38 Degrees Email Appealing to Public to Write Letter Supporting NHS Pay Rise to Jeremy Hunt

I’ve just got this email from 38 Degrees requesting people to writer to Chancellor Jeremy Hunt asking him to abandon his opposition to the NHS workers’ demands for a pay rise. I’ve written an email as they’ve requested. If you also feel that our great medical professionals and the other staff deserve their rise, please feel free to do so as well.

David, today and tomorrow, nurses in England will be striking. [1] We know they don’t want to do this – but government inaction, pushing our NHS to breaking point, has left them with little choice.

The good news? Things might be swinging our way! Reports are emerging that the Health Secretary, Steve Barclay, is working with NHS unions to try and get more money for NHS staff. [2] But it’s also claimed Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Chancellor Jeremy Hunt are refusing to budge. [3]

The Chancellor holds a HUGE amount of power over the purse strings. If we want him to stop dragging his heels, thousands of us need to speak up now.

David, you are one of 75,000 of us who signed the open letter in support of striking NHS workers. [4] If all of us bombard the Chancellor with messages telling him to listen to his colleagues, and invest in our nurses and NHS staff, we’ll be impossible to ignore.
David, will you email the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, today to demand he ends his holdout and offers NHS workers a proper pay rise? It only takes a couple of minutes and there are some pointers to help you write your message.

EMAIL JEREMY HUNT NOW

Thanks to pressure from hundreds of thousands of 38 Degrees supporters, in 2021 we helped force the Government to triple its pay offer to NHS staff. [5] We can do it again, but only if thousands of us speak up together in support of striking NHS workers.

If you’ve never sent an email to an MP before, don’t worry, it’s easy and even a short message could make all the difference. Here are some tips for what you could say:

• Share your story if you are an NHS patient: if you’re waiting for treatment and are happy to talk about this, it will be even more powerful.
• If you work in the NHS, you could mention it – personalised stories will go a long away
• Talk about why you back our NHS heroes: even if it’s a line or two, the Chancellor needs to know why the public are backing NHS staff
• Remember to be polite: There’s a real person at the other end reading your email!

So, David, will you join in and send one of the thousands of emails landing in Jeremy Hunt’s inbox on the day NHS nurses go on strike? It only takes a couple of minutes and there are some pointers one the page to help you write your message

EMAIL JEREMY HUNT NOW

Thanks for all that you do,

Jonathan, Mike, Veronica and the 38 Degrees team

NOTES:
[1] BBC News: Nurses’ strike: New dates as union escalates dispute
[2] The Guardian: Revealed: cabinet split over NHS pay disputes piles pressure on Sunak
[3] See note [1]
[4] 38 Degrees: We support striking NHS staff
[5] 38 Degrees: Pay Rise Posters
Times: 38 Degrees full-page ad
BBC: NHS workers in England offered 3% pay rise

We Own It Petition against Local NHS Privatisation

Not only have We Own It launched a petition against the general privatisation of the NHS they’ve also launched one people can sign directed at their local NHS leaders against the privatisation of local services as well. I got this email earlier today and have, of course, signed it. If you’re also concerned about your local NHS services being privatised, you may like to do the same.

‘Dear David,

If you could take a 2 minute action to STOP the outsourcing of your local NHS services to profit-greedy private companies, would you do it? 

There is something you can do that will have a HUGE impact.

Sign the petition to ask local NHS leaders to commit to end NHS outsourcing.

Sign the petition to your local NHS leaders

For over a decade, the ideology of privatisation has been gaining a strong foothold in our NHS.

We were told that outsourcing was ‘the most efficient way to provide services’.

But you always knew that this wasn’t true. And now you’ve been proven absolutely right.

The evidence is clear. The preventable deaths of 557 people have been linked to the outsourcing of NHS services. 

Once you’ve made your voice heard, NHS leaders will have to face the facts: privatisation fails our health. 

Can you add your voice to the petition and demand that your local health leaders commit to end outsourcing in your local NHS now?

Sign the petition – make your voice heard

Last night we launched our End NHS privatisation, save lives campaign with over 300 other campaigners.

New research has linked 557 preventable deaths to the outsourcing of NHS services.

Ben Goodair, the Oxford academic behind the research, told us at the campaign launch rally last night:

“My research found that wherever privatisation increased, deaths from preventable causes also increased. It is clear that there is a connection there.

“I am grateful to everyone that is doing something about this – you are saving lives.”

Whether you live in England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland, your local NHS leaders need to know that you’ve had enough of the deaths and the outsourcing.

Demand that your local health leaders save lives now – sign the petition

This fight in your local NHS is totally winnable. We just need to mobilise thousands of people in your area to add their voices to this demand.

They simply cannot ignore thousands of voices.

That is how we are going to win. And we have won before.

We’ve worked with Keep Our NHS Public campaigners in London to force local NHS leaders to kick American multi-national company Centene out of multiple GP surgeries. 

We’ve worked with Save Our NHS campaigners in Bath to get Virgin Care removed from their local NHS board.

Together with you we got the NHS in 11 regions to pledge to ban private companies from their boards.

We can win – YOU can win – if we make our voices heard in our thousands.

Make your voice heard now by signing the petition

We are so excited about this campaign because we know that when we come together and fight, nothing and no one can stop us winning.

Sign the petition and share it with your friends and family. And if you can do more, sign up HERE to receive leaflets from us to distribute to houses on your street.

Thank you for everything you do to protect our NHS from privatisation. 

Cat, Alice, Johnbosco, Matthew, Kate – the We Own It team’

Wednesday’s Online Meeting about Statutory Sick Pay

Wednesday evening, I went to a Zoom meeting organised by the Centre for Progressive Change about campaigning for much needed reforms to Statutory Sick Pay. The Centre for Progressive Change is a new organisation, and this is their first campaign, so they want to make a mark. As far as I could make out, the campaign is being led by the cleaners and their union, although other unions are also involved. At the moment there are a large number of workers, who aren’t getting statutory sick pay. I’ve forgotten the precise figures, but it’s something like a third or above. If they do qualify for it, they have to wait three days to receive it from the day they sign off sick, and the amount paid, £99 a week, isn’t sufficient to cover people’s needs. They are therefore campaigning for the amount to be raised, and for it to be paid from the first day of ill health.

They also mentioned cases where workers were denied time off work and SSP by their employers, even though they were perfectly entitled to it. This included one young man who came down with cancer a year or so ago. An operation was scheduled, but he was told he would have to isolate for a week or so before the operation to make sure he didn’t catch Covid and would need two weeks off work to recover. When he told this to his HR manager, who had previously been kind and supportive, he was told that the manager couldn’t run a place like this and so couldn’t take the time off work for isolation. Nor was he going to receive sick pay when he took time off work to recuperate. The boss told him instead that he’d have to take unpaid holiday.

This clearly isn’t acceptable.

The meeting itself was bilingual in English and Spanish. There was a button for simultaneous translation, so if you didn’t speak whatever language was being spoken at that moment, you could press a button and get the translation. It felt rather like being at the UN when the various ambassadors and officials there get the translations of speeches through their headphones. I was puzzled why it was in English and Spanish when we’re no longer in the EU, but it may just be that so many of the cleaning staff and other low wage workers involved in this campaign are Spanish.

They’ve got a petition to persuade the government to pay increased SSP and are also trying to get people to organise to see their local MPs about it. I’ve signed it because of the cost of living crisis and Truss’ renewed assault on working class wellbeing.

For more information, go to their website athttps://www.centreforprogressivechange.org/

A Small Family Sex Show in Bristol Cancelled Because of Petitions and Death Threats

As a Bristolian, I feel I have to add my fourpence worth about this controversy. One of the arenas of the culture war is over sex education in schools and especially sex education, with particular concern about the teaching or promotion of homosexuality and transgenderism. Parents and politicians are concerned about proper age-appropriate teaching of these subjects. The controversy seems to be particularly acute in America, where various, mostly right-leaning journos, activists and media pundits like Michael Walsh have criticised videos posted on TikTok of teachers coming out to young pupils and announcing that they’re gay, non-binary or trans. There have been instances where primary school children have been asked about which gender they identify with, as apart from their biological sex. One teacher proudly announced the ‘gender closet’ in which children can get changed into the clothing of the opposite sex when they want to keep it secret from their parents. There have been very sexually explicit books published for schools about gay and gender issues, containing the kind of imagery that once upon a time only used to be found in hard porn. And schools have also been told that, if a child trans, they should not inform his or her parents. As a result, there have been meetings of outraged parents confronting their local school boards in various towns and cities across the US. The Republican governor of Florida,, Ron de Santis, has just passed his so-called ‘Don’t Say Gay’ act, which forbids the teaching of anything about sex and sexuality, including heterosexuality, from ages 5 – 9. The Disney corporation and various LGBTQ+ employees have been particularly incensed by it, and have tried to mobilise opposition against the bill. This was in conjunction with a leaked video showing some of its top brass saying that they want half of all their characters to come from ethnic minorities or the gay community. As a result, right-wing Republicans like Walsh are calling for an end to Disney’s autonomy in the state and its tax exemption. I have to say that this shows a somewhat skewed morality. As a massively profitable global enterprise, Disney should pay its fair whack of tax like the rest of us proles. And especially because conditions for its workers in China are so dire that they’ve had to install suicide nets in their factories to stop the wage slaves toiling over their merchandise from killing themselves.

The Tobacco Factory, one of Bristol’s many theatres, put its collective feet firmly into this mire of controversy last week when they announced they were hosting ‘A Small Family Sex Show’ by theatre company ThisEgg. The show was described as woke, Queer and feminist, ,and intended to teach children about sex, using personal experiences, covering sexual orientation, gender identity, boundaries and so on. The show was described as suitable for children of five upwards, and included a section where the performers were free to take their clothes to the extent they felt comfortable. This could be total nudity, or else the removal of bottoms but not underwear, or even just simply staying clothed. The content included teaching children about masturbation, touching as well as other, much more dubious and extreme practices. Quiet-voiced Benjamin Boyce, an American YouTuber who discusses topics like gender identity, went through the description of the show’s contents on their website. This also included various explicit drawings. It was a weird mixture of sex with information about theatre, such as pointing out that the areas to each side of the stage that are hidden from the audience are called the wings. It also promised to teach children about White privilege and supremacy. In the video introducing the show, it’s producers introduce themselves with their pronouns and a description of their race, complexion, hair colour and so on. They seem to have been White, and Boyce wondered why they thought such descriptions were necessary when everyone could see what they were like. But it was the sexual subjects they show intended to teach which naturally attracted Boyce’s astonishment and disapproval. Again and again he wondered aloud how it wasn’t grooming. And others wondered too, on both sides of the Atlantic, with many being very firmly convinced it was.

Karen Davis, a gender critical Black American YouTuber, covered it on her channel. She was concerned that it was aimed at a time when children were only just learning to differentiate between fiction and reality, and that you could not like people while still being civil to them. She was also concerned that it would break down barriers about sex between children and adults, barriers that children naturally have for very good reasons. She was concerned that it was teaching kids not to believe their own eyes and feelings about whether an adult presented a danger, and would so make them vulnerable to predators. Davis has very strong and uncompromising views on the trans issue and she goes further in her opposition than some other gender critical folks. But in this instance her views seem to be very well grounded. She frequently cites the medical and academic literature to support her opinions, which are also informed by her work as a special needs teacher for children. She has also previously worked in centres for people with mental health issues. She knows whereof she speaks. And one of her concerns was about the theatre companies name. ‘Egg’ apparently is trans slang for someone on the verge of being trans, who needs to be ‘hatched’. I wondered if the name wasn’t inspired by a cult BBC show about a group of graduates living in London called This Life, one of whose characters had the monicker ‘Egg’. The show claimed it had the support of one of the organisations charged with protecting children, but a glance at that organisation’s website – it might have been the NSPCC – showed that the show was in conflict with the organisation. This said on their website that one of the signs that a child was being abused or near to a child who was, was sexuality explicit talk.

There have been any number of people on YouTube in Britain and America tearing into the show. Meesh Makeida, a Black British mother, covered it in one of her videos and made it very plain that she definitely would not take her five year old to it. Karen Davis in her video about it compared it to the real, grubby sex shows for adults. Unfortunately, these have been about in my city. The city council voted a few months ago to shut down the, er, ‘gentlemen’s clubs’. And the tone of Park Street in Clifton went up when the strip clubs there closed down in the 1980s.

A large number of Bristol’s citizens also made their opposition to the show very plain. There was a petition against it, which garnered 38,000 signatures. There were also threats of death and violence against the theatre and ThisEgg. This resulted in the show’s cancellation. The producers have claimed that they were forced to pull the show due to the threats, and that these came from a small minority of extremists.

I don’t agree with making death threats, and sincerely hope that those sent did come from a small minority. But the 38,000 signatures on the petition definitely don’t come from a small number of people. I don’t know how many people were actually aware of the show’s existence – I haven’t seen it mentioned on the local news. But offhand I can’t think of anyone who would be happy at such a show being performed in front of children and especially not five year olds.

And grooming is a real and legitimate issue with this play. It appears to be informed by Queer Theory. This, in the view of scholars and critics like James Lindsay, explicitly wishes to break down the barriers between adults and children in matters of sexuality and sexual identity. It’s based on the theories of Foucault, a postmodern philosopher and paedophile. Foucault and other intellectuals tried to get the age of consent reduced to 12 or there about in France in the 1970s, and Foucault himself used to go to North Africa to take advantage of the prostituted boys. One of the issues here is that the gay rights movement in its early stages included many paedophiles and civil rights activists who mistakenly believed that it should be legalised. The gay movement in Britain began making headway when the gay organisations purged the paedophiles from their ranks and made it very plain that gay very definitely did not equal paedo. There are thus fears that the paedophiles are trying to come back in through Queer Theory and the kind of sex education that it produces.

Graham Linehan, the writer of Father Ted, Big Train and the IT Crowd and a very firm opponent of the trans ideology, also discussed the play with American gender critical feminist Kara Dansky. I think Linners believed that ThisEgg were genuine in their concern that children received proper information about sex, just misguided. Dansky, on the other hand, suggested that the company really may have been deliberately grooming children. I hope not. They seemed sincere, but terribly, destructively wrong in my opinion.

When the news that the show was being staged a week ago, some of the commenters on various videos had a dig at Bristol. The city’s terribly ‘woke’, you see, and somehow it’s all the fault of the University. Well, certain parts of the city are very left-wing. People joke about the ‘People’s Republic of Stokes Croft’, for example. Other parts are more moderate or Conservative. And the various initiatives taken by Bristol University, such as lowering admissions for Black and Asian applicants in order to encourage more of them to apply don’t come from a long history of left-wing activism. They seem to be initiated in order to dispel criticism that the university is too elitist and White. But of course, there are left-wing lecturers there, just as there are Tories and others, who keep their political views quiet.

As for theatre in Bristol general, the city has a number of excellent venues. The Hippodrome tends to stage West End musicals like Cats, Return to the Forbidden Planet and even, every so often, the Rocky Horror Show. The Theatre Royal in King Street is one of the oldest in the country, and has produced many of this great nation’s leading thesps. It’s had everything from one man shows by Michael Bentine and John Mortimer, to performances of Into the West, from the film starring Ron Moody as a villain. It also staged more challenging performances about the Vietnam War and its legacy. Another theatre venue, Quaker’s Friars, has staged great plays, one of which was by one of the great 18th century French playwrights, as well as a production of the Hollywood classic Key Largo. And before it decided to put on A Small Family Sex Show, the Tobacco Factory had also put on several excellent plays, including puppet shows for children.

I think it’s excellent that the show has been cancelled, but I’m also acutely aware that children do need proper sex education. There was a time when it was not taught in school, and so children were really ignorant about their bodies, the changes of adolescence and reproduction. We should very definitely not go back there, whatever opposition there is to it by right-wingers like Peter Hitchens.

I’m also not entirely convinced that there’s been this controversy about it just when Bristol is facing a referendum over the elected mayor. At the moment it’s Marvin Rees for Labour. Now the mayor and city council generally have had nothing to do with the show, and no-one has said they have. But I’m afraid that the controversy over the play and the constant statements by the right about it being the product of the ‘woke’ left will lead some people to mistakenly connect it to Labour.

Bristol’s a great city, with great theatre. A Small Family Sex Show isn’t one of them, and shouldn’t have been booked.

Children do need proper sex education, given at suitable ages and using appropriate material. They cannot be left ignorant, but should not be exposed to material that is too explicit either. Especially when there is the danger that real abusers could use to approach children, no matter how well-intentioned the people behind such material are.

Vox Political: Pictures of the Resistance to Dictator Johnson

Yesterday, Boris Johnson took it upon himself to ask the Queen to prorogue parliament so that he could force through his unwanted no deal Brexit against the opposition of MPs. Boris Johnson himself hasn’t been elected. He was foisted on the British public as their leader by the Tory party, who represent a vanishingly small section of the British people. With this act, Johnson has assumed dictatorial powers. And the British people aren’t standing for it. There have already been demonstrations against him on College Green, and Mike has put up a selection of pictures of them by Rachael Swindon, Marcus Chown, Mr Bliz, Steve Bray, Carole Peters, the EU Flag Mafia, as well as a video by former Labour cabinet minister, Andrew Adonis, calling BoJob’s action what it is: Massively unconstitutional. He also encourages Brits to take heart, as he feels we’re still going to win this. He says that this is actually a sign of weakness from Britain’s Trump Junior. Boris hasn’t called an election, because he knows he’d lose it, and he’s aware that the Remain Alliance made last week is too strong for him. Adonis feels that there is still enough time left in September and October for parliament to make its voice felt. And Boris hasn’t made any kind of deal with the Fuhrage, who would eat him alive. So people, who want to see Britain a constitutional country at the heart of Europe should feel encouraged: ‘we’re still going to win’.

Thousands demonstrate across the UK to #StopTheCoup

There is also this petition against the Johnson’s Machtergreifung. Please sign it if you, like me, deeply object to this trashing of British democracy by an autocratic, mendacious clown.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/269157

Mike says in his article about it that it won’t make a scrap of business. Boris is a Tory MP, which means that he automatically ignores demonstrations. Mike’s right about this. But this does show the sheer strength of feeling by the British electorate. With MPs across the party political divide ranged against him, and condemnations from Nicola Sturgeon, the Scots First Minister and the Welsh Assembly, and the resignation of Ruth Davidson, the leader of the Tories north of the border, this is adding to the pressure against Johnson. It may not affect him, but it might scare some of his backers.

We hope. 

 

‘I’ Newspaper Smears Corbyn’s Labour as Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theorists: Part 3

The next anti-Semitic conspiracy theory Verber claims is held by people in the Labour party is ‘Twisting or denying the facts of the holocaust’. The example he gives of this is ‘Chris Williamson’s series of unfortunate events’. He writes of this conspiracy theory

Wander into any coffee shop in Tel Aviv and you will hear all manner of Israelis criticising the government of the day. But none of the Nazis’ anti-Semitic policies are remotely similar to any passed by Israel. The Nazis set out to murder every Jew in Europe and then – had they got their way – across the globe.

Each innocent Palestinian life that has been lost in the conflict with Israel is a tragedy, as it every Israeli life. But Gaza is not Auschwitz. Comparing the two is a lie, a low blow deliberately calculated to cause hurt and pain to a community still in trauma.

Other versions of this conspiracy theory include attempts to play down the Holocaust’s significance or event to question its existence.

Now look what’s being done here. It’s a classic example of ‘bait and switch’. For most people, ‘twisting or denying the facts of the Holocaust’ would mean straight out Holocaust denial, or the noxious variants of it that minimise the numbers murdered. But that’s not what concern Verber. He’s upset because, gasp, some people are comparing Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to the Nazis. His statement that none of Israel’s policies are comparable to the Nazis is a flat-out lie. Firstly, Israel is an apartheid state. Only Jews can be citizens. This is identical to the Nazis’ policy that only ethnic Germans could be German citizens. The country’s indigenous Arabs also live under separate laws and may only use specific roads. Many municipalities in Israel have passed legislation forbidding property to be let to non-Jews. Furthermore, the country was born partly through a series of massacres against the Arabs. Those making the claim that Israel resembles Nazi Germany, like Tony Greenstein, qualify that statement by saying that it is like Nazi Germany before the launch of the Holocaust in 1942. Gaza is not Auschwitz, as Verber says. But I don’t think anyone has said it was. It has, however, been described as an open-air ghetto.

As for comparisons to Nazi Germany being hurtful to a community still in trauma, this is massively hypocritical. Israelis accuse their politicians of being Nazis all the time. There was even a cartoon in one newspaper of Netanyahu in Nazi uniform.

Now we come to what Verber calls ‘Chris Williamson’s series of unfortunate events’. This begins with Williamson signing a petition against Islington Council’s banning of Jazz saxophonist Gilad Atzmon, a Holocaust denier. Verber notes that he later claimed that he didn’t know about Atzmon’s views. It’s possible. Atzmon considers himself to be a supporter of the Palestinians, although the mainstream Palestinian solidarity movement doesn’t want to have anything to do with him because of his toxic views about Jews. But Atzmon is hardly a household name, and if the petition claimed that he was being banned because of his support for the Palestinians, then it’s quite possible that Williamson signed it in all innocence.

But there is more half-truths and malign insinuations that follow. He states that Williamson has several times shared a platform with Jackie, who has been suspended for falsely accusing Jews of financing the slave trade and playing down the importance of the Holocaust, and defended Ken Livingstone, who said that Hitler supported Zionism. I’ve dealt with the accusations against Walker and Livingstone ad nauseam. Neither of the two are racist, and especially not Walker, who is a Black Jew, believes in Judaism as a religion, sends her daughter to a Jewish school, and has a Jewish partner. The quote the CAA used to claim that she believes Jews financed the slave trade was lifted out of context from a personal discussion with three friends, where it was understood that she was talking about how some Jews financed and profited from the slave trade. Which is true, as she cites the literature and authorities to back up her comment. As for downplaying the importance of the Holocaust, she did no such thing. She was secretly recorded by the Jewish Labour Movement at their Holocaust Memorial Day workshop questioning the exclusive focus on Jews at the expense of other ethnicities, that have also suffered Holocausts. She also asked them to give her a definition of anti-Semitism she could work with. When Marc Wadsworth asked the same question at his tribunal, when he was smeared as an anti-Semite, the tribunal called for an adjournment. When they returned, it was accompanied with four lawyers, all arguing. Walker was singled out because she did not accept the I.H.R.A. definition of anti-Semitism, because it is used to suppress criticism of Israel. As for Leninspart, he was right about Hitler and Zionism. Before the Final Solution was introduced, the Nazis were keen to find anyway of getting rid of Germany’s Jews. And this meant sending them to Israel through the short-lived Ha’avara Agreement. Which is historical fact.

Verber also goes on to say that Williamson has warned of ‘certain dark forces ‘ using their contacts in the media and power to undermine Corbyn. But as we’ve seen, there is abundant evidence to show that these fears are not unfounded, not least as regards Israel.

Verber concludes this section with the words

Outright Holocaust denial has been moved to the fringes even of the world occupied by conspiracy theorists. Given the vacuum, new and more subtle ways of trivialising and attacking the Holocaust have had to be created.

Well I dare say, but this doesn’t apply to criticism of Israel for ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians or the smears against Walker and Livingstone. The last two haven’t denied or played down the Holocaust at all, and neither has Williamson. This is just more lies and smears from him, to try to make them seem anti-Semitic monsters.

David Rosenberg on the Racist Supporters of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism

More bigotry and bullying from the Jewish Labour Movement and their allies, the grievously misnamed Campaign Against Anti-Semitism. Yesterday the Equalities and Human Rights Commission announced that they were investigating the Labour Party, following a dossier of complaints handed to them by the above. David Rosenberg, a Jewish socialist and firm supporter of the Bundist tradition of anti-Zionism, has put up a very interesting piece exposing just what kind of people sign the CAA’s petitions. Last August the Zionist hate group put up a petition declaring ‘Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-Semite and must go’, which was later changed to ‘Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-Semite and the Labour Party must act’. Also changed was a piece that alleged the Labour leader was stuffing the party with Holocaust deniers. The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism also invited those signing its wretched petition to leave comments. And these were ‘ugly, very ugly’, as the Star Trek’s Ferengi used to say. Rosenberg gives just a few examples. They are:

“corbyn is a danger to the uk he hates the uk and white men he is skum”

“He is disgrace to the people actually born and bred in this country”

“We are an island and cannot take any more migrants, and he would welcome a million more”

“Corbyn is a communist and terrorist supporter, he is persecuting the Jews who are peaceful people unlike the immigrants he wants to flood the country with”

“This pond scum should not be allowed to be a public figure”

“This man is a treasonous snake who is of grave danger to our country”

“Jeremy is a cunt”

“Corbyn is a dirty nazi”

“It would not surprise me if he had Mein Kampf by the side of his bed.”

“This piece of terrorist loving anti-Semite scum is poison.”

“Let’s get this bastard!”

“I would prefer for someone to shoot him”

Rosenberg therefore encourages the EHRC request a full list of the comments the CAA had on their petition, and asks them if they really want to cooperate with an organisation that posted up such vile abuse and threats of terrorism. He also asks if the Jewish Labour Movement is proud of its association with the CAA, now that it is playing a game of brinkmanship with the Labour party with its threats to disaffiliate.

See: https://rebellion602.wordpress.com/2019/03/08/now-who-has-got-a-problem-with-discrimination/

The racism left by the CAA’s commenters doesn’t surprise me. It’s almost to be expected that the people, who hate Corbyn are the same racist fanatics who want Boris Johnson or Jacob Rees-Mogg to lead the Tory party and begin an ethnic cleansing of Blacks and Muslims. And the same islamophobia seems to pervade the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism. Tony Greenstein has commented several times on the organisation’s own hatred of Muslims. According to the CAA, the typical anti-Semite is a young Muslim male. But as the CAA plays very fast and loose with stats, for which it has been criticised, you can’t necessarily believe that. It might be true that most British anti-Semites are Muslims, given that rabid hatred of Jews is common across the Middle East and Islamic world. A few years ago Egyptian television staged a dramatisation of the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion. And back in 2007 the Channel 4 documentary, Undercover Mosque, caught an uncomfortably large number of militant Islamic preachers in British mosques vilifying and demonising Christians, Jews and non-Muslims in general. But that doesn’t mean that their congregation was necessarily listening to them.

From what little I’ve read, it doesn’t seem that the CAA has given any information about how it reached this conclusion that British Muslims are more inclined towards Jew hatred than anyone else. What polling company did they use? How large were the sample populations? What questions did they use to gauge anti-Semitism? There are very serious questions about how the CAA came to such a serious claim, and I don’t think the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism has provided any information to answer them. And as so much Israeli psy-ops is based on creating fear of Muslims as the terrible, non-Judaeo-Christian other ready to murder us all in our beds if we don’t convert, this simply looks like more Zionist fear-mongering.

As for the JLM, after Mike posted a piece about their theatrical antics yesterday in pretending to be considering whether to disaffiliate from the Labour party, their supporters responded in their inimitable way: Personal abuse and lies. Mike was once again told he was an anti-Semite and a holocaust denier, needed anti-Semitism training, and told that Arabs lived in perfect equality with Jews in Israel. They opposite to all this is the truth, which Mike shows with some very good tweets of the testimony of Ronnie Barkan and the grandson of Nelson Mandela.

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/03/08/supporters-of-the-jewish-labour-movement-respond-to-this-sites-critique-with-abuse/

The Jewish Labour Movement has announced it will hold its AGM on the 7th April. My guess is that if anyone from outside this wretched organisation were to sneak in and secretly film them, they’d be shown making some deeply racist and anti-Semitic comments about non-Zionists, and particularly non-Zionist Jews. The organisation seems to be stuffed with the kind of Fascists that support BoJo and Rees-Mogg. The only difference is that they’re Jewish.

 

 

 

Secular Talk: Pressure Your Congressman and Sign Petition to Support Medicare For All

This was put up on the 27th March on the Secular Talk YouTube channel, so I don’t know if this is still going through Congress. In this clip, Secular Talk’s Kyle Kulinski reports that not all Democrats in Congress are complete sell-outs, and some have responded the proper way to the failure of TrumpCare: they’re now pressing for Medicare for All. John Conyers has proposed it in the House of Representatives, and the awesome Bernie Sanders is proposing it in Senate. 72 Democrats have backed it, but this is less than the total 192 Democrats in the House.

The bill also has the backing of National Nurses United, Brand New Congress, and the Justice Democrats group of progressive Democrats.

Kulinski recommends that his viewers should get on to their congressman, if he’s a Democrat, and urge him to vote for this bill. He also urges them to make it clear that if he does not, then they will vote against him in the next election. He gives the example of a comment from a politico that what really gets things going at Congress is when the phones start ringing.

There is also a petition up at the Justice Democrats’ website supporting the bill, which Kulinski also urges his viewers to sign.

Kulinski states that now is the time to introduce this bill, as they have the support of 55 per cent of the country. One of the leading Democrats, who does not support it is Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi wants to lead the Democrats, but believes that giving everyone proper access to medical care is a step too far. Kulinski also states that those Democrats, who don’t want to support Medicare For All, but maintain that they should just stick to supporting Obamacare are sell-outs. He makes it clear that Obamacare is a great step forward, but it is at heart a right-wing solution. It was proposed by Newt Gingrich way back in the 1990s, and various forms of it have also been backed by Richard Nixon and the Heritage Foundation in the 1980s. It’s an improvement, but still has very severe drawbacks.

Kulinski goes on to urge his viewers to point out to their Democratic representative that they can even rub the Republicans’ noses in it by citing Trump back at them. Trump said in a speech that he believed in Medicare For All. Quote: ‘If a nation can’t look after its sick people, then it’s over. I believe in Medicare For All’.

He makes it very clear that this reform is needed. There are 53 million people, who cannot afford medical insurance in America. Every other developed country has some form of free medical care. It is also bizarre and iniquitous that the country can find billions to fund the war in Syria, and give massive corporate bail-outs and subsidies to the banks and big business, but then states that Medicare For All is too expensive, and the existing Medicare budget needs to be cut.

Petition to Hold New Brexit Referendum

Earlier today I posted a piece about referendum’s vote to leave Europe, and stated that I think a minimum two-thirds majority should have been set as the requirement for the decision to be considered valid. Michelle, one of the great posters on this blog, has told me that there is a petition before parliament for another referendum to be held if the majority is under 60 per cent and the percentage of people voting is less than 75. It’s at:

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/131215

I’ve already voted for it, as has Joanna, one of the other fine commenters here. I would also encourage others to sign it. This decisions is so fundamentally important to this country’s future, that there must be an absolutely clear majority for a ‘leave’ vote to be even remotely acceptable.

The future of the United Kingdom, and particularly in Northern Ireland, the lives of our fellow citizens depend on it.

TYT: 1/3 of Israeli MPs also Critical of Trump

More from The Young Turks about Trump. I blogged this morning about how Cameron was ignoring a petition, signed by 300,000 people, to ban Trump from entering our fair country. It seems Britain isn’t the only country. At the eastern end of the Med, 37 members of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, have signed a petition against Trump, criticising Netanyahu’s decision to meet him. As The Turks’ anchors Cenk Uygur and John Iadarola point out, this is a third of all the members of the Israeli legislature. The Arab parties in particular also aren’t impressed. Ahmed Tibi, a spokesman for the Arab party in the Israeli legislature, has called him a neo-Nazi and demanded that he should be banned from setting foot in Israel.

The Turks also discuss the British petition, and point out that Trump’s comments about Muslims, and also Mexicans and others, would constitute hate speech according to the law in many European countries. They’re right, but unfortunately, Cameron doesn’t seem to think it applies in this case. Here’s the video.