WarCrimes’R’Us Used Their Lawyers to Intimidate Chuffed Into Taking Down Our Crowdfunder But We Are Now Back Up
If capitalism is an immoral, asocial system that knows only profit and war then its most immoral part are the arms companies, what Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex. And no one but no one is more immoral than Elbit, Israel’s largest arms company.
For 36 hours our Crowdfunder was suspended but now it's up and running
Perhaps the title of the most genocidal and murderous regime in the world goes to the military junta in Myanmar (Burma). The junta has waged war against the Rohinga people, burning them out of their villages and massacring them. Elbit is happy to step in to enable them to commit more war crimes.
The text I agreed to remove from our Crowdfunder
Last Saturday I set up a Crowdfunder
on Chuffed, which I’d been
recommended to as a socially conscious crowdfunding platform. I wanted to avoid
American corporations like Just Giving. By the end of Monday we had raised over
£3,000 and then disaster struck.
What greeted me on Tuesday
On Tuesday I woke up to an email saying that the Crowdfunder
had been temporarily taken down and we had to remove all references to Elbit as
they were defamatory.
Chuffed on Twitter/X
There followed a long conversation in which I was prepared to
take out most of the text criticising Elbit but I wasn’t prepared to remove the
title Help Support Elbit
Protesters and nor was I prepared the photograph which pictured two people
holding a placard saying ‘Elbit are the
real criminals’. After all that is a photo of a demonstration that took
place. How can that possibly be defamatory? News organisations showing pictures
of a demonstration would be protected under ‘fair comment.’
By the end of Monday we had reached a deadlock and I
did some research and found out that yes, Chuffed
did hold itself out to be a socially conscious crowdfunder for all sorts of
campaigns, which is to its credit, but it was giving us a hard time.
What I didn’t realise was that Elbit’s overpaid
lawyers had been on to Chuffed and
threatened them unless the blog was taken down.
So we left it with me telling Carl that I would be
left with no option but to run the Crowdfunder from my own blog and I would of
course have to explain why this had happened which would inevitably mean that
Chuffed suffered reputational damage amongst activists.
At this point Jennie Smith, their acting CEO emailed
me from Australia asking for a WhatsApp meeting. Unfortunately because I had
been blogging till the early hours and because of the different time zones we
never did manage it. However Jennie made it clear that she wanted to restore
the Crowdfunder.
I also contacted all those who had donated and asked
them to contact Chuffed and explain why
they were disappointed at what had happened and expressing the hope that it
would be resolved as quickly as possible, which many did.
I am pleased to say that Jennie was happy with my
compromise which was to take the criticism of Elbit out of the text but to
leave in the heading and the photograph which says everything really.
So to end the story on a happy note the Crowdfunder
is up
and running and at the time of writing has raised £3,100. This is more than
enough for the 5 Elbit Defendants in Wolverhampton and I propose to distribute
it to other Defendants in Elbit trials so it should be seen as a more general
defence fund.
Prominent amongst these is Amber whose crowdfunder
for £5 ,000 is to pay for her legal fees as she has been denied legal aid. I
intend that we donate £1,000 towards this and I hope others do too.
So this is a story with a happy ending. Unlike some
other crowdfunders Chuffed did enter
into correspondence with us and we reached a mutually satisfactory outcome so I
would definitely recommend people use them.
Elbit provided the White Phosphorous Used for Bombing a UN School
The moral of the story is that Elbit is quite happy
enabling war crimes and blowing kids to bits but it is very sensitive when
people criticise them. And this is the company that British Judges have bent
over backwards to protect.
Tony Greenstein