James O'Brien's Must-Watch Monologue On Britain's Row With Russia - LBC

LBC: Leading Britain's Conversation
DAB Digital Radio | 97.3FM FM London

[trollhunter]

Jacob Rees-Mogg praised the Prime Minister’s plan to impose sanctions on Russia this afternoon, saying “tyrants must be stood up to”, Adding:

“Can I encourage her to impose a freeze on assets so that people don’t have the opportunity to take them out of the country in the short-term.”

Scrapbook wonders if Rees-Mogg would similarly support a retaliatory Kremlin backed freeze on British assets in Russia – which could see his own financial interests jeopardised.

It’s a well known fact that the MP for North East Somerset has earned millions of pounds as a founder partner at Somerset Capital Management (SCM) and owns up to 15 per cent of the shares in the company, according to register of MP’s interests.

But according to investment websites, SCM manages sizeable assets invested in Russian firms (for which it takes a tidy management fee every year).

One of the company’s flagship funds (worth £1.4bn) has over £90m invested in Russian equities, according to investment firm Hargreaves Lansdown.

And most of that (£57m) is invested in Sberbank, a Russian state-owned banking service.

The Somerset Emerging Markets Dividend Growth fund was in fact set up by Mogg with fellow founding partner of SCM Edward Robertson in the early days of the company, according to SCM’s website.

What’s more, the fund’s done awfully well for SCM (and for Mogg as a shareholder and director), seeing as its capital has grown by 45 per cent over the past five years alone.

Rees-Mogg seems a little too happy to toe a strong line on Russia after having profited from the country for so many years.

[flashmanharry]

This is the only time I've agreed with him.

[Starfishtroopers]

It's these kind of sell outs like O'Brian that should be held accountable.

[cbarclay]

Tony Blair must be pulling his hair out. If only he had employed James O'Brien as a speechwriter in 2003, when millions protested against a war for whose justification Blair had failed to provide credible evidence. Those millions would have been cowed into accepting the Government's lies by O'Brien's words: "The smile Saddam Hussein must have on his face when he hears people who have grown up with all of the benefits of Western liberal democracy somehow choosing his side against their own country."

O'Brien's description of Mein Kampf - "It is all there. Treat people as if they are incredibly stupid, give them a couple of meaningless slogans, a sense of certainty when confronted with complicated issues and they will do your bidding" - describes US government propaganda post-9/11. What better 'meaningless slogan' is there than 'The War on Terror'. Unfortunately for the US and UK governments and their media shills, people are not as 'incredibly stupid' as they assumed. The scepticism of many people towards the UK Government's claims over the Salisbury poisonings has to be seen in context: it follows the lies told about Iraq in 2003, the lies told about Libya in 2011 and the lies told about Syria since 2013. O'Brien employs his habitual tactic of smearing people who disagree with him. What he does not say is that we would now be fighting a land war with Russia in Syria had Labour MPs and their leader Ed Milliband not reflected widespread public opposition to such a war in a vote in 2013. On that occasion, Cameron's director of communications accused Milliband of giving 'succour to Assad'. We can see at whose feet O'Brien learnt his trade.

Nor does O'Brien mention that the EU was slow in supporting the UK's claims almost certainly because of doubts about the claims' veracity. Presumably Putin owns the French and German governments too. (The claim that Putin got Tillerson fired is ludicrous when you consider that his replacement was a CIA insider).

Why was the UK story doubted? Because in March when O'Brien made his propaganda pitch, the Government's definitive explanation of how the Skripals had been poisoned was changing at regular intervals and the method of producing Novichok has been widely known for decades. (On Nick Ferrari's show on LBC, a former MI6 officer actually made this point). Even 6 months later, the UK Government still has no idea of the real identity of the accused but claims to have proof that they work for the GRU and got their orders direct from the Kremlin. This is frankly laughable. There is also the point about the incompetence of disposing of the poison container by throwing it under a bush. Either the assassins were not the GRU's finest or else they were being followed, which begs the question as to why they were allowed to leave the UK.

What is known is that the Skripals both switched off their mobile phones for several hours on the day of the poisoning. The obvious explanation is that they wanted their location to be unknown to BRITISH intelligence. If the Skripals did meet the two men accused by the British government, it was for purposes that they wanted to hide from BRITISH intelligence. The UK Government is clearly not telling the whole truth and probably lying to us.

[dembydish]

Very few people trust their politicians in the UK and with good reason. So by extension why should they be believed them on this issue? I think your analysis is very skewed.

[trollhunter]

alot of people voted brexit to get rid of cameron and break the austerity deadlock the tories were imposing on the uk..and it worked because brexit was the gamble that was going to destroy the tory party forever..brexit was the greatest gift to the uk people from cameron you can imagine..

[fcallum]

Who are James O'Brien's handlers?

[Fleatoad]

Now the UK experts say they can't prove the nerve agent comes from Russia. Aww and you put so much effort into this video!

[lliambunter]

That is my lot with you James, You don't have to support Russia to disagree with something for which there is no evidence, very very disappointed with you and to compare this with so called chem trails is ridiculous, have you been got at?

[Etechization]

Who is this clown and why is he on my recommendations?

[paddymuppy]

James needs to educate himself on the current deployment of sulfate aerosols into the atmosphere for solar #Geoengineering #SRM Solar Radiation

[samwarrilow]

What a waste of 3 minutes 48 seconds of my life listening to that over-inflated misery

[gatgoggle]

Shame on you.

(Fool you once shame on them.
Fool you twice...)


You ain't gonna fool me again.

[eugenetennant]

Damn those basket of deplorables. Am i right? Oh and the cartons 'turn the fricken frogs gay' not children. Gotta love Alex Jones. Hes such a basket case 😁

[plewin]

Progressives have a way with words that is truly impressive. Perhaps it started when they stole the word liberal from libertarians and since has snowballed out of control. From “social justice" to “pro-choice” (except with light bulbs) to various “isms” to describe their opponents, progressives are experts at such linguistic feats. And while conservatives and even libertarians unfortunately use many trite phrases in place of an argument as well, progressives are the all-time champions. The best proof of this is the term progressive and their excessive use of it when referring to everything they support as being progressive and everything they oppose as more or less reactionary. This simple dichotomy is a pleasant fiction for those who like their politics boiled down to the most unsophisticated, partisan blather. However, the idea of progress coming on some gradient between reactionary conservative or libertarian and progressive liberal is blatantly fallacious.

Those progressives were the ones who rammed through Prohibition against those “economic conservatives who ... pushed so hard for repeal”

Bryan epitomized the prohibitionist viewpoint: Protestant and nativist, hostile to the corporation and the evils of urban civilization, devoted to personal regeneration and the social gospel, he sincerely believed that prohibition would contribute to the physical health and moral improvement of the individual, stimulate civic progress, and end the notorious abuses connected with the liquor traffic.

Sounds like a modern day drug warrior, to whom progressives are often quite suspect (unless they are fighting Four Loko, of course). Speaking of which, the progressives of old also passed the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act, the first federal drug law. Meanwhile, the presumably reactionary libertarian H.L. Mencken described supporters of Prohibition as being moved by the “psychological aberration called sadism.”

It should also be noted that Coletta described Bryan as a “nativist.” Nativism is usually associated with the right, but that shouldn’t be the case for these progressives. The AFL supported the 1882 and 1924 immigration restriction acts against the Chinese. In fact, many “progressive” labor unions were very racist, nativist, and nationalist. Even the second incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan in the early twentieth century, aside from being quite racist, was also in favor of many progressive reforms. Abortion-advocate and progressive hero Margaret Sanger even gave a speech at one of the KKK’s rallies.

Margaret Sanger was also an avowed supporter of eugenics, as were many other progressives of the time(something modern day progressives seem less enthusiastic about). As Steven Pinker observed,

Contrary to the popular belief spread by the radical scientists, eugenics for much of the twentieth century was a favorite cause of the left, not the right. It was championed by many progressives, liberals, and socialists, including Theodore Roosevelt, H.G. Wells, Emma Goldman, George Bernard Shaw, Harold Laski, John Maynard Keynes, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Margaret Sanger and the Marxist biologists J.B.S. Haldane and Hermann Muller. It’s not hard to see why the sides lined up this way. Conservative Catholics and Bible Belt Protestants hated eugenics because it was an attempt by intellectual and scientific elites to play God. Progressives loved eugenics because it was on the side of reform rather than the status quo, activism rather than laissez-faire, and social responsibility rather than selfishness.3

It’s almost absurd that conservatives and libertarians get blamed for eugenics, even if it’s typically in a roundabout way through the muddled and all but apocryphal term of “Social Darwinism.” After all, why would conservatives, who are often skeptical of evolution, support a “science” based on evolution? And why would libertarians support government trying to regulate people biologically when they oppose the government trying to regulate lemonade stands. Given that, it is unsurprising that the Catholic conservative G.K. Chesterton wrote Eugenics and Other Evils. And the great libertarian economist Ludwig von Mises complained about socialist meddling in that “... [a man] becomes a pawn in the hands of the supreme social engineer. Even his freedom to rear progeny will be taken away by eugenics.”



But the National Socialists (i.e., “Nazis”) were the biggest proponents of eugenics and they weren’t progressive, right? After all, their 25 point platform demanded all sorts of libertarian things such as “the nationalization of all trusts ... profit sharing in large industries ... [and] a generous increase in old-age pensions.” Hugh Johnson, a key member of Franklin Roosevelt’s Brain Trust during the New Deal, even refered to Benito Mussolini as a “shining example of the twentieth century.”5 Still, the National Socialists certainly weren’t antecedents of modern left-wing social justice warriors. Of course, it’s hard not to conclude such fascists were also close to the polar opposite of libertarians.

This history should prove that progress in terms of moving toward something better is, in a political sense, extremely subjective. For example, progressives in Denmark made prostitution legal and progressives in Sweden made it illegal. Can both be progressive? Now, progress surely exists in economic, scientific, and technologic terms. Or at least one would think. Some very progressive folks believe the Luddites were a “heroic movement for working-class rights.” So destroying technology equals progress? What about the Industrival Revolution? After all — despite its many difficulties — per capita income did skyrocket afterward. But some progressives seem unsure about the Industrial Revolution’s overall positive qualities. Or let’s go back further and ignore the ridiculously high levels of violence among tribal societies by undoing the Agricultural Revolution, which Jared Diamond calls “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race.” Or forget that, let’s just get rid of human beings all together with the hyper-progressive voluntary human extinction movement. Progress!

What progress is and what reaction is depend very much on where you start and where you want to go. If equality is the goal — as many self-described progressives say it is — then any progress toward equality should be considered, well, progress. If that is the case, shouldn’t communism be the most progressive cause of all? Communism was certainly considered as such by many intellectuals in the past. Indeed, Karl Marx saw history as a sort of march of progress: primitive communism to slave society to feudalism to mercantilism to capitalism to socialism and finally to communism. And the Soviet Union certainly executed its fair share of reactionaries and counter-revolutionaries.




Fortunately, communism has been politically dead for over two decades. You may have a few radicals like Maoist Rebel News toasting his now dearly departed Kim Jung Ill with a shot of Hennessey or making a whole series of videos describing the greatness of North Korea by recycling North Korean propaganda videos and talking points. But that’s abnormal. Most modern progressives despise communism and would never show even the meekest support for such a blood-soaked system. Would they?

Well, over at Salon, Jesse Myerson wants to tell you “Why you’re wrong about communism” and Sean Mcelwee at The Rolling Stone highlights why “Marx was Right” because he foresaw the horror of iphones. Whoopi Goldberg thinks that at least “it’s a great concept.” Former Obama White House Communications Director Anita Dunn referred to Mao Zedong as one of her “favorite political philosophers” whom Howard Zinn lauded for creating “... the closest thing, in the long history of [China], to a people’s government ...”6 Back in 1984,  Jesse Jackson gave a speech in Havana titled “Viva Fidel, ” Robert Redford went scuba diving with said dictator and Steven Spielberg described the time he spent with Castro as “the most important eight hours of [my] life.” Hollywood even made a four-and-half- hour, two-part propaganda film about Che Guevara back in 2008. The left’s mushy and ambivalent view toward communism may best be summed up by Daniel Singer, when writing for The Nation back in 1999, wanted to highlight both sides, the “enthusiasm, construction, the spread of education and social advancement” along with the less pleasant things, such as mass murder.

Refutations of such nonsense can be found elsewhere. What’s important to this discussion is that one would suspect that dusting-off things which had been left in the ash heap of history would be, well, reactionary.

[chilrad]

1:34-1-46 or indeed from Russia eh James?

[plewin]

Up until WWII, Progressivism and Fascism were political twins – perhaps not identical twins, but twins. Both were overtly racist, embracing eugenics and its concepts of superior races. Both pursued concordant race-based population reduction: from Progressives we saw Planned Parenthood and its “Negro Project, ” and from Fascists concentration camps.

The first Progressive President, Woodrow Wilson, segregated the formerly integrated federal government. Progressives of that era (and ever since) have lauded large, dominant and domineering central government, a model diametrically opposed by our Constitution. Yet the second Progressive President, FDR, erected an ever more powerful “state” through his “New Deal” – much to the approval of Fascist leader Mussolini in Italy. Indeed, we all know how Fascists view government power and scope. So overall, FDR and the Fascists of his era were essentially sharing Collectivist “best practices.”

Unfortunately, from the standpoint of the Classic Progressive leaders, the end of WWII exposure of the National Socialists’ concentration camps forced eugenics out of fashion, at least in polite company. However, Collectivists of all stripes, including those of the Progressive branch, never lost their ardor for achieving an all-powerful global government, administered by an elite of superior human beings, lording over the inferior masses beneath. For their own good, of course. Even if they are too stupid to appreciate what their betters were doing for them – but then again, what else can you expect from “deplorables”?

So for the Progressive leaders, how to continue the mission, now that open eugenics was off of the table? Strategic salvation came in the form of what today is referred to as “Cultural Marxism” – the purposeful and anarchistic deconstruction of Western culture and norms, executed so as to pave the way to build a secular utopia upon the societal rubble. Its originators and proponents included Antonio Gramsci, the Communist theorist from Italy; Germans like Herbert Marcuse and Theodor Adorno (of the “Frankfurt School” that eventually set up shop at Columbia University); and “American” Saul Alinsky of “Rules for Radicals” notoriety. (Yes, Progressivism is a branch of Collectivism, which is international in scope and menace.)

The post-WWII Progressives – henceforth we’ll refer to them as “Neo-Progressives” – knew a good thing when they saw it, and have run with Cultural Marxism ever since. In doing so, they’ve shifted Progressivism’s emphasis from “White” racism to a sort of “egalitarian racism.” That is, Progressives now pretend to believe that all races are “equal, ” and that they are the champions of the “minority” and “underprivileged” races – Blacks and the so-called Hispanics “race” in particular. (It deserves mention that Progressives’ “advocacy” for ever-multiplying categories of gender and sexual proclivities is also part of its Cultural Marxism strategy.) Neo-Progressivism is egalitarian in the sense that any “race” but “White” is welcomed aboard, so long as it will be useful toward advancing the agenda.

Note that both the Classic Progressives and Neo-Progressives always have, and always will categorize people by group, particularly by race; and do so in a manner diametrically opposed to our founding principles, i.e., “all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator…” The Neo-Progressive leadership – still to this day almost exclusively comprised of elite-class Whites – for public purposes portrays “Whites” as the privileged boogeyman.

Thus, Neo-Progressives appear to embrace the opposite of the “White Supremacy” that their Classical Progressive forefathers embraced. Yet all the while all Progressive leaders have embraced and pursued the same ultimate goal – that of a global, Godless utopia governed by a ruling elite of the “best and brightest” (i.e., them). While the White Supremacist “means to the ends” may have been flipped on its head – at least for public consumption – the ultimate goal has remained unaltered. Judging people by the color of their skin rather than the content of their individual character – and encouraging useful idiots to do likewise – and herding them into proverbial Collectivist cattle cars of the victimhood train, is politically useful for Neo-Progressives.

“Antifa” and “Black Lives Matter” are Neo-Progressive cadres; while the KKK types are Classical Progressive cadres (note that the KKK started as an arm of the Democrat Party, in many respects the Reconstruction era’s “Antifa”). The battles between them that we just witnessed in Charlottesville are not unlike what occurred in the 1930’s – two forms of Collectivism duking it out for dominance as the form that rules – only today it’s an intramural squabble between two forms of Progressivism. Back in the 1930’s it was Fascism vs. Communism duking it out – in Germany and Italy Fascism controlled through WWII, while Communism prevailed in the USSR. After WWII, Communism (and its adolescent sibling, Socialism) prevailed in the USSR, China and much of Europe. Meanwhile, on this side of the Atlantic, before and after WWII, Progressivism continued its incremental but determined “fundamental transformation” advance through the United States of America.

Today’s street-level Neo-Progressives believe that they are “fighting” to achieve “social justice, ” while street-level Classic Progressives believe that they are “fighting” to achieve “White Supremacy.” Both cadres are useful idiots, unwittingly in service of their Progressive overlords, who are manipulating them to inflame and irreparably divide our country. Seeking to wrench us from e pluribus unum – and ultimately intending to achieve the Cultural Marxists’ dream of societal deconstruction.

After which, the street-level folks will be encouraged to lock-arms in solidarity, as they become indistinguishable equals, human widgets within Progressivism’s proletariat under the new global order.

[arisrayden]

james you need to do a little bit more research into trump. honestly i am a bit baffled that you missed this but mein kampf may well be the only book trump has read

[helveticavanburen]

If I'm not sure what I think about something I find out what James O'Brien thinks and then I know the correct position is the exact opposite of whatever that failed journalist is saying.

[kensummers]

I love James's monotonous monologues> I literally windsurf on the lake of his whinny Remainer tears.