Message from Stop the War about Anti-War Demos in London and Elsewhere

I got this email today from the Stop the War Coalition detailing the various protests and meetings that are going to be held up and down the country against the terrible war in Ukraine. There is going to be a major demo in London on March 6 along with other protests in Canterbury, Cardiff, Durham and Manchester. There’s also a protest the previous day, March 5, in Cambridge. There are also meetings, both online and in person, which will be held in Birmingham, Bristol, Merseyside and Newcastle. The email provides links for those wishing to join them and find out more, as well as sending them information about any protests their supporters are holding. The email runs

‘At the weekend a massive international online meeting called a global day of protest on Sunday 6th March demanding an end to the war in Ukraine, Russian troops out and no to NATO expansion.

We are urging all our Stop the War groups and supporters to call protests on that day in town and city centres. You can find a list of all the protests, meeting and vigils currently organised here. Stay tuned for announcements of further protests.

In London there will be a demonstration assembling at the BBC, Portland Place at midday called by Stop the War and CND.

There couldn’t be a more important time to take to the streets. Please do all you can to spread the word and maximize the number of people protesting on Sunday.

Yes, I’ll be Joining the London Demo

There are protests taking place across the UK. Find yours below…

Cambridge – Protest – Sat 5 March, 1pm – Market Square, Cambridge. Click Here for Full Info.

Canterbury – Protest – Sun 6 March, 12pm – Westgate Gardens, Canterbury. Full Info TBA Soon.

Cardiff – Protest – Sun 6 March, 2pm – Aneurin Bevan Statue Queen Street, Cardiff. Click Here for Full Info.

Durham – Protest – Sun 6 March, 12pm – Durham Market Place. Full Info TBA Soon.

London – Protest – Sun 6 March, 12.00pm. Assemble: BBC Portland Place, London, W1A 1AA. Click Here for Full Info.

Manchester – Protest – Sun 6 March, 1pm, St. Anne’s Square, M2 7DH. Full Info TBA Soon.

There are also a number of meetings taking place in the coming days…

Birmingham – Online/In-Person Meeting – Tues 1 March, 7.30pm. Click Here for Full Info.

Bristol – Online Meeting – Thurs 3 March, 7.30pm. Click Here for Full Info.

Merseyside – In-Person Meeting – Thurs 10 March, 7pm. Casa Bar, 29 Hope Street, Liverpool, L1 9BP. Click Here for Full Info.

Newcastle – Online Meeting – Tues 1 March, 7pm. Click Here for Full Info.

If you have an event you’d like us to add to the list please email: office@stopwar.org.uk now!

Share the List of Events

Join us at Conway Hall this Wednesday to hear how the anti-war movement must respond to the invasion of Ukraine.

If you’re able to help us with stewarding on the day please email office@stopwar.org.uk with your details as soon as possible.

Register Here‘

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)

Private Eye Criticises Rachel Riley for Hypocrisy over China

Could the media support for Rachel Riley be waning just a little? This last fortnight’s edition of Private Eye for 14th – 27th August 2020 carried a piece calling her out for hypocrisy. She’d published a link to a petition against the persecution of the Uyghurs by the Chinese government, urging people to sign it. However, a few months ago Riley had also declared that she’d made a deal with the Chinese-owned company, Tiktok, to help it produce maths tips. The Eye’s article runs

Countdown mathematical whizz Rachel Riley recently tweeted a link to a petition drawing attention to the plight of the Uyghur Muslims. It called on the UK government to impose sanctions on China for its human rights violations. “We’re listening, we’re with you… Thanks to everyone who signed this,” she wrote.

Is this the same Rachel Riley who tweeted “This should be fun” in response to an announcement in June that she’d signed up to help TikTok’s move into the UK education market, producing mathematics tips for the platform?

The Chinese-owned video sharing app has long attracted privacy concerns and has been banned by the Indian government after claims that it was using data illegally and secretly collecting information from phones when the app was downloaded. Meanwhile, TikTok’s domestic Chinese version, Douyin, is heavily censored under Chinese government rules.

Most concerning to Riley, however, might have been the news in November that TikTok had suspended the account of 17-year-old Feroza Aziz after she highlighted human rights abuses against … the Uyghur Muslims. As Riley puts it, this should indeed be fun.

I’ve got absolutely no problem with Riley supporting a petition against the vicious genocide being waged against the Uyghurs. She’s quite right to point it out and demand government action. And I don’t find her support for TikTok particularly hypocritical either, even if it does conflict with her new attitude towards the state persecution of the Muslim people by the Chinese authorities. What I do find hypocritical is her own vicious bullying and smearing of decent, anti-racists and genuine opponents of anti-Semitism, simply because they support Jeremy Corbyn or are critical of the Israeli state’s 70 year long campaign of ethnic cleansing against the indigenous Palestinians. Riley certainly isn’t alone in this. The smears were made and repeated by just about the entire right-wing British political and media establishment, including Private Eye. Which makes the Eye’s article, now criticising Riley for hypocrisy, somewhat ironic. Riley and her best buddy Tracy Ann Oberman were given extensive support for their accusations and smears by the media, who have promoted her as some kind of doughty campaigner against anti-Semitism. Except, when it comes to critics of Israel, in my opinion she isn’t. She’s confusing it with anti-Zionism. Anti-Semitism, as defined by Wilhelm Marr, who founded the League of Anti-Semites in 19th century Germany and coined the term, is hatred of Jews simply for being Jews. Zionism is a political ideology, which has historically been adopted by both Jews and non-Jews. In the early 20th century Zionism was itself so closely associated with real anti-Semitism, that one sympathetic German nobleman refused to support Theodor Herzl’s movement because he was afraid that people would think he was a Jew-hater. And Israel, of course, is a country. It is not synonymous with the Jewish people as a religion or people, no matter how much legislation Netanyahu passes declaring that it is. And it is definitely not anti-Semitic to criticise it for its barbarous maltreatment of the indigenous Arabs.

But Rachel Riley and Oberman appear to believe that it is. As an example of how twisted their views are, one of the two even compared the Durham Miners’ Gala last year to the Nazis because the band played ‘Hava Nagila’. Which they do every year. And their response to personal criticism appears to be to threaten their critics with a libel action. Mike is currently fighting Riley, because he reblogged and commented on her calling a 16 year old schoolgirl with anxiety an anti-Semite on social media. This led to the girl being attacked online by a crowd of Riley’s supporters, all because the girl had declared her support for the former Labour leader. And a few days ago, Oberman threatened Gary Spedding with a libel action for stating that she had her faults. These included, according to Spedding, not standing with Jewish people of colour. Oberman decided that Spedding was accusing her of racism, and so threatened him with a writ. See https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/08/tracy-ann-oberman-meltdown.html

In my view, Oberman and Riley are legalistic bullies, seeking to close down legitimate political and personal criticism through malicious accusations of anti-Semitism and suits for libel. I don’t quite know what has caused the Eye to publish an article critical of Riley, but it might be that some in the media might just have realised that just as Riley and Oberman can threaten and sue ordinary members of the public, so they can also turn on them. Of course, it may also be that the Eye is entirely disinterested in this matter, and is just calling out what they view as double-standards by another celeb.

Whatever the reality, Riley and Oberman’s malicious behaviour, as I see it, needs to be stopped. Which is why it’s important that Mike wins the case they have brought against him. Perhaps if Riley and Oberman meet with enough failure, the rest of the media may also stop giving the two their uncritical support.

Laura Kuenssberg Takes an Unscheduled Break

Last week, presenter Emily Maitlis mysteriously disappeared from an edition of Newsnight, leaving it to be hosted by her colleague Kate Razzall. This was after she had made a few sharp, but entirely fair and justified comments, about Dominic Cummings’ breach of the lockdown regulations in the previous evening’s edition of the programme. This had resulted in the Beeb receiving a nasty message from 10 Downing Street. The Beeb, Razzall and Maitlis herself all denied that her disappearance from the show on the subsequent evening was due to official disapproval. But to everyone else capable of putting two and two together and making four, the link seemed obvious.

Unfortunately, the Tories and their supporters have been out there denying any such connection. One of the Tory-supporting channels on YouTube, We Got A Problem, has instead claimed that Maitlis flagrantly breached the Beeb’s impartiality rule, and was therefore rightly the subject of 40,000 complaints. I haven’t watched the wretched video on the reasonable grounds that if I do, it’ll just make me angry. But even without seeing it, it still seems to me that there are two obvious flaws with their argument. Firstly, Tory anger does not mean that Maitlis broke the Beeb’s guidelines. All it does is show that the Tories are angry. Secondly, how many of these messages are genuine? This is a good, fair question. The Tories have a history of using bots and some of the email and twitter messages that have appeared in the last few years applauding the Tories and particularly Boris Johnson have rung massively fake. There are two many similarities between them and an awful lot of have come from previously unknown internet addresses. There’s also the case of the various medical professionals who tweeted out their messages of endorsement to Boris for his handling of the Cornoavirus. Many of them were demonstrably fake. One of them used a photograph of a Greek paediatrics nurse in London, but affixed it to a fake identity of a gay doctor. The scandal was briefly discussed by the Beeb, who decided that there was too little information to make the connection with the Tories and suggested that it was someone trying to smear them. As the Beeb has a long and infamous history of pushing pro-Tory propaganda, and especially the noxious smears against Jeremy Corbyn over the past four years, I think the opposite is true. The Tweets were fakes from the Tories, and the Beeb was trying to defend them by suggesting that the messages were anti-Tory fakes.

Maitlis’ disappearance was shortly followed by that of Laura Kuenssberg. Goebbels’ true-blue Tory spiritual daughter also vanished from her position in front of the camera to take an unscheduled holiday. This was after she had tried asking further questions about Cummings’ short touring holiday to Durham and Barnard Castle at Bozo’s press briefing, when the Prime Minister stopped the ladies and gents of the fourth estate asking his Chief Medical and Chief Scientific Officers about the affair on the grounds that such queries were political, rather than scientific and medical. Kuenssberg gave no reason for her sudden absence, just the message “Not around for a few days – keep up with [BBC News] and [BBC Politics]“. It’s therefore entirely possible that, despite her loyal support of the Tories and flagrant breaches of the Beeb’s impartiality rules in their favour, she too had been the subject of official disapprobation and had been hit with the ban hammer.

Her announcement that she was taking a short leave of absence was greeted with messages of support by some. Others remembered just how biased she had been, and so sent messages such as  “We might get some actual reported news for a change” or ask her if she had, like Maitlis, also been sanctioned. Others reminded her of the occasion a few years ago when she left the Beeb to work for ITV, and Peter Oborne’s tart comment about her being the Beeb’s equivalent of Robert Peston. Oborne is a journalist of immense integrity, who stopped writing for the Torygraph because of the way that paper’s management was demanding that articles should be written to suit their advertisers. He also presented a Dispatches documentary for Channel 4 attacking the Israel lobby and urged people to vote Labour at last year’s election.

Zelo Street in their article about Kuenssberg disappearance concluded

‘So what gives with Ms Kuenssberg? Taking a few days off while the country is in lockdown and in the middle of a significantly sized national crisis? Curiouser and curiouser.

There is one further problem: the BBC will manage fine without her. I’ll just leave that one there.’

See: https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/05/where-is-laura-kuenssberg.html

In addition to its own, innate right-wing bias, the Beeb’s also under additional pressure from the Tories. They want to privatise it for the benefit of their donors in the rival, private broadcasters, like Sky and one Rupert Murdoch. The Corporation is facing devastating cuts and the Director-General is up for replacement in a few years’ time. This brings with it fears that the Tories will impose one of their henchmen, who’ll carry out their plans of closing it all down and selling it off. Boris is already threatening to decriminalize nonpayment of the license fee, which would starve the Corporation of millions of pounds if it goes ahead. It therefore seems all too likely to me that, no matter how impartial or even pro-Tory presenters may be, the Corporation is so terrified of Tory displeasure that any offending journo now faces a few days’ suspension. Even if, like Kuenssberg, they have resolutely toed the government line all the way down the road.

As for the Tories themselves, they’ve shown themselves to be the party of fake news and lying propaganda. Their style of handling the media now seems closer to that of Putin than other, properly democratic nations. If a hack displeases the Arkhiplut, he sends a couple of state toughs round to beat them. Other hazards include being thrown down stairwells.

Johnson hasn’t gone that far yet, but give him time. And the lying Tory media would excuse and applaud such brutality when it comes.

See also: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2020/05/28/emily-maitlis-enemy-of-the-state/

 

Have I Got News For You Totally Dominated by Dominic Cummings Scandal

Much of the news this week has been taken up with Dominic Cummings and his decision to leave London with his four-year old son to drive up to Durham thus breaking the lockdown rules. Cummings said that it was because his wife had the Coronavirus, and he was hoping that his parents or relatives up there would look after the child. They didn’t. While he was there, he drove thirty miles and back to Barnard Castle, in order to test his eyesight as he was worried it wasn’t good enough for him to drive back himself. He also appeared to have made at least two, and possible three trips in breach of the regulations. These journeys and his account of them flatly contradict what his wife was writing in his defence in the Spectator. And in the words of the irate newsreader in Broadcast News, people are ‘as mad as hell’ and ‘not taking it any more’.

To the vast majority of the population, Cummings’ behaviour and his boss’ refusal to sack him is a massive insult and display of flagrant hypocrisy and double standards. The British people have made great sacrifices in order to maintain the lockdown and prevent the spread of the disease. People haven’t been able to be present at the deaths of their loved ones, or attend their funerals because of the restrictions. And they have been very definitely prevented from driving anywhere as far as the 240 miles it is from London to Durham, except for the workers that haven’t been furloughed. It’s very definitely one law for the rich and politically connected, and another for the rest of us.

The result has been that Boris’ personal popularity has taken a nose dive. Last Tuesday, the same day that Britain booed the malignant buffoon, Zelo Street put up a piece about an article in the Independent. In the four days from the previous Friday to then, Boris had plunged in the polls from a rating of +19 to -1. It had dropped 35 points since the start of May, and 48 points from its peak on 8th April. Starmer’s ratings had fluctuated from +35 to +3. It was then at 12. And the government’s overall approval rating was at -2.

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/05/boris-no-longer-popular.html

It’s a massive embarrassment to Boris, who is, like Trump, colossally vain. Boris wants to be loved and popular, like Winston Churchill (who certainly wasn’t as universally popular as the hagiographers try to make out). And so the Tories have been trying to redirect attention away from this affair through working up bogus stories in the press about the EU and Michel Barnier. Gove and the Attorney General Suella Braverman have been wheeled out to give their support to Cummings. In the case of Braverman, this has violated he duty to remain impartial, and is properly a matter for her resignation. Which, as a good Tory aiding her boss, she won’t do.

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/05/brexiteers-wibble-at-barnier-letter.html

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/05/polecat-broke-rules-braverman-is-bust.html

And now Boris is doing his best to silence any questioning or criticism of the matter. Emily Maitlis was censured by the BBC for her absolutely reasonable comments about it on Newsnight after a complaint from Downing Street. She was then replaced the following day by Kate Razzall. It’s another clear breach of the Beeb’s duty of political impartiality in favour of the Tories, following so many cases of bias against Labour by other Beeb news people like Andrew Neil and the odious Laura Kuenssberg.

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/05/bbcs-shameful-surrender.html

And at a press meeting Bozo stopped the media from asking the Chief Medical Officer and the Chief Scientific Officer, questions about Cummings’ conduct on the grounds that they were political, not medical or scientific. But they were medical and scientific, because Cummings had placed other people’s health and lives in jeopardy. He also stopped Laura Kuenssberg from asking a follow-up question about Cummings. As Zelo Street remarked, this is conduct worthy of a dictatorship like Kim Jong-il’s Korea.

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/05/press-briefing-bozo-channels-kim.html

And that boiling popular anger all came out last night on Have I Got News For You. Nearly the entire programme was taken up with the issue. Ian Hislop, the editor of Private Eye, was particularly irritated. When asked by host Martin Clunes how his week had been, he replied that he’d been busy trying not to get too angry, and had been getting masses of letters from angry people, with whom he agreed. And the programme went on to tear gaping, bloody shreds off Polecat Dom and his tale. They asked how credible it was that Cummings could take a four year old child on a journey of that length without the lad wanting the toilet, as well as the obvious point that if you’re blind, you shouldn’t be driving. And they also brought up the Durham dialect term, ‘Barnard Castle’, as meaning a pathetic excuse. Given how swiftly the Beeb caved in to Boris’ complaints against Maitlis, this programme probably won’t have pleased Lord Hall-Hall. But I think it may well reflect how some Beeb programme makers and news crew feel about the scandal and the way Maitlis was treated, whatever she, Razzall and the producers may say to the contrary.

Everyone I know despises Cummings for this breach of the public’s trust, including Tories, who feel he’s let BoJob down. Well, there’s no danger of that, because BoJob’s standards are so low anyway only Britain’s few remaining miners and underground railway engineers can find them.

Cummings is making Johnson more unpopular by the day. And the longer it goes on, the worse it’ll get. Which is good news for Britain!

Hope Not Hate Publishes Dossier of Tory Islamophobes

A week or so ago Mike put up a piece on his blog commenting on the Equalities and Human Rights Committee’s apparent double standards towards racism in the Labour and the Conservative parties. They have spent a year combing the Labour party for evidence of anti-Semitism. It’s undoubtedly there, because it exists in wider British society. However, the fact that they haven’t published anything about it so far indicates what has already been said about anti-Semitism in the Party: it’s at a much, much lower level than mainstream British society, and the majority of it comes from the right and especially the far right. However, the Tory, media narrative demands that Labour be a hotbed of anti-Jewish hatred, and so they’re determined to find it. No matter how long it takes.

This is in sharp contrast to the Tory party, which is seething with real islamophobia. The internet personality Jacobsmates found plenty of it on Tory Facebook and Twitter accounts, with the supporters of Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg expressing real, vicious, murderous hatred towards Muslims. Sayeeda Warsi has been demanding that islamophobia in her party should be investigated, as has Miqdaad Versi of the Muslim Council of Great Britain. I think Boris even promised an inquiry, but put it off until after the election. How very convenient! A fortnight ago, 20 Tories were suspended and expelled for their prejudice towards Muslims. But so far the EHRC has done nothing. Perhaps it has something to do with its leader, Trevor Philips, being suspended from the Labour Party for it. This has infuriated the Tories, who are all claiming that Philips is innocent and it’s because he was telling the truth about Muslims and their grooming gangs. But the evidence against Philips seems strong. He did make false accusations against Muslims, particularly over the case of a child placed with a Muslim foster family. Please go and see Zelo Street’s posts about this for further information, such as https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/03/trevor-phillips-doth-protest-too-much.html

Now the anti-racism/anti-religious extremism organisation, Hope Not Hate, has published its list of Tory islamophobes, and is calling on the Conservatives to take firm action against them and racism in the party. The organisation says

Throughout 2019 there was a steady flow of allegations made against Conservative Party councillors, activists and members which, when viewed alongside the polling of members conducted by YouGov in July, paints a picture of a party that has a significant problem with anti-Muslim sentiment at local level. Now HOPE Not Hate can reveal a new dossier of Islamophobic social media posts by more than twenty Tory officials and activists, including six sitting councillors. We are calling on CCHQ to take immediate action against these individuals, and will continue to demand that they take proper steps to tackle the Islamophobia crisis that has gripped the party at every level.

The list includes:

Councillor Steve Vickers, of Nottingham County Council

Councillor Sonia Armstrong, Harworth and Bircotes Town Council

Councillor Judith Clementson, Winchester City Council

Councillor Karl Lewis, Llandinam Community Council

Councillor Derek Bullock, Bolton Council

Councillor Ranjit Pendhar Singh Gill, Hounslow

Parliamentary Assistant Fraser McFarland

Ex-councillor Bryan Denson, Wakefield

Ex-Councillor Gail Hall

Ex-Councillor Christopher Meakin

Ex-Councillor Susanna Dixon, Coventry

Ex-Councillor Martin Akehurst, Henley-on-Thames

2019 Council Candidate Liam Christopher Ritchie

2019 Council Candidate Roger Vernon, Bassetlaw

2019 Council Candidate Deirdre Vernon, Bassetlaw

2016 Council Candidate Yonah Saunders

2018 Candidate Paul Ingham, Tower Hamlets

2017 Council Candidate and Former Chair, Alan Booth, Durham

2016 Council Candidate John Hill, Portsmouth,

2016 Council Candidate John Shoesmith, Calderdale

2016 Council Candidate Charles Beckham, Darlington

Party Donor Fraser Duffin

Activist Fraser Duffin, Inverness

The offensive comments and posts they made include personal attacks on London’s mayor Sadiq Khan and Sayeeda Warsi, general hatred of immigrants and support for Donald Trump. Unsurprisingly, some of them also believe that Muslims are collectively responsible for 9/11 and support terrorism, as well as the various conspiracy theories about Muslims deliberately invading Europe in order to take over and destroy western society. Many of them believe the discredited ‘Eurabia’ nonsense, which holds that Muslims are outbreeding everyone else, and in two generations will be the dominate ethnic/ religious group.

Revealed: New evidence of Islamophobia among Conservative Party officials and activists

I have strong reservations about Hope Not Hate. They’ve done some brilliant work exposing genuine racism and religious extremism. However, one of the organisations they liaise with is the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, which has been one of the major promoters of the Labour Party anti-Semitism smears. Nevertheless, they’ve done an excellent job in helping to expose the rabid islamophobia in the Tory ranks.

And Labour’s allegations of deep-seated islamophobia in the Tories is clearly causing more than a little discomfort. One of the hacks in the I last week wrote a piece attacking political ‘whataboutery’. I didn’t read the article, just the headline, so I may well be wrong. But I took this to mean that they weren’t happy with Labour raising the issue of Tory islamophobia in response to the anti-Semitism smears. Smears which the I, like the rest of the press, was all too eager to promote.

This is an embarrassing issue for the Tories. Which is why they and the media are trying to play it down and cover it up. But it’s not going away, and needs to be exposed and dealt with.

Perhaps after Hope Not Hate, other organisations will take up the challenge and pressure Johnson to do more to combat such racism in his ranks. But as he’s one of them, don’t bet on it. 

See: https://www.hopenothate.org.uk/2020/03/02/revealed-new-evidence-of-islamophobia-among-conservative-party-officials-and-activists/

 

 

Is Riley’s and Oberman’s Fixation with Corbyn Heading towards Clinical Paranoia?

Mike’s had to put up another piece on his site asking his supporters to dig into their pockets again to help fund his defence against Rachel Riley. His preliminary hearings set for December 11, and he needs a further £6,684. Justice in this country is expensive, which is why I think Riley is pursuing her entirely malicious libel claim against Mike, and threatens anybody else, who dares to criticise her, with legal action.

But the fixation Riley and her bestie, Z-list actor Tracy-Ann Oberman, have with supposed Labour anti-Semitism, and particularly Jeremy Corbyn, is so extreme and irrational that I’m starting to wonder if it’s edging into clinical paranoia. For example, a few months ago one of the two heard the Durham miners’ band playing ‘Hava Nagila’ at their annual gala. Riley – or was it Oberman? – blew her top and declared it was like the KKK playing it. Except that it wasn’t. The Durham miners’ explained that they played the tune every year, and resented being compared to the Klan. As they should. But the pair have obviously decided that as Corbyn and his supporters want justice for the Palestinians, they are anti-Semites, and so every member of a trade union or the Labour party is thus likely to be a Nazi.

And a few weeks ago Oberman decided that Corbyn was stalking her personally. She was performing in a play at a theatre in Manchester, and Corbyn turned up visiting the theatre. But it had nothing to do with persecuting Oberman. Corbyn’s actually a patron of that particular theatre, and was one of the people, who got it set up in the first place. He was there to see a play. This seems to show, to me, that Oberman is on the verge of real paranoia.

I’ve compared her fixation with Corbyn and anti-Semitism in the past to some of the bizarre racist myths about Roman Catholics and Blacks circulating around poor White Protestants in the southern US. A documentary was made about this a few years ago, but I can’t remember its name. Apparently this included tales that Roman Catholics were secretly telepathic, and if you suddenly found yourself thinking about the Pope, it meant that they were secretly beaming Roman Catholic ideas into your head. Blacks also had a powder they could put on their body that would make them appear White. Thus your mate could really be Black. She also reminds me of the paranoid messages the FBI used to get during the Cold War from people, who wore the tinfoil beanie against the CIA/Red Chinese/Aliens beaming their mind control rays at them. As well as the other nutters, who thought they’d found Adolf Hitler alive and well and working at the local Jewish delicatessen in New York.

She also reminds me of Steve Renstrom, AKA She-Bop Steve, an American artist, who decided that Senator Alan Cranston was behind a vast conspiracy to kill millions including John F. Kennedy and the actor John Belushi. Donna Kossy provides an example of his insane rants in her Kooks: A Guide to the Outer Limits of Human Belief (Portland, Oregon: Feral House 1994). This has the following

The Goods on the Big Boys

Reagan/Cabinet, Iran/Contra Situation –

IT’S A CRANSTON ‘TAKES THE FALL’ FRONT LIE

[TERROR OF JUSTICE]

The Reich, or Cranston Co., owns the scenario and is undermining the power and popularity of the Presidency. The Reich is freaking about the possibility of justice re their mass slaughtering of the people.

So, they opportuned and exacerbated the Iran thing plus deviously calling for conclusions, anti-Reagan conclusions, all across the land. (brainwashing every voice). This one really tipped me: picture of Reagan on the front page pointing to head. (At the same time as Iran scheme!)

The Dan Rather Incident: Horrifying Berlin 42 Implications

It was designated also to blind mass “Dupe Troop” levels. “What’s the frequency” was a ‘drop’ they’d buy a “it’s pigs allright, must be o.k. to beat up newsmen. We ought accept more ‘n more Nazi violence and atrocities. And it’s o.k. also about owning the media about it.”

P.S. All during this writing I’m being insanely tortured. Also flow “cover up” and American guilt lies every second.

The Iran/ Contra scandal was when members of Reagan’s government were caught supplying arms to Iran, so that they would pressure Shi’a terrorists in Lebanon into releasing captured American hostages. The conspiracy also involved sending aid to the Fascist Contras in Nicaragua in exchange for allow them to export cocaine to America. The Dan Rather incident was when the veteran American newsman was assaulted in New York by someone, who seemed to think he was responsible for mind-control beams or some such similar nonsense, and beat Rather over the head shouting, ‘What’s the frequency, Kenneth?’

It might sound a bit extreme comparing Riley’s and Oberman’s fixation with Jeremy Corbyn and She-Bop Steve’s paranoid views about Senator Cranston. But I do think that there are real similarities there and that, if they’re not careful, Riley and Oberman will end up as real paranoiacs blaming Corbyn for all manner of conspiracies, including UFOs.

Mike’s very grateful to his supporters for all the help he gets, no matter how small. If you want to help him, go to https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/11/08/target-set-to-fund-next-hearing-in-riley-libel-fightback/ and follow the instructions there.

Bonkers Hateful Riley Compares Durham Miners’ Brass Band to KKK

Has Rachel Riley’s mind finally snapped? Is she really trying to discredit herself? Does she actually believe socialists and trade unionists are really anti-Semites? And does she think that of all working people? I ask this because yesterday Mike put up a piece reporting Riley’s deranged sneer at a tweet about Durham Miners’ Brass Band. They had held their annual gala at which they’d played the Israeli folk song, ‘Have Nagila’. This had been put on the web by Charlotte, who tweeted ‘A brass band playing Hava Nagila at Durham!! Chag Miners’ Sameach friends’ followed by three hearts. This was too much for the hateful Riley, who commented

‘As tasteful as showing Black Panther at a Klan rally’.

Which makes you wonder just how much hatred Riley has for the organised working class. From this sneer, quite a bit.

It really is quite irrational, and a very nasty smear at good people. Hava Nagila’s a great tune, which is widely enjoyed by all kinds of folks. I’ve got the sheet music for it at home here, and have enjoyed playing it. I’ve never heard anyone say that it’s offensive for non-Jews to play it. And it’s clear that Charlotte not only really loves the song, but she also might be Jewish. I can’t speak Hebrew, but know enough about Judaism to know that the chagim is the Hebrew word for the Jewish feasts and holy days. So the phrase ‘chag …. sameach’ might be a special greeting or phrase indicating approval. It seems very clear to me that Charlotte enjoys it being played regardless of the ethnicity or religious affiliation of the people playing it.

And the Durham Miners’ haven’t done anything to deserve the implied smear that they’re racists and anti-Semites. They’re simply working people playing great tunes. They replied to Riley with the following tweet

Dear Rachel Riley

Your damaging comments regarding one of our community brass bands has caused great hurt to good people.

Hava Nagila has been played at the Durham Gala by many bands over many years.

We invited you to Durham to meet and learn from the men, women and children who play in brass bands, celebrating their culture alongside music around the world.

It’s a very gracious response to a very ungracious sneer. But I doubt that Riley will take them up on their invitation. She seems too convinced in her twisted views of the working class and their organisations. She really does seem to believe that Jeremy Corbyn, his supporters, and by extension the entire Labour party and trade union movement are anti-Semites who want the destruction of Israel. But as has been said many times by very many people, some very strong members of the Jewish community, Judaism and Israel are not synonymous, no matter what Benjamin Netanyahu wants everyone to believe. Nor do everyone, who support the Palestinians, including Jeremy Corbyn, hate Jews or even the Israeli people. What they want is for the Israeli slow-motion ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, and the Israeli state’s machinery of oppression and apartheid to stop. As do many Israelis, to whom the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, pays tribute in his book, Ten Myths about Israel.

As for the Durham miners’ and their brass band, there’s absolutely nothing there to show that they in any way deserve Riley’s accusation. There’s nothing to indicate what views, if any, they have about Israel. And in fact, I’d say that if they’re playing it, it indicates that they have a positive view of Jews. The real anti-Semites and racists object to playing anything from other races and ethnicities. The Nazis didn’t like Jazz, because it was invented by Black people. Similarly they violently objected to modern music composed by Jews, just as they hated art and literature created by them, because they thought it was part of the plot to ‘jewify’ Germany. Genuine anti-Semites and Nazis therefore wouldn’t have played ‘Hava Nagila’ or any other kind of Jewish music. And in fact, for all we or anyone else know, some of the band themselves may even be Jewish, have some Jewish ancestry or have Jewish friends or relatives.

And there’s a nasty parallel here to the outrage Garrison Keillor caused last Christmas or so ago, with a comment he made which was very much seen as anti-Semitic. I think he was annoyed about the number of seasonal songs that had been written by Jews, like ‘White Christmas’ and ‘Rudolf the Red-Nose Reindeer’. So he posted a comment saying that Jews should stop colonising Christmas, or something like that. This naturally cause great offence, and people of all backgrounds replied to tell Keillor exactly what they thought of him. But it seems Riley holds similar views about music and ethnicity/ religion. Just as Keillor objected to Jews writing music celebrating a Christian festival, so Riley appears to hate the idea of working class non-Jews playing a Jewish song, based on no more than her own prejudiced views. If Keillor’s unacceptably prejudiced for his own comment, then so’s she.

It seems to me that Riley’s rage and hatred at Corbyn and his supporters is becoming increasingly irrational. Assuming that it was ever rational in the first place. it reminds me a little of the conspiracy theorists, who made themselves tinfoil hats in order to stop the CIA/Russians/Red Chinese/THEM beaming their mind-control rays at their brains. Years ago somebody made a documentary about the weird fears and myths some White Protestants in the American south have about Blacks and Roman Catholics. The film’s called The Darkness at the Top the Stairs, if I remember rightly, and records some really bizarre ideas, like:

• Black people have a secret powder they put on themselves to make them appear White. Thus, your best friend could be Black, and you wouldn’t know it.
• Roman Catholics are telepathic and use their powers to make Protestants think about Roman Catholicism. If you find yourself suddenly thinking about the Pope, it’s because somewhere a Roman Catholic is beaming this image into your mind.

I don’t think Riley has quite reached this level of deranged paranoia yet, but if she’s accusing decent people like the above brass band of being anti-Semites, simply based on her own weird political and ethnic assumptions and prejudices, then it seems to me that she’s not far off.

Mike in his piece about this nasty incident compares it to Riley’s own attack on Mike for his article reporting how she bullied a schoolgirl suffering from anxiety. He invited his readers to look at Riley’s tweet about the band and decide for themselves who they thought was right. As Riley is suing Mike, he also asked his supporters if they knew other people, who were as offended by her attack on the band as he was, and might consider donating to his fund to defend himself from her suit. Mike ended his article

It’s only my personal opinion but I think that Ms Riley’s behaviour is utterly unacceptable. If you agree, please spread the word about my campaign as widely as possible.

Did Rachel Riley’s ‘Durham Miners’ tweet upset you? Support Mike’s libel fight!

Mike’s right: Riley’s behaviour is unacceptable, but she’s getting away with it. As one of Mike’s great commenters, Mark C., says

Every day she is showing her true colours; this seemingly has nothing to do with anti-semitism, and everything to do with her hatred of the Labour movement and its desire to level this country’s playing field.

I wonder how long and how far she can go on before people in this country wake up and realise how crazy and venomously hate-filled she is.

 

 

The Miners’ Strike and Times’ Editor Charles Moore’s Hatred of the Working Class

Owen Jones in his book Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class, argues that the impoverishment and degradation inflicted on the working class by Tony Blair’s New Labour and the Conservatives is due to a bitter hatred of them by the Conservative upper classes. He quotes Balfour as saying ‘Of course there’s a class war going on. We started it.’ Hollingworth’s discussion of the miner’s strike in his The Press and Political Dissent: A Question of Censorship adds more evidence to this. He notes that the right-wing press and its editors may also have had a very strong hatred of the miners, a hatred that was displayed in a comment by Charles Moore, a former editor of the Times and one of the Thatcher’s biographers. It was also displayed in a piece written by an academic, who talked about how the miner’s were all tricked into striking because they were the less intelligent pupils from Secondary Moderns and Comprehensive schools.

There is also some evidence, though far from conclusive, that Fleet Street’s hostility was based on simple class hatred towards the miners and their families. Charles Moore is the editor of the Spectator but used to be a Daily Telegraph reporter and writer and still contributes to the paper regularly. Asked about the miners, he replied: ‘I really hate those people, actually. This strike as brought out feelings I didn’t know I had. It seems to me such a lie that these people represent or are the defenders of an oppressed class and so clear that Arthur Scargill is an oppressor, that is has finally brought out all my contempt for the Left. A perhaps more serious example came from the Sunday Times in August 1984. The paper commissioned a feature article by Professor Frank Musgrove of Manchester University. This is what he wrote:

In the past 30 years two social processes have siphoned off men of initiative and ability. Educational selection has left a residue of D and E stream secondary modern and comprehensive school pupils for pit work – there has been a massive haemorrhage of talent from mining communities. And earlier pit closure programmes have set up eddies of selective migration which have drained away the most enterprising men from the more northerly fields.

It is the dilute human residues that remain, especially in Yorkshire and Durham, that have been most effectively manipulated and mobilised by the tactics of the NUM. They have been bounced into a strike without a ballot and have learned to repeat slogans (‘No pit closures on economic grounds’. ‘Cowards hide behind ballots’) whose horrendous implications they do not begin to grasp.

We did not solve the educational problem by raising the school-leaving age to 15, still less to 16. Five years in the E Stream of a comprehensive school is an excellent training in sheer bloody-mindedness if not actual subversion. … This is not education. It is a species of trench warfare. It is anticipatory socialisation for the mass picket line. (The emphasis is added by Hollingworth, pp. 283-4). The Sunday Times was, of course, edited by Andrew Neil, now presenting the Daily Politics for the Beeb.

From 2013: Private Eye on Empty Places at Free Schools

Also in their edition for 19th April – 2nd May 2013, Private Eye carried an article on the number of empty places at the free schools in the government is encouraging being built up and down the country. May of these appear massively undersubscribed. Furthermore, the headmaster of the school, which was at the centre of the Eye’s article, had left his previous job due to incompetence and the massive dissatisfaction of staff and pupils. The Eye’s story ran thus:

Empty Desk Syndrome

A new free school in Durham will open in September in the very buildings of a local comprehensive that is closing due to falling pupil numbers. It’s yet another example of the bizarre policy of opening new schools where there are already far too many school places.

According to the National Union of Teachers, a fifth of the free schools opened so far are in areas which already had empty desks in schools. Millions of pounds of public money have been spent creating a huge surplus of secondary places, while primaries elsewhere in the county remain badly overcrowded.

County education chiefs opposed Durham Free School (DFS) taking over the site of Durham Gilesgate Sports College. Though the city is closing schools because it has so many unfilled places, it will be forced by the Department of Education to hand over the keys at the end of term to provide a temporary home until DFS finds a permanent site. DFS will open with just 60 pupils, but says it plans to have more than 800 eventually, gambling on future housing developments going ahead to the south of the city.

Meanwhile DFS’ headteacher Peter Cantley introduced himself – in a style that will be oddly familiar to Eye readers – with “A Message from the Headteacher…” Although he name-drops the schools where he was an assistant head and deputy head, he’s more reticent about his most recent post: “I previously led a school merger project for the [Department of Education}.”

That merger was between two faith schools, one Church of England, the other Roman Catholic, becoming St. Andrew’s College in Cleethorpes. After 18 months as headteacher, Mr Cantley resigned suddenly in May 2011. Governors said he quite to pursue employment opportunities closer to his come in Cumbria.

Ofsted inspections from after his departure reveal that his headship in Cleethorpes was not altogether happy. In February 2012, inspectors rated the school “inadequate” and blamed some of the school’s problems on “turbulence in senior leadership” following the merger. A follow-up inspection this year says of the new head, who started in December 2011, that staff and students “say that things have got a lot better since she came”.

The evidence from this case certainly bears out other reports that the expansion in the number of free schools is driven by ideology from the Tories, not need on the ground. And the same double standards we’ve come to expect from the Tories are in abundant evidence here. The numbers were too low to support a conventional state school, but for free market Tories, there’s nothing wrong with them for setting up a school outside local authority administration.