Forthcoming Protests from the Stop the War Coalition

I got this email today from the Stop the War Coalition giving details of their forthcoming protests against the wars in Ukraine and Yemen and on behalf of refugees against racism.

‘

Click Here to Register

The war in Ukraine is a disaster for the people of Ukraine, risks spreading conflict and will have far reaching consequences for the wider world.

Leading activists and experts are coming together for a teach-in on the war on Saturday 26 March in London’s Mary Ward Centre in Bloomsbury.

The teach-in will analyse the causes of the war, discuss some of the key controversies it has raised and examine its likely consequences.
There will be discussion of Ukraine’s history, NATO’s record, the question of self-determination, the threat of nuclear war, attacks on Russian culture and the issue of refugees.

Tickets for this in-person event are limited so register as soon as possible to avoid missing out.

Click Here to Register

Yemen Meeting

On Saturday 26th March from 5:00pm Stop the War is co-hosting with Liberation a very important online meeting on Yemen, on the anniversary of the starting of the war.

Speakers include; Jeremy Corbyn MP, Chris Hazzard MP, Shireen Al-Adeimi, Mahmood Al-Sagheer, Steve Bell, Kirsten Bayes, Roger McKenzie and Prof Madawi Al-Rasheed.

Register Now

March Against Racism- UN Anti-Racism Day

On Saturday 19 March we will be supporting UN Anti-Racism Day and joining the National March Against Racism.

The government’s abysmal record on welcoming refugees has been very publicly exposed in the last week, so join us to stand in solidarity with Ukrainian refugees and all those fleeing wars – be they from Ukraine, Afghanistan or Yemen, be they black or white, Christian or Muslim, we say Refugees are Welcome Here.

Click here for full info

How Genuine Are the Feelings of Hurt Claimed by the ‘Jewish Community’ over Labour Antisemitism?

I know this is a provocative question, but it needs to be asked. Yesterday Mike put up an excellent piece about the hypocrisy and moral cowardice of the Labour leadership. Angela Rayner had admitted that Jeremy Corbyn was right when he said that the amount of anti-Semitism in the Labour party was exaggerated. Nevertheless, it was right to suspend him because of the hurt they caused. Mike points out in his article that Rayner has effectively admitted what the victims of the anti-Semitism smear campaign have known for years – that Labour will expel people who tell the truth about it. He also says

“Hurt” and “distress” are irrelevant if they are not based on facts. And how do we know that the people saying they were “hurt” and “distressed” actually were? There are a lot of liars out there.

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2020/11/01/labour-expels-members-for-quoting-facts-about-anti-semitism-deputy-leader-admits/

Quite. As the old saying goes, ‘truth hurts’. And it seems from this that the self-proclaimed ‘Jewish community’ that claims to be so hurt, simply can’t or won’t handle the truth. But then, they don’t represent the Jewish community, and they aren’t really hurt by anti-Semitism.

Organisations behind Anti-Semitism Smears Unrepresentative of Britain’s Jews

How dare I say these terrible things, which I dare say some people could twist to sound anti-Semitic. Easily, because the facts are on my side. The people behind the accusations and smears that Jeremy Corbyn and the party he led were anti-Semitic most certainly don’t represent all of the Jewish community, but Zionist sectarians. Tony Grenstein and other great, self-respecting Jewish anti-racists and critics of Zionism have pointed out again and yet again that these accusations come from Zionist organisation. The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism was founded in 2012 or thereabout specifically to combat the rising hostility to Israel provoked by the bombing of Gaza. Labour Against Anti-Semitism are pretty much the same type of people in the Labour party. The Jewish Labour Movement used to be Paole Zion, Workers of Zion, and is the sister party to the Zionist Israeli Labour Party. In my view, both of these groups are deceptively and deliberately misnamed. The Campaign Against Zionism should be renamed the Campaign For Anti-Semitism, as it exists solely to manufacture accusations of Jew-hatred. As for the Jewish Labour Movement, it’s been shown that you don’t have to be Jewish or a member of the Labour party to join. It’s really a Zionist infiltration group, but obviously ain’t going to describe itself as such. And they will probably accuse you of spreading the anti-Semitic trope of Jewish conspiracies if you do. Nevertheless, it’s the truth. And the truth ain’t racist or anti-Semitic. It just is.

Chief Rabbis Sacks and Mirvis Ultra-Zionists

As for Chief rabbis Jonathan Sacks and Ephraim Mirvis, or ‘Mirv the Perv’ as I think he should be known, both of these gentlemen are, in my opinion, racist ultra-Zionists. Yes, I realise that over here they talk the language of anti-racism and interfaith dialogue. But Mirv spent years learning the Torah in one the hardline Israeli settlements. The settlers, or at least a very large majority of them, believe that all of Eretz Israel should belong to the state of Israel, and the Palestinians expelled and their lands colonised by Jews. Sacks and Mirvis also took contingents of British Jews to the March of the Flags in Jerusalem, despite pleas from British Jewish organisations not to do so. What’s the March of the Flags? It’s the day when the Israeli equivalent of Fascist boot-boys march through the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem waving the Israeli flag and vandalising Palestinian property. Palestinian kids are told not to go out on that day for fear of assault by these thugs. I see no difference between it and the Orange Marches through Roman Catholic areas in Northern Ireland. Or indeed through the attempted marches of Oswald Moseley and the British Union of Fascists through the East End of London and other Jewish areas in the 1930s.

Board of Deputies Zionist and Sectarian

Then there’s the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which sounds like it should represent the whole Jewish community. It don’t. It doesn’t represent secular Jews, who comprise a third of all British Jews. They also don’t represent the Orthodox, who have their own, separate organisation. And they really don’t represent Haredi Jews, who reject Israel because it’s a secular state. For the Haredi and Jews like them, Israel can only be restored by the Almighty through the Messiah. Until that time, the Children of Israel are required to remain in galut – exile – and pray for the health of the city, just as their ancestors did in exile in Babylon. Haredi Jews are viciously persecuted by the Israeli state because they refuse to recognise it. From what I gather, they are due to overtake the United Synagogue as the main Jewish sect in Britain in a few decades. And they have particular respect for Jeremy Corbyn for the efforts he and Diane Abbott have made on behalf of their community.

Tony Greenstein and others have pointed out that the Board of Deputies is, by its constitution, a Zionist organisation. So it obviously doesn’t represent non- or anti-Zionist Jews. These range from religious Jews, like the Haredi, to politically liberal and secular Jews, who object to the Israeli ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Whether religious or secular, these Jews believe that by doing so, Israel is violating the central tenets of traditional Jewish morality. As someone once said, ‘To be a Jew is always to side with the oppressed, never the oppressors’. In fact, the Board really only represents the United Synagogue. And probably not all of them, as some have sitting representatives where there hasn’t been an election for years. Other synagogues won’t allow women to vote. And the fact that it is the United Synagogue driving these smears is shown very clearly in many of the articles the I has published smearing Labour as anti-Semitic. Alongside the name of the author of so many of these hit pieces was the statement that they were a member of the United Synagogue. The Board is therefore a sectarian organisation, that no more speaks for the whole of the Jewish community than the Archbishop of Canterbury speaks for all British Christians, who are also divided into a number of different sects and denominations.

Corbyn Not Anti-Semitic

As for the hurt these mamzers claim to have felt, it’s a peculiarly selective kind of hurt. The South African Jewish politico, Andrew Feinstein posted a video this weekend showing very clearly that Corbyn wasn’t an anti-Semite. This includes footage of the former Labour leader denouncing it and all other forms of racism in a fiery speech in 2002 and of him meeting and being warmly greeted by members of the Jewish community, including a rabbi. Feinstein showed stats from a 2015 survey showing that Labour had the second-lowest incidence of anti-Semitism in British political parties. Two years later, another survey showed that Labour was the joint lowest.

Feinstein’s arguments should carry particular weight, as he has personal, family experience of real, murderous anti-Semitism. His mother’s family is a holocaust survivor, who lost 39 members of her family in Auschwitz. Feinstein has not only been to Auschwitz, but has also lectured there. I believe he was also subjected to anti-Semitic abuse by a real Fascist, which is where the vast majority of real anti-Semitism lies.

Hypocrites Behind Smears Not Concerned with Greater Anti-Semitism in Tories and Fascism

I believe the same stats showed that there was more anti-Semitism in the Tory party. And certainly the internet fan groups for BoJob and Jacob Rees Mogg the blogger Jacobs Mates dug up includes among their vicious racists and Islamophobes anti-Semites, who believe that non-White immigration is an evil plot by the Jews to exterminate the White race. Labour was placed under immense pressure to adopt the I.H.R.A. definition of anti-Semitism in full, complete with examples. But no such pressure was placed on the Tories, who haven’t. It’s a peculiar kind of hurt, that has no objection to anti-Semitism in the Tories, but like Violet Elizabeth Bott in the Just William books ‘thcweems and thcweems’ until it’s sick at its much lower incidence in Labour.

Anti-Semitism Smears Weapon to Defend Israel against Criticism

Of course the Jewish organisations accusing Labour of anti-Semitism aren’t doing it because of real anti-Semitism. They’re doing it because they want to defend Israel. Israel’s behaviour towards the Palestinians is indefensible on rational, factual grounds, so all they can do is smear critics as anti-Semites. As Norman Finkelstein, another leading Jewish critic of Israel has said, the Israel lobby is a machine for manufacturing anti-Semites.

And Jews like Andrew Feinstein are horrified and sickened by the cynical, political use of such accusations, not least because it cheapens the deaths of the six million, who were murdered by the Nazis.

Jewish Critics of Israel Victims of Anti-Semitic Ultra-Zionist Smears

But this is precisely what the people behind the anti-Semitism smears are doing. And many of the people they smear are self-respecting Jews, who as critics of Israel can, like Shraga Stern, a Heredi supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, justly claim to have been victims of sectarian anti-Semitic abuse and vilification.

Conclusion

The Jewish organisations claiming to have been hurt by Labour anti-Semitism are liars, both about the incidence of anti-Semitism in the Labour party and their motives for denouncing it. They were protected and supported by a lying Labour party bureaucracy, and are now by a lying Labour leadership. And these smears were spread by a lying British political and media establishment terrified of a revived Labour party that would actually do something for working people. Who of course include Jews. Always have done, always will do, ever since it was founded.

‘Hurt’ nonsense! This is a nasty pack of lies that smears decent people, cheapens real victims of anti-Semitism and desensitizes people to the real anti-Semites in the Fascist fringe. How utterly, utterly contemptible!

Jewish Chronicle Folds – Real Fighters Against Racism and Anti-Semitism Not At All Bothered

Here’s a rather positive story from yesterday. According to Mike, the Jewish Chronicle and the Jewish News have been forced to close. They’re blaming the lockdown, which has also damaged News Corporation profits so much that Murdoch’s minions wrote pieces in his wretched rags begging the public to buy newspapers. Which is something else that is highly amusing. Critics of the Chronicle and its foul editor, Stephen Pollard, suggested that the real reason might be all the money it’s being forced to pay in damages to all the people it’s libeled. 

The Chronicle was a right-wing, Tory rag. Its editor, Pollard, has written various pieces across the years claiming that the left, trade unions and Muslims are serious threats to western civilisation. It’s a list that once a time included Jews. That’s changed, because British Jews, by and large, are very assimilated and generally, but not uniformly, prosperous. Sixty per cent of the Jewish population is middle and upper middle class. It’s that wealthy, Tory voting section of the British Jewish population that the Jewish Chronicle spoke for.

It was also fanatically pro-Israel, and so was one of the worst in libeling and smearing the country’s critics, pro-Palestinian activists and over the last few years, Jeremy Corbyn, his supporters and the Labour Party as a whole. This included Mike of Vox Political, who the Chronicle and a number of other papers, including the equally repulsive and loathsome Sunset Times, smeared as an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier. Mike isn’t, never was, and never will be. Mike launched a successful appeal with IPSO, the press regulator, against those rags, and they were forced to print retractions. But this didn’t stop them continuing with their campaign of lies and smears against Labour.  Pollard’s spite wasn’t just reserved for those outside his newspaper’s staff. A few weeks ago he sacked long-time Chronicle contributor Prof. Geoffrey Alderman, an expert in British Jewish history. He gave no reason in his letter to Alderman telling him his services were no longer required, but many observers were in no doubt of the real reason. Alderman had committed the terrible crime of penning a piece in the Spectator stating that Corbyn wasn’t an anti-Semite but a friend to Jews. Pollard couldn’t tolerate the spectacle of the truth contradicting his smears. Alderman’s certainly no man of the left, and I think he’s a convinced Zionist. But this didn’t save him from Pollard’s wrath. Pollard himself isn’t Jewish, which led to the Chronicle’s  Jewish critics calling his thunderous exhortations to their community to support Israel ‘goysplaining’. In fact, critics of the smear campaign against critics of Israel, and Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters, like Tony Greenstein have repeatedly pointed out that the Israel lobby is especially venomous towards Jews, who refuse to give their wholehearted and absolute support to a nation to which they do not belong, nor in many cases have ever been to.

Mike in his article reproduced the comments on Twitter from various people and organisations about the Chronicle’s collapse. And they had absolutely no regrets about the rag’s demise whatsoever because of its role in pushing the smears. In fact, they welcomed it. They included  organisations like the Jewish human rights group, Jews Sans Frontieres, Socialist Voice, and the newspaper/ site Dorset Eye. One commenter, John O’Connell, summed up the situation and said ‘What was once a proud and worthy voice for Jewish communities has in recent years become a Tories and Right Wing mouthpiece for Anti #Labour Myths and Rhetoric’.  Two of the people, Neil Clark and Andrew Feinstein, had been personally attacked and vilified by the Chronicle, and so weren’t sorry to see it go at all.

The people the Chronicle and the Jewish News smeared in their campaign of hate against Corbyn, the Labour Party and pro-Palestinian activists were decent, genuinely anti-racist people and opponents of anti-Semitism. The quality of British print journalism has been raised by their closure. Unfortunately, the rest of the scummy Tory press still seems to be going, though hopefully it won’t be too long before the Sunset Times and the Torygraph go the same way. It’s sad that some of the people being laid off will be ordinary, decent peeps, but the rag itself won’t be missed. However, as Nathaniel Gibbons pointed out, Pollard is now reduced to spouting his defamatory, racist bile in the Heil, Torygraph and Scum.

And Britain would only gain if those despicable rags followed the Chronicle into closure and liquidation.

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2020/04/08/jewish-chronicle-to-close-with-staff-redundancies-the-quality-of-uk-media-has-improved/

Outrage as Rachel Riley Endorses Photoshopped Image of Corbyn Anti-Apartheid Protest

Speaking of the Labour anti-Semitism smears, how crass, arrogant and insensitive is Rachel Riley in her determination to smear Jeremy Corbyn? And how long before her antics are too much for Channel 4 and they sack her? These are not idle questions, as today Riley showed how low she would stoop to libel Corbyn as an anti-Semite by publicly wearing a photoshopped image of the Labour leader. There’s nothing unusual about that, as people have been producing them for years. There was a particularly odious one a few years ago which showed Corbyn sat next to Adolf Hitler in a limo. But this time the smear merchants have excelled themselves. They took a photograph of the Labour leader when he was arrested at an anti-apartheid demonstration outside the South African embassy in the 1980s. Corbyn was wearing a sandwich board with the slogan “Defend the right to demonstrate against Apartheid. Join this picket”. However, this has been removed and replaced with the words ‘Jeremy Corbyn is a racist endeavour’. Riley tweeted a picture of herself wearing it on a T-shirt.

Riley obviously thought this was a good idea, but the good peeps on Twitter thought otherwise. They considered that it showed just how unhealthy Riley’s obsession with smearing Corbyn was, as well as being massively offensive in its erasure of apartheid. Mike Williams, for example, tweeted

“Jeremy Corbyn’s showing people he’s committed to reducing living costs by living rent-free inside Rachel Riley’s head” and continued

“Imagine having the confidence to smear Jeremy Corbyn as a racist, while simultaneously erasing apartheid history for your own twisted agenda. Rachel Riley, everyone”.

He concluded

“Is Rachel Riley behind this and is she ok? I’m all for freedom of expression but this just wrong”.

Similar comments were made by Mark Hebden, and Alex Tiffin, Socialist Voice remarked

Jeremy Corbyn was protesting against black peoples’ struggle in apartheid South Africa. Rachel Riley has erased this to smear Jeremy Corbyn in an attempt to portray herself as a victim. 

Tonight she reached a new low. What a disgusting and repulsive individual she really is. 

Novara Media’s Aaron Bastani stated that it was the craziest thing he’d seen a twitter, and that a white person erasing an anti-apartheid message reached a new level of bizarre. It was something you expected from the Alt-Right. He noted that she had fronted anti-trolling campaigns, to which he just added ‘Good grief’.

‘Good grief’ indeed.

Evolve Politics wrote

Rachel Riley slammed after erasing anti-apartheid message to label Jeremy Corbyn a racist https://evolvepolitics.com/rachel-riley-slammed-after-erasing-anti-apartheid-message-to-label-jeremy-corbyn-a-racist/ …

Naturally some of the people most unimpressed with her latest smear were Black people and Whites, who had been active in the anti-apartheid campaign.

Chardine Taylor Stone tweeted

Rachel Riley needs to be cancelled. YOU DO NOT treat apartheid as joke to make a statement. I don’t care who is holding the placard or what statement she thinks she is making here. #Blacktwitter we need to sort this out.

Coco (Vote Labour) tweeted

“How many times is Rachel Riley going to shit on black history before mainstream outlets will start calling her out… I… I’m tired”.

Andrew Feinstein, a White, Jewish anti-apartheid activist, who had lost family in the Holocaust, also sent this message:

As a former MP under Nelson Mandela, as the son of a Holocaust survivor who lost 39 members of her family in the camps, as a [South] African anti-racist, I find what Rachel Riley has done offensive, appalling & deeply repugnant”.

See: https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/11/rachel-riley-channels-katie-hopkins.html

Labour’s Black PLP with the hashtag ‘Register to Vote’ tweeted

Rachel Riley should apologise for the hurt and upset that she has caused to many whose families and loved ones suffered under the Apartheid regime!

The disrespect and lack of care shown to the Anti-Apartheid struggle is truly hurtful.
https://metro.co.uk/2019/11/21/rachel-riley-sparks-backlash-erasing-jeremy-corbyns-anti-apartheid-message-photoshopped-t-shirt-11192944/ …

Frank Owen’s Legendary Paintbrush also compared her tasteless T-shirt with Jonathan Freedland’s smearing of an innocent Muslim Labour councillor as an anti-Semite, remarking that it was funny how those trying to smear Corbyn as a racist ended up exposing themselves.

And then came the demands that Channel 4 should inflict some kind of censure on her for her actions. Peter Goldup asked the broadcaster to reconsider her position. ‘Andy’ sent them the message

I call on @Channel4 to condemn Rachel Riley’s disgraceful actions and to terminate their association with this unhinged individual. She has misused her fame & brought politics, by association, onto Countdown, a programme which I can no longer watch because of her presence.

Lu Vegan was more pessimistic, feeling that she probably wouldn’t get any work-related backlash for her slur.

Mike has taken this as an opportunity to once again ask his supporters to donate to his crowdfunding campaign to help him defend himself against a libel action from Riley. Riley, he reminds his readers, accused a 16-year old schoolgirl of being an anti-Semite for criticising her smears against Corbyn. The girl was then subjected to a torrent of abuse from Riley’s followers, some of whom issued death threats. When Mike wrote a piece about this, Riley became offended and threatened to take him to court. Mike continues

My belief is that she thought she could bully me into paying her some money because I could not afford to defend myself.

Instead, I started a CrowdJustice page and members of the public helped me fight back.

There could be no better demonstration of why I need to win this case than this latest incident. It is clear that Ms Riley will continue with this abhorrent behaviour unless she is made to face legal consequences for it.

He states that he doesn’t think ‘think there will ever be a better time to contribute to my appeal, so please forgive me for asking’, before going on to inform people how they can contribute to his fund.

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/11/21/if-you-think-rachel-riley-went-too-far-with-photoshopped-t-shirt-please-support-my-court-case/

In my opinion, Riley and her pal Tracy Ann Oberman have a fanatical fixation on the Labour leader, and are bullies, deliberately picking on ordinary people, who they believe won’t be able to defend themselves from rich celebrities such as themselves. And they will go on doing so as long as they’re allowed.

If you can support Mike, please do so. All contributions are gratefully received, as is the great support he’s also received morally from followers of his blog and his work.

As for Riley, Zelo Street is right when they say that she’s now reached the level of ‘Hatie Katie’ Hopkins, the former apprentice contestant and right-wing gob, who’s become so racist that she’s lost her position at a string of media outlets, including the Daily Heil.

How long before Riley goes the same way, and Channel 4 gives her the order of the boot?

Liberal America YouTuber David Pakman Abused for Being Jewish and Smeared as an Anti-Semite

David Pakman is an American YouTube broadcaster and journo, who reports and comments on the news from a generally left-wing, liberal perspective. He’s not a socialist, but because he is highly critical of conservatism, he comes gets mountains of splenetic abuse from the Right. His method of dealing with this is to turn some of the worst into a regular feature on his show. In ‘Hatriot Mail’ a voice artist reads out, in the kind of educated, ‘classy’ tones usually received for discussions of the great works of American political writing, the angry letters he and his co-hosts have received for comic effect. These letters are generally ill-spelled, ungrammatical, stream of consciousness rants by demi-literates. As examples of how deranged, uneducated and moronic the fanatics of the American Right are, they’re hilarious. But the abuse they contain is horrendous. There are attacks on Pakman’s and his co-host’s masculinity, ranging from just calling them wimps and ‘soyboys’ to outright homophobic abuse. Pakman isn’t gay, neither, as far as I know, are his producers and co-hosts. Not that this would be anyone’s business but their own if they were. But nevertheless, the Hatriots rant about how gay they are. Pakman is also Jewish, and was born in Argentina, a fair bit of the abuse he receives is bitterly racist and anti-Semitic. But, because he’s a liberal, he’s also attacked for being a socialist, which to some of the authors of these vile screeds means he must be an anti-Semite himself, as the Nazis were socialist. Because they said so. Pakman himself has refuted that historical distortion, pointing out that by that logic, the Democratic Republic of North Korea is therefore a democracy, along with other examples of nations and organisations claiming to be something that they really aren’t.

Here’s a couple of examples of that section of his programme from YouTube. The first clip, from 2016, contains two letters. The first of this ranting scrawls abuses Pakman for being Jewish and then libels him as a rapist. Oh, and it also claims that Donald Trump is superior to Hillary. In the second, the anti-Semitism is ramped up to full-scale conspiracy level. The writer shrieks that Pakman isn’t really concerned with Trump’s boorish, sexist attitude to women, or that Trump said that many Mexicans were rapists. No, the reason Pakman is against Trump, is because he’s Jewish, and Trump is a threat to Jewish supremacy in the US. That’s why Pakman also supports Hillary: her masters, according to this Nazi, are Jewish.

In the second clip, the letter accuses him of being Nazi and claims that across Europe and America the liberals and socialists are preparing to exterminate the Jews again, all while performing a sex act on their Muslim masters. It ends with the puerile insult ‘You smell!’ Which itself shows all too clearly the infantile level of the writer’s mind. Rather more seriously, it tells him to kill himself and his mother.

Pakman is really cool regarding that vile instruction. He states on the video that he won’t joke about it. Instead, he encourages and advises anyone, who is contemplating suicide to contact a helpline, whose number he gives.

While it’s great how Pakman has turned all this abuse around in his favour, so that his audience can have a hearty laugh at his abusers’ expense, to the point where Pakman is even selling ‘Hatriot Mail’ merchandise, like calendars, this segment of his show does show the poisonous racism and prejudice of part of the American Right. And the anti-Semitism and accusations of anti-Semitism aren’t confined to America, by any means.

Which is why I’ve put it up here.

Because I think it also describes the vile abuse Jewish supporters of the Labour Party and Jeremy Corbyn are going through. I’ve mentioned before the disgusting insults Jackie Walker has received ever since the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and the Jewish Labour Movement conspired to have her expelled from the Labour party, libeling her, with the full complicity of the British press and media, as an anti-Semite. She’s been told she should be lynched, be killed and her body dumped in a bin-bag among other abusive messages. This is despite the fact that she’s ethnically Jewish through her father, is Jewish by faith, her partner’s Jewish and her daughter attended a Jewish school. And that she has always, following the example of her parents, fought against racism. Tony Greenstein, another passionate opponent of every kind of racism and Fascism, also receives horrific abuse. Because he’s a Jewish critic of Israel, like Jackie, he’s had enraged Zionists call him a ‘traitor’ and say that they wish he and his family had been murdered by the Nazis. One Jewish American even assaulted him, for which he was arrested, not the assailant. And these are just two. Zelo Street put up another piece two weeks ago about the abuse Andrew Feinstein, a Jewish supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, received simply for responding to Telegraph journo Alison Pearson’s smear of the Labour leader. She had libeled him as “an appalling anti-Semite Marxist”. Feinstein’s mother was a Holocaust survivor, and 39 members of her family had been murdered in the Shoah. He himself had experienced anti-Semitism in South Africa. And he himself has lectured at Auschwitz on genocide prevention. Feinstein therefore said that he could ‘state categorically that Jeremy Corbyn is not an anti-Semite’.

This set off the odious David Collier, one of the main witch-hunters and smear artists, and Daniel Sugarman, one of the deadbeat hacks at the Jewish Chronicle, who then began vilifying Feinstein as an anti-Semite, against all the plentiful evidence against. Feinstein responded to the gruesome twosome by challenging them to a debate on anti-Semitism in the Labour party, Holocaust Remembrance and racism. He concluded his series of tweets with them with

 “The crazy cowardly reactionary assault on me has only made me more determined to use my family & political history to fight the weaponisation of antisemitism 4 reactionary political ends. I’ll always fight racism in all its forms. Thanks 4 all the support”.

And Zelo Street concluded its article on this squalid episode thus:

It’s sad that Jews who conclude independently that Jeremy Corbyn is not an anti-Semite find themselves under attack for their freely expressed political choice – and castigated for telling that their families were decimated at death camps like Auschwitz and Theresienstadt. And the talking up of seemingly random Twitter accounts as Corbyn-supporting activists is very poor journalism. It almost smacks of desperation.

See: https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/06/jewish-activist-attacked-for-supporting.html

It smacks of desperation because it is desperate. It’s the reaction of a couple of Zionist fanatics, whose only response to any refutation of their smears is to repeat them and smear their opponent, even when he obviously has an impeccable record of experiencing and combating racism and anti-Semitism. Which is why Feinstein, and Jews like Jackie and Tony are particularly abused and vilified. They are living denials of Zionism’s claim to absolute and uncritical support from the Jewish community, proof that other interpretations of Jewish faith, identity and political commitment are possible by self-respecting Jews.

And like the anti-Semitic abuse and the accusations of Nazism directed at David Pakman, they also show that the real Jew-hatred and prejudice comes from the Right, with the latter now used to discredit the Left. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

South African Politico Andrew Feinstein on the Evils of the Arms Trade

Hat tip to Michelle, for sending me this video on the immense harm and global corruption due to the arms trade.

In this video, the South African politician Andrew Feinstein talks in detail about the arms trade. This creates death and chaos, not just through the weapons themselves, but through the web of corruption and kickbacks western governments, and here he talks specifically about the British government, use to sell them to countries that don’t need them and can’t afford them.

Like South Africa. BAe Systems and the British government were involved in a very corrupt deal to sell arms to his country. This diverted money, that should have been spent feeding the starving masses. Instead it went into the pockets of the merchants of death, and tens of thousands of children died of starvation as a result.

Another instance he cites is the Al-Yamamah arms deal, in which Britain sold arms to Saudi Arabia, in return for which one of the Saudi princes, Prince Bandar, received a kickback of a cool $1 billion. The agency that investigates corrupt business dealings were about to bring a prosecution, when Tony Blair’s government stepped in and stopped it. It was only when some of that money ended up in the accounts of two of the 9/11 hijackers that the authorities thought fit to investigate it.

http://realmedia.press/arms-trade-make-killing-andrew-feinstein/

None of this should be surprising to Private Eye readers. The magazine has cover the British arms industry for decades and the way it flouts international law. Under Maggie Thatcher, we were supplying arms to Saddam Hussein despite a ban on weapons sales imposed by the Americans. These were weapons that were turned on our squaddies when we invaded in Gulf War I. The Eye has also documented ad nauseam the countless times Britain has sold its lethal products to extremely repressive governments, like those of Indonesia and the Gulf states.

And BAe systems also manufactures weapons that are illegal under human rights legislation. Way back in the 1990s the Eye reported how the company was making and selling, quite illegally, electric shields and batons.

The massive arms fair held in London last week is now over, but the issues surrounding it haven’t gone away. We are still manufacturing and exporting these weapons to brutal, oppressive regimes with the complete support of the government. Remember how David Cameron went up to a weapons manufacturing plant in the North the other year to enthuse about the ‘wonderful kit’ they were making? Britain’s part in the global arms trade is small – much smaller than the American’s, whose expenditure on weapons vastly outstrips that of the other leading countries combined. But the trade, and the death and chaos it causes, still needs to be stopped. Hopefully this won’t just help to stop some of the supply of lethal weapons to brutal and oppressive regimes, it will also help stop the poverty and corruption this immoral trade generates.

Former South African MP Andrew Feinstein on Global Arms Trade

I received this fascinating comment from Michelle Thomasson on my last post, in which I put up a meme about how the banks, businesses and governments profit from war at the expense of the people, who actually have to live, fight and die through them. She writes

In November I helped host a discussion at the House of Commons on the Ethics (!!) of the UK Arms Trade, one of the speakers was Andrew Feinstein a politician in South Africa (he worked against apartheid), but in the last 10 years has undertaken very brave research re the shadow world of the arms trade, the information he relates in this short clip is hair-raising: https://youtu.be/2F6J4Xvdkuo

For a fuller speech from him and more on the hidden dynamics within politics, here is an extended speech from Andrew a couple of weeks later at Medact:

These clips are grim, but immensely informatiove in giving an overview into how immensely profitable, pernicious and massively corrupt the global arms trade is, and how that corruption infects government at the highest possible levels. The first clip is audio only, but still well worth listening to. The second is rather long at 27 minutes, and has video. They both cover much the same ground, though the second adds a few more details, including Feinstein’s own experience as a South African politician being thrown out of government because of his opposition to a massively corrupt arms deal cut by Thabo Mbeki.

Feinstein is South African, Jewish and a former ANC politician, serving his country in its parliament for seven years. After he was forced out of government by his country’s president, he started making a documentary, The Shadow World, which is both a book and a film, on the global arms trade. He states in these clips that Europe is experiencing its highest level of militarism in peacetime for seven years. This militarism is supported by the global arms trade. The global trade in arms is worth $1.5 trillion. The small arms trade is smaller and less profitable, but worth a whopping $8.5 billion. Nevertheless, it is responsible for tens or hundreds of thousands of violent deaths through the world. The United States is the leader in this trade by a massive margin. Its arms sales make up as much as the rest of the world combined. Other leading countries involved in the trade are Germany, Britain, Japan and a number of others. As many of these countries are on the UN security council, there is a general unwillingness and inability to hold the arms trade to account. And the main customer for British weapons is Saudi Arabia, despite that country’s appalling lack of human rights.

Feinstein goes on to state that arm dealing operates on a continuum between the legal to the illegal. In practice, all arms deals involve some kind of illegality. He describes his meeting with the 77 year old man, whose fellow arms dealers described as ‘the most dangerous man alive’. After failing to track him down, he eventually found him on Facebook. This man was an unreconstructed Nazi, who began his career aged 18 in an office run by a former Nazi officer in post-War Germany. At one point the man told Feinstein to his face that many of the world’s problems would have been solved, ‘if Hitler had been able to continue his work’. Feinstein states that he didn’t tell him that as well as being Jewish, his mother was a holocaust survivor.

Feinstein asked the dealer if his Nazi views ever presented a problem in this business. The man looked at him as if he was stupid, and pulled out from his wallet a stack of cards showing that he was an official in the American Department of Defense and in USAID, the American aid agency, for Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and Liberia, amongst other nations. He also stated that UN arms embargoes were good for business. He describes them as practically dollar signs, as that means the dealers can charge more.

By and large the arms dealers operate above the law. The trade comprises 40% of all corruption cases worldwide, and 50% of American corruption cases. This corruption is not incidental, but built into the trade’s very structure. It is responsible for the erosion of democracy and state’s internal stability, as well as damaging to their citizens’ health, prosperity and wellbeing. The dealers owe their massive power to the revolving door between them, the arms manufacturers, government and the civil service. This door is so fast, that its changes are impossible to track. One of Feinstein’s media colleagues tried in the US, and gave up after 18 months. And just to show how seriously the Land of the Free treats peaceful negotiation compared to the trade, there are less US diplomats across the globe than personnel on a single US aircraft carrier.

The trade is critical in securing party funding. Hence it operates in a parallel legal universe. Of the 502 violations of UN arms trading laws, only two have resulted in any legal consequences. One of these was the massive al-Yamamah arms deal between Britain and Saudi Arabia, negotiated by Thatcher, which earned her and her disgusting progeny, Mark, a nice little kickback. Mark Thatcher, aka ‘Thickie Mork’, got his own private jet, painted in whatever colour or design the little so-and-so wanted. This was being paid for by the British taxpayer until 2007. Other notorious deals included Iran/Contra, in which the Americans supplied arms to the Islamic Revolutionary Regime in Tehran, and the Contras in Nicaragua. One of the worst aspects of the arms trade is that the weapons often end up in the wrong hands, or turned against the very western countries which sold them. For example, when America started bombing Gadaffi’s Libya in the last stages of the war, the gun installations they attacked were those they had previously sold them. And immediately after the revolutions in the Middle East during the Arab Spring, Dave Cameron was in the region, including Egypt, trying to sell the new governments arms.

Feinstein also describes the massive arms deal that saw him forced out of office. He was head of the oversight committee when Mbeki struck an arms deal worth $10 billion, as well as $300 million in bribes. He was thrown out, and the two anti-corruption agencies in South Africa closed down because he refused to drop the investigation into the deal. This was an arms deal encouraged by Tony Blair. Jacob Zuma, Mbeki’s successor, was also involved, but was let off. The judge who did so was appointed to the high court two weeks later.

Feinstein includes in the final part of his talk a discussion of how arms dealing harms countries’ medical provision for their peoples. At the same time Mbeki was making his deal, he announced that there was no money for the retroviral drugs to treat those suffering from HIV. As a result, 365,000 South Africans died of AIDS in five years, and tens of thousands of babies were unnecessarily born HIV positive. Feinstein concluded his speech by stating that we needed to work to close down the trade’s massive corruption, and make sure that what remained of it was highly regulated.

Watch and listen to his talk yourself, and be informed about how vile and pernicious the trade is. The parapolitics magazine, Lobster, also has numerous articles on the arms trade and Iran/Contra, as well as criticism of Tony Blair.