How the News Agenda is Set
By Craig Murray | June 26, 2016
David Cameron gets heckled every day of his life. The media never bother to report the names of the hecklers or the gist of what they say.
Yet a single heckler shouts at Jeremy Corbyn at Gay Pride, and not only is that front page news in the Guardian, it is on BBC, ITN and Sky News.
What makes a single individual heckling a politician newsworthy? There are dozens such examples every single day that are not newsworthy.
The answer is simple. Normally the hecklers are promoting an anti-establishment view, so it does not get reported. Whereas this heckler was promoting the number one priority of the establishment and mainstream media, to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn. So this heckler, uniquely, is front page news and his words are repeated at great length in the Guardian and throughout the broadcast media.
The impression is deliberately given that he reflects general disgust from young people, and particularly gay young people, at Corbyn over the EU referendum. The very enthusiastic reception for Corbyn at Gay Pride is not reported.
Nor is the fact that the incident was not a chance one. The “heckler” is Tom Mauchline, a PR professional for PR firm Portland Communications, a dedicated Blairite (he describes himself as Gouldian) formerly working on the Liz Kendall leadership campaign. Portland Communications’ “strategic counsel” is Alastair Campbell.
So far from representing a popular mood, Mauchlyne was this morning on twitter urging people to sign a 38 Degrees petition supporting the no confidence motion against Corbyn. Ten hours later that petition has gained 65 signatures, compared to 120,000 for a petition supporting Corbyn. Mauchline formerly worked for 38 Degrees, unsurprising given their disgraceful behaviour over the Kuenssberg petition. I am waiting for the circle to be squared and Kuenssberg to report on the significance of Mauchline’s lone heckle.
I find it incredible that the mainstream media are all carrying this faked incident while not one single mainstream journalist has reported who Mauchline really is.
Brexit and the Diseased Liberal Mind
By Jonathan Cook | June 26, 2016
The enraged liberal reaction to the Brexit vote is in full flood. The anger is pathological – and helps to shed light on why a majority of Britons voted for leaving the European Union, just as earlier a majority of Labour party members voted for Jeremy Corbyn as leader.
A few years ago the American writer Chris Hedges wrote a book he titled the Death of the Liberal Class. His argument was not so much that liberals had disappeared, but that they had become so co-opted by the right wing and its goals – from the subversion of progressive economic and social ideals by neoliberalism, to the enthusiastic embrace of neonservative doctrine in prosecuting aggressive and expansionist wars overseas in the guise of “humanitarian intervention” – that liberalism had been hollowed out of all substance.
Liberal pundits sensitively agonise over, but invariably end up backing, policies designed to benefit the bankers and arms manufacturers, and ones that wreak havoc domestically and abroad. They are the “useful idiots” of modern western societies.
Reading this piece on the fallout from Brexit by Zoe Williams, a columnist who ranks as left wing by the current standards of the deeply diminished Guardian, one can isolate this liberal pathology in all its sordid glory.
Here is a revealing section, written by a mind so befuddled by decades of neoliberal orthodoxy that it has lost all sense of the values it claims to espouse:
There is a reason why, when Marine le Pen and Donald Trump congratulated us on our decision, it was like being punched in the face – because they are racists, authoritarian, small-minded and backward-looking. They embody the energy of hatred. The principles that underpin internationalism – cooperation, solidarity, unity, empathy, openness – these are all just elements of love.
One wonders where in the corridors of the EU bureaucracy Williams identifies that “love” she so admires. Did she see it when the Greeks were being crushed into submission after they rebelled against austerity policies that were themselves a legacy of European economic policies that had required Greece to sell off the last of its family silver?
Is she enamoured of this internationalism when the World Bank and IMF go into Africa and force developing nations into debt-slavery, typically after a dictator has trashed the country decades after being installed and propped up with arms and military advisers from the US and European nations?
What about the love-filled internationalism of NATO, which has relied on the EU to help spread its military tentacles across Europe close to the throat of the Russian bear? Is that the kind of cooperation, solidarity and unity she was thinking of?
Williams then does what a lot of liberals are doing at the moment. She calls for subversion of the democratic will:
The anger of the progressive remain side, however, has somewhere to go: always suckers for optimism, we now have the impetus to put aside ambiguity in the service of clarity, put aside differences in the service of creativity. Out of embarrassment or ironic detachment, we’ve backed away from this fight for too long.
That includes seeking the ousting of Jeremy Corbyn, of course. “Progressive” Remainers, it seems, have had enough of him. His crime is that he hails from “leftwing aristocracy” – his parents were lefties too, apparently, and even had such strong internationalist principles that they first met at a committee on the Spanish civil war.
But Corbyn’s greater crime, according to Williams, is that “he is not in favour of the EU”. It would be too much trouble for her to try and untangle the knotty problem of how a supreme internationalist like Corbyn, or Tony Benn before him, could be so against the love-filled EU. So she doesn’t bother.
We will never know from Williams how a leader who supports oppressed and under-privileged people around the world is cut from the same cloth as racists like Le Pen and Trump. That would require the kind of “agile thinking” she accuses Corbyn of being incapable of. It might hint that there is a left wing case quite separate from the racist one – even if Corbyn was not allowed by his party to advocate it – for abandoning the EU.
But no, Williams assures us, Labour needs someone with much more recent left wing heritage, someone who can tailor his or her sails to the prevailing winds of orthodoxy. And what’s even better, there is a Labour party stuffed full of Blairities to chose from. After all, their international credentials have been proven repeatedly, including in the killing fields of Iraq and Libya.
And here, wrapped into a single paragraph, is a golden nugget of liberal pathology from Williams. Her furious liberal plea is to rip up the foundations of democracy: get rid of the democratically elected Corbyn and find a way, any way, to block the wrong referendum outcome. No love, solidarity, unity or empathy for those who betrayed her and her class.
There hasn’t been a more fertile time for a Labour leader since the 1990s. The case for a snap general election, already strong, will only intensify over the coming weeks. As the sheer mendacity of the leave argument becomes clear – it never intended to curb immigration, there will be no extra money for the NHS, there was no plan for making up EU spending in deprived areas – there will be a powerful argument for framing the general election as a rematch. Not another referendum, but a brake on article 50 and the next move determined by the new government. If you still want to leave the EU, vote Conservative. If you’ve realised or knew already what an act of vandalism that was, vote Labour.
Jonathan Cook, based in Nazareth, Israel is a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books).
Corbyn rips into BBC over biased coverage
Press TV – June 1, 2016
UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has blasted the BBC for being “obsessed” with efforts to damage his leadership and accused some party members of playing into its hands.
Britain’s opposition leader made the comments in an interview with Vice News as part of a documentary about the workings of his office.
The film, which was aired on Wednesday, follows Corbyn over almost two months during the run-up to the May elections and features a series of interviews with Ben Ferguson, a Vice journalist and Labour member who voted for Corbyn.
In response to Ferguson expressing concern about Labour’s performance in May, Corbyn revealed the depth of his feelings about his portrayal in the media, launching a fierce attack against the BBC in particular.
“There is not one story on any election anywhere in the UK that the BBC will not spin into a problem for me. It is obsessive beyond belief. They are obsessed with trying to damage the leadership of the Labour party and unfortunately there are people in the Labour party that play into that,” he said.
Corbyn said one of the main lessons of being the leader is “how shallow, facile and ill-informed many of the supposed well-informed major commentators are in our media,” accusing them of shaping a debate that was “baseless and narrow.”
The Labour leader is filmed calling “utterly disgusting” a Guardian column that had accused him and his party of having an anti-Semitism problem.
The anti-Semitism row within the Labour Party became the center of media attention last month after the party suspended a number of its key figures for condemning Israeli crimes.
The latest uproar against Labour flared up when the former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, was suspended by Corbyn over denouncing Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people and arguing that Adolf Hitler, the former leader of Nazi Germany, was a supporter of Zionism.
As the controversy deepened, David Abrahams, a major party donor, called for Corbyn to resign, saying “Labour needs strong leadership.”
However, Corbyn said in a statement that he would propose a new code of conduct banning any forms of racism in his party.
“There is no place for anti-Semitism or any form of racism in the Labour Party, or anywhere in society,” he said.
Corbyn’s Latest Sin: Ignoring Summons to Visit Holocaust Museum in Israel
By Richard Edmondson | Fig Trees and Vineyards | May 30, 2016
Poor Jeremy Corbyn. He’s in hot water again. His latest offense? Ignoring an invitation from the leader of the Israeli Labor Party to journey to Israel to visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum.
And the Israeli Laborites are incensed at the absence of a reply, while the Blairite centrists in Corbyn’s own party are reportedly in “shock” at the news.
“You’re a lying racist,” shouted Labour MP John Mann at former London Mayor Ken Livingstone last month after the latter pointed out–accurately, by the way–that Hitler had supported Zionist goals of having Jews immigrate to Palestine. But it seems the philo-semitic witch hunters out for Corbyn’s blood can’t be bothered with historical facts.
“It should be a matter of common courtesy to reply to a letter from the leader of one of our sister parties, particularly on an issue as important as tackling antisemitism,” commented Labour MP Wes Streeting when news of the snub broke over the weekend.
“But this is fairly typical of the flat-footed and lackadaisical attitude that we’ve seen from the outset. It is simply unacceptable,” he added.
Streeting apparently feels the leader of the British Labour Party should pack his bags and promptly head for Yad Vashem.
Built on a rise overlooking the site of the Deir Yassin massacre, the Yad Vashem museum has for years now been a favored destination of opportunists seeking to further their political careers. Here’s Obama in 2008:
Joe Biden in 2011:
And war criminal Tony Blair, also in 2011:
During his own visit to the museum, Blair wrote the following in the guestbook:
“Thank you for what will remain with me forever. It is hard to describe what this means to me or how profoundly it affects my emotions. For me, this is a memorial, it is a tribute, it is a reflection of an event almost too terrible to contemplate. But it is also a warning, a warning of the wickedness of which humanity is capable. I leave here with that warning in my mind. I also leave, however, with a sense of hope, because amidst all the evil and tragedy, those that survived built a better world and had the grace and wisdom then to build this testament to suffering and to the human spirit.”
The people of Britain are of course now awaiting judgement from the Chilcott Inquiry as to whether Blair may be guilty of “the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole,” i.e. crimes against peace. And certainly what Blair and George Bush Jr. did to the people of Iraq is “almost too terrible to contemplate.”
As Corbyn put it recently,
“The Chilcot report will come out in a few weeks’ time and tell us what we need to know, what I think we already know: There were no weapons of mass destruction, there was no ability to attack within 45 minutes and a deal had been done with Bush in advance.”
Corbyn, in a general manner of speaking, seems to feel Blair should indeed be prosecuted for war crimes, although when specifically asked his views on this matter, his response was a vague, “If he’s committed a war crime, yes. Everyone who’s committed a war crime should be (prosecuted).”
Indeed, all war criminals should be prosecuted, and while none of the witch hunters seem to want to acknowledge it, certainly a war crime was committed against the people of Deir Yassin. According to Deir Yassin Remembered:
Early in the morning of April 9, 1948, commandos of the Irgun (headed by Menachem Begin) and the Stern Gang attacked Deir Yassin, a village with about 750 Palestinian residents. The village lay outside of the area to be assigned by the United Nations to the Jewish State; it had a peaceful reputation. But it was located on high ground in the corridor between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Deir Yassin was slated for occupation under Plan Dalet and the mainstream Jewish defense force, the Haganah, authorized the irregular terrorist forces of the Irgun and the Stern Gang to perform the takeover.
In all over 100 men, women, and children were systematically murdered. Fifty-three orphaned children were literally dumped along the wall of the Old City, where they were found by Miss Hind Husseini and brought behind the American Colony Hotel to her home, which was to become the Dar El-Tifl El-Arabi orphanage.
What was once the village of Deir Yassin is today occupied by an Israeli psychiatric hospital. Some of the Palestinian homes still standing after the massacre, were later incorporated into the hospital buildings, and the facility is plainly visible today from the museum.
Suppose a photo of Corbyn, perhaps wearing a kippah, prostrating himself before the altar of the holocaust, were to circulate widely over the Internet–would it help or hurt his political career? And why would the Israeli Labor Party issue such an invitation to him at this time?
In April, Israel’s opposition leader Isaac Herzog and leader of the Israeli Labour Party, responded to the antisemitism row by inviting senior members of the Labour Party – including Jeremy Corybn – to visit Yad Vashem as a reminder of the results of antisemitism.
So reports the Jewish Chronicle in an article published May 29. The story was also picked up by the Daily Mail, The Guardian, The Times of Israel, The Jerusalem Post, among others, and most of the reports take pains to note as well that the news comes the same week as the reinstatement of party member Jackie Walker, who was suspended last month after posting on Facebook that Jews had been involved in the African slave trade (another historical fact).
So was the invitation, as per the Jewish Chronicle’s report, issued only to remind Corbyn of “the results of antisemitism”? Or was the motive to embarrass him, to put him in a dicey and uncomfortable position? And who from the Israeli Labor Party contacted the media to let them know of Corbyn’s dereliction in answering? The reports don’t seem to mention that. What they do give us are the words of Herzog, the Israeli Labor leader, as quoted from his letter to Corbyn last month:
“I have been appalled and outraged by the recent examples of anti-Semitism by senior Labor party officials in the United Kingdom,” Herzog said, going on to refer to Livingstone as “anti-Semitic beyond hope of redemption.” Yet he also expressed his belief that some within the Labour Party are able to “understand the scourge of anti-Semitism.”
Sadly Corbyn has lacked the mettle to respond to attacks that have in essence now become a Zionist blitzkrieg against his entire political party. Rather than suspending his party members, he should have defended them. Consider the case of Livingstone.
In the world we live in, people can be fired from their jobs for suggesting that the holocaust didn’t happen or that six million Jews didn’t die. Livingstone did not deny the holocaust. He did not even deny the six million number. Nevertheless he lost his job anyway. It was reported over the weekend that Livingstone’s Saturday morning slot on London’s LBC radio station has been dropped and that his contract has not been renewed. The situation might have been different had Corbyn had the temerity to mount a vociferous defense of his longtime friend.
As for Walker, she describes the past few weeks of her life as a “living nightmare,” and this is probably no exaggeration.
Jackie Walker, of UK’s Labour Party
“I am glad this investigation has fully cleared me of any wrongdoing,” Walker said. “I am not a racist, but I robustly defend my right and the right of others to speak openly and frankly about matters of grave political and historical importance. That is the cornerstone of the right of free speech in our democracy.”
She added: “What I have suffered and the effect [it] has had on my health, and also on my family, can only be described as the lowest form of ‘attack politics’.”
In addition to Deir Yassin, the following massacres, according to a source here, were also carried out by Israel in the years from 1948 onward. I cannot vouch for all the information, although some of the massacres, such as Kafr Qasem massacre of 1956, I have read about previously. And certainly all of us, or most of us, are familiar with the more recent events cited down at the bottom of the list. As for the Kafr Qasem massacre, it is discussed in the 1983 book, The Fate of the Jews, by Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht, a Jewish author, who cites the same number of fatalities–43–as that given in the list below, along with the additional information that seven of the dead were children and ten were women.
The Semiramis Hotel Massacre 1948
Jewish Agency escalated their terror campaign to drive out Palestinian Arabs by bombing the hotel. 18 civilians killed; 16 wounded.
Naser Al-Din Massacre 1948
Zionist gangs entered the village dressed as Arab fighters and met villagers with fire. All the houses of the village were raised to the ground, killing the entire population except 40 who survived. 632 civilians in total were killed.
Tantura Massacre 1948
Israeli troops entered village to remove inhabitants to make way for a parking lot for a nearby beach. Groups of Palestinians were rounded up, killed, and their bodies thrown, rounding up more groups. 200 civilians were killed.
Beit Daras Massacre 1948
Zionists mobilized a large contingent and surrounded the village, killing the women, children and elderly that were fleeing the conflict. 265 civilians in total were killed.
Dahmash Mosque Massacre 1948
Israelis told Arabs through loudspeakers that if they went into the mosque they would be safe, 80-100 Palestinians were massacred in the mosque and their bodies lay decomposing for 10 days.
Dawayma Massacre 1948
Israeli army entered the village on the western side of the Hebron mountains and brutally killed about 100 women and children.
Houla Massacre 1948
Jewish militants dressed in traditional Arab attire entered the border village. Militants rounded up 85 people and detained them in a number of houses, firing live ammunition at the civilians and killing all but 3.
Salha Massacre 1948
105 civilians killed by occupiers when ordered to face the wall of a mosque, then shot from behind.
Sharafat Massacre 1951
Israeli soldiers crossed armistice line and destroyed residential properties – 10 civilians killed (2 elderly men, 3 women and 5 children), 8 wounded.
Qibya Massacre 1953
600 Israeli soldiers moved in towards village destroying 56 houses, a mosque, a school and water tank. 67 men and women killed.
Kafr Qasem Massacre 1956
Israeli soldiers stepped out of military trucks, positioned themselves at village entrances, and killed 43 farmers.
Khan Yunis Massacre 1956
Israelis occupied the town and an adjacent refugee camp. UNRWA investigation found 275 unarmed civilians murdered by Israelis.
Gaza City Massacre 1956
Zionist Army gangs brought death toll to 60 civilians including (including 27 women, 29 men and 4 children) and 103 injured.
Al-Sammou’ Massacre 1966
Israeli forces raided the village destroying 140 houses, a village clinic and school. 18 civilians were killed and 54 wounded.
Aitharoun Massacre 1975
Caused by a booby-trapped bomb. 9 civilians were killed, 23 were wounded.
Kawnin Massacre 1975
An Israeli tank ran over a vehicle carrying 16 civilians. None of them survived.
Hanin Massacre 1976
After a 2-month siege and hours of shelling, occupation forces stormed the village and turned it into a bloodbath. 20 civilians killed.
Bint Jbeil Massacre 1976
A crowded market was the target of a sudden barrage of Israeli bombs, slaughtering 23 civilians and 30 wounded.
Abbasieh Massacre 1978
Israeli warplanes destroyed a mosque while civilians used it as shelter from heavy shelling. 80 civilians killed.
Adloun Massacre 1978
2 cars carrying 8 passengers came under Israeli fire while they were on their way to Beirut. Only 1 passenger survived.
Saida Massacre 1981
Residential areas targeted by Israeli artillery resulting in 20 civilians killed, 30 were wounded.
Fakhani Massacre 1981
Israeli warplanes raided crowded residential areas using highly sophisticated weaponry. 150 civilians killed, 600 were wounded.
Sabra and Shatila 1982
Israeli Army surrounded the camps, providing aid and facilities, in collaboration with right-wing Lebanese Phalangist, were responsible for almost 3500 civilians dead, most of them women, children and elderly.
Jibsheet Massacre 1984
Occupation forces’ tanks and helicopters fired at a crowd of people. 7 civilians were killed, 10 were wounded.
Sohmor Massacre 1984
Occupation forces stormed with tanks and military vehicles, then ordered the inhabitants to congregate at the town’s mosque and fired at them. 13 civilians killed, 12 wounded.
Seer Al Garbiah Massacre 1985
At Al-Husseinieh people took shelter from shelling of Israeli soldiers who stormed the town with military vehicles. 7 civilians killed.
Maaraka Massacres 1985
Occupation forces detonated an explosive device during distribution of aid to citizens during siege. 15 civilians were killed.
Zrariah Massacre 1985
Occupation forces stormed the town after heavy shelling with 100 vehicles, killing children, women and elderly. 22 civilians slaughtered.
Horneen Al-Tahta Massacre 1985
Occupation forces ordered the inhabitants to gather at a school of the village then destroyed it.
Jibaa Massacre 1985
Huge Army forces attacked the town and put it under siege. Soldiers fired at people escaping the siege. 5 civilians killed, 5 were wounded.
Yohrnor Massacre 1985
An Israeli armed force entered the town using civilian cars and opened fire at the houses. 10 civilians killed, among them a family of 6.
Tin Massacre 1986
Occupation forces cutting the hands and ears from civilians in the town. 4 persons were killed; 79 were crippled and wounded.
Al-Naher Al-Bared Massacre 1986
Israeli warplanes raided the Palestinian refugee camp killing many of the refugees. 20 person were killed and 22 were wounded.
Ain Al-Hillwee Massacre 1987
Jet fighters launched 2 raids. 31 civilians killed and 41 wounded. Refugees were hit by a raid while evacuating casualties, 34 more were killed, making a total of 65 civilian casualties.
Oyon Qara Massacre 1990
Israeli soldier lined up Palestinian labors and murdered 7 of them with a sub-machine gun. 13 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in subsequent demonstrations.
Siddiqine Massacre 1990
Israeli warplanes bombed a house, among the 3 killed a four years old child.
Al-Aqsa Mosque Massacre 1990
Israeli forces placed military barriers around roads and surrounded it with military helicopters. Jewish settlers fired live ammunition with automatic weapons and gas bombs. 23 Palestinians were killed, 850 wounded.
Ibrahimi Mosque “Cave of the Patriarchs” Massacre 1994
Almost 500 worshipers attended Friday dawn prayer when Zionist settlers and soldiers stormed the mosque and fired on the people praying. 24 civilians died and hundreds injured.
Jabalia Massacre 1994
Jewish undercover police opened fire on Palestinian activists killing 6 and injuring 49. Some of the wounded activists were taken out of their cars and shot in the head.
Eretz Checkpoint Massacre 1994
Occupation forces fired on Palestinian workers at Eretz checkpoint while 4 Israeli tanks and helicopters were brought in. 11 civilians were shot dead and 200 injured.
Deir Al-Zahrani Massacre 1994
Israeli warplanes fired a “vacuum” missile at a 2-story building which was destroyed. 8 people were killed, 17 were injured.
Nabatyaih School Bus Massacre 1994
Israeli warplanes targeted a school bus full of students. 4 children were killed and 10 injured.
Sohmor Second Massacre 1996
Israeli artillery targeted a civilian vehicle carrying 8 passengers, killing them all.
Mansuriah Massacre 1996
Israeli helicopter fired rockets at a vehicle carrying 13 civilians fleeing the village of al-Mansuri, killing 2 women and 4 young girls.
Nabatyaih Massacre 1996
Israeli Air attack with helicopters fired rockets at 3 buildings in the village on a house in Nabatiyya al-Faqwah causing 11 civilians casualties (including a mother and her 7 children) and 10 injured.
Qana Massacre 1996
Zionist forces bombed a shelter providing refuge to 500 Lebanese, mostly women, children and elderly forced out of their villages by Israeli raids. 109 civilians killed and 116 injured in a UN compound.
Janta Massacre 1998
Israeli warplanes attacked a mother and her 6 children when they had returned from the field. All had been killed.
The 29 June Massacre 1999
Israeli force targeted a building in Beirut. 8 civilians killed and 84 injured.
Western Bekaa villages Massacre 1999
Israeli warplanes fired on children who were celebrating the Eid festival. 8 children were killed and 11 others wounded.
Al-Aqsa Mosque Massacre 2000
Ariel Sharon entered Al-Aqsa Mosque with 3000 Israeli soldiers. Soldiers opened fire on Muslims worshipers before completing their prayers. 80 Palestinian civilians were killed and 1000’s injured.
Lebanon Massacre 2006
There were more than 94 cases of Israeli air and artillery attacks on civilian homes and vehicles . Of the 1,109 casualties, approximately 900 were civilians, and most of the targets were roads, residential buildings and civil buildings that had no evidence of combatants.
Operation “Cast Lead” Gaza Massacre 2009
Israeli government lay siege to the city with the use of white-phosphorous chemical weapons in densely populated areas such as schools and hospitals. 1,300 women, children & elderly were killed and thousands injured.
Gaza Siege 2012
162 men, women and children killed by air strikes, and 1269 injured during the 8 day assault on the Gaza Strip just before elections in Israel.
Operation “Protective Edge” Gaza Massacre 2014
7 weeks of Israeli bombardment resulted in a total of 2,150 men, women and children killed in the Gaza strip, including 578 children. Human rights groups reported that around 69–75% of the victims were civilians.
We of course know that throughout the same period there have also been attacks by Palestinians that have claimed the lives of Israelis, but we have to keep in mind that of the two groups of people, one is resisting an occupation while the other is imposing it; one is fighting to keep what’s left of it’s land while the other continues to sieze more, claiming self defense as its justification. Perhaps most pertinent of all, Israel has never acknowledged a single one of these massacres. It has also, for whatever reasons, never acknowledged the Armenian genocide. At the same time, powerful Jews continuously lay down fiats and dictums to the rest of us: holocaust denial forbidden. Slave trade denial acceptable. Israel is a democracy with the most moral army in the world. Livingstone is anti-Semitic beyond hope of redemption, and if you disagree, you are too.
What it all suggests is that the pagan (sic) holocaust religion exalts the primacy of Jewish suffering, and that massacres, murders, and genocides of others are of little or no consideration by comparison.
Will the Zionist chatterers come to rue their attacks on Corbyn? It all depends. The possibility of the rise of a very different sort of leader from Corbyn, one fed up with Israel’s flagrant violations of international law and who cares little about civility and diplomatic niceties, cannot be ruled out. Should such a leader emerge–possibly in Europe–possibly in America–there may well come a time when the high priests of political correctness will long for the dulcet days when they had “good ole Jeremy” to kick around.
‘Tony Blair lied on Iraq and will be exposed by Chilcot report’ – Corbyn
RT | May 18, 2016
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s lies about weapons of mass destruction and his secret war pact with former US President George W Bush will be exposed by the Chilcot Inquiry, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has said.
Sir John Chilcot is due to finally release his long-delayed report on the legality of the 2003 Iraq invasion on July 6, seven years after the inquiry was commissioned.
Corbyn made the remarks on Tuesday in a speech at the London School of Economics to honour the late Ralph Miliband, a Marxist scholar and father of Corbyn’s predecessor, Ed Miliband.
While Corbyn supported some of the domestic achievements of Blair’s “New Labour,” he argued it had stuck too closely to its neoliberal, Thatcherite ideological roots.
Addressing Blair’s Iraq legacy, Corbyn warned: “The Chilcot report will come out in a few weeks’ time and tell us what we need to know, what I think we already know: There were no weapons of mass destruction, there was no ability to attack within 45 minutes and a deal had been done with Bush in advance.”
Corbyn took a leading role in opposing the 2003 invasion both inside and outside parliament.
Asked if Blair should be tried for war crimes, Corbyn said: “If he’s committed a war crime, yes. Everyone who’s committed a war crime should be.
“I think it was an illegal war, I’m confident about that, indeed [former UN Secretary General] Kofi Annan confirmed it was an illegal war, and therefore [Blair] has to explain to that.”
“Is he going to be tried for it, I don’t know. Could he be tried for it? Possibly,” Corbyn added.
Some MPs are trying to revive a campaign to have Blair prosecuted for his part in the war, either at an international tribunal or by a special parliamentary impeachment process.
Although rare, parliament can impeach a current or former official. It would involve a member of the Commons presenting evidence in the manner of a parliamentary motion, and if carried, it would then move to the House of Lords. If it was also passed by the Lords, the impeachment process would resemble a conventional trial.
The last time parliament attempted to impeach anyone, however, was in 1806, according to the BBC.
Scottish National Party (SNP) MP Alex Salmond said Monday that, rather than parliamentary impeachment, he favored Blair being brought before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
However, the ICC has said it is not yet able to exercise jurisdiction over international “crimes of aggression” – the offense often connected with Blair’s role in Iraq.
The ICC will rule on whether to extend its powers to try suspects of aggression on January 1, 2017.
The London Mayoral Election: a Victory for Whom?
By Thomas Barker | CounterPunch | May 13, 2016
The last couple of weeks have been tumultuous for the Labour Party, to say the least. Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-austerity message has made significant gains at the polls, despite the best efforts of Labour right wingers to smear the left of party with accusations of anti-Semitism.
One of the biggest wins for Labour was the election of Sadiq Khan as Mayor of London.
Khan’s campaign benefitted enormously from the surge of grassroots support for Corbyn, many of whom took to social media and the streets under the slogan “Jez We Khan” – an extension of “Jez We Can”, used to back Corbyn in last year’s leadership race.
Curiously, however, whilst accepting support from these activists, London’s first Muslim Mayor has constantly sought to distance himself from his party’s leader, claiming that he has his “own mandate” and is not beholden to Corbyn.
Although Khan is frequently described as “soft-left” or a “social democrat”, his political record reveals an active hostility toward the principles which saw Corbyn elected as Labour leader last year.
During his election campaign, Khan vowed to be “the most pro-business Mayor London has ever had”; stated his opposition to the “mansion tax”, the nationalisation of banks, and has pledged to work with the Tory government to defeat Corbyn’s push for a “Robin Hood Tax” – a fee on buying stocks, shares and derivatives publicly backed by the Labour leader last summer; and in recent weeks, Khan has described the fact that there are 140-plus billionaires and 400,000 millionaires in London as “a good thing” – echoing the haughty words of Labour’s true blue Tory Peter Mandelson,
Khan has also come out in opposition to Corbyn on the issue of defence, in particular the renewal of Britain’s nuclear “deterrent” Trident – estimated to cost the tax payer a cool £100billion. In an interview with the Telegraph, Khan states unequivocally: “I’m quite clear that I can’t foresee any circumstances in which I would vote to unilaterally end our nuclear capability.”
Since his election, Khan has now expressed support for Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel who, he states, “is doing interesting stuff with the infrastructure bank in Chicago.”
The Chicago Infrastructure Trust is a project, backed by former President Bill Clinton, to entice private investors to fund public projects – hardly a left wing solution.
Mayor Emanuel, a former investment banker, is himself a controversial figure, and has been implicated in a number of high profile corruption cases and is renowned for his hostility toward the public sector.
It has also been exposed that Khan, the man who has pledged to solve London’s housing crisis, accepted almost £30,000 in donations from parasite landlords during his election campaign. £10,000 came from a Mancunian firm which Magistrates fined £14,000 for breaching tenant safety rules. And £19,900 came from a south London developer which campaigns against landlord licensing.
But perhaps most revealing of all, is Khan’s eagerness to join in the witch-hunt against Labour members who criticise the brutal militarism of the Israeli government, which has been purposefully conflated with anti-Semitism.
Just last week, Khan was one of many Labour MPs calling for the suspension of Corbyn’s close political ally Ken Livingstone over alleged anti-Semitic (in reality anti-Israeli government) statements.
Such scurrilous attacks are intended to discredit the left wing leadership of the Labour Party.
The Labour right, with the full backing of the capitalist class, are cynically and sickeningly using this very real form of discrimination to undermine Corbyn, who has close links with pro-Palestine groups, with an eye, first of all, to isolate him, then eventually to remove him as the party leader.
His high profile mayoral campaign has meant that Khan has played a key role in this process.
But perhaps we should not be surprised. Khan’s association with the Labour right goes back to his election as Labour MP in 2005 – the same year that he became a patron to the Blairite faction of the Labour Party, Progress, the group responsible for organising attacks on Corbyn’s leadership.
Apparently, Sadiq Khan’t stop supporting the 1%
Detaining Suspects Without Trial
In February 2005, Tony Blair’s government voted in favour of the Prevention of Terrorism Bill which, amongst other things, legislated to create “control orders”: civil orders made by the Home Secretary against individuals who the intelligence services suspect of “involvement in terrorism-related activity” on a domestic or an international level.
Control orders allow for a range of restrictions from house arrest and electronic tagging to rules on whom the suspect may contact, where they can go and where they may work. The orders also significantly lowered the standard of proof necessary to detain terror suspects (no trial is necessary, for instance).
The legislation was roundly criticised by human rights organisations for providing the Home Secretary, then Charles Clarke, with powers equivalent to that of the judiciary.
Although Khan was not yet an elected MP when this vote was passed, in 2007 and 2010 he voted to renew these highly undemocratic measures… despite being a former human rights lawyer himself and despite being a persistent critic of the War in Iraq!
Corbyn consistently voted against control orders.
Pro-Academisation
In 2006, Blair’s government voted on the Education and Inspections Bill. The bill served as an important step toward expanding the academisation (i.e. privatisation) project, the rotten fruits of which are being reaped today, by encouraging councils to pass schools from the hands of democratically elected Local Authorities into those of private sponsors.
One representative from the National Union of Teachers described Blair’s Education Bill as giving “even greater opportunities to business and religious sponsors to instil their ideas on young people.”
Khan voted in favour of this bill, but the Labour Party faced a major backbench rebellion, with over fifty MPs (including Corbyn) voting against the proposed legislation.
Revealingly, Blair could rely on the full support of the Tory opposition to push through this attack on comprehensive schools, the leader of whom, David Cameron, said that the reforms were in line with Conservative Party policy.
Anti-Worker
With the Prison Officer Association coordinating a series of strikes at the end of 2007 because of privatisation and cuts to pay, the government responded on January 9, 2008 by strengthening the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, section 138 of which prohibits prison workers from taking strike action.
Khan voted in favour of this act, Corbyn against.
Treaty of Lisbon
A few weeks later, the news media was dominated by the issue of the Treaty of Lisbon, which was widely understood as providing an EU-wide legislative basis for the privatisation of public services, as well as facilitating attacks on the wages, conditions, and rights of workers.
Article 188c, for instance, helps to remove the ability of states to veto trade deals involving health and education, opening up the prospect that financial speculators, as a right, could intervene and cherry pick the most profitable aspects of health and education.
The Lisbon Treaty was opposed overwhelmingly by delegates at the Trade Union Congress (TUC). Irish workers rejected the Treaty outright in a referendum.
Whether or not one is in favour of remaining or leaving in the upcoming EU referendum, the decision as to whether or not the Lisbon Treaty should have approved should have been put to the public.
Khan voted in favour of the Treaty, and against a referendum on its imposition. Corbyn voted against the Treaty, and in favour of a referendum.
Khan’s Record on Welfare 1
Perhaps one of the most pernicious attacks on welfare that the Tory-Liberal coalition government (2010-2015) carried out was the introduction of the 2013 Jobseeker’s Bill. After the court of appeal quashed the regulations that underpinned the government’s hated Back to Work programme (introduced in 2011) for “lack of clarity”, the Tories responded by rushing through “emergency” Jobseeker’s legislation to set out the bill in more stark terms.
The Workfare program has been described by Dr Simon Duffy, the Director of the Centre for Welfare Reform, as a form of “modern slavery.”
So, what was Labour’s response?
After much debate, discussion, and disputation, the Labour leadership took the bold move of whipping its MPs into abstaining from the vote.
The reason given for this was that by abstaining, and allowing the coalition government to fast-track the workfare scheme through parliament, Labour were able to negotiate concessions, including a full review into the sanctions regime. And yet, just two months prior, the Labour Party described the Work programme as “a worse outcome than no programme at all.”
If this was the case, what would be the purpose of a review?
Khan was one of the many who abstained on the vote. Corbyn voted against it.
Khan’s Record on Welfare 2
Next up is the Welfare Cap which was introduced by the Tory-Liberal coalition in 2014 as a way of curtailing the amount in state benefits that an individual can claim per year, as well as the amount of overall welfare spending.
Diane Abbot gave a particularly impassioned speech against the bill:
This benefits cap is arbitrary and bears no relationship to need, as our benefits system should. It does not allow for changing circumstances—rents going up and population rising—and will make inequality harder to tackle. There are ways to cut welfare. We could put people back to work, introduce a national living wage, build affordable homes and have our compulsory jobs guarantee.
Others read the bill as an attempt to perpetuate a false divide between “strivers” and “scroungers”.
And yet, under the leadership of Ed Miliband, the Labour Party, including Khan, voted overwhelmingly in favour of the cap. Thirteen Labour backbenchers, including Corbyn, defied the party whip to vote against the cap.
Khan’s Record on Welfare 3
More recently we have the controversial Welfare Reform and Work Bill, voted on in the aftermath of the 2015 general elections. The Tories, having narrowly been elected with an outright majority – although with the smallest mandate since Universal Suffrage – took the opportunity to hammer home their cuts agenda against a weak, divided, and (apparently) confused Labour Party.
Amongst other things, the Bill was committed to reducing the household benefit cap from £26,000 to £20,000 (£23,000 in London); freezing the rate of many major benefits and tax credits for four years; limiting the child element of universal credit to a maximum of two children; and stopping those on certain benefits being able to claim additional help towards their mortgage payments.
Against a backdrop of huge anger, the interim Labour leader Harriet Harman whipped fellow MPs to abstain on the vote in order to show the electorate that Labour “was listening” to their concerns about welfare. According to Harman:
The temptation is always to oppose everything. That does not make sense. We have got to wake up and recognise this is not a blip and we have got to listen to why. No one is going to listen to us if they think we are not to listening to them.
Amongst those who absented themselves, many remain in the Labour shadow cabinet: Tom Watson, Angela Eagle, Seema Maholtra, Hilary Benn, Andy Burnham, Heidi Alexander, Rosie Winterton, Lucy Powell, Owen Smith, Jon Trickett, Lisa Nandy, Chris Bryant, Lilian Greenwood, Vernon Coaker, Ian Murray, Nia Griffith, Kerry McCarthy, Kate Green, Maria Eagle, Gloria de Piero, Luciana Berger, Karl Turner, John Ashworth, and John Healey.
That is an astonishing 89% of the current shadow cabinet who refused to oppose the Tories’ Welfare Bill (anyone looking for evidence of Corbyn’s isolation within the Parliamentary Labour Party need look no further than this fact). In fact, only three members of the current shadow cabinet opposed it: Corbyn, McDonnell, and Abbott.
Credit to Khan, however, who, unlike the majority of his right wing colleagues, defied the whip to oppose this bill, but given his background and his planned Mayoral bid it is tempting to speculate that there was no small amount of political opportunism in this vote.
In Summary
Jeremy Corbyn’s landslide election as Labour leader showed the potential for creating a mass anti-capitalist party. Unfortunately, however, the majority of Labour MPs and councillors remain pro-capitalist and pro-austerity. Khan is amongst this group
To defeat the right means starting to mobilise the currently fragmented anti-austerity mood into a mass, democratic movement. This will not succeed if it remains trapped within the current undemocratic structure of the Labour Party, vainly trying to compromise with “the 4.5%” – the Blairite representatives of big business in the Labour Party.
Instead it means building an open, democratic movement – organised on federal lines – that brings together all of those who have been inspired by Corbyn and want to see a determined anti-capitalist party.
Thomas Barker is an independent journalist and PhD student in Aesthetics and Politics. He can be reached at https://durham.academia.edu/ThomasBarker
The True Anti-semites, Past and Present
By Jonathan Cook | Dissident Voice | May 3, 2016
We are desperately in need of some sanity as the British political and media establishment seek to generate yet another “new anti-semitism” crisis, on this occasion to undermine a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour party before the upcoming local elections.
Corbyn and his supporters want to revive Labour as a party of social justice, while Britain’s elites hope that – in a period of unpopular austerity – they can turn the Labour leadership’s support for the Palestinians into its Achilles’ heel. This is nothing more than a class war to pave the way for a return of the Blairites to lead Labour.
Israel and its supporters in the UK are only too willing to help fuel the hysteria, given their own fears that a Corbyn-led government would be bad news for an Israel committed to destroying any hope of justice for the Palestinians.
I have analysed earlier efforts to foment panic about a “new anti-semitism”, including during the early years of the second intifada, when Israel’s popularity plummeted. As now, Israel tried to deflect attention from its increasingly clear abuses of Palestinians – and its lack of interest in peace-making – by suggesting that the problem lay with critics rather than its policies. You can see my articles about this here, here and here.
Then, the chief targets of the “new anti-semitism” smear were supposedly leftist elements in the media who were concealing their true goal – vilification of Jews – behind criticism of Israel. The campaign, despite being patent nonsense, was successful enough that it cowed the few critical voices in the media – and terrorised senior editors at the BBC into supine compliance with Israel’s narrative.
That’s why we should take this current campaign seriously and worry that Corbyn, who is already on the back foot, is in real danger of conferring credibility on this whole confected narrative of an “anti-semitism problem” in Labour simply by giving it house room. The only suitable response is derision.
We should be particularly wary of the wolves in sheep’s clothing. The Guardian’s Jerusalem bureau chief Peter Beaumont, for example, was set the task of bolstering absurd claims against Ken Livingstone for being an anti-semite after he stated – admittedly clumsily – a historical truth that for a period of time Hitler and the Zionist movement shared enough common ground that they held negotiations about transferring Jews to Palestine.
Livingstone said the following on radio:
When Hitler won his election in 1932 his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.
There’s a lot of information about this out there – Lenni Brenner even wrote a book on the subject. Livingstone’s mistake was both to express himself slackly in the heat of the moment and to refer to a history that was supposed to have been disappeared down the memory hole. But what he is saying is, in essence, true.
He could have gone further, in fact. A century ago, many European anti-Semites, including most members of the British government that formulated the Balfour Declaration in 1917 to create a “national home” for Jews in Palestine, upheld the same logic as the Zionist movement. They saw the Jews as a race apart. They thought in terms of a “Jewish question”, one that needed solving. And for many, the solution was to export that “problem” far away, out of Europe.
This was not surprising because Zionism emerged both in reaction to Europe’s ugly ethnic nationalisms – where it was normal to speak of “races” – and mirrored these nationalisms’ failings. The Zionists wanted to claim for themselves the same traits as other European “races”: nationhood and territory. And the European anti-Semites were only too happy to oblige – especially if the primary victims were going to be brown people in the colonies, whether in Uganda or Palestine.
Fortunately, there is an antidote to Beaumont’s kind of stenographic journalism, apparently written up after an afternoon at Israel’s Holocaust museum Yad Vashem, in the form of this interview with Norman Finkelstein. It is full of profound insights.
Finkelstein puts into perspective both Livingstone’s comments and the orginal “offending” Facebook post by Labour MP Naz Shah that triggered the latest hysteria. Finkelstein notes that the post (one dredged up from two years ago), which shows a map of the United States with Israel superimposed, and suggests resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict by relocating Israel to the US, was clearly intended to be humorous rather than anti-Semitic.
I would make a further point. It is also obvious that the true target of the post is the US, not Jews or even Israel – making the anti-Semitic claim even more ridiculous.
The post’s implicit argument is that, if the US government and ordinary Americans are really so committed to the creation of a safe haven for Israeli Jews, then would it not be far wiser to locate them inside the US rather than supporting at great expense a garrison state in the Middle East that will always be at war with its neighbours? This is classic satire, and the fact that almost no one in the British media and political establishment can see this – or, in the case of Corbyn and his allies, afford to admit it – is the real cause for concern.
In addition, Finkelstein concludes with a very powerful argument that the “new anti-Semitism” canard is likely – and possibly intended – to fuel the very anti-Semitism that it claims to be exposing and challenging.
Here is what Finkelstein says:
Our Corbyn is Bernie Sanders. In all the primaries in the US, Bernie has been sweeping the Arab and Muslim vote. It’s been a wondrous moment: the first Jewish presidential candidate in American history has forged a principled alliance with Arabs and Muslims. Meanwhile, what are the Blairite-Israel lobby creeps up to in the UK? They’re fanning the embers of hate and creating new discord between Jews and Muslims by going after Naz Shah, a Muslim woman who has attained public office. They’re making her pass through these rituals of public self-degradation, as she is forced to apologise once, twice, three times over for a tongue-in-cheek cartoon reposted from my website. And it’s not yet over! Because now they say she’s on a ‘journey’. Of course, what they mean is, ‘she’s on a journey of self-revelation, and epiphany, to understanding the inner antisemite at the core of her being’. But do you know on what journey she’s really on? She’s on a journey to becoming an antisemite. Because of these people; because they fill any sane, normal person with revulsion.
Here is this Muslim woman MP who is trying to integrate Muslims into British political life, and to set by her own person an example both to British society at large and to the Muslim community writ small. She is, by all accounts from her constituents, a respected and honourable person. You can only imagine how proud her parents, her siblings, must be. How proud the Muslim community must be. We’re always told how Muslim women are oppressed, repressed and depressed, and now you have this Muslim woman who has attained office. But now she’s being crucified, her career wrecked, her life ruined, her future in tatters, branded an ‘antisemite’ and a closet Nazi, and inflicted with these rituals of self-abasement. It’s not hard to imagine what her Muslim constituents must think now about Jews. These power hungry creeps are creating new hate by their petty machinations.
Get Corbyn!
Antisemitism Inquisition shifts up a gear in bid to wreck Labour’s election chances and remove the “loose cannon”.
By Stuart Littlewood | Dissident Voice | May 2, 2016
With important local government elections a few days away the campaign against alleged antisemites reached a crescendo over the weekend, with the press and TV corps in full cry.
Their main quarry was former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, now suspended from the party; their instrument a Labour MP bully-boy called John Mann, who happens to be chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group against Antisemitism. But no-one is in any doubt that the ultimate aim of this operation is the downfall of Labour’s new leader, Jeremy Corbyn.
Zionists have a serious problem with Corbyn. His election to the leadership was a surprise brought about by a sudden influx of new supporters weary of sterile and corrupt politics. They had no time to groom him, not that he’s capable of being tamed like previous leaders. Corbyn has a long record of support for the Palestinians and other justice causes. As a loose cannon in a carefully controlled political battlefield he has to be disabled. One way to do that is to pick off his allies one by one and, with the help of a compliant media, derail his party’s election prospects.
Livingstone’s ‘crime’ is a remark about Zionists collaborating with Nazis in the 1930s. Though factually correct, it’s not the sort of thing the Inquisition likes to hear. So is it a flogging offence? Hardly, but such is the paralysing fear of being on the receiving end of an antisemitism smear that few in the party (or mainstream media) have the balls to say so.
Strange how the latest upsurge in allegations of antisemitism has coincided with the ambassadorial appointment to London of Mark Regev, former chief of Israel’s propaganda machine and spokesman for Israel’s extremist prime minister.
Regev was given a platform on the BBC’s flagship Andrew Marr programme at the weekend to complain about antisemites targeting the collective Jew: “If you’re saying… the Jewish people don’t have that right… to sovereignty and independence, you have to ask why you are holding Jews to a different standard. And there is a word for that.”
Yes, and the word is Jewish exceptionalism. Israeli Jews are not, and never have been, sanctioned for defying UN resolutions and international humanitarian law. On the contrary they are allowed to continue their crimes with impunity and rewarded by the West with eye-watering generosity.
As for Regev’s “collective Jew”, Israel insists on being recognised as the Jewish state, implicating Jews generally. As for the right of the Jewish people to sovereignty and independence, that is something they have consistently denied the Palestinians, whose lands they covet, occupy and creepingly annex. Israeli politicians, including Netanyahu, have gone further and declared that they will never allow the Palestinians self-determination.
So let us view the Labour Party’s freak-out over antisemitism in proper context.
An Israeli wise man — the former military intelligence chief and professor of International Relations, Yehoshafat Harkabi — warned some years ago that the Jewish state, which was supposed to solve the problem of antisemitism, could actually become a factor in the rise of antisemitism: “Israelis must be aware that the price of their misconduct is paid not only by them but also Jews throughout the world”.
However, not all Jews outside Israel are Zionists or supporters of the Israeli regime. A large number campaign energetically against it, so it is wrong to blame the worldwide Jewish community. On the other hand Israel claims to be “the only democracy in the Middle East”, in which case the government of Israel acts in its people’s name.
A New York Times obituary quotes Harkabi as saying: “I am for finalizing the conflict, and you can’t do that without recognizing that the Palestinians, like any other human group, deserve the right to self-determination.”
That right is still denied.
What about Labour’s links to Zionist criminals?
The trouble with UK Labour is its ignorance. That goes for other political parties that harbour Zionist stooges. If members knew the truth about the situation in the Holy Land, they would never swallow the false narrative peddled for years by the likes of Regev and Israel’s flag wavers such as Blair, Cameron and the Friends of Israel group – a UK version of the all-powerful AIPAC which dictates US foreign policy.
Friends of Israel repeatedly question Corbyn’s past association with Hamas and Hezbollah. But, as they well know, Hamas and Hezbollah were created out of necessity to resist Israeli aggression and are regarded as terrorists by no-one except the Washington-Tel Aviv axis and US-Israeli stooges in London and some other capitals – a number of which have evidently crept into the Labour Party.
For a branding-iron Bush used this definition: “The term “terrorism” means an activity that
(i) involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life, property, or infrastructure; and
(ii) appears to be intended —
(A) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(B) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
(C) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, kidnapping, or hostage-taking.”
The joke is that it describes the behaviour of successive Israeli governments perfectly.
The media’s baying hounds and Labour’s fanatical inquisitors are entitled to question Jeremy Corbyn’s past connections, as long as they also ask Corbyn’s critics about their links to the Israeli terror regime.
Are Palestinians children of a lesser God?
We shouldn’t focus entirely on Labour. The biggest Zionist-occupied organisation outside America and what we loosely refer to as the Christian church is the British Conservative party. Eighty percent of its MPs and MEPs are reported to be signed-up Friends of the rogue regime and it was the recent Conservative-led coalition that reneged on Britain’s solemn obligations under the Geneva Conventions specifically to allow wanted Israeli criminals to come and go in the UK without fear of arrest.
Membership of Friends of Israel has long been a useful qualification in securing a place on the parliamentary candidates list and is said to be a stepping stone to high office. Hopefuls are ‘groomed’ on Tel Aviv’s propaganda conveyor-belt. Under the title ‘Team Cameron’s big Jewish backers’ the Jewish Chronicle in 2006 reported on the individuals bankrolling David Cameron’s bid for power and provided a fascinating insight into how the pro-Israel lobby infiltrates government and destroys the principles of integrity and accountability once prized in British public life.
As soon as Cameron became Conservative leader he proclaimed: “The belief I have in Israel is indestructible — and you need to know that if I become Prime Minister, Israel has a friend who will never turn his back on Israel.” Good dog.
Those who sign on as a Friend of Israel surely realise that they embrace and endorse the whole hellish Zionist enterprise including the terror and ethnic cleansing on which the state of Israel was built, the dispossession and expulsion of native Palestinians at gunpoint and the discriminatory laws against those who remain. They signal that they accept the abduction of civilians, including children, and their imprisonment and torture without trial. And presumably they are happy supporting and legitimizing a religious war that humiliates Muslims and Christians and prevents them visiting their holy places.
There is no room here to detail Israel’s cruel interference with Palestinian life at every level or describe the human misery it causes every minute of every day. Sufficient to say that anyone who defends these outrages deserves scant consideration of their feelings.
Even after a series of bloodbaths by the Israeli military in Gaza such people remain Israel’s special Friend. Will they still be comfortable when the next assault blows to smithereens hundreds more children, again shreds and incinerates thousands of innocent men and women, maims many more and destroys still more vital infrastructure such as hospitals, schools, power plants and clean water supplies?
Do they really believe Palestinians are children of some lesser God?
Oh, and Friends of Israel squeal “antisemitism!” at the very mention of BDS (the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement). Why? Respected Palestinian lawmaker, Dr Hanan Ashrawi, explains how BDS is “a legal, moral and inclusive movement struggling against the discriminatory policies of a country that defines itself in religiously exclusive terms, and that seeks to deny Palestinians the most basic rights simply because we are not Jewish.”
Practising BDS simply means you avoid purchasing Israeli goods or services and decline normal contact with individuals and organisations that are connected with or support the racist creed that squeezes the life out of the Holy Land. And you continue to do this until Israel ends its illegal occupation and honours its obligations under the UN Charter and international humanitarian law.
If Labour Friends of Israel don’t know these things, they should take the trouble to find out. If they don’t also know about Zionist ambitions for a Greater Israel, from the Nile to the Euphrates (the Yinon Plan), they should find out.
Corbyn knew of the Zionist threat to himself long before he became leader. At the outset he should have established a competent media group to anticipate trouble and formulate necessary communication strategies, including the case for curbing the use of the party as a platform to advance the interests of a foreign military power.
Now, instead of taking the fight to the troublemakers he’s letting them tear Labour apart. And Regev sits on his doorstep laughing.
As I sign off, a petition calling for MP John Mann to be disciplined has reached 19,000 signatures. Mann, a rabid pro-Zionist, started a shouting match with Livingstone in front of the cameras, putting rocket-boosters under the Inquisition and bringing the party into disrepute.
UK Labour leader refuses to denounce Hamas, Hezbollah
Press TV – May 2, 2016
Britain’s Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn has refused to give in to calls from Israeli officials and British Jewish figures to denounce Islamic resistance movements Hamas and Hezbollah, vowing to continue talking to the two groups.
The leader of the opposition has come under pressure from a number of Labour lawmakers, Israeli Ambassador to London Mark Regev and Jewish leaders in the UK to distance himself from Labour politicians’ recent remarks condemning Israeli crimes against Palestinians, as well as groups fighting against the Tel Aviv regime’s occupation of the Palestinian lands.
Labour MP Naz Shah resigned as an aide to the party’s shadow chancellor last week after being forced to apologize for backing calls for Israel to “relocate” to the United States.
Also last week, the Labour Party suspended former London Mayor Ken Livingston after he defended Naz Shah in BBC interview and criticized the British media for ignoring Israeli war crimes against the Palestinian people. Livingston also said that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler had been a Zionist early in his political career.
Following these developments, Israeli figures accused the Labour Party leader of being soft on “anti-Semitism” in the party, which was forced to launch an inquiry into how to tackle the issue.
On Monday, Israel’s opposition leader Tzipi Livni said that Britain should condemn “anti-Semitism for the sake of its own core values.”
Israeli Ambassador Regev called on Corbyn to denounce Hamas and Hezbollah and pay a visit to Tel Aviv to build bridges.
Regev referred to Corbyn’s earlier support for the Islamic resistance movements, which were labeled as terrorist organizations by Britain.
A number of British Jews also urged Corbyn to display clarity about having relations with the two groups.
In response to the ongoing calls to reject Hamas and Hezbollah, Corbyn’s spokesman issued a statement on Sunday, saying, “Jeremy Corbyn has been a longstanding supporter of Palestinian rights and the pursuit of peace and justice in the Middle East through dialogue and negotiation.”
“He has met many people with whom he profoundly disagrees in order to promote peace and reconciliation processes, including in South Africa, Latin American, Ireland and the Middle East,” the statement added, noting that it is essential to talk to people “with whom he profoundly disagrees in order to promote peace and reconciliation processes, including in South Africa, Latin American, Ireland and the Middle East.”
“Simply talking to people who agree with you won’t help achieve justice or peace,” it added.
Corbyn has in the past called for the participation of Hamas and Hezbollah for a settlement of the conflict in the Middle East and highlighted the role of Iran in the regional issues. He has also referred to the two movements as “friends.”
UK Labour Party in Grip of Zionist Inquisition
By Stuart Littlewood | Dissident Voice | April 29, 2016
The orchestrated smear campaign against pro-Palestine sympathisers sent me reaching for my pen. But Gilad Atzmon too was eyeing the Labour Party’s crazed witch hunt for “antisemites” with misgiving and had already declared, in his usual robust way, that Labour under Jeremy Corbyn was not so much a party as a piece of Zionist-occupied territory.
Writing in his blog about Corbyn and McDonnell’s servile commitment to expel anyone whose remarks might be interpreted by Zionist mafioso as hateful or simply upsetting to Jews, Atzmon concludes: “Corbyn’s Labour is now unequivocally a spineless club of Sabbos Goyim” [which I take to mean non-Jewish dogsbodies who do menial jobs that Jews are forbidden to do for religious reasons].
“The Labour party’s policies,” says Atzmon, “are now compatible with Jewish culture: intolerant to the core and concerned primarily with the imaginary suffering of one people only. These people are not the working class, they are probably the most privileged ethnic group in Britain. Corbyn’s Labour is a Zionist Occupied Territory… It proves my theses that the Left is not a friend to Palestine, the oppressed or the workless people.
“I would have never believed that Jeremy Corbyn would engage in such colossally treacherous politics. I did not anticipate that Corbyn would become a Zionist lapdog. Corbyn was a great hope to many of us. I guess that the time has come to accept that The Left is a dead concept, it has nothing to offer.”
This writer too is shocked after signing up as a supporter (though not a member) of the Labour Party with the express purpose of voting in the leadership election for that beacon of common sense, that staunch champion of high ideals, that great white hope who would start a revolution in British politics and sweep away the crap and corruption left behind by Blair and Brown.
Boy, was I in for a disappointment!
And the latest casualty in this ugly Zionist power-play is former mayor of London Ken Livingstone. In a heated public spat with one of the party’s chief inquisitors, MP John Mann, he had the temerity to defend a female MP, Naz Shah, who had fallen foul of the party’s antisemitism police for comments made on Facebook before becoming an MP. She had suggested that Israel be transferred to the United States. She apologised profusely, but Labour’s Israel lobby went ballistic after raking up this old remark. Had they forgotten that their hero, David Ben-Gurion, himself, was mad-keen on population transfer… of Palestinian Arabs, that is? So what’s to get excited about? Mann happens to be chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Antisemitism. One-sidedness is the name of his game.
What seems to have generated the greatest sound and fury is this observation by Livingstone: “When Hitler won his election in 1932 his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.”
Joan Ryan MP, Chair of Labour Friends of Israel, said: “To speak of Zionism – the right of the Jewish people to self-determination – and Hitler in the same sentence is quite breathtaking. I am appalled that Ken Livingstone has chosen to do so…. He should be suspended from the Labour Party immediately.”
It scarcely needs saying that Zionism may mean self-determination for the Jewish people but it has cruelly denied the Palestinians their right to self-determination for decades. Nevertheless Livingstone is suspended from the party after 47 years.
President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews Jonathan Arkush can be relied on to put in his two-pennyworth on these occasions, and he didn’t disappoint: “Ken Livingston’s comments were abhorrent and beyond disgraceful. His latest comments combine Holocaust revisionism with antisemitism denial, when the evidence is there for all to see. He lacks any sense of decency. He must now be expelled from the Labour Party.”
And on the suspension of Naz Shah, Arkush was in overdrive: “If the Labour party is to re-establish its credibility on this issue, it needs to take four important steps forward:
First, there must be a credible inquiry into the entire Naz Shah episode. Secondly, the party has to take effective measures to eradicate antisemitism wherever it occurs within its membership. Thirdly, the leader must make it clear that allegations of antisemitism are not to be dismissed as arguments about Israel. Fourthly, Jeremy Corbyn must now respond to our repeated calls for him to accept that his meetings with rank antisemites before he became leader were not appropriate and will not be repeated.
Witch hunters’ balloon pricked
Whether Livingstone’s claim that Hitler was a Zionist is correct, I know not and care not. He presumably checked his facts and was itching to score with this mischievous titbit. Whether that was a wise thing to do is a matter for idle chatter, not expulsion. Meanwhile Zio hotheads inside and outside the party would do well to pay attention to the The Jewish Socialists’ Group, which has some sound advice for them and sticks a pin in their not-so-pretty balloon with this measured statement:
Antisemitism and anti-Zionism are not the same. Zionism is a political ideology which has always been contested within Jewish life since it emerged in 1897, and it is entirely legitimate for non-Jews as well as Jews to express opinions about it, whether positive or negative. Not all Jews are Zionists. Not all Zionists are Jews.
Criticism of Israeli government policy and Israeli state actions against the Palestinians is not antisemitism. Those who conflate criticism of Israeli policy with antisemitism, whether they are supporters or opponents of Israeli policy, are actually helping the antisemites. We reject any attempt, from whichever quarter, to place legitimate criticism of Israeli policy out of bounds.
Accusations of antisemitism are currently being weaponised to attack the Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour party with claims that Labour has a “problem” of antisemitism. This is despite Corbyn’s longstanding record of actively opposing fascism and all forms of racism, and being a firm supporter of the rights of refugees and of human rights globally.
A very small number of such cases seem to be real instances of antisemitism. Others represent genuine criticism of Israeli policy and support for Palestinian rights, but expressed in clumsy and ambiguous language, which may unknowingly cross a line into antisemitism. Further cases are simply forthright expressions of support for Palestinian rights, which condemn Israeli government policy and aspects of Zionist ideology, and have nothing whatsoever to do with antisemitism.
The JSG goes further and suggests that the attacks come from four main sources – the Conservative Party, Conservative-supporting media and pro-Zionist Israeli media sources, right-wing and pro-Zionist elements claiming to speak on behalf of the Jewish community, and opponents of Jeremy Corbyn within the Labour party. These groups make common cause to wreck the Corbyn leadership, divert attention from Israeli government crimes and discredit those who dare to criticise Israeli policy or the Zionist enterprise.
In short, the JSG says what needs to be said and puts the witchfinder-generals firmly in their place.
Of course, if Labour – or the Conservatives – truly wished to be squeaky-clean in matters of racism they would disband their Israel fan clubs (i.e. Friends of Israel) and suspend all who refuse to condemn Israel’s brutal acts of ethnic cleansing and other war crimes. If people holding public office put themselves in a position where they are influenced by a foreign military power, they flagrantly breach the Principles of Public Life. There are far too many Labour and Conservative MPs and MEPs who fall into that category.
The Labour Party announced today it is considering reviewing its rules to send a clear message of zero-tolerance on antisemitism. For balance, why not match this with zero-tolerance of those who use the party as a platform for promoting the criminal Israeli regime and its continuing territorial ambitions? Go on, Labour, prove Atzmon wrong… prove the party is not Zionist occupied territory.
Stuart Littlewood’s book Radio Free Palestine, with Foreword by Jeff Halper, can now be read on the internet by visiting radiofreepalestine.org.uk.
Latest Corbyn hit-piece: he earns MP’s salary
By Jonathon Cook | The Blog From Nazareth | April 13, 2016
If I hadn’t seen for myself that this article “exposing” Jeremy Corbyn was published on the Daily Telegraph’s website, I would have assumed it was a spoof from The Onion – an even more preposterous one than normal.
In a lengthy hit-piece, the Telegraph suggests that Corbyn is a hypocrite for criticising David Cameron over his efforts to conceal the financial benefits he received from his father’s tax-haven investments.
What’s the Telegraph’s evidence for accusing Corbyn of a double standard?
Corbyn is apparently part of the fat-cat class himself because he earnt £1.5 million. That sounds a lot – except it was his total earnings as an MP over the past 33 years. That’s the equivalent of a £45,000 a year salary. A good sum but hardly the stuff of scandals.
As a Labour spokesman says (buried at the bottom of this long piece): “It represents his wages as an MP over the last 30 years, the same as every other MP who has done the same service. He’s been elected consistently by the electorate and he has earnt what every other MP earns and those payments are in the public domain.”
In other words, this is a complete non-story. He’s a an MP and he received the benefits due an MP. If there’s a problem with that, then the Telegraph ought to be campaigning against MPs’ salaries.
So why is the Telegraph writing a story that makes clear it is not even pretending to be a newspaper – which reveals in stark fashion that, in fact, it is just a propaganda sheet for the business class?
There can be only one reason – or two related reasons.
That Corbyn is seen as such a danger to the vested interests of the powerful corporations that are served by the Telegraph and the rest of the corporate media that they need to smear him even at the cost of undermining their own credibility.
And equally significantly, that they are so sure that Cameron can be relied on not to damage their interests, that they will do anything – including writing a patently ridiculous anti-Corbyn story – to help the prime minister in his hour of need.
If Corbyn became prime minister, he might threaten the apple cart that has made the Telegraph’s owners, the famously litigious Barclay Brothers, and the rest of the 1% fabulously wealthy. The brothers are – how can we put it? – familiar with the workings of tax havens; they live in one.
Cameron is a member of that same exclusive club: he might talk the talk, but he is never going to walk the walk. He and his party will look after their friends and their off-shore accounts for as long as they can do so without paying a serious political price.
The only scandal here is that the Telegraph can write a story like this and still be considered a newspaper rather than a muck-raking comic. This example may be extreme, but behind it lie the same motives of class-interest that have driven the hundreds of other hatchet jobs on Corbyn over the past year, published in every British newspaper including supposedly liberal publications like the Guardian.
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The Kevin Barrett-Chomsky Dispute in Historical Perspective – Last part of the series titled “9/11 and the Zionist Question”
By Prof. Tony Hall | American Herald Tribune | August 28, 2016
Amidst his litany of condemnations, Jonathan Kay reserves some of his most vicious and vitriolic attacks for Kevin Barrett. For instance Kay harshly criticizes Dr. Barrett’s published E-Mail exchange in 2008 with Prof. Chomsky. In that exchange Barrett castigates Chomsky for not going to the roots of the event that “doubled the military budget overnight, stripped Americans of their liberties and destroyed their Constitution.” The original misrepresentations of 9/11, argues Barrett, led to further “false flag attacks to trigger wars, authoritarianism and genocide.”
In Among The Truthers Kay tries to defend Chomsky against Barrett’s alleged “personal obsession” with “vilifying” the MIT academic. Kay objects particularly to Barrett’s “final salvo” in the published exchange where the Wisconsin public intellectual accuses Prof. Chomsky of having “done more to keep the 9/11 blood libel alive, and cause the murder of more than a million Muslims than any other single person.” … continue
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