One of the major news stories this week was the trial in Huddersfield of yet another Asian paedophile gang. From what I gather – I haven’t really followed the story – this was a group of taxi drivers, some of whom were of Pakistani descent, and the case was very similar to the Rotherham and other paedophile gangs. Including the reaction of the authorities to the exploitation of the female victims. The girls – now young women – have said that they have only now come forward because when the abuse was occurring they were not believed. The reporter discussing the case on the Beeb’s News at Six described how the authorities in this and the other cases didn’t act because they were afraid of disrupting ‘community cohesion’. In the case of Rotherham, one of the local authority officials or senior police officers, who could have stopped, stated that they were afraid of it starting riots. As a result, nothing was done for years, and the abuse continued until eventually these thugs were brought to trial.
This issue is delicate, as we’ve seen how the various surviving Nazis and Islamophobes are trying to capitalize on it. The EDL and the racist hooligans of the Football Lads’ Alliance have been goose-stepping up and down, pushing the idea that this is how Islam, and all Muslims, see those outside their faith: inferior beings, whom they can exploit freely without any pang of conscience. I’ve got a feeling that it was this case in particular in Huddersfield that Tommy Robinson was commenting on outside the courthouse when he was arrested and banged up for contempt of court. His followers then declared that it was a free speech issue, and their leader had been unfairly silenced by the pro-Muslim dhimmis of the establishment. It was nothing like that, of course. There are strict regulations covering the reporting of court cases affecting everyone. They’re designed to stop a miscarriage of justice by reporters spreading biased or mistaken information. Robinson violated them, not least with his antics shouting angry questions at the men was they were being taken into court, questions and comments which assumed their guilt. If let unchecked, this could have resulted in them being acquitted or the case collapsing following a motion by their lawyers that the reporting was preventing them from getting a fair trial.
And the Islamophobes of the EDL, FLA, DFLA, and Pegida UK, etc., aren’t interested in protesting against paedophiles per se. There are plenty of cases of the prosecution of Whites for the same offences, at which they haven’t shown their faces. They are only interested in these cases because the perpetrators are Brown, and they can use them to work up hatred against Muslims and the wider Asian community.
And let’s deal with another canard the islamophobes have been repeating about the case: that this shows essential Muslim attitudes towards non-Muslims. If the crew in Huddersfield are like the other Asian grooming gangs, such as Rotherham, then they say absolutely nothing about Islam in this regard. Again, from what I gather, the Rotherham gang were Muslims in name only. They weren’t practicing Muslims and never attended the mosque. Or if they did, it was once in a very, very long time.
But nevertheless, there are racial aspects of this case that do need investigation, discussion and comment. The gangs’ victims were White, and it’s because they were that the issue was ignored. As has been said, the authorities were afraid that if they acted, it would provoke race riots. It’s a gift to the Far Right, who can honestly say that in these cases, the authorities weren’t interested in combating anti-White racism and exploitation. Now I have spoken to Whites, who believe that they have been racially abused and insulted, but that when they tried to raise it with social workers, they were refused help. One man said that the social workers flatly refused to believe him, and said ‘Oh, they’re not like that.’ I’m sure most BAME people aren’t. But some are, just like some Whites. And for a brief moment at the start of this century, round about the time of the Oldham race riots, there was more anti-White racial crime than against Black or Asians. I’m fairly certain that this situation has been reversed following 9/11 and the abuse and violence against Muslims that unleashed, and the immigration crisis.
Paedophiles and those who enslave and sexually exploit children and women exist in all levels of society, and in all colours. The Roman Catholic, Anglican and Methodist churches have been rocked through similar scandals with White clergy, whose crimes were also disgustingly covered up and their perpetrators were protected, in order to avoid a scandal. Paedophiles are also manipulative and enter professions where they can prey on the vulnerable, like teaching. Which is why that profession has very strict regulations about dealing with their charges, as well as reporting and dealing with possible incidents of sexual abuse that they may uncover amongst their students and pupils.
But historically, as well as exploiting those of their own race, nations and ethnic groups across the world have also exploited other races. White racists see Blacks as more sexual and promiscuous than Whites and ethnic groups. But this is a prejudice created through the slave trade. White Europeans and Americans trading and travelling in Africa actually reported that Black African women were very chaste, more so than their own people. What altered this image was the sexual exploitation of enslaved women by White men in the plantations of the New World. And where it did not involve rape, it frequently consisted of prostitution, with the White man giving the woman a few coins for her services. Which may also have been unwilling. And some of this sexual exploitation may have been directed against Blacks partly because White women, or at least of those of respectable status, were protected and the chastity jealously guarded. Which is also not an excuse for the men not controlling themselves and raping and exploiting their slaves instead.
And it does look to me like something similar is going on here. That the men in these gangs, like the Whites who sexually exploit Black women, are doing so because they do consider White women less worthy than their own. Yasmin Alibhai-Browne in the Independent and then the I has written many times about anti-White racism amongst BAME communities as well as ordinary White racism. And she has described how some Asians view White women’s sexual freedom with horror, as promiscuity and a lack of ‘respect’. And so I do wonder if the Asian men in these gangs had the same attitude White planters had to their Black slaves: they could abuse them freely, not just because they were in their power, but because they believed their race also to be more promiscuous than their own women, and so their rape and abuse didn’t matter. They were ‘tarts’, and so deserved it.
I am certainly not suggesting that all or most Muslims or Asians in this country approve of or share the attitudes of these Asian rape gangs. Just as I don’t believe that the majority of Whites in this country think that Black women deserve rape or sexual exploitation. But I am saying that these men’s attitude does show a racial as well as sexual contempt for their victims. And that this needs to be recognized and discussed alongside other forms of racism.
I also think there’s an issue with the racial elements of prostitution and sexual exploitation in this country generally that isn’t being discussed, and of which these cases are a part. For example, one Asian commenter on a similar case complained that there was sexual abuse within the Asian community, which was being hushed up. I’ve also heard of White men using the services of Muslim prostitutes. And way back in the 1980s I can remember a Black friend from St. Paul’s here in Bristol complaining that the Black community there had a reputation for prostitution, but the girls themselves were Whites from Hartcliffe.
Racism and racial exploitation has no colour. People of all races can be prejudiced, abusive, violent and exploitative towards others. And this seems to have happened in the case of these Asian grooming gangs, who are not representative of Asian Britain as a whole. And I’m sure that racism is also an element in other forms of rape and sexual exploitation committed and suffered by people of other ethnic groups. And this needs to be recognized, discussed and acted upon. Rather than swept under the carpet and angrily denied in case it cause further racial friction.
This is a very short piece from RT, which suggests that British justice in this case has been much less than impartial. The video reports that the parents of judge Altham, who jailed three anti-fracking activists, are the directors of J.C. Altham & Sons, which is reportedly in the same supply chain as Centrica. Centrica has invested tens of millions of pounds in fracking. The Altham’s company also backed a letter lobbying Lancashire council to permit fracking. The report also states that the three men are supposed to be the first eco-protesters jailed as a public nuisance since 1932.
The report shows the men clambering on to the trucks during their protest, and a tweet from The Left Wing UK revealing the judge’s connections to the fracking industry.
This clearly casts grave doubts over the judge’s impartiality and the justice of his decision. I am surprised that the judge was allowed to preside over this case, as I would have thought the men’s defence lawyer would have raised an objection against him. Perhaps they did, but it was overruled by the judicial authorities. In which case, it raises wider questions about the entire impartiality of the system in this case.
This is another video from the conference ‘Israel’s Influence: Good or Bad for America?’, organized by the American Educational Trust, which publishes the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs; and Middle Eastern Policy, Inc. The speaker in this piece is Maria LaHood, a deputy legal director at the Centre for Constitutional Rights, who works to defend the constitutional rights of Palestinian civil rights activists in the US. In this clip she describes some of the cases she’s worked on defending Palestinian and pro-Palestinian activists from legal attack by the Israel lobby. These includes the case of the Olympia Co-op, Professor Stephen Salaita, and filing Freedom of Information Act Requests to obtain government documents about Israel’s attack on the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza. The speaker also says she works on the Right to Heal Initiative, helping Iraqi civil society and veterans seeking accountability for the damage to Iraqis’ health from the last war. She’s also challenged the American government over the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki and Caterpillar over its sale of the bulldozer used to kill Rachel Corey to Israel. Before joining the Centre, she also worked campaigning for affordable housing in the Bay area of San Francisco.
She begins by talking about attempts to harass, prosecute and suppress pro-Palestinian students and professors at US universities.
The first case she talks about is Professor Stephen Salaita, an esteemed Palestinian-American lecturer, who had a tenured position at Virginia Tech University. He was offered a position at the University of Illinois, Urban Champagne on its Native American Studies programme, which he accepted. He was due to begin his new job at the University of Illinois in the summer of 2014. During that summer he watched, horrified, Israel’s devastation of Gaza and tweeted about it. Two weeks before he was due to take up his post, he received an email from the Chancellor telling him not to bother because he would not be accepted by the Board of Trustees. The professor and his family were thus left without jobs, an income, health insurance and a home.
Salaita lost his job due to a self-declared Zionist, who’d been following his tweets. These were published on the right-wing blog, Legal Insurrection. Professor Salaita was also targeted by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, the Jewish Federation and the Anti-Defamation League. Also, wealthy donors to the uni threatened to withdraw their money. The Chancellor and the Board later stated that they withdrew his job offer based on those tweets, which they considered uncivil, and anti-Semitic. LaHood states that accusations of anti-Semitism is commonly used to silence criticism of Israel. Christopher Kennedy, who led the Board’s rejection of Salaita, was later given an award by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre.
CCR sued the university, the trustees and top administrators. The court found in his favour, and the Chancellor resigned a few hours later the next day, and the Provost resigned a few weeks later. LaHood states that last autumn (2015) Salaita became the Edward Said Chair at the American University of Beirut, and settled his case for $875,000 against the university. LaHood paid tribute to the immense grassroots support for Salaita, with thousands signing petitions, five thousand professors boycotted the university, and 16 U of I departments voted ‘no confidence’ in the administration. The American Association of Professors also censured the university. Salaita went on to talk about his experience to more than 50 unis, and his works on Israel and settler colonialism are more popular than ever.
The Olympia Food Co-op is a local food co-op in Olympia, Washington; a non-profit organization, it has been very involved in social work and political self-determination. It has adopted a number of boycotts, and in 2010 the board voted by consensus to boycott Israeli goods. Five of the co-op’s 22,000 members voted to prosecute the 16 board members, who’d passed the vote, over a year later. Six months before the lawsuit was filed, the Israeli consul general to the Pacific northwest, based in San Francisco, travelled to Olympia to meet the co-chairs of Stand With Us Northwest, the lawyer representing those suing, and some Olympia activists. Stand With Us is a non-profit organization supporting Israel around the world. It is one of the groups trying to suppress free speech on Israel in the US. It maintains dossiers on Palestinian rights activists. The five issued a letter to the board members telling them to rescind the boycott or else they would be sued and held personally accountable. They were accused of violating the co-op’s governing principles, and the board asked their accusers how they had done this, and invited them to put their proposal to a membership vote, according to the co-op’s bye-laws. The accusers refused to do so, and went ahead and filed the suit. After they did so, Stand With Us put it out on their website that they had brought the suit in partnership with the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, spearheaded by the Deputy Foreign Minister, Danny Alon. Alon admitted that the Israelis were behind the lawsuit, and using it to amplify their power.
CCR then sued, using an anti-SLAPP motion. SLAPP stands for ‘Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. Half the states in America have legislation to deter the abuse of laws to chill free speech. The trial court dismissed the case as a SLAPP, held the Board had the authority to initiate the boycott, and awarded them each $10,000. The accusers launched an appeal, this was turned down, and they then appealed to the Supreme Court. The Washington Supreme Court turned down the anti-SLAPP motion, and referred the case back to the trial court. The CCR’s motion to dismiss the case again was denied. The case goes on, and the board members, most of whom are no longer in their post, have been subject to discovery and intimidation. The boycott of Israeli foods continues, however.
LaHood states that these are not isolated incidents, but only two of numerous cases where those, who speak out on Palestine are attacked. In September 2015 the CCR and their partner, Palestine Legal, issued a report, The Palestine Exception to Free Speech: A Movement Under Attack in US, documenting the increasing attempts in the US to silence and punish advocacy in favour of Palestine and speech on Israel, including BDS. The report details to the tactics and many cases studies, and is available on both of the organisations’ websites. In 2015 Palestine legal dealt with 240 cases of suppression, including false accusations of terrorism and anti-Semitism. 80% of those incidents were against students and professors at 75 campuses, and this is only the tip of the iceberg. She talks about some of these tactics and cases, such as that of the Irvine 11, who were criminally prosecuted for walking out of a speech by the-then Israeli ambassador to the US, Michael Oren. Several schools have been given complaints by the Zionist Organisation of America, claiming that advocacy on campus for Palestinian rights creates a pro-anti-Semitism atmosphere on campus. Even though these complaints are unconstitutional, universities respond by investigating those accused and cracking down on speech.
These complaints are not only brought by the Z of A, but also the Brandeis Centre, the Ampline Centre, Sheriat Hedin, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, the Anti-Defamation League amongst others. Netanyahu has launched a full attack on BDS, which Israel has declared to be the biggest threat it faces. Movements to divest from Israel across America have been accused of being anti-Semitic. The American Studies Association was received death threats when they voted to endorse the call to boycott Israeli academic institutions. Sheriat Hedin, the Israeli law centre, threatened to sue them if they didn’t end the boycott. Sheriat Hedin admits that it takes advice on which cases to pursue from Mossad and Israel’s National Security Council. Also in response to the ASA’s decision, legislatures around the country voted on bills to withhold state funding from colleges that used any state aid to fund academic organisations advocating a boycott of Israel. Mobilisation of public opinion prevented these bills from being passed, but now 15 states have introduced anti-boycott legislation. Some states have also passed non-binding resolutions against the BDS, but those have no legal effect. Last year (2015) Illinois passed a law demanding a black list of foreign companies that boycott Israel and compelled the state pension fund to divest from those companies. Florida passed a similar bill in 2016, which also outlaws state contracts with such companies for amounts over a million dollars. New York has even worse legislation pending.
The US Congress has introduced legislation to protect these state laws from federal pre-emption challenges, but these cannot prevent challenges under the First Amendment. Anti-Boycott provisions were introduced into the Federal Trade Promotions Authority Law, making it a priority to discourage BDS from Israel and the Occupied Territories. More information can be found about anti-BDS legislation at righttoboycott.org. Anti-BDS isn’t confined to the US. Israel has anti-boycott damages legislation and France has criminalized BDS. And people have been arrested for wearing BDS T-shirts.
She states that these laws are an extension of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians. They have no defence, so they attempt to stop the debate. Free speech and free inquiry is essential to the functioning of democracy, especially at universities, and open debate helps shape public attitudes. Campus opposition helped turn the tide against the Vietnam War, Apartheid in South Africa and will eventually do the same against Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians. The mounting opposition to people working against the occupation and other violations of international law shows how strong the pro-Palestinian movement is, and how it will eventually win.
Last month, on the 27th August 2018, Tony Greenstein posted a piece on his blog criticizing the I newspaper for its anti-Semitism smears against Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party. The newspaper had published articles by two of its columnists, Simon Kelner and Ian Birrell. In one of them, Kelner attacked Labour for being anti-Semitic because it hadn’t then adopted the I.H.R.A. definition of anti-Semitism in its entirety. The other article, written by Birrell, declared that Corbyn was ‘unfit for office’ because of his presence at the anti-Zionist meeting where Hajo Meyer made his speech comparing Israel to the Nazis. Which in actual fact, wasn’t anti-Semitic.
Birrell, apart from writing for the Groaniad, Independent and the Heil, used to be a speechwriter for ‘Dodgy’ David Cameron. Greenstein describes his article as just one long ad hominem. As for Kelner, he tried to justify his recommendation of the I.H.R.A. definition of anti-Semitism by claiming that the Jewish community supported it, it was the commonly held definition, and that it seemed to him, a Jew, to be an uncontroversial document.
Greenstein points out in his article that the Jewish community has never spoken with a single, monolithic voice, that it has also been accepted by genuine anti-Semites like Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Michal Kaminski and the anti-Semitic Law and Justice Party of Poland.
He also points out that the definition has also been attacked by the Director of the Sears Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism, Professor David Feldman, Hugh Tomlinson, QC, and the retired appeals court judge, Sir Stephen Sedley, who is himself Jewish.
Greenstein was so outraged by these articles, that he wrote several messages of protest to the I’s editor, Oliver Duff. But surprise, surprise!, he didn’t get an answer.
Greenstein states that he has always found Kelner a superficial writer. I seem to remember that way back in the 1990s he regularly used to appear in Private Eye’s ‘Street of Shame’ column under the monicker, Simon ‘Pussy’ Kelner. No explanation was given for this soubriquet, but I do wonder whether it was because of a misogynist remark he may have made. Or perhaps it’s simply because he liked cats.
Regardless of this, his argument for demanding Labour adopts the I.H.R.A. definition simply boiled down to ‘All Jews demand it, and I’m Jewish, so I know what’s anti-Semitic’. It’s an easy argument to refute as not all Jews by any means demanded, being a member of a particular ethnic group does not necessarily give someone a privileged insight into what is or isn’t a racist slur or action against them.
It’s also extremely hypocritical for the Tories to use that argument. I can remember when the McPherson rules were first proposed, that a crime should be categorized as racist if the victim, a member of an ethnic minority, said it, the Tory papers went berserk. The Mail published articles attacking the very notion, fearing that White Brits would be smeared as racists simply on the say-so of Blacks and Asians.
In fact, as Mike has repeatedly pointed out in his article, the McPherson rules actually say no such thing. They state that if the victim believes they were racially abused or assaulted, then that is how it should be registered by the police. But the crime still has to be investigated the usual way, and it still needs to be shown that the crime was racially motivated.
In the case of the Tories’, Blairites’ and lamestream media’s attacks on Corbyn and the Labour party for anti-Semitism, absolutely none of this appears to have been done. And indeed, their is active resistance to it being done. You’re angrily smeared as an anti-Semite by the baying Zionist mob if you even dare ask for proof, as Pete Willetts did.
Although Greenstein published his article about three weeks ago, it’s still very relevant because Kelner was riding the same hobby horse again in his column this week. It’s headline proclaimed that he didn’t know he was a Jew, and was accompanied by a picture of an angry crowd all bearing placards accusing Corbyn of anti-Semitism. I didn’t bother reading on. I don’t think I needed to. The headline and photo said it all. And no doubt Kelner will continue going on saying the same smears and spurious arguments for as long as the Tories believe Labour’s a threat.
Which I hope will be a very long time indeed. I look forward to Corbyn, the most anti-racist politico, getting into No. 10 to the squawking fury of Kelner, Birrell, Duff and their readers. Assuming that they still have any by then.
On Wednesday, 13th June 2018, Mike annnounced that he had set up a crowdfunding page to raise money for him to take to court the organisations and publications that have libelled him as an anti-Semite. He has had to do this, because he simply doesn’t make enough from the Vox Political page to pay the legal fees himself, and so he has turned to the generosity of his readers.
He posted up the description of his case, and why he needs the money, which he has put on his JustGiving page. This runs
“My name is Mike Sivier. You may know me as the writer of the Vox Political website.
I am probably best-known as the man who forced the Conservative government to reveal the number of sick and disabled benefit claimants who had lost their lives after being denied benefit, after a two-year campaign.
In 2017, immediately before local government elections in which I was standing as a Labour candidate, an organisation calling itself the Campaign Against Antisemitism published an article falsely alleging anti-Semitism by me. I believe the intention was to corruptly spoil my chance of being elected.
The piece ‘quotemined’ investigative articles I had written about claims of anti-Semitism against Labour Party politicians, using only those words that could present the most prejudicial impression about me, in order to falsely suggest hatred of the Jewish people. A weblink to the article was then sent to the Labour Party, in an attempt to have my membership suspended. This led to newspaper articles including one in which my local Conservative MP libelled me.
Labour obligingly suspended my membership, and subsequently launched a one-sided investigation in which I was found guilty despite being absent from the proceedings, at which none of the evidence I had presented to the party was mentioned by the investigator.
A copy of the report to the Labour Party committee that heard my case was then handed to a member of the national press. This led to further newspaper articles claiming I was not only an anti-Semite but also a Holocaust denier (an innovation by the Labour Party investigator).
I have been trying to persuade all those involved to retract their unfounded claims and apologise. These lies have harmed my main business – the Vox Political website – by encouraging readers to believe I should be avoided because of the unacceptable views they have attributed to me.
My attempts seem unlikely to produce positive results so it seems I must resort to court action.
I need your support to fund the court campaign to clear my name.
Please support this case and share. As a Labour Party member, I believe in equal opportunities for all people, no matter the colour of their skin, their religion or ethnic background, or any other accident of birth. My campaign to force the Tory government to release its sickness and disability death figures was an example of my commitment to end discrimination, prejudice and hate based on such characteristics.”
He ends his article with an appeal to readers to support him, either by donating or sharing the link, or both, which is
All this is absolutely true. And I’ve written time and again that Mike is no racist, Anti-Semite or any kind of Nazi. He and I had an uncle, who was of Jewish descent, with whom our family used to go on holidays when we were children. Our father had done his national service in Germany, not far from Belsen concentration camp, and showed us the photos he’d taken of the remains of that terrible place, and the memorial the British army put up to the Jews murdered there.
He has always enjoyed the friendship of people of different cultures, religions and nationalities. One of his mates at college was a Muslim Nigerian. And while he was there, he was one of the speakers reading out the names of some of the victims of the Holocaust in a performance commemorating them and the others butchered in the Shoah. He had done this at the invitation of a female Jewish friend, who was deeply moved by his performance.
One of the books I’ve got on my shelf on the Third Reich was given to me by Mike after he went on a College trip to Berlin. It’s on the Nazi Sicherheitsdienst – the infamous ‘Security Service’, which formed a part of the apparatus of state terror in the Third Reich. It was published by the-then West German government to acccompany an exhibition on the SD and the horrors they perpetrated following the redevelopment and archaeological investigation of the organisation’s headquarters in what was then West Berlin. As well as information on the SD and the other parts of the Nazi secret police, like the Gestapo and the Krimipolizei, the ordinary criminal police, who were also responsible for persecuting political and ethnic enemies of the Nazi order, the book also gave due coverage of the Nazis’ victims. It described the network of camps, and gave the figures for the number of Jews and other victims murdered in the occupied countries. It also had a photographs and potted biographies of some of the most notable victims. It is most definitely not the kind of book Nazis, ant-Semites and Holocaust deniers want people reading, let alone give to their relatives.
Mike and I grew up in the ’80s, when the NF and BNP were very much in the news and trying to make their presence felt through terrorising and attacking people of colour and lefties. It was also the decade when Blacks and Asians also fought back against racism with the support of White sympathisers. There was a real fear at the time that the BNP or something like them could gain power, especially under Thatcher’s noxious government, with its links to South American Fasciss like Pinochet and the horrific Rios Montt. This fear was expressed in some of the comic literature that both he and I read, which dealt with issues like racism and persecution.
It shows the absolute contempt for truth or any kind of journalistic integrity that he, and so many others like him, have been smeared and libelled by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and the scumbags of the right-wing press. I full support Mike in his court battle, and hope others will too.
On Saturday the islamophobic far right held a march to protest against the arrest and jailing of Tommy Robinson, the founder of the EDL, and former member of the BNP and Pegida UK, for contempt of court. Robinson had been livestreaming his coverage of the trial of a group of Pakistani Muslim men accused of child abuse. There are very strict laws governing press coverage of trials, which Robinson broke, just as he had broken them a year or so before in Canterbury. This had earned him a suspended sentence, which automatically kicked in when he repeated the offence last week in Leeds. Robinson was arrested, convicted and jailed.
The laws Robinson broke are there to make sure that everyone gets a fair trial, and apply to all cases, not just those of Muslims accused of paedophilia. But Robinson’s supporters decided that he had been the victim of state censorship and imprisoned for his political beliefs by an establishment determined to protect paedophile Muslims and persecute Whites, hence the march. This was addressed by some of the most notorious islamophobes in Britain and the Netherlands.
Hope Not Hate have an article at their site identifying the speakers, and giving a brief description of their political careers and their very racist views on Islam and Muslims. They included the notorious anti-Islamic Dutch politician Gert Wilders; Anne-Marie Waters, who was formerly a Labour party member before joining Pegida with Tommy Robinson. In October last year, 2017, she launched another far right party, the For Britain Movement; Raheem Kassam, a former advisor to Nigel Farage and editor of Breitbart’s London branch. He’s also the direct of Student Rights, which claimed to be a campus monitoring group dedicated to combating extremism. In fact, it has no student members or links to student unions, though it is linked to the extreme rightwing American group, the Henry Jackson Society. It has also been criticised by several London student unions for targeting Muslim students, and the Institute of Race Relations also noted that its work was used by far right groups to target a Nuslim student event. He’s also the editor of another, Neoconservative news site, The Commentator.
And then there’s the extremely islamophobic UKIP MEP, Gerard Batten, who in 2011 addressed the Traditional Britain Group, the far right outfit that invited Jacob Rees-Mogg to their dinner. Mogg attended, but now claims he only did so because he didn’t really known what they were like. Which sounds very unlikely to me.
As well as vile views on Muslims, the article also describes the vicious hatred towards other groups of some of those associated with the speakers. Like Mandy Baldwin, a member of Waters’ For Britain Movement, who posted homophobic material from a Nazi website on a social media site. For Britain also includes several former members of the BNP and other Fascists, such as Sam Melia, who was a former member of the banned terrorist group, National Action. Another member, Stuart Nicholson, posted extremely anti-Semitic material on his Twitter account before it was withdrawn. In one of these, he retweeted a post that read “National Socialism is the alternative to degeneracy we currently face. It is a pathway to freedom and prosperity. It is an escape from Jewish Tyranny. It is the Future of our people.”
It’s probably no surprise that some of those, who joined the anti-Islam movement also have a bitter hatred of gays and Jews, and openly support Nazism. All the stuff Nazis write about ‘Jewish tyranny’ is a vile lie, responsible for justifying the Holocaust under the Nazis. And Nazism never brought freedom and prosperity. For the German working class, is meant low wages and complete subordination of the workforce to the bosses as part of Hitler’s Fuhrerprinzip, or Leader Principle. Just as it meant the absolute political, social and economic dominance of the Nazi party and the proscription of all competing parties and organisations, whose members were rounded up and sent to the concentration camps.
I don’t doubt that not all members of the anti-Islam movement have views as extreme as these. But it does seem to show that if these people have their way and ban Islam and persecute or expel Muslims, sooner or later they will move on to attack other groups. Like gays and Jews.
Last month, Tommy Robinson, or to give him his real name, Steven Yaxley Lennon, was arrested and jailed for contempt of court. Robinson is the former leader of the Islamophobic EDL, and has also been a member of PEGIDA UK, as well as the BNP. He’d been covering the trial of a group of Pakistani Muslims in Leeds on the internet outside the court. Robinson already had a suspended sentence for doing the same thing about a year ago in Canterbury. The rozzers swooped, Robinson pleaded guilty, and is now enjoying a holiday at her majesty’s pleasure.
His supporters have gone berserk, claiming that he’s been persecuted for his beliefs and that this is a serious breach of free speech by the multicultural establishment to protect Muslims. They’ve also been on the internet claiming that this is all part of the establishment’s campaign to make Whites extinct through immigration and racial mixing. The Islamophobic Dutch politician, Gert Wilders, who is himself no stranger to prosecution for racism, has condemned Robinson’s arrest and imprisonment. As has Pauline Hanson, the head of the minuscule Australian anti-immigration party, the One Nation Party. Hanson runs a fish and chip shop in Western Australia, and she’s made herself president for life of her outfit, so there are definitely no overtones of Fascist dictatorship there.
Last Sunday, 4th June 2018, Robinson’s supporters held a rally in London demanding his release. This has alarmed anti-racist activists and organisations. Hope Not Hate have released a video telling the truth about Robinson and what he really stands for and why he was jailed. As have Kevin Logan, the male feminist and anti-Fascist, and Far Right Watch. RT also covered the demonstration, and their short clip shows some of Robinson’s supporters trying fighting or attempting to fight the police.
Far Right Watch are an unpaid, volunteer group of nine people dedicated to exposing Fascism and the Far Right on the internet. In this video, which is about 28 minutes long, they answer five questions about Robinson and bust seven myths about him.
They start out by making the point that Robinson is a racist, and has been a member of a series of racist organisations, including the BNP. He’s also a criminal, having been convicted 12 times of various offences, including fraud. They go into great detail, including citing the official court document explaining to Robinson why he is being jailed, showing that his arrest is certainly not political censorship but was done as part of the ordinary legislation designed to give defendants a fair trial.
They point out that under English law since the 13th century, a person is innocent until proven guilty. This is unique to English law and the legal systems that are derived from it, and it’s a cornerstone of British justice. Robinson broke that in his coverage of the case, because his commentary on the trial assumed that the men being tried were guilty.
This is serious because it threatened to prejudice their trial, meaning that if the judge considered that the accused couldn’t get a fair trial because of Robinson, the trial would be abandoned or the accused acquitted. And if the accused were guilty of the heinous crimes with which they were charged, it would be a serious miscarriage of justice. Hence the mass of legislation surrounding the reporting of criminal cases which bind real journalists.
Robinson also violated accepted journalistic procedures by broadcasting live. When the professional broadcasters cover cases from outside a courthouse, it’s always recorded, and the report is then examined by legal experts to make sure that it complies with the law. Robinson did not none of that. He had no control over what was occurring, and was simply filming events as they happened. Furthermore, there were other people also coming to court for their trials, and his cavalier contempt for the law could have placed their cases in jeopardy.
His followers have also claimed that Robinson was all right to present his commentary on the case, as it was over. This video reveals that it wasn’t. The case Robinson was covering was only one of a number of trial, which were ongoing. They have also claimed that the ruling of contempt of court doesn’t apply to him, because he was outside the courtroom. That isn’t the case. The documents state that Robinson was still subject to the laws about contempt of court because he was still in the precincts of the court. Mike, who is a professional journalist, and who knows the law, told me that the precincts of the court are wherever the judge decides they are. So that excuse for him doesn’t hold up.
As for Robinson’s swift arrest, it’s so fast because he was given a 13 month suspended sentence for doing the same thing in Canterbury last year, which he didn’t contest. This sentence would immediately have started the moment Robinson broke the law again, regardless of any additional sentence he would be given for this offence. And while the speed of his arrest is unusual, it’s not unknown. Plus the fact that Robinson actually pleaded guilty to contempt when he was tried for it, so there’s absolutely no reason for the whole process to be prolonged with a lengthy trial and prosecution.
The video also makes the point that Robinson’s own interest in the trial was cynically racist. He wasn’t interested so much in the welfare of the children these people are accused of violating and exploiting. He was only interested in it as a way of generating further hatred against Muslims. He hadn’t covered a string of similar trials up and down England and Wales, for the simple reason that the paedophile gangs being tried in these cases were all White. Just like he also wasn’t interested in talking about Jimmy Savile or the allegations against the former Tory leader, Edward Heath.
As for Wilders and Pauline ‘President for Life’ Hanson fulminating against his arrest and sentencing as a travesty of British justice, or words to that effect, the same laws against contempt of court are in force everywhere, including the Netherlands and Australia. So if Robinson had broken the law in those countries, as he has here, he’d still have been jailed.
In short, Robinson is in no way a martyr for free speech, as the document outlining the reasons why he has been jailed states very clearly. This wasn’t about politics. It was about justice, giving the accused a fair trial, under laws which go all the way back to the Middle Ages. It was definitely not about protecting Muslim paedophiles, or the elites advancing the cause of ‘White genocide’ or any of the stupid and vile conspiracy theories that the Far Right may choose to believe or make up about it. And Robinson himself is hardly a high-minded, principled political activist. He’s a convicted criminal and a racist, who knowingly violated the law in order to generate more anti-Muslim hatred.
This is another great video from RT, although it’s only 47 seconds long. It’s of the Labour MP Stella Creasy tearing into the government for their refusal to allow the women of Northern Ireland vote on the issue of abortion, because of their need to retain the support of the far right DUP.
Creasy begins her speech by asking if the government will really require rape victims to come forward to give evidence in open court, in order to get an open declaration and force them to act. She then asks whether they, as MPs, responsible under the Good Friday Agreement for the human rights of all citizens in Northern Ireland, are going to pretend that they’re doing their job if they allow the government to go through with this. She states that the women of Northern Ireland deserve better; they deserve control over their bodies, they do not deserve to be forced to go to court to talk about these issues in order to get the government to listen.
And then the punchline: They deserve the kind of control that Arlene Foster has over this government.
Mike put up this morning a piece about Tommy Robinson’s arrest and sentencing for contempt of court. Robinson is the former leader of the EDL, and was arrested last week for filming outside a courtroom, where a group of Muslims were being tried on charges of paedophilia. This is illegal, and Robinson has just been given a 13 month sentence for contempt.
In this video, male feminist and scourge of Fascists and manospherian misogynists Kevin Logan, explains the circumstances behind Robinson’s arrest, and why it’s important that he is jailed. Robinson was videoing and commenting on a trial in a court in York, where a group of Muslims were being tried for paedophilia. Logan states that it’s quite likely that the accused men are actually guilty, and he certainly isn’t defending them. But they have a right to a fair trial. However, there are cases where, because of the biased reporting or comments about a trial, the accused have been released despite their probably guilt, because they were unable to get a fair trial. Logan states that something similar happened to Jayda Fransen and one of the other far right storm troopers, who were jailed on charges of racially aggravated harassment, although he then admits that this was a slightly different issue.
Robinson’s supporters claim that this is a free speech issue, and that he’s a journalist. But Robinson isn’t a journalist. He wasn’t reporting any of the facts of the case, and is actually so incompetent that even the far right Canadian outfit, Rebel Media, won’t have him. Logan points out that he used to be the head of the English Defence League, and before then was a member of the BNP, so he’s simply a Fascist. And he just wants to spread Islamophobia and fear of Brown people. He also states that Robinson has already got a suspended sentence for doing the same thing outside a court in Canterbury last year, down the other end of the country. He describes him as an ambulance-chaser, running around behind court cases of Muslims. So when Robinson got himself arrested for breach of the peace, it was his own fault.
Israel is very strongly supported financially by America. I don’t know the precise figures, but annually tens, if not hundreds of millions of US dollars goes in aid to it. And the Iron Dome anti-missile shield was actually given to the Israelis by Obama’s regime. But the Israel lobby in America, AIPAC and the other organisations, continually press for more money and continued financial support. And I have heard of incidents where the suggestion that aid money to Israel must be scaled down is greeted within Israel by angry protests and cries of ‘anti-Semitism!’
But Israel isn’t the first colonial state founded as a refuge for persecuted minorities in the West. The first modern such states were Liberia and Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone was established in the late 18th century by British abolitionists as a homeland from freed slaves. Like Israel, there was also a utopian element in the scheme. Sierra Leone was to be self-governing, and non-feudal, based on contemporary liberal English historians’ conception of Anglo-Saxon English society and government before the Norman Conquest. Many of the Black colonists sent there were literate, and they were joined by a number of poor Whites, who also wanted to set up a new home in the Continent.
In fact, the colony was troubled almost from the outset. It was beset with agricultural problems, disease and sickness were rife, and there was conflict with the indigenous peoples, from whom the Abolitionists had purchased or leased the land. It eventually passed under the control of a colonial company and thence became a British colonial possession. Due to friction with the colonial authorities, the Black colonists rebelled. This was quashed with the arrival of a number of Maroon – free Black – soldiers from Jamaica.
After the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire in 1807, Sierra Leone became the centre of one of the naval courts in West Africa, that judged whether or not captured ships were slavers. The enslaved people in these vessels were also settled there, after they were given their freedom. It also became a major centre of Creole – Western Black – learning and culture. Much of what we know about the culture and languages of West Africa comes from Sierra Leonean travellers and missionaries. It was through working in Sierra Leone that two non-conformist missionaries presented evidence to British parliamentary committees that Black African children were not just as intelligent as White European kids, but at certain stages seemed to be more advanced. This is obviously very controversial, but it is true that Black babies tend to be more alert earlier than Whites. There is also a connection to the world of British classical music. The father of the 19th century British composer, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (not to be confused with the poet of almost the same name) came from Sierra Leone. Coleridge-Taylor was the composer, amongst other things, of a Clarinet Quintet, and a cantata based on Longfellow’s Hiawatha. This is still performed today by British choral societies.
America also founded a similar colony for its freed slaves in the same part of West Africa. This was Liberia. The American abolitionists, who founded the colony, were proud of the achievements of the Black colonists, their political involvement and the colonies’ economic development. They praised, for example, the growth of craft and artisan industries and the colonists’ manufactures, and predicted it would be a major centre of civilisation in Africa.
Sadly, this has not been the case, either in Sierra Leon or Liberia. Both remain impoverished developing nations, dominated by kleptocratic elites. Sierra Leone was rent by a devastating civil war in the 1990s over control of its vast diamond reserves. In Liberia, the descendants of the Western Black Colonists dominate and oppress the indigenous peoples. When one of the Afro-American presidents deigned to make a tour of the indigenous peoples and their lands in the 1960s, this was hailed as a major democratic move.
Western settlers dominating the indigenous people, in a country founded so that the settlers could be free from persecution in the West – that also sounds very much like Israel.
Critics of Zionism have pointed out that many of the gentile supporters of Zionism were anti-Semites with their own reasons for supporting a Jewish homeland. Quite simply, many of them simply wanted to clear Jews out of Britain, and dump them somewhere else in the world. Jewish Zionism was also predated by Christian Zionism, which wanted to re-establish the ancient kingdom of Israel in preparation for the End Times predicted in the Book of Revelation.
And one of the reasons for the foundation of Sierra Leone and Liberia was the belief that Whites and Blacks would never mix in Europe and America. There would always be prejudice against Blacks. And many of the supporters of the scheme, at least for Sierra Leone, also wanted a place to put British Blacks and clear them out of England.
Israel is a prosperous country, and is now supporting itself through its arms trade. But recently it has been hit with a massive corruption scandal surrounding Binyamin Netanyahu. It therefore seems to me that, for all the promotion of Israel and its undoubted achievements in the West, if it wasn’t so heavily supported by America and the Europeans, it would decline very swiftly to the same level as Sierra Leone and Liberia: dominated by kleptocrats and brutal, corrupt dictators, which oppressing the indigenous peoples. Which the Israelis are doing already to the Palestinians.
Hope Not Hate on Anti-Semitism, Homophobia and the Islamophobes Speaking in Support of Tommy Robinson
June 13, 2018On Saturday the islamophobic far right held a march to protest against the arrest and jailing of Tommy Robinson, the founder of the EDL, and former member of the BNP and Pegida UK, for contempt of court. Robinson had been livestreaming his coverage of the trial of a group of Pakistani Muslim men accused of child abuse. There are very strict laws governing press coverage of trials, which Robinson broke, just as he had broken them a year or so before in Canterbury. This had earned him a suspended sentence, which automatically kicked in when he repeated the offence last week in Leeds. Robinson was arrested, convicted and jailed.
The laws Robinson broke are there to make sure that everyone gets a fair trial, and apply to all cases, not just those of Muslims accused of paedophilia. But Robinson’s supporters decided that he had been the victim of state censorship and imprisoned for his political beliefs by an establishment determined to protect paedophile Muslims and persecute Whites, hence the march. This was addressed by some of the most notorious islamophobes in Britain and the Netherlands.
Hope Not Hate have an article at their site identifying the speakers, and giving a brief description of their political careers and their very racist views on Islam and Muslims. They included the notorious anti-Islamic Dutch politician Gert Wilders; Anne-Marie Waters, who was formerly a Labour party member before joining Pegida with Tommy Robinson. In October last year, 2017, she launched another far right party, the For Britain Movement; Raheem Kassam, a former advisor to Nigel Farage and editor of Breitbart’s London branch. He’s also the direct of Student Rights, which claimed to be a campus monitoring group dedicated to combating extremism. In fact, it has no student members or links to student unions, though it is linked to the extreme rightwing American group, the Henry Jackson Society. It has also been criticised by several London student unions for targeting Muslim students, and the Institute of Race Relations also noted that its work was used by far right groups to target a Nuslim student event. He’s also the editor of another, Neoconservative news site, The Commentator.
And then there’s the extremely islamophobic UKIP MEP, Gerard Batten, who in 2011 addressed the Traditional Britain Group, the far right outfit that invited Jacob Rees-Mogg to their dinner. Mogg attended, but now claims he only did so because he didn’t really known what they were like. Which sounds very unlikely to me.
As well as vile views on Muslims, the article also describes the vicious hatred towards other groups of some of those associated with the speakers. Like Mandy Baldwin, a member of Waters’ For Britain Movement, who posted homophobic material from a Nazi website on a social media site. For Britain also includes several former members of the BNP and other Fascists, such as Sam Melia, who was a former member of the banned terrorist group, National Action. Another member, Stuart Nicholson, posted extremely anti-Semitic material on his Twitter account before it was withdrawn. In one of these, he retweeted a post that read “National Socialism is the alternative to degeneracy we currently face. It is a pathway to freedom and prosperity. It is an escape from Jewish Tyranny. It is the Future of our people.”
https://www.hopenothate.org.uk/2018/06/08/march-tommy-robinson-extreme-anti-muslim-activists-line-speak/
It’s probably no surprise that some of those, who joined the anti-Islam movement also have a bitter hatred of gays and Jews, and openly support Nazism. All the stuff Nazis write about ‘Jewish tyranny’ is a vile lie, responsible for justifying the Holocaust under the Nazis. And Nazism never brought freedom and prosperity. For the German working class, is meant low wages and complete subordination of the workforce to the bosses as part of Hitler’s Fuhrerprinzip, or Leader Principle. Just as it meant the absolute political, social and economic dominance of the Nazi party and the proscription of all competing parties and organisations, whose members were rounded up and sent to the concentration camps.
I don’t doubt that not all members of the anti-Islam movement have views as extreme as these. But it does seem to show that if these people have their way and ban Islam and persecute or expel Muslims, sooner or later they will move on to attack other groups. Like gays and Jews.
Tags:'Student Rights' (Monitoring Group), Adolf Hitler, Anne-Marie Waters, anti-semitism, BNP, Breitbart, Concentration Camps, Courts, EDL, For Britain Movement, Gays, Gerard Batten, Gert Wilders, Henry Jackson Society, Hope Not Hate, Islamophobia, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Jews, Labour Party, Mandy Baldwin, MEPs, Muslims, National Action, Neocons, Paedophiles, Pegida UK, Raheem Kassam, Sam Melia, Social Media, Stuart Nicholson, Student Unions, The Commentator, the Holocaust, Tommy Robinson, Traditional Britain Group, Twitter, UKIP, Whites, Working Class
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