CHRIS WILLIAMSON – NEC Panel Recommends His Expulsion

The only person who should be expelled is Tom Watson –

If Corbyn Doesn't Speak Out He Will Be Next on the List

I have learnt tonight that Chris Williamson, the Labour MP for Derby North, has been recommended by an NEC panel for expulsion. This outrageous recommendation is nothing but pure maliciousness and vindictiveness against one of the few genuine socialists amongst Labour MPs.

It is also fraudulent. The NEC appointed a previous panel which recommended his reinstatement. Because they got the wrong decision the NEC have appointed another panel!  It’s like being acquitted by a court and the powers that be deciding they didn’t like the decision and trying you over and over again until they obtain the ‘right’ decision.

The attacks on Chris, by the supporters of the Israeli Apartheid state, are based on yet another outrageous and dishonest distortion. Chris was accused of saying that Labour has been too apologetic about anti-Semitism. This is a lie.  He said Labour had been too apologetic about the false allegations of anti-Semitism made against it.  Only a complete moron or someone as politically dishonest as Tom Watson, cannot understand the difference.

What Chris actually said was:

 “I have got to say I think our party's response has been partly responsible for that because in my opinion… we've backed off far too much, we have given too much ground, we've been too apologetic...

“We've done more to actually address the scourge of anti-semitism than any other political party. Any other political party. And yet we are being traduced.”

Momentum’s unelected dictator Jon Lansman has already made it clear that he is at one with the Right in the Labour Party in demanding Chris’s expulsion.  However it is also the case, as a recent poll, by Labour List demonstrated that over 60% of Labour members support Chris.

In other words Lansman and his sycophantic hacks, and we have a few of them here in Brighton Momentum, are in a minority. Any reasonable person can see that nothing Chris said was anti-Semitic.

Tom Watson 'lost sleep thinking about poor old Phil Woolas'

However there are very good grounds for expelling Tom Watson.

Phil Woolas's racist leaflet that Tom Watson backed

i.                 RACISM

a.                         Backing racist Labour MP Phil Woolas who campaigned to ‘make the white folk angry’.  When the High Court removed him for lying about an opponent Watson wrote he had ‘lost sleep over poor Phil.’

b.                        Running a racist campaign in the Birmingham Hodge Hill by election in 2004. As Campaign Manager Watson oversaw the distribution of  leaflets which said “Labour is on your side; the Lib Dems are on the side of failed asylum-seekers.” In an interview  with the New Statesman Watson said. “I wouldn’t write it again, I wanted to defeat the Lib Dems at all costs.”  Which just goes to show that Watson has all the attributes of a syphilitic rattle snake.

2.    Bullying of women

a.     Bullying Yvonne Davies, a local Councillor because she objected to a white racist march supported by the BNP in his constituency of Sandwell. Yvonne, who is now leader of Sandwell Council, organised a photoshot of councillors to send to Jennie Formby as a get well card.  All councillors except the two working for Watson were in the photo!        

b.    Bullying Jennie Formy over the fake anti-Semitism claims knowing full well she is undergoing chemotherapy.

3.    Anti-Semitism

Leon Brittan:         Tom Watson is on record as saying he wouldn’t rest until the last anti-Semite was expelled from the Labour Party.  In which case he should resign his membership!

Moments after the death of the former Jewish Conservative Home Secretary Leon Brittan from cancer, Watson wrote that he was ‘“as close to evil as any human being could get” (which is a remarkably good description of Tom Watson).

Brittan had been accused by Watson’s friend Carl Beech, now serving 18 years for a variety of offences, of being a paedophile. There was no substance to this yet Watson singled out Brittan, a dying man, not any other of Beech’s targets.  The only possible reason for this was because he was Jewish. 

During his political career Brittan had been subject to considerable anti-Semitism in the Tory Party (but of course as this has nothing to do with Israel it was brushed under the carpet). Harold MacMillan quipped that the Thatcher cabinet

“was more old Estonian than old Etonian” — a crack which sped through the bars of the Commons and in Tory clubland as a non-too-subtle way of putting Nigel Lawson, Leon Brittan or Michael Howard in their place.’

This is the tradition Tom Watson has followed in.

4.    Using the abuse of children to further Tom Watson’s Political Career

Tom Watson didn’t merely raise the issue of a possible VIP paedophile ring, he positively encouraged Carl Beech, who has himself been convicted of sexual abuse of children, to make wild and fantastic claims of abuse. Although I hold no brief for Harvey Proctor, who when he was an MP was a member of the far-Right Monday Club and a fellow-traveller of the National Front, the allegations made against him were clearly preposterous and without foundation. Watson abused parliamentary privilege to make these claims. In this sense Proctor is right to call Watson the ‘cheerleader-in-chief’ for Carl Beech.

That is not to say that there haven’t been powerful politicians and celebrities who have used their position to continue their abuse.  The obvious person was Jimmy Saville, who was given a knighthood by Margaret Thatcher.  Likewise Cyril Smith, the Liberal MP was protected by the leader of the Liberals, David Steel despite Steel knowing of the allegations. Peter Morrison, Thatcher’s PPS was another well known paedophile and implicated in the North Wales child abuse scandal. See Paedophile politicians - the ones that got away

Clearly what the NEC should do is to firstly suspend Tom Watson, then form a panel to hear the charges against him and then recommend his expulsion.

In the meantime the case of Chris Williamson should be withdraw from the National Constitutional Committee as there is no case to answer

Tony Greenstein

Tony Greenstein Interview with Scottish PSC

Mick Napier's interview with me today can be seen here on the Scottish PSC Facebook Group or above:

In the 55 minutes available I tried to cover the witchhunt of anti-racists and socialists in the Labour Party and also Zionism’s real relationship to anti-Semitism, which is one of acceptance of the rightfulness of antisemitism.

Tony Greenstein

Live Interview with Tony Greenstein tomorrow!

Labour’s Fake Anti-Semitism Panic – 
Zionism and its relationship with the Nazis – Israel and Apartheid
No topic is too controversial! 

Visit the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign Facebook site tomorrow at 16.00 to hear what I have to say about Palestine, Zionism, the Labour Party and any other controversial topic you are interested in – be there or be square!!

I shall be interviewed by Mick Napier. You can also text in questions

https://www.facebook.com/events/359771544958571/

Peter Kyle’s Contempt for Democracy as he ‘persuades’ the Brighthelm Centre to Cancel Chris Williamson Meeting

The 'Labour' MP for Hove Uses Jews to further the Labour Right’s anti-Corbyn agenda whilst Lansman gives him encouragement

Israeli soldiers cheer as they murder another Palestinian - this is what Kyle and Labour Friends of Apartheid support

UPDATE

It would appear that the signatories accompanying the McCarthyist statement on 'antisemitism' have been taken down pending an 'investigation'. 

Possibly that has something to do with the number of anti-Semites and fascists who decided to endorse the statement including the late Adolf Hitler, Pinochet, Eichmann, John Vorster as well as one very alive Donald Trump!  What did they expect? Socialists to sign?

Israeli soldiers demonstrate their joy as Palestinian buildings are blown up and Palestinians are made homeless - this is the reality of present day Israel

Peter Kyle, the MP for Hove demonstrated his contempt for freedom of speech when he ‘persuaded’ the Christian Evangelist Brighthelm Centre to cancel a public meeting on August 8^th at which Chris Williamson MP was speaking. His excuse was that

‘our city should not be a welcoming place for people who bait the Jewish community or sow seeds of division.’

Peter Kyle supports the use of private firms in the NHS - the main task of the Left in Hove is his deselection

So according to Kyle a meeting on socialist economics and a Labour government is ‘divisive’.  Such is Kyle’s contempt for democracy and freedom of speech.

Chris Williamson is someone who has been an active anti-fascist all of his life. Peter Kyle on the other hand is someone who has never spoken up about refugees or racism.  Only Israel and ‘anti-Semitism’ is his concern.

We intended to auction the original Steve Bell cartoon that was banned by the Guardian - on the grounds of 'antisemitism' of course

 The suggestion that Chris Williamson is a ‘Jew baiter’ is a despicable lie coming from someone who has supported New Labour’s racist agenda on refugees, Travellers and asylum seekers.

Kyle is also a member of Labour Friends of Israel which last year supported Israel’s shooting of unarmed demonstrators in cold blood. Kyle has refused to sign any Early Day Motion condemning Israel’s human rights abuses. That is the clue to why he sought to obtain the banning of Chris Williamson.  As a dedicated Zionist he is following a path blazed by the Israeli state itself.

My letter in the Argus

Banning meetings and persons, locking people up indefinitely without trial – this is what comes naturally to the Israeli state, just as it did to the South Africa apartheid state before it.  Israel rules over 5 million Palestinians who have neither political nor civil rights. If all those living under occupation were given a vote there would be no ‘Jewish’ state.

The meeting, organised by Brighton and Hove Labour Left Alliance for August 8^th will go on at another, undisclosed venue as planned.  We are determined to ensure that Kyle and his Zionist supporters aren’t allowed to get away with their attack on free speech in Brighton and Hove.

At the time of the Charlie Hebdo killings, free speech included the right to attack the Muslim religion but it would seem this doesn't extend to the Israeli state

The Brighthelm Centre will also be the subject of a full boycott. When they refused to allow Jackie Walker to speak two years ago Palestine Solidarity Campaign decided to hold its meetings elsewhere.  We will now call for a full boycott of the Brighthelm Centre beginning with my own trade union branch, Unite.

As the prospect of a General Election looms so the Labour Right have started mobilising around ‘anti-Semitism’. This is a somewhat easier topic than coming out in support of austerity and things like tuition fees for students, benefit cuts for claimants or attacks on asylum seekers.

Anti-Semitism is a much easier way of fooling people. However the test of their sincerity is what their take is on other forms of racism.  For these people to prioritise ‘anti-Semitism which is a marginal prejudice, when the very real racism of Windrush and Islamaphobia is ever present demonstrates the hypocrisy of these people.

It seems that Donald and Kyle agree about 'antisemitism' and why shouldn't they?

None of those who have signed their statement and there are about 30 Labour right-wingers from Brighton and Hove, have ever spoken out about other forms of racism.

Under the banner of Labour Members Together the remnants of Brighton and Hove Right have issued a dishonest statement. It is little wonder that Adolf Hitler, Augusto Pinochet and John Vorster have (posthumously) signed it along with Neville Chamberlain and (Lord) Steve Bassam.

Their statement on anti-Semitism is a farrago of lies and distortions. Point 2 seeks

‘the expulsion of anyone who is guilty of ‘sharing a platform with members suspended or expelled for anti-Semitism.’

Classic McCarthyism. In essence they are calling for the old South Africa Apartheid practice of banning people. The fact that people who are suspended are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty is irrelevant to what we used to call ‘police state democrats’.  An accusation means to this bunch of New Labour leftovers means you are guilty.

The dishonesty of the statement is evinced by Point 10 which refers to

‘the Macpherson principles, which define racist incidents as those which are perceived as such by the victim or any other person.’

The MacPherson Report says no such thing and if they lie about this then you can assume they won’t be telling the truth about anything else. As Shami Chakrabarti explained in her Report.

‘the purpose of the approach [recording incidents as racial when perceived as such by the victim] is to ensure that investigators handle a complaint with particular sensitivity towards the victim. It is to suggest the seriousness with which a complaint must be handled, but in no way to determine its outcome.’

These dishonest or stupid right-wingers deliberately omit the latter part and suggest that an accusation is in itself proof of guilt.  Indeed they add ‘any other person’ for which read ‘any other Zionist or racist’!

Given that Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth and myself were expelled as part of the anti-Semitism witch-hunt, not for anti-Semitism but ‘bringing the party into disrepute’ etc. this demonstrates the hypocrisy, lack of any democratic principles and basic dishonesty of these people.

The reason why Kyle seeks to prevent Chris Williamson MP from speaking is that he knows he has no answer to the arguments of the Left. The Labour Right can only thrive through bans and prescriptions.

Tony Greenstein

The Curious Case of Priti Patel - the Zionist Basket Case

Corruption, Dishonesty and Treason – Priti Seems Very Well Qualified to be Home Secretary – If Only She Were Jewish She Could be Israel's 'Justice' Minister

Corruption, Lying and Treason are the qualities that make up our new Home Secretary

Sacked under Theresa May, Priti Patel has made a comeback as Home Secretary in the new government. A self-declared supporter of the death penalty she is also a friend of Narendra Modi, the communalist  Prime Minister of India, who has the deaths of thousands of Muslims to his credit in the 2002 riots in Gujarat, where he was Chief Minister.

What with being paid £1,000 an hour by Viasat, a company which holds contracts with the British government we can add corruption and more to her credentials.  Clearly very qualified.  Enjoy this excellent video from George Monbiot.

Tony Greenstein

Life And Debt: Stories From Inside America’s GoFundMe Health Care System

The Creeping Privatisation of the NHS – Brighton and Hove CCG is Forcing Patients to Buy Medicines Rather than Prescribe Them

  

You may remember that line from Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi –

‘You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.’

That applies like nothing else to the NHS.  People take for granted being able to turn up at a hospital if they have a problem or get ill.  We take it for granted being able to obtain a GP’s appointment.  We don’t know what it is like to face the agonising decision of whether we can afford to go to the doctor or afford to buy the medicines he has prescribed.  Yet that is the ‘logic’ of the free market.

With Donald Trump promising that in a US-British trade deal ‘everything is on the table’ including the NHS, then it is worth having a look at what the free market in health is like in the United States.

A comment piece I did for the Brighton and Hove Argus some years ago on Big Pharma

After all the ideology of the market is that everything has its price, everything is a commodity, health included. No one has any social responsibility or duties towards another. If you can afford it then the world is your oyster but if you can’t, then that’s tough. Everyone has the right to starve and sleep under the stars but it just happens that only the poor and homeless take advantage of these ‘freedoms’.

As RH Tawney put it ‘freedom for the pike means death to the minnow.’

In the United States ‘freedom’ includes the right to die without treatment and of course the right to buy virtually any treatment you want and to jump the queue whilst doing so.

Below is a shocking article on how thousands of Americans are having to resort to crowd funding to pay for health care. Billions of dollars have been raised to pay for what we take for granted. Whole communities rally round to raise the funds necessary to pay for someone’s cancer treatment because even when someone is insured, there are ancilliary costs that are not covered.

There is a reason why every newspaper hates Corbyn - and it isn't 'antisemitism'

However those who don’t have a community to rally round them, the homeless and forgotten, are left to die unaided. And the ‘Christian’ politicians who call themselves ‘pro-life’ as they prohibit abortions, because the death of the unborn so distresses them, are unmoved by the death and suffering of those who cannot afford medical care because they cannot afford it.

When I learnt that I had Hepatitis C 7 years ago, I was fortunate in more ways than one. I was unable to cope with what was the then standard treatment of being injected with a toxic drug called Interferon.  Although it was curing the disease it was killing the patient!

I was lucky because at that very moment new experimental non-interferon treatments were coming on stream. A drug called Harvoni was being marketed by an American drug company called Gilead Sciences. I took this drug for 90 days. One pill a day after which I was cured. But without the NHS I couldn’t have afforded it because it cost about $1,000 a pill.  It cost $1 a pill to make.  An obscene level of profit.

I was lucky because I was one of the 500 sickest people with Hep C who were on a government funded programme to pay for this drug on the NHS.  I was the first person my consultant told me in Brighton and Hove.

The drug was developed primarily at Cardiff University but Gilead Sciences got the patent and they charged what they admitted ‘the market would bear’.

There is a brilliant cross-examination by Alexander Orcasio-Cortez, the socialist Congresswoman from New York who Trump particularly hates and who was recently told to ‘go back home’ despite having been born in the USA.  In the same speech Trump accused the Congresswomen of ‘anti-Semitism’.

In the video we see the hapless Gilead representative face the accusations that they are charging $2,000 for Truvada, an HIV drug, in the US whilst it costs $8 in Australia. Big Pharma has no morals.

My complaint to the Brighton & Hove CCG

I mention all this because the Brighton and Hove Clinical Commissioning Group has decided on a policy that any drug that can be purchased over the counter is no longer going to be available on prescription.  It doesn’t matter what it costs, you will not be able to get it. It would appear that it does not depend on what your ailment is either. This is in order that the CCG can ‘save’ approximately £500,000, absolute chicken feed.

The cost of drugs in the US is one of the main ‘extras’ that insurance tends not to cover so it is an important principle that if your doctor believes that you should be prescribed a drug it’s not for the faceless bureaucrats of the CCG to determine whether or not you will be ‘allowed’ it.

I have made a formal complaint and I have threatened that if necessary I will seek to apply for a judicial review of the decision.  However this is not just peculiar to Brighton and Hove but is a national policy. The NHS may be safe with us, as the Tories claim, but one thing is for sure.  Given half the chance they would like to adopt the American system of super profits for private health care companies and an insurance lottery for the rest of us whereby the insurance company will decide whether or not you need the treatment you have been prescribed and how much they will fund.

One statistic has always caught my eye.  Cuba, which has a universal health care system, has a lower child mortality rate than its wealthy neighbour because the United States prefers to spend its money on weapons systems than on the most basic needs of its citizens. And it has a President whose job it is to get the poor to fight amongst themselves, ‘making America great’ in order that the rich can get away with it.

And that is also what the attacks on Corbyn and the ‘anti-Semitism’ moral panic is about. Protecting the wealthy here from those who would like to redistribute their ill-gotten gains.

Tony Greenstein

Outrageous health care costs and a merciless system are forcing Americans to raise money from strangers, revealing the ugly truths about U.S. health care.

The human body is a frail thing, and illness is a pitiless adversary. Every day, an untold number of Americans are diagnosed with a devastating illness or suffer a sudden injury that threatens to upend their lives and tear apart their families.

This misfortune often comes at a staggeringly high financial cost that can be just as cruel.

While health insurance or government programs like Medicaid and Medicare can shield against huge medical bills, massive debt and even bankruptcy, only the truly wealthy can feel secure that sickness won’t lead to financial ruin.

This is why thousands of Americans have turned to crowdfunding website GoFundMe in the last decade to help cover medical bills and related costs. HuffPost is profiling some of those people, and what their stories reveal about the shortcomings of the American health care system.

These are not feel-good stories.

That’s often how the news media cover these fundraisers ― focusing on the generosity of individuals giving rather than the systemic failures that created the need. While it’s hard not to be inspired by successful campaigns and the fortitude of those suffering through terrifying ordeals, such stories portray a chilling reality that Americans ― even those with good jobs and health insurance, can be one bad day away from financial ruin.

A serious disease can put financial strain on people even in countries with universal health care systems and strong safety nets. But the United States, which has neither of those things, leaves its residents uniquely vulnerable. 

More than 50 million donors contributed more than $5 billion to GoFundMe campaigns between 2010 and 2017, according to GoFundMe, which is based in Redwood City, California, near San Francisco.

Two years ago, one-third of all the money raised went to campaigns listed in the Medical category. GoFundMe reports that more than 250,000 medical fundraisers are added a year and raise $650 million annually.

Although the fundraising numbers offer a sense of the need behind the many campaigns, they are imprecise, according to GoFundMe. Users can choose whatever category they like, so not all medical fundraisers are actually for medical bills and related costs, and some users seek help for those things in other categories on the website. Those figures also include money raised in other countries.

Successful fundraisers can generate $100,000 or more, as neighbors and strangers alike rally around families in need, and that money can go a long way to ensuring that treatments can continue, that housing and other daily costs can be covered and that families don’t lose everything while trying to keep loved ones alive and make them healthy.

ISABELLA CARAPELLA/HUFFPOST

Americans pay more for their health care than their counterparts in other developed countries. And even though more than 90% of Americans have some form of health coverage, according to a federal survey from 2017, it’s often inadequate. Some 45% of Americans are “underinsured,” according to a report published last year by The Commonwealth Fund, a New York-based think tank. And 27% of Americans told West Health and Gallup they had skipped medical care because of the cost in the past year in survey findings published this year.

High deductibles requiring thousands of dollars of out-of-pocket expenses before the insurance covers any bills, large copayments at the point of service and costly prescription medicines are among the reasons Americans pay so much. Add to that services or medicines insurance companies won’t cover at all, experimental treatments ineligible for coverage, medical providers that aren’t in insurance networks and other uncovered costs, and medical bills can rise into the millions of dollars. For the uninsured, there is no upper limit to how much they could owe.

According to data from the Federal Reserve Board, 40% of Americans don’t have enough savings to cover an emergency expense exceeding $400. In the past year, Americans borrowed $88 billion to cover medical bills, the West Health/Gallup survey found. Among Americans who declared bankruptcy from 2013 to 2016, 59% cited medical bills as a factor, according to a survey published in the American Journal of Public Health this year.

Illness often means lost income, as the patient and family members miss time at work during treatment. Transportation and lodging costs pile up for people who must travel long distances to receive care, including those in rural areas who live far from the nearest medical facilities and those who seek medical treatment from specialists who practice at prominent institutions like the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota or the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. These so-called indirect expenses are a reason medical fundraising is the leading category on GoFundMe worldwide.

Browsing the Medical category on GoFundMe offers a brutal reminder that illness doesn’t discriminate. People from all walks of life and at virtually every level of income, both the insured and the uninsured, turn to their communities and to strangers on the internet to solve a financial problem that would be impossible to handle on their own.

There you can find heartbreaking stories about a small boy badly hurt in a car crash, an actor stricken with cancer, a woman injured in a savage sexual assault, twin brothers who both need heart transplants, an infant with a rare disease who needs experimental treatments and practically any terrifying scenario you can imagine.

No amount of charity is enough to compensate for America’s tattered and unforgiving health care system, as GoFundMe founder and CEO Rob Solomon articulated in an interview with Kaiser Health News published in January.

“The system is terrible. It needs to be rethought and retooled. Politicians are failing us. Health care companies are failing us. Those are realities. I don’t want to mince words here. We are facing a huge potential tragedy,” Solomon said. “We provide relief for a lot of people. But there are people who are not getting relief from us or from the institutions that are supposed to be there. We shouldn’t be the solution to a complex set of systemic problems.”