Daily Mail Estimates Libel Trial Against Mike Could Cost Riley £1 Million

As well as the I, the Heil also wrote a piece about Mike’s appeal court victory yesterday. It was briefly on the net, but I haven’t been able to find it today. So I’m afraid you’ll have to rely on what I can remember about the piece.

As well as reporting the basic details of the case, the Heil’s article also featured the opinions of a lawyer specialising in libel cases. He guessed that Riley had already spent £60-70,000 on suing Mike, and if she took this to trial this could end up costing her £1 million. The lowest cost for such a trial is £500,000, according to the expert, and most start at £1 million.

Zelo Street has also put up a great article about Mike’s case and the latest victory. The Sage of Crewe notes that Riley’s case is undermined somewhat by the fact that she hasn’t gone after the author of the original articles Mike also drew on for his. Shaun Lawson, the author, lives in Uruguay, and Riley and her team estimated that he didn’t have enough assets to justify suing him as they would not recover their losses. This conflicts with a statement from Mark Lawson, Riley’s lawyer, that this wasn’t about money.

The article also notes that Riley’s case against the barrister, Jane Heybroek, for retweeting a comment by Shaun Lawson linked to one of his articles, collapsed after Riley had spent £80,000 on it and was unable to show that that the tweet had caused her any reputational damage. See Zelo Street: Rachel Riley’s Court Case Conundrum (zelo-street.blogspot.com).

It therefore looks like any further action Riley carries on against Mike could be extremely expensive for her.

Akila Hughes Loses Vindictive Court Case against Sargon. Obviously.

There was an interesting bit of legal news last week. Akila Hughes, a left-wing Black American activist, lost her lawsuit against Carl Benjamin, aka Sargon of Akkad, the man who broke UKIP. I’ve blogged about Sargon many times already. He’s a libertarian, Trump-supporting, Tory Brexiteer, so I really don’t share his politics. They’re closer to Hughes. But this time, I think Sargon was actually right and that Hughes has only herself to blame for her defeat. Sargon was the better person.

The dispute goes back to the American presidential election campaign between Trump and Clinton. Hughes was a supporter of Killary, and put up a video supporting her. Sargon disagreed, and in order to show that millions of Americans didn’t share her views, took clips from it and turned it into a YouTube poop intended to satirise her. YouTube poops, if you are blissfully unaware of them, are videos where the makers take clips of certain celebrities or personalities and edit them to make them look ridiculous. There have been any number directed against mad conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, which I find hilarious. And the peeps on YouTube regularly take videos and clips of material by others and include them in their own to critique or comment upon this. This is allowed under the copyright laws as fair use.

Hughes didn’t see it that way, however, and decided that Sargon was infringing her copyright. So she sued him for $150,000. She also showed just how personally vindictive she was by declaring on YouTube that she didn’t care if this bankrupted Sargon and took food away from his children, because Sargon himself should have thought of that. But this personal spite has backfired on her. Judge Sullivan founded in Sargon’s favour, and has ordered Hughes to pay the Sage of Swindon $38,000 in costs. The other day Sargon received a copy of the lawman’s judgement, and posted a video about it on YouTube. And it’s not only interesting in itself, but I’d say it was also relevant for other, similar vindictive legal actions. Like those, in my opinion, brought by Rachel Riley and Tracey Ann Oberman.

The judge decided against Hughes because of her suit’s ‘objective unreasonableness’. I don’t think she had been able to show how Sargon had harmed her through the video, but had shown instead her own personal spite against him by stating that she didn’t care about taking food away from his children. He also ruled that she had acted from improper motivations. While many such litigants are able to keep theirs hidden, she had displayed hers by boasting about her intentions to her many followers on Twitter and social media. Hughes had previously led a campaign to have Sargon thrown off Twitter, and when this succeeded, claimed it was due to her. Having received a message from YouTube that the company supported Black creators, she took this as a sign that she should go ahead and try to get Sargon deplatformed from there as well. She also told her followers she wanted to bankrupt Sargon, stymie his attempts to crowdfund his defence and use copyright law to silence her personal critics and opponents. The judge also ruled that she was also seeking to publicise her suit in order to enrich herself. He therefor found against her. Sargon isn’t out of the woods, as Hughes has 38 days to appeal the decision. But it looks very damning.

I have to say that while I dislike Sargon’s opinions, I don’t believe that he is personally racist or a White supremacist as Hughes and his opponents allege he. He has spoken on his channel to Black activists, and shares their concern about the breakdown of the Black family. Not that family breakdown hasn’t devastated White and other communities as well. Some of his criticisms of Black anti-racism are, in my opinion, entirely fair. In one of his videos he criticised a group of Black activists, who were complaining because the Equalities Commission were compiling statistics on anti-White incidents. He called them racists, which they are. He has also criticised Black Lives Matter and the demands for redressing historic western slavery, when real slavery has re-emerged in Africa. He has quoted a recent article from a paper, which stated that there are now three times more slaves around the world than were transported from Africa to the New World during the transatlantic slave trade. This is grotesque and horrific, but you hear very little about it. Emma Maltby took issue in the pages of the I a few weeks ago to attack right-wing critics of anti-racism movements like Black Lives Matter for trying to use the issue to distract on the real problems of racism and racial inequality in the west. She’s right, but so is Sargon, and I don’t believe that the real slavery that is experiencing a resurgence would have quite the same exposure without Sargon and Conservative critics like him. My sympathies in this case are with Sargon, not Hughes.

And I also note certain similarities between Hughes’ case and that of Rachel Riley and Tracey Ann Oberman to sue Mike and other bloggers for posting a piece about their maltreatment of a schoolgirl. They accused the girl of being an anti-Semite and told her they wanted to re-educate her, simply because she put up a piece supporting Jeremy Corbyn. Shaun Lawson put up an article about this, which other people, including Mike, reblogged and/ or commented upon. Riley and Oberman therefore took it upon themselves to sue Mike and others, including Jane Heybroek in a related case, for libel.

Now Riley and Oberman certainly haven’t gone on social media and revealed their improper motives, but the circumstances of these lawsuits are very suspicious and, in my opinion, certainly look every bit as vindictive and spiteful as Hughes’. Riley and Oberman are rich celebs. Riley is able to afford the expense of a QC, and has insurance against her losing legal suits. Mike, like Sargon, has had to crowdfund his defence. Riley, like Hughes, has attempted to stymie Mike’s defence. Her lawyer argued that the difficulty Mike was having obtaining a lawyer to act for him during the summer months was clogging up the legal system, in what looks suspiciously to me like an attempt to stop Mike raising any more money to defend himself. Despite her own claims that she is not doing it for the money, she did not proceed against Shaun Lawson, who creator the original article. He lives in Uruguay, and apparently doesn’t have much in the way of money so it apparently isn’t worth suing him. Her suit against Jane Heybroek was abandoned when her insurers decided that they would no longer fund her suit, and she would have to start using her own money. In addition, Riley also appealed to her followers to suggest people she should sue, as the charities she supported needed money. This, as Zelo Street pointed out, comes close to the very definition of grifting. And so it does look very much to me – and I stress this is my own personal opinion – that Riley is using the lawsuit and its publicity to enrich herself.

And I am absolutely convinced that she is, like Hughes, abusing the legal system to shut down her personal critics. Riley and Oberman like to present themselves as crusaders against anti-Semitism. But their interpretation of anti-Semitism seems to be the perversion used by the Zionist fanatics: criticism or opposition to Israel. Israel, it needs to be stressed, is a country. And like all-too many nations, it commits atrocities. In the case of Israel, these are against the indigenous Palestinians. It is not by any means anti-Semitic to criticise Israel for its crimes. Despising Israel’s atrocities does not mean that one hates its citizens, still less the wider Jewish community. However, Israel and pro-Israel groups have and are using claims of racism and anti-Semitism to silence critics and opposition groups, such as the Boycott, Divest and Sanction campaign against goods produced in the occupied territories. The misuse of such legislation to silence such criticism is termed ‘lawfare’. And it looks to me very much exactly what Riley and Oberman are doing in their lawsuit against Mike.

As I said, I don’t share Sargon’s opinions, but I’m glad he won. Just as I hope Mike and the others will similarly be vindicated when Riley’s and Oberman’s suit comes to trial. I hope the judge also finds their case vexatious and vindictive. Because it certainly seems that way to me.

William Blum’s List of American Foreign Interventions: Part 1

Yesterday I put up a piece about American hypocrisy in the allegations that Putin was blackmailing Donald Trump, when the Americans themselves interfered in the Russian elections in 1996 in order to secure Boris Yeltsin’s election as Russian president. This was, however, hardly the first time America had intervened in the domestic politics of a foreign country. William Blum devotes two chapters to this in his book, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower. In one he lists the various interventions America has made in other countries, including invasions and military coups, and in the other cases where America has interfered with the conduct of elections in order to secure a win for their favoured candidates.

Both of these are very long and ignominious lists. Here’s part 1 of a list of foreign interventions by the US.

American Interventions

China 1945-51
Aiding Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang against Mao’s Communists.

France 1947
Backing French Socialist party against the Communists, using Corsican mobsters to attack Communist party and Communist-aligned trade unionists.

Marshall Islands 1946-58
Indigenous people of Bikini Atoll removed from the island in order to make way for nuclear tests.

Italy 1947-1970s
Backing Conservative Christian Democrats to keep the Socialists and Communists out of power.

Greece 1947-9
Backing neo-Fascists and creating intelligence unit for them in the civil war against the Communists.

Philippines 1945-53
Military actions against the left-wing Huk forces.

Korea 1945-53
Korean War. However, afterwards US backed Conservatives, who had collaborated with the Japanese, and Fascist dictators, also committed atrocities against fleeing civilians.

Albania 1949-53
Backing anti-Communist guerillas, most of whom were collaborators with the Nazis and Italian Fascists.

Eastern Europe 1948-1956
Head of CIA Allen Dulles deliberately heightened paranoia in the eastern bloc, causing hundreds of thousands of imprisonments, purge trials and murders by the Communist regimes.

Germany 1950s
Lengthy campaign of terrorism, dirty tricks and sabotage against East Germany.

Iran 1953
Prime Minister Mossadegh overthrown by CIA and British led coup, as dared nationalise what is now British Petroleum oilfields.

Guatemala 1953-1990s
CIA backed Fascist coup against democratic socialist Jacobo Arbenz for nationalising plantations owned by American company, United Fruit. Result: forty years of terror, with 200,000 people murdered.

Costa Rica mid-1950s and 1970-1
Attempted assassination of liberal democratic president, Jose Figueres, because considered too soft on the left, and for making his nation the first in Central America to establish diplomatic links with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and questioning American foreign policy, like the invasion of Cuba.

Middle East 1956-58
Attempts to overthrow the Syrian government, shows of force in Mediterranean against opposition to US-backed governments in Jordan and Lebanon, landing of 14,000 troops in Lebanon, and attempts to overthrow and assassinate Egyptian president Gamal Nasser.

Indonesia 1957-8
Attempts to manipulate elections, assassinate, blackmail and start a civil war to overthrow President Sukarno. Sukarno neutral in Cold War, went on trips to China and USSR, nationalised private property of Dutch colonialists, and did not crack down on the Communist party, which was then engaged on electoral path to power.

Haiti 1959
Trained troops of notorious dicator Papa Doc Duvalier, and destroy attempted coup against him by Haitians, Cubans and other Latin Americans.

Western Europe 1950s-1960s
Granting of American money through charities and so on to various groups and organisations in pursuit of American anti-Communist, anti-Socialist policies.

British Guiana/Guyana 1953-64
Attempts to force out of office democratically elected socialist premier, Cheddi Jagan by America and Britain.

Iraq 1958-63

Long campaign against nationalist leader General Abdul Karim Kassem after he overthrew the monarchy and established a republic. USA and Turkey drew up plan to invade; this dropped in favour of arming Kurds, as well as assassination attempts. Kassem helped set up OPEC and created nationalised oil company. Kassem was finally overthrown in a Ba’ath coup, which also led to a clampdown on the Communist party, which was backed by both America and Britain.

Soviet Union 1940s-1960s
Cold War campaigns of espionage, propaganda and sabotage, backing of resistance movements against USSR.

Vietnam 1945-73
Vietnam War.

Cambodia 1945-73
Overthrow of Prince Sihanouk enabling Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge to gain power.

Laos 1957-73
Armed insurrection and bombing against reformist left, led by Pathet Lao party.

Thailand 1965-73
Armed forced against insurgents.

Ecuador 1960-63
Overthrow of president Jose Maria Velasco for not clamping down on left and not following US policy against Cuba.

Congo/Zaire, 1960-65, 1977-8
Overthrow of Patrice Lumumba in favour of dictator and mass-murderer Mobutu Sese Seko.

France/Algeria 1960s
Backed French military coup in Algeria to stop country becoming independent. Also hoped repercussions would overthrow De Gaulle, who was blocking American attempts to dominate NATO.

Brazil, 1961-64
Backed military dictatorship which overthrew President Joao Goulart for being too independent and friendly towards Communists, despite the fact that Goulart millionaire devout Roman Catholic.

Peru 1965
Military action against leftist guerillas

Dominican Republic 1963-5
Overthrow of liberal president, Juan Bosch.

Cuba 1959-Present
Attempts to overthrow Communist regime.

Indonesia 1965
Overthrow of Sukarno and bloody suppression of Communists by successor, General Suharto.

Ghana 1966
Overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah

Uruguay 1969-72
Dirty War against Tupamaro leftists guerillas.

Chile 1964-73
Long campaign against democratic Communist, Salvador Allende, culminating in Fascist coup of General Pinochet.

Greece 1967-74
Intervention against liberal Greek president George Papandreou, as he wanted to take Greece out of NATO and declare Greek neutrality in Cold War. Overthrown in the Fascist coup that inaugurated the rule of the Colonels.

South Africa 1960s-1980s
Assistance to South African apartheid government against African Nationalist Congress, which, amongst other things, led to the arrest and imprisonment of Nelson Mandela.

Bolivia 1964-75
Military campaign against President Victor Paz for supporting Cuba.

Australia 1972-5
Operations to have Gough Whitlam, the leader of the Aussie Labor party, removed by America and British, ’cause he was opposed to Vietnam.

Iraq 1972-5
CIA backed Kurds, not for them to get autonomy, but to distract Iraqi army and make sure they didn’t overthrow the Shah of Iran.

Portugal 1974-76
comprehensive series of measures, including shows of force by NATO warships, against radical policies proposed by the army officers, who overthrew the previous Fascist dictatorship of General Salazar.

East Timor 1975-99
Backing of Indonesian invasion, which killed 1/3 of the island’s population.

Angola 1975-1980s
Angolan civil war, which was basically proxy war between US, China and South Africa on one hand and USSR and Cuba on the other.

Israeli State Terrorism in the Developing World

Lobster 13 published way back in the mid/late 1980s had the following review of Jan Nederveen Pieterse’s Israel’s State Terrorism and Counter-Insurgency in the Third World, published NECEF Publications in Ontario, Canada. It said

The first thing that should be said is that for someone for whom English is a second language, Pieterse writes really well. This is excellent, the perfect concise, detailed, documented exposition of the Israeli state’s profitable games of footsie with some of the most obnoxious regimes in the world. In South America, for example, that list includes Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, El Salvador and Guatemala.

The most plausible rationale for this apparently odd behaviour (odd in the sense that these state are famously sympathetic to neo-Fascists, harboured Nazis after WW2 etc) is that the Israeli state has hitched its wagon to US foreign policy interests and is thus paying the price, acting as a US surrogate in areas where overt US intervention is difficult.

Pieterse is highly critical of contemporary Israeli foreign policy and will no doubt be called an anti-Semite. He isn’t.

This review was published at about the same time Ronald Reagan was supporting the Fascist death squads in El Salvador, and hailed the murderous Contras in Nicaragua as ‘the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers’. The fact that those opposing the Israeli state because of its oppression of the Palestinians and collaboration with South American Fascists should be smeared as anti-Semites is nothing less than scandalous.

William Blum’s Awkward Questions for Obama on Foreign Policy

William Blum is a writer and campaigner against America’s barbarous and brutal foreign policy. As well as writing a series of books, he also produces the Anti-Empire Report on the web. In the latest issue, 141, he puts a series of awkward questions that should be asked of Obama regarding his foreign policy in the Middle East, but which won’t. Several of these are about the way America is determined to punish Syria, but does nothing about Saudi Arabia, which has done far more to support Islamist terrorism. He also points out just how much aid Turkey gives to the Islamists.

Which is most important to you – destroying ISIS, overthrowing Syrian president Assad, or scoring points against Russia?

Do you think that if you pointed out to the American people that Assad has done much more to aid and rescue Christians in the Middle East conflicts than any other area leader that this would lessen the hostility the United States public and media feel toward him? Or do you share the view of the State Department spokesperson who declared in September that “The Assad regime frankly is the root of all evil”?

Why does the United States maintain crippling financial sanctions and a ban on military aid to Syria, Cuba, Iran and other countries but not to Saudi Arabia?

What does Saudi Arabia have to do to lose its strong American support? Increase its torture, beheadings, amputations, whippings, stonings, punishment for blasphemy and apostasy, or forced marriages and other oppression of women and girls? Increase its financial support for ISIS and other jihadist groups? Confess to its role in 9-11? Attack Israel?

What bothers you more: The Saudi bombing of the people of Yemen or the Syrian bombing of the people of Syria?

Does the fact that ISIS never attacks Israel raise any question in your mind?

Does it concern you that Turkey appears to be more intent upon attacking the Kurds and the Russians than attacking ISIS? And provides medical care to wounded ISIS soldiers? Or that ISIS deals its oil on Turkish territory? Or that NATO-member Turkey has been a safe haven for terrorists from Libya, Chechnya, Qatar, and elsewhere? Or that last year Vice President Biden stated that Turkish president Erdogan’s regime was backing ISIS with “hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weapons”?

In the previous issue, 140, Blum points out how much aid the Western nations, as well as the Gulf states, have given ISIS, al-Qaeda and the other Islamist terrorists, and how they have used them against secular regimes. Like Gaddafi’s in Libya. He also suggests that the real reason for the attack on Syria is partly over control of another strategic oil pipeline.

The mainstream media almost never mentions the proposed Qatar natural-gas pipelines – whose path to Europe Syria has stood in the way of for years – as a reason for much of the hostility toward Syria. The pipelines could dethrone Russia as Europe’s dominant source of energy.

He also states that the real reason for the US’ hostility to Assad isn’t because he’s a vicious dictator, but because he’s independent and does not do what Washington tells him.

The United States, I suggest, is hostile to the Syrian government for the same reason it has been hostile to Cuba for more than half a century; and hostile to Venezuela for the past 15 years; and earlier to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia; and to Dominican Republic, Uruguay, and Chile; and so on continuing through the world atlas and history books.

What these governments have had in common can be summarized in a single word – independence … independence from American foreign policy; the refusal to be a client state of Washington; the refusal to be continuously hostile to Washington’s Officially Designated Enemies; insufficient respect and zeal for the capitalist way of life.

They’re at http://williamblum.org/aer/read/140

Go and read what’s really behind America’s and the Tories’ Middle Eastern policy; and http://williamblum.org/aer/read/141