Posts Tagged ‘Stephen Bannon’

Labour’s Kangaroo Courts Are A Credibility Liability

November 19, 2018

Yesterday, Mike put up a piece discussing how he had finally got written notification from the Labour party, informing him he had been thrown out as an anti-Semite. He can, apparently, reapply for admission in something like 18 months time. The letter also informed Mike on what grounds they had decided he was anti-Semitic. As Mike points out, these were quite different grounds than the charges that were originally made against him.

The letter declared that he had been found guilty because

“Upon the balance of probabilities the charge was proved for reasons including:
◾It was not disputed that you were responsible for the posting the content that the NEC claimed breached Labour Party rules;
◾A reasonable person would find the posted content, that is the basis of the NEC’s charge, to have the propensity to cause offence, be regarded as abusive and make some feel discriminated against;
◾In posting the content you breached the Labour Party’s Antisemitism and other forms of racism code of conduct, Social Media Policy and Member’s Pledge in appendix 9 of the Rule Book.”

But the original charges were

“Mr Sivier has repeatedly posted content propogating the conspiracy that secretive networks of Jews control and have undue influence over government and other societal institutions. He uses language that is dismissive of antisemitism and that denies Jews the right to self-identify as they wish. This falls fairly and squarely within the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which the Labour Party has adopted.”

Mike states clearly that at his hearing he completely blew these charges out of the water, which is why the NCC was reduced to finding him guilty on the trumped-up twaddle in the letter. But he points out that all the letter proves is that there was someone who felt abused, offended and discriminated against.

He also makes the point that there is a huge difference between saying something and meaning it, and that the complaint was deliberately made to interfere with his attempt to run for election as a member of Powys council.

He also wondered how the reasonable people, who read his blog, and don’t believe that he’s an anti-Semite feel about how the NCC has described them. Their ruling is a clear statement that they don’t regard people like them as reasonable.

Actually, the unreasonable person(s) in the whole affair are whoever made the complaint, and Labour’s NCC, and the Vishinsky in charge of this Stalinist show trial, Maggie Cousins. The allegations that Mike’s an anti-Semite was made originally by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, and apparently supported by the Israel lobby within the Labour party, like the Jewish Labour Movement. Or Paole Zion, as it used to be called. These people aren’t remotely reasonable. They’re bug-eyed fanatics, who demand unquestioning support for Israeli policies, even when these are clearly Fascistic, such as the system of apartheid designed to contain and isolate the Palestinians, and their slow ethnic cleansing through land seizures, house demolitions, the poisoning of their water supplies and the arrest, torture and casual shooting by the armed forces, including women and children.

The Israel lobby in Britain is violently islamophobic and, like its Israeli masters, makes alliances with real Nazis and anti-Semites to further its ends. Israel has invited Richard Spencer, the head of the Alt-Right, Sebastian Gorka and Stephen Bannon from America, and Tommy Robinson, the former head of the English Defence League, onto its television and high-level political and military gatherings. The Israeli state has also allied itself with the Far Right governments of Poland and Hungary, and sold arms to the Nazis now running amok in the Ukraine.

In the UK, we’ve had Stephen Pollard, the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, tell Groaniad readers that Michal Kaminski, an MEP for the current ruling party in Poland, isn’t an anti-Semite. This is despite Kaminski’s party trying to cover up Polish complicity in the Holocaust and denying that the villagers of Jedwabne were responsible for the massacre of the Jews there. Zionists like Jonathan Hoffman turn up at anti-Palestine demonstrations in the company of members of Britain First and have links to the EDL. Which had a Jewish division, quite apart from the Jewish Defence League. Some of the members of the British Zionist movement are Likudniks, members of the Likud party’s British organization, Herut. And there are a couple, who even brazenly turn up wearing the insignia of Kach, a Fascistic Israeli organization banned in Israel for terrorism.

As for former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sachs, who was one of the leading members of the Jewish community baying for Corbyn’s removal, Sachs has absolutely no business calling anyone racist. A few years ago, Sachs took it upon himself to lead a party of Jewish Brits to join the Israel Day march in Jerusalem. This is when the Israeli equivalent of skinhead thugs march through the Muslim quarter to threaten and intimidate the indigenous residents, vandalizing their property, scrawling racist graffiti on the walls and Lord knows what else. One Israeli scientist, religious scholar and philosopher described such thugs as ‘Judeonazis’. And he’s right. They are the Jewish equivalent of the Nazis. There is no other word which properly describes them, no matter how much the Israel lobby may scream and howl with rage at the comparison.

Of the letter itself, Mike says it proves two things, that

I am not an anti-Semite (the letter makes no suggestion of any hatred towards Jews, simply because they are Jewish) – and Labour’s National Constitutional Committee is a laughing-stock.

However, the affair has also created problems for the Labour party. Labour has just launched a recruitment campaign. But they may find that a problem, as many people will not want to join a party that is so prejudiced against its own grassroots members, and which cannot correct and root out the systemic corruption in its bureaucracy. This gives the party a credibility problem with its treatment of Mike and others like him, especially as there is no appeal procedure.

He states that this also puts them in an actionable position, so perhaps the mess can be sorted out in court. He also makes the point that while he is putting a brave face on it, it is nevertheless distressing to be accused of anti-Semitism.

Labour is now particularly in a difficult position, as they wish to close the gap with the Conservatives in the polls. But that’s the party’s fault, not Mike’s.

He concludes

If Labour really wanted to gain credibility now, the party’s leaders should have thought very carefully before inflicting this particular injustice on this particular man.

They’d better do something about it quickly – don’t you agree?

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2018/11/18/labours-kangaroo-court-issues-details-of-its-finding-against-me-and-they-dont-even-match-the-charge/

Now I very much do agree, but I don’t think the Blairites and Zionists in Labour, who have engineered this crisis are remotely bothered about it. They have shown themselves absolutely determined to destroy Corbyn’s leadership by any means, including organizing coup after coup, smearing him and his supporters in the press, trying to pack the party with Lib Dems and Tories in order to stop themselves being deselected, or prevent grassroots Labour members getting elected to important posts. And finally they’ve threatened to split from the party and form their own, like the SDP in the 1980s.

They have, in short, shown that they are determined to destroy the party, if they can’t control it. And if it does badly in the polls, then they’re highly delighted if they can blame it on Corbyn. And in order to prevent a Corbyn Labour government, they will betray the country and their members and vote with the government to prop up Theresa May.

In short, they are the credibility. And Corbyn is assisting them, as he has shown time and again that he won’t back up his supporters against these false charges of anti-Semitism, because he thinks that if he sacrifices them to the Israel lobby, it’ll placate them. It won’t. They have made it very clear that their overriding concern is to remove him. Attacking his supporters is merely part of this overall strategy.

The Blairites and the Israel lobby are a liability, and have created a credibility gap. And the only way it can be solved is if these people are cleaned out, and Corbyn grows a backbone and stands up to them.

Maggie Cousins – the Racist Defender of Labour’s Racist NEC

November 16, 2018

One of the things that is very clear from Mike’s kangaroo court hearing is that Mike is no racist. He never was, and never will be. And growing up in the 1980s when the NF was once again seeking power, racism was attacked by a new generation of Black activists and Black politicians took their place as Labour MPs, we became very conscious of this issue and the need to combat it everywhere and every time it arose. One of the subjects Mike tackled in his attack on the false claims of anti-Semitism levelled against other Labour party members, was the racist abuse directed at Jackie Walker, the vice-chair of Momentum. Walker had attended a Holocaust Day training workshop organized by the Jewish Labour Movement, formerly Paole Zion, the British branch of the Israeli Labour party. She had then committed the unpardonable sin of objecting to the workshop’s exclusive focus on the suffering of the Jews to the exclusion of other groups, who have also suffered genocide. Her comments were secretly recorded, she was accused of anti-Semitism, and suspended from the party.

It is a farcical, shameful accusation from hypocrites and moral nullities. Walker is Jewish and a woman of colour. Her father was a Russian Jew, and her mother a Black American civil rights activist. They met during a civil rights march. Both sides of her family thus know only too well the reality of bigotry, racism and violent intolerance. After her comments were leaked, she suffered further racist abuse from those pretending to be the opponents of anti-Semitism. Mike discussed this in one of his posts, and the faceless Stalinists of the party bureaucracy accused him in turn of anti-Semitism. The NEC dismissed Mike’s concerns out of hand, and made a pompous statement that Mike’s very mention of the issue was

grossly offensive to those the Party seeks to represent particularly the Jewish community. Comments like these have had and continue to have a serious impact on the Party’s position as an inclusive organisation, which stands against antisemitism.

and ‘dismissive of anti-Semitism’.

Utter bilge!

Mike and some of the Jewish bloggers have shown the vile tweets directed at people like them on Twitter by Zionists, who very much claim that the focus should only be on the Jewish Holocaust. And the racist abuse suffered by Walker herself was appalling. Among the insults hurled at her was the charge that she couldn’t be Jewish, because she was Black. This is despite the fact that there are African Jews, of which the Falashas are probably the best known. Indeed, the Bible records that one of Moses’ wives came from Cush, which is now part of modern Ethiopia. There have been a number of documentaries and pieces by journalists exposing the violent racism in Israel against Black Africans, including Jews of Ethiopian heritage, who have come to Israel. Furthermore, the transatlantic Zionist right, or at least elements of it, also take the view that only Jewish suffering must be commemorated on Holocaust Memorial Day. Kathy Shaidle, an extreme right-wing Canadian Conservative/ Republican activist made that very clear on her blog, Five Feet of Fury. She took particular ire at Bernie Farber, the head of the main Canadian Jewish organization. Because Farber was a decent man, who felt Jews should sympathise and show solidarity with all other marginalized and persecuted groups. When Darfur in the Sudan was attacked and its people killed and rape by the Islamist Janjaweed militia, Farber organized a ‘Shabbat for Darfur’, a day of fasting and prayer in the Jewish tradition. Farber also had the temerity to take part in gay pride march to show his solidarity with Canada’s gay citizens. And Farber’s not alone in his views. As one left-wing, anti-racist Jewish activist said, to be a Jew is always to support the oppressed, never the oppressor.

There is no question that in making this accusation, the NEC were very much supporting racism. Mike makes that clear in his blog post about this issue, and condemns it as disgusting.

And when Mike argued against the accusation, posing awkward questions of his own, Cousins interrupted to prevent those presenting the accusations from answering. And when Mike succeeded in getting them to answer, it was clear why Cousins was so keen not to let the presenter answer the questions: she couldn’t. You can read Mike’s account of this over at his blog, at

Labour’s ruling committee is racist – the evidence is undeniable

Nor is Mike alone in finding the NEC’s and Maggie Cousin’s persecution of decent members of the Labour party under the pretext of combating anti-Semitism racist.

Jackie Walker made the same accusation in an event in Islington in May this year, 2018, which was part of a tour of the country by Marc Wadsworth, supported by the comedian Alexei Sayle, and Jackie Walker and others, including a number of Black anti-racism activists. Marc Wadsworth was the Black anti-racism campaigner, who was himself smeared by Ruth Smeeth and a complicit Tory press as an anti-Semite because of a remark he made about her passing on information to a Torygraph hack at Labour party meeting. Wadsworth didn’t know she was Jewish and made no reference to Jews in his comments. But Smeeth, a Zionist and Blairite, smeared him as an anti-Semite anyway.

And as with Walker, it’s a charge that is utterly ridiculous. Wadsworth was a dedicated campaigner, one of his whose achievements was getting the parents of the murdered Black teenager, Stephen Lawrence, to meet Nelson Mandela. He had also worked closely with the Board of Deputies of British Jews in fighting the BNP in the ’80s and ’90s after a series of anti-Semitic assaults in parts of London. He is very, very far from being an anti-Semite. But he was a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, and so the Blairite and Zionist right of the party chose to smear him in the campaign to topple the Labour leader.

And presiding over the kangaroo court that smeared him as an anti-Semite was – yes, you guessed it! – Maggie Cousins.

The three other Black speakers that evening were also concerned about the racist persecution of the Windrush generation, and anti-Black racism within the Labour party. They claimed that the report by Shami Chakrabarti on racism with in the Labour party, had been ignored when it came to other races. One of these speakers, Angela Lee, a presenter on the Genesis channel, was particularly concerned about low expectations of Black children and the higher rates of expulsion for them in schools, including those in Islington. See http://islingtontribune.com/article/the-muddle-around-a-conflict-within-labour

Cousins is a hard-right Zionist, but she isn’t a member of the Jewish Labour Movement or Jewish Voice for Labour on the other side, and so she masquerades as being impartial.

As for Zionism, non-Zionist Jews like Tony Greenstein and David Rosenberg have argued very strongly and convincingly that it is itself a deeply and perniciously racist ideology. It is anti-Semitic, in the sense that it is a capitulation to anti-Semitism. Its founder, Theodor Herzl, believed that anti-Semitism could not be overcome, and that Jews’ only hope lay in creating a state of their own, for which they should co-operate with anti-Semites. He thus praised Arthur Balfour, for passing the Aliens Act against eastern European Jewish immigration to Britain, as well as the British Brothers’ League, a racist organization campaigning against such immigration. The Zionist organization in Nazi Germany fully supported the racist Nuremberg Laws at the time other Jewish organization were campaigning against them. Its newspaper, the Judischer Rundschau, even told its readers that they should wear the yellow Star of David forced on them by Nazis with pride. Chaim Herzog opposed the kindertransport, which evacuated Jewish German children to Britain. He stated he’d prefer it if nearly all of the Jews in Germany were exterminated, if only a few went to the Jewish settlements in Palestine rather than the majority were saved by going to Britain. In Hungary, Rudolf kasztner made a deal with the Nazis to send some tens of thousands of Jews to the death camps, on the condition that some might be spared to go to Israel.

And Israel is still making alliance with real Nazis and anti-Semites, praising the far-right regimes in Poland and Hungary, and hosting British and American influential far right figures like Stephen Bannon, Richard Spencer and Tommy Robinson. And they have the same vile opportunism towards genuine anti-Semitic atrocities. After the Pittsburgh massacre last weekend, the Israeli ambassador to America claimed the rise in anti-Semitism in America was partly due to ‘left-wing activism on campus’. This was a coded attack on the BDS campaign, amongst other things. He also urged Jews to move to Israel.

The shooter had chosen the Tree of Life synagogue, because they were active helping asylum seekers come to America through a Jewish charity. An Israeli rapper notorious for his Fascistic lyrics odiously declared that you couldn’t blame the shooter and those like him, because they were fed up of liberal Jews interfering in their country’s politics.

Utterly, utterly repugnant.

There is also a very strong streak of what would be rightly seen as anti-Semitism if it came from gentiles in Zionist attacks on Israel-critical Jews. They are viciously attacked as ‘kapos’, with some wishing that their families had died in the Holocaust.

And David Rosenberg on his blog, Rebel Notes, has posted his account of how the Board of Deputies of British Jews in the 1980s was strongly opposed to Jews going on anti-racist marches when they were to protect and defend other racial groups. Thus meetings of Jewish anti-racists had to be held in venues like Quaker Meeting Houses because many synagogues closed their doors to them. The official reason was that the Board was afraid Jewish marchers would be exposed to anti-Zionist propaganda. But some left-wing campaigners believed the real reason was that the Conservative Jewish establishment wanted to keep them away from the Left.

And this is apart from Israel’s persecution of the Palestinians, its imprisonment of them in a system of apartheid and slow, ethnic cleansing. None of which can be defended, which is why Israel’s advocates smear those, who criticize it as anti-Semites.

This is what Cousins and Labour’s NEC are supporting: a vicious, hypocritical and persecutory ideology and state, which attacks real anti-racists and opponents of anti-Semitism. It is an ideology, who strongest advocates in Britain have never wanted British Jews to involve themselves in the struggles of other ethnic groups for equality and dignity. The Israel lobby in the Labour party wishes the genuine sufferings of Blacks in history to be ignored, rather than commemorated with that of the Jews. And for the marginalization of Labour’s Black members and those in Labour-run councils to continue in silence. Ken Livingstone was also concerned about Black representation in the Labour party. It’s in his book, Livingstone’s Labour. Which may well be another reason they smeared him as an anti-Semite.

So perhaps it’s about time we fought back, and named Cousins and the NEC for what they are, and tell them very firmly what we tell the BNP, National Action, the EDL and the rest of the thugs and bully-boys of the Far Right:

Off Our Streets, Fascist Scum!