They Don’t Like It Up 'Em – Dame Nancy Rothwell’s Complained About Me Calling Her A ‘Bastard’ But She Doesn’t Mind Being Called a Racist!

A month ago the Guardian reported Whitworth gallery director Alistair Hudson forced out over Palestinian statement. Manchester University did not deny the content of the article or dispute its accuracy. Their response:

We absolutely uphold academic freedom. Staffing matters are strictly internal to the university and we never comment on questions of this nature.”

which begged more questions than answers. One can only assume, since the University’s Vice Chancellor Dame Nancy Rothwell has repeatedly tried to suppress discussion about Zionism and Israel, on the anti-Semitic grounds that it may offend Jewish people, then she considers interfering with anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian meetings and the Forensic Architecture exhibition, to the extent of imposing her own chair on a meeting, consistent with academic freedom.

I posted a blog ‘Open Letter to Manchester University's Racist Vice-Chancellor Dame Nancy Rothwell’ on March 7 describing what had happened recently at the Whitworth Galley but also pointing out that in 2017, war criminal Israeli Ambassador Mark Regev had had a secret meeting with Rothwell and on this basis the University had censored the title of a talk given by Jewish Holocaust survivor, Marika Sherwood.

The Information about Regev’s meeting with Rothwell hadn’t been disclosed voluntarily. It had had to be dragged out of the university via a Freedom of Information request. The University had refused to accede to the FOI request and the Information Commissioner had to issue an order that they comply.

Even the Jewish Chronicle, which is hardly a pro-Palestinian paper, led with a story University censors Holocaust survivor's speech. The JC reported the details of interference by the Israeli Embassy:

after the Information Commissioner ruled the university had to comply with a Freedom of Information (FOI) request by a student to disclose “all correspondence between the University of Manchester and the Israeli lobby”.

The title, described by university officials as “unduly provocative”, was banned and conditions were imposed by the university before the talk could go ahead, including that it had to be recorded, and that only students and staff could attend.

Michael Freeman, the Israeli embassy’s counsellor for civil society affairs, contacted the university about the talk.

He claimed the title “could be considered antisemitic”, saying it breached the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, and would make Jewish students feel uncomfortable on campus.

He also criticised two speakers booked for a separate event.

Ms Sherwood’s talk went ahead with the amended title. She denied the original title was antisemitic.

According to the Guardian, she told the audience she was saved from the Nazis by Hungarian Christians who baptised her and provided her with documents saying she was not Jewish.

She said: “I was just speaking of my experience of what the Nazis were doing to me as a Jewish child. I can’t say I’m a Palestinian, but my experiences as a child are not dissimilar to what Palestinian children are experiencing now.”

In what was irrefutable evidence of how the IHRA Definition of Anti-Semitism chills free speech a spokesperson for the Israeli embassy told the JC:

Comparing Israel to the Nazi regime could reasonably be considered antisemitic, given the context, according to IHRA’s working definition of antisemitism, which is accepted by the British government, the Labour Party, the NUS, and most British universities.

Comparisons between Russia and Nazi Germany, Putin and Hitler are frequent at the moment. I’ve not heard anyone suggest that this is anti-Semitic, however stupid such comparisons may be, so why should comparisons with Israel be anti-Semitic? Is the Israeli state exempt from criticism or comparisons because it calls itself ‘Jewish’? Given that the Israeli state never hesitates to compare the Palestinians and its opponents with the Nazis it would appear that Israel has been given immunity by Rothwell.

In an email from Dianne Petcu, writing on behalf of Dame Rothwell, she writes that:

The University has not suppressed artistic and academic freedoms. Nor has it bowed to external pressures as has been suggested

The email was written in respect of the latest controversy over the University’s attempted censorship at the Whitworth Gallery, where they ordered a statement in support of the Palestinians to be removed (later they were forced to retract their edict) but it applies equally to the affair of Marika Sherwood five years ago. Not only is Rothwell a racist she is a liar, or rather she gets others to lie on her behalf.

On what basis did Rothwell take it upon herself to censor the title of a meeting by a Jewish Holocaust survivor at the best of someone who defended the machine gunning of 4 boys playing on the Gaza beach? If Rothwell had any honesty or integrity she would have resigned in shame after the revelations of Israeli Embassy interference and her acquiescence in the demands of Israel’s Embassy.

Unfortunately, like Boris Johnson and the British Establishment, Rothwell doesn’t understand the meaning of the word shame. She is one of those desiccated managers who uses platitudes to avoid telling the truth.

As readers of this blog know, I go out of my way not to offend anyone, but it would seem that some people are offended by the truth.

Following my blog a few readers emailed Manchester University. One such was Benjamin Treuhaft, who asked whether my open letter had been received. In reply Roz Dutton, the Executive Assistant to the President & Vice-Chancellor, made it clear that her boss didn’t appreciate my correspondence! Dutton wrote telling Ben that:

we should confront here that we object to being referred to as “bastards” and do not consider this to be an appropriate way to conduct an exchange

It should be noted that my blog was titled: ‘Open Letter to Manchester University's Racist Vice-Chancellor Dame Nancy Rothwell’. The only conclusion that can be drawn from this is that her ladyship doesn’t mind being called a racist, indeed she seems quite flattered at the description, but calling into question her parentage ruffles her feathers. I guess that’s what comes of having joined the aristocracy.

Incidentally I cannot find any reference in my correspondence to calling those involved ‘bastards’ although I would accept that it’s a fitting description!

On 9 March Dutton wrote to me to informing me that my

‘email and blog include content which is grossly inaccurate with many and widespread misrepresentations including of a personal nature. The University disputes the assertions you make.’

Dutton referred me to an anodyne statement on the university’s website which stated that

We work tirelessly to ensure that these rights [academic freedom, freedom of speech and equality responsibilities], ‘are considered fully and carefully.

Despite accusing me of ‘many and widespread misrepresentations’ Dutton saved herself the trouble of telling me what these ‘misrepresentations’ were.

On 10 March, Dianne Petcu also wrote to Michael Shanahan in which she referred to ‘unhelpful speculations and false representations about the Whitworth Art Gallery’. However Petcu went on to say that ‘we hope the following confirmations are helpful’.

Most of the ‘confirmations’ were simply repetitions of previous assertions as to how Manchester University spends all its time working ‘tirelessly to ensure that these rights, and our duties, are considered fully and carefully.’ Certainly Petcu has been working tirelessly trying to repair the reputation of Manchester University. However at the top of the list of confirmation was the following statement:

Alistair Hudson is the Director of the University of Manchester’s Whitworth Art Gallery.

Missing from the statement is any repetition of its previous statement to the Guardian that ‘Staffing matters are strictly internal to the university and we never comment on questions of this nature.” Instead there was a bland statement that Alistair Hudson remains in post.

The only conclusion that I can draw is that once again, faced with a storm of pressure, Manchester University and racist Rothwell have thought twice about sacking Alistair Hudson. All that is now left to do, if the University really wants to convince us that it has turned over a new leaf, is to confirm that Rothwell has been sent on a long sabbatical to her favourite country Israel.

I imagine that there is post vacant at Ariel University in the occupied West Bank for this apologist for Israeli Apartheid. The correspondence is below

Tony Greenstein

President

Tue, 8 Mar, 11:32 (3 days ago)

Dear Ben,

We have indeed received the letter from Tony Greenstein and a response will follow to him, though we should confront here that we object to being referred to as “bastards” and do not consider this to be an appropriate way to conduct an exchange.

With regard to the point that you make below which addresses the recent unhelpful speculations and false representations in the media about the Whitworth Art Gallery, the facts are:

Alistair Hudson is the Director of the University of Manchester’s Whitworth Art Gallery.

The University has not suppressed academic and artistic freedoms. Nor has it bowed to external pressures from UKLFI, or other external bodies as has been suggested.

Indeed, the University went to great lengths to ensure that the exhibition in question proceeded uncensored and remained opened for the full period that had been planned.

The University’s position was clearly articulated in a statement that accompanied the exhibition and is attached hereas areminder.

Museums and galleries have traditionally been a space of experimentation and challenge and we believe that the Whitworth is a place where we can debate, discuss and disagree well.

As a University and gallery, there are various rights and duties which apply across our work, including the protection of academic freedom, freedom of speech and expression and duties under equality laws (including the public sector equality duty.)

We work tirelessly to ensure that these rights, and our duties, are considered fully and carefully.

Yours sincerely,

Roz Dutton (Mrs.)

Benjamin Treuhaft

Tue, 8 Mar, 13:11 (3 days ago)

Dear Mrs. Dutton,

thanks for your comments on Tony’s accusations. I’m sorry that you didn’t like “bastard” - although I fear you’ll find there’s much worse in his letter. Did The Guardian and all the artists withdrawing their work from the museum get it completely wrong about Alistair Hudson’s future? That would be great!

Thanks,

Ben

>>Wed, 9 Mar, 10:09

Dear Mr Greenstein,

We write further to your email dated 7 March 2022 addressed to the University’s President and Vice-Chancellorand in connection with the corresponding blog published on your website on the same date.

The University recognises and embraces the rights of freedom of speech and expression. However, your email and blog include content which is grossly inaccurate with many and widespread misrepresentations including of a personal nature. The University disputes the assertions you make.

A copy of the University’s statement issued following recent speculative and false representations in the media about the Whitworth Art Gallery is accessible via the following link: https://www.staffnet.manchester.ac.uk/news/display/?id=27770

Yours sincerely,

Roz Dutton (Mrs.)

To: <president@manchester.ac.uk>

cc. The Chancellor <chancellor@manchester.ac.uk>, "Patrick Hackett (REGISTRAR)"<patrick.hackett-REGISTRAR@manchester.ac.uk>, UoM correspondence replies <correspondence@manchester.ac.uk>, Nalin Thakkar <n.thakker@manchester.ac.uk>, Luke Georghiou <luke.georghiou@manchester.ac.uk>

Dear Ms Dutton,

Thank you for your email of 9 March.

You say that my email and blog were 'grossly inaccurate' but you carefully avoided taking the opportunity to enlighten me as to what those inaccuracies might be.

You also say that Manchester University ‘recognises and embraces the rights of freedom of speech and expression’. I can only say that if this is true then you have a strange way of demonstrating it.

If there was any truth in your statement then you would not have embraced the IHRA Definition of Anti-Semitism whose sole purpose is to conflate anti-Zionism and support for the Palestinians with anti-Semitism. I doubt if even your distinguished Vice-Chancellor can tell us what the 38 word definition actually means:

“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

This definition has been heavily criticised by a range of legal and academic scholars. David Feldman, Director of the only academic institute in Britain for the Study of anti-Semitism, described it as ‘bewilderingly imprecise’. Sir Stephen Sedley, a Jewish former Court of Appeal judge stated that it’s not even a definition, being indefinite. Geoffrey Robertson QC, a prominent human rights barrister’s opinion was that it was ‘unfit for purpose.’ Indeed the very person who drafted it, Kenneth Stern, in evidence to Congress, described how it was being used to ‘chill’ free speech. Manchester University proves this.

The IHRA is the quintessential example of anti-Palestinian racism. It defines the Palestinian experience of Zionism and Israeli racism through the prism of ‘anti-Semitism’. It presupposes that when Palestinians oppose the demolition of their homes and confiscation of their land that they do it out of hatred of Jews.

The IHRA says that calling the Israeli state racist is anti-Semitic. So the practice of confining Israeli Palestinians to 2% of Israel’s land and refusing them admission to hundreds of Jewish only communities is not racist? Why? If the same happened in reverse and an English National Fund denied Jews access to ‘Christian’ land would that not be anti-Semitic?

UK Lawers for Israel statement saying they wrote to Rothwell ‘suggesting that the University should consider appropriate disciplinary action’ against Hudson

To take another example I can go, at any time I choose, under the Law of Return to Israel and claim citizenship whereas Palestinians born there not only have no such right but those living there are having that right removed. Maybe the good Dame can explain why this is not racist?

Vice-Chancellor Dame Nancy Rothwell was responsible for the introduction and implementation of the IHRA at Manchester University. You chose the tender feeling of groups like the far-right UK Lawyers for Israel over those of Palestinian students.

Your decision to adopt a definition of ‘anti-Semitism’ that chills free speech was taken as a result of government pressure. You did not have the courage to resist. So your statement that you ‘embrace’freedom of speech and expression is just hot air, devoid of any substance.

If you were serious about freedom of speech you would junk the IHRA and adopt the Jerusalem Declaration on Anti-Semitism which has been drawn up by Israeli and Jewish academics. It carefully avoids conflating support for Palestine with anti-Semitism.

Dame Rothwell was responsible for a Jewish holocaust survivor, Marika Sherwood, being forced to change the title of a speech she gave, ‘“You’re doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to me” because Israeli Ambassador Mark Regev, whose main job was to lie on behalf of his country, objected. How is this compatible with your lofty declarations?

Most reasonable people would say that Ms Sherwood was in a better position to know whether or not Israeli behaviour resembled Nazi behaviour. Instead of indulging Regev you should have sent him away with a flea in his ear.

I have read the university statement and it is clearly inaccurate as you did try to prevent a statement on Palestine accompanying the Exhibition of Forensic Architecture and you only backed down when FA itself withdrew the exhibition.

If you dispute the claimthat UKLFI asked for disciplinary action to be taken against Mr Hudson and you obliged them then why you don’t simply go on record and deny it? There is a long and shameful record of academic institutions in this country collaborating with apartheid, be it in South Africa or Israel. You seem determined to continue that tradition.

It is clear that the Vice-Chancellor of Manchester University, Dame Nancy Rothwell, is an unashamed racist who, given the choice between Palestinian students and the Israel lobby prefers the latter. That is your misfortune.

Dame Rothwell’s behaviour is also racist because she subscribes to the canard that criticism of Zionism or Israel’s behaviour will breach the university’s public sector equality duty. UKLFI said that support for Palestinians “seems designed to provoke racial discord” but this only demonstrates that Zionism and anti-Semitism are two sides of the same coin. Support for the Palestinians and opposition to Zionism has nothing whatever to do with anti-Semitism and any attempt to connect the two is itself anti-Semitic.

It is clearly time that the good Dame moved on to greener pastures. Manchester University is surely, after 12 years, entitled to a Vice Chancellor who is an anti-racist?

Yours sincerely,

Tony Greenstein

From:Dianne Petcu <dianne.petcu@manchester.ac.uk> on behalf of The Chancellor <chancellor@manchester.ac.uk>
Sent: 10 March 2022 14:27
To: Michael Shanahan
Subject: RE: The current status of your Whitworth Director , Alistair Hudson.

Dear Mr Shanahan,

Thank you for your further email. I would like to refer you to our latest statement below which addresses your queries.

Following the recent unhelpful speculations and false representations about the Whitworth Art Gallery we hope the following confirmations are helpful:

Alistair Hudson is the Director of the University of Manchester’s Whitworth Art Gallery.

The University has not suppressed artistic and academic freedoms. Nor has it bowed to external pressures as has been suggested.

Indeed, the University went to great lengths to ensure that the exhibition in question proceeded uncensored and remained opened for the full period that had been planned.

Museums and galleries have traditionally been a space of experimentation and challenge and we believe that the Whitworth is a place where we can debate, discuss and disagree well.

We work tirelessly to ensure that these rights, and our duties, are considered fully and carefully.

In summary, we can assure you that, together with my colleagues in the University, we are committed to ensuring that the Gallery’s work and reputation goes from strength to strength.

Best wishes
Dianne

How Disabled People Were Singled Out as part of the Austerity Offensive

SOCIALIST DISABILITY GROUP MEETING

Register here:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYpdemgqD0qHtC2Q-lBqGAVoJCAAKZMLXf3

The Socialist Disability Group (SDG) is holding an online meeting on Friday 25 March called “SHAFTED — how disabled people found themselves on the front line.”

Disabled people have been the main sufferers of the pandemic, of the austerity that came before it and generally of government policies. Now, new legislation will cut benefits, make it more difficult to apply for help and cut many off from vital NHS services through privatisation and enormous waiting lists. This can not go on. As Christine Tongue of the SDG and the meeting’s organiser said:

We have to take action. We need a bold, grassroots fightback which will make our presence visible. It’s too easy for the world — especially politicians — to ignore people with disabilities. We’re not going to let that happen.

The main speaker at the meeting will be Paula Peters of Disabled People Against the Cuts, a group known for taking direct action and mounting imaginative protests.

But a special feature of the event will be contributions from the floor. Christine said:

We will have members of our network telling their own stories and saying what they would like politicians to do about their problems. But able or disabled, we welcome all to this meeting.

Disability and illness is a lottery. Anyone can get it. The point about a civilised society is that we recognise that we have a duty of care to those who fall victim to disability.

My first experience of disability was when I was told I had Hepatitis C in 2012. I went on to experience chronic liver disease and cirrhosis of the liver. I had had hepatitis for 20+ years. I was however lucky in the sense that new non-interferon treatments were coming on stream.

Interferon, which was the only method of treating Hep C previously is an extremely toxic drug. I was first treated with it in 2013, along with 2 other drugs, and after a couple of months I discovered that although it was killing the virus it was also killing me. I spent 18 days in intensive care as a result.

In the summer of 2014 I was one of an initial 500 people nationally, part of a special government programme, who were judged to be the most sick, who were put on the new Harvoni treatment. You had to take 1 tablet a day for 3 month. Each tablet cost $1000 dollars even though it cost $1 to make. As Gilead Sciences, the company which made the drug freely admitted, they were charging what the market would bear, even though their pricing policy meant that thousands of people died as a result. What was worse was that most of the research for the drug had been carried out at Cardiff University. This is capitalism at its rawest. See Big Pharma Prepares to Profit From the Coronavirus

From 2013 to 2015 when I had a liver transplant I experienced what it was like to be old and frail. Taking more than a few steps was an effort. Walking to the shops was an ordeal. Taking part in political protests was simply impossible and I had to withdraw from the Sodastream protests that Brighton PSC were engaged in.

My first consciousness of what it was like to be disabled though was when I was Vice-President Welfare of Brighton Polytechnic Student Union, some 45 years ago! Disabled students who felt left out by the union suggested that the best way of understanding what they experienced was for me, as the responsible official, to navigate a campus in a wheelchair. Falmer was chosen as it was the most hilly.

It was an eye opening experience to realise the difficulties in reaching for handles that were too high or doors that were too heavy to open or steps that made even getting into a building difficult. Toilets were even more of an obstacle.

Things have improved since that time. Then disability toilets were the exception. Automatic doors had not yet made an appearance. Ramps instead of or in addition to stairs were very much the exception. But if some of the worst obstacles have been eliminated (& see Christine Tongue’s article for the Isle of Thanet News below) then the attacks on disabled people’s right to a decent living have not abated.

People won’t remember that in the 1970s there was no disability discrimination legislation. That was only introduced under John Major’s government as a result of our membership of the European Union. And the first Act was made as weak as possible. It was, for example, possible to justify both direct and indirect discrimination on grounds of cost whereas today direct discrimination can never be justified. The same was true when age discrimination laws were introduced.

Disability benefits have been under attack ever since the introduction of Disability Living Allowance in 1992, which unified all previous disability benefits and extended them to those with mental health difficulties. DLA was a good benefit because it was not means tested and because other earnings were disregarded. That was why it soon came under attack from New Labour. A campaign by the Daily Mail and the tabloids was launched against ‘bogus’ disability claimants who we were told were bankrupting the country.

All Work Tests were introduced run by companies such as ATOS with the clear purpose of getting as many people as possible off benefits. Incapacity Benefit was abolished by New Labour and towards the end of the Labour Government a Green Paper was issued by the Health Secretary Andy Burnham which floated the option of abolition of DLA for the over 60s (after all getting old means getting infirm!) or at the least abolishing Attendance Allowance. Burnham himself refused to deny that these options were on the table.

It was New Labour that set the scene for the Cameron Government and Ian Duncan Smith’s attack on the living standards of claimants generally and disabled claimants in particular. Introduced by the 2012 Welfare Reform Act it was a replacement for DLA for all those above the age of 16. It was meant to cut the cost of DLA by 20% whereas in fact it has risen.

Now that the COVID pandemic is considered by the government to have gone away (which it hasn’t) we can expect further government attempts to cut and restrict disability benefits as they embark on a new period of austerity.

Below is a lightly edited article by Ellen Clifford in Tribune in November 2020 and an article by Christine Tongue, of the Socialist Disability Group and a Steering Committee member of the Socialist Labour Network.

Tony Greenstein

Britain’s War on Disabled People

Ellen Clifford

In 2016, the UN said austerity had created a ‘human catastrophe’ for Britain’s disabled — but the last decade has also seen unprecedented organising to fight back.

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

Prior to 2010, the UK government was known as a world leader on disability. A decision was made under the Coalition government and carried forward by successive Conservative administrations that this progress had gone too far. This marked the first time in the history of modern social policy that things went backwards for disabled people. This was done in order to make disabled people pay for a financial crisis that they did not cause. It needed to be concealed from the public. The way in which right-wing politicians and the media achieved this was by creating a narrative that blamed disabled people themselves, purposefully stoking fires of division and hatred.

What the government did is one half of the story. The other half is the resistance mounted by disabled people themselves. If the Tories imagined that disabled people would be easy targets for their brutal cuts, they were wrong. Again and again, the government was forced into U-turns and concessions. These discrete wins along the way have not been able to halt the overall regression in material conditions for disabled people, wiping away the hard-won gains of generations of disabled campaigners before us. After more than a decade of tireless resistance against austerity and welfare reform, the odds against us have grown even greater.

Targeting Disabled People

In 2016, the UK became the first country in the world to be found guilty of grave and systematic violations of disabled people’s rights. This was the finding of an unprecedented investigation by the UN Disability Committee into the impacts of welfare reform and austerity measures. What was of concern was the rolling back of the rights of disabled people, driven forward, the inquiry revealed, by deliberate legislative and policy choices.

Regressive measures, badged as government ‘reforms’, were pushed through by the Coalition government in the face of sustained opposition. As a consequence, disabled people experienced negative changes within all areas of our lives. In 2018, the Equality and Human Rights Commission warned that

‘[d]isabled people are falling further behind in many areas, with many disparities with non-disabled people increasing rather than reducing’, and they called on the government to urgently adopt an ‘acute focus on improving life in Britain for disabled people’.

Measures implemented in the name of austerity and welfare reform have had a disproportionate impact on disabled people. This was the truth behind David Cameron’s lie that ‘we are all in it together’. Cuts to benefits (excluding pensions) and local government made up 50 per cent of the 2010 austerity plan. Disability and carers benefits make up about 40 per cent of non-pension benefits and social care makes up 60 per cent of local government expenditure. Thus, the decision to target spending reductions in these two areas automatically led to extensive cuts to income and services for disabled people.

The combination of cuts in benefits and services was found to hit disabled people on average nine times harder than most other citizens in research carried out by the Centre for Welfare Reform. For disabled people with the highest support needs, the burden of cuts was found to be nineteen times that placed on most other citizens. Contrary to the government’s repeated claim to be ‘protecting’ and ‘targeting resources’ on ‘the most vulnerable in society’, the cuts were effectively aimed at disabled people.

At the same time, decisions were made to benefit the rich and help households with the highest incomes. A 2019 report from the Fabian Society identified how changes to tax and benefit policies since 2010 have contributed to Britain’s crisis of inequality, revealing that the government is providing more financial support for the richest 20 per cent of households than the poorest 20 per cent.

Human Catastrophe

Evidence before us now and in our inquiry procedure as published in our 2016 report reveals that social cut policies have led to a human catastrophe in your country, totally neglecting the vulnerable situation people with disabilities find themselves in.

– Theresia Degener, chair of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

These words were addressed to representatives of the UK government during the concluding session of a routine public examination of the UK under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It took place less than a year after the government dismissed the findings of the committee’s special investigation.

Death and suicides linked to cuts and benefit changes are the most extreme example of the human cost of austerity and welfare reform, but there have been many other terrible impacts, including rising poverty, food-bank use, debt, survival crime, and homelessness, in addition to dramatically escalating levels of mental distress. A study by academics from Liverpool and Oxford Universities published in 2015 found that reassessments for Incapacity Benefit from 2010 to 2013 were associated with an extra 590 suicides, 279,000 additional cases of self-reported mental health problems and the prescribing of a further 752,000 anti-depressants. Victims of welfare reform who have died or taken their lives as a direct consequence of benefit cuts are now a common item on daily media coverage.

Legislation and policies that have inflicted such suffering have also largely failed to deliver their stated aims. The transition from Disability Living Allowance (DLA) to Personal Independence Payment (PIP) was intended to save 20 per cent compared with DLA remaining in place, but it appears to have cost around 15 to 20 per cent more. A report from the Office for Budget Responsibility published in January 2019 estimated an overspend on the DLA/PIP budget of £2 billion, leaving an estimated £4.2 billion shortfall when compared to the original savings target.

On a societal level, cuts to local authority budgets threaten disabled people’s continued existence in the community alongside non-disabled people. Funding cuts to education and social care and a failure to invest in accessible social housing are leading us towards physical re-segregation and institutionalisation. Alongside this, there has been a fuelling of attitudes that ‘other’ and thereby marginalise disabled people: on the one hand, growing disadvantage, resulting from cuts to state-funded support and leading to greater reliance on charity, has encouraged a pitying view of disability; on the other, hatred and hostility towards disabled people have been enflamed by anti-benefit-claimant rhetoric used by the government to justify welfare reform.

Political Fallout

A government does not attack its own citizens en masse without consequence. The impacts of austerity and welfare reform on disabled people have played a significant but overlooked role in the political upheaval of the last ten years. In terms of retaining control of Westminster, the Tories were largely correct in their assumption that — as Iain Duncan Smith observed — ‘[disabled people] don’t vote for us’, and thus that their attacks on disabled people would not affect their chances of re-election. Nevertheless, Cameron’s miscalculation on the EU referendum can be attributed to his failure to adequately understand the impacts of his policies and the bitter anger towards anything regarded as ‘establishment’.

Welfare reform has politicised large swathes of people. Experiences where individuals have their benefits stopped are obviously traumatic for those affected, but all benefit claimants are now subject to a benefit assessment approach which is personally humiliating. Trauma, confusion, and anger can turn to demoralisation and distress, but they can also lead to politicisation and activism. Research by the University of Essex and Inclusion London found that, in order to make sense of their situation, claimants came to think about their difficulties within the context of politics and Tory attacks on disabled people. Those who adopted an attitude of resistance towards the system and/or became politically engaged were better able to restore a sense of self-esteem that had been taken from them by their interactions with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

Issues affecting disabled people have the potential to cause far greater social upheaval than the public and political profile of disability suggests. Disabled people make up 22 per cent of the population, a figure that is often underestimated. We are geographically and generationally dispersed across the population. Issues relevant to us also affect our friends, family, neighbours, and the range of workers whose jobs are linked to disability. Lack of recognition for the social significance of disability issues within politics and the media reinforces in those experiencing them the idea that their lives are not valued by those in power, making them hungry for a change from the status quo.

Forefront of the Fightback

With the Disabled People’s Movement (DPM) in decline from the mid-1990s, resistance from 2010 onwards can be characterised as a return to grassroots activism. In a conscious departure from the identity politics era of disability campaigning, new groups such as Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) were set up with the explicit aim of building alliances and joining the wider anti-capitalist movement.

One of the ways in which the British government was able to get away with making war on disabled people was by the sheer volume and complexity of the measures they unleashed. Where disabled people and their allies succeeded in holding them back was through intense and varied activity operating on many fronts and involving many people, each making an invaluable contribution in their own way. Resistance has used every tool at its disposal — from research, lobbying, protests, endless legal challenges, awareness-raising, and direct action. Collectively, the stakes are too high to give up and give in.

Since 2010, campaigners have won significant victories such as forcing Atos, a global corporation with a revenue measured in billions, out of its contract to deliver the Work Capability Assessment. The government has been free to ignore the UN disability committee findings but it was a considerable achievement for grassroots disabled activists to secure the unprecedented special investigation that took place from 2015–16. The findings served to validate the experiences of millions of disabled people under attack from their own government. The government’s failure to slash the DLA/PIP budget can be attributed to the hard work of campaigners, claimants, advisers, and public lawyers who have consistently resisted attempts by the DWP to introduce measures limiting eligibility for the benefit.

Disabled activists have been at the forefront of the anti-austerity movement. Despite our efforts, the direction of government policy is further regression of disabled people’s living standards. One of the impacts of this is that it is becoming harder for disabled people to mobilise resistance.

The War Goes On

In December 2019, the most right-wing government in modern British history was re-elected with a significantly increased majority.

This was disastrous news for disabled people. Under Boris Johnson, the Conservatives now had the parliamentary power not simply to carry on in the same direction with the continuation of policies that have spread inequality, poverty, and immiseration, but to ramp up their attacks and implement welfare reform measures that they were previously beaten back from achieving.

An early indication of what the election result meant for disabled people was the decision announced in the New Year’s honours list to award Iain Duncan Smith a knighthood. Duncan Smith had not held a ministerial appointment since his period as secretary of state for work and pensions from 2010 to 2016. The honour effectively endorsed the dismantling of the social security safety net over which he presided. It also suggested full government commitment to rolling out Duncan Smith’s big idea, Universal Credit, in spite of the well-evidenced harms it has caused.

Into this picture, we then had the Covid-19 outbreak. The pandemic exposed existing inequalities within society even more starkly than a decade of austerity and welfare reform had. Disabled people were at the same time most at risk from coronavirus and also largely ignored in official responses to the pandemic. At a time of great uncertainty and anxiety, disabled activists and health workers had to challenge NHS guidelines that stated that disabled people were not a priority for life-saving treatment. Two thirds of deaths from coronavirus in the UK are disabled people. Between 15 March and 2 May, 22,500 disabled people died from Covid-19 compared to 15,500 non-disabled people.

Campaigners suspect that Boris Johnson’s original strategy of seeking to create ‘herd immunity’ and the government’s failure to do more to protect disabled people was part of a deliberate plan to remove from society those whose lives are deemed to represent a cost burden on the state. This is not inconceivable. Both Johnson and his close adviser Dominic Cummings have expressed views described by researcher-activist Roddy Slorach as ‘textbook examples of eugenic opinion’.

Speaking to city bankers during his time as mayor of London, Johnson said:

Whatever you think of the value of IQ tests it is surely relevant to a conversation about equality that as many as 16 per cent of our species have an IQ below 85 while about 2 per cent have an IQ above 130 … the harder you shake the pack the easier it will be for some cornflakes to get to the top. And for one reason or another — boardroom greed or, as I am assured, the natural and God-given talent of boardroom inhabitants — the income gap between the top cornflakes and the bottom cornflakes is getting wider than ever.

Inequality is a state that Johnson and Cummings both regard as natural and even desirable for the functioning of society. It is nevertheless important to remember that the war against disabled people cannot just be attributed to individual ministers or Tory governments. Its existence is bound up with the intrinsic relationship between disability and capitalism.

What has happened since 2010 is a sharp reflection of the fundamentally important role that the category of disability plays within capitalist political economy, where it serves to identify the less productive members of society and enables a ‘weeding out’ from the rest of the population. Interrogating the relationship between disability and capitalism is a powerful way to expose the inequalities and cruelty of the system of exploitation under which we live. It is no wonder then that disability issues are so hidden and misunderstood within mainstream society: they need to be shrouded in myths and misconceptions in order to obscure the true nature of capitalism.

Those of us who want a fairer world must fight for improvements in the living conditions of disabled people as part of — not in isolation from — the rest of the working class. But our resistance must also be consciously situated within the struggle to transcend capitalism itself. Only then can we guarantee freedom from oppression and a society where diversity is truly valued.

Opinion with Christine Tongue: Mentioning the unmentionables

Look away now if you feel squeamish about talk of lavs, pants and pads and toilet issues in general.

My friend Mandy who has an undiagnosed neurological problem, said to me “I sometimes can’t do two things at the same time. Standing up from the loo and pulling up my pants was just too much today. I fell flat on my face — hence the new bruises!”

My friend Sue, wheelchair user, has to use incontinence pads at night when getting to the loo involves hoists and transfers to a special bathroom wheel chair. But the pads she could get free from NHS supplies are not comfortable or adequate. She has to buy her own. A large weekly expense.

Some disabled people have catheters into their bladder —you pee into a bag beside your bed. It’s convenient but leaves you prone to infection.

I’m not at that stage yet, but with my failing legs and painful back, going to the loo is now a much more difficult process. Social services have provided metal surrounds and raised toilet seats for my home. But going outside your house is a minefield.

I’ve just had to get my long suffering partner to carry one of my toilet frames to a friends house. Last time I used his loo I nearly fell over trying to hold onto his bath and a door handle —the door opened, I lurched into the cupboard etc etc. You get the picture….

Why aren’t all houses designed with potential disability in mind. Whose mad idea was it to put in low toilets in modern bathrooms with no grab rails around them? Most people are taller than me so have a long way to haul themselves up from a low seat.

But public loos are not ideal. They may have wheelchair on the door but it doesn’t mean all disabled people can use the space.

The disabled loo in Broadstairs harbour needs a “radar” key to get in —just in case you able hooligans go in and use it for antisocial behaviour I guess. It’s a kind of master key for most disabled public loos. Nothing electronic about it and anyone can buy one. But for me, even though I now have a radar key I bought on the internet, I would have to stand outside, reach for my key, put my sticks in one hand, or prop them up on the wall in order to use the key. Mandy might have fallen over by now.

You get inside and need to lock the door. Another balancing act. But oh joy, two bars on each side of the loo to grab and lift yourself up with. I wonder how others get on with washing their hands. For me it’s another balance problem with no stick to lean on and sometimes a distance to the hand dryer.

The other disabled loo at Broadstairs bandstand doesn’t need a key and is easy to get into on my scooter — which gives you a safe stable object to hang onto. Which you need because there’s a lack of grab rails and the hand dryer is the other side of the room from the sink. Take a clean hanky and give it a miss is my advice.

People using the dryer will inevitably drop water on the floor. A wet floor and sticks is not good! Which is why I like to take the scooter in with me. I can’t risk slipping. My bones are rebellious enough without shaking them up sliding on a wet floor.

What I’m talking about is often down to basic design. You won’t fall over if you have a grab rail in the right place. If you need pads and special pants let’s make sure the people who need them get the best available. As for public lavs, let’s make them accessible, clean, safe. Not locked! Why not?

Putin has fallen into the trap that Biden laid for him

Scott Horton’s speech to the Libertarian Party of Utah and Mises Caucus in Salt Lake City, Utah 2/26/22

See my article in Weekly WorkerKey issue is not Russia

It goes without saying that socialists unreservedly condemn Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, with the terrible devastation and suffering that they have inflicted. We should have no hesitation in calling for the immediate withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine. Both the regimes in Moscow and Kiev are rotten and anti-working class. We are in favour of working class unity between the people of both countries not a war which lines up workers behind their ‘leaders’.

Like his fellow Zionists, Zelensky is koshering Ukraine's neo-Nazis

We should also support, without hesitation, the anti-war protestors in Russia itself and condemn the repression by the gangster regime that Putin represents with his new law imposing 15 year gaol sentences on those who contradict Russian propaganda. But what Putin is doing in Russia Zelensky is doing in Ukraine with the banning of all independent media and now the outlawingof 11 left-wing parties, including the Communist Party of Ukraine. Our ‘free media’ of course condemns the Russian legislation whilst failing to mention Zelensky’s dictatorial actions whilst, at the same time, supporting Boris Johnson giving the police powers to close down ‘noisy’ protests.

It is not however enough to condemn Putin’s actions. We also need to understand why Russia invaded Ukraine. Was it because Putin was hell bent on recreating a Greater Russia and used the question of Ukraine’s potential membership of NATO as an excuse? Is it merely a question of an inter-imperialist war as the Socialist Workers Party, the Alliance for Workers Liberty, Anti-Capitalist Resistance and others on the imperialist left, like Novara Media, maintain? It is easy to describe what is happening as an inter-imperialist war because it saves people the trouble of analysing what caused it. It also saves them from having to oppose their own ruling class.

The most precise and succinct analysis of the causes of the war is provided by Professor John Mearsheimer of Chicago, a bourgeois political scientist. For Mersheimer the United States is choosing the wrong target which in his opinion is China. To him the present strategy is simply driving Russia into the arms of the Chinese.

Mersheimer first came to prominence with an article in London Review of Books ‘The Israel Lobby’ written jointly with Stephen Walt from Harvard University, which questioned the utility to US foreign policy interests of the Israeli state.

Mearsheimer is no socialist (though he supported Bernie Sanders). He is from what is known as the Realist School of Political Science and is on the fringes of the US political establishment. Unlike the policy wonks and foreign policy think tanks that adorn the political scene in Washington. Mearsheimer prides himself on taking a long view of American strategic interests rather than the short term approach of the military-industrial complex and its representatives in the Democrats and Republicans.

I recommend two talks by Mearsheimer. The first lecture was given to students at King’s College, London on February 21, three days before the war began. The second lecture was given on March 6, ten days into the war, with Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst and Head of their Russia desk.

To understand the conflict in Ukraine today one has to go back to the talks held with Russian leaders in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact and German reunification. James Baker, U.S. Secretary of State gave his famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990. It was part of a ‘cascade of assurances’ given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout German unification, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents in the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

The first such assurance was given by West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher on January 31, 1990. The U.S. Embassy in Bonn informed Washington that Genscher made clear

“that the changes in Eastern Europe and the German unification process must not lead to an ‘impairment of Soviet security interests.’ Therefore, NATO should rule out an ‘expansion of its territory towards the east, i.e. moving it closer to the Soviet borders.’”

Genscher even proposedleaving East German territory out of NATO’s military structures in a unified Germany.

The idea of special status for the territory of the German Democratic Republic was codified in the final German unification treaty signed on September 12, 1990. The promises about not expanding NATO closer to the Soviet borders is written down, not in treaties, but in memoranda of conversation between the Soviets and Western leaders (Genscher, Kohl, Baker, Gates, Bush, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Major, Woerner, and others) offering assurances throughout 1990 and into 1991 about protecting Soviet security interests and including the USSR in new European security structures.

Not once, but three times, Baker gave a pledge of “not one inch eastward” in his meeting with Gorbachev in the February 9, 1990, meeting. He agreed with Gorbachev’s statement in reply that “NATO expansion is unacceptable.” Baker reported his conversation to Helmut Kohl, the German leader

And then I put the following question to him [Gorbachev]. Would you prefer to see a united Germany outside of NATO, independent and with no U.S. forces or would you prefer a unified Germany to be tied to NATO, with assurances that NATO’s jurisdiction would not shift one inch eastward from its present position?

As late as March 1991, according to the diary of the British ambassador to Moscow, John Major personally assured Gorbachev,

We are not talking about the strengthening of NATO.” Subsequently, when Soviet defense minister Marshal Dmitri Yazov asked Major about East European leaders’ interest in NATO membership, the British leader responded, “Nothing of the sort will happen.

There can be no doubt whatsoever of the promises made at the time of the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and nor can there be any doubt about the fact that these promises were broken under first Clinton, then Bush and Obama.

Yet despite these promises the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary joinedNATO in 1999 followed by Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and the Baltic Republics in 2004. In 2009 Albania and Croatia followed suit and in 2017 Montenegro joined. The last member to join was North Macedonia in 2020.

Not for nothing was Britain, at the height of the British Empire, known as ‘Perfidious Albion’. The same could be said of the major western powers. There isn’t a promise that the imperialist powers didn’t break nor a pledge that they kept.

At the NATO Summit in Bucharest in April 2008 a statementwas issued, over the objection of France and Germany, which

welcomed Ukraine's and Georgia's Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership and agreed that these countries will become members of NATO.

For Russia this was a step too far. It was clear that NATO’s strategy was to surround Russia as part of the United States goal of remaining the world’s imperialist hegemon. One of the results of the NATO summit’s declaration was the war which broke out in Georgia in August of that year when Russia intervened on the side of separatists in order to carve out the state of South Ossetia.

It was becoming clear to Russia that the plan outlinedby Zbigniew Brzeziński, another ‘realist’ and Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of State, in his book ‘The Grand Chessboard’, that Russia would be divided into 3 separate republics, was on NATO’s, i.e. the United States agenda.

The next milestone was in Ukraine itself in 2014. In 2010 Viktor Yakunovich was elected as President. Courted by the European Union and Russia, Yakunovich chose the latter after having initially pushed for closer relations with the EU. The IMF had played hardball and the economy was almost bankrupt.

The reaction from the United States and the EU was not long in coming. They sponsored the Maiden coup, funding the fascists of the Right Sector and other groups which they armed. Peaceful demonstrators in Maiden Square were shot, not by the Police but by armed neo-Nazi groups. The United States, on the admission of Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, had pumped in over $5 billion to ensure that Yakunovich was overthrown. Victoria Nuland was caught on tape openly interfering in the governance of Ukraine.

All of this is documentedin Oliver Stone’s documentaryUkraine on Fire, which quite naturally in the present propaganda war offensive has been covered with a Youtube health warning:

The following content has been identified by the YouTube community as inappropriate or offensive to some audiences.

The advent of a new regime in Ukraine under the corrupt Petro Poroshenko saw the abolition of Russia language rights affecting nearly half Ukraine’s population. It also saw attacks by fascist militias on Russians in the Donbass. It was therefore no surprise that parts of Eastern Ukraine broke away to form the republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, with the aid of the Russian military.

For the last 8 years there has been an undeclared war against these republics by the fascist Azov battalion, during which 14,000 people have been killed.

It was not as if the United States had not been warned. George Kennan, an American diplomat and an advocate of containment of the USSR, made his own viewsclear on what was likely to happen if a policy of NATO expansion took place. It would be

the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era. Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.

Likewise the current director of the CIA, William Burns, saidin 2008 that for Russia, “Ukraine’s accession to NATO is the brightest of all red lines.” He went on to say that:

“I have not yet found anyone who would consider Ukraine in NATO as something other than a direct challenge to Russia’s interests,” he said.

It is difficult to disagree with any of these prescient sentiments. But then, as Dean Acheson, Truman’s Secretary of State remarked"Mr Kennan, in my opinion, has never understood the realities of power relationships."

This is the background and context to the present war. However as we know, the BBC and the mainstream media always omit anything except the most immediate. They have a ‘bias against understanding’. And just in case an alternative view might gain currency, RT was banned by that faithful servant of the British government, Ofcom, for bias. The BBC’s ceaseless propaganda, with its pro-American experts never presents an alternative narrative.

It should therefore be clear that much of the British left, by touting the idea that what is involved is an inter-imperialist war, are really guilty of bowing before the ‘patriotic’ hysteria that is current. Instead of directing their fire at their own ruling class and its imperialist policies they pretend that both parties are guilty. This has a name – social chauvinism.

A cursory examination of the facts above makes it clear that Russia’s war on Ukraine is a defensive war borne out of the fear of encirclement. One only has to think back to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 when the United States threatened to use nuclear weapons if Soviet missiles were not removed from Cuban soil. What the United States is proposing is to site nuclear missiles on Russia’s borders.

Economically Russia ranks11^th in the world, with a total GDP of $1.65 trillion behind South Korea. The United States has a GDP of $23 trillion.Put bluntly, because of the disastrous privatisation of its nationalised industries and Putin’s support for the oligarchs, Russia does not have the economic capacity to maintain a war machine like the United States. Russia has 1 overseas based in Syria compared to the United States’s 750+ bases.

We can see the efficacy of Russia’s military machine now that it has got bogged down in the invasion of Ukraine. The key issue today is not Russian expansion but the expansion of the United States informal empire.

You might think that the abolition of NATO would be a prime demand of socialists yet at the Brighton and Hove Trades Council the SWP motion on Ukraine merely called for NATO not to expand into Eastern Europe. Likewise they had nothing to say on the question of sanctions, which is war by another means. The Anti-Capitalist Resistance group actually supports sanctions and the AWL has adopted NATO as another progressive bedfellow alongside the Zionist state of Israel.

What is most striking about the war in Ukraine is the breathtaking hypocrisy of those who solemnly condemn the invasion of a sovereign nation, invoking the UN Charter no less, but who have nothing to say about the war in Yemen where Saudi Arabia has been attacking and bombing civilians for seven years. The United Nations has estimatedthat 370,000 people have died as a result of the Saudi instigated war yet neither this nor the 81 executions in one day has prevented Boris Johnson going cap in hand to this feudal monarchy in his efforts to secure increased Saudi oil supplies.

And what of ‘democratic’ Ukraine itself? Well Zelensky has closed down all opposition media, gaoled journalists and has now suspended11 left-wing parties including Platform for Life which has 44 seats in the Ukrainian parliament. Indeed in the 27 years between 1991 and 2018 66 journalists have been murdered.

We see the open arming of the neo-Nazi Azov battalion and other fascist militia by the West, with Congress repealingat the end of 2015 a ban on the supply of weapons to neo-Nazi militia. Although they have little support electorally the Azov battalion is integrated into Ukraine’s National Guard. There are now reports that Zelensky is seeking to appoint Serhiy Sternenko as head of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) in Odessa, in an attempt to further his alliance with neo-Nazi forces. As the former head of the neo-Nazi Right Sector in Odessa, Sternenko was directly implicated in the 2014 Trade Unions House massacre of 46 people who were burned alive when the fascists set fire to the building. These are the West’s allies today.

Tony Greenstein

Also see:

The CIA May Be Breeding Nazi Terror in Ukraine

Uncle Sam's Nazi Warriors

Vigilante punishment spreads in Ukraine

Was bombing of Mariupol theater staged by Ukrainian Azov extremists to trigger NATO intervention?

Ukrainian President Zelensky deepens alliance with far right

The History Behind the Russia-Ukraine War

Those who support sanctions against Russia should remember that in Iraq they killed ½ million children but left Saddam Hussein alone

Madeleine Albright, US Secretary of State, on why the death of half a million Iraqi children from sanctions was 'a price worth paying'

One of the few instances of good news in the past few weeks has been the death of war criminal and former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in the Clinton regime. To bourgeois feminists what is important is that Albright was the first woman to become Secretary of State.

Albright, a fierce anti-communist, became famous for an interview she did with CBS 60 minutes in 1996.

Veteran journalist, Lesley Stahl, interviewed Albright about sanctions on Iraq, which she said had killed half a million children, thousands of them from leukaemia, because they couldn’t import the necessary drugs under the sanctions regime. Stahl told Albright that this was more than the number of children who died at Hiroshima, the most notorious of all American massacres (along with Nagasaki). Stahl asked whether the price of getting rid of Saddam Hussein was worth it. Without batting an eyelid Albright replied that it was a difficult choice but ‘yes, we think the price is worth it’.

Albright trying to effect regime change in Venezuela - always in the cause of democracy of course!

Let us not forget this was not a Republican Secretary of State, no Mike Pompeo or Donald Rumsfeld. This was Clinton’s choice of Secretary of State. You might think that such a notorious and famous interview would merit at least a mention in our ‘free press’ when she died. Obituaries are supposed to include peoples’ bad as well as good sides.

Fleeing African and Indian students face racism at Ukraine border

I know that we are not supposed to talk ill of the dead but what is more important is to tell the truth about them. Could anyone imagine an obituary of Adolf Hitler that dwelt on the fact that he got rid of unemployment and build the autobahns without mentioning the Holocaust?

Augusto Pinochet was another of the USA's 'democrats'

Yet without exception the press omitted all mention of this interview and Albright’s role in the murder, the cruel calculated murder of half a million children because they happened to be born in a state that had invaded the West’s artificial protectorate in the Middle East, Kuwait. After all the chemical weapons that Saddam had used in Halabja, when he killed 5,000 Kurds, had first been employed in the war against Iran in the 1980s. Indeed it was Germany and other western countries that had supplied Saddam with chemical weapons.

Yet without blinking an eye obituaries in the New York Times, The Guardian, CNN, Washington Post and of course our very own voice of the British Establishment, the BBC, failed even to mention this interview. This was no accidental omission. The BBC, which as we all know, is the voice of the British Establishment, wrote:

On the world stage, Albright advocated aggressively for US and democratic interests. Perhaps aided by her all-too close familiarity with communism and fascism, she was a fierce proponent of human rights and opposition to authoritarianism on the international stage, even if it meant military intervention.

Savour that if you will. Albright was a ‘fierce proponent of human rights’. What you might ask, about the human rights of Iraq’s half a million children? Were they not human beings with rights? Richard Medhurst has fun with this hypocrisy in his podcast War Criminal Madeleine Albright Dies at Age 84 and I recommend you watch it.

Madeleine Albright on regime change in Cuba

What did the Guardian, NYT and all the other lie sheets emphasise? How Albright only found out in later life that she was born Jewish but her parents converted to Catholicism to save her from the Holocaust. Almost all the headlines concentrated on the fact that she was the first woman Secretary of State.

I sometimes think that if only the Nazis had practised positive discrimination then we might have forgiven them for their atrocities. This is the kind of coverage which passes for serious analysis in the bourgeois press. It wasn’t just one paper but all of them indulged in this feminist imperialism that elevates sex over substance.

America’s first female secretary of state has died of cancer, aged 84 shouted the Economist. CNN’s take was Madeleine Albright, first female US secretary of state, dies. The New York Times variation was Madeleine Albright, First Woman to Serve as Secretary of State, Dies at 84. Not forgetting the ‘liberal’ Guardian’s creative approach to this war criminal. Diplomat and scholar of international relations who served as the first female US secretary of state. Only Ahmed Twaj writing for Al Jazeera broke the melody with his piece Let’s remember Madeleine Albright for who she really was.

I often ask myself what possible reason would there ever be for an authoritarian state to impose censorship in the USA or Britain when the newspapers and broadcasters fall over themselves to sing from the same songsheet? Why censor them when they are so good at self-censorship?

This is the same censorship that is currently being employed, along with a hefty dose of racism, the handmaiden of imperialism, when it comes to Ukraine and the refugee crisis. In unison the BBC, CBS, CNN etc. praise god that the refugees are civilised like us. They are White unlike those Syrians and Afghans, who come from countries that are always at war.

They forget to tell us that those wars only happen because we start them. Praise for the fact that Ukrainian refugees are White is the message that comes across as Poland boasts of not allowing Muslims to enter at the same time as they find room for hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians.

Border guards in Poland and Ukraine are sifting out Black and non-White Ukrainians. In the case of Ukrainian border guards they are also preventingtrans women from emigrating on the grounds that they are men.

Yet what does the imperialist left, from the SWP to Anti-Capitalist Resistance, have to say about this? Their answer is that self-determination is the most important issue in Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. Russia must be condemned. NATO is irrelevant. The reasons for the invasion is irrelevant. This is the poverty of much of Britain’s far-left. Even the formation of armed neo-Nazi militias as part of Ukraine’s military is a matter for the Ukrainians alone.

It takes dissident Tory contrarians like Peter Hitchens (ex-SWP!) to point out the obvious that it isn't alright that 'only' 20% of a Ukrainian army unit consists of fully fledged Nazis. That if NATO is arming fully fledged Nazis, forget the 'neo' then what does it say about Ukrainian resistance? What I wonder has happened to the brain dead SWP/ACR/AWL/RS21?

Thank God They Are White

This points to the utter degeneration of the British left. Lowkey is absolutely right when he says in his podcast with Electronic Intifada journalist Asa Winstanley that large sections of the British left now finds itself to the right of Henry Kissinger, who argued that Ukraine should be a bridge to not a bulwark against Russia. The podcast A History of NATO and Nazis, is well worth watching.

Although I have my criticised them in the past, the only group on the left that has resisted the patriotic hysteria and national chauvinism is the small Communist Party of Great Britain for which I penned an article this week Key issue is not Russia (despite the appalling headline!).

Below is an excellent article by Michael Arria. See also Jonathan Cook’s If Putin is a war criminal, then Madeleine Albright was no less of one

Tony Greenstein

Albright with fellow war criminal Bill Clinton

Madeleine Albright’s legacy is a reminder that Clinton’s Iraq policy was murderous too

Madeleine Albright's honest appraisal of Iraq sanctions highlighted the brutality of U.S. foreign policy

By Michael Arria March 25, 2022

Madeleine Albright has died at the age of 84. She was Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State from 1997-2001, the first woman to ever hold that position. From 1993-1997 she was the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. For some the enduring legacy of Albright won’t involve anything she did during her historic political career. She will be most remembered for something she said.

Something very rare happened on May 12, 1996. That evening viewers of CBS’ 60 Minuteswitnessed a thorough and critical segment about U.S. foreign policy that was based around actual reporting. The program, which would go on to win correspondent Lesley Stahl an Emmy and a duPont-Columbia journalism award, was called “Punishing Saddam” and it detailed the U.S. government’s Iraq sanctions policy.

Let’s begin by stepping back. When it comes to Iraq, some Americans might view the Clinton years as an uneventful gap between Bush 1’s Gulf War and Bush 2’s Iraq War. “Eight Years of Peace, Progress, and Prosperity” went the Democratic mantra. However, the Iraqi people certainly experienced no peace during that era. After less than six months in office (in full violation of international law of course) Clinton lobbed 23 cruise missiles into the country. Three hit residential areas, killing nine people and wounding 12. The acclaimed Iraqi painter Layla Al Attar was one of the victims. Her husband and their housekeeper were also killed. Her daughter was blinded. The bombings continued from there. Operation Desert Strike occurred later that year, then there was Operation Desert Fox in 1998. In 1998 Clinton also signed the Iraq Liberation Act, instituting an official U.S. policy of “regime change” and planting the seeds for Bush’s war crimes.

Then there were the sanctions, which a UN-commissioned study found responsible for the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children. Those numbers have been challenged in subsequent years, but it’s important to remember a couple things. The “Oil-for-Food” program’s first coordinator Denis Halliday quit his position in protest of the policy in 1998, calling it “genocidal.” The respected diplomat had worked at the U.N. for 34 years.

“When I got to Iraq in 1998, the hospitals in Baghdad, and also of course in Basra and other cities, were full of children suffering from leukemia,” Halliday told The Progressive last year. “Those children, we reckon perhaps 200,000 children, died of leukemia. At the same time, Washington and London withheld some of the medicines and treatment components that leukemia requires, again, it seemed, in a genocidal manner, denying Iraqi children the right to remain alive.” Dennis Halliday, UN Coordinator ‘Oil for Food’ programme

Halliday’s successor, Hans von Sponeck, quit a couple years later for the same reasons.

“For how long should the civilian population, which is totally innocent on all this, be exposed to such punishment for something they have never done?” he asked.” Hans von Sponeck, UN Coordinator Food for Oil Programme

So 26 years ago, Albright was interviewed by 60 Minutes as the Clinton administration’s spokesperson on the matter. Here was the most infamous portion of the exchange:

Stahl: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.

The striking thing about this exchange is Albright’s honesty. You almost never see a story like this in the mainstream media, but when you do the protocol is pretty consistent. We’re currently seeing it play out with pro-Israel groups and Amnesty International’s apartheid report. You smear and deflect, but you never actually acknowledge the crimes.

As I mentioned, the legacy of Albright’s comments is the compelling part. The deaths of Iraqi children were consistently cited by Osama bin Laden in interviews and recruitment videos. “A million innocent children are dying at this time as we speak, killed in Iraq without any guilt,”he declared about a month after the 9/11 attacks. At the time The Guardian looked into the claim and concluded that he was overstating things. However, the paper also quoted Dr Peter Pellett, a professor of nutrition at UMass, who served on multiple UN food and agriculture missions to Iraq: “All recent food and nutrition surveys have reported essentially the same story: malnourished children… increased mortality, and a general breakdown in the whole fabric of society.” When it came to Iraqi kids “Bin Laden’s propaganda may be exaggerated and one-sided. But he does perhaps have a point” the article admitted.

Even if you happened to watch and remember that 60 Minutes episode from 1996, the mainstream press certainly wasn’t acknowledging the Albright quote within the context of 9/11 after the towers fell. It’s doubtful that many Americans were reminded of it. Here’s Rahul Mahajan in FAIR from November 2001:

Albright’s quote, calmly asserting that U.S. policy objectives were worth the sacrifice of half a million Arab children, has been much quoted in the Arabic press. It’s also been cited in the United States in alternative commentary on the September 11 attacks. But a Dow Jones search of mainstream news sources since September 11 turns up only one reference to the quote–in an op-ed in the Orange Country Register. This omission is striking, given the major role that Iraq sanctions play in the ideology of archenemy Osama bin Laden; his recruitment video features pictures of Iraqi babies wasting away from malnutrition and lack of medicine.

A couple years after Albright made those comments she was questioned by students at Ohio State during an event that was televised by CNN. Albright (by then Secretary of State) had come to the campus with Defense Secretary William Cohen national security adviser, Samuel Berger to make the case for attacking Iraq. Again, a concept with roots far deeper than 2003.

Albright fielded a question from Jon Strange, who was a 22-year-old substitute teacher at the time. Here’s that exchange:

Strange:What do you have to say about dictators in countries like Indonesia, who we sell weapons to yet they are slaughtering people in East Timor. What do you have to say about Israel, who is slaughtering Palestinians, who imposed martial law. What do you have to say about that? Those are our allies.Why do we sell weapons to these countries? Why do we support them? Why do we bomb Iraq when it commits similar problems?

(WILD APPLAUSE)

Albright: There are various examples of things that are not right in this world and the United States is trying..I am really surprised that people feel it is necessary to defend the rights of Saddam Hussein, when we what ought to be thinking about is how to make sure that he does not use weapons of mass destruction.

Strange: I’m not defending him in the least. What I am saying is that there needs to be consistent application of U.S. foreign policy. We cannot support people who are committing the same violations because they are political allies. That is not acceptable. We cannot violate U.N. resolutions when it is not convenient to us. You’re not answering my question Madam Albright.

“Madeleine was always a force for goodness, grace, and decency — and for freedom,” said President Biden in a statement after her death. Last week Biden sent Patriot missiles to Saudi Arabia after the country urgently requested them. On the campaign trail Biden declared that he would end U.S. support for and make Saudi Arabia a pariah, but Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has changed the calculus. Yemen is the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, with 17 million people food insecure. 2.2 million of them are children. Biden presumably views it as a very hard choice, but ultimately thinks the price is worth it.

For more examples of how the BBC is essentially a propaganda extension of NATO see Skawkbox’s excellent

Exclusive: BBC claims Ukrainian nazis are exaggerated – but shows video of Bowen with nazi unit

As Miner’s Leader Mick McGahey Once Said, ‘They’ll Stop Chasing You When You Stop Running’

John McDonell in Surrender Mode with Andrew Marr – He Totally Accepted the fake ‘Anti-Semitism’ Narrative Whose Purpose was to Destroy Corbyn

Dear John,

On 18^thFebruary, the day Russia invaded Ukraine, Stop the War Coalition issued a statement calling for an end to the war, whilst addressing the underlying causes of the war, namely NATO’s expansion into Eastern Europe. NATO expansion had been contrary to repeated assurances that Bush, Baker, Genscher and others had given to Gorbachev at the time of German unification in 1991.

It was pretty mild stuff and yet 11 members of the Campaign Group who signed the statement, including yourself, were threatened by Starmer with loss of the Whip. Instead of standing up to him you all meekly complied. Not one of you had the courage to defy him.

On March 2 Starmer threatenedyou and Diane Abbot with the loss of the Whip if you spoke at a Stop the War rally. Again Starmer threatened you with loss of the Whip. Again you complied. Under Starmer’s Stalinist regime free speech has been abolished.

StWC describedNATO as an offensive not a defensive alliance referring to ‘its record in Afghanistan, Yugoslavia and Libya over the last generation, not to mention the US-British attack on Iraq.’

These are incontestable facts but you didn’t even mount a protest at what had happened. What is the point of your gestures of opposition if at the end of the day you always back down?

The reaction of Starmer was predictable. He was elected as leader on the basis of 10 pledges, number 4 of which promised to ‘promote peace and human rights’.

No more illegal wars. Introduce a Prevention of Military Intervention Act and put human rights at the heart of foreign policy. Review all UK arms sales and make us a force for international peace and justice.

This was of course a lie. In a contest between Johnson and Starmer one would be hard pressed to decide who is the bigger liar. Yet you didn’t see fit to point these, simple facts, out.

NATO’s willingness to fight Russia down to the last Ukrainian was an ideal issue on which to make a stand but once again you bottled it. You could for example have pointed out that the United States and Britain have openly armed neo-Nazi militias in Ukraine. You could have asked how this squared with his commitment to rooting out anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. You did none of these things.

The obvious response to someone who makes a Dalek seem an empathetic human being was to tell Starmer to go take a swim in the River Thames. Preferably without a life jacket. But you did none of these things.

You and the Cowardly 10 chose to place a premium on your seats in parliament even though Starmer has made it clear that you are unlikely to be allowed to stand for Labour again.

To put your behaviour in context it is worth looking at what happened during previous witchhunts by the Right and how the Left responded.

In 1939 Sir Stafford Cripps and Aneurin Bevan refused to back down when they supported an anti-fascist united front with the Communist Party. As a result they were expelled.

Bevan first and then Cripps were readmitted to the Labour Party. Bevan went on to found the NHS and Cripps, who at one time rivalledChurchill in war-time popularity, became a member of the War Cabinet and in 1947, Chancellor of the Exchequer. As George Orwell wrote:

The outstanding thing about Sir Stafford Cripps, however, has always been his utter unwillingness to compromise his political principles.

I doubt if even your best friend could say that about you John. If there is one thing that marks you out it is your willingness to surrender. No principle is so precious that you won’t give it up.

Do you remember that toe curlingly embarrassing interviewwith Andrew Marr on Labour ‘anti-Semitism’? Not once did you challenge the assumption that Labour was overrun by anti-Semitism. You simply took as gospel what the supporters of Israeli Apartheid said.

Today we face not only NATO inspired carnage in the Ukraine but the possibility of nuclear conflagration if the US continues find pretexts for war in order to retain military and economic hegemony. That is why it has created the Aukus Pact as part of its pivot to Asia and undeclared war against China. Always of course in the name of ‘human rights’!

Graham Bash, who was recently expelled after 53 years membership, described you as the best Labour MP he had known, which makes me shudder as to the rest of them. You are 71. After 25 years in parliament you will have a good parliamentary pension. You and Dianne Abbot will not suffer if you are deselected. Who knows you could even win against Starmer Labour.

However bad Blair was Starmer is even worse. What is it that prevents you and what’s left of the Socialist Campaign Group mounting a political attack on Starmer, who is the Tory enemy from within, and his shadowy backers like Mandelson and Labour Friends of Israel?

Starmer himself is insignificant. A political nonentity. He has less charisma than the average mannequin. There is no lie that he is not willing to tell, nor any promise that he is not prepared to break.

He was a ferventRemainer but now he supportsBrexit. He promised to ‘root out’ Labour ‘anti-Semitism’ and then he expelled record numbers of Jews! So much so that if you are a Jew in Labour then you are 5 times more likely to be expelled than non-Jews.

Luke Stanger, a vile anti-Roma racist was welcomed back to the Labour Party by David Evans, Starmer and local MP Peter Kyle

The only true thing Starmer has said since becoming leader is that he is a Zionist ‘without qualification’, i.e. a racist for whom Black Lives Matter was a ‘moment’. Starmer has readmittedto Labour racists like Trevor Philips, for whom Muslims are a nation within a nation and Luke Stanger for whom Roma and Gypsies are ‘a nasty blight on society.’ Through all of this you have kept silent.

If there is any one individual, bar Jon Lansman, who bears responsibility for the defeat of the Corbyn project, it is you. It wasn’t long ago when you were ‘tearing your hair out’ about anti-Semitism. You apologisedfor non-existent anti-Semitism. You told us that we should take the advice of the Zionist Board of Deputies on anti-Semitism even though the BOD has a proven record of attacking Palestinian supporters and anti-Zionists as ‘anti-Semitic’.

Even worse you and Lansman supported the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism which was designed precisely in order to conflate anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.

It was as if you had loaned out your brain. I was the first Jewish person to be expelled from Labour as a consequence of the ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations. The first person to welcomemy expulsion was Starmer. It was clear then that the concern of the Tory press and the Labour Right about ‘anti-Semitism’ was contrived. Yet you and the Campaign Group remained silent.

When Chris Williamson was suspended instead of defending him you told him that the Jews were a forgiving people! Perhaps, but Zionists aren’t that forgiving.

Did you ever ask why should those who demonised asylum seekers and Muslims should be so concerned about anti-Semitism? It was New Labour, with Alan Johnson as Home Secretary, who first created the ‘hostile environment’ policy that Theresa May ran with. If Jews were genuinely suffering from anti-Semitism, then the Tories and Labour Right would be the last people to complain.

Did you never ask yourself why The Times, whose editor Geoffrey Dawson forbade all criticism of Hitler’s anti-Semitism in the 1930s, was so concerned about ‘anti-Semitism’? Or the Daily Mail which led with ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts’ and employeda neo-Nazi, Katie Hopkins as a columnist, was a cheerleaderfor Hitler in the 30s?

Lord Rothermere, owner of the Daily Mail with friend

When Hitler ‘won’ the unfree elections in March 1933, the Mail wrotethat if Hitler used his majority “prudently and peacefully, no one here will shed any tears for the disappearance of German democracy”. Yet we are supposed to believe that the Mail has now repented and it too is now concerned about Labour ‘anti-Semitism’.

What possessed you to praise the Board of Deputies, a body that has never organised a demonstration against genuine anti-Semitism? In October 1936, it advisedJews to stay away from the anti-fascist mobilisation against Moseley’s British Union of Fascists in the East End of London. The Jewish working class, which today does not exist, ignored the BOD. Did it not strike you as strange that their first demonstration against ‘anti-Semitism’ in March 2018 was against Corbyn? A demonstration which those well known anti-racists Ian Paisley and Norman Tebbit attended?

It was obvious in 2016 that the British Establishment and the US and Israeli states had resolved that someone opposed to NATO and its wars could not be allowed to be the leader of the second major party in their closest European ally. Anti-Semitism was their chosen weapon.

Instead of standing up to the Right and its false anti-Semitism narrative you betrayed the Left and appeased the Right. When Margaret Hodge, whose call for a Whites only housing policy had been praisedby the BNP, calledJeremy ‘a fucking anti-Semite’ it was you who opposed any disciplinary action.

This was the same Hodge that demandedthat Starmer remove the Whip from Corbyn or she would resign. Is it any wonder, according to Owen Jones and Pogrund/ MacGuire that Corbyn refused to talk to you for many months as a result?

This is the same Hodge who covered up a child abuse scandal in Islington Council when she was leader and who libelled one of the victims. As Matthew Norman wroteWith a past like hers, Margaret Hodge might show a bit more humility. Hodge’s rewardwas being made Children’s Minister by Blair, an act that defied irony yet nonetheless you sought to appease this despicable creature who is now the Jewish Labour Movement’s parliamentary representative.

A different path was always available to you. You could have supported Open Selection of MPs and got rid of Hodge and her detritus. The PLP could have been transformed. Instead you thought you could win over the Ian Austins and John Manns of this world!

It is no surprise therefore that as soon as Starmer barked you and the SCG jumped. The SCG has 35 MPs yet only 11 were even prepared to sign StWC’s statement. As Dylan wrote, you threw it all away.

Today it would be difficult to put a piece of paper between Starmer and Johnson. They are both liars and they are both ‘patriots’ who wrap themselves in the flag. As Samuel Johnson observed, patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

If you had an ounce of courage or principle you would challenge Starmer for the Tory he is. You would appeal over his head to Labour’s membership and start a campaign against this reactionary representative of the Deep State with his persecution of Assange, his protection of Jimmy Saville and his supportfor extraordinary rendition.

Instead you retreat in sullen silence. Indeed you even attempted to flatter him. ‘Keir’s got this exactly right’ was your responseto Starmer’s Covid strategy. But what was Starmer’s strategy? He promisedto support Johnson ‘in the national interest’.

By delaying the first lockdown Johnson killed 20,000 people. By decanting the infected into care homes he killed at least 30,000. Yet you praised him.

If you are not going to fight Starmer inside the Labour Party, the principled thing to do would be for you and the SCG to accept that Labour has abandoned even the pretence of socialism. Your one service to socialism would be to help in the formation of a new, socialist party.

The Labour Right is determined that there will never be a return to the Corbyn era and you seem determined to help them in that.

The only thing that puzzles me is why the Labour Representation Committee still keeps you on as their President. Perhaps its a case of misplaced nostalgia or just wishful thinking.

Fraternally,

Tony Greenstein

In Railroading a Constitution Through Its AGM in Less Than an Hour, PSC’s Ruling Clique Demonstrated Their Contempt for the Membership

Lisa Nandy and Emily Thornberry, both right-wing Zionists are invited to speak on PSC platforms - who does that benefit?

The angry, scowling face of PSC Chair Kamal Hawwash, who was determined to brush aside all opposition

In my letter of resignation I outline the reasons why Palestine Solidarity Campaign is today an obstacle to Palestine solidarity work.

Instead of educating activists as to the nature of Zionism and the Zionist movement, PSC has abandoned all opposition to Zionism. PSC is depoliticising activists in the face of constant Zionist attacks. It also reduces the question of Palestine to a human rights issue.

Of course the oppression of the Palestinians involves grave human rights abuses but if Palestine is simply a human rights issue then it is only one of many such examples. Who can doubt that the treatment of the Rohinga in Myanamar at the hands of the Burmese army, which is engaged in actual genocide, is worse than that of the Palestinians?

Zionism has systematically exploited the Holocaust through its blanket attack on all opposition to its settler colonial project as ‘anti-Semitism’. Yet instead of pointing out that Zionism represents an acceptance of anti-Semitism’s belief that Jews are aliens in the countries where they live, PSC prefers to jettison anti-Zionism.

Just 200 people participated in the Zoom session and as the day wore on it was down to less than 150

What makes Palestine different is that Israel is the only apartheid state on the planet and the only active settler colonial state in existence. Defenders of White Supremacy in South Africa were fond of pointing to human rights abuses in neighbouring countries and contrasting those states with itself.

The response of anti-imperialists was that South Africa’s regime of racial supremacy was unique. The same is true of Israeli Apartheid. Just as the South African state supported the repressive Black states surrounding it, Israel also acts as a guarantor against revolution in its neighbours. That is what the Abraham Accords are about.

PSC avoids such ‘difficult’ questions as it panders to the lowest common denominator politically. A cursory look at PSC literature would have you believe that Israel is alone in the Middle East. There is barely a mention of Israel’s strategic role in the region.

The Zionists have deliberately conflated the terms ‘Jew’ and ‘Zionist’. Support for the Palestinians has become ‘anti-Semitism’. PSC’s response has been to abandon opposition to Zionism. A search of its Annual Plan contains no mention of the word ‘Zionism’.

Those opposed to the resolution needed to obtain 25% of the vote. In the end we obtained 24.16% - just 113 people, 1.5% of PSC's total membership, voted for the new constitution

PSC AGM and the New Constitution

All of this came to a head at PSC’s recent AGM on March 19^th where any debate about a new proposed constitution was rendered impossible. One of the drawbacks of Zoom is that it enables those who set up the meeting to tightly control the proceedings and through the use of the webinar facility to atomise those taking part.

The Chat facility, which enables participants to discuss issues with each other, was disabled. The control freaks in PSC’s ruling clique, most notably its Director Ben Jamal, were determined that members who attended the AGM were not able to have any horizontal contact or communications with each other. This is no different to the behaviour of Starmer’s apparatchiks in the Labour Party.

The Executive proposed an entirely new Constitution. Its reason was that the existing constitution had become misaligned with the Articles of Association of PSC Ltd. No proof that this was a problem was ever produced. Since 2004 PSC has been both a limited company and a campaigning organisation, which legally was an unincorporated association.

Members were lied to. They were told that they had to approve a new constitution, unamended, because it was a Special Resolution under the 2006 Companies Act which requires 15 days of any amendment to the Articles of Association (a company’s constitution).

However there was absolutely no reason why an Extraordinary General Meeting could not have been called in 4 or 6 weeks time and amendments submitted within that time frame. Debate however was the last thing that PSC’s ruling clique wanted.

Leadership loyalist Diane Langford speaking in the constitution debate

PSC’s New Constitution Represents A Shift of Power From the Membership to PSC’s Ruling Clique

Below are a few examples of the mindset behind the proposals.

Section 4 of the old constitution was headed ‘Membership’. The new constitution has a much enlarged and prescriptive Part III ‘Membership.’ Section 6 not only requires that you agree with PSC’s Aims and Objectives but that you ‘uphold the Values of the campaign’. There is a new section 5, ‘Values’ which is as vacuous as anything New Labour produced. PSC’e Values are a substitute for having Principles. These values include defining ‘anti-Semitism’ as a form of racism as opposed to prejudice in the former constitution.

Clause 4.6 of the 2015 Constitution specified that someone expelled from the organisation had the right of appeal to the following AGM. No such provision now exists. Such a person merely has the right under s.10.4 to appeal ‘in line with the Appeal Process referred to in the relevant Regulation.’ Except there are no regulations and if and when they are drawn up they do not need to be approved by the membership.

Dave Chappell of Exeter PSC speaking in the debate

Under s.9.1 members must ‘support and promote the Aims, Objectives and Values of the PSC’. Given that the values are subjective this hands absolute power to the Executive Officers. There was no such stipulation in the previous constitution and no explanation as to why this is needed now.

Members must now also (s.9.2) ‘abide by the Code of Conduct and Constitution’. The Executive drew up a Code of Conduct which was a mere 25 times as long as the previous code of conduct of 98 words. It is effectively a charter for a future witchhunt. It does not need to be approved by anyone other than the Executive. Again there was no such stipulation in the previous constitution nor has there been any explanation as to why such a provision needs to be introduced now.

Clause 5.3 of the old Constitution stipulated that ‘All branches should adopt a constitution, which must contain...’ and it listed 5 non-controversial requirements such as a requirement for officers to be members of PSC nationally and to hold an AGM.

The new s.13.6. stipulates that ‘All branches shall have a constitution, approved by the Executive Committee.’ The original idea was to go further and divide members of PSC branches into two. Those who are members of national PSC and those who weren’t. The latter would have been unable to vote in elections for local officers. It was withdrawn after an outcry but it betrays the mentality of those who drew up this constitution.

What is the reason for local constitutions to be approved by national PSC? None was given. The new 13.7.2. says that ‘all branch members shall abide by the PSC’s Aims, Objectives, Values and Code of Conduct.’ This is entirely new and hands powers to a future Executive to conduct a political witchhunt.

It is not just the wording of the new constitution but the mentality behind it. There is a new section 7 ‘Rights of Members’ but apart from the right to attend the national AGM and Branch Forum, which already existed there are no additional rights.

The new section 9 ‘Responsibilities of members’ lays out that Members ‘must’ support and promote the Aims Objectives and Values of PSC. Note the word ‘must’.

But when it comes to the Executive then the language changes. Section 18.1 says that ‘The Executive Committee shall be accountable to the membership for various tasks.’ The word ‘must’is replaced by ‘shall’. It is in this authoritarian spirit that the whole of this verbose constitution was drawn up.

Rob Ferguson of the SWP giving loyal support to PSC's ruling clique as they remove opposition to Zionism from the Constitution

You might expect members of the Socialist Workers Party, who are nominally anti-Zionist, to have opposed this constitution, especially its proposal to remove opposition to Zionism. Not a bit of it. Tom Hickey and Rob Ferguson gave fulsome support to the Executive’s proposed Constitution on the grounds that we should not bother discussion constitutions. We should all just get on with campaigning!

According to the SWP we don’t need to think about things like the political aims and goals of PSC, still less its internal democracy. Given that there is no internal democracy in the SWP, the result of which was the rape crisis scandal in 2013, they couldn’t see the need for anyone else to take democracy seriously.

As Hickey and Ferguson were speaking, their Scottish comrades in Stand Up to Racism were busy welcomingGlasgow Friends of Israel and the Confederation of Friends of Israel Scotlandonto their annual ‘anti-racism’ march complete with the Israeli flag. This meant that Muslim organisations were unable to participate in the march. This was of no concern to them. Fearful of being accused of ‘anti-Semitism’ the SWP allowed the Zionists to march with them. This was abject political cowardice and opportunism.

Louise Regan, Chair of the afternoon session and Iyas AlQasem, who chaired the committee that drew up the new constitution

The Quisling Palestinian Authority and Murder of Nizar Banat

PSC’s ruling clique also opposed a motion condemning the Quisling Palestine Authority which had murderedPalestinian resistance fighter Nizar Banat. His family personally contacted me to offer their support for the motion and sent a message, which I read out. PSC Executive were not prepared to condemn the PA, which is Israel’s military subcontractor in the West Bank.

When Donald Trump cut all funding to the Palestinians, including the PA, he made an exception as regards funding the Palestinian security forces at Israel’s special request.

The PA’s security forces work closely with the Israeli military and its secret police Shin Bet. They arrest and interrogate (i.e. torture) Palestinians when supplied with names by Shin Bet before handing the prisoners over to the Israelis. This however cut no ice with Ben Jamal, Kamal Hawwash or PSC Executive.

PSC Refuse to Say Anything About the Two State Solution

Today the main supporters of the two state solution are Zionist groups like Labour Friends of Israel. They support it because they know it will never happen but it’s a useful smokescreen and alibi for continued settlement. Unsurprisingly my motion opposing the two state solution was met with the Executive’s opposition.

The Palestine Action motion, which had been gutted by the Executive's amendment, was still opposed by a hardcore of 21 members who oppose any form of direct action, with 19 unable to decide what they think.

Palestine Action

The best thing that has happened to the Palestine solidarity movement in Britain in the past 5 years was the creation of Palestine Action. Through the use of direct action and community campaigns in like Oldham and Leicester Elbit actually closed their factory in Oldham because they could no longer protect it.

None of this stopped Ben Jamal waging an 18 months war of attrition against PA including the dissemination of bogus legal advice to PSC branches warning them off contributing to their funds. He also made allegations of anti-Semitism. The details are in this paper.

Robyn Dasey of Brixton PSC speaking

PSC’s repeated boasts that it is building a mass movement that will mainstream Palestine is just that. A boast. ‘Mainstreaming’ is jargon for persuading the British Establishment to cut its ties with Israel.

The main achievement of PSC to date is to build itself into another NGO whose priority is maintaining itself. Its support for its own activists is secondary. When BDS first took off in Britain PSC opposed it. PSC today is a politically timid organisation bent on appeasing the British Establishment. That is why it has put on its platforms Zionists like Lisa Nandy and Emily Thornberry.

What is worse is that PSC is controlled politically by a secretive ex-Trotskyist organisation, Socialist Actionwhich believes that China is a socialist society. It is Socialist Action’s iron grip on PSC’s leadership which is responsible for PSC failing to develop politically.

As someone who helped found PSC in 1982 I don’t take the step of resigning lightly but as long as PSC is tightly controlled by a few individuals it will never build the mass movement that it talks about.

PSC’s lack of any anti-imperialist or anti-Zionist politics means that it is helpless when faced with a concerted Zionist campaign such as that over ‘anti-Semitism’.

In 1993 I resigned from PSC when it supported the Oslo Accords, rejoining in 2005. As I predictedat the time, the Oslo Accords, of which the Palestinian Authority is the bastard fruit, represented the greatest setback to the Palestinian struggle since the Nakba. I will continue to be a member of my local Brighton and Hove PSC.

Tony Greenstein

As part of Israel’s collective punishment, the Israeli military shoot a child, blinding him in one eye

Israel's military shoot child today, blinding him in one eye

Israeli Military Raids Today - Soldiers Drag the Body of a Man as If he was an Animal

Following the shootingdead of 3 Israelis in a Tel Aviv bar last week and the recent killing of 11 Israelis, including 3 police officers, by Palestinians, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who has condonedsettler attacks on Palestinians, stated that

‘We are granting full freedom of action to the army, the Shin Bet and all security forces in order to defeat the terror. There are not and will not be limits for this war.”

Today a child in Jenin paid the price of this all-out war. At least one Palestinian has been killed by the Israeli military in Jenin today. When the 3 Israelis were killed, Al Jazeera reportedthat

United States and European envoys to Israel condemned Thursday’s shooting. In a statement, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US was “closely following developments” and was in “regular contact with our Israeli partners, with whom we stand resolutely in the face of senseless terrorism and violence.”

We await the US and European envoys condemnation of Israeli killings in Jenin and elsewhere in the West Bank. Of course if the Palestinian gunman had been Ukrainian then he would have been feted as a resistance fighter not a terrorist.

I have helped fundraise in the past few years for the Al Tafawk Children’s Centre, which is in the centre of Jenin Refugee Camp. Today a worker from the Centre messaged me.

Dear Tony

JENIN IS suffering now , Israel closed it we are not allowed to go out or any one gets into ! The news doesn't show what is going on here, Today the solders attack our home while we were sleeping , And went up on roof to shot any one who move... here some videos this morning ... you are the only one who can make our voice heard .. We are not ok

I then got a second message later in the day and two pictures. It simply said:

A child from the center lost his eye today

Children are not immune from Israeli actions because they too are seen as part of a population that has the temerity to resist the occupation. The right of resistance accorded to Ukranians does not apply to Palestinians.

There is also Jewish religious justification that has grown up in Israel for killing and hurting Palestinian children.

The Israeli army today has a large component of religious nationalists in it who adhere to the belief that non-Jewish life is less valuable than that of Jews. Indeed it goes far wider than just religious nationalists.

In 2009 two Lubavitch rabbis, Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzure penned a book‘Torat Hamelech’ that sanctioned the killing of non-Jewish, that is Palestinian, children and infants. According to the authorsthe prohibition 'Thou Shalt Not Murder' applies only 'to a Jew who kills a Jew.' According to the Jerusalem Post, the authors argued that:

‘it is permitted to kill minors as well, even if they are innocent, when they are situated in a place that blocks the saving of Jews' lives. Shapira and Elitzur refer to these minors as "blockers of rescue"

"Little children are often situated in this way," they write. "They block the rescue of Jews and they do this against their will. Even so, it is permitted to kill them because their very presence facilitates the killing [of Jews]."

The authors also advocate the killing of young children if it is foreseeable that these children will grow up to be enemies of the Jews. " [which was the justification that Himmler gave in a talk to SS Higher Police Leaders in October 1943 in Posen, Poland - TG].

There is an argument for killing the very young if it is clear that they will grow up to hurt us [Jews]. And in this situation the attack should be directed at them and not just indirectly while attacking adults," write Shapira and Elitzur. "It is also permitted to kill the children of the [evil] leader [of the enemy] in order to put pressure on him, if hurting the children will prevent the evil king from acting out his evilness."

This is being played out in Jenin and the West Bank today. Last year 79 Palestinian children, including 67 in Gaza, were murderedby the Israeli military. Since 2000 at least 2,200 children have been killed by Israel.

What You Can Do

What you can do is to contact your MPs with messages demanding that Israel lifts the siege of Jenin and write to the press. Collective punishment is outlawed under the Geneva Convention. In other words it is a war crime. Although as we know the mass media is only concerned with Russian war crimes its worth bombarding the BBC and asking why it is selective about which war crimes it reports.

Finally, one of the only places of refuge for children in Jenin refugee camp is the Al Tafawk Children’s Centre which Israeli troops wrecked last May. In their demonic hatred they even ripped up children’s story books.

So please, if you can afford it, please donateto our Crowdfunder to support the Centre.

Tony Greenstein

Israeli citizens are barred from entering the Palestinian city, whose economy relies heavily on Israeli Arabs

Yaniv Kubovich

Jack Khoury

Apr. 9, 2022 8:37 PM

Israeli citizens are now barred from entering the West Bank city of Jenin, the Defense Ministry announced Saturday, in a series of sanctions on the hometown of the Palestinian shooter who killed three people in an attack in Tel Aviv on Thursday.

The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories announced several restrictions on the Jenin area, in the West Bank's north, including blocking local merchants and some businesspeople from entering Israel and preventing Jenin residents from visiting family in Israel, thereby revoking 5000 permits Israel issued for Jenin residents for the holy Muslim month of Ramadan which takes place in April.

Residents of the Jenin area with work permits in Israel will still be allowed to go there, but will face more stringent security inspections at checkpoints, the statement said.

The restrictions are expected to deal a hard blow to the local economy. Arabs from Israel who frequent Jenin constitute about 75 percent of the city's purchasing power.

Students at the Arab American University in Jenin who are Israeli citizens are exempt from the latest travel restrictions.

Combatants for Peace, an Israeli-Palestinian group, condemned the restrictions and called the defense minister to revoke them, saying that "hurting Palestinian citizens of Israel and collectively punishing all of Jenin's residents is not the solution, and will only deteriorate the situation."

Knesset member Sami Abu Shehadeh of the Joint List joined the condemnation, saying that "collective punishment, crimes carried out by the occupation army and a continuous abuse of the Palestinian people will certainly not be a solution to the current crisis."

He added that"only a diplomatic solution and an end to the occupation are the guarantee for a safer future for all of us."

On Saturday, a Palestinian militant was killedand a dozen others were wounded in Jenin in a fire exchange with the Israeli military who were raiding the house Raad Hazem, the mas who killed three people and wounded 10 others in a shooting attack in central Tel Aviv on Thursday.

Diaa Hamarsheh who killed five people in a shooting attack in the Tel Aviv suburb of Bnei Brak was also from the Jenin area – where security forces are now concentrating their efforts, since three of the last five attacks were carried out by people from there, including Saib Abahra, who was killed with two other Palestinians by Israeli forces last Friday.

According to Israeli security forces, the three were responsible for a recent shooting attack near the city of Tul Karm in the West Bank, and planned to carry out further attacks.

Defense Minister Benny Gantz said on Friday that Israeli forces were continuing to act with great forces against terrorism, adding that "we have already made 200 arrests, if needed we will make thousands."

Israeli forces kill Palestinian fighter in large-scale raid on Jenin camp

Israeli forces kill Palestinian fighter in large-scale raid on Jenin camp

Palestinian fighters respond to the raid with gunfire, leading to heavy street clashes with Israeli troops

By Shatha Hanayshain Jenin refugee camp

Published date: 9 April 2022

One Palestinianwas killed and 13 more wounded on Saturday morning as a large Israeliforce raided the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. The raid began at around 9:30am local time when Israeli special forces entered the camp and headed to the family home of Raad Hazem, a 28-year-old who carried out a shooting at a bar in Tel Aviv on Thursday, killing three Israelis.

Reinforcements followed, and Israeli troops raided the camp from all entrances, to be met by Palestinian fighters residing in the camp who began firing at troops in several locations.

A local source told Middle East Eye that Palestinian fighters also used an explosive device in the heavy street fights, which lasted for nearly three hours before Israeli forces withdrew from the city.

One Palestinian, identified as Ahmad al-Saadi, 23, was killed in the gunfight, according to the Palestinian health ministry. Al-Quds Brigades (Saraya al-Quds), the military wing of the Islamic Jihad movement, said he was a commander in its Jenin unit.

At least 13 more Palestinians sustained bullet wounds, including a 19-year-old woman, with two in critical condition. Two more were wounded in the shoot-outs and detained by the Israeli army.

Israeli forces kill Palestinian fighter in raid on Jenin refugee camp

An eyewitness, who preferred to remain anonymous, told MEE that Israeli snipers stationed on rooftops during the raid were shooting at passers-by, including his friend, who was wounded by a live bullet while walking on the street.

The Israeli army said in a statement early in the morning that military forces entered Jenin and operated in the refugee camp, without giving more details. No Israeli casualties were reported.

While surrounding Hazem's family home, Israeli forces took measurements of the house ahead of a potential demolition, Israeli media reported.

Israel often demolishes family homes of those accused of carrying out attacks against Israeli targets, in a policy condemned by rights groups as a form of collective punishment.

Israeli forces also attempted to arrest Fathi Hazem, Raad's father, but he refused to turn himself in and the troops left without detaining him, an eyewitness told MEE.

Young Palestinians throwing stones at an IDF vehicle in Jenin, on Saturday.Credit: JAAFAR ASHTIYEH - AFP

Jenin camp fighters

The northern West Bank city, particularly its central refugee camp, is known as a stronghold for a reemerging Palestinian armed resistance movement. Since late last year, Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) have made several attempts to contain the growing number of armed fighters in the city.

In late December, Israeli armed forces chief of staff Aviv Kochavi said in an interview with Channel 12 that Israel was on the cusp of launching a major operation in Jenin three months earlier, before they called the PA into action. Last week, Israeli soldiers killed three Palestinians in a pre-dawn ambush in Jenin as residents marked the 20th anniversary of a brutal Israeli assault on the city's refugee camp that has become emblematic of Israel's occupation.

The Saturday raid comes at a time of heightened tensions in Israel and Palestine. Fourteen Israelis have been killed in the past three weeks in shooting and stabbing attacks carried out by Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and inside Israel.

At least six Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the same period in the West Bank, including one shot by a settler.

In occupied East Jerusalem, Israeli police have carried out a nightly crackdown on Palestinians celebrating Ramadan at Damascus Gate since the start of the holy month on 2 April.

More than 30 people were arrested, including minors, and dozens were wounded in the assaults.

During the Corbyn Era Hate not Hope saw anti-Semitism everywhere but today they ignore it repeating NATO Propaganda About Zelensky Being Jewish

Eduard Dolinski

On 29^th March Nick Lowles from Hate not Hope wrote to me saying that ‘it’s never been more important to take action against fascism and make it clear to everyone where you stand.’ Nick then tried to sell me their merchandise ‘so that you can wear your anti-fascism with pride.’ Naturally I was interested until Lowles told me how he was ‘particularly excited’ about their clothes which read 'They shall not pass’ in Ukrainian.

Oh dear I thought. Poor Nick’s got it wrong again. No Pasaran was the slogan of the Spanish Republicans not Franco. Does Nick really think that the neo-Nazi Azov and Adair Battalions, C14, Right Sector and the rest are anti-fascists? Does Nick not know that the Wolfsangel, the badge of Azov, was the insignia of the Waffen SS Das Reich Division? It seems that years of supporting Apartheid Israel whilst accusing its opponents of ‘anti-Semitism’ have finally caused Nick to lose his political bearings if not his marbles.

Being a concerned and kindly soul I penned Nick a note to try and help him regain his political balance.

Nick, I hope you are referring to the neo-Nazi armed Azov militia, Right Sector and C14 who have been armed and funded by the US, Israel and UK among others. It would be a new low for Hate not Hope to be backing neo-Nazis but I wouldn't put it past you given your support of Apartheid Israel

Two days later Nick’s underling Jayde replied. Jayde reassured me that ‘We wholeheartedly oppose the Azov Regiment’. That was certainly a relief as I had begun to wonder whether neo-Nazis too were not part of the fight against ‘anti-Semitism’.

Things then went downhill as Jayde informed me that ‘Putin's claims that he is 'denazifying' Ukraine is both incorrect and offensive.’ And then I heard the familiar NATO trope that ‘Ukrainian President Zelenskyy is Jewish and lost family members in the Holocaust.’

Whenever Zionists want to exonerate Jewish racists and fascists they tell us that these people had relatives who died in the Holocaust. However if they are attacking Jewish anti-Zionists for ‘anti-Semitism’ then there is never a mention about ourrelatives. Strange that.

'Ukraine - What is Really Happening?' - Gonzalo Lira | Real Talk with Zuby

You may recall that whenever that tax-dodging supporter of Apartheid South Africa, Margaret Hodge, opened her big mouth the media rushed to assure us that she had lost relatives in the Holocaust. As if that justified her breaking the Boycott of South Africa.

Was Jayde saying that losing relatives in the Holocaust prevents you from collaborating with neo-Nazis? Why? Zionists have a long history of collaboration with anti-Semites, Holocaust or no Holocaust.

The Ukrainian Police demanded details of all Jews in Kolomiya in order to investigate 'ethnic' crime. Israel and the ADL had nothing to say as they are more concerned with ‘anti-Semitic’ criticism of Israel.

I doubt if there is a single Ukrainian Jew who has not lost relatives in the Holocaust. Some 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews, the reservoir of European Jewry, died in the Holocaust. Indeed most British Jews had relatives who died in the Holocaust, my father’s family included.

Think of all those Jews in Israel who chant ‘Death to the Arabs’ just as Polish and German anti-Semites used to chant ‘Death to the Jews’. Many of them will have lost relatives in the Holocaust but that has not stopped them becoming Judeo-Nazis.

There is no law that says the victims of racism will not become racists themselves. Israel is a good example. Priti Patel is another example.

Then it got worse. Jayde informed me that despite Ukrainian Jews ‘facing antisemitism that all Jewish populations sadly receive’ it had, after the fall of the Soviet Union, ‘become a thriving community with freedoms and protections written in law.’

Russian POWS being tortured

It appears that Hate not Hope have become apologists for Ukrainian anti-Semitism. I wondered how this squared with the views of the leader of Ukrainian Jews, Eduard Dolinsky, who described Ukraine as the most anti-Semitic country in Europe after Poland:

Our government encourages nationalistic groups. Our government encourages glorification of Nazi collaborator mass murderers and murderers of Jews.

Literally there are hundreds of monuments, streets named after killers of Jews. You can’t imagine in the West... a monument to a policeman who was escorting Jews to Nazi death camps.... We have anti-Semitic incidents every day – vandalism on Holocaust mass graves, vandalism on Jewish monuments. ... No one was ever convicted. They always deny the issue.

And then Jayde entered the realm of fantasy. He told me that the size of the Azov Regiment was around 900 out of a total army of nearly 200,000 not including nearly a million reservists.

What Jayde didn’t mention was that the Azov Battalion, which is part of the Ukrainian armed forces, commands a force of 60,000 in Mariupol alone. It is clear that this army has imbibed Azov’s neo-Nazi views much as an infant imbibes its mother’s milk.

Jayde informed me that ‘The current misuse of anti-fascism by Putin regime is nothing new’ yet this is exactly what Hate not Hope are doing. By associating the slogan They Shall Not Pass (No Pasaran) with the Ukrainian army Nick Lowles was koshering Ukraine’s neo-Nazi brigades.

HnH was to the fore of the false anti-Semitism campaign. They calledpeople like Chris Williamson, a principled opponent of racism, an ‘anti-Semite’ whilst holding hands with all manner of vile Zionists, including their Board member, the execrable Ruth Smeeth, who was responsiblefor the political lynching of Marc Wadsworth.

HnH is a good example of the pitfalls of bourgeois anti-fascism. HnH came from the stable of SearchlightMagazine under Gerry Gable. For years Searchlighttraded information with the British and Israeli states. They passed information on the left to Special Branch and MI5 in exchange for information on the fascists, see Searchlight 'anti-fascist magazine joins forces with Labour’s ‘anti-Semitism’ witchhunt

HnH split from Searchlight of which Lowles had been Editor. The split was not about any political differences or principles but about money and the fact that Gable was a hindrance to Lowles ambitions. See The Death Agony of Searchlight Anti-Fascist Magazine.

HnHsees capitalist democracy as an ideal to be defended at all costs. It sees the state as neutral rather than an instrument of class oppression. This leads them into support for western imperialism and Israel. In short HnH like Searchlight before it supports capitalism and its exploitation of the working class. Hence their relationship with MI5/Special Branch. To them the Police aren’t the sharp end of capitalist oppression but the force that keeps democracy on the road.

HnHfails to see that in certain situations like Ukraine today, western capitalism utilises fascist and neo-Nazi groups in order to defend its interests. The West has funded, armed and trained the Azov Battalion and other fascist groups in Ukraine. Instead HnH play down the threat and use the ‘Jewish’ President Zelensky as a cover for what is becoming the Nazification of the Ukrainian state.

Bourgeois anti-fascism in other words ends up supporting the very capitalist system that in crisis turns to fascism. Hitler did not come to power via elections. He was put into power by the military and industrialists. In July 1932 the Nazis obtained 13.75m votes (37.3%) compared to 13.2m (35.9%) for the Workers Parties (SPD/KPD). In November 1932 the Nazi vote fell to 11.74m (33.1%) whilst the vote for the SPD/KPD stayed the same 13.2m (37.3%). It was this, the weakening of the Nazi vote which cause the German capitalists to propel Hitler into the position of Chancellorship.

Western ‘democracy’ had no hesitation in supporting the vilest of fascist dictators such as Pinochet in Chile and Videla in Argentina. There is nothing inherently democratic about capitalism. Bourgeois democracy rests on economic dictatorship. When the needs of capitalism dictate, democracy is ditched. That is what has been happening in Ukraine for the past 8 years.

Today Ukraine is not, contrary to Western propaganda a democratic state. It has banned all opposition media and all left-wing parties. With neo-Nazis having been integrated into the armed forces Ukraine has all the trappings of a semi-fascist police state. It is this that HnH with its bourgeois anti-fascism is defending.

Tony Greenstein

Dear Jayde,

Thank you for your email of 31 March. I confess that I am surprised by your complacency regarding the role neo-Nazi militias are playing in Ukraine. You seem to be a victim of NATO’s black propaganda and disinformation war.

I am no more concerned with Putin’s rhetoric about deNazification than Biden’s claims that the United States stands for freedom and democracy. Lying comes easily to our rulers. What concerns me is the fact that the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion [AB] and other fascist groups have become integrated into Ukraine’s police and security forces. As Kharkiv’s Human Rights Protection Group observed‘Far-right vigilantes imposing ‘Ukrainian order’ are strange partners for Ukraine’s National Police.’

A March 2018 report stated that “C14 and Kiev’s city government recently signed an agreement allowing C14 to establish a ‘municipal guard’ to patrol the streets.” This gave them state sanction to carry out pogroms against the Roma and led to a “purge” of Romani from Kiev’s railway station in collaboration with the Kiev police.

Ukrainian neo-Nazi have engaged in horrifying attacks on Roma, all with the connivanceof the Ukrainian police. In Lvov, it was the Ukraine Armed Forces who were responsible for taping Roma women and children to a pole.

Ukraine is the world’s only state to have absorbed a neo-Nazi militia into its military. The AB was initially formed out of the neo-Nazi Patriot of Ukraine. Andriy Biletsky, who became their commander, once wrotethat Ukraine’s mission is to “lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade…against the Semite-led Untermenschen.” Biletsky was a deputy in Ukraine’s parliament.

In the autumn of 2014, the AB was incorporatedinto Ukraine’s National Guard. Because of Ukraine’s importance in NATO’s geo-political strategy, neo-Nazism is now being made respectable. A host of pro-NATO and Zionist organisations such as the Anti-Defamation League [ADL] are actively whitewashing them.

Bandera's militia massacred 100,000 Poles in Eastern Ukraine

The historical roots of Ukrainian neo-Nazism

In an interviewwith Andrew Srulevitch, ADL Director of European Affairs, Professor David Fishman exonerated the Ukrainian Insurgent Army [UPA] and its leader Stepan Bandera, who were responsible for the slaughter of 300,000 Jews and Poles. Asked about torchlit marches in Kyiv with red and black flags, Fishman had this to say:

“For Ukrainian nationalists, UPA and Bandera are symbols of the Ukrainian fight for Ukrainian independence. The UPA allied with Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union for tactical – not ideological – reasons.... When Ukrainian nationalists and Jews look at those red and black flags, we see two different things.’

In fact UPA attacks on Jews were so ferocious that Jews sought the protection of the Germans. The Banderite bands and the local nationalists raided every night, decimating the Jews,” a survivor testified in 1948. “Jews sheltered in the camps where Germans were stationed, fearing an attack by Banderites. Some German soldiers were brought to protect the camps and thereby also the Jews.”

ADL, which purports to oppose anti-Semitism, carried the interview with Fishman on its website and in its newsletter. Zionist organisations, which are usually so concerned about ‘anti-Semitism’ when it comes to Palestine, have echoed NATO propaganda. As Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abunimah observed:

Fishman’s excuse that Bandera and other Nazi collaborators are “symbols” of the “fight for Ukrainian independence” mirrors the claimsfrom American white supremacists that their display of the Confederate battle flag is merely to honor their “heritage” and not to celebrate a regime that went to war to protect its “right” to enslave people from Africa.

Dozens of Ukrainian streets are named after Bandera and in a particularly nice touch Bandera’s street runs right up to the site of Babi Yar.

Ukraine is the only country in the world to have a national holiday in memory of a Nazi collaborator, Stepan Bandera. The Times of Israel described how Hundreds of Ukrainian nationalists march in honor of Nazi collaborator.

Daniel Lazare, in a review of Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe’s Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist wrote:

Although Bandera and his followers would later try to paint the alliance with the Third Reich as no more than “tactical,” an attempt to pit one totalitarian state against another, it was in fact deep-rooted and ideological. Bandera envisioned the Ukraine as a classic one-party state with himself in the role of führer, or providnyk, and expected that a new Ukraine would take its place under the Nazi umbrella, much as Jozef Tiso’s new fascist regime had in Slovakia or Ante Pavelić’s in Croatia.

What we are seeing is a cynical attempt to rewrite history in order to portray Bandera and the OUN/UPA as mere Ukrainian nationalists. Why? Because NATO’s Ukrainian friends identify with Bandera’s alliance with Nazi Germany. Bandera sawthings differently explaining that Ukrainian nationalism had taken shape “in a spirit similar to the National Socialist ideas”.

The ADL has long experience in this kind of thing. It was previously engaged in spying on anti-apartheid activists and the left on behalf South Africa’s secret police, BOSS. In 1993 it paid$178,000 to activists who had been targeted by its spy Roy Bullock. See ADL’s Spy Ring.

That the BBC and the yellow press is engaged in trying to prettify the AB and assorted neo-Nazis is one thing (see Ros Atkin’s apologia What untruths is Russia spreading about Nazis in Ukraine?) but for a self-proclaimed anti-fascist organisation to do the same is something else.

As Jimmy Dore observed, there are now good Nazis as well as bad Nazis. The good ones are pro-Western and publicly, at least, play down their anti-Semitism.

Although you don’t deny that the AB is a neo-Nazi group you minimise its size, suggesting that it only consists of 900 members, 0.5% of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. [AFU] This suggests that you either do not appreciate the scale of the Nazification of the AFU or that you are playing it down for political reasons.

According to Ruslan Leviev, an analyst with the Conflict Intelligence Team, it is estimated that there are ‘several thousand’ members of the Azov Battalion. However even this is likely to be an underestimate. Azov are in charge of 60,000 troops in Mariupol, one-third of the Ukrainian armed forces.

According to Reuter’s in addition to 145,000 army personnel there are 102,000 paramilitaries, including foreign mercenaries. Far-right groups are heavily concentrated in them. Who can doubt that those under AB’s command, those in Mariupol have become indoctrinated into its far-Right ideology?

An example of Azov’s handiwork was the body of a woman found in the basement of Azov’s HQ in Mariupol. She had been tortured and a swastika was scratched into her chest. For which Western media blamedRussians.

Oleksiy Kuzmenko’s Far-Right Group Made Its Home in Ukraine’s Major Western Military Training Hub[George Washington University, September 2021] makes for sombre reading. Kuzmenko wrotethat:

... since 2018, the National Army Academy (NAA), Ukraine’s premier military education institution and a major hub for Western military assistance to the country, has been home to Centuria, a self-described order of “European traditionalist” military officers that has the stated goals of reshaping the country’s military along right-wing ideological lines and defending the “cultural and ethnic identity” of European peoples against “Brussels’ politicos and bureaucrats.” The group envisions a future where “European right forces are consolidated and national traditionalism is established as the disciplining ideological basis for the European peoples.”

The group, led by individuals with ties to Ukraine’s ... Azov movement, has attracted multiple members, including current and former officer cadets of the NAA now serving in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Apparent members have appeared in photos giving Nazi salutes and made seemingly extremist statements online.

The group has been able to proselytize Ukraine’s future military elite inside the NAA. Apparent members have also gained access to Western military education and training Institutions.

The presence of the far right within the NAA and AFU is alarming because that institution is central to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Western support for that country, and Western military presence there. Foreign military instructors routinely engage with the Academy’s cadets at both the Academy proper and the International Peacekeeping and Security Center it oversees....

Azov figures and groups linked to Azov also heaped praise on Centuria and shared its messages online. In January 2019, for example, Eduard Yurchenko, an ideologue of the Azov movement, praised the group on Telegram, where he now has more than 1,100 subscribers. “You should know that this is our legendary future growing,” Yurchenko wrote of Centuria, emphasizing that the group was holding events within the NAA. ...

Galician Youth, a group that is linked to the Azov movement and operates in the Western part of Ukraine, similarly shared Centuria propaganda on Telegram in 2019.

In May 2021, the United Jewish Community of Ukraine... accused Galician Youth of spreading anti-Semitic posters in Lviv. The group denied having any connection to anti-Semitic posters and stated that it condemned anti-Semitism and xenophobia. Belying these statements, however, Galician Youth events, patches, etc., feature white nationalist symbols.

The evidence is overwhelming that the AFU is being penetrated at all levels by neo-Nazi groups.

HnH, which never lost an opportunity to attack anti-racists like Chris Williamson for ‘anti-Semitism’, goes out of its way to downplay genuine anti-Semitism in Ukraine. HnH even withdrewan award to Joe Solo for having supported Chris, though it ended up with egg their your faces. You wrote that:

Ukraine's contemporary Jewish community, while facing antisemitism that all Jewish populations sadly receive, has, in the post-communist era, become a thriving community in the country with freedoms and protections written in law.

Eduard Dolinsky, the leader of Ukraine’s Jewish community clearly disagrees:

Our government encourages nationalistic groups. Our government encourages glorification of Nazi collaborator mass murderers and murderers of Jews.

Zelensky’s Alliance with Ukraine’s Neo-Nazis

You wrote that ‘Ukrainian President Zelenskyy is Jewish and lost family members in the Holocaust.’As Lev Golinkin wrotein The Forward ‘Ukraine Is Teeming With Anti-Semitism. It Just Elected A Jewish President.’

Zelensky is a puppet of Ukraine’s fascists who came to power thanks to patronage from Ukrainian oligarch, Ihor Kolomoisky. Kolomoisky also fundsthe AB and other far-right militias.

In 2019 Zelensky metwith a range of fascist groups telling reporters “I met with veterans yesterday. Everyone was there – the National Corps, Azov, and everyone else.” A few seats away from Zelensky was Yehven Karas, leader of the neo-Nazi C14 gang.

In 2019, Zelensky defended Ukrainian footballer Roman Zolzulya against Spanish fans taunting him as a “Nazi.” Zolzulya had posed beside photos of Stepan Bandera and openly supported the AB. Zelensky, described Zolzulya as “not only a cool football player but a true patriot.”

Last April Zelensky attempted to appoint the neo-Nazi former head of the Right Sector in Odessa, Serhiy Sternenko as head of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU). As the former head of the neo-Nazi Right Sector in Odessa, Sternenko was directly implicated in the 2014 Trade Unions House massacre of 46 people.

In November 2021 Dmytro Yarosh, announcedthat he had been appointed as an advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of the AFU. Yarosh led the Right Sector from 2013-2015, vowingto lead the “de-Russification” of Ukraine.

A month later, as war with Russia drew closer, Zelensky awardedRight Sector commander Dmytro Kotsyubaylo the “Hero of Ukraine” commendation. Kosyubaylo keeps a pet wolf in his frontline base, and likes to joketo visiting reporters that his fighters “feed it the bones of Russian-speaking children.”

On March 1, Zelensky replacedthe regional administrator of Odessa with Maksym Marchenko, a former commander of the extreme right Aidar Battalion, which has been accused of an array of war crimes in the Donbas.

Zelensky’s recent visit to Greece backfired dramatically in a country which was occupied during WWII.

Zelensky’s address cut away to broadcast two members of the AB. Both said that they were of Greek heritage. It brought outrage in Greece. “Nazis Return to Parliament — Thanks to Mitsotakis” ran one headline referring to the fact that it is only recently that Greece has managed to drive out its own neo-nazis.

What HnH is doing is repeating one of NATO’s favourite canards. Because Zelensky is Jewish we can safely ignore the Nazification of the Ukrainian state. It is a favourite prop of the West’s propagandists as this video demonstrates.

Zelensky is Jewish - NATO talking point

Until recently Zelensky downplayed his Jewishness jokingthat “The fact that I am Jewish barely makes 20 in my long list of faults,”Now however it is of enormous propaganda importance

Zelensky’s Jewishness is being used in order to justify the rehabilitation of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi groups and HnH is part of this effort. On December 16 2021 when the UN General Assembly passeda resolution on “Combating Glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices’ 130 countries voted in favour with only two against – the Ukraine and the United States!

In 2016 the United States lifteda ban on funding neo-Nazi Ukrainian militia. Although the ban was reimposed two years later it has since been ignored. Not only the USA but Britain and Israeltoo have supplied the fascists with weapons.

More relevant than his being Jewish is that Zelensky is a Zionist. The Zionist movement has historically koshered anti-Semitism, Nazism included. The founder of Revisionist Zionism, Ze’ev Jabotinsky came from Odessa. A member of the Zionist Executive, Jabotinsky made a pact with Symon Petliura, leader of the Ukrainian People’s Republic which fought the Red Army.

Shlomo Avineiri called it an ‘embarrassing episode’. Petliura’s nationalist mobs and army killed 100,000 Jews but this did not stop Jabotinsky’s troops fighting alongside him. In 2009 Kyiv renamed Comintern Street Symon Petliura Street.

Bandera’s hands were even bloodier than Petliura’s, who at least, according to some accounts, made some efforts to stop the pogroms. Bandera’s Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists [OUN] got their first taste of Jewish blood at Babi Yar, the ravine just outside Kiev where over 33,000 Jews were killed in just 2 days, 29-30 September 1941. It was the first big Nazi massacre.

Zelensky has banned11 left-wing groups including the Opposition Platform for Life, which with 44 seats is the biggest opposition party in parliament. Given that the Communist Party of Ukraine is already banned we can see a pattern. It is noticeable that no nationalist or fascist groups have been banned. Banning left-wing parties was one of Hitler’s first acts.

Finally I want to address your comment that Zelensky has relatives who died in the Holocaust. So what? I doubt if there is a single Jew in Ukraine whose relatives didn’t die in the Holocaust. There must be few Jews anywhere in Europe whose relatives didn’t die in the Holocaust. No doubt ÉricZemmour, the defeated Jewish fascist who stood for election in France also had relatives who died in the Holocaust. That hasn’t stopped him being an anti-Semite.

This lazy repetition of the mass media’s sound bites suggests that HnH is deliberately minimising the strength of neo-Nazis in Ukraine. In the process you are exploiting the memory of the dead of the Holocaust. There is a word for that – anti-Semitism. Israeli leaders, such as Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, had relatives who died in the Holocaust but that did not stop them murdering thousands of Palestinians. In the case of Shamir it didn’t stop him, as leader of the Stern Gang, twice offering the Nazis a military pact in 1941. What matters is what you do now. Zelensky has got into bed with Ukraine’s neo-Nazis.

Regards,

Tony Greenstein

Who Was Stepan Bandera?– Daniel Lazare

Who are Ukraine’s far-right Azov regiment?

Vigilante punishment spreads in Ukraine

Ukrainian President Zelensky deepens alliance with far right

Who are Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Battalion?

Far-right vigilantes imposing ‘Ukrainian order’ are strange partners for Ukraine’s National Police

How Ukraine’s Jewish president Zelensky made peace with neo-Nazi paramilitaries on front lines of war with Russia

Ukraine: Apparent POW Abuse Would Be War Crime

Ukrainian President Zelensky deepens alliance with far right

Was bombing of Mariupol theater staged by Ukrainian Azov extremists to trigger NATO intervention?

Zelensky, the Azov Battalion and the Greek parliament

Correspondence between Tony Greenstein and Hate not Hope

Nick Lowles

signup@hopenothate.org.uk Tue, 29 Mar, 16:18

Subject: Re: ‘They shall not pass’ in Ukrainian

Hi Tony,

With everything that’s going on in the world, it’s never been more important to take action against fascism and make it clear to everyone where you stand.

That’s why HOPE not hate produces a range of merchandise from clothing, bags, badges, water bottles and much more - so that you can wear your anti-fascism with pride in all aspects of your life.

I’m particularly excited about our new t-shirt and hoody, steeped in antifascist history, which reads 'They shall not pass’ in Ukrainian.

From: Tony Greenstein <tonygreenstein111@gmail.com>
Date: Tuesday, 29 March 2022 at 16:23
To: signup <signup@hopenothate.org.uk>

I hope you are referring to the neo-Nazi armed Azov militia, Right Sector and C14 who have been armed and funded by the US, Israel and UK among others.

It would be a new low for Hate not Hope to be backing neo-Nazis but I wouldn't put it past you given your support of Apartheid Israel

Tony Greenstein

signup 31 Mar 2022, 11:01

Hi Tony, thank you so much for your message.

The Azov Regiment is a neo-nazi paramilitary organisation that is now a unit of the National Guard of Ukraine which has been active since 2014. The regiment has received widespread support from the global white supremacist movement and at times attracted foreign fighters. We wholeheartedly oppose the Azov Regiment and completely condemn any support or aid for the regiment.

However, despite the existence of this neo-nazi regiment, Putin's claims that he is 'denazifying' Ukraine is both incorrect and offensive. Ukrainian President Zelenskyy is Jewish and lost family members in the Holocaust. Ukraine's contemporary Jewish community, while facing antisemitism that all Jewish populations sadly receive, has, in the post-communist era, become a thriving community in the country with freedoms and protections written in law.

Estimates place the size of the Azov Regiment around 900 soldiers. While this remains unacceptable, the Ukrainian military had roughly 196,600 active military personnel at the start of the invasion and could call on 900,000 reservists when hostilities began, making the Azov regiment a tiny fraction of the Ukranian fighting force.

Anti-fascism was instrumentalised by the Eastern Bloc regimes during Cold War in order to justify their agenda of 'social reorganisation'. It has been called 'antifascism as total ideology'. The current misuse of anti-fascism by Putin regime is nothing new.

It is possible to wholeheartedly condemn the Azov Battalian and any support for it within Ukraine or anywhere else, while also rejecting Putin's false denazification claims being used to justify his illegal and unjustifiable war against the Ukranian people.

You might also be interested to read our recent blog about the far right in Ukraine https://hopenothate.org.uk/2022/02/24/the-far-right-wrestles-with-ukraine and our podcast on the same subject https://hopenothate.org.uk/podcast/radio-43-episode-31-intelligence-report-the-ghosts-of-fascism-in-russias-war-on-ukraine

Best wishes,

Jayde

Injustice Across Borders - Ugly Patel’s Racist Refugee Plan – BBC Bias – US Police Racism – Ukraine and Assange

George Galloway Appeal for Disappeared Ukrainian/Chilean Blogger Gonzalo Lira - the list of names below are those of 'disappeared' journalists in Ukraine - some of whom are feared to have been murdered by Ukraine's Secret Police

A few days ago I watched a video interview by Zuby with Gonzalo, a Chilean blogger living in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second biggest city, describing conditions there and pouring scorn on the mainstream media’s narrative about how the Russians are war criminals.

In it he expressed his fear that he, like other bloggers, could disappear and said that the Ukrainian authorities were trying to locate him to silence him.

In the West the media portrays Ukraine as a normal western democracy but this is a lie. Its security forces have absorbedfascist militias like the Azov Battalion. All independent media have been shut down and recently all 11 left-wing parties, including the Opposition Platform for Life with 39 seats in the Ukrainian parliament, were banned.

The Double Standards of our Rulers Knows No Limits

This Blog is slightly different from normal. I have decided to include a number of odds and ends, memes, graphics and videos. As I write blogs I accumulate a lot of interesting things which don’t merit a blog on their own (or for which I don’t have time).

Plus, despite my best attempts to avoid COVID, being immuno-compromised I have nonetheless caught it. I took 8 lateral flow tests in the past 3 days, four negative and four positive. But today a PCR result arrived confirming I have it.

However I have no symptoms or ailments (yet) so I may be lucky. Also I have had 4 jabs so I’m as prepared as anyone can be.

Nonetheless in the past week nearly 2,000 people have died, including on one day over 600 people from COVID. This high rate of death is directly due to the criminally negligent lifting of all restrictions by Boris Johnson in order to save his career. If we had an opposition then Labour’s leader might have laid into him because of this.

I should also say that the anti-vaxxers have a lot to answer for. Thousands of people died who might still be alive but for the fake information that was spread by conspiracy theorists like Piers Corbyn.

A fact check by the Poynter Institute showed that for people age 80 and over, the death rate among the unvaccinated was 156 per 100,000 — more than three times higher than 49.5 for the vaccinated.

The difference was highest among people aged 50 to 59 where the rate was 12.4 deaths per 100,000 among the unvaccinated, compared with 1.4 deaths among the vaccinated, i.e. more than 8 times higher.

Barnaby Raine video on the IHRA Misdefinition of Anti-Semitism

End Israeli Apartheid - Scrap the IHRA Definition of Anti-Semitism

The Israel Lobby, which spearheaded Corbyn's removal as Labour Party leader with anti-Semitism smears, has been focussing on UK universities, with the strong support of the Government.

How can we defeat this censorship campaign and go on the offensive against those who smear life-long anti-racists for the 'crimes' of supporting Palestinian freedom and opposing the political ideology of Zionism?

Meeting on UN Israel Anti-Apartheid Day

On March 19 we held a meeting on UN Anti-Racism Day, which was established to remember the massacre in 1960 at Sharpeville by South Africa’s Apartheid Police of 69 Black African demonstrators protesting against South Africa’s Pass Laws. The speakers were:

Ramzy Baroud Editor of the Palestine Chronicle. Ramzy has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist and author of several books. His latest book is These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons

Haim Bresheeth, Israeli academic and professor at the School of African and Oriental Studies is a filmmaker and photographer. He is the co-author of The Holocaust for Beginnersand his latest book is An Army Like No Otherfor Verso.

David Miller set up the UK’s lobbying watchdog, Spinwatch, which has tracked corporate power for 15 years. Professor of Sociology who was dismissed by Bristol University after a massive Zionist and Establishment campaign against him headed by Caroline Lucas MP and racist Tory MPs such as Bob Blackman.

Huda Ammori– is of Palestinian and Iraqi descent, and an active campaigner against the military industrial complex and Israel’s apartheid regime. She is a co-founder of Palestine Action, a direct action network targeting Israel’s largest private arms company, Elbit Systems. PA’s achievements include the closure of Elbit’s Oldham factory.

Farid Esackis a professor at the University of Johannesburg, a writer, and political activist who was appointed by Nelson Mandela as a gender equity commissioner. He is a member of Africa for Palestine.

Tony Greenstein was the first Jewish person to be expelled as part of the 'antisemitism' witchhunt, a member of the Steering Committee of the SLN and a co-founder of PSC. He is bringing out a new book Zionism During the Holocaust which has already been condemned as ‘anti-Semitic’ without the Zionists having read a word!

The meeting explored the use of the IHRA Definition of anti-Semitism as a means to suppress free speech and action in solidarity with Palestine. It also looks at resistance to this effort to silence and suppress pro-Palestinian activism

Roger Waters’ ‘The Occupation of the American Mind’

Despite receiving an overwhelmingly positive response from those who have actually seen it, The Occupation of the American Mind has been repeatedly attacked and misrepresented by right-wing pressure groups and outright ignored by virtually all mainstream media outlets and North American film festivals. To bypass this campaign of misrepresentation and suppression, the film has been made available for FREE online so that people can make up their own minds about its analysis of U.S. media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Please watch and share widely!

Noam Chomsky: A Left response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine

Noam Chomsky isn’t a socialist but he is an anti-imperialist. Unfortunately much of the left such as the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty and Anti-Capitalist Resistance have abandoned anti-imperialism. Chomsky’s interview on Real News Media is a must if you want to learn the background to the invasion and the potential consequences.

It is a lesson in the reality of a world dominated by a war-mongering hegemon, the USA which has stoked and created the war in Ukraine.

Gaoled Ukrainian Blogger Gleb Lyashenko

Ukrainian Blogger

You will have heard of the Russian law which imposes up to 15 years in prison for ‘fake’ information about the war. The mass media won’t let you forget Putin’s repression. But have you heard of the Ukrainian blogger Gleb Lyashenko who has been gaoled and is facing 15 years in prison?

No? That’s strange. I guess that the BBC and Guardian didn’t have room in between all their anti-Russian stories! The Morning Star reported that

The Galician District Court in Lviv jailed Gleb Lyashenko for 60 days pending trial for blaming Ukrainian political decisions for the Russian attack.

“For eight years Russia has been asking and even begging Ukraine to change its course. Ukraine has refused for eight years. And here is the result,” he wrote.

Gleb was referring to the Minsk agreement signed between Russia and Ukraine, which aimed to end conflict in the eastern Donbass region which erupted in 2014.

Ukrainian security forces accused Mr Lyashenko of being a “traitor who supported the criminal actions of the aggressor country.”

The Morning Star reported that:

The charges of treason were brought after President Volodomyr Zelensky banned all private TV stations, merging them into one state-controlled TV channel amid a broader crackdown on media.

He has been widely criticised for banning 11 left-wing and progressive parties.

Purges of the Ukrainian left have continued, with priests, communists and human rights defenders disappearing in a mirror image of Russia’s harsh crackdown on peace activists and critics of the war.

The fate of trade union leader Yuriy Bobchenko remains unknown nearly two weeks after he was abducted from his home in the east Ukrainian city of Krivoy Rog.

He is chair of the Trade Union of Metallurgists and Miners of Ukraine, an affiliate of global labour federation IndustriALL, at the city’s ArcelorMittal mine.

Gleb wrote:

"Zelensky was wrong. It has been years that the Russia has been asking us for a reasonable agreement, that is to stay out of the Nato. But there was no change of course. This is why our government takes orders from others, who use us Ukrainians for their purposes. The result was this absurd war."

"All wars start with lies. But all wars can be stopped by the truth! "

Ugly Patel’s Racist Scheme to Send Refugees to Rwanda is Copied From Israel (where else?)

Ugly Patel’s attempt to send asylum seekers to Rwanda is a blatant flouting of the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. If Ugly’s parents had not been admitted to Britain as refugees from Idi Amin in Uganda in 1973 we wouldn’t have this despicable racist at the Home Office.

Her scheme is not new. It was first tried in Israel when Netanyahu tried to get rid of its 40,000 Black African refugees who were guilty of two crimes – they were not Jewish and worse, they were Black.

As the International Refugee Rights Initiativereported in September 2015 after a study based on interviews with Sudanese and Eritrean refugees who had left Israel, any promises made today will be broken tomorrow. Their paper documented the experiences of asylum seekers who were subjected to Israel’s “voluntary departure” procedure.

It focused on the reasons they left Israel, their status in the receiving countries, Rwanda and also Uganda and the reasons they left these countries shortly after arriving in them.

Almost two thirds of the asylum seekers who left Israel with the assistance of Israel’s “voluntary return unit” did so as a result of their detention or upon receiving a detention order.

These asylum seekers were sent to Rwanda with a promise from the Israeli authorities that they would be provided with the necessary papers to enable them to stay legally in the receiving country.

Their findings were that,

‘in reality, they do not receive any legal status: they are left with no valid legal documents upon arrival and are either encouraged to leave these countries, live below the radar and without legal status, and/or hide the fact that they came from Israel.’

Whatever promises are made by Ugly will be broken. The experience from Israel is not promising. See Sent to Rwanda by Israel: ‘We have no food or work. Don’t come here’

Three years ago Netanyahu was defeated in his attempts to deport the refugees. Israeli pilots refused to fly the refugees out. This must be the reaction of British pilots. See The Other Israel Demonstrates that it hasn’t completely forgotten the lessons of the Holocaust and Judaism

Rwanda’s dictator Paul Kagame has ruled for over 20 years and shows no sign of stepping down. He runs a ruthless regime which is applauded in the West. It is no accident that he has agreed to a corrupt deal with Ugly Patel to take Britain’s Black asylum seekers. We can be sure that no White person will be sent to Rwanda. That is reserved for non-White and Black people. See How President Paul Kagame crushed Rwanda’s free press and Rwanda's human rights record from genocide to torture - as UK plan to send asylum seekers

But what stopped Rwanda’s corrupt deal with Israel was the actions of asylum seekers themselves. They protested and demonstrated outside Rwanda’s Embassy in Israel. Kagame and his regime were embarrassed into retreating. They did it once and we can do it again.

There is limited purpose in protesting outside the Home Office though there is certainly a head of steam building up against Ugly’s scheme, even from within the Home Office. However crucial to ensuring this scheme does not go ahead will be pressure on Rwanda’s corrupt state. We should be picketing outside the Rwandan Embassy until they back down.

There is no sidewalk yet the police arrested Joseph Davies for not walking on it!

US POLICE RACISM - Cop arrested a man for not walking on a sidewalk, but he didn't know anyone would see this video

Joseph Davis from Terre Haute, Indiana, was arrested for not walking on a sidewalk. In Indiana there is a law that says if there is a sidewalk use it and don’t walk in the road. Fair enough you might think.

The only problem is that the road didn’t have a sidewalk. However that didn’t stop the racist cop from arresting him! He turned off his body camera and thought no one else was filming. The Police Accountability Report investigated and obtained body camera and dashcam video evidence that offered a rare glimpse into American law enforcement—evidence that not only contradicted the allegations made by the racist pig but that also revealed how difficult it is to escape the US’s law enforcement-industrial complex. Read the transcript of this interview. This is American justice and the pig involved will suffer no consequences.

The Origins of Ukraine’s Fascists & Why It Matters, w/ Historian Tarik Cyril Amar

For those who only discovered Ukraine two months ago, the fact that Ukrainian nationalism has been dangerously intertwined with fascism might sound like Russian propaganda. But is it?

How powerful is the Ukrainian far right? Are they really linked to Nazis? Why is the corporate-owned media denying this?

To place this war and the Ukrainian far-right in its historical context, Rania Khalek was joined by Tarik Cyril Amar, a historian from Germany, who is currently associate professor of history at Koc University, Istanbul.

Assange Picket of The Guardian

18 months ago I took part in a picket of The Guardian over their shocking abandonment of Julian Assange. The only genuine journalist at the Guardian was its cartoonist, Steve Bell who was given notice that his contract was being ended. I was interviewed at the picket by Real Media.

Fake CIA Story Planted in The Guardian by Luke Harding, an MI5 'journalist'

Even worse Guardian ‘journalists’ like Luke Harding, an MI5 asset, penned demonstrably fake stories about Trump’s former election manager, Paul Manafort, having held secret talks with Assange in Ecuadorian embassy. There was no evidence whatsoever for this story.

All the evidence shows this was Black Propaganda. To this day the Guardian’s useless editor Kath Viner has refused to take the story down or substantiate it. There were CCTV cameras at the entrance to the Embassy as well as a signing in book. They provided no evidence for a fake story without legs.

The Guardian betrayed Assange even to the extent of making public a secret password which destroyed his careful work spent ensuring that no one would be hurt by its disclosures (though why he would want to protect CIA assets is another matter). The Guardian ran a series of front page exposes based on Assange’s revelations yet when he was incarcerated with false allegations of rape in Sweden the Guardian helped the prosecution.

The Guardian took Assange's Information and then Betrayed him

‘Journalists’ on the Guardian did their best to undermine Assange when he was under attack. The despicable Suzanna Moore posted a tweet calling Assange a ‘flattened pigeon’ (possibly a reference to her hair style). George Monbiot refused to cover the issue at all. James Ball, a lightweight ‘journalist’ even by the Guardian’s standards wrote in January 2018 that:

‘The only barrier to Julian Assange leaving Ecuador’s embassy is pride - The WikiLeaks founder is unlikely to face prosecution in the US, charges in Sweden have been dropped – and for the embassy, he’s lost his value as an icon’

The Guardian's Despicable Suzanna Moore

See Why Did The Guardian Fail to Cover the Extradition Proceedings of Julian Assange in September?

Other Highlights

Apsama Begum MP on Why You Should Oppose the Border and Nationality Act

A good video by Apsama Begum MP on why the government is introducing racist legislation. To divide and rule among the working class.

Ruby Bridges – What Did You Learn About Racism At School?

See this excellent video on what you didn’t learn in school. It describes how Ruby Bridges, a 6 year old Black child, was forced to walk through lines of vicious white women spitting their hate on her as she was accompanied into school in Arkansas by 4 federal marshalls. School integration had been mandated by the US Supreme Court (when it was still in the hands of liberals).

Ruby was forced to take classes by herself, was alone in the playground and suffered as no child should have to suffer. This is what racism was like in the Deep South. We should remember that to this day schools in Israel are segregated between Jew and Arab.

John Pilger Interviewing ex CIA Chief Duane McClarridge about Salvador Allende’s Overthrow in Chile in 1973

What took me aback about this interview is the brazenness of McClarridge. It throws into sharp relief those who believe that the West is on the side of the ‘good guys’ in Ukraine. Those charlatans consider themselves on the Left. Figures like Fourth International supporter Gilbert Achcar who offersintellectual and political support for the American war effort.

Why I Welcome the Abolition of the BBC License Fee

Unlike much of the soft, liberal left I welcome the government proposal to abolish the BBC’s license fee as I made clear in a letter to the Morning Star recently. The license fee itself is a regressive form of taxation. Rich and poor pay the same amount.

But more importantly the BBC, as it has demonstrated over the Ukrainian War is a Government/NATO propaganda station. Stripped of its cultural and sporting output it is the Voice of the British Establishment. We should leave it to the ruling class to pay for the BBC!

Goodbye Andrew Marr Enter Tory Laura Kuensberg

For those who still retain any doubts about the BBC’s impartiality, you should watch Andrew Marr’s report in Downing Street at the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003 as British and American troops did what they are attacking Russia for now, but with far less justification. Marr spoke of how:

Mr Blair is well aware that all his critics out there in the party and beyond aren’t going to thank him, because they are only human, for being right when they’ve been wrong...

But I think this is a very very important moment for him. It gives him a new freedom and a new self-confidence....

I don’t think anybody after this is going to be able to say of Tony Blair that he is somebody who is driven by the drift of public opinion or focus groups or opinion polls.

He said that they would be able to take Baghdad without a bloodbath and that in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating. And on both of those points he has been proved conclusively right. And it would be entirely ungracious even for his critics not to acknowledge that tonight he stands as a larger man and a stronger Prime Minister as a result.

The only thing we have to console ourselves with is that Andrew Marr’s replacement is Tory Laura Kuensberg, privately educated daughter of a tax dodging family.

A Seder Story from Anti-Occupation Group Na’amod

Favourite Quote of the Day

Is from Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid who said that the "killing of innocent civilians" was why Israel had voted to suspend Russia from the (human rights) council.'

Israel had been doing nothing else but killing innocent civilians since the day it was formed in 1948. One wonders just how these righteous hypocrites can sleep at night.

The Cartoon that the Morning Star Deleted

This is an irreverent cartoon making a point that simply because someone says that they’ve transitioned doesn’t necessarily mean that they have.

Of course crocodiles are not the same species as newts and this is therefore no analogy! However the point is still one that is relevant although undoubtedly it will be claimed that it is transphobic.

The Labour Debate on Palestine that Never Was – Day 3 of Labour Party Conference Never Happened

That Labour Party motion that described Israel as an Apartheid State at the 2021 Conference didn't get passed after all. In fact there was no such debate. Indeed there was no Day 3 of the Conference at all.

Starmer has ruled that Day 3 of the Labour Party never happened as he affirmedto the Jewish Chronicle that in the eyes of the Labour Party Israel is a democratic state and that kosher pigs really do fly. Apparently Labour Party HQ have removed all evidence of Day 3 and the Palestine debate from their own conference recording showing that Stalinism is alive and well in Labour under Starmer.

The Death of an Elderly Palestinian Shepherd

This is an amazing segment on MSNBC from Velshi in which he describes Israel as an apartheid state – a taboo word in the American media. For example the New York Times still has not covered the Amnesty International Report describing Israel as an apartheid state.

An Israeli Minister was condemned for even having discussed settler violence against Palestinians by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett

Velshi seems the odd one out in the American media in being willing to call Israel’s criminal behaviour out, explain the process of colonisation and land theft and even call Israel an Apartheid State (whilst still supporting its ‘right to exist’) Below is another Velshi programme describing how Israel troops and those demolishing the bread oven of an elderly Palestinian shepherd literally ran him over and let him bleed to death whilst they scarpered.

Zionists Call for Me To Be Gaoled Whilst Trying To Get Me a Ticket to Dignitas!

And to end on a lighter note. My good friend Jonathan Hoffman, who I even defended once in the letters pages of the Jewish Chronicle, is getting all worked up.

In the attached Facebook post he declares his wish to sue me but unfortunately he realises that the costs of so doing would inevitably fall on him. In the restrained polemics that we have come to love and adore Hoffie says that ‘he (me!) is already in debt up to his putrid scraggy neck.’

Hoffie objected to my labelling him a Tommy Robinson supporter despite copious evidence that he befriends fascists such as Britain First’s Paul Besser. The photo below shows him dancing down the street outside Ahava with Roberta Moore of the Jewish Defence League, the EDL’s Jewish arm.

His friends naturally commiserated, none more so than Mel Gharial, who is pictured here with Danny Tomo, Tommy Robinson’s bodyguard. Mel wanted to ‘do something together’ with Hoffie, which opens up all sorts of possibilities!

Mel recently assured me that reports of her having once been a page 3 girl are wrong. I have to confess that I myself was surprised at the news as surely the Sun had better taste. But that’s what her friends assured me. They also told me that Mel had been a lady of the night, but again I find it hard to believe as Mel can hardly be described as a lady of anything. Who knows?

Mordko Rainer jumped in assuring his comrades that ‘No reasonable person would buy anything he is selling.’ But I don’t sell anything. Everything is given away!

Jonathan Hoffman's grovelling apology for having accused David Hoffman (not related) of having photoshopped a picture of him cavorting with fascists

Sharon KKKlaff jumps in. Sharon has an ecumenical approach to British fascists. This racist shrew who left South Africa as it abandoned Apartheid informed the gaggle that ‘sadly BLM supporting anti-Semites buy his libellous lies and use them to label people as racist’. Perish the thought that Pegida supporting Sharon, who led the campaign against a mosque in Golders Green could be labelled a racist, despite having labelled all BLM supporters as anti-Semites!

In a most unfriendly comment Sharon stated ‘surely jail time is called for’. Sharon unfortunately is homesick and often imagines herself back in the laager when political opponents could indeed be gaoled for 'defamation'.

But the kindest comment came from Nigel Lawrence who asked for the phone number of Dignitas, where people can go in order that they have a dignified exit from life if they suffer from incurable illnesses.

And it is very true. Although I am hale and hearty at the moment, in the event that I fall ill with a terminal and painful illness I would be very grateful for a ticket to visit Dignitas. All I can say is that it is most comforting that even my worst enemies are looking out for me!

Tony Greenstein

If these Nazi-style execution of civilians were perpetrated by the Russians why did Bucha’s Mayor say nothing when he announced its 'liberation'?

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The wanton massacre of civilians, in a Nazi style execution, makes no sense from the perspective of the Russian forces. We know that they have fed and provided water to civilian inhabitants. Why would they want to perpetrate a massacre such as in Bucha? What possible good would it do them?

However the massacre of Russian supporting Ukrainians by fascist militias which abound in Ukraine today does undoubtedly make sense.

Russian Torture victim

Undoubtedly there will be individual instances of war crimes by Russian soldiers. All armies perpetrate such atrocities in times of war and where they happen they should be severely punished. But the story of a Russian massacre at Bucha doesn’t ring true. It is what the CIA’s paramilitaries in El Salvador and Nicaragua have done. It is the United States which set up the School of the Americas in order to train such groups in torture and murder.

Azov Torture Victim

On 30 March Russian forces left Bucha, a town on the outskirts of Kyev. They had been using Kiev as a diversion to split up Ukraine’s troops. They rerouted their troops to the Donbas to bottle up and destroy the 125,000 Ukrainian troops there.

The very next day a beaming Anatolii Fedoruk, the Mayor of Bucha, in a videoon Bucha City Council’s official Facebook page, which was aired on Ukrainian TV channel Ukraine 24 TV, announced, in a translated post accompanying the video that March 31 was:

the day of the liberation of Bucha. This day will go down in the glorious history of Bucha and the entire Bucha community as a day of liberation by the Armed Forces of Ukraine from the Russian occupiers.

Now you would have thought that if there were 700+ dead bodies scattered around town, that he might have noticed something?

bodies with Russian packs

On 2^ndApril, the Communication Department of the National Police of Ukraine posted photos and a YouTube video on their website. They declared that their Special Unit, Safari (mainly Azov), would be carrying out a "cleansing operation" to "liquidate" pro-Russian "saboteurs" and "collaborators" on April 1st. They also asked residents to stay indoors and to not be alarmed. A female politician from the area also publicly broadcast the same message on television: that a "cleansing operation" was taking place, and for residents to stay indoors and not t panic. You can find the announcementhere:

‘Special Forces Regiment SAFARI Begins Clearing Operation in Bucha from Saboteurs and Accomplices of Russia’.

The Safari consists of members of the Azov Battalion and one particularly notorious thug and murderer, Sergey Korotkikh, who according to Evan Reif is a man also known as Botsun, Malyuta. Bandit, Terrorist and most fitting of all, Nazi.

Sergey "Boatsman" Korotkikh was not only among the first Ukrainian forces in the town along with his squad of terrorists, he was making jokes about shooting civilians as he entered. He would later happily post these videos on his official telegram channel. Botsun is captured on film asking his commanding officer

“There are guys without blue armbands, can I shoot them?”

“Fuck yeah

Dead bodies with white armbands

Most of the victims were wearing white armbands (friendly to Russia), or had them used to tie their hands behind their backs. The photo of the alley shows multiple victims lying dead next to Russian ration packs. These ration packs are green with star symbols on them which you can see in the photographs. The Ukrainian State's public policy is to treat any civilian who trades eggs and other dairy goods for dry goods with the Russians as ‘collaborators’. The bodies in the street look placed, as they are lying in a symmetrical pattern which isn't natural--the victims wouldn't have fallen so perfectly, if, say, dumped from the back of a moving truck, or shot while in the area.

A young Ukrainian, known only as Halexandria, posted a comment on YouTube in which she stated that she has family who live in Bucha. After the initial fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces, Russians handed out food and water to residents--some took it, and others declined it. After the Russians pulled out on March 30th, the mayor of the town betrayed the townspeople, and told Ukrainian forces which residents took humanitarian aid. Military personnel then broke into people's homes, and shot anyone who the mayor alleged took aid, or had ration packs in their home, and anyone else who got in their way. Her family members witnessed this, as they live very close to some of the residents who were shot.

bodies with Russian packs

All of this evidence points to the Bucha Massacre being committed by the Nazi Safari unit of the Ukrainian National Police, under instructions of the state itself.

On April 4th the New York Times allegedto have satellite photos from the Pentagon which prove that the bodies had been in place since, at least, March 19th. Satellite images show bodies lay in Bucha for weeks, despite Russian claims.

Naturally the BBC and dozens of other MSM echoed this nonsense. The Pentagon deniedthat they had any photographic evidence confirming that Russian troops had committed the massacre. That was because an independent analysis of the satellite imagery concluded that it was taken on April 1st. But see Russia to show UNSC 'empirical evidence' regarding Bucha deathsand Scott Ritter’sWhat Happened in Bucha Ukraine

Any forensic pathologist would tell you that bodies exposed for two weeks would have bloated, expanded with gas, burst, changed colour, and spilled liquidised organs onto the ground according to any basic forensic analysis. The victims were clearly killed soon after the Russian withdrawal,

Was Alleged Russian Army Massacre of Civilians at Bucha Actually a False Flag Event Staged by Ukrainian Nazis?

The Russians, when accused of this crime 3 days later, immediately demanded a special session of the UN Security Council. And you know what? Britain, which was in the Chair, refused the request. Now why would that be?

The Guardian, ever the faithful servant of the British Security State and NATO, is getting very perturbed about all this. It ran an article on April 21 Facebook posts disputing Bucha atrocities shared 208,000 times in a week. It seems, judging by comments on the Guardian’s Facebook page that more and more people are not buying the never ending, ceaseless propaganda barrage by NATO and its loyal press.

The neo-Nazi insignia of NATO's Nazis

Now if the Guardian and the rest of Britain’s yellow press were seriously concerned about this horrific massacre, then the first thing they would do would be to demand an impartial, international inquiry into who did this. Even UN Secretary General, António Guterres’s demandfor an inquiry has been ignored. Yet the Guardian complains in a non-story that people aren’t buying into NATO’s lies anymore.

The real question is why, instead of a barrage of war propaganda, the Guardian and the BBC aren’t supporting Gutuerre’s demand for an inquiry.

NYT: Ukraine Responsible For Bucha War Crimes Against Russians

Perhaps the reason is because, as a Pentagon official admitted, even they can't independently confirm atrocities in Ukraine's Bucha, official says. None of this has prevented a rush to judgement by the mass media. Why? Because they want it to be the Russians. The idea that they might at last have to face up to the fact that the West is backing a Ukrainian state, whose security forces depend on 100,000 strong neo-Nazi paramilitaries might cause people to start asking questions as to why we are backing Zelensky. People might even start to ask whether Russia had a very good case for intervening in Ukraine in order to defend its Russian speaking population and Ukrainian Russians.

Woman tortured and killed by Azov in Mariupol - swastika engraved into her

Background

The background to this is what happened in 2014. To compensate for the lack of soldiers, the Ukrainian government resorted to paramilitary militias. In 2020, they constituted about 40 percent of the Ukrainian forces and numbered about 102,000 men, accordingto Reuters. They were armed, financed and trained by the United States, Great Britain, Canada and France. There were more than 19 nationalities.

Disagreeing with NATO's narrative is defined by Twitter as 'harassment'

These militias have been operating in the Donbas since 2014, with Western support. These militias are violent, convey a nauseating ideology and are virulently anti-Semitic and are composed of fanatical and brutal individuals. The best known of these is the Azov Regiment, whose emblem is reminiscent of the 2nd SS Das Reich Panzer Division, which ‘liberated’ Kharkov from the Soviet Union in 1943, before carrying out the 1944 Oradour-sur-Glane massacre in France.

The characterization of the Ukrainian paramilitaries as "Nazis" or "neo-Nazis" is consideredRussian propaganda. But that's not the view of the Times of Israel, or the West Point Academy's Center for Counterterrorism. In 2014, Newsweekmagazine seemed to associate them more with... the Islamic State.

Russian Torture Victim

So, the West supported and continued to arm militias that have been guilty of numerous crimesagainst civilian populations since 2014.

The integration of these paramilitary forces into the Ukrainian National Guard was not accompanied by a "denazification,"as some claim.

What happened in Bucha is part of a continuous fabrication of stories over the war in Ukraine. It is literally impossible to believe anything you see anymore on the BBC, Sky or the major press with the exception of the Morning Star.

Take for example the so called Russian strike on a railway station in Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine involving a Tochka-U missile. This kind of missile is not used by Russia but it has nonetheless been blamed on Russia.

The serial number on the missile that hit the Kramatorsk train station matches exactly, bar one digit, the serial number on a missile that was shot into the Donbas in 2015. Russia decommissioned Tochka-U missiles in 2019. Also, an analysis by DNR forces on the ground found that the trajectory very likely points to the missile being fired from Ukrainian-held territory.

Patrick Lancaster and Matron at Mariupol Hospital

Or take the continuous lies that have been broadcast about Mariupol. It has taken a brave and independent journalist, Patrick Lancaster (please donate to his appeal for expenses) to broadcast the truth about the Russian bombardment on a hospital in the city. Patrick interviewed the matron in the hospital that was bombed who confirmed that all the patients had been ordered days before to leave in order that Azov thugs could establish themselves in the hospital.

Of course when Israel bombs a hospital or clinic in Gaza no one says a word when Israel says Hamas is using it. But when the neo-Nazi Azov regiment claims a hospital was bombed it is held to be true. But judge for yourself.

Dead left behind in Mariupol

There is a concerted attempt to whitewash the Azov brigade. We had one of the main Zionist organisation in the United States, the Anti-Defamation League, which can sniff out ‘anti-Semitism’ miles away, whitewashing Ukrainian neo-Nazis.

Youtube, which for some reason defines itself as a 'community' does its best to deter people from accessing material questioning NATO's Nazi narrative

As Ali Abunimah wroteon 17 March, two weeks before the ADL published an article by Andrew Srulevitch, its director of European affairs, which can only be called a whitewash of Ukrainian Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, who had the blood of 200,000 Jews on his hands as well as 100,00 Poles.

In an interview with David Fishmanwho is a professor of Jewish History at the Jewish Theological Seminary as well as a member of the academic committee of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Srulevitch asked

“We’ve seen torchlit marches in the middle of [Kiev] with the red and black flags of UPA … and pictures of Stepan Bandera, who allied with the Nazis during WWII” “Isn’t that evidence of Nazism in Ukraine?”

Fishman replied

This is a complete lie. As Daniel Lazare wrotein 2015 in a review of Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe’s book Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist.

“Bandera envisioned the Ukraine as a classic one-party state with himself in the role of führer, or providnyk, and expected that a new Ukraine would take its place under the Nazi umbrella.”

However Fishman then contradicted himself:

“For Jews, however, not only is allying with the Nazis unforgivable under any circumstance, but historians have documented that Ukrainian nationalists participated together with Germans in the murder of many thousands of Jews in Ukraine,” Fishman adds.

If ‘Ukrainians’ participated in murdering thousands of Jews doesn’t that suggest some form of ideological alignment? People then wonder why I have made it a specialism to document the history of Nazi-Zionist collaboration.

Fishman asserted that “There are neo-Nazis in Ukraine, just as there are in the US, and in Russia for that matter... But they are a very marginal group with no political influence and who don’t attack Jews or Jewish institutions in Ukraine.”

Another example of this attempt to whitewash Ukraine's neo-Nazis was the sacking of Jewish journalist Konstanty Gebert from a Polish newspaper for refusing to describe Azov as 'far- right' rather than neo-Nazi.

The leader of Ukraine’s Jewish community, Eduard Dolinsky, clearly doesn’t agree. See ‘Open anti-Semitism’: Ukrainian police request names and addresses of city’s Jews - Jewish leader says last such demand was ‘during the German occupation

And this reportUkrainian neo-Nazis torture Jewish anti-war MMA athlete suggests that ADL are doing what Zionists have always done, lying and playing down anti-Semitism when it is the genuine article. Why? Because their relationship with the US state demands that they ignore the actual anti-Semitism of the US’s allies. It is a replay of the Zionists’ behaviour in WW2.

We know from the presumed deathof blogger Gonzalo Lira that the Azov Battalion and Ukrainian neo-Nazis will stop at nothing to silence independent journalists and bloggers and prevent the truth emerging from Ukraine. In this they are enormously helped by papers like the ‘liberal’ Guardian.

NATO's fascist goons joke about the murder of Gonzalo Lira who was betrayed by the Daily Beast to the SBU

In the same way the true story of what has happened in Mariupol and the reported murder of hundreds of its Russian speaking inhabitants is being deliberately covered up by our mass media. They prefer to report on the ‘heroic’ last stand of Azov at the steel plant. Human shields only apply in Gaza not Ukraine. See Patrick Lancaster’s road of death and his interview with a Mariupol resident

Resident in Mariupol interviewed about Azov's terror

The Western press cannot even admit that the purpose of NATO is to fight to the last Ukrainian. See NATO admits it wants 'Ukrainians to keep dying' to bleed Russia, not peace

We hear a lot about Zelensky being Jewish (in fact he is an ultra-Zionist). But as The Nation wrote:

TV comedian-turned-politician Volodymyr Zelensky was elected last year as Ukraine’s first Jewish president, yet “anti-Semitism and fascist-inflected ultranationalism are rampant” in the country, reports .

A victim of CIA trained torturers in Ukraine

It has been also been confirmedthat the SAS are in the Kiev region training Ukrainians. NATO has been training Ukrainian troops since at least 2014. The third floor of the SBU (Ukraine’s version of the SS) headquarters is dedicated to the CIA who are also heavily involved in such activities.

There are also reports that the Ukrainians asked the Turkish military whether their drones could administer over 20 litres of aerosol, and the Turks said no. There is now footage of jerry-rigged drones that have been captured by Russians which have tanks and aerosol administration devices attached to them. Why would this be? Because if you want to stage a false chemical attack (& remember Azov allegeda chemical attack in Mariupol which has now been forgotten) then a drone would be an idea means of delivery.

Tony Greenstein

“One less traitor”: Zelensky oversees campaign of assassination, kidnapping and torture of political opposition

Ukrainian neo-Nazis torture Jewish anti-war MMA athlete

Retired Swiss Military-Intelligence Officer: 'Is it Possible to Actually Know What Has Been And is Going on in Ukraine?'

The Ukrainian conflict is a U.S./NATO Proxy War, but one which Russia is poised to win decisively – Scott Ritter

Pro-war socialists

Sheffield Hallam Lecturer & Lawyers 4 Israel's Lesley Klaff Declares that ‘Zio’ is not Anti-Semitic as Scottish Zionists Tried to Smear Scottish PSC as Anti-Semitic

I have the greatest sympathy for the crooks and liars who otherwise go under the name of Glasgow Friends of Israel (GFI) and Confederation of Friends of Israel in Scotland (COFIS).

Put yourself in their shoes. You are desperate to defend your favourite apartheid state (Israel). The only way you can do so is by accusing your opponents of ‘anti-Semitism’. So how can you prove it?

The problem they face, as everyone who is honest (no that doesn’t mean you Sir Sturmer!) is that Palestinian supporters and anti-Zionists don’t hate Jews. Nor do they blame Jews for what Israel does. That is what Zionists do. So what can the Zionists do?

Easy. If you are Edward Sutherland, a genuine non-Jewish anti-Semite, you set up a fake profile as a Palestinian supporter and then post a stream of anti-Semitic abuse. Unfortunately for Sutherland no one seemed to be taking the bait.

Therefore Sutherland and his friend, Zionist lawyer Matthew Berlow, hit on the brilliant idea of daubing ‘Free Palestine’ on Berlow’s home and blaming Scottish PSC. What could go wrong? Well everything actually!

Sutherland set up a fake Facebook profile under the name ‘Stevie Harrison’. He then posted what he considered an anti-Semitic post, ‘Fuck Israel’ and he also set up a fake Twitter account in the same name. Fuck Israel is not the most astute political comment I’ve seen but it’s not anti-Semitic.

Another of Sutherland’s charming posts read “I’ve seen it all now. "Zio prick’s asking for donations” in reference to Jewish lawyer Matthew Barlow’s Go Fund Me page. ‘Zio prick’ was his idea of anti-Semitism whereas it is simply abusive.

At the time Sutherland was Convenor of COFIS. But the icing on Sutherland’s cake was a tweet:

A certain Jewish lawyer woke up this morning to find ‘Free Palestine’ spray painted rather prominently! No idea who was responsible.

This was followed five winking emoticons insinuating that he, “Stevie Harrison”, had done the supposed spray painting. Berlow responded:

Idiocy. Typical spsc [Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign] behaviour. Criminal.

Not only does Sutherland teach morals and philosophy at Belmont Academy but he is the Principal Teacherof religious education too! One can only imagine what religion he teaches? Devil worship?

working with anti-Semites and fascists doesn't stop GFI accusing the Labour Party under Corbyn of neo-Nazism

Sammy Stein from GFI admittedthat “Mr Sutherland, as well as a few others in our organisation, have false identities on social media.’ Stein explained the fake profiles by saying:

“We do this to expose people who express anti-Semitic sentiments.”

In other words they post anti-Semitic stuff and then claim the people doing it are Palestinian supporters.

We have come across Sammy before. Sammy is nothing if not an expert in anti-Semitism. In fact he seems to spend most of his time keeping company with anti-Semites. In 2019 Stein was caughtwith Max Dunbar, ex-Treasurer of the BNP and Treasurer of Britannica, a fascist group which was, according to Hate not Hope, merely the BNP under another name. They were both harassing the SPSC stall.

Another friend of Stein was Jimmy Robertson, former security chief of the BNP in the Highlands. Both had been helping run the GFI stall.

Max Dunbar, ex-BNP and neo-Nazi with Sammy Stein of Glasgow Friends of Israel having a friendly chat at the Zionists' stall

Not surprisingly the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) was forced to set up a hearing into whether Sutherland was a fit and proper person to be teaching children. It’s a bit like asking whether it would be proper to appoint Wayne Couzens as the manager of a woman’s refuge. You know the answer before you begin.

The hearing was told that Sutherland ‘had shared antisemitic posts online after setting up a fake profile ‘under the pseudonym Stevie Harrison.’

The panel heard evidence from Matthew Berlow, who claimedSutherland set up a fake profile to lure antisemites into exposing their views.

Despite admitting posting the messages with a view to defaming others, Sutherland denied breaching the teachers’ code of conduct. His defence being that “We do this to expose people who express antisemitic sentiments.”

Now why you may ask should Sutherland want to trap anti-Semites into posting on his Facebook newsfeed when he is surrounded by anti-Semites? How many anti-Semites does one man want?

Messages from his Stevie Harrison account read: “Back after a 30 day ban, my first thought? F*** Israel.”

Sharing a post from a member of the Glasgow Palestine Human Rights Campaign Facebook page, Sutherland wrote: “Tried to stitch up a good mate of mine. P***k.” For a teacher of religion Sutherland has a penchant for salty language. "Free Palestine ya bastards”.

But it wasn’t just Sutherland who was in on the conspiracy to frame other people for his own anti-Semitism. According to The Times of Israel Zionist lawyer,

Matthew Berlow found to have commented on social media post about attack he knew never happened with accusation that Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign was the culprit

Screen capture from video of a Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign rally. (YouTube)

The ToI reportedin February 2020 that:

A Scottish Jewish lawyer has been found to have attempted to discredit a pro-Palestinian group in accusing it of vandalism that he was aware never happened.

Matthew Berlow, a criminal solicitor based in Glasgow, faces a £500 fine following a probe by the Law Society of Scotland, the local Daily Record newspaper reported Monday.

A preliminary ruling said Berlow did not maintain the standards of behavior expected of a lawyer.

The reporter for the LSS found that Ed Sutherland, a teacher at Belmont Academy in Ayr, had created a Facebook account with the alias “Steve Harrison” which, under the guise of being a pro-Palestinian activist, he then used to associate himself with the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC).

Sutherland is an associate of Berlow and both men have ties to a UK-based Israel advocacy group, the Record reported.

Berlow admitted he knew the graffiti attack was fake telling the Law Society of Scotland that he played along because the Harrison persona was being used “to monitor various disruptive activities of the SPSC.”

Not surprisingly the LSS foundthat Berlow’s behaviour fell below the standards expected of a solicitor and that he had fakeda graffiti attack at his own home. Berlow had in the past been finedby the LSS for calling SPSC ‘scummy racists.’

Berlow’s response to Sutherland’s tweet was “Idiocy. Typical SPSC behaviour criminal.” In other words he was trying to frame SPSC for criminal damage. In the circumstances the £500 fine amounted to an endorsement of criminal behaviour. Sutherland’s ‘explanation’was

“Unfortunately I made it too real and named an organization I shouldn’t have. It wasn’t my intention to blame the SPSC for a fictitious event.”

As Mick said, the LSS should have reconsidered their fine

“because the damage to our reputation, in accusing us of such criminal acts, is impossible to deny.”

In 2018 Berlow was ordered to undergo “diversity training” and pay a fine after abusing Palestinian campaigners. He was given a fine of £1,750 as well as an additional £100 to University of Aberdeen lecturer and pro-Palestinian campaigner Dr. Karolin Hijazi, for calling her a “snowflake” and a “wannabe justice warrior.”

Scottish pro-Palestinian activist Dr. Karolin Hijazi of the University of Aberdeen in 2014. (Screen capture: YouTube)

One of Sutherland’s worst comments was about Berlow, saying:

‘Looks like a certain Zio’s big nose is out of joint. Don’t worry Mr. Berlow, You’re going to get what’s coming to you.’

When the fake account began to raise suspicion, Sutherland lashed out:

Someone complained to Facebook about me not using my real name. I don’t know what… they are up to but there it is on my profile.

Stevie Harrison. If you want my birth certificate, just say.

If I lose my job because some zionist doesn’t like me supporting the people of Palestine, don’t worry about it. I’ll still have my dignity.

The see you next Tuesday who complained won’t have. Rant over.

According to Mick Napier, the Law Society of Scotland got involved, which led Berlow to admitthat he was behind the Stevie Harrison posts — in other words faking his own antisemitic harassment, which of course for Zionists is nothing new.

At this point the rats fell out among themselves. Berlow defended himself by exposing Sutherland’s role: it was Sutherland, not he, who was behind the fake postings. As Tom Suarez observed

‘if Berlow knew of the deceit when it took place, then he knowingly accused SPSC on no basis, and so in early 2019 SPSC filed a complaint against Berlow with the Law Society’

which found against him but imposed the derisory fine.

Berlow went further telling Electronic Intifada that Sutherland’s “posts were not anti Semitic” under the IHRA definition that has been used to tar Palestinian supporters as antisemitic.

My charge sheet included using the term 'Zio' - now the Zios have said it's not anti-Semitic I'm hoping Sir Keith will readmit me with an apology!

Actually I agree with Berlow but that’s because the IHRA is not about anti-Semitism but anti-Zionism. It is a confidence trick that too many University administrators and academics have gone along with.

Bear in mind that in April 2018 the Herald reportedthat SPSC was being criticised for using a “vile and derogatory word” to describe Zionists and supporters of Israel. And what was this word? ‘Zio’. As Mick explained:

I use ‘zio’ because I am hostile to the political ideology of Zionism adding that ‘Zio is not to be confused remotely with a racist epithet.”

You may remember the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations in the Labour Party which have now mysteriously disappeared as Sir Sturmer busies himself with expelling Jewish members.

Labour's Shami Chakrabarti defined 'Zio' as anti-Semitic and Corbyn being a fool went along with it

In 2016 Shami Chakrabarti issued a reportwhich described ‘zio’ as ‘a new modern-day racist epithet’. Utter nonsense but Chakrabarti understood nothing about Zionism or anti-Semitism.

Sammy Stein, told the Daily Record that Sutherland had been using the alias “for years”, but that “Ed is no anti-Semite. In fact, he’s a friend of Israel.”

Of course as anyone knows, there is nothing incompatible with being a Zionist and an anti-Semite. On the contrary the list of anti-Semites who love Zionism and the State of Israel is as long as your arm:

Tommy Robinson, Viktor Orban, neo-Nazi Richard Spencer (a ‘White Zionist’), Donald Trump etc. etc. If you are an anti-Semite what is there not to love about Zionism and Israel? Anti-Semites want to get rid of Jews and where better to send them than Israel?

Some of the most important Zionists in history have also held vile anti-Jewish attitudes. And some of the world’s worst contemporary anti-Semites are militantly pro-Israel.

Sutherland was both Convener and site administrator of COFIS, a registered charity. Sutherland took over the position of Convener in 2018 from another disgraced official, Nigel Goodrich, when Goodrich‘s involvement with an overtly racist Facebook group was exposed. Nigel Goodrich left the UK after an earlier case involving Facebook deception when his membership of an extreme right-wing Facebook page Jewish Defence Forces was revealed.

The JDF included members jailed for violent assault and people like Israeli academic Mordechai Kedar who advocatedthe rape of Palestinian women to deter Palestinian resistance. Its posted “Rule One” which was: “This group is about ‘Palestine and Palestinians’ which doesnt [sic] exist.’ Sutherland defended Goodrich at the time, claiming he left COFIS “due to relocating outside of the UK”.

Starting on April 5, the General Teaching Council for Scotland held a hearing to reviewSutherland’s fitness to teach in a classroom.

What Sutherland and Berlow did is nothing new. As Asa Winstanley wroteMossad-linked Israeli law firm Shurat HaDin admitted posting a series of violently anti-Semitic comments to Facebook in order to frame Palestinians and solidarity activists. In 2019, Electronic Intifada exposed a network of fake Twitter trolls systematically posting violent anti-Semitism in order to frame Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party and the Muslim community. See:

Edward Sutherland campaigning for Israel in Glasgow.

COFIS has “an extensive record of publishing racist materials” Mick Napier wrotethat

The Scottish body charged with overseeing charities should revoke COFIS’ charitable status immediately.

The GTC statedthat the "material posted by the teacher was of an anti-Semitic nature", and Mr Sutherland could lose his job pending the outcome of the upcoming hearing.

It is alleged that his fitness to teach is impaired as a result of breaching several parts of the GTC Scotland code of professionalism and conduct.

It was Sutherland’s defence however that provoked astonishment. In 2018 one of the charges against me by the Labour Party was that:

"On numerous occasions since May 2016, Mr Greenstein has uploaded deeply offensive and derisory antisemitic posts to social media and comments boards including but not limited to : repeatedly using "zio" as a term of derision,

According to the Jewish Journal, ‘zio’ is an ‘anti-Semitic slur coined by the KKK’. Yet what was the defence put forward by Sheffield Hallam lecturer Lesley Klaff of UK Lawyers for Israel on behalf of Sutherland?

According to Mick Napier Klaff defended Sutherland by insisting that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism should not be confused; ‘Zio’ was merely “an abbreviation” and not racist! Which is rich coming from an organisation that dedicates its life to proving that anti-Zionism = anti-Semitism. Klaff argued that:

“A reasonable person would realize that this is a reference to somebody who supports Israel…Zionism is a political ideology and there's a range of views held by Jews on Israel and there's a range of views held by non-Jews on Israel. There are plenty of non-Jews who are Zionist and there are quite a few Jews who aren't…Zionism is not legally recognized as an aspect of Jewish identity. It's recognized legally as a political movement or ideology to which some Jews subscribed. Many non-Jews do as well, so it's not unequivocally anti-Semitic.

Sutherland agreed with Klaff about “Zio” and “Zionist”:

“It’s frequently used as a derogatory term for people who support the State of Israel, whether they're Jewish or not. It is only ever in my experience used as a political insult.”

Klaff is the same person who was responsiblefor a complaint of ‘anti-Semitism’ being made against Palestinian academic Shahd Abusalama at Sheffield Hallam University. Klaff is sister-in-law of the open racist and fascist, Sharon KKKlaff.

Klaff’s defence of Sutherland demonstrates the dishonesty of the Zionist lobby. Klaff argued that even when “Zio” was used with a hostile expletive this was not anti-Semitic. Posting repeatedly about a “Zio prick” or a “fucking Zio” was not anti-Semitic but entirely political, claimedSutherland:

In my experience it is an abbreviation for Zionist, in an entirely political sense. It’s entirely political and makes no reference to Jewish tradition culture or religion. "Zio prick" is vulgar but not anti-Semitic.

Oddly enough this was my defence at my expulsion hearing from the Labour Party in February 2018. My argument was simple. ‘Zio’ is short for Zionist and if you believe a Zionist and a Jew are one and the same then it is you who is anti-Semitic. Jeremy Corbyn, being an utter fool went along with it describing‘zio’ as a ‘vile epithet.’

Sutherland told the tribunal that several other current members of COFIS had also set up Facebook profiles with false identities.

Sutherland and Berlow were co-conspirators who went on to invent a graffiti attack on the lawyer’s home, which they then attributed to Scottish PSC. According to Sutherland’s testimony theirs was a close collaboration. Asked if he shared his posts with Berlow before or after he posted them, Sutherland replied that it was “a combination of the two. It was a daily discussion. I shared all of them with Mr. Berlow”.

Having been caught in flagrante, and facing disciplinary action by their respective professional associations, Sutherland and Berlow put forward an unprecedented defence. It turned on its head the traditional accusation of Zionists that anti-Semitism equals anti-Semitism.

The smearing of political opponents as ‘anti-Semitic’ has been promoted by the Israeli regime since its foundation. Foreign Minister, Abba Eban, explainedthat Israel works “to prove that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is not a distinction at all”.

Boris Johnson’s racist ‘anti-Semitism’ Czar, Lord Mann demanded that UK Labour Party leader, Keir Starmer, outlaw the critical use of the term “Zionist”. That party has ruled that “Zio” was on a par with racist slurs, and “should have no place in Labour party discourse”.

Conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism was a constant of pro-Israel advocacy – until the recent GTCS hearing.

A REAL RACIST SLUR DEFENDED

Sutherland’s “Stevie Harrison” jeeredabout Matthew Berlow, that the “Zio’s big nose is out of joint”. Klaff insisted that such a post was not anti-Semitic, “given that many Zionists are not Jews and given that many non-Jews have big noses and many Jews don't”.

This is disingenuous but clearly the GTC was out of its depth. Nazi propaganda about Jews regularly caricatured Jews with oversized noses. Sutherland claimed the post was“not made generically about any group of people. It refers specifically to Mr Berlow personally having a big nose”. Pull the other one.

Scottish Zionists have a long history of making false accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ against Scottish PSC. In January 2018 Berlow denounced“people from the spsc shouting about big noses” at his comrades in Glasgow city centre. That earlier fabrication stands in stark contrast to the evidence he gave under oath that they believed that jibes about “Zio big noses” do not constitute anti-Semitism..

Berlow was asked if he thought someone genuinely posting any of those comments would be anti-Semitic: “I would say that this is a person who has a problem with supporters of Israel, with Zionists”.

ZIOS SUPPOSEDLY DEFENDING FREE SPEECH
Klaff who is nothing if not dishonest, which admittedly is a common characteristic amongst lawyers, defended the right to belligerent anti-Zionist discourse as being protected by the IHRA definition:

The IHRA definition was never intended as a tool to be used to sanction people or take away their livelihood or indeed to take away people’s free speech rights…or to discipline them because it’s got to be used in the context of other laws like employment, protection legislation, the right to free speech under Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights and so on

This comes from someone who usedthe IHRA to try and get a young Palestinian academic at her own university sacked! The dishonesty of these Zios beggars belief. The person who drafted the IHRA, Kenneth Stern, said it was being used to ‘chill’free speech.

Klaff issued a veiled threat of possible legal action against the GTCS if it found against Sutherland by relying on a dictionary definition of anti-Semitism:

If Mr.Sutherland was sanctioned for these comments on the basis of a definition other than the IHRA definition, if he was to pursue the case under the European Convention of Human Rights, courts would take a dim view of that. Given that the government has adopted it, I think we all need to be singing from the same hymn sheet.

THERE WERE SEVERAL WEAKNESSES in the proceedings of the GTC panel, each attributable to the fact that the only witnesses called were pro-Israel campaigners

· Although her testimony was recognised by the GTC ‘prosecutor’ to be ‘confusing’, ‘conflicting’, and ‘distinctly odd’, the supposedly ‘expert’ testimony of a member of UK Lawyers for Israel was not scrutinised by anyone with expertise in the field.

· The potentially criminal act of fabricating a crime to falsely incriminate SPSC was not included in the hearing on Sutherland’s fitness to teach, although the deception was jointly promoted by Sutherland and Berlow, and has been admitted under pressure by Berlow, who defended their joint endeavor as a “a moment of madness”. Sutherland’s lawyer insisted there was no question of criminality in his client’s behavior and this went unchallenged.

· A lack of knowledge from members of the panel meant that the GFoI fantasy narrative of frightening aggression from ‘hate groups’ hostile to Israel was never questioned. Stein and Berlow were accepted unchallenged as “credible witnesses” and their record of working with a right-wing extremist and Holocaust denier to harass pro-Palestine campaigners remained undisclosed.

· Sutherland pleaded to the panel that “nothing I have done was motivated by intolerance or prejudice”. This too went unchallenged, whereas the extreme anti-Palestinian racism of the group he led was expressed in numerous racist posts, including a post from the admin welcoming the “euthanizing” of three [Palestinian] rioters in Jerusalem”. Another praised the massacre of Muslims in a New Zealand mosque as “payback for what Muslims have done”

During the four-day GTCS hearing the Israeli lobby demonstrated their true colours. They are not interested in fighting racism but defending Israel and attacking those who stand with Palestine.

See Shock Zionist U-turn at GTC Sutherland hearing, Mick Napier, 15 April 2022, Mick Napier
None of this stopped Jonathan Hoffman, the former Vice-Chair of the Zionist Federation and a good supporter of Tommy Robinson and friend of fascists and anti-Semites alike, from defendingSutherland and Berlow. Hoffman’s only qualification for defending anti-Semites is that they support Zionism and the Israeli state. Which practically includes all anti-Semites today!

Naturally being a concerned member of the public I emailed Belmont Academy to find out whether Sutherland was still teaching at the school. The correspondence is below:

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am writing an article on Edward Sutherland, the teacher from Belmont Academy, who set up a fake anti-Semitic Facebook group under a pseudonym. Please can you confirm whether he is still a teacher of Religion and Morals and Philosophy at your school or not?
Kenny.Ross@south-ayrshire.gov.uk

Sent on 26/04/2022 14:15:00 by Kenny Ross

Hi Tony, please see our response below. If you send any future enquiries to communications@south-ayrshire.gov.ukwe will get you a response.

A spokesperson for South Ayrshire Council said: "A hearing conducted by the General Teaching Council for Scotland is currently underway, and it would be inappropriate for us to comment at this stage."

I therefore responded:

18:19 (5 hours ago)

Dear Mr Ross,

I find it strange that you and the local authority seem unable to say whether you are still employing an open racist and anti-Semite, to say nothing of someone who adopts fake persona on social media in order to blame others for a purported act of vandalism. What I find even more absurd is that this man is a teacher of religion, morals and philosophy! I just hope God has a sense of humour.

This seems out of a Life of Brian sketch.

Yours sincerely,

tony greenstein

Scottish Friends of Israel’s fake Facebook page posted anti-semitic material (SPSC)
Scottish “friend of Israel” faked anti-Semitism for years (Asa Winstanley, E.I.)

81 years later, on May 2 2014, Trade Union House in Odessa was Burnt to the Ground – Over 100 People Were Murdered by the Fascists and the AWL's Allies in Ukraine

Hitler proclaimed May 1 1933, as a national holiday. He told the workers:

“You will see how untrue and unjust is the statement that the revolution is directed against the German workers.”

The next day, Hitler ordered the Sturm Abteilung (SA) to destroy the trade union movement. Their headquarters were occupied, union funds confiscated, the unions were dissolved and their leaders arrested. Many ended their lives in Dachau. 169 different trade unions were put under Nazi control as the Nazis established the Labour Front under Robert Ley as a means of controlling the German working class.

Memorial lights in memory of the murdered anti-fascists

On May 2 2014 after an attack by neo-Nazis and fascists of the Right Sector, armed with weapons, on peaceful protestors in Odessa, many retreated to Odessa’s Trade Union Centre.

Dmitry Rogovsky of the Right Sector was clear: "The aim is to completely clear Odessa [of pro-Russians]. They are all paid Russian separatists."

burying bodies secretly

The 'liberal' Guardian reduced a fascist atrocity to 'clashes' between opposing sides

What happened was covered up from the start. To the Guardianit was merely a question of “violent and chaotic clashes” between pro-Russian separatists and “pro-Ukraine activists” (i.e. not fascists or neo-Nazis). The Guardian’s Howard Amos told how ‘The seizure of the trade union building was the violent culmination of a day of street battles in this Black Sea resort city.’ Amos reversed what happened.

The clashes began after protesters gathering for a rally in support of a unified Ukraine were attacked by pro-Russia activists armed with clubs and pistols.

The Police stood by and watched as the fascists set light to the building and then entered by side entrances to finish off those who were still alive. Many of the photos in this blog are extremely disturbing but I have made the decision that it's better to tell the truth about these fascist barbarities than to obscure it. It is also best to make it clear just who the friends of some on the British left - in particular the AWL, ACR and RS21 - are.

What is happening today is a direct result of the events surrounding the burning alive and murder of ordinary trade unionist and protesters in Odessa in 2014. Yet there are some sections of the Left in Britain, who refuse to see it that way and seriously believe that the real issue is one of Ukrainian self-determination rather than an attempt to suppress ethnic Russian Ukrainians and their national and linguistic rights within a Ukrainian federation. To say nothing of the continuous expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe.

We can expect no better of the pro-imperialist Alliance for Workers Liberty which has a 40 year old record of backing US wars, whether it is in Iraq, Afghanistan or Israel. Despite its concern over ‘anti-Semitism’ in the Labour Party the AWL has no problem covering for Ukraine’s neo-Nazi battalions.

British Military Commanders are training the Azov Battalion who are integrated into the National Guard

What is surprising is that Anti-Capitalist Resistance, the British section of the 4^th International under Gilbert Achcar, a Professor at SOAS, London University, has taken a similar position. An article by AWL’s Sacha Ismail Using "anti-imperialism" to avoid siding with Ukraine sides with Achcar in his debatewith the SWP’s Alex Callinicos. That fact alone should tell ACR that something has clearly gone wrong with their politics as they end up cheerleading NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine.

Despite the SWP’s wrong characterisation of what is a civil war in Ukraine as ‘inter-imperialist’, Callinicos at least understands that US and NATO expansion is the cause of the war.

Fascist Militia on the march in Odessa

The same does not apply to Achcar whose article Contemptuous Denial of Agency in the Name of Geopolitics and/or Peace positively delights in supporting NATO’s war mongering. Not a word about the fascist militias leading Ukrainian resistance.

Despite ACR’s professed commitment to open debate, they first refused to publish a reply by me and then, having been pressurised into allowing my response then deleted all the comments! The Trotskyist left in Britain have problems with debate and discussion It is as if they instinctively know that their formulaic positions don’t stand up to close examination.

Today we have the neo-Nazi Azov battalion integrated into the Ukrainian National Guard, armed and trainedby the United States and British military as well as Israel. See Why is Israel arming Ukraine’s neo-Nazi militias?

If you want to understand the background to what is happening in Ukraine I highly recommend John Pilger’s The rise of fascism is again the issue. Written in March 2015 Pilger presciently predicted what is now taking place. He wrote of the attack on the ethnic Russians in the East and he described the absorption of Crimea back into Russia after an overwhelming and free referendum of its people.

If Putin can be provoked into coming to their aid, his pre-ordained “pariah” role in the West will justify the lie that Russia is invading Ukraine.

The Kiev regime turned on the ethnic Russian population in the east with the ferocity of ethnic cleansing. Deploying neo-Nazi militias in the manner of the Waffen-SS, they bombed and laid to siege cities and towns. They used mass starvation as a weapon, cutting off electricity, freezing bank accounts, stopping social security and pensions.

More than a million refugees fled across the border into Russia. In the western media, they became unpeople escaping "the violence" caused by the "Russian invasion". The Nato commander, General Breedlove - whose name and actions might have been inspired by Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove - announced that 40,000 Russian troops were "massing". In the age of forensic satellite evidence, he offered none.

I found this the most shocking of all the pictures reproduced here

These Russian-speaking and bilingual people of Ukraine - a third of the population - have long sought a federation that reflects the country's ethnic diversity and is both autonomous and independent of Moscow. Most are not "separatists" but citizens who want to live securely in their homeland and oppose the power grab in Kiev. Their revolt and establishment of autonomous "states" are a reaction to Kiev's attacks on them. Little of this has been explained to western audiences.

On May 2, 2014, in Odessa, 41 ethnic Russians were burned alive in the trade union headquarters with police standing by. The Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh hailed the massacre as “another bright day in our national history”. In the American and British media, this was reported as a “murky tragedy” resulting from “clashes” between “nationalists” (neo-Nazis) and “separatists”(people collecting signatures for a referendum on a federal Ukraine).

The New York Times buried the story, having dismissed as Russian propaganda warnings about the fascist and anti-Semitic policies of Washington's new clients. The Wall Street Journal damned the victims – “Deadly Ukraine Fire Likely Sparked by Rebels, Government Says”. Obama congratulated the junta for its “restraint”.

Below are two excellent articles from the World Socialist Web Site. The first articleshows the lengths to which the New York Times and the western media went to cover up the atrocity. The second article What took place in Odessa on May 2? describes in harrowing detail the fascist attack on protesters in Odessa, aided and abetted by the Ukrainian state.

New York Times covers up fascist atrocity in Odessa

5 May 2014

The criminal character of the US-European Union intervention in Ukraine was tragically exposed for all to see Friday when supporters of the US-installed regime in Kiev, led by neo-Nazi Right Sector thugs, set fire to the Trade Unions House in the Black Sea port of Odessa, killing 38 pro-Russian demonstrators who had taken refuge in the building.

The anti-Kiev regime protesters had retreated into the building after the Ukrainian nationalist mob set fire to their nearby tent encampment. Authorities say 30 people died from smoke inhalation and another eight were killed when they jumped from windows and balconies in an attempt to escape the blaze.

According to eyewitness accounts, those who dropped from the building and survived were surrounded and beaten by Right Sector fascists. Videofootage shows bloodied survivors being attacked.

‘They beat us with bats and chains’ - anti-Maidan activist in Odessa

RT Footage of the Attack on the Trade Union Centre in Odessa and the Massacre of its Occupants by Fascists of the Right Sector

This massacre occurred on the same day that government military forces, including armored personnel vehicles and helicopter gunships, attacked towns in the southeast of the country under the control of pro-Russian opponents of the regime, which was illegally installed last February in a coup led by Right Sector paramilitaries and backed by Washington and the EU.

The far-Right Svobada party on the march with a picture of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera

The Obama administration, along with the governments of Germany, France, Britain and the other European imperialist powers, bears political responsibility for Friday’s atrocity. They have sponsored the Right Sector, as well as the neo-fascist Svoboda party, and seen to it that they were integrated into the new anti-Russian regime in Kiev.

The US media, led by the so-called “newspaper of record,” the New York Times, shares political responsibility, having brazenly promulgated government propaganda and lies since the Ukraine crisis began last November. The Times, in particular, both in nominal “news” stories and in columns by State Department mouthpieces such as Andrew Higgins, C.J. Chivers, Roger Cohen, Nicholas Kristof and Thomas Friedman, has promoted the line that the incipient civil war in Ukraine is the result of Russian aggression, not US-European subversion.

In order to promote this grossly distorted version of events, the Times has gone so far as to publish an article with fabricated “evidence” and doctored photos supposedly proving that the rebellion in southeast Ukraine is the work of Russian military and intelligence forces—a story the newspaper was forced to retract—and dismissed as Russian propaganda, warnings about the fascist and anti-Semitic politics of Washington’s ultra-right allies in Kiev. Chivershas also penned on-the-spot reports on the right-wing Maidan protests in Kiev sympathetically painting the ultra-nationalist paramilitaries as honest patriots and obscuring their fascist politics and pedigree.

Thus it is not surprising that the Times responded to the fascist murder of 38 people in Odessa on Friday by burying the story and deliberately obscuring the identity of the perpetrators. The only mention of the torching of the Trade Unions House and murder of 38 people holed up inside occurred in a story on page A7 of the Saturday edition of the newspaper—on the fourth page of the International section.

The reference to the massacre, moreover, was a fleeting mention well down in the article, carefully formulated to avoid attributing blame. The authors, C.J. Chivers (Who else?) and Noah Sneider, wrote:

Violence also erupted Friday in the previously calmer port city of Odessa, on the Black Sea, where dozens of people died in a fire related to clashes that broke out between protesters holding a march for Ukrainian unity and pro-Russian activists.

The SundayTimespublished a front-page on-the-spot report by Chivers and Sneider from Slavyansk on the anti-Kiev government insurgents. Despite being unable to produce any evidence of the presence of Russian spies or troops, the authors wrote that “one persistent mystery has been the identity and affiliations of the militiamen.”

To further bolster the US State Department line they wrote, in relation to a rebel leader named Yuri, whom they described as “an ordinary eastern Ukrainian of this generation,” that his background as a former Soviet special forces commander in Afghanistan “could make him authentically local and a capable Kremlin proxy.”

Mention of the torching of the Trade Unions House and murder of dozens of pro-Russian protesters in Odessa was once again relegated to the back pages. The article falsely stated that “it was not immediately clear who had started the blaze.”

The cover-up by the Times is consistent with the dishonest treatment provided by the rest of the so-called “mainstream” press in the US—only more crude than most. The Washington Post had a front-page article that featured the deaths in Odessa and acknowledged that the fire was set by supporters of the Kiev regime, but omitted any mention of the Right Sector.

The Wall Street Journal in a news report attributed the fire to “a clash between pro-government and anti-government mobs.” In an editorial published Saturday, the Journal actually implied that Russia was responsible for the mass murder. The editorial stated: “Pro-Ukraine demonstrations in the southeast are large, and the Russians have tried to beat them into silence. Some three dozen people died on Friday during clashes in Odessa.”

In downplaying the mass killing in Odessa and concealing the identity, politics and US connections of the perpetrators, the American media is not simply covering up for the fascists and the regime in Kiev, it is concealing the criminal responsibility of the Obama administration and American imperialism.

Even as Ukrainian military forces were attacking protesters in the east and fascist mobs allied to the government were burning and killing in Odessa, President Barack Obama was giving his unconditional support to the actions of the regime at a joint White House press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “The Ukrainian government has the right and responsibility to uphold law and order within its territory,” he declared, and went on to praise Kiev for its “remarkable restraint.”

At a meeting Friday of the United Nations Security Council, US Ambassador Samantha Power put the entire blame for the violence on Moscow and called the military crackdown in the east “proportionate and reasonable.”

Nothing of any significance that the US puppet regime in Kiev does is independent of its masters in Washington. That the US is calling the shots in the mass repression of anti-government forces in eastern Ukraine was highlighted by the separate visits to Kiev of Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan and Vice President Joseph Biden, after each of which the regime launched new attacks on the rebels in the east.

The United States has worked closely with the neo-fascist Svoboda party as well as the Right Sector, and signed off on their incorporation into the government it installed in Kiev after the February 22 putsch that overthrew the elected, pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych. Initially, the head of Right Sector, Dmytro Yarosh, was offered the post of deputy head of internal security, but he turned it down in order to operate more freely while providing the regime with a pretense of separation from the fascist militia.

Nevertheless, the Kiev government set up a new National Guard, recruited largely from the Right Sector and other ultra-nationalists and fascists, and has thrown it, as well as the Right Sector directly, against pro-Russian oppositionists in the east to supplement the operations of the Ukrainian military.

In an interview last month with the German publication Spiegel Online, Yarosh boasted of state support for his forces, saying, “Our battalions are part of the new territorial defense. We have close contact with the intelligence services and the general staff.”

The handprints of Washington are all over the fascist massacre in Odessa, and the New York Times, along with the rest of the “mainstream” media, is exposed as an accomplice. The cover-up of this crime by the Times is a guarantee that it will whitewash even greater crimes of US imperialism in the days and weeks to come.

What took place in Odessa on May 2?

13.5.14

New information, eyewitness testimony, photos and videos reveal the extent of the massacre carried out by fascist forces in the Ukrainian city of Odessa on May 2.

The day began when opponents of the Kiev regime assembled in tents in the centre of Odessa to collect signatures in favor of a referendum for a federal system in Ukraine. This peaceful gathering was then attacked by groups of fascist thugs who had been bussed into the city from Kiev and Kharkov. The storming of the tents is shown in this video, [removed by Youtube] which shows hundreds of thugs armed with clubs, shields and pistols marching into the middle of the city and attacking anti-government protesters.

To escape the fascist onslaught, the anti-Kiev activists retreated to the city’s central Trades Union building, a massive stone structure consisting of five storeys. The building was then surrounded by the neo-Nazi mob who proceeded to blockade the doors. Bawling “burn them” the nationalist thugs then set fire to the front of the building with Molotov cocktails. Photos show the fascists preparing Molotov cocktails on the street.

During this entire period, the Ukrainian police watched on and did nothing to restrain the fascists. Instead they arrested 130 of the anti-Kiev protesters and survivors of the massacre. There are no reports of arrests by the police of any of the neo-Nazis who stormed the trade union building.

One video [removed by Youtube] shows some of the reactions of the thugs surrounding the building. One man, wearing a yellow-blue armband and identified as an activist in the Maidan demonstrations in February, is seen shooting at people trying to escape from the windows.

Four minutes into the video, one man calls for more Molotov bombs to be tossed into the building: “Throw them, throw them!” A few seconds later a grenade explodes at the front of the building.

As the flames spread on the second floor, people began to jump from the windows. On the ground, the ultra-nationalists shout: “Jump! Glory to the Ukraine!”

Shots aimed at those inside the burning building came from behind police lines, indicating that the police supported the fascists. The police also did nothing to prevent the mob from blocking the path of fire engines attempting to reach the fire. This delay doubtless cost extra lives.

Initially the media reported that the total of around 40 victims of the masssacre died directly as a result of the blaze—from smoke inhalation, or from injuries sustained when they jumped from windows.

The media have maintained a total silence on gruesome photos taken inside the building after the fire that indicate that several victims were murdered and did not die from the fire—suggesting that the fascists were able to enter the building and systematically execute those inside. One photo shows a pregnant woman bent backwards over a desk with a wire wound around her neck. She had evidently been strangled.

These reports expose the attempts of Western officials and media to cover for the reactionary far-right regime in Kiev and blame the massacre on the pro-Russian forces that were its victims. The Swedish foreign minister, Carl Bildt, who has longstanding links to neo-conservative US think tanks, posted on Twitter on the same day of the massacre, noting: “Horrible with at least 38 dead in Odessa. Seems to have started with pro-Russian attempt to get control of buildings…..”

The aim of the provocation in Odessa on May 2, followed in the past days by the latest Ukrainian military offensive in Mariupol, is to intimidate all opposition to the putsch regime in Kiev, which has pledged to implement the program of drastic austerity dictated by the IMF and EU. To this end the governments of Washington and Berlin are prepared to collaborate with the reactionary filth responsible for the atrocity of May 2 and even risk military conflict with Russia.

Naturally the Guardian, (2.5.14).which was so exercised about ‘anti-Semitism’ in the Labour Party, got in on the act as it did its best to whitewash the neo-Nazi forces in Ukraine in an article Ukraine clashes: dozens dead after Odessa building fire

Still no justice: Ukraine marks anniversary of deadly post-Euromaidan clashes in Odessa

RT 2.5.19.

Five years have passed since the deadly clashes in Odessa, Ukraine, but there is still no sense of justice. The constantly-delayed probe has only led to one conviction, while the courts have been harassed by far-right activists.

More than 1,000 people came on Thursday to Kulykove Pole in Odessa to lay flowers in memory of the victims of the fierce and chaotic clashes that rocked the city in 2014. The tragic events left 48 people dead. Most of them perished inside the Trade Unions House, which was set on fire during the standoff between pro-coup activists and their opponents.

The death toll, as well as the images of charred bodies lying on the stairs of the burnt-out building, shook the nation. Yet, as of today, only one person has been convicted in relation to the clashes, Deputy Interior Minister Sergey Yarovoy said. So what exactly happened in Odessa that day and who is responsible for the bloodshed?

From street battles to deadly inferno

Located on the Black Sea coast, Odessa was mostly known as a quiet, peaceful town, a popular tourist hub since Soviet times, with a nice climate and vibrant culture. The spring of 2014 divided its history into two parts. The tragedy unfolded on the heels of the Euromaidan protests and bloody coup in Kiev which inflamed tensions across the country. The tense atmosphere in the city reached a boiling point on May 2, when scores of football fans flocked there to watch a game.

Joined by Maidan Self-Defense (a pro-coup group) and far-right group Right Sector, they decided to hold a massive ‘unity of Ukraine’ rally downtown. They were met there by local anti-coup and pro-federalization activists. The standoff quickly escalated into brutal street fights. Six people were gunned down.

The anti-coup activists retreated, taking refuge inside a large five-story building known as the Trade Unions House. They were chased down by the pro-unity and coup supporters. Some of them were filmed hurling Molotov cocktails at the building and firing at the windows. Others cheered on as the fire rapidly spread.

The first floor was soon engulfed in flames, forcing people to seek refuge on the rooftop. Those less fortunate hid from the fire on narrow drip cups, while some jumped to the ground. People in the crowd outside reacted in different ways. Some tried to save people from the raging inferno, but others in the pro-unity camp attacked those who had just barely made it out alive.

5 years and no justice

As bereaved Ukrainians were laying wreaths at the steps of the building and carrying placards with photos of the dead on Thursday, many felt that the authorities have let the victims down.

“My husband and brother died. Both were burned right here,” a sobbing woman said, pointing at the refurbished Trade Unions Building.

“How is it even possible that, in a civilized country, people were burned alive at a city center just like that?” said another.

Many wonder why the case has taken the investigators so long, given the amount of publicly available footage of the clashes.

The UN seems to have similar thoughts. Five years have passed since the tragedy, but “no meaningful progress” has been made in the investigation and in bringing the perpetrators to justice, the organization’s mission in Ukraine noted in March.

Court proceedings have stalled and are repeatedly delayed. As a result, some defendants have spent years in custody or under house arrest. Others, like the local police chief, accused of inaction during the clashes, fled the country.

The investigation was also accused of bias against pro-federalization activists. Out of more than two dozen defendants, only one was pro-unity. There were multiple reports of far-right groups pressuring the court to release the man. Two hearings were called off “due to the court’s failure to select a jury panel and disruption of the proceedings by ‘pro-unity’ supporters,” a UN report said.

In another incident, far-right activists clashed with police outside the court building in Odessa, injuring 35 officers.

Nationalists were outraged that two anti-Maidan activists were acquitted for their role in the May 2 clashes. Both were quickly arrested again, this time charged with “conspiracy to undermine the territorial integrity” of Ukraine, and remain in custody to this day.

The authorities could not prove the men were guilty, but did not dare let them walk free either, because “the radicals would come and start an intimidation campaign,” Kiev-based political analyst Mikhail Pogrebinsky told RT.

The judges are being intimidated. The authorities don’t want to face the nationalists because they are well-organized. As long as the authorities continue such policies, the situation won’t change.

I submitted the following comment to an article by Sacha Ismail’s article on the Alliance for Workers' Liberty website Using "anti-imperialism" to avoid siding with Ukraine. It doesn't seem to have appeared. It seems that like Anti-~~Communist~~ Capitalist Resistance, they are afraid to debate their politics. I can't imagine why!!

We are not going to agree on the nature of the war in Ukraine which is essentially a civil war between the Ukrainian state and its neo-Nazi militias and its Russian speaking citizens in the Donbas and elsewhere to after the US funded fascist coup in 2014 found themselves under attack by the Azov Battalion and other fascists. The Ukrainian state found that up to 95% of its army didn't want to take part in the attacks on ethnic Russian Ukrainians and that was why the fascists were armed and co-opted to the fight.
It is interesting that nowhere in the above article does AWL's Sacha Ismael even mention the neo-Nazis at the heart of the Ukrainian state. For a group that was so hot on 'left antisemitism' I am bemused that you are so unconcerned by the genuine article. It is as if 'antisemitism' was always a pretext for your pro-imperialist politics of support for Zionism and the Israeli state.
It is the same with the Afghan 'resistance' against the Soviet Union, which was resistance to the Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan, a liberal regime which emancipated women but then came under attack from feudal reactionaries in the Mojahideen. The Soviet intervention in support of this regime was clearly not imperialist unlike the US support for the Islamic fundamentalists. In latter years the AWL, taking its league from British and US imperialism was second to none in attacking Islamic fundamentalism but at the time was quite happy to support anyone that the CIA supported.

So I was amused at Sacha Ismael's formulation regarding this:

'Any hesitation or qualifications to positive socialist support for the Afghan “resistance” concerned its extreme-right politics and sectarian characteristics, rooted in various ethnic-religious minorities in Afghanistan and murderously opposed to other minorities. Neither of those kind of problems is anywhere near decisive in Ukraine.'

Really? So the Azov and Adair Battalions don't exist do they? Fascists haven't been absorbed into the Ukrainian state itself as armed military formations? The Right Sector didn't burn out the Trade Union centre in Odessa in 2014 and murder probably over 100 protestors and trade unionists?
Who do you think occupied and 'defended' the city of Mariupol if not the Azov Battalion? who carried out the massacre at Bucha if not the Safari Battalion of the National Police, heavily populated by the fascists.
The fact is that in its determination to support Western imperialism the Alliance for Workers' Liberty is prepared even to cover for outright neo-Nazis. When I challenged Pete Radcliffe on this at a recent Not the Andrew Marr Show where he was debating Chris Williamson, he was noticeably reticent about Ukraine's neo-Nazi formations. I can't think why!
Yes it is a shame that the AWL was proscribed by Keir Starmer recently. Blatant sectarianism given that there is no disagreement between you on international issues and imperialism.

UJS has a historyof trying to suppress views it disagrees with. Last year it did its best to ban Ken Loach, the world famous filmmaker from St Peters College because he once directed a play Perditionbased on a real life Israeli trial which involved Zionist-Nazi collaboration. Apparently an 84 year old man was a ‘threat’ to the ‘safety’ of these Zionist snowflakes. See Outrage as Oxford college holds event with controversial filmmaker Ken Loach

As someone whose party is opposed to the ‘cancel’ culture it would seem that you are only opposed to the cancellation of racists.

It is perfectly understandable Nadhim that you should have found a home in Boris Johnson’s government. In 1994 Geoffrey Archer, later jailed for perjury, helped you campaign for a seat on Wandsworth council. And by way of thanks you were put in charge of Archer's corrupt campaign for Mayor of London in 1998.

In January 2016 Labour proposed an amendment that would have required private landlords to make their homes "fit for human habitation". According to the Parliamentary register of interests, you were 1 of 72 Tory MPs who voted against the amendment. You just happen to be a large private landlord.

In November The Sunday Mirror caught you out after you had claimed £5,822 expenses from the public purse for electricity for your riding school stables and a yard manager's mobile home. It’s an easy enough mistake to make. I do it all the time. If you had been claiming social security you would have had the book thrown at you but dishonest MPs are granted immunity by the Met.

I am even more surprised that your concern over ‘anti-Semitism’ does not extend to sexism against women. In January 2018 you attended a men-only Presidents Clubdinner at the Dorchester Hotel in London. You will probably recall media reports of female hostesses being subjected to sexual harassment, groping and sexist abuse. The mere fact that you went to a men-only event such as this speaks volumes.

It is no surprise, given that a Prime Minister who doesn’t even know how many children he has and who has been accusedof serial sexual harassment by Sunday Times journalist Charlotte Edwards, that you should have found yourself so at ease in his Cabinet.

Boris Johnson Lies About Groping Women

I have just one thing to ask of you. Do you think you could put a stop to this fake concern over ‘anti-Semitism’? You are no more concerned about Jews than Johnson or Starmer are concerned about the truth.

Yours,

Tony Greenstein

Israeli soldiers pulled the trigger but it is the United States, Britain, France and Germany who are equally culpable

Shireen Abu Akleh was covering Israeli raids on Jenin in the occupied West Bank [Al Jazeera]

Yesterday an ‘elite’ unit of the Israeli Army deliberately and in cold blood murdered Al Jazeera’s Palestinian/American journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh.

The level of outrage over Israel’s murder of Shireen is of course welcome but much of it is nonetheless hypocritical. The Israeli state has given its military a licence to kill anything that moves in Jenin refugee camp. They have been shooting innocent civilians in Jenin for 3 weeks now without a murmur from Biden and the US Administration.

Breaches of human rights in Ukraine are a war crime. In Palestine they are an unnecessary luxury. Below are 2 articles. One is an excellent forensic article by Richard Silverstein calling out the lies of Israeli Prime Minister Bennett and the Zionist lobby. The second is an articleby Gideon Levy in today’s Ha’aretz.

Levy is right. Who protested when snipers mowed down hundreds of innocent participants in the Great Return march in Gaza? Why were there no calls for sanctions when Nizar al Najar, a 21 year old Palestinian medic was murdered?

Of course Israel will deflect because that is what the blood drenched Israeli state and Zionism always does. It first pretended that the murder of Shireen was by the Palestinians themselves. Blaming the victims has always been a colonial habit and Israel is no different from the United States in that respect.

Realising that the evidence was too damning they have now admitted it was carried out by an ‘elite’ unit.

Israel initially said that they had offered the quisling Palestinian Authority to hold a joint investigation. Except that they ‘forgot’ to tell the PA!

Of one thing we can be sure. No Israeli soldier will be held accountable or see the inside of a gaol. After all they had been given a licence to kill – whether it was journalists or children.

I received the messages below yesterday and today from the Al Tafawk Children’s Centre which Israeli troops raided and destroyed a year ago. It is situated in the middle of the Jenin refugee camp.

Children being collected by car were shot at by the Israeli military a day ago yet politicians in this country – Boris Johnson and the ever more pathetic Starmer – stay silent or talk about Israel as a ‘democratic’ state. We supply Israel with weaponry and equally importantly the moral and political justifications for these actions. That is why we are equally guilty as those who pulled the trigger.

Bullet holes where a car carrying children to school has been shot at

10^th May

Tony

I am so sorry to share this terrible news ! Other child form the center has been shot t while he was going to take his treatment in Jerusalem today.

Ali is 6 years old has cancer .He goes to Jarusalem every month...

Please share his story he is so poor kid without father .. We relay on you to save our children

He was going in the early morning to Jerusalem to have his treatment as he is sick of cancer and the Israel military shot at the car he was inside... his condition is ok now ! But he is so scared..

These actions are increasing these days.. I wish the news could share this as they share what is going on in the other side !

11^th May

JENIN under attack! We were collecting Children when the military shot Shereen ! They knew that this time children where going to schools! I hope we do not lose more children and people.

They shot us while me and my father were picking up the children by our car even they knew there where children inside

Killing children is an Israeli sport. 2 weeks ago a 15 year old boy Mohammed was blinded in one eye by these thugs in uniform. Yet Labour MPs keep their mouths shut for fear that Starmer might deprive them of their seats for speaking out. The British political establishment is a despicable accomplice in what happened in Jenin with the murder of Shireen.

Tony Greenstein

IDF Sniper’s Cold-Blooded Murder of Palestinian-American Al Jazeera Journalist

Veteran Journalist, Shireen abu-Akleh wore a Press Vest standing with journalists outside any conflict zone

May 11, 2022 by Richard Silverstein

Oh, the lies. They pour freely forth from the mouths of Israeli leaders and army officers.

Al Jazeera journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh murdered by IDF in Jenin

The IDF was in the midst of an operation to kidnap Palestinians suspected of militant activities in Jenin. Several Palestinian journalists were on the scene to cover the operation. Four of them were gathered together. They were nowhere near any firing or conflict. They stood by themselves and were clearly identified by the Press vests and helmets they wore. Shireen Abu-Akleh was shot in the head:

Another Al Jazeera journalist, Ali Samoudi, was also wounded after being shot in the back. He is now in a stable condition, and said that there were no Palestinian fighters present when the journalists were shot, directly disputing an Israeli statement that referenced the possibility.

“We were going to film the Israeli army operation and suddenly they shot us without asking us to leave or stop filming,” said Samoudi. “The first bullet hit me and the second bullet hit Shireen … there was no Palestinian military resistance at all at the scene.”

Shatha Hanaysha, a Palestinian journalist who was present next to Abu Akleh when she was shot, also told Al Jazeera that ‘there had been no confrontations between Palestinian fighters and the Israeli army, and said that the group of journalists had been targeted.’

“We were four journalists, we were all wearing vests, all wearing helmets,” Hanaysha said. “The [Israeli] occupation army did not stop firing even after she collapsed. I couldn’t even extend my arm to pull her because of the shots. The army was adamant on shooting to kill.”

This timeline offers a credible account of the scene at the time of the Israeli shooting:

• A group of journalists arrived at the edge of Jenin refugee camp, Shireen and colleagues, including Al-Smodi and Hanaysheh, they were wearing flak jackets and helmets, and kept themselves together as an obvious group;

• At that moment, there were neither clashes nor shooting from any side, even there were no protests or throwing stones, there were nothing;

• Three gunshots were shot by Israeli soldiers, the first missed Ali, the second one hit him in his shoulder, Shireen shouted “Ali has been wounded”;

• The third gunshot directly hit Shireen in the head (beneath her ear), fell to the ground under a tree;

• Journalists could not rescue her because shooting continued for more than three minutes from the same Israeli side.

• Shireen was evacuated to hospital with a private vehicle because the Israeli soldiers prevented ambulances from at arriving the scene.

Al Jazeera has said this was an execution:

Al Jazeera said in a statement that the Israeli military “assassinated Abu Akleh in cold blood,” and called on the international community to condemn her killing and hold Israel accountable.

“We commit to take legal action against those responsible and bring them to justice,” the news outlet said.

Image of the murder scene

Good luck to them. The AP made the same vow after the IAF destroyed its offices in a Gaza residential tower felled by missile strikes. It’s still waiting for an answer to this indiscriminate attack on journalism.

In the past, the IDF has murdered journalists in Gaza. But it has never murdered any in the West Bank; certainly not a journalist for a foreign news outlet; and it has even more certainly never murdered an American citizen who is a practicing journalist. This is an IDF trifecta.

Let’s make something very clear. The bullet fired by the IDF sniper was a kill shot. It entered her neck and exited her face. Snipers don’t strike victims in the head unless intending to kill. Why would they murder her? Because she was the face of Palestine on the most popular Arab media outlet. In fact, Palestinian journalists tell how during the Second Intifada soldiers would take to bullhorns and use Shireen’s on air sign-off as if to taunt the Palestinians and her. So it’s not at all unlikely she was assassinated, or as Al Jazeera said above, “executed.” This is Israel’s way of getting rid of what an English king said of Thomas a Beckett: “will someone not rid me of this meddlesome priest?” Shireen was Israel’s meddlesome reporter, and now it is rid of her.

It’s difficult to tell whether this is more of the same from an army that doesn’t care to discriminate between civilians, militants and journalists, killing them all indiscriminately; or whether this is a military sinking into a new depth of depravity, deliberately targeting journalists for murder. Either way, this killing places it in the company of other authoritarian regimes which murder their citizen journalists with impunity: Putin’s Russia is right up there at the top of the list. Following closely behind are Sri Lanka, Mexico, and Syria. Next time you hear anyone talk of Israel’s freedom of the press, ask about Shireen. What sort of “freedom” does she enjoy? Freedom to die with her Press vest displayed across her chest?

Israeli officials have shamelessly claimed that Shireen was caught in a crossfire:

Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that, according to Israeli information, “it appears likely that armed Palestinians — who were indiscriminately firing at the time — were responsible.”

…Israeli military officials said at a briefing with reporters earlier that Abu Akleh’s death is “a very tragic incident” and claimed she was likely killed by “indiscriminate [gun]fire by Palestinian militants.”

He followed up with an equally mendacious statement quoted by the Washington Post:

In a statement, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said the shooting occurred while the Israel Defense Forces were conducting counterterrorism operations in Jenin, after a spate of deadly attacks over the past few weeks in Israeli cities. During the operation, he said, “armed Palestinians shot in an inaccurate, indiscriminate and uncontrolled manner.”

“Our forces from the IDF returned fire as accurately, carefully and responsibly as possible. Sadly, Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed in the exchange,” he said. “To uncover the truth, there must be a real investigation, and the Palestinians are currently preventing that. Without a serious investigation, we will not reach the truth.”

This is a tissue of lies. The IDF never does a “real investigation.” This meaningless rhetoric is fodder for foreign consumption, meant to mollify those who actually believe in the rule of law and accountability. Israel does a calculation of how much damage an incident will do to its interests. There are no humane or even legal considerations.

There is a concept common among Yiddish speakers called rochmonis (“mercy” or empathy). Israel does not have this capacity, though it does reserve it for Israeli Jews. It doesn’t even have it for Diaspora Jews, though they do merit slightly more consideration. Israel is a hard country. Mercy and empathy are in short supply. Of course, there are historic and psychological reasons for this. But history cannot justify the cold, hard calculating practices of the Israeli state and its representatives in this and many similar cases.

Here is another statement released by an anonymous Israeli source to the Post:

A senior Israeli official, in a statement sent to reporters, said that the Army’s assessment was based on evidence that included video footage in which a gunman is heard saying in Arabic, “We hit a soldier, he’s on the ground.” The Israeli military said that no Israeli soldiers were injured during clashes in Jenin on Wednesday and that the Palestinians in the video may have been referring to Abu Akleh.

This claim makes a laughingstock of whichever idiot released it. So an unsourced video, filmed in an unspecified location, at an unspecified time, featuring unspecified individuals (but not Shireen) offers definitive proof that she was killed either by Palestinian gunmen or in a crossfire? I’m sorry but this is more obfuscation designed to confuse the public. It shows desperation and a calculated attempt to offer so many conflicting narratives that everyone will forget the most credible one offered by multiple eyewitnesses. It’s a common tactic of crisis management, when you have nothing good to offer.

I suppose we’re lucky they didn’t accuse her of taking the soldier’s gun and killing herself. Justice minister Gideon Saar had the chutzpah to call the accusations of murder against the IDF a “blood libel.” I suppose the IDF soldiers weren’t firing bullets but flowers or candy; and somehow she died of a sugar overdose.

The IDF complained that the Palestinians had taken her body and were “refusing” its offer of “a joint investigation” of the incident:

Israeli military spokesperson Gen. Ran Kokhav told army radio that Palestinian officials had taken Abu Akleh’s body and refused to hold a joint pathological investigation into her death.

Palestinian officials have rightly refused. What does Israel want to investigate? It knows what happened. It knows who killed her. It knows why they killed her. They don’t need her body to figure that out. What Israel wants is a way to discredit the findings, seeking to offload guilt onto anyone but themselves.

Naftali Bennett has once again gotten himself into a fine mess. Just as things were cooling down and Abbas Mansour was about to announce at a press conference that his Islamist Ra’am Party would rejoin the coalition, someone comes along and puts a bullet into a Palestinian woman’s head. What a way to spoil the Party.

Another irony is that the West Bank military operation was designed to assuage those calling for the murder of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. The army offered Bennett an alternative: a sweep through the West Bank arresting hundreds of the usual suspects, just to show that the army was doing something to fight Palestinian terror. Now, instead of putting a security feather in his cap, Bennett is dripping in a journalist’s blood.

Of course, no one in Israel cares about this woman. She was a Palestinian first of all. She was a journalist second of all. And a journalist working for an Arab news outlet. She came up short on the empathy meter on all counts. But Israel must be seen to care. It has already announced a full-fledged investigation. That’s for the benefit of the Biden administration, since it too must be seen to care for a US citizen:

Tom Nides, the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, confirmed Shireen Abu Akleh was a Palestinian American citizen and called for “a thorough investigation into the circumstances of her death,” as Palestinian and Israeli officials gave conflicting accounts of what happened to the veteran reporter.

But Biden could care less about Abu-Akleh, citizen or no citizen. She is an inconvenient distraction from other far more pressing matters like Ukraine or North Korean ballistic missile tests. Here’s how little we care. This is what the State Department said after the murder of another American citizen of Palestinian descent:

We are complicit. We don’t hold Israeli accountable. We literally let it get away with murder. Shireen’s murder is our shame as Americans.

So Now You’re Appalled?

Gideon Levy

May. 11, 2022 5:19 PM

The relative horror expressed over the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh is justified and necessary. It is also belated and self-righteous. Now you’re appalled? The blood of a famous journalist, no matter how brave and experienced she was – and she was – is no redder than the blood of an anonymous high school student who was traveling home in a taxi full of women in this same Jenin a month ago when she was killed by gunfire from Israeli soldiers.

That is how Hanan Khadour was killed. Then, too, the military spokesman tried to cast doubt on the shooters’ identity: “The matter is being examined.” A month has passed, and this “examination” has yielded nothing, and never will – but the doubts were planted, and they sprouted in the Israeli fields of denial and suppression, where no one actually cares about the fate of a 19-year-old Palestinian girl, and the country’s dead conscience is silenced again. Is there a single crime committed by the military that the right and the establishment will ever accept responsibility for? Just one?

Abu Akleh seems to be another story: an internationally known journalist. Just this past Sunday a more local journalist, Basel al-Adra, was attacked by Israeli soldiers in the South Hebron Hills, and no one cared. And a couple days ago, two Israelis who attacked journalists during the Gaza war last May were sentenced to 22 months in prison. What punishment will be meted out to soldiers who killed, if indeed they did, Abu Akleh? And what punishment was given to whoever decided on and carried out the despicable bombing of the Associated Press offices in Gaza during the fighting last year? Has anyone paid for this crime? And what about the 13 journalists who were killed during the Gaza war in 2014? And the medical personnel who were killed during demonstrations at the Gaza border fence, including 21-year-old Razan al-Najjar, who was shot dead by soldiers while wearing her white uniform? No one has been punished. Such things will always be covered by a cloud of blind justification and automatic immunity for the military and worship of its soldiers.

Even if the smoking Israeli bullet that killed Abu Akleh is found, and even if footage is found that shows the face of the shooter, he will be treated by Israelis as a hero who is above all suspicion. It’s tempting to write that if innocent Palestinians must be killed by Israeli soldiers, better for them to be well-known and holders of U.S. passports, like Abu Akleh. At least then the U.S. State Department will voice a little displeasure– but not too much – about the senseless killing of one of its citizens by the soldiers of one of its allies.

At the time of writing, it was still unclear who killed Abu Akleh. This is Israel’s propaganda achievement – sowing doubts, which Israelis are quick to grab onto as fact and justification, though the world does not believe them and is usually correct. When the young Palestinian boy Mohammed al-Dura was killed in 2000, Israeli propaganda also tried to blur the identity of his killers; it never proved its claims, and no one bought them. Past experience shows that the soldiers who killed the young woman in a taxi are the same soldiers who might kill a journalist. It’s the same spirit; they are permitted to shoot as they please. Those who weren’t punished for Hanan’s killing continued with Shireen.

But the crime begins long before the shooting. The crime starts with the raiding of every town, refugee camp, village and bedroom in the West Bank every night, when necessary but mainly when not necessary. The military correspondents will always say that this was done for the sake of “arresting suspects,” without specifying which suspects and what they’re suspected of, and resistance to these incursions will always be seen as “a breach of order” – the order in which the military can do as it pleases and the Palestinians cannot do anything, certainly not show any resistance.

Abu Akleh died a hero, doing her job. She was a braver journalist than all Israeli journalists put together. She went to Jenin, and many other occupied places, where they have rarely if ever visited, and now they must bow their heads in respect and mourning. They also should have stopped spreading the propaganda spread by the military and government regarding the identity of her killers. Until proven otherwise, beyond any shadow of a doubt, the default conclusion must be: the Israeli military killed Shireen Abu Akleh.

Israeli Animals Attack the Funeral Cortege of Assassinated Journalist Shireen Abu Akleh

Terror in Jenin

Today I received this message from Jenin:

‘Please share we in danger now

The military attacked our homes this morning about 5am to arrest someone from our neighbours but their anger was too much on the whole of us and on his family as well! they brought his mom and dad and put their guns on their head to force him to be arrested ! But they used this as an excuse to shoot people. so around 12 people have been shot!

Then they bombed the home of his family and some homes around! During this time Military were spreading on roof of our buildings and shot on any one who moved
During this time they bombed the electricity poles so we are without electricity right now
I wish i could tell about everything but it is too much to tell’

If the terror is to stop there are 2 demands we should make:

i. Stop all arms supplies to Israel.

ii. Stop funding Israeli Apartheid. The United States bears the primary blame for this with its $3.8 billion aid to Israel each year.

The BBC do their best to absolve Israel of its crimes - Violence Didn't Just Erupt - It was inflicted by Israel's Police Thugs

If its expressions of concern are going to be anything than pious hypocrisy then there must be an immediate stop to their funding of Israel’s war crimes.

But it goes far and away beyond that. Israel is a ‘Jewish’ state i.e. a state of Jewish supremacy. Until Israel becomes a normal state of its citizens, all its citizens, from the Mediterranean to the Jordan, and opposed to an ethno-supremacist state, these attacks will continue.

We should say it loud and clear. There is no right for an Apartheid State to exist. Just as the South Africa and Nazi states had no ‘right to exist’. It is human beings who have the right to exist.

Meanwhile the amoral Boris Johnson’s only contribution is to make it illegal to boycott Israel and its daily war crimes and his echo chamber Keir Starmer says nothing worth hearing.

Attack on Funeral Procession

Today there were shocking scenes when Israeli Police attacked the funeral procession of Shireen Abuakleh. It is really unbelievable.

Even at the height of The Troubles in the North of Ireland British occupation forces never attacked an IRA funeral at which IRA gunmen gave the traditional gunshot salute.

Despite Britain's many atrocities in Ireland they knew there were limits. Israel's armed animals know no limits and have no respect for the most basic human norms. Words cannot express what I feel about these savages.

Tony Greenstein

There was no evidence that she killed her 4 children – it was a presumption that their deaths couldn’t have been a coincidence which scientists have now discredited but Stubborn Australian Judges and Politicians Refuse to Admit Their Mistake

Fairfax Media/Getty Images, Kathleen Folbigg, pictured after a court hearing in 2004

It is often assumed that judges are impartial and juries are infallible. But as the false imprisonment of the Birmingham 6 and now Julian Assange shows judges are anything but unbiased or neutral. In the case of the Birmingham 6, Guildford 4 and Maguire 7 there were criminal conspiracies by the police. Nor was the scientific evidence infallible. The evidence of Dr Frank Skuse was discredited but still the Court of Appeal under Lord Lane upheld the conviction.

The Birmingham 6 on their release

If we had a law that any judge who wrongly turned down an appeal had to serve the same time in prison as the innocent person whose conviction they upheld there would be a dramatic reduction in such cases. However that is too much to hope for.

When the Birmingham 6 brought civil actions against the Police for having had confessions beaten out of them Lord Denning ruled against the appeal continuing. Not because of lack of evidence but because of the implications of admitting that the Police had engaged in a conspiracy, alongside others. Denning ruledin 1980 that:

“Just consider the course of events if their action were to proceed to trial… If the six men failed it would mean that much time and money and worry would have been expended by many people to no good purpose. If they won, it would mean that the police were guilty of perjury; that they were guilty of violence and threats; that the confessions were involuntary and improperly admitted in evidence; and that the convictions were erroneous… That was such an appalling vista that every sensible person would say, ‘It cannot be right that these actions should go any further’.”

As a result the men served 11 more years in prison. Not that Denning was alone. In 1987 the Birmingham 6 had a second appeal. By then the scientific evidence had been discredited as indeed had all the other evidence. But the 3 judges, led by LJ Lane went out of their way to discredit the defence case. I remember watching the reconstruction on Channel 4 and I was amazed at the sheer obstinacy and dishonesty of the judges. Lane beganthe verdict with the statement that “The longer this case has gone on, the more convinced this court has become that the verdict of the jury was correct.”

Infamous Police photo of the Birmingham 6

Three years later the Birmingham 6 were cleared by the same Court of Appeal. The Prosecution had conceded the case. A new scientific test, the ESDA test, had been invented that proved, through indentations on the pages of the notebooks that the Police used, proved that the confessions had been beaten out of them.

The notorious West Midlands Police’s response was to destroy the notebooks in their custody in similar cases.

However this article is not about the Irish cases. It is about an Australian woman, Kathleen Folbigg. Four of her children died before the age of 2. It was a case of Sudden Infant Death.

The Sydney Morning Herald/Getty Images, Kathleen Folbigg (left) at her murder trial in 2003

There was no evidence that Kathleen had inflicted any violence on them or that they had suffered any violence. She was sentenced to 40 years in prison, 30 of them without parole.

Just as in the Irish cases above Australian judges have moved heaven and earth in order to protect an unsafe verdict and keep Kathleen in gaol. Presumably they believe that losing her children is not enough punishment.

Research has shown that two of the children had genetic abnormalities that could have caused their death. To any reasonable person it would be obvious that there must be a presumption that the same is true with the other two deaths.

Yet wooden-headed judges and politicians prefer to keep Kathleen in gaol as and until scientists come up with the proof that the other 2 children also died because of a genetic abnormality.

The concept that an innocent person should have to wait as an until scientists have made further discoveries is in essence reversing the burden of proof and expecting the Defendant to prove their innocence rather than the other way around.

Australia, like Britain, is a common law country where judges make law and precedents.

90 distinguished scientists, including 2 Nobel laureates signed a petition calling for Kathleen’s release yet the Governor of New South Wales Margaret Beazley and the Attorney General Mark Speakman have deliberately prevaricated and delayed. Defending the reputation of NSW’s judicial system is more important than keeping an innocent person behind bars.

Australia’s ABC has produced the video above and the article below explains this appalling case in more detail. But this case is not unique to Australia or Britain. It is a consequence of judicial systems where process and procedures are considered more important than justice.

Perhaps the ultimate example of this lunatic addiction to procedure rather than justice is the application of Arizona state to the US Supreme Court that two prisoners should not be allowed to put forward evidence showing that they are innocent because they failed to do so in an earlier state court hearing despite the woeful incompetence of their state appointed lawyers. In other words Arizona should have the right to judicially murder them because they were unable to afford decent lawyers!

The Justice for Kathleen Folbigg can be contacted here.

Tony Greenstein

Kathleen Folbigg: Could science free Australian jailed for killing babies?

By Quentin McDermott
Sydney

Published 11 March 2021

Imagine for a moment what it must feel like if, as a mother, you give birth to four children, one after another, each of whom, as infants, dies from natural causes over a 10-year period.

Then imagine being wrongly accused of smothering them all and being sentenced to 30 years in jail for four terrible crimes you did not commit.

That narrative is emerging as potentially the true story of Kathleen Folbigg, an Australian mother from the Hunter Valley region of New South Wales (NSW).

Branded at her trial in 2003 as "Australia's worst female serial killer", Folbigg has already spent nearly 18 years in prison after being found guilty of the manslaughter of her firstborn Caleb, and the murder of her three subsequent children, Patrick, Sarah and Laura.

But now, fresh scientific evidence is turning this case on its head.

Last week a petition signed by 90 eminent scientists, science advocates and medical experts was handed to the Governor of NSW, requesting a pardon for Folbigg and her immediate release.

Among the signatories were two Nobel laureates and two Australians of the Year, a former chief scientist, and the president of the Australian Academy of Science, Professor John Shine, who commented: "Given the scientific and medical evidence that now exists in this case, signing this petition was the right thing to do."

If Folbigg is freed and her convictions are overturned, her ordeal will be seen as the worst miscarriage of justice in Australia's history - worse even than the case of Lindy Chamberlain, who served three years in prison after being wrongly convicted of murdering her baby, Azaria, at Uluru.

The petition exposes a troubling gulf in this case between science and the law.

Over several appeals and a detailed inquiry which re-examined Folbigg's convictions in 2019, Australia's judges have resolutely rejected the notion of reasonable doubt in her case, giving greater weight to the circumstantial evidence presented at her trial, and the ambiguous entries which she made in contemporaneous diaries.

Kathleen Folbigg and her children

"It remains that the only conclusion reasonably open is that somebody intentionally caused harm to the children, and smothering was the obvious method," said Reginald Blanch, a former judge who led the inquiry. "The evidence pointed to no person other than Ms Folbigg."

The NSW government further assured the public two years ago "that no stone has been left unturned".

But the science, increasingly, points to the conclusion that there must be reasonable doubt about her convictions. "The science in this case is compelling and cannot be ignored," says human geneticist and researcher Professor Jozef Gecz.

Child and public health researcher Professor Fiona Stanley says: "It is deeply concerning that medical and scientific evidence has been ignored, in preference of circumstantial evidence. We now have an alternative explanation for the death of the Folbigg children."

That alternative explanation lies in the recent discovery of a genetic mutation in Kathleen Folbigg and her two daughters which, the scientists say, was "likely pathogenic" and which they believe caused the deaths of the two girls, Sarah and Laura.

A different genetic mutation has been discovered in the two boys, Caleb and Patrick, although the scientists acknowledge that here, further research is needed.

The initial discovery of the two girls' mutant gene, CALM2 G114R, was made in 2019 by a team led by Carola Vinuesa, a professor of immunology and genomic medicine at the Australian National University, and a driving force behind the petition calling for Folbigg's release.

"We found a novel, never-before reported mutation in Sarah and Laura that had been inherited from Kathleen," Professor Vinuesa told the BBC.

"The variant was in a gene called CALM2 (that encodes for calmodulin). Calmodulin variants can cause sudden cardiac death."

In November last year, scientists from Australia, Denmark, France, Italy, Canada and the US reported further findings in the prestigious medical journal, Europace, published by the European Society of Cardiology.

Prof Carola Vinuesa's research led to the discovery of the mutant gene

A team in Denmark, led by Aalborg University Professor Michael Toft Overgaard, conducted experiments designed to test the pathogenicity of the CALM2 variant.

They found that the effects of the Folbigg mutation were as severe as those of other known CALM variants, which regularly cause cardiac arrests and sudden death, including in young children while asleep.

The scientists stated: "We consider the variant likely precipitated the natural deaths of the two female children."

Both girls were suffering from infections before they died, and the scientists suggested that: "A fatal arrhythmic event may have been triggered by their intercurrent infections."

The scientists also reported that Caleb and Patrick each carried two rare variants in BSN, a gene shown to cause early onset lethal epilepsy in mice.

The recent genetic discoveries follow in the footsteps of earlier expert medical opinions which support the theory that all four children died from natural causes.

Professor Stephen Cordner, a Melbourne based forensic pathologist, re-examined the children's autopsies in 2015, concluding that: "There is no positive forensic pathology support for the contention that any or all of these children have been killed." He added: "There are no signs of smothering."

Three years later, in 2018, forensic pathologist, Matthew Orde, Clinical Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: "Fundamentally, I'm in agreement with Professor Cordner, in that all four of these child deaths could be explained by natural causes."

Now, as Lindy Chamberlain did before her, Kathleen Folbigg bides her time in jail, awaiting the outcome of the petition and a recent hearing in the NSW Court of Appeal. She continues to protest her innocence.

If We are Going to Bury Corbyn then We Have to Be Clear About Our Message –
Not ‘For the Many not the Few’ but
‘For the Few not the Many’!

Stürmer Kept his Financial Backers Hidden from the Voters

Dear Sir Keith,

I am so looking forward to being readmitted to the Labour Party after 5 long years next February. In just two years under your stewardship it has changed beyond recognition.

I have to be honest with you. You do not know the trauma I suffered when, having been expelled, you were the first person to react, tweeting with your customary brevity just one word‘good’..

It's one letter after another from Keir these days

So you can imagine my joy when you resumed our correspondence, even if it was only to beg for money.

I always enjoy your emails about your family and especially your Zionist wife, Victoria. I was particularly interested to hear about your old man the toolmaker (even if he did own the factory) to say nothing of your mum the nurse.

I know Labour’s Corbynite troublemakers and those wrong sorts of Jews have nothing nice to say about you but in my view you are a warm and empathetic, even if a bit stiff at times. I put it down to shyness and possibly an allergy –socialism. You certainly do not deserve the opprobrium that has been aimed at you.

However I hope that doesn’t deter you from doing what is right. Why should the NHS be exempt from the choice agenda and privatisation? Unfortunately Boris has made a hash of it, spending all that money on COVID when we could have used it to buy shiny new missiles.

When all is said and done, if something can’t make a fast buck or two what’s the point in having it? Like you I am a convert to neo-liberalism. Why should people expect to be treated for free just because they are ill? It seems so unfair. Why work if it’s going to be free? Where is the incentive? After all we are all going to die sometime so what does it matter if the proles go first?

Yet another personal letter - who says Sir Keith doesn't empathise?

I know you agree with me but we can’t be seen to be saying these sorts of things aloud or else the louts will shout that we are ‘Red Tories’ when it’s not true. We are Deepest Blue!

If we hand over everything to Virgin Healthcare and that nice Mr Branson then I’m sure the great unwashed won’t mind paying for their GP appointments and X-rays. And they also won’t miss so many appointments if they have to pay for them first!

In fact I’d go further. We could privatise the Police and the Army. Instead of draining all our hard earned taxes we could sell them to the first bidder and fund them through raffles and appeals. ‘Adopt a squaddie’ could be quite a catchy slogan don’t you think?

We could have a BP battalion and a Shell sergeant major. After all, when all is said and done, the role of the armed forces is to defend the interests of British multi-nationals. We could have a G4 police force. Why should the Police be available to any malcontent with a grudge or complaint of racial discrimination? They are there to defend men (and women) of property not those who don’t have a brass farthing to rub together.

I have been thinking long and hard about improving Labour’s election prospects because there’s nothing I want to see more than a Labour version of Boris entering No. 10. We need a political strategy.

I know that this Beergate Affair has blown you off course but I think I’ve found the solution. The Police only began this investigation after it was revealed that that Jezebel, Angela Rayner, was also present. It is obvious what happened and that also explains your beer and curry. After all you normally drink only the finest claret and dine in the best restaurants.

Clearly that Rayner got you by yourself in a room and performed the same trick that she practised on Boris, namely opening and closing her legs. You of course being a highly moral man immediately panicked and rushed out of the room grabbing the nearest drink to calm you down whilst someone plonked a curry in your hands. Far from partying you were doing the exact opposite.

I have also been worrying about the criticism that no one knows what you stand for. It is unfortunate that you still have those 10 Pledgesup on your site and I can only advise that you get David Evans to scrub them. Then you can deny that they ever existed, much like the debate on Palestine at Labour Party Conference!

After all you don’t really want to tax the rich even more than they pay at present. As for promoting peace and human rights, how does that square with fulsome support for NATO? Common Ownership made for an embarrassing interview with Andrew Marr.

And as for the final pledge, ‘Effective opposition to the Tories’, even your worst enemy couldn’t accuse you of that. The common perception is that you are Boris's forensic twin. It is my job to try and change that. But if I am to succeed and get you into No. 10 then we need radical changes.

Of course we all know what you stand for – unrestrained capitalism and rule by the rich for the rich. But the real problem is how to transform that into a winning electoral strategy?

Well I think I’ve cracked it. I had a chat the other day with Mandy Mandelson who was busy at the time trying to get another free ‘loan’ off a rich Zionist in exchange for a few beads. He wasn’t particular enthusiastic at first but I think I won him round.

Old Cor*** (like Lord Voldemort it’s best not to mention him by name for fear of frightening the children), whatever else you can say about him (and I know you have a lot to say!) did have one thing going for him. A catchy slogan – For the Many not the Few – which our Zionist friends changed to For the Many not the Jew!

Your problem is that you find it difficult to wrap up what you stand for in 6 or so words. ‘Building a Police State for the Many’ doesn’t quite cut it with most people.

So I thought to myself why not reverse old Cor***’s slogan. Instead of ‘For the Many not the Few’ why not ‘For the Few not the Many’! Yes I know it doesn’t have the same ring to it at first but it grows on you with time. What we are doing is holding out to the masses the prospect of them also becoming part of the few. They too can become filthy rich and trample on the rest.

And with this slogan we can also say that we are the party of integrity and honesty. After all, from Thatcher to Blair to Cameron and Johnson, all governments have been governments of the rich by the rich and for the rich, transferring loot from the feckless poor to the affluent few (I nearly said the ruling class, sorry). It’s just that they didn’t have the honesty to say out aloud what they were thinking. That’s where we could be different. We won’t hide it!

Please have a think about it because I hate to see good ideas go to waste.

Please don’t get me wrong Keith. I really do appreciate your letters to me asking for some of my hard earned cash. Unfortunately business hasn’t been good lately. But I was thinking. How about you put my name forward to become a peer of the realm?

The Right Honourable Baron Bassam was once my squatting mate. You can read all about him in a pamphlet I produced The Noble Sayings of Lord Bassam

When I came to Brighton I began squatting with Steve, now Lord Bassam of Brighton, who was Labour Chief Whip in the Lords before he got caught out double claiming on his expenses. Unfortunately when Blair made him a Lord he forgot about me. Which is a classic example of anti-Semitism which I know you care very deeply about.

Nonetheless, despite my personal disappointment, I wrote a short biography of Brighton’s new Lord, The Noble Sayings of Lord Bassam of Brighton accompanied by a flattering poster.

Well to cut a long story short, instead of having to survive on a state pension I could pop into the Lords each day and trouser £300+ tax free. I’m sure a few businesses would be only too happy to have Baron Greenstein of Kemptown sit on their board of directors for a small consultancy fee. I was just thinking that if you could see your way to nominating me then I could let you have the odd 50 quid.

I realise however that my donations won’t solve your problem which are systemic. Basically the more people you expel the less money you have. Especially as the buggers keep suing you and the legal bills mount. What to do? I think I have found a solution and wanted you to apply your forensic mind to it.

The Labour Party’s relationship to its members is a contractual one. And furthermore we have the right to change the contract unilaterally at any time. What if we make it a condition of membership that you have to keep paying your subs, even if you are expelled for 5 years? I don’t see why people who have been expelled for the grave crime of not supporting Israel, right or wrong, should profit from those crimes. It will serve them right if they still have to keep paying their subs. In fact we could create a special rate for people who are expelled (higher of course)!

In fact if we create a special rate for those who resign too it will definitely be in our interest to have as small a membership as possible! As you can see I am a mine of good ideas. This is what is called blue sky thinking. Of course we don’t need to tell members about this until we get to Conference and even then we can slip it in amongst all the other rule changes. I was thinking of making it explicit that anyone who describes themselves as a socialist is automatically barred from standing for public office but I am told they already are!

But above all we need a rebrand. ‘Labour’ is so passé and 20^th century. Tony Blair was groping in this direction with ‘New Labour’ but I would go one step further. Instead of New Labour why not New Tory? That might appeal to the South in which case we can say good riddance to the Red Wall and leave them to Boris.

Speaking of the Red Wall. I know that Michael Gove of the swivelling eyes is keen on levelling up but we all know that it is a con. Why don’t we come out with levelling down instead? Equality among the poor is after all a form of socialism!!

We could also change the tax system which I’ve always thought to be very unfair. At the moment the more you earn the more tax you pay. And at a higher rate. It creates no incentive to exploit others or become rich. That must change.

How about if we propose that the less you earn the higher the rate of tax and if you earn above a million or so then you don’t have to pay any tax? Yes I know what the objections are but look at the advantages. Instead of paying expensive accountants to find ways of avoiding taxes there would no longer be a need for them since there would be no taxes to pay anyway!

And the poor, being poor, wouldn’t be able to hire accountants. Not that there would be anything to hide. So all that money would come flooding back from the tax havens and everyone would be happy. Except the poor and workshy.

As I say I have lots of ideas for a New Tory Party led by you. And if we adopt the Republican strategy of making it impossible for Blacks and the poor to vote then we won’t have to worry about the electoral consequences!!

And just one final thing. I’ve always found the Red Flag stuck in my throat at party conference. With all your flag waving and patriotism why not Land of Hope and Glory? Far better than all that stuff about traitors flinching and cowards sneering.

We have to put clear blue water not only between old Cor**** and us but between us and Boris too.

Yours truly,

Tony

The Refusal by Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle to Support Assange Tells You Everything You Need to Know About Labour's Deference to the British State

The case of Julian Assange represents the most dangerous and concerted attack on journalism and freedom of the press in over a century. It has nothing to do with the Assange himself, despite attempts to portray his attempted deportation as being a consequence of him seeking asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy and before that the false accusation of rape.

You would have to go back to the case of John Wilkes in 1762 for a similar case. In that case Wilke’s attack on George III’s ministers led to the issue of a General Warrant, which was deemed illegal by Chief Justice Pratt.

The Corrupt Lord Justice Burnett - friend of Alan Duncan

In the case of Assange far from defending press freedom the Judiciary have led the attack on it. Lord Chief Justice Burnett who ruled in the High Court against Assange and in favour of accepting US assurances about prison conditions in the USA just happened to be a close friend of former Deputy Foreign Secretary Alan Duncan, who led the hounding Assange, describing him as a ‘miserable little worm’. A description that might better be applied to Burnett and himself.

Burnett if he had any integrity, given his close relations with Duncan. would have recused himself but to expect honesty or integrity from British judges is like expecting Boris Johnson to tell the truth.

Other recent cases involving attacks on press freedom include Mary Whitehouse v Dennis Lemonin 1977. Gay Times had reprinted James Kirkup's poem The Love that Dares to Speak its Name in which a Roman Centurion had sex with the crucified Christ. Lemon received a 9 month suspended sentence from another judicial dinosaur, Alan King-Hamilton, who told the court that homosexuality had caused the fall of the Roman Empire. The offence was blasphemous libel, which was abolished in 2008.

The ABC trial held the following year, 1978, was authorised by the then Labour Government’s illiberal Home Secretary Merlyn Rees and Attorney General Sam Silkin. ABC was short for the names of the 3 Defendants, Audrey, Berry and Campbell. It involved the unprecedented use of Section 1 of the Official Secrets Act against non-spies for having disclosed the existence of GCHQ, the eavesdropping centre.

The government case was quickly discredited since the information was already in the public domain. Also revealed was the use of police vetting of juries necessitating the replacement of the whole jury. Justice Mars Jones described the prosecution as ‘oppressive’ and threw out the Section 1 charges.

There was the gaolingof 2 journalists for 3 and 6 months for refusing to divulge their sources to the Vassall Tribunal set up after the revelation that Vassall, a civil servant working in the Admiralty, had been a Soviet spy.

In the case of Goodwin v UK in March 1996 the European Court of Human Rights [ECHR] ruled that under Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights, a court could not force a journalist to divulge his sources. The Engineer had intended to publish confidential financial information about Tetra Ltd. Naturally the High Court, Court of Appeal and House of Lords took the side of property interests and ordered Goodwin had to divulge his sources of information and when he refused was fined £5,000 for contempt of court. The European courts ruled otherwise.

The most recent case involving press freedom was the gaolingof Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan. Murray was sacked by Jack Straw, New Labour Foreign Secretary and Blair toady. Murray’s crime was to have revealed the extensive use of torture (boiling people alive) by the then ruler of the country Islam Karimov.

Murray wrotethat the SNP leadership, Sturgeon in particular, the Crown Office and police conspired to convict Alex Salmond on charges of sexual harassment and attempted rape. Salmond was acquitted on all charges. The British establishment got their revenge when senior Scottish judge and Sturgeon loyalist Lady Dorrian issued an order forbidding the publication of the names of the women who given false witness testimony against Salmond.

In March 2021 Dorrian found Murray to be in contempt of court after he published information that in her view could potentially lead to identifying some of the complainants, what was called jigsaw identification and sentenced him to eight months' imprisonment.

What made this case particularly outrageous was that Dorrian had ruled that in the case of the mainstream press, she would have imposed a non-custodial sentence.

But perhaps the most significant case that of The Sunday Times v. United Kingdom in 1972. This was in pre-Murdoch days when the ST was a campaigning paper. Distillers had produced Thalidomide, a tranquiliser taken by pregnant women, which resulted in hideous deformities in babies. Thalidomide used its financial muscle to force many parents into taking meagre settlements.

The ST printed an article in 1972 with the promise of further articles. The Attorney General obtained an injunction at the High Court preventing publication. Although it was overturned by the Court of Appeal the House of Lords upheld the injunction. It went to the European Court of Human Rights which ruled 11-9 that the injunction interfered with the freedom of the press.

I mention these cases because it gives the context to the case of Julian Assange and what Nils Melzer calls his persecution. Assange has been in prison for 3 years and confined in the Ecuadorian Embassy for 7 years for the ‘crime’ of having revealed via Wikileaks the gross war crimes of the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It says everything about the British Judiciary that they have nothing to say about the right to expose war crimes but are happy to gaol and extradite those who blow the Whistleblowers. This is also true of both the British Government and Labour’s pathetic leader Keir Starmer.

The British government together with the Swedish and US governments have been complicit in this persecution and attempted in effect to destroy Assange through a web of disinformation and dirty tricks including the making of false charges of rape.

On 10 May I forwarded a letter from the Julian Assange Defence Campaignto Brighton Kemptown Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle asking him to sign 2 Early Day Motions. 12 Labour, 6 SNP/Alba, 2 Plaid Cymru, 1 Green, 2 Independent and even 1 Tory (David Davies) signed EDM 220 and 16 Labour, 6 SNP, 2 Plaid Cymru, 1 Green and even 1 Democratic Unionist Party MP signed EDM 719.

However what proved palatable to a Democratic Unionist MP was a step too far for the ginger nut who represents Brighton Kemptown.

I did not envisage that my request would prove controversial given that EDM 220 simply related to the refusal of the government and prison authorities to allow an online meeting between MPs and Assange. EDM 719 merely affirmed ‘its commitment to press freedom and public-interest journalism’. Innocuous in the extreme.

So I was staggered when Moyle’s PA, Carla May Kavanagh, on Moyle’s behalf,responded that since MPs‘cannot interfere with decisions made by the courts, he is unable to comment on an ongoing legal matter.’ This was a non-sequitur. The whole point of MPs is that they can comment. The EDMs made no mention of any legal matters. But I was assured that ‘Lloyd believes it is very important that we protect freedom of the press’.

In other words Moyle believes press freedom is important but refuses to say anything about a case that directly threatens press freedom. This is the dishonesty that I’ve come to expect from Moyle.

I responded demanding an answer from Moyle directly not his PA, pointing out that ‘If Lloyd actually means what he says then he cannot help but speak out against the treatment of Assange.’ I asked whether Moyle’s support for freedom of the press was merely ‘an empty pious phrase designed to placate myself and others’. I gave him 7 days to respond before I went public with his craven response.

MPs have every right to comment on judicial bias, of which there is a surfeit in this case and that ‘Tony Benn, Tam Dalyell, Chris Mullin, Joan Maynard and many other socialist Labour MPs have spoken out against judicial bias and irregularities in the past.’

Moyle’s cowardice is based on the idea of judicial neutrality whereas judges are highly political, reactionary members of the Establishment. Moyle’s response demonstrates that the left in Parliament today has no class base or analysis. It consists of middle class careerists and nonentities like Moyle who, will occasionally make radical gestures.

Stung by my response, Moyle wrote that ‘I have no interest in taking up or commenting further on Assange and I will not be singing (sic!) EDMs on it.’ And just in case I was under any doubt he made clear that he ‘intended to publicly say nothing on this issue.’

I responded by quoting veteran journalist John Pilger that:

if WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is extradited to the US “no journalist who challenges power will be safe”.

This double-barrelled twerp is a hypocrite. At the 2021 Labour Party Conference Moyle had taken a day trip to the left when he addressed the annual rally of the Socialist Campaign Group. He told the audience that ‘this has been a goddamn awful conference with a goddamn awful leadership.’

Clearly he had been drinking too much or imbibing something stronger because he laid into Starmer personally describing him as

‘not a politician for the Labour Party. I’m afraid that is a reality.... No politician worth their salt would wage an internal war on the party when we have one of the worst governments in history’.

Moyle has always been an opportunist and his next statement provoked newspaper headlines and a complaint by the so-called Labour Against Anti-Semitism. Referring to those who had been purged from the Labour Party Moyle said:

“I was struck by members who feel alone in our party at the moment. I want to apologise, from me in particular, because if we have made you feel like you are alone, if we have not reached out our arms enough in these tough times when you are being purged or set up with false allegations, I not only apologise, I will endeavour to do better because we have to support each other. ”

Of course Moyle meant none of it. The Zionist press went crazy and Guido Fawkes, the Tory libel sheet, reportedthat the Whips Office were considering removing the whip from Moyle. Moyle must have panicked. The Chair of Kemptown Labour Party, Colin Piper told members that Lloyd was unlikely to be allowed to stand at the next election. It was panic stations for someone whose only concern in life is his own career.

Moyle is not alone. Labour history is littered with MPs who prioritised their own career over their socialist principles. The number of Tony Benns, Jeremy Corbyns, Tam Dalyells and Joan Maynards are few and far between.

The hypocrisy of Moyle’s promise to ‘reach out his arms’ to those who are purged is breaktaking given that he scabbed on me and other members of Brighton Labour Party. He had written in secret to the anti-Corbyn General Secretary Iain McNicol urging that my expulsion be sped up, despite the party having voted to support me!

The full correspondence can be seen here.

Lloyd Moyle's protective arms did not reach as far as Amanda Bishop

Nor had Moyle made an exception for me. Amanda Bishop, a White anti-apartheid exile from South Africa had suggested in response to the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations and the suspension of a Black member of the Labour Party, Alexander Braithwaite, that we should march to a Hove synagogue. Now this might not have been the brightest idea but was it anti-Semitic?

Moyle wrote secret letters, in defiance of Brighton Labour policy to the witchhunters about my responding to the JLM witchhunters

It was Zionist groups calling themselves Jewish who were responsible for the racist suspension of Alex. So it was quite understandable. And why is a march to a synagogue anti-Semitic anyway?

What was racist was suspending the only Black woman, Alex Braithwaite on false accusations of antisemitism, not calling for a march on a synagogue

Was I anti-Christian when I took part in a march and picket outside a Worthing evangelical church for organising pickets to harass women at Brighton’s abortion clinic? I think not.

Putting the faces of 3 right-wing councillors on this fun Chanukah video was 'antisemitic'

Likewise Moyle also condemned a working class young Labour member Daniel Harris for putting the faces of 3 right-wing councillors on a fun video. Apparently this was anti-Semitic! Why? Because according to former MP Ivor Caplin, a war criminal who was Defence Minister at the time of the Iraq War invasion, two of the 3 councillors ‘had significant Jewish connections’In other words all 3, including Caroline‘poison’ Penn were non-Jewish. But in the frenzied ‘anti-Semitism’ affair everything could be anti-Semitic, except genuine anti-Semitism.

Daniel Harris was victimised and Lloyd Moyle joined in

This is not the first blog that has featured Moyle. See

No one Better Represents the Opportunism and Lack of Principle of the Campaign Group of MPs than Brighton Kemptown MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle

Lloyd Russell-Moyle – the Double Barrelled Hypocrite who was imposed as Chair of Brighton & Hove Labour Party

Lloyd Russell-Moyle MP for Brighton Kemptown Defies the Board of Deputies 10 Pledges & Speaks on the Same Platform as Expelled Labour Member, Tony Greensteinand

No sooner had Lloyd-Russell Moyle MP Apologised for Supporting the Purge of Socialists from the Labour Party than he Recanted!

Unfortunately Labour breeds opportunists and charlatans like Moyle, who say one thing to get selected and spend the rest of their career feathering their own nest.

Moyle also had another consideration when refusing to be associated with Assange. Starmer was personally responsible for the Crown Prosecution Service’s attempt to extradite Assange. Starmer had worked hand in glove with the Americans and Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder in order to secure an extradition by false pretences to Sweden on bogus rape charges.

When the Swedes were thinking of dropping the case because of lack of evidence, a CPS barrister wrote back ‘don’t you dare get cold feet’. Clearly their interest in the case had nothing to do with the actual issue of attempted rape.

The last thing Moyle wanted to do was to antagonise Herr Stürmer any further. He had already openly mocked Labour’s robotic leader in his speech to the SCG rally when he said that ‘the problem is that he [Starmer] might be a very nice man...’ then pausing and giving a nod and a wink to his audience who were shouting their hate of the man.

But I will leave this rank opportunist, parliamentary and political lightweight, who has made a career out of throwing red meat to Labour Party members whilst reassuring the party establishment that he was really one of them.

Under Corbyn Moyle was a Corbyn supporter and under Starmer he is a Starmer supporter. No doubt if Boris Johnson were leader of the Labour Party Moyle would have pledged his unswerving allegiance to him too. He is a man for all seasons and none. A fair-weather socialist who first sees which way the wind is blowing before making his mind up on an issue.

Let me turn by way of contrast to a man who has demonstrated his integrity and honesty. I refer to the Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture who has brought out a remarkable book The Trial of Julian Assange which should be compulsory reading for anyone who values democratic rights in a society that is rapidly moving to the authoritarian right with one piece of legislation after another whittling away our right to protest. There is an excellent reviewof the book by Jonathan Cook.

Among the main points Melzer makes is that:

i. The United States is determined to make an example of Assange for the treasure trove of secrets Wikileaks revealed concerning US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. In particular the ‘Collateral Murder’ videowhich shows a helicopter machine gunning civilians on a square in Baghdad in July 2007. 12 people were murdered including two Reuters journalists, Namir Nour El Deen and Saeed Chmagh.

ii. The Swedish case of rape, as Melzer, a Professor of International Law at Glasgow University and the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law, made clear was bogus from beginning to end. It was the police who suggested rape not the women.

iii. Assange, on a speaking tour to Sweden, slept with two women, S and A. Assange, who is on the autistic spectrum, was certainly insensitive in the way he treated both women and by all accounts was extremely sexist. But he was not a rapist and at no stage did they make such an accusation. In the case of S he ignored her concerns over whether he might be HIV positive and it was only reluctantly that he agreed to have an HIV test. In the case of A Assange had wanted to have unprotected sex and she suspected that he deliberately ripped open a condom. However this remained a suspicion.

iv. Both women went to the Swedish Police with their concerns and they were told that even if they did not want to press charges of rape the police certainly did. There were a number of serious irregularities, such as interviewing the women by phone and not notifying Assange or his lawyer as to what the charges were. Nor were the defence allowed to see the women’s statements.

v. The Chief Prosecutor for Stockholm, Eva Finne cancelled the initial arrest warrant and issued a statement that ‘I do not believe there is any reason to suspect him of rape.’ In the case of S she dropped the investigation altogether and threw the police charges out but the women’s publicly appointed lawyer, Claes Borgström, was a deceitful and ambitious social democrat, who had been embroiled as defence counsel in a case of wrongful convictions whereby a man confessed to 8 murders he didn’t commit, spending 20 years in prison as a result. Borgström was later sacked by the women.

vi. The original interview with S was ‘amended’ without S being consulted. This was used as the basis of the appeal to Marianne Ny, Director of Public Prosecutions, a personal friend of Borgström. This amended statement was the basis of the successful appeal to reinstate the case.

vii. When Assange was interviewed by the Police, it was promptly leaked to the press despite promises to the contrary. Assange stayed on in Sweden for an extra month but the moment he took a flight out of Sweden an Interpol Arrest Warrant was issued thus giving the impression that he was fleeing justice.

viii. It is clear that throughout his stay Assange was being monitored and that the US was interested in getting him. For example all his credit cards were cancelled whilst he was away and it doesn’t take much guessing as to who would or could put pressure on the card issuers.

a. It isn’t surprising that the authorities seized on rape with such alacrity because nothing was better designed to discredit Assange. Many on the left who should have known better recoiled when they heard what he’d been charged with.

ix. Assange, when he reached London, was immediately subject to extradition proceedings to Sweden. Assange had no problem in surrendering to the Swedes but he also suspected that this was a ruse and that he would be rendered to the United States from Britain.

x. Assange sought assurances from Sweden that this would not happen but the Swedes refused to give such assurances. It was clear that the rape charges were a charade. Contrary to many peoples’ impressions, Sweden was no longer the country of Olaf Palme, the assassinated Premier who had been a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War. Sweden, as we are seeing with its NATO application, has a very close relationship with US Intelligence and was involved in the rendering of 2 men to the United States in order that they could be tortured and questioned.

xi. Assange suspected, correctly as it turned out, that the United US was preparing proceedings against him. A secret Grand Jury was empanelled. It was this that forced Assange to seek asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy.

The Guardian

A word should be said about the role of the press, in particular the Guardian which had a whole series of exposes as a result of Assange such as The looting of Kenya, Wikileaks: reaction to the Collateral Murder video, 'All lies': how the US military covered up gunning down two journalists in Iraq.

But then, when the heat was turned up and Assange fled into the Ecuadorian Embassy, the Guardian turned on Assange like a venomous snake and betrayed him. Various Guardian journalists vented their spleen on Assange like the bizarre tweet from ex-Guardian ‘journalist’ Suzanna Moore, who has now decamped to The Telegraph, about Assange stuffing himself with ‘flattened guinea pigs’ calling him a ‘massive turd’. I guess Moore never did irony well.

But the Lord Haw Haw prize for yellow journalism surely goes to James Ball, who had worked with Assange. Ball wrotein January 2018, a mere 16 months before he was kidnapped from the Embassy, that ‘The only barrier to Julian Assange leaving Ecuador’s embassy is pride’. Not content with this prediction, our latter day Nostradamus went on to predict that

‘The WikiLeaks founder is unlikely to face prosecution in the US, charges in Sweden have been dropped – and for the embassy, he’s lost his value as an icon’.

Ball should be given the Nick Cohen Journalist of the Year Prize.

This fake MI5 sourced story is still up on The Guardian's web site

But even Ball and his fellow Guardian Presstitutes were outdone by Luke Harding and Dan Collyns who wrotethat ‘Manafort held secret talks with Assange in Ecuadorian embassy’. Manafort was Trump’s ex campaign manager, convicted of various felonies in the US.

There was no truth in the story. It was clearly planted by the intelligence services. No attempt was made to check the story. The Ecuadorian Embassy was swarming with CCTV and CIA cameras and listening devices. Every visitor had to sign in. Assange himself was restricted by this time to very few visitors. If Manafort had visited Assange the evidence would have been everywhere yet despite being asked to either put up the proof or take the story down, the Guardian’s Editor Katherine Viner has refused to do so.

Luke Harding is known an MI5/ MI6 asset. He is the Guardian’s Russia correspondent and was a conduit for CIA false intelligence that Trump had been elected because of Russia whereas Trump was elected because the Democrat leadership cheated Bernie Sanders in the primaries in order to get the detested Hilary Clinton selected.

Aaron Mate Destroys Luke Harding's Fantasies

Harding wrote a book Collusion full of innuendo but when he was interviewedby Aaron Mate on this he came unstuck as he could not verify any of his allegations. In the end he stormed out. If you enjoy watching a Guardian Presstitute destroyed then this is the video.

The Guardian in the form of ex-Editor Alan Rusbridger provided one account, albeit dated, WikiLeaks: The Guardian's role in the biggest leak in the history of the world in January 2011.

The Guardian today is a discredited ‘liberal’ paper that led on the false ‘anti-Semitism’ attacks on Corbyn.

The fact that Lloyd Russell-Moyle takes his political lead on Assange from what are effectively intelligence plants says everything one needs to know about him.

Assange personally

A lot of the attacks on Assange has been viciously personal and have failed to separate out the person, flawed as he is, from the invaluable role that he performed. A good example of this is the interviewwith British journalist and former ghostwriter for Assange Andrew O’Hagan. O’Hagan wrote that

“Julian scorns all attempts at social graces. He marches through doors and leave women in his wake. He talks over everybody. And all his life he has depended on being the impish one, the eccentric one, the boy with a bag full of Einstein who enjoyed climbing trees. But as a forty-year old, that’s less charming.” There are so many quotable lines. “His pride could engulf the room in flames.”

I have no way of knowing if this is true. But even were it true, bearing in mind Assange’s autism, so what? Are a lack of social graces a crime meriting 3 years in Belmarsh and false and trumped up accusations of rape? It would seem that British journalists, the James Balls of this world allow their own egos to intrude on what is, by any account a monstrous injustice.

It has always been my view that Assange made the wrong decision when jumping bail and seeking refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy. I suspect it was a decision made on impulse.

Assange was right about the US preparing a secret indictment and the rape charges in Sweden being bogus. However Sweden would not have been able to just drop the charges the moment Assange landed there. They would have followed them through and Assange would undoubtedly have been acquitted given there was no evidence.

If at that point Sweden had tried to extradite Assange to the United States there would have grown up, both in Sweden and world wide a massive campaign against his forcible extradition to face Espionage charges. It is only my own view but we are now where we are and when faced with the behaviour of despicable cowards like the Lloyd Moyles of this world we can only redouble our efforts.

Tony Greenstein

You can get involved with the Assange Defence Campaign here. and can see my correspondence with Moyle (11-18.5.22) here.

President

Benjamin Treuhaft

See my article in Weekly WorkerKey issue is not Russia

Who Was Stepan Bandera?– Daniel Lazare

Nick Lowles

signup 31 Mar 2022, 11:01

‘The only barrier to Julian Assange leaving Ecuador’s embassy is pride - The WikiLeaks founder is unlikely to face prosecution in the US, charges in Sweden have been dropped – and for the embassy, he’s lost his value as an icon’

See Why Did The Guardian Fail to Cover the Extradition Proceedings of Julian Assange in September?

NYT: Ukraine Responsible For Bucha War Crimes Against Russians

Memorial lights in memory of the murdered anti-fascists

On May 2 2014 after an attack by neo-Nazis and fascists of the Right Sector, armed with weapons, on peaceful protestors in Odessa, many retreated to Odessa’s Trade Union Centre.

burying bodies secretly

The 'liberal' Guardian reduced a fascist atrocity to 'clashes' between opposing sides

British Military Commanders are training the Azov Battalion who are integrated into the National Guard

Despite the SWP’s wrong characterisation of what is a civil war in Ukraine as ‘inter-imperialist’, Callinicos at least understands that US and NATO expansion is the cause of the war.

Fascist Militia on the march in Odessa

The same does not apply to Achcar whose article Contemptuous Denial of Agency in the Name of Geopolitics and/or Peace positively delights in supporting NATO’s war mongering. Not a word about the fascist militias leading Ukrainian resistance.

5 May 2014

Naturally the Guardian, (2.5.14).which was so exercised about ‘anti-Semitism’ in the Labour Party, got in on the act as it did its best to whitewash the neo-Nazi forces in Ukraine in an article Ukraine clashes: dozens dead after Odessa building fire

From street battles to deadly inferno

5 years and no justice

See also Global Research Eight Years Ago: US-NATO Installed a Neo-Nazi Government in Ukraine and my own article in March 2014 Ukraine - the Hypocrisy of the West

As someone whose party is opposed to the ‘cancel’ culture it would seem that you are only opposed to the cancellation of racists.

If We are Going to Bury Corbyn then We Have to Be Clear About Our Message – Not ‘For the Many not the Few’ but ‘For the Few not the Many’!

If We are Going to Bury Corbyn then We Have to Be Clear About Our Message –
Not ‘For the Many not the Few’ but
‘For the Few not the Many’!