Congratulations! Mike Is Asked to Speak at a Workshop on ‘Resisting Lawfare’

Kudos and respect to Mike on Vox Political. Nottingham is hosting a ‘Festival of Resistance’ on October 16th and 17th, and Mike has been invited to speak at a workshop on ‘Resisting Lawfare’. Lawfare is the term used to describe the use of the law by political organisations to penalise and silence their opponents. The Israel lobby is currently using this tactic to criminalise the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement in America. Various states and other areas have passed legislation outlawing the BDS movement as anti-Semitic, with Zionist groups pushing for the prosecution of people and organisations that adopt and promote it. The BDS movement, in my view, is very far from anti-Semitic, though I can well see how its opponents believe and make the claim that it is. Real anti-Semites have organised boycotts against Jewish firms, the most infamous being the Nazis’ though they weren’t remotely alone. Right-wing Polish nationalists demanding independence from the Russian empire also saw Jews as their enemy and organised boycotts against them. But the BDS movement isn’t against the Jews, or even Israel as a whole. It is just against trading with Israeli businesses in the occupied territories. It is not anti-Jewish, anti-Israel, but pro-Palestinian. And it is backed by a number of Jewish Americans, who despise the Israeli government’s persecution of the indigenous Arabs.

Rachel Riley has risibly accused Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters of anti-Semitism, even going so far as compare the band at the Durham Miners’ Gala to the SS because they dared to play ‘Hava Nagila’ at their annual gala as they do every year. It’s a ridiculous, deeply insulting claim particularly as it was the trade unions and the Communists who joined their Jewish brothers and sisters and resisted real Fascists in the shape of Oswald Mosley and his storm troopers when they came goose-stepping down the East End. Riley has also threatened anyone who dares to contradict her with legal action, and her prosecution of Mike for libel may, I feel, be reasonably seen as lawfare.

Mike, I can state with utter honesty, is very firmly anti-racist and definitely far from an anti-Semite. Genuine Jew-haters and Holocaust-deniers will get short shrift from him, as will other bigots and racists. Mike will not be giving details of the Riley case, but he does intend to talk about what it feels like to be on the end of such SLAPP suits. He makes the point that the bullies behind them are trying to make their victims feel helpless, but that hasn’t been the case with him because of the donations he has received from his supporters. He is very grateful, but asks people to continue giving. He also hope some of the people, who have supported him against Riley, will come to the Festival as he’d really like to meet them.

I think it’s great that Nottingham is hosting such as Festival, as we need to resist the Tories even more now as they pursue their policies of attacking the welfare state, privatising the NHS and driving more and more working people into poverty while promoting racism and bigotry. The Labour left has organised Zoom rallies for such resistance as part of the Arise festival of left-wing ideas. I’m pleased that Mike has joined what I’ve no doubt are a number of other great people to speak. I regret, however, that at the moment my illness prevents me from travelling anywhere outside Bristol, and so I shan’t be able to go and see him and the others. I hope some of his supporters will be able to go and meet him, as they’re great people doing a great job.

And solidarity to our left-wing brothers and sisters in Nottingham and to every socialist and critic of Israel who has or is being threatened with prosecution or expulsion from the Labour party simply for criticising Israel and its barbarous ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

As the late Bobby Ball, of comedy double act Cannon and Ball, used to say, ‘Rock on!’

https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2021/09/17/vox-political-writer-to-speak-on-resisting-lawfare-at-festival-of-resistance/

Celebrity Supporters of Tracy Anne Oberman Bully Another Ordinary Woman Off Twitter

It seems Riley and her lawyers aren’t the only people this week determined to show themselves in a bad light. Her friend and mucker, Tracy Anne Oberman, also caused another storm on Twitter this week in which she accused an ordinary member of the public of anti-Semitism, which resulted in a dogpile by her fans and supporters and her victim forced off the social network.

The woman, ‘Caroline’, had offended Oberman’s delicate sensibilities by posting that she’d been enjoying Russel T. Davies’ drama about the 1980s AIDS crisis right up until the moment Oberman appeared. This soured her experience, and she was trying to forget Oberman.

Oberman decided that the reason Caroline didn’t like her was simple: anti-Semitism. She therefore went on the offensive – and I have to say, I find her very offensive – and rhetorically asked the poor woman if she wasn’t the type of bigot Davies was talking about in his drama. She also hashtagged a number of organisations, including the Community Security Trust, a Zionist paramilitary vigilante police organisation, Labour Against Anti-Semitism, one of the organisations in the Labour party behind the anti-Semitism smears and witch-hunt, and the Labour party. Because Caroline’s picture also showed, apparently, a Labour party membership card. Stephen Pollard, the appallingly right-wing editor of the Jewish Chronicle, a newspaper with a proud history behind it, also jumped in to defend Oberman. And more people joined the dogpile.

Others, however, realised what was going on, thought better of their involvement, backed out and made their apologies. Daniel Mays, who had previously posted in support of the actor, deleted his tweet. Janey Godley also backed down, tweeting ‘Am horrified she’s being piled on, it seems unnecessary – I apologise‘. Another poster, Dileep Rao, who had posted that people like Caroline should be dragged through the street, also recanted, tweeting “I was wrong to write this. I apologize. Without reservation. It was absurdly out of proportion … It was just dumb”.

It needs to be noted, because from this it appears that some people are incapable of doing so themselves, that Caroline had made no mention of Jews whatsoever. There is zero anti-Semitism in her tweet. She just says she can’t stand Tracy-Anne Oberman. The idea that Caroline was somehow doing so out of anti-Semitism is simply Oberman’s own construction. In fact there are many reasons somebody might dislike a particular celebrity that have nothing whatsoever to do with their race or religion. In the case of Oberman and Riley, one reason might be the way they freely make false accusations of anti-Semitism towards anyone on the left. As when one of the two called the Durham miners’ band at their annual gala the other year ‘Nazis’ because they were trade unionists, who ended their gala, as they’d always done, by playing Hava Nagila.

Oberman has form when it comes to playing the victim. A few years ago she claimed in another twitter spat that she was particularly vulnerable because she was ‘a jobbing actress’. Hah! I know jobbing thesps, and that is one thing that Oberman is not. Genuine jobbing actors work damned hard just to get a part in an advert or as an extra on a TV comedy or drama. Oberman is extremely fortunate in that it seems that she is never short of work. Not only has she turned up on It’s A Sin, but it wasn’t that long ago that her fizzog appeared as Pike’s mother in the remake of the three lost Dad’s Army episodes. She’s a member of the metropolitan smart set. My guess is that, despite the job being extremely precarious, it’s been a long time since Oberman had to be seriously worried about getting work.

She isn’t a victim. She’s the victimiser. And she is able to get away with the dogpile and bullying because Mrs Justice Collins Rice has ruled in Mike’s case that Rachel Riley was not responsible for her fans’ and supporters’ behaviour when they went into a similar dogpile against a schoolgirl Riley and Oberman had accused of anti-Semitism, because she supported Jeremy Corbyn. Mike has appealed against that ruling, and points out in his piece about this squalid incident that the ruling undermines the right to freedom of expression, and contradicts the intention of the Online Harms Act, which is due to come in making such dogpiles a criminal offence.

Oberman’s own willingness to throw around gratuitous accusations of anti-Semitism could also seem a mite hypocritical, considering there’s a hint of racism around two of her own tweets. One of these was a reply to a tweet by Liz Hurley expressing her delight at Ping Pong talking. Oberman responded by asking if Ping Pong was the Thai help. No, it was her parrot. And joking about east Asians having names like it has had serious consequences for others in the political sphere. Remember the local UKIP activist who managed to torpedo her political career in a Beeb documentary by referring to another Kipper of east Asian heritage as a ‘Ting Tong’.

The second is a tasteless reply she made to David Quantick. He’d tweeted that ‘we are all pretend Muslims now. Except the real Muslims’. To this Oberman gave the classy response ‘I’ll take your clitoris off for that comment.’ Female Genital Mutilation is a very serious issue, and while Oberman obviously felt it was a suitable subject for a joke, I know other women who very much don’t. It seems to me that, if a man had made this comment to a woman, even as a jest, she’d still be entirely justified in considering it misogynistic. As it is, in my opinion, it’s islamophobic. The practise isn’t confined to Islam, but is found in a number of cultures across the world and I was told by my lecturer when I took Islam as part of my minor in Religious Studies over thirty years ago that female circumcision was something that had entered Islam from pre-Islamic cultures as the religion had expanded.

Mike is appealing against the profoundly mistaken ruling of Mrs Justice Collins, and welcomes all donations to crowdfunding campaign to defend himself. Believe me, he really appreciates all the support people have given him.

As for Oberman, it seems to me that she is just a rich, privileged bully. And the fact that people, who initially joined in the dogpile against Caroline then withdrew, deleted their tweets and apologised, shows that some people at least are starting to share that opinion. She should be careful. If she carries on like this, she’ll start losing even more supporters.

Who knows – they might also join the ranks of people, who can’t stand this ‘jobbing actress’ on the box.

For further information, see

Why did ‘celebrity’ Twitter users force suspension of ordinary woman? Because they could | Vox Political (voxpoliticalonline.com)

Zelo Street: Tracy Ann Oberman’s Faux Victimhood (zelo-street.blogspot.com)

Video of Me Playing ‘Hava Nagila’

After a hiatus of about a year due to various reasons, I’ve put another video up on YouTube. This is just of me playing ‘Hava Nagila’ on a keyboard. I’ve wanted to death for a long time to show my solidarity and support for the Durham miners. Their band ended their gala the other year by playing it, as they traditionally do. But because they were trade unionists and members of the Labour party, Rachel Riley accused them of being Nazis and anti-Semites, as she has to so many other blameless lefties.

I realise my playing isn’t great by any means, but I hope you all enjoy it.

Hava Nagila – YouTube

Thanks to Rachel Riley For Getting More People to Donate to Mike’s Libel Defence Fund

Internet bully Rachel Riley scored an enormous own goal this week when she decided to jump on the bandwagon for a new non-profit organisation trying to help people deal with internet trolls. It’s a real problem. Nearly every day at one time there was yet another story in the papers about the real harassment innocent people, including MPs and ‘slebs, as well as ordinary folk have suffered from bullying. What is most worrying is the vicious abuse heaped on schoolchildren and young people on social media. It’s turned many children’s lives into a living hell, and tragically, some have become seriously ill or tried to end it all.

A group of celebrities including Gary Lineker appeared to state that they would no longer be publicising the abuse they received on social media. Instead they are going to mute, block and report the most abhorrent abuse they receive to the rozzers, in order to deprive the trolls of the oxygen of publicity. The charity the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, which has launched a ‘don’t feed the trolls’ campaign, is encouraging people to mute and take a break from social media before escalating the situation into something unlawful.

Hungry for more publicity, Rachel Riley jumped in, and appeared on the Victoria Derbyshire show trying to present herself as yet another victim of the evil trolls. Instead, all she did was remind people of what a horrible troll she herself is. The peeps on Twitter responded by reminding her that she was one of the worst trolls around. They mentioned how Riley bullied a 16 year-old schoolgirl with anxiety problems. This was the girl Riley had smeared as an anti-Semite, because she happened to have posted up a piece supporting Jeremy Corbyn. As a result, the girl was dogpiled by Riley’s supporters. They also reminded her that she was part of the Gnasherjew troll collective. This is partly run by David Collier, a bald thug and ardent, bitterly intolerant Zionist, who can’t bear to see Israeli apartheid criticised. He’s one of the three people behind the Gnasherjew monicker, and he specialises in going through people’s net traffick in the hope of finding anything he can twist into sounding vaguely anti-Semitic, so he can smear them. Tom London, who is Jewish, also sent a Tweet to Derbyshire telling her that she should have done due diligence on her guest, who many Jews and non-Jews consider a troll because of the way she smeared people as anti-Semites. Others pointed out how how they had to mute and block Riley because of her abusive tweets smearing them and other as anti-Semites. To show how baseless her accusations are, they reminded the world how she had confused the Durham Miners’ Gala to the KKK because they happened to play Hava Nagila. Another tweeter, Leftworks, gave an example of the kind of abuse Riley metes out to people she accuses of anti-Semitism, and encouraged his readers to give to Mike’s CrowdJustice fund.

The result was that Mike had donations suddenly come flooding in by well-wishers, fed up of Riley and her hypocrisy. 

I’ve no doubt that this will have caused her some embarrassment, as Riley likes to present herself as an innocent victim with the support of millions. A few months ago she appeared on Jonathan Ross’ show to thank all her fans for their support against the campaign of abuse she claimed she had received. Which shows you once again how biased the Beeb is. Even on a light entertainment show, there must be no doubt that Labour is irredeemably anti-Semitic and Jeremy Corbyn is a Nazi. On no account must the victims of the witch hunt be allowed to speak for themselves, and especially not people like Mike and the others, who have been smeared and libelled. And if we’re talking about real, horrific abuse, there’s the disgusting attacks directed at Jewish woman of colour, Jackie Walker, after she was falsely accused of anti-Semitism by the Jewish Labour Movement and the woefully misnamed Campaign Against Anti-Semitism. She has been told she should be lynched, and her body set on fire and shoved in bin bags. This would be serious enough in any country, but her parents came from America. Her father was Russian Jewish and her mother was a Black civil rights activist. These were people, who came from communities which had experienced real mass violence in the shape of pogroms and lynchings. Walker wasn’t libeled by Riley, but Riley is part of the wider movement that throws accusations of anti-Semitism around in the hope that the victims won’t be able to defend themselves, and will suffer further abuse.

It’s great that Riley put her foot in it with this attempt to pose as victim for publicity. I’m really glad people decided to give to Mike’s campaign, and hope that her egotistical hypocrisy has also encouraged more people to support other victims of her abuse and vilification.