War didn't agree with the article in the sense the' victims ' did not Reap the Whirlwind but on his other hand he suggests that Stop The War however agree with the article because they too feel 'The State' did 'Reap the Whirlwind'. Some people like myself will share a different view to yourself durhamjen but that's because I don't feel the Paris attack should be given one nanno second of blaim to any party other than the terrorists who committed the death of so many people. If the public/media whomever had not been been upset by the article in places then it would be on the Stop The War website no doubt still.

It seems Stop The War are looking harder at their PR as they have become more entrenched in the spotlight and several articles have been removed if I am not mistaken that have caused offence.

John Rees was a Co-Founder of Stop of The War and was a prominent figure in the Socialist Workers Party, resigned in 2010. However he sits on the editorial board of Counterfire a political organisation and he helped start up The Peoples Assembly Against Austerity. In fact the leaders of most of these organisations have connections to the far left parties don't they .

I think the Sunday Politics program. which included an interview with Labour MP Richard Burgon is a better insight into Stop The War than the link provided and is well worth a watch if anybody is genuinely interested. Of course it will be factual , inquisitive to some viewers but smeer and made up fantasy by others , you pays your money you take your pick.

I can assure you durhamjen that as for your last comment some people have quite a good take on facts and will criticise if and when they feel it appropriate. Please don't patronise.

Please do not patronise me, either. You do it all the time. I am just as capable as you of putting my views. I read a lot; I watch a lot.
We will obviously never agree, because you would rather we bombed. I am a pacifist. I would not.
You would always find fault with Stop the War.
Why are your views more sensible than mine? I do not think so.
I know my own MPs views on not bombing Syria. I do not need Richard Burgon's views.
Richard Burgon, a Leeds MP, listened to his constituents and voted with them.
Hilary Benn listened to his constituents telling him to vote against the bombing, and voted against them, swaying many in the Labour party, and possibly being responsible for the UK bombing Syria.

No wonder Stop the War want MPs to be held responsible by their constituents.

You know very well that some articles have been removed. What are you insinuating by that? Please read Stop the War properly and you will find out why.

Richard Burgon was not discussing Syria durhamjen, he was discussing Stop The War.

You really have an issue with anybody who dares to counter argue with you it would appear.

And you do not? It appears to me that you do, too.
I said we would never agree. That's a much more simple way of putting it.

I didn't read the link because I'm bored to tears with links that say the same thing. Thanks to thatbags for the summary of the link, as well as for her conclusions.
I'm with Pogs on this issue - curious isn't it, she's what on gransnet will usually thought of as 'on the right' and I'm 'on the left'. I dislike simplistic, dictatorial approaches to complex problems. I blame the terrorists who murdered people in Paris for their actions.
I may think there is a (tenuous) link between the abusive behaviour of adults who experienced some form of abuse in childhood. I would not believe for one moment that their early life experiences absolved them of responsibility for perpetuating the abuse cycle. In the end, we are each and every one of us responsible for our behaviour.