Brighton & Hove Councillor Anne Pissaridou Suspended for ‘Anti-Semitism’ as Lloyd Russell-Moyle is sacked by Starmer

When will they learn? Starmer is waging a War on the Left - Anti-Semitism is his Pretext – STOP apologising for criticising Israeli Apartheid

Anne Pissaridou

Three days ago, Brighton & Hove Labour Councillor Anne Pissaridou was suspended for ‘anti-Semitism’. Her ‘crimes’ were two Facebook posts of at least 4 years vintage.  It says something about the pathetic state of the Labour Party at the moment that her fellow councillors didn’t immediately protest at the decision to deprive Labour of its status as a majority party on Brighton and Hove Council.

The first question that should be asked is why someone was trawling through 4 year old Facebook posts?  I wouldn’t even know how to access mine. Who is it that dug up Lloyd Russell-Moyles 11 year old Facebook post? It is clear that there is Israeli state involvement in all of this. Israel barely bothers to hide the fact that it has a Ministry of Dirty Tricks which goes by the name of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs.

Four years ago one of their operatives, Shai Masot, was caught with his pants down by Al Jazeera’s undercover programme, The Lobby. Because of the close relationship between the British and Israeli states it was all hushed up and Masot quietly left the country.

Anne Pissaridou

No one, absolutely no one, should be suspended for social media posts alone.  If someone is posting overtly anti-Semitic stuff then they will also be active racists and unlikely to be in the Labour Party. If by chance they are members of the party then they should be judged on their actions not their words.

Racism is not about words (or to use the Zionists’ favourite word ‘tropes’) it is about deeds.  It is what you do not what you say that counts. One of the most remarkable things about the whole fake Labour ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign is that there are no Jewish victims, apart from people like me, i.e. Jews who have been expelled for being anti-Zionists.

As was made clear from the leaked Labour Party report (see my blog) in the case of a genuine Holocaust denier, Christopher Crookes, Sam Matthews and the Compliance Unit/GLU were not interested.  It took a petition of over 200 members of the International Section before he was suspended and later expelled.

This is what Starmer (I'm a 100% Zionist is defending) - an Israeli Labour Party (to which the JLM is affiliated) that opposes a state of all its inhabitants - Herzog rebutted the idea that the Israeli Labour Party were 'Arab lovers' - the National Front used to call us 'nigger lovers'

The reason is simple. So simple that even the thickest member of the Labour Right, even Luke Stanger or Emma Daniels should get it. The ‘anti-Semitism’ witchhunt is not, and never was, about anti-Semitism.  It is unfortunate that many on the left, including Jewish Voices for Labour, still don’t get it.

The witchhunt was always about Zionism and Israel. Zionism from its very beginning accepted and understood anti-Semitism.  It never had a quarrel with genuine anti-‘Semitism. After all the anti-Semites were doing the Zionists job for them. They were ‘encouraging’ Jews to leave.

As Theodor Herzl, the founder of Political Zionism wrote in his Diaries (p.6) in the middle of the Dreyfus Affair:

In Paris... I achieved a freer attitude towards anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all, I recognise the emptiness and futility of trying to 'combat' anti-Semitism.

When the Argentinian Junta (1976-83) began torturing to death up to 3,000 Jewish leftists (10% of the disappeared though Jews are less than 1% of Argentinians) the Israeli state didn't want to know and not once criticised the Junta

That is why today, the best friends of the Israeli state are anti-Semitic and far-Right regimes such as Orban’s Hungary.  It is why the leaders Netanyahu is closest to include open Hitler admirer Duterte and Bolsonaro. It is why, when the Argentinian Junta was murdering Jews because they were Jews, the lips of the Israeli government fell silent.

However when it comes to anti-Zionism, which has been redefined as ‘anti-Semitism’ then the Zionists are vocal. When they say that anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism what they really mean is that it’s anti-Semitic to support the Palestinians and to oppose the oppression of the Palestinians. And what is the basic assumption behind this? That all Jews support Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians which is about as anti-Semitic a ‘trope’ (to use the Zionists favourite word) as you can get.

Tommy Robinson in the racial paradise of Israel

It is also why anti-Semites such as Richard Spencer and Tommy Robinson are ardent supporters of the Zionist ethno-nationalist state. There is nothing more that they would like to see adopted in Europe and the USA than ttheir own ethno-nationalist white states. 

The idea that Zionist organisations, whose raison d'être is to support the world’s most racist state, are somehow opposed to anti-Semitism is the big lie that has persisted for the past 5 years.  It is the lie that Corbyn, McDonnell and now Lloyd Russell-Moyle have swallowed.

Nearly 4 years ago Anne Pissaridou shared an article ‘Rothschild doubles down on Gold as Banking Crisis Begins’ with a picture of Jacob Rothschild with gold bars behind him. Anne’s comment was ‘interesting article’. The second piece of ‘proof’ that she is 'antisemitic' was a post sharing an article from Voxpoliticalonline.com with a picture of Corbyn meeting a rabbi with the title ‘Jewish Israeli journalist claims pro-Israel propagandist have ‘taken out a contract to stop....’ presumably Corbyn.

The first article could be seen as anti-Semitic but there should be no automatic assumption that the person who posted it is anti-Semitic.

The involvement of the Rothschilds in all sorts of nefarious activities is a standard theme of conspiracy theorists. It is based on anti-Semitic assumptions that the Rothschilds have such extraordinary financial prowess that they can engineer things like the banking crash. There is no doubt that the origins of the Rothschild’s conspiracy theories were anti-Semitic.

However most people who refer to the ‘Rothschilds’ are not anti-Semitic.  Indeed I’ve met some who didn’t realise that the Rothschilds were Jewish! The mere fact of sharing such an article is not proof that Anne Pissaridou is an anti-Semite.  Not, that is, unless you want her to be.

Today the place of the Rothschilds has been taken by George Soros.  And virtually the whole of the racist Right, Trump and Jacob Rees Mogg included, subscribe to the notion that Soros is a destroyer of the White nations and a supporter of subversion.

If this witchhunt was genuinely about anti-Semitism then there would be an investigation into Anne’s activities.  Has she hung around with anti-Semites and racists?  Has she written for far-Right papers or gone on Tommy Robinson support marches alongside a large number of Zionists?

But of course those who suspended Anne don’t for a minute believe she is a far-Right infiltrator into the Labour Party.  What they are seeking to do is to remove as many people on the Left as possible.  As far as they are concerned you can be racist about just about anybody as long as it’s not Jews or rather as long as you are not opposed to the Israeli state.

In the second article Anne quoted from Gideon Levy, a journalist on Ha'aretz. It had nothing at all to do with anti-Semitism, unless of course you think that opposing Zionism is anti-Semitic in which case you are saying that anti-racist Jews are anti-Semitic!  

Yet that is the ‘logic’ of genuine racists like former Brighton & Hove Labour Leader Councillor Daniel Yates who immediately opened his big mouth to issue platitudes about ‘anti-Semitism’.

Yates told the Argus that

“I can only apologise for the hurt fear and betrayal these actions have caused those who we seek to represent and support. There is no action I can take to undo this.’

Where do these people live?  No one who is Jewish will give a tinker’s cuss about what Pissaridou shared on Facebook 4 years ago.  People are far more worried about Coronavirus and how this government has fucked up big time killing thousands of people.

Of course it doesn’t help when Pissaridou say ‘“I am deeply sorry for my actions and any distress I have caused to the Jewish community.’ Look love, no one in the Jewish community has suffered the slightest distress for any inane comments you have made.

There is of course a very simple test as to what is and is not anti-Semitic. It is the Oxford English Dictionary definition of anti-Semitism, 'opposition to or discrimination against Jews' as Jews. If that was Anne’s intention in posting the first article then yes the charge is justified.  If it was just an article which she read and found interesting then the charge is nonsense.

The  problem is that the IHRA misdefinition of ‘anti-Semitism’ which Yates foisted on Brighton & Hove Council has nothing to do with anti-Semitism and everything to do with conflating anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, thus rendering at a stroke thousands of anti-Zionist Jews as anti-Semites.

Daniel Yates, like most of his ilk, is a political careerist.  Like his predecessor, Warren Morgan, he is not the brightest tool in the box. But even Yates should be able to understand this. If you say that anti-Zionism is equal to anti-Semitism, which is what Yates is doing, then what he is saying is that the 5-6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust were anti-Semites!  Think about it.  2-3% of German Jews were Zionists and in Poland in the last elections in 1938 Polish Jews overwhelmingly rejected the Zionists.  In the Warsaw local elections out of 20 Jewish Council seats the anti-Zionist Bund won 17.  The Zionists won just one. This is where the accusation that anti-Zionism=anti-Semitism leads.

The real question is what are the motives of those who moved to suspend Anne.  Do they, for example, take the same attitude to other forms of racism as they do to ‘anti-Semitism’ or are allegations of anti-Semitism merely a smokescreen for another agenda entirely?  An agenda that involves a war on the Left?

Steve Reed MP - NOT sacked by Starmer

An exercise in hypocrisy

Almost at the same time as Anne Pissaridou was being suspended Labour frontbencher, Steve Reed, repeated a phrase that has come to be identified with Jewish financiers pulling the strings of gullible non-Jews. He asked ‘Is billionaire former porn-baron Desmond the puppet master for the entire Tory cabinet?’ Richard Desmond just happens to be Jewish. 'Puppet Master' is a term used by a host of anti-Semites in regard to George Soros.

There has been a long and vicious campaign against Soros by Netanyahu’s friend Viktor Orban of Hungary who won the 2018 General Election by campaigning against him.  Soros is the main hate figure of the American far-Right. Anti-Semitic cartoons depicting Soros as pulling the strings are regular features of the far-Right press.

3 years ago Yair Netanyahu, the son of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, posted an anti-Semitic ‘puppet master’ cartoon attacking Soros. It was replete with David Icke’s lizards. He was immediately praised by the neo-Nazi editor of the Daily Stormer, Andrew Anglin and David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the KKK.

So what was Starmer’s response to Steve Reed’s anti-Semitic post?   Absolutely nothing. Likewise his response to right-wing MP Rachel Reeves tweet in support of Hitler supporting Nancy Astor was likewise ignored.

Reed is but one example.  The person who was identified with the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign more than anyone was Labour MP John Mann.  Yet Mann penned ‘The Bassetlaw anti-social behaviour handbook’ some years ago which listed under examples of anti-social behaviour such as ‘Rubbish’ and ‘Neighbours from Hell’ Travellers and Gypsies. He was subsequently interviewed by the Police under caution for a suspected hate crime.

Tom Watson defended Phil Woolas MP who ran an election campaign based on 'making the white folk angry'

The Labour Right, which professes to be so concerned about ‘anti-Semitism’ has throughout the years been distinguished by its hostility and racism to Gypsies. Luke Stanger, currently suspended for posting that Travellers are a social blight on communities, is but one example.

It wasn't only Jews who were annihilated in the Holocaust.  Up to half a million Gypsies and Roma were murdered in the same gas as the Jews yet you never hear about this from the Zionist Holocaust Memorial Trust or the Labour Right.

Tom Watson was the driving force behind the fake 'anti-semitism' campaign yet he was a died-in-the-wool racist. Watson had a long record of racism stretching back to the Birmingham Hodshrove by-election when he told the electorate that Labour was ‘on your side’ unlike the Lib Dems who ‘were on the side of asylum seekers’.  

This ghastly man wrote in Labour Uncut about how he had lost sleep thinking about ‘poor Phil’ – the racist Labour MP Phil Woolas who the High Court removed from Parliament after he lied about his Lib Dem opponent and ran an election campaign based on 'making the white folk angry'.

Jewish historian Professor Geoffrey Alderman made a complaint about Tom Watson's antisemitic remark - it was not progressed

Tom Watson even issued an Easter message in 2019 referring to how the Jewish High Priests were responsible for the crucifixion of Christ, one of the oldest and most deadly anti-Semitic myths.

If Corbyn, McDonnell and the rest had had anything residing between their ears then the moment the Labour Right piped up about ‘anti-Semitism’ they would have pointed  to their record over the years on immigration, asylum seekers and Muslims.  But the Labour Left historically has also been the stupid left.

What Can We Do?

It should be crystal clear by now that the anti-Semitism campaign is being used by Starmer, not merely to remove supporters of the Palestinians but as a means of attacking the Left as a whole. It is not surprising that the Zionists want to separate ‘anti-Semitism’ out from racism as David Feldman and others of the Pears Institute for Anti-Semitism have suggested because their version of anti-Semitism has nothing to do with racism. [see Labour and Antisemitism: a Crisis Misunderstood]

 For too long the Left, including the organised left, has sat silently on the sidelines.  JVL spent the last 2 years proving that there were Jews opposed to Zionism and providing a 'Jewish cover' for Corbyn.  Unfortunately they didn’t get it that the ‘anti-Semitism’ smears were not about anti-Semitism and that providing a Jewish cover for Corbyn was an exercise in futility since he was not prepared to defend himself or his supporters.

The LRC has just gone along with a Centre Left Grassroots Alliance slate that deliberately excluded Jo Bird, a Jewish anti-Zionist from the slate. 

It is clear that Brighton is one of the targets of the witchhunters and it is rumoured that other councillors are targets too – names mentioned include Nikki Brennan, Nick Childs and Kate Knight.  Even soft-left Council leader Nancy Platts is being talked about.  

It is incumbent on the left Councillors to say that they will not accept the removal of the whip from Anne.  That an injury to one is an injury to all.  If necessary all the Left councillors should either resign the Whip and put the Greens in power or insist that Anne stays a member of the Group.  On no accounts should racist Dan Yates be allowed to become Labour leader again.

Yates is an uncritical supporter of Zionism and Israel and close to the far-Right Sussex Friends of Israel. He has no problem with an Israeli state that bars its 20% Arab population to access 93% of ‘national’ i.e. Jewish national land. He has no problem with a state where Jewish women can insist that they are able to give birth in a maternity ward free of Arab women, a state where Arabs are barred from any job that is ‘security’ related. He was no problem with a state whose Prime Minister says Israel is not a state of all its citizens just its Jewish citizens.

It is incumbent on the 3 Brighton & Hove Labour Parties to support Anne Pissaridou and demand her reinstatement – by the party nationally and by councillors locally.

If Jews in Britain experienced a tenth of the discrimination of Palestinians in Israel then they would be entitled to shout about anti-Semitism.  As it is they are used as an alibi for racists like Dan Yates.

The Left in the Labour Party needs to do what the Right did for the past 4 years. The Right fought Corbyn regardless of the electoral consequences.  That is what the Left should also do.  Why?  Because the election of Tory Starmer would be a bigger disaster than Blair was. Starmer is as much our enemy as Boris Johnson and he should be removed as early as possible  The fact that he has been praised by George Osborne should be proof  enough.

Tony Greenstein

Riad El-Taher - Expelled from the Labour Party for Trying to Mitigate Sanctions Against Iraq

Ivor Caplin – War Criminal and Junior  Defence Minister under Tony Blair Personally Fingered Riad

On March 8th, Riad El-Taher received a letter out of the blue (as one does!) from a Sam Matthews at Labour Party Headquarters.  It notified Riad that he had been auto-expelled (i.e. with no rights of appeal or representation) because in 2010 he had been imprisoned for ten months for trying to relieve the effects of sanctions on Iraq by paying a bribe for importing oil for food.

A reminder of the deadly nature of the Iraq sanctions that war criminals like Ivor Caplin supported

To understand the context of Riad’s actions, for which he paid a very heavy penalty, for what was a humanitarian endeavour, one needs to recollect the words of the US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.  John Pilger described, in the Guardian on 4^th March 2000, how when he was in Washington

 ‘I interviewed James Rubin, an under secretary of state who speaks for Madeleine Albright. When asked on US television if she thought that the death of half a million Iraqi children was a price worth paying, Albright replied: "This is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it." 

Riad

When I questioned Rubin about this, he claimed Albright's words were taken out of context. He then questioned the "methodology" of a report by the UN's World Health Organisation, which had estimated half a million deaths. Advising me against being "too idealistic", he said: "In making policy, one has to choose between two bad choices . . . and unfortunately the effect of sanctions has been more than we would have hoped." He referred me to the "real world" where "real choices have to be made". In mitigation, he said, "Our sense is that prior to sanctions, there was serious poverty and health problems in Iraq." The opposite was true, as Unicef's data on Iraq before 1990, makes clear.’

Ivor Caplin, War Criminal and former MP for Hove and a dedicated Zionist member of the Jewish Labour Movement. Caplin was a junior Defence Minister at the time of the Iraq War 

This is the background to Riad’s outrageous expulsion by dictat.  An expulsion by an unelected official, a nobody who has never lifted a finger in his life to campaign against war, famine or injustice.

The real reason for Riad’s expulsion lies in what took place less than two weeks previously.  Despite all the manipulation and gerry mandering over the past 9 months, all the failed attempts at vote-fixing  by Labour's officials and NEC members like Ann Black, attempts which led to the suspension of the Brighton and Hove District Labour Party on July 2^nd last year [Brighton & Hove Labour Party Suspended by National Labour Party, The Lies of Warren Morgan & Kyle Rebound on Them] Hove Labour Party voted in a complete slate of Momentum officers and Executive members, which included Riad.  This was very bad news for the local Progress MP Peter Kyle, who had been hoping that his supporters would take control.

Riad's expulsion is about protecting this man - Peter Kyle Progress MP for Hove

This was the cue for Ivor Caplin, a close personal friend of Kyle and the previous MP as well as Junior Defence Minister under Blair at the time of the Iraq War, to finger Riad for his humanitarian efforts during the sustained US and UK bombing of Iraq and the sanctions levied against that country which preceded the war itself.  People often forget these sanctions but they led to the death of an estimated half a million children.  Sanctions, which are 'anti-Semitic' if imposed on Israel, were perfectly fine when imposed on Iraq.  The sanctions caused a modern state with an up to the date health system to turn into a third world relic.  This is what is commonly known as imperialism and the Ivor Caplins of this world are its bloody practitioners.

Riad was caught up in the UN’s oil for food programme and as part of getting food into Iraq he was involved in paying a financial surcharge to the Iraqi regime.  Since he was one of many doing the same thing and given that there was no personal financial motive, his prosecution and gaoling can be seen as a calculated and vindictive measure by the Blair government  which engaged in illegal extra-ordinary rendition and collusion in torture.

The real criminals in this are not Riad, but the Ivor Caplins and Tony Blairs who should be prosecuted for the deaths during the sanctions regime and  the war itself.

Jeremy Corbyn came to power because, at least in part, due to his record in opposing the attacks on Iraq.  It is shameful that as Leader he has not so much as lifted his lifted his little finger to countermand the expulsion by Sam Matthews and the other apparatchiks at Labour Party HQ.

Tony Greenstein

From: Sam Matthews <sam_matthews@labour.org.uk>
To: Riad El-taher <riadeltaher@ymail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, 14 March 2017, 15:51
Subject: RE: your letter 9.03.2017

Dear Mr El-Taher,

Thank you for your letter.

As outlined in our letter to you on the 9^th March , being convicted of four accounts of Making funds available to Iraq except under the authority of a licence granted by the Treasury is a serious crime, for which you served a custodial sentence.

You remain ineligible for membership of the Labour Party. There is no right to appeal an auto-exclusion.

The Labour Party considers this matter closed and will not consider an application to re-join until the 9^th March 2022. We will not be responding further on this matter.

Regards

Sam Matthews

Head of Disputes

Governance and Legal Unit

The Labour Party

Southside, 105 Victoria Street, London, SW1E 6QT

                                                                                     

11^th March 2017

Mr S Matthews

Head of Disputes

The Labour Party

Southside

105 Victoria Street

London SWIE 6QE

Your Ref: A644374

Dear Mr Matthews,

Thank you for your letter of 9^th March informing me that I have been expelled from the Labour Party.

I note that sub-section iii of Chapter 2.1.4.D in the Labour Party rules, which you quote, is the third and most severe of three options under that Clause 1.4.D. which reads: ‘where a member has been convicted of a serious criminal offence the NEC shall have the right to impose the appropriate disciplinary action from the following options.’ The other options are suspension and referral of a disciplinary case to the NCC.

The phrase ‘serious criminal offence’ might suggest murder, war crimes or bank robbery, not paying an Iraqi surcharge on oil-for-food transactions that were designed to relieve the desperate plight of the Iraqi people. Madeline Albright may have considered the death of half a million Iraqi children a price worth paying in order to achieve regime change but I took a different view and acted accordingly. Is that a serious criminal offence?

There is now widespread agreement, both within and beyond the Labour Party, that the policies pursued by the Blair and Bush administrations were profoundly mistaken and that they caused incalculable suffering to the Iraqi people and resulted in the subsequent disastrous destabilisation of the country. In view of this, would it not have been more appropriate to refer my case to the NEC to consider the whole matter in more depth? Were those who made the decision to expel me fully conversant with the political situation seventeen years ago and are they now, in retrospect, untroubled by the actions of the British and American governments of that time?

The fact that you chose the most severe option in disciplining me and decided against investigating the matter further, suggests that pressure was brought to bear from some undisclosed quarter and that there is no likelihood the NEC would consider there were ‘exceptional circumstances’ justifying the relaxation of the ‘five year’ exclusion.

I left the Labour Party as a result of the war in Iraq, my country of birth, and re-joined following Jeremy Corbyn’s election as leader believing it to be a compassionate organisation, concerned with the welfare not only of the British people but of others across the globe. My membership of the Labour Party is, compared with these greater realities; of minor consequence but it is a cause for concern that you, as a representative of a party with equality and justice at its heart should act in this way. If the purpose of removing me from the Labour Party is to purge its membership of disreputable members I could suggest rather more suitable candidates for removal.

I am attaching to this letter a brief account of the events surrounding my payment of the surcharge. The recently deceased Tam Dalyell, Labour MP and Father of the House of Commons, was fully aware of the situation in which I found myself at that time and commented on my subsequent conviction and imprisonment as follows: ‘That Riad El Taher should land up in Wandsworth gaol was, in my opinion, a process of nasty, political vengeance.’

Yours sincerely,

Riad El-Taher.

cc Governance and Legal Unit

cc South East Labour Party

The circumstances surrounding Riad El-Taher’s payment of the surcharge

Following a visit to Iraq in 1993, Tam Dalyell, whom I had invited to accompany me, suggested I set up an organisation, Friendship Across Frontiers (FAF), to campaign against the sanctions regime. FAF had Tam Dalyell as Patron and following his retirement, Harry Cohen and was supported by many Members of Parliament.

In 1996, following widespread concern at the level of human suffering caused by the sanctions the UN introduced the oil-for-food programme that had been agreed in principle in 1991. The programme required oil to be sold within a six month period and to ensure that this was achieved I was approached by the Iraqi government, due to my experience and expertise in the oil industry, to ensure the oil was sold in a timely manner; every oil allocation in my name was approved by the Department for Trade and Industry (DTI), Foreign Office (FO) and the UK Mission at the UN.

The fund was paid into a UN escrow account and its use depended on the agreement of the 661 Committee that oversaw the oil-for-food programme. This system failed to deliver the benefits intended due to an extremely restricted interpretation of what Iraq could use the funds for and even for goods that were agreed, there was a time-lapse from order to delivery of around six months. The fact that the Iraqi government was unable to directly purchase locally produced food and medicines or use any of the money it had earned from the sale of oil meant it was unable to satisfy the urgent needs of its people in the easiest, speediest and cheapest way possible.

The US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, interviewed about the effect of sanctions indicated that the death of half million children was a price worth paying. Worldwide public opinion was outraged and it became clear that action should be taken immediately to avert the disaster that was unfolding. A recommendation was eventually made to the 661 Committee that a cash component of $600 million per six-month phase should be paid directly to the Iraqi government. However, in 1999 this proposal, which was supported by the thirteen other members of the 661 Committee, was vetoed by the US and UK representatives.

At this stage the Iraqi government decided to compensate for the lack of money it was expecting the 661 Committee to approve by introducing a surcharge on all oil-for-food transactions. The US and UK governments were fully aware that all approved oil lifters had to pay the surcharge and yet they took no action against them and issued no warnings. I concluded that these governments were deliberately turning a blind eye to these payments. Moreover, I was in sympathy with the position of the Iraqi government on this issue even though I did not approve of its policies in many other respects.

My purpose was to relieve the suffering of the Iraqi people and not, as alleged, for personal gain. I was an engineer, not an oil trader. Circumstances simply put me in a position to assist. Any profits made were used to campaign on behalf of the Iraqi people. The irony is that Saddam eventually decided to end the surcharge because he realised he was making far more money through the illegal trafficking of oil through Turkey and the Gulf under the watch of the US and UK authorities; a trade which the West clearly had no desire to impede.

To my knowledge no one has ever been prosecuted for payment of the surcharge and yet I, who was conducting transactions approved by HMG, was prosecuted a decade later because I paid the surcharge. The Serious Fraud Office, which brought the case against me, indicated that after me there would be countless further prosecutions worldwide, eighty of them in the UK alone. In fact, not a single further case was brought. The US authorities had ensured that of all the Iraqi institutions only the Ministry of Oil documentation was protected from looting and yet even the new regime in Iraq decided not to proceed with the prosecutions these documents would have facilitated.

In 2004 the UN Secretary General set up the Volker Committee to investigate alleged corruption and fraud in the oil-for-food programme and the following year I was interviewed as part of that investigation. I was the only one who admitted to the payment of the surcharge and yet when the report was published shortly after I was only mentioned briefly in a footnote. Clearly, I was regarded as inconsequential.  

Far-Right Brighton Labour Councillor resigns from Labour Party citing 'anti-Semitism' as his excuse

Cllr. Inkpin-Leissner refuses to stand for re-election as Brighton councillor

Inkpin deserts the sinking ship that is the current Labour Administration of Brighton & Hove Council

I was first alerted to the resignation of Councillor Michael Inkpin-Leissner when I was visiting the site of the McCarthyite Zionist Campaign for Anti-Semitism.  There is, as many of you will be aware a petition calling on the Charity Commission to deregister this political organisation which is almost certainly funded by the Israeli state.

Inkpin-Leissner is a councillor for the ward where the unemployed centre, which I founded, used to be based.  It is a very deprived ward of Brighton and the New Labour politics of Inkpin have done nothing to help regenerate it, quite the contrary.  Inkpin is and remains a supporter of the New Labour Brighton and Hove Council which is led by Progress supporter Warren Morgan, who was behind the suspension of the District Labour Party in July last year.

I have posted a response on Inkpin's facebook page though I doubt it will stay up too long!  Inkpin describes himself as an 'armed forces champion' - in other words a militarist who will support any amount of imperialist wars using his fake concern for individual soldiers as his prop to lean upon.  As I make clear below, anyone seriously concerned with members of the armed forces would be campaigning against imperialist wars abroad, but that would go against his New Labour politics.

As is to be expected of such a person, Inkpin won't be resigning citing 'a lot of local residents with diverse political opinions' who voted for him.  Of course he forgets to say that they voted for him as a Labour candidate and if he is so confident of their support then why not see at a by-election?

Statement in Response to that of Cllr. Michael Inkpin-Leissner

Your statement says nothing at all. There is no content worthy of the name. This is shallowness beyond measure and an indication of the vacuity of what is left of New Labour.

It might be quite strange to you but New Labour's continental equivalents have not been a shining success. In the Netherlands last week a massive defeat for the Blairite Labour Party. In France the Socialist Party under Hollande is in melt down. In Germany, as you say, it is Die Linke, which is the flame for the Left. You offer nothing but the continuation of a system, yes capitalism, which plunders and despoils.

Your concern about 'anti-Semitism' is touching and entirely misplaced. Anti-semitism is a marginal prejudice in this society. Unlike you I am Jewish and having lived my childhood in non-Jewish working class areas of Britain I can testify that I never experienced it. Nor have I ever experienced it on the Left or in the Labour Party.

How the far-Right Zionist Campaign for Anti-Semitism sees Inkpin's resignation

Please do not use Jewish people as an excuse for your own far-Right political leanings. The lesson of the holocaust is that all forms of racism are wrong and should be fought. Your New Labour friends pioneered Islamaphobia in this country and demonised Muslims.

With your war in Iraq and Afghanistan you brought terrorism, which we have seen today, onto the streets of Britain. What you called 'monsters' were summoned into being by the monstrous wars that you and your ilk supported.

What you and others mean by 'anti-Semitism' is opposition to Zionism and the Israeli state. A state which only recently demolished an Arab/Bedouin village Umm al Hiran, in Israel proper, in order to make way for a Jewish town. It would be futile to describe the system of military oppression on the West Bank, the shackliing and torture of children, the house demolitions etc. because you after all supported the continuing war crime that began with the invasion of Iraq.

It is incidentally no accident that in the USA, with the advent of Trump and his white supremacist friends in Breitbart and the alt-RIght, that anti-Semitism has indeed increased exponentially. That was why my anti-Zionist friends in Jewish Voices for Peace and other Jewish leftists picketed the meeting in November last year where Steve Bannon, Trump's new Strategic Advisor and former CEO of Breitbart was due to speak. In the end hundreds of anti-racist Jews prevented him speaking. Whose was the meeting he had been invited to? The Zionist Organisation of America! It is no accident that whereas the Israeli government is happy to condemn 'anti-Semitism' in Britain it has failed to say a word about the very real anti-Semitism of Trump's administration. Zionism and anti-Semitism are and always were merely different sides of the same coin.

It is a pity that you, being German, should use your guilt complex as a way of expiating Israel's racist crimes. Some of see in what Israel does a continuation of the Nazi regime. In Israel, as under the 1935 Nuremburg Laws, a Jew cannot marry a non-Jew. Or perhaps demolishing a non-Jewish house to make way for a Jewish home is your idea of penance?

You speak of your 'never ending support for members of the British Armed Forces'. It is no surprise that cheap jingoism and militarism is your political refuge. Patriotism always was the refuge of the political scoundrel. If your support was at all sincere you would have opposed Blair's wars of imperialism and the war that we are currently supporting against the people of Yemen.

The British army does not have a proud record - be it in Ireland, India Kenya or indeed Iraq, where it carried out the world's first ever bombing of civilians in 1920. When members of the armed forces have done their duty they are left, in many cases, to live in poverty, in prison or to die on the streets. That is what your 'support' for the armed forces really amounts to. The resources used for war could, of course be used to peaceful activities but that would defeat your whole political purpose.

I suspect that neither the Labour Party nor your own electors will regret your resignation but if you had the courage of your convictions then you would restand in your ward and give all those ' local residents with diverse political opinions' a chance to decide whether to support you now that you have dispensed with the political party that enabled you to be elected in the first place!

I shall put this on other sites in case this doesn't stay up too long.

Statement of Councillor Michael Inkpin-Leissner

Please find here my personal statement regarding my resignation from the Labour Party:
When I joint the Labour Party it was a natural choice for me as a Social Democrat from Germany. Labour was a proud pro European Movement.

The current Leadership of the Labour Party seems to have forgotten that. The lukewarm stance to defend the European Nationals by the Parliamentary Labour Group ( I applaud the Lords on this occasion) made me feel more and more uncomfortable to be a part of the Labour Party.
When I joined the Labour Party it was a centre-left Party like the German SPD.
Now it has been taken over by left-wingers and the Momentum extremists, who are working to build an axis with former German Communists “Die Linke”.

As a German, and you will understand, I can never support this and never will compromise my stance against any form of antisemitism. Unfortunately the position of the Labour Party, though there are strong personalities standing up against antisemitism, seems to be not really sincere anymore, proven by the lackluster investigation of Baroness Chakrabarti. I have lost my faith in Labour fighting Antisemitism and for Europe.

I know, fellow councillors made it clear that I should ignore these temporary issues and focus on local politics. But I have to strongly disagree. As a Labour Member in the public eye I was connected to what the current leadership says and stands for. This is why I have to walk away from this party. In my two remaining years as independent councillor I shall focus on my local support and activities in my ward. Some of you will state that I should resign as a Councillor. I disagree on this as not only Labour supporters voted for me but a lot of local residents with diverse political opinions. I shall honour my obligations to them. I was elected to support a Labour Administration.

Where agreed I shall support the current administration under Warren Morgan’s leadership. As we know from the Budget debate the Greens are politically reliable unreliable and the Tories are… well the Tories.

Of course there was already the usual political procedure. GMB, Unite and Corbyn supporters as well as Tories and Greens demanded my complete resignation. Sorry to disappoint you. This city has a stable and reliable administration. I will not support any change to that. Brighton and Hove deserves better than blind ideology from the very Corbynite/Green left or the Bombastic Boris Mayhem right.

I can't express my gratitude for so many messages of support: members of the Jewish community and other faith groups, members of different political parties, fellow councillors from all over the country.

Now what’s next: I finally can speak free on what annoyed me most as resident in my ward and elsewhere: The abuse of the HMO system, the chaos on Lewes road,my neighbourhood, a lot of other local issues and my never ending support for members of the British Armed Forces, Veterans, their families and carers.