Eggs-actly, Mr Corbyn

Continuing a long British tradition of political protest, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn was 'egged' on Sunday.

A man described in news reports as a “pro-Brexit protester” caught up with 'Jezza' outside the Finsbury Park Mosque and slapped a raw egg down on his head, with the words: “When you vote, you get what you vote for.”

The protester was arrested for assault. The media was quick to assure us that the Labour leader was unharmed after his ordeal. Labour shadow home secretary Diane Abbott ramped up the hyperbole when she tweeted: “He punched Jeremy very hard. He happened to have an egg in his palm. But it could have been a knife.”

But the sticky situation Corbyn found himself in was no more than what he deserved after selling out his principals, his friends and his country twice last week in a vain attempt to appease factions in his party who want him out.

First he declared his support for a re-run of the 2016 referendum on leaving the European Union, with reversing that decision as one of the options. With around two-thirds of Labour-held or targeted constituencies voting Leave, this effectively makes Labour unelectable.

Then Corbyn hung his political ally MP Chris Williamson – a staunch defender of Brexit and Venezuela's right to national sovereignty – out to dry, over his defence of his party's position on tenuous allegations of institutional anti-Semitism.

Corbyn's double betrayal has only made things worse. Like sharks, it has given his enemies a whiff of blood and driven them into a feeding frenzy.

Despite obeying an order from Corbyn's office to make a grovelling apology for his public comments, Williamson was suspended from the Labour group of MPs within hours. The attacks on the leader and pressure for further betrayals on Brexit – including a parliamentary vote to delay leaving indefinitely or even cancel it – continue unchecked.

Even Corbyn's closest ally, shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, backs a second referendum and has hinted at joining a protest march in favour of it. Maybe he hopes to be elected leader when the imperialist, Zionist, pro-EU wing of Labour finally force Corbyn to quit.

The whole farrago has crippled Labour as a serious opposition party to the Conservative government, which now seems likely to get its treacherous Brexit-in-name-only deal through Parliament after the Tory Eurosceptics softened their opposition to the “backstop” clause that could keep us under EU rules indefinitely.

Brexit mastermind Nigel Farage has seized on this treason by the two main parties, both of which campaigned at the last election on promises to honour the Brexit vote.

Two weeks from now former UK Independence Party and current Brexit Party leader will lead a march from Sunderland, the first polling centre to declare a Leave majority in 2017, to London, arriving on the March 29 leaving date.

The march route is close to that of the 1936 Jarrow Crusade against unemployment. The organisers are playing up that analogy. The Labour Party and Trades Union Congress leaders of the day failed to support the Jarrow marchers, but local Conservative party branches often welcomed them.

Today's Labour Party and TUC bigwigs have similarly turned against their pro-Leave voters and members outside the metropolitan areas, treating them like foolish or naughty children who need a good telling-off and to make amends.

Labour has betrayed the working class many times, starting with its support for the First World War. But this time the stab in the back comes from a leader held aloft as the great white hope of the left, a true socialist, a dangerous Marxist.

Thankfully the people are smarter than politicians and media give them credit for. Fortunate, but not for Labour or Tories.

In Britain we still elect individuals to Parliament, harking back centuries to before formal political parties stood candidates. That's why the eight Labour and three Tory MPs who resigned from their parties to form the anti-Brexit “Independent Group” still hold their seats.

Perhaps it's time to return to the early days of Parliamentary democracy, like Cuba did after its 1959 revolution, and stop the big party machines from foisting their stuck-up, metropolitan media-friendly, corporate-captured candidates on our constituencies.

The mystery of the Guanches

The origins and language of the indigenous people of the Canary Islands remain a mystery, writes Dr Sabina Goralski Filonov Translation by James Tweedie The guanches, the aboriginals of the Canary Islands whose origin, lost in the mists of time, still arouses intense and passionate debate and great controversy about their origins and the how the seven Canary Islands were populated – which according to some studies occurred between 10,000 and 8,000 years BC. Literally, the word ‘Guan’ means man or person and ‘Chenech’ or ‘Chinet’ is applied to the island of Tenerife, thus meaning a man or inhabitant of Tenerife – although according to Núñez de la Peña, the Spanish named them the Guanchos during the conquest of the islands. But with the passage of time, experts in the subject are questioning whether the word Guanche was used to designate the primitive inhabitants of all the islands in the pre-Hispanic period. The term ‘Guanche’ has also ceased to be applied to the di...

Homeless dogs’ home fights for compensation

Dingo Dogs owner Phil Nelson at his since-demolished home. DOGS’ home owner Phil Nelson has vowed to take legal action following his eviction from his Dingo Dogs animal sanctuary in August. by James Tweedie Indian-born Mr Nelson, along with former girlfriend and Dingo Dogs treasurer Leigh Crouch were left homeless by the court-ordered eviction and have been sharing a small hut in the mountains near Las Chafiras with ten dogs and three cats ever since. Mr Nelson’s dispute with his former landlord began in September 2004, after he officially registered his rented hillside finca as an animal sanctuary. It was a requirement of his registration that he keep proper financial records, including receipts for payment of rent. Mr Nelson says that despite having a rental contract and paying his rent “as regular as clockwork” for years, his landlord never gave him a receipt even after he began asking for one every month in 2004. In May 2005, after his landlord ha...

No 'day in court' for Zuma as supporters take Durban

The trial of South Africa's ex-president Jacob Zuma was postponed for two months on Friday pending his legal challenge to the resurrection of decade-old corruption charges. Outside the Durban High Court, thousands of Mr Zuma's supporters from the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and other organisations brought the Indian Ocean port city to a standstill. Zuma supporters rally around a stage set up outside the Durban High Court The ANC Women's League, Youth League and Umkhonto we Sizwe Veterans' Association were present, along with the Black land First Campaign, National Interfaith Council of South Africa, the Commission for Religious Affairs. Revellers wore ANC t-shirts and other merchandise in defiance of warnings by Police Minister Bheki Cele Former minister Des van Rooyen and Eastern Cape ANC leader Andile Lungisa accompanied Mr Zuma to the doors of the court. Inside he sat smiling a few feet apart from Christine Guerrier, a representative of Fre...

Venezuela condemns MUD silence over terror attack

Venezuela’s foreign minister condemned the opposition and their foreign backers for their silence over Tuesday’s helicopter attack on the capital. At a press conference on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Samuel Moncada said Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) coalition leader Henry Ramos’ only comment on social media was that the attack was “useless.” “Firstly that does not condemn it,” Mr Moncada said. “Secondly it appears he was condemning it because it didn’t have the desired effect, that is to say, that it would blow up the building.” And he asked why fellow Mud leader Henrique Capriles lacked the “moral courage to... repudiate a terrorist act.” The newly-appointed minster and former ambassador to Britain accused fellow members of the Washington-based Organisation of American States of “feigning ignorance” and so protecting the culprits. And he accused sections of the media of portraying the culprit — Police investigator and one-time action film star Oscar Perez — as a “Rambo ...

The Labour-Snatchers

WHAT do you call an event that would see a country lose a third of its population? A catastrophe? An apocalypse? In Europe they call it “Union.” According to the Vienna-based International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), the “free movement of labour” between European Union member states will see that fraction of some countries' populations emigrate in the next 40 years. A recent IIASA study, reported on Friday by the EU Observer website, says Romania and Croatia's populations will fall by 30 percent by 2060, and Lithuania's by 38 percent. By contrast, eight years of the West's proxy war on Syria, when much of the country was overrun by terrorists who behead followers of other religious sects, has seen between 12 and 23 percent of the population flee the country. The 1983-85 Ethiopian famine killed about 1.2 million people and drove another 400,000 out of the country, about five per cent of the population at the time. Another 41 years of EU...

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