Ahhhhh, relief

“ Right now the success rate is getting on for 100% – allowing for time lag”

An absolute classic from Murphy on that thread

It really underlines how shite our politics are when Rebecca Long-Bailey (stupid name) is meant to be an important figure.

You wouldn’t trust her to make a cup of tea without fucking it up, would you? If you looked up “dozy cow” in the dictionary, you’d probably see her strangely proportioned face.

Henceforth known as Rebecca Luvvie lives matter.

SMFS,

From what I’ve read, no, Israel didn’t train those police officers but Amnesty International has claimed Baltimore and other police did send some of their officers there for training:

But what hasn’t received as much attention is where Baltimore police received training on crowd control, use of force and surveillance: Israel’s national police, military and intelligence services.

Baltimore law enforcement officials, along with hundreds of others from Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Arizona, Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Georgia, Washington state as well as the DC Capitol police have all traveled to Israel for training. Thousands of others have received training from Israeli officials here in the U.S.

A fine distinction and Minneapolis police may have been trained by those who did go to Israel, but I haven’t seen anyone making that claim.

From what I can gather that training in the USA was a half day seminar at Israel’s embassy.

But then again they could have been trained anywhere as police do share tactics and techniques:

What’s wrong with that?

It’s true to say that the world’s police forces share training and best-practice – though in the case of many American police forces the phrase “worst practice” might be more appropriate – and that holds true for the police in most nations.

The trouble with Peake’s comments was that she singled out Israel – suggesting that the technique which lead to the death of Floyd was learnt in Israel.

Why should Israel’s security services be treated as more responsible for the killing than those of the United Kingdom or France, or any of the countless forces that use aggressive restraint techniques?

Why is Peake, a British actor, singling out the world’s only Jewish majority state as the point of origin for the killing of an African-American? Why not focus on the country she lives in? Why not on the United States, where the killing took place? It is an example of the all-too-common behaviour of parts of the British left: of placing Israel at the heart of a global nexus of various ills.

And this long Twitter thread is as an good explanation of why it was anti-semitic and why RLB knew it as I’ve seen:

I think the RLB thing is incredibly hard to unpick & you need a shit tonne of context to understand why it was dodgy, which is why most people won’t. And it’s so effing hot, I don’t want to have to explain it, but I fear I must & bear with me, will do my best. 1/

This is a classic situation where someone has, on the surface of things, criticised the actions of the Israeli state. That in itself is not antisemitic, of course. It is also something where a bit of it is true & a bit of it isn’t. The important bit isn’t. 2/

I’m not copying them all across, I’ll leave you to go and read them, if you’re interested.

BiND- the politics are quite simple, Rebecca didn’t do what she was told by her boss.

Keir- hey Rebecca, that article you retweeted, i’ve been told it could be construed as X which some would then construe as Y. I see it as my job to end Y in the party. So please remove the retweet.
Rebecca- get wrecked grandad. You don’t own me.
Keir- you’re fired.

Now we can go into the whys and wherefores behind all the construing going on, but is it even necessary when really a leader takes a view, tells a subordinate colleague, this is how it’s got to be, colleague demurs. Suddenly Rebecca has the freedom of the backbenches. The way alot of leaders would look at it… If it wasn’t this it would be something else, and that something else could be more damaging. As it is Keir gets to declare a small victory over Y in the party.
Now of course that’s not the end of it. But Rebecca’s career took a hit, and Keir’s neutral or a boost, if he keeps doing that then he might actually get a handle on his party.

BIND

– here’s the article i read originally.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53183085

Iain watson- “Leadership sources, though, insist the sacking was not part of some grand plan.
They say Mrs Long-Bailey had to go because she repeatedly refused to remove her retweet of Maxine Peake’s article when asked to do so.”

What puzzles me is that no-one seems the slightest concerned that Ms Peake, for whom RLB has the utmost admiration, was, in the same post, advocating the overthrow of capitalism. Hmmm… that should convince a few floating voters, eh?