Dear Heather,

Your analysis is very accurate, and mine.  I am so glad you cited Milton Mayer.  Shamefully I have never read his book.  SAlways reacting to the poneros.  He was a journalist.  I recall that he had a 'quiet funeral' like Howard Zinn, another 'Jew' of the finest morals.  Interesting.  I have sent these quotes from Mayer out for at least 15 years.  Hundreds of times.  I cannot recall, and you know my memory, more than one or two responses - and many go out to people I know and respect.  Psychology is all important.

I have found time, when staying awake after a pee usually, to read a book reviewed in the Morning Star about 11 years ago - just before I left after it swerved towards Zion, that black hill in Jerusalem.  This very brave psychologist was studying poneros -evil with 2 others under the heel of 'communism'. 

Political Ponerology     Andrew M. Lobaczewski  ISBN-13:978-1897244470   Red Pill Press  North Carolina -unincorporated community.  A short list of books of seminal nature  Graham who sent it from the States put in -

Dear David,  hope you find the information helpful.  best wishes Graham.  the e-mail address is still live - (unless the CIA are diverting mails)

love and truth dear Heather

David
 

On 11/12/2019 11:15 pm, Heather Stroud wrote:

This in response to my communication with the organisers of the hustings event. David, you will note I borrowed your quote.

Subject: Hustings.
Thank you both for your responses. In reading them I realise we are not so far in our thinking. You  confirm my frustration that these hustings are, by there very nature, only designed to be an introduction to the candidates that can only ever reach a shallow understanding of what their values are. It’s this leads me to question the format and wonder if there is a way we can achieve something deeper. Having been alert to government changes over many years through my involvement in negotiations with the British Government in Hong Kong in relation to the treatment of asylum seekers, I do see a trend in ever tighter and tighter controls that I find very disturbing. Like others who have taken a stand by speaking out I share a sense of urgency in addressing these issues.

As you will see from my published article the question I posed regarding Julian Assange goes way beyond his individual injustice. In fact it goes right to the heart of government. What kind of government do we have and how far away is it to the kind of government we aspire to have. As stated this question relates to freedom of speech, to democracy and to justice. His case raises the question as to who is actually in charge of making policy decisions within the UK. Certainly not us the sovereign electorate. In allowing the arbitrary detention of Julian Assange for revealing war crimes committed in the US, our government is ( like the US) sending out a message that those who challenge power will not be tolerated. The US and UK are in many ways on a parallel track. 

The US is ahead of us in having privatised all of their public services. They have don’t have a health care system that is available to everyone. Even in the private sector it’s said that it is nowhere near to the standard of the NHS. Am I moving far away from the question relating to the arbitrary detention of Julian Assange? ... No, not at all. Dr. Bob Gill and others who are speaking out about the stealth employed in the ‘sell off’ of the NHS are fully aware that in speaking out in today’s climate of control it will likely not only cost them their job but jeopardise their career as medical professionals. It’s happened and is happening to many such whistleblowers. I could site the case of a banking whistleblower not so far from home.

Democracy has never been given to us. It was something that had to be fought for by our forebears and as a result of our complacency will no doubt have to be fought for again. Our welfare system, along with our treasured jewel the NHS, was largely granted to us because of fears that the influence of communism was taking seed amongst the disenchanted workers who had returned home from the Second World War. Of course there were genuinely good people like Bevin and others, at the forefront fighting for these reforms. There was also a motive on the part of the ruling elite to get the economy moving again to foster their own wealth. Most gains within society happen as a result of struggle and a convergence of other factors.

I consider myself to have been born during the golden years soon after the war... free education (including university) free health care (including dental and eye care), cheap rental accommodation, cheap buses ( including trains). Energy, water, transport, prisons were all owned in public hands. There was no outsourcing or shareholder profits, children we were free to play and to explore, not coming home until it was tea time or it was getting dark. We took ourselves to school because no one questioned that we weren’t safe. I don’t remember there being so many  young homeless people .. living and dying on the streets. Maybe the odd tramp who had chosen a lifestyle of the open road.

We thought there would be no more wars, then came the Falklands, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and where else might we be fighting covertly. Certainly our weapons have appeared in Yemen. I could say much more, but the evidence is there... what we had is slowly being stripped away.

‘They Thought They Were Free'
by Milton Mayer, The Germans, 1938-45

"What no one seemed to notice was the ever widening gap between the government and the people. And it became always wider.....the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting, it provided an excuse not to think....for people who did not want to think anyway gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about.....and kept us so busy with continuous changes and 'crises' and so fascinated.....by the machinations of the 'national enemies,'  without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us.....

"Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted,' that unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these 'little measures'.....must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing.....Each act is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next.

"You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even talk, alone.....you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.'  But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes.

"That's the difficulty. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves, when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed.

"You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things your father.....could never have imagined."

Warmest wishes, Heather