By Standing as an Independent Jeremy Corbyn Can Help Destroy the Warmongers and Neo-Liberals behind Liar Starmer

Labour is Dead as a Party Representing The Working Class and Oppressed

Ken Loach on Slippery Starmer

I had a personal and political reason for knowing that Starmer was lying when he stood as a Corbyn continuity candidate for the Labour leadership. That he should have jettisoned his 10 Pledges so quickly was no surprise whatsoever. That he should have called himself a Zionist ‘without qualification’ was also no surprise. Racism and Starmer go together like Laurel and Hardy.

On February 18^th, hours after I had been expelled, Starmer welcomed my expulsion with one word – ‘good’. A man of few words and even fewer ideas.

Keeping Starmer in his Shadow Cabinet, despite his personal responsibility for what has happened to Julian Assange, his proposal to gaol those guilty of over claiming benefits for 10 years (not tax dodgers of course) and his refusal to prosecute police murderers such as the killer of Ian Tomlinson, should have given him ample warning of Starmer’s Brutus like treachery.

Below is an article which I largely agree with, from Adam Johannes, a Welsh socialist. It is clear that despite the Tories self-imploding over the summer with Liz Truss’s 44 day leadership, the shortest in history, Starmer has failed to capitalise on it.

Thornberry attacks the Crown Prosecution Service under Starmer for its failure to prosecute Jimmy Savile

Sunak has now stabilised the Tory government and Starmer has nothing to say, hence his childish ad accusing him of not wanting to gaol child abusers when it was he who refused to prosecute Jimmy Savile. Starmer himself has never denied his part in the decision not to prosecute Savile.

Starmer represents the British state in all its ugliness and hypocrisy. He is, as I wrote, two months before he was elected leader, ‘the candidate that the Deep State & the British Establishment want you to vote for.’

For me the key was Starmer’s pivotal role in the persecution of Julian Assange, whose only crime was the revelation of American war crimes in the illegal Iraq War. Starmer also ensured that thousands of CPS files were destroyed.

Corbyn made many mistakes during his leadership but the key one was appeasing those who were out to destroy him. Instead of calling out Israel’s supporters in the Jewish Labour Movement he tried to work with them.

Corbyn failed to understand the nature of the attack on him and took these attacks as if they had been made in good faith. In particular he accepted the ‘anti-Semitism’ narrative.

As Asa Winstanley made clear, The Jewish Labour Movement had been refounded precisely in order to destroy Corbyn. Yet, as the Labour Leaked Report revealed (p. 306)

Jeremy Corbyn himself and members of his staff team requested to GLU that particular antisemitism cases be dealt with. In 2017 LOTO staff chased for action on high-profile antisemitism cases Ken Livingstone, Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker and Marc Wadsworth, stressing that these cases were of great concern to Jewish stakeholders and that resolving them was essential to “rebuilding trust between the Labour Party and the Jewish community”.

Well we were all expelled or forced out of the Labour Party yet was trust rebuilt? Yet instead of realising his mistake Corbyn went on trying to appease the Zionists. Chris Williamson, his most faithful supporter in Parliament was thrown to the wolves. Jennie Formby boasted about how many socialists she had expelled compared to Iain McNicol.

The crowning mistake was at the Labour Party Conference in 2018 when Corbyn opposed reselection. I spoke with Chris Williamson at the Labour Against the Witchhunt fringe meeting and I said to him after the meeting that by taking this decision, and persuading Len McLuskey of UNITE to oppose it, Corbyn had driven the final nail into the coffin of the Corbyn Project.

Tony Benn and Jon Lansman

In one sense Corbyn and Tony Benn before him represented the fatal weakness of the Labour Left. In Benn’s famous phrase an airplane needs two wings to fly. This is of course true but when it has two pilots determined to fly in different directions that is a disaster.

The Labour left had little or no imagination and could never imagine life without the pro-war, pro-capitalist Labour Right. In practice what this meant was that the Labour Left abandoned all hope of socialism and put its faith in minor reforms to capitalism. The history of the Labour Left is a history of retreat, ideological confusion and betrayal.

This has now reached its logical end point with a Socialist Campaign Group that has, to all intent and purposes, abandoned any criticism of Starmer or his policy of faithfully following every twist and turn of US foreign policy.

John McDonnell and the SCG support the United States’s proxy war in Ukraine. Just as McDonnell, perhaps the most pathetic of the leaders of the Labour left there has ever been, praising Starmer’s do nothing, see nothing, say nothing refusal to criticise Boris Johnson over the COVID pandemic.

However Corbyn can make amends. To paraphrase Shakespeare, nothing would become Corbyn so much as his leaving of the Labour Party to stand as a socialist independent. The question is whether he will take that step and lead the fight against Starmer and for a new socialist formation.

I agree with Adam Johannes.  Because Starmer has refused to oppose the Tories on economic affairs, civil liberties, racism or indeed anything substantive, the Labour Party today is by no means guaranteed to win the next election.

Dido Harding - only qualification was marriage to a Tory MP

The refusal of Starmer and Streeting to support striking workers, including the nurses and junior doctors is particularly shameful. ‘There is no money’ they repeat in Tory fashion. But there was £37 billion for a failed COVID test and trace system run by Dido Harding. of which there  is no trace other than to say it went to Tory cronies.

There were billions of pounds for a VIP channel for COVID contracts that even the High Court declared unlawful. It is capitalism that prefers to reward ruling class crooks rather than pay ordinary workers that is the problem and the problem with the Labour Left is that they have never opposed a market economy or capitalism.

Tony Greenstein

The Weakness of Starmer Labour and the tasks ahead

Adam Johannes

The latest opinion polls suggest that the days of a 20 point lead by Labour over the Tories are over and we could be heading for a hung parliament in the next election, which could even mean the prospect of another five years of Tory rule.

On the central faultline in British politics the cost-of-living crisis and the economy the Labour Party are not offering a sharp, clear alternative way of resolving the crisis by ending it, or any easily understood solutions to the ills that plague everyday life today: wages, benefits and pensions that don't match rising living costs, the housing crisis, crumbling public services etc.

Labour's plunge in the polls comes as we reach the end of round 1 of the national strike wave which offered the possibility of a national alternative narrative to the establishment on the economic crisis, but has dipped with the drive of the trade union bureaucracy for sectionalism and to settle for pay rises well below inflation, effectively a pay cut, and refusal to link individual disputes into a national programme to end the cost of living crisis.

A stronger, more political, movement of workers in the rank and file will be needed that can push for a winning strategy in the workplaces and articulate an alternative set of national policies to end the crisis, tied in with supporting campaigns against racism, climate breakdown and imperialist war etc.

The permanent dithering of Jeremy Corbyn over whether he will stand as an independent (let alone help build a left wing alternative to Labour) is also problematic, as such such an election campaign even though in one constituency would offer a possibility to give a national profile for an alternative set of national policies and exert pressure on Starmer's Labour from the left.

One of the weaknesses of the Corbyn Project was the beginnings of a sweeping economic programme separated from fighting social movements and militant trade unionism at the base of society, it was as though it could all be done from above. One of the side-effects of the collapse of Corbynism is the beginnings of a revival of social movements and militant trade unionism that often don't link the day-to-day battles with 'high politics' and a sweeping economic programme that challenges the system.

Meanwhile yesterday's canvassers for nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy now say that all we can do is burrow away at a very local level in our renters unions and workplaces in the hope that in some far flung future we will reach the cumulative strength to articulate a national alternative, politics doesn't progress by gradualness though, but by 'Leaps! Leaps! Leaps!'

The Enough is Enough campaign has also been a setback for the left. The unions involved CWU, RMT, UCU, as well as Tribune and Acorn, and Zarah Sultana should be held to account, you don't play sectarian games during a major economic crisis. Last summer as the cost-of-living crisis began to fight hundreds of thousands signed up to this sham organisation wanting to join a national mass organisation to fight back. It's main achievement has been to derail building a national movement around the cost-of-living crisis and a national community organisation to support the national strike wave, by pretending to fill the space and thereby stopping anything actually being built to occupy the space.

The coming election will probably be the ugliest on record fought out on so-called 'culture war' issues in a bidding war between Tories and Labour over who can be most in the gutter in cynically using the lives of minorities, migrants and marginalised groups, and the poor, for political gain, and Labour deploying right wing tropes around being tough on crime, rather than its causes.

This is a potentially combustible mix. With no strong national left wing voice, as bitterness rips though society over rising living costs coming on top of years of austerity and neoliberalism, all kinds of dark forces may be waiting in the wings.

The left must stand with the oppressed and the scapegoated, but simply remaining in that defensive space means essentially getting bogged down on a terrain decided by the right and where the right is strongest.

What is desperately needed is HOPE a sense of a national movement in political life on the offensive with a progressive economic programme that can unify our people and cut across various cultural divides in society.

Not only repairing years of damage to the fabric of society done by forty years of Thatcherism and individualism, but offering something collective for the common good that goes beyond the welfare state consensus of 1945-1975.

The NHS is dying before our eyes and all we are doing is watching and waiting

 Dr Bob Gill explains how privatisation is destroying the NHS as Starmer & Streeting support its takeover by vulture capital

If you want to understand why it is that the NHS was so unprepared for the COVID pandemic and why it is that we have unprecedented waiting lists, then watch this 20 minute video of Dr Bob Gill who explains it all quite succinctly.

The NHS was the greatest achievement of the post-war Attlee government. Gone were the days when if you couldn’t afford to see a doctor or pay for drugs you simply had to suffer in silence or hope that a charity cottage hospital would treat you.

We live in the age of neo-liberalism, which is another way of saying that everything public is bad (except the Police/Army and Monarchy of course) and everything private is good.

Dr Bob Gill

Yet we cannot rely on the Labour Party under Starmer to oppose privatisation. His shadow Health Secretary West Streeting openly supports the involvement of private companies on the pretext that it will help cut waiting lists.

Yet this is a lie. The way to cut waiting lists is to train more doctors and nurses, build more hospitals and transfer the money from our increasing ‘defence’ (i.e. war) budget to health care. Private firms are interested in one thing only – profit.  And where does that come from?  Money that would otherwise go into the NHS (and also further exploitation of NHS workers).

Streeting is a brazen liar. Why else would John Armitage, a hedge fund founder and manager, who has given over £3 million to the Tories, give £15,000 to Streeting? The Electoral Commission’s register of donations shows that Streeting reported receiving this donation in January 2022.

Armitage, number 138 on the 2021 Times ‘rich list’, is co-founder and director of the Egerton Capital hedge fund. Among its almost £19bn of investments, Armitage’s fund owns shares worth almost £834m in UnitedHealth (UH), a vast US private health corporation that has spent millions lobbying US politicians for its interests.

UH has played a key role in the ‘americanisation’ of the NHS that began under New Labour and continued apace under the Tories. See Shadow Health Sec Streeting takes large sum from Tory donor with huge private health interests.

Not only Streeting but Starmer himself has received £12,500 from Armitage. Now why would this be? The answer is clear. Starmer intends to continue from where the Tories left off. Nothing could better illustrate the political bankruptcy of the Labour Party today and yet the ‘Socialist’ Campaign Group says next to nothing. It refuses to call for Starmer to stand down whereas the Labour Right had no such problems when Corbyn was the leader.

But the NHS trade unions have also been pathetic. UNISON and GMB have stayed silent. Indeed it is difficult to know whether or not the GMB is even concerned about the effect of privatisation on its members.  UNITE has called out Streeting over his receipt of Armitage’s donations but it has not done much else.

If anyone is in any doubt about what a catastrophe a private insurance health system is they should look to the United States where some 46 million adults don’t have private health care insurance.That is almost  1 in 5 adults. What that means is that if you are seriously ill you cannot get treated until it is classified as an emergency and then you can be admitted via an A&E.

Yet even if you do have private health insurance you often end up having to pay for extras, things like drugs and other extra charges. The insurance companies, mindful of their own profits, haggle over the nature of the treatment and sometimes simply refuse to pay out if, for example you don’t get their permission for treatment in advance or if you go to a hospital that isn’t on their list. These are the benefits of privatisation.

Contrast this with Cuba, 50+ years under a blockade from the United States. Despite its lack of resources child mortality rates (under 5 years, infant and neonatal) in Cuba have been lower than in the USA for many years. WHO figures for 2016 for under 5 child mortality (U5M) show that Cuba has a U5M rate of 5.5 per 1000 live births, whereas the USA has a U5M rate of 6.5 and Costa Rica has a rate of 9.7.¹ Cuba has the second-lowest U5M in the Americas behind Canada with a rate of 4.9.

Despite the fact that one-fifth of its population are excluded from coverage, the USA spends more per capita on health care than any other country. Why?  Because each stage of the insurance process sucks up money, the process of billing, accountants etc. add to the cost plus of course the mega profits at each stage.

So privatisation not only costs more but it is less efficient all round yet Starmer and Streeting want to increase the privatisation of the NHS and the trade unions that NHS workers belong say and do next to nothing.

That the GMB says nothing is not surprising.  They have been found by the Report they themselves commissioned to be institutionally sexist (and it implied institutionally racist too). A corrupt, right-wing union, the main concern of Gary Smith, its General Secretary and those around him is their own perks and privileges. And defending the apartheid State of Israel.

We can already see what the future holds for the NHS from the crisis in dentistry.  9/10 dentists cannot offer appointments to adults on the NHS and 8/10 can’t do the same for children. The BBC has revealed that we are at tipping point. The British Dental Association has said that the BBC’s research is ‘the most comprehensive and granular assessment of patient access in the history of the service’.

People are resorting to pulling out their own teeth without anaesthesia yet our so-called  Opposition says nothing about this because it’s more concerned with rooting out a non-existent anti-Semitism.

I recommend watching Bob Gill’s video because what it shows is frightening.

Gonzalo Lira a Chilean Blogger from Kharkiv has Disappeared and his Life is in Danger from Ukraine’s Secret Police

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 absorbed fascist 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 Beginners and his latest book is An Army Like No Other for 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 Esack is 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 Initiative reported 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 offers intellectual 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 affirmed to 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