Sara MacDonald

Novelist. Lives in rural Cornwall. The LONG ROAD from KANDAHAR out May 12 2022 Published by HarperCollins. Agent Broo Doherty-DHH literary agency

[Sara MacDonald @MacDonaldSara]

@yousef_ki1 Oh poor baby. Unbearable. 🇵🇸

[Sara MacDonald @MacDonaldSara]

@gavinthomas2015 Spring onions.

[Sara MacDonald @MacDonaldSara]

@SusanPearson50 @meganekenyon I think it should scare the pants of us all. Are we, the public, being taken for suckers in some carefully choreographed power play. Different puppet, same strings?

[EndPopulistLies @EndPopulist]

@meganekenyon Simons is Blue Labour Mandelson protege McSweeneys bestie

It’s a FarRW Bannon playbook coup like the one that removed May to install Johnson

Funded by the same BrexStein billionaires

SGC have been used as useful idiots AGAIN (like Brexit🤦‍♀️)

Never Careful What They Wish For

[Sara MacDonald @MacDonaldSara]

@yousef_ki1 💔🇵🇸

[Sara MacDonald @MacDonaldSara]

@medoyaa 15

[Yves Engler @EnglerYves]

Fanatic Zionist Hillel Neuer is the product of a private, but taxpayer subsidized, Jewish supremacist Montreal school network.
Recently, the longtime head of UN Watch boasted about seeking to destroy the life of Francesca Albanese and her husband. After labelling the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories “the leading purveyor of the genocide libel”, Neuer told a Jewish News Syndicate Summit in Jerusalem that Albanese “is banned [from] the United States! She cannot use a bank card! She cannot use a debit card! She cannot receive a payment! After she was sanctioned, we got her husband … he was demoted from his position at the World Bank for incitement to hate!”

Because Albanese criticizes his beloved genocidal state, Neuer openly brags about successfully lobbying the US government to upend her life.

Among “top 100 most influential Jewish people in the world”, according to Israeli newspaper Maariv, Neuer leads a group that bullies those who promote equality and international justice. UN Watch campaigns against food aid to starving Palestinians. To assist Israel, it seeks to weaken the international legal system and the UN in general. As I told him four years ago, Neuer is an “anti-Palestinian bigot”.

Racist fanatics like Neuer don’t fall from the sky. They are the product of a family and/or educational system.

Neuer credits Hebrew Academy for his commitment to apartheid. A National Post profile notes, “he traces his skepticism of the UN back to high school and the Hebrew Academy in Montreal, where he wrote ‘an article critiquing the UN’ for the school newspaper. ‘So it is documented that I was skeptical of UN bias from about the age of 15 or 16,’ he says wryly.” Elsewhere, Neuer has said Hebrew Academy equipped him with a strong sense of moral clarity and Jewish values.

The kindergarten to Grade 11 Montreal private school bombards its students with Jewish supremacist messages. The school raises the Israeli flag and high schoolers are pushed to travel to the lawless apartheid state. Israeli emissaries lead kindergarten classes in “fun IDF programs” and the school shows students movies celebrating the Israeli military. Students send gifts to soldiers on IOF bases and Hebrew Academy says they are “beyond proud” of alumni who join the apartheid army.

A dozen private Jewish schools in Montreal promote Zionism. According to B’nai Brith, 7,000 children attend Jewish day schools in the city, which is more than half all the Jewish school age population. In a page listing all the schools they assist, Montreal’s Federation Combined Jewish Appeal boasts that “research shows that graduates of Jewish day schools are more likely to … maintain strong ties to Israel…87% of graduates say Israel is an essential part of their Jewishidentity.”

Incredibly, Quebec taxpayers pay over half the schools’ costs. Private schools in Quebec receive over $5,000 per student in education ministry funding. Additionally, the schools receive funds from the registered charity Federation CJA and are able to provide tax credits to donors themselves.

In other words, all Quebecers and all Canadians are subsidizing schools that indoctrinate students to defend Israel no matter what it does to Palestinians, Lebanese, Iranians or others. Quebecers and Canadians are subsidizing schools that convince students to join a foreign military. We subsidize schools that produce students who work to undermine the United Nations and international law, which Canada claims to support.

This must end.

[Zack Polanski @ZackPolanski]

The genocide in Gaza is a moral litmus test for Burnham.

[Peter Reynolds @TweeterReynolds]

@premnsikka Israel is the great moral issue of our age. It's exactly the same as the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s. If you can't step up on this then it will define you forever.

[Prem Sikka @premnsikka]

Meet James Purnell. Andy Burnham's chief of staff.

He supported Iraq invasion; ex chair of Labour Friends of Israel; said that Winter Fuel Allowance and free bus passes should not be sacred; supported PFI, lie-detector tests for benefit claimants.

Next?
https://t.co/8Cnj0hIu62

[Craig Murray @CraigMurrayOrg]

Andy Burnham's Chief of Staff will be James Purnell.

Ex Chair of Labour Friends of Israel.

All you need to know.

[The Heartlands Tribune @Labourheartland]

There is a lot to be said about Andy Burnham.

And there are plenty of people already leaping to defend him, usually by attacking anyone who dares point out the obvious.

Here’s the thing...

Burnham has not been parachuted in to be handed the highest office in the land to save the people or rescue the country.

He has been brought in because the Labour Party machine has shifted up a gear in an attempt to save itself.

They are hoping the public will look more kindly on a different face, as if Starmer alone caused Labour’s collapse in support.

He didn’t...

Starmer was the face of bad policy, poor government, donor politics, managed slogans and contempt for the people. Changing the face will not change the direction.

And that is the real insult.

Labour has over 400 MPs. A supermajority. A whole parliamentary party supposedly ready to govern. Yet when the machine needed a replacement, it had to ship in a substitute from the old Blairite days.

Not one of them had the ability, authority or confidence to take up the challenge.

That is not renewal.

That's panic...

As for Burnham, for those of us that have no longer tied our self to Labour’s mast,
you don’t have to dig very deep to find the real Andy Burnham.

He is not some insurgent socialist waiting in the wings. He is a dyed-in-the-wool Blairite, a career politician forged in the New Labour machine.

Before Parliament, he worked as a researcher and special adviser. In government, he served under Blair and Brown. As an MP, he backed the Iraq War in 2003.

As Health Secretary, he inherited and defended a system already riddled with New Labour’s love affair with marketisation, targets, outsourcing and PFI-style thinking. That is the political soil he grew out of.

So let’s stop pretending Burnham represents a clean break from Starmerism.

He's not the antidote. He's the earlier variant.

A smoother voice, a better regional accent, a bit more warmth on camera, but still the same basic politics: manage decline, praise “partnership” with the private sector, keep the donor class calm, and call it change.

If Labour replaces Starmer with Burnham and expects the country to mistake it for renewal, they are insulting people’s intelligence.

New boss. Old machine...

#AndyBurnham

[Roshan M Salih @RmSalih]

The great Israel Parliamentary debate stitch up

I've just totaled up the amount of time each side had to speak during the parliamentary debate yesterday on Israeli influence over UK politics.

The pro-Israel side had 1 hour and 9 minutes to put forward their pro-Israel views.

The anti-Israel side had 15 minutes only to put forward their anti-Israel views.

So in effect, the pro-Israel side had 82% of the speaking time during the debate, and the anti-Israel side had 18% speaking time.

This wasn't a debate, it was a forum for Israeli hasbara and propaganda.

And it proves exactly why 117,000 people signed a petition questioning Israel's influence over UK politicians.

[Sara MacDonald @MacDonaldSara]

@__jacker__ @TomLondon6 They do. But thousands of British people are unable to ignore his moral bankruptcy on Gaza.

[Sara MacDonald @MacDonaldSara]

@medialens I find the silence on this one huge fact of his unpopularity astonishing. I listened all day yesterday and not one mention of Gaza from any journalist on any programme. It’s the emperor’s new clothes. It’s the elephant in the room.

[Sara MacDonald @MacDonaldSara]

@__jacker__ @TomLondon6 You are missing the point of the post and illuminating the fact that no media outlet is admitting Starmer’s extreme unpopularity is because of his stance on Gaza.

[Sara MacDonald @MacDonaldSara]

@cutiieepie6 I’m so sorry. What a horrible shock.

[The Lucky Heron @LuckyHeronSay]

Being a Friend of Israel is a career move. It’s like being a freemason. It sends a message to the ruling class that you can be trusted to manage the state machine, that you put self interest above political principles, basically that you can be bought.

[Sara MacDonald @MacDonaldSara]

@yanisvaroufakis @EaarthNet Brilliant summing up.