EXCLUSIVE – MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE - British State exacts revenge on Socialist Trade Union & Socialist Coalition

The CPS refused ‘in the public interest’ to Prosecute Tory Party in Election Expenses Scandal but TUSC's Chris Fernandez is Gaoled for 15 months for Trivial Electoral Offence

Christopher Fernandez - TUSC election agent gaoled for 16 months by a judiciary and legal system that turns a blind eye to Tory election frauds

You may remember those 20 Tory MPs who overspent and underdeclared their expenses when it came to filing their electoral returns. Only one of them is facing a trial.  Local expenses such as hotel bills for activists bussed in, were charged to national rather than local expenses limits in a deliberate attempt to get round spending limits.

A prosecution was not however deemed to be ‘in the public interest’  even though the electoral returns ‘may have been inaccurate’.  Of course we will never know how inaccurate these limits were as the Establishment, in the form of the Crown Prosecution Service and its reactionary head, Alision Saunders refused to prosecute.

However when it came to an election agent for the socialist Trade Union & Socialist Coalition, Chris Fernandez, who was found guilty of misleading people who sign a candidates proposal form, then a swingeing 16 months sentence was handed out.  Chris denies the allegation and argues that he took petitions about the closure of a swimming pool with him in order to demonstrate what TUSC stood for.

No one suggests that Chris Fernandez forged the signatures.  Bob Spink, a UKIP candidate and ex-Tory MP was convicted of the same offence. He received a 6 months suspended sentence.  Other agents and candidates who have forged peoples’ signatures have got off with a caution.

What is amazing is that the Police, who are always telling us that when it comes to rape and violence against the person, don’t have enough resources yet they were able to visit all 80 electors who nominated TUSC candidates several times.

We should support the demand for Chris Fernandez to  be freed on bail and for his sentence to be reduced to a non-custodial one at worst.

For a detailed analysis of the trial see TUSC's Report on the Derby court case involving a TUSC local election agent

Tony Greenstein

Image copyright PA Image caption Mr Spink, from Benfleet, Essex, was Conservative MP for Castle Point from 1992 to 1997, and again from 2001 - despite being convicted of the same offence he received a 6 months suspended sentence

Outrageous sentence for TUSC agent in ‘misleading electors’ court case

Chris Fernandez, the local election agent for eight Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) candidates at the 2016 council elections in Derby, was sentenced on 13 February to 15 months imprisonment for ‘electoral fraud’.  Chris had been found guilty of misleading voters into signing the TUSC candidates’ nomination papers.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) argued that many electors had signed believing that they were backing a petition against the closure of Derby’s Moorways swimming pool and not a local election nomination form.

It is important to understand that there was no question of votes being fraudulently cast, of ballot papers being interfered with, of people’s right to vote how they wish being denied, of impersonation of voters, or postal ballot irregularities; no public money was misspent.

It was purely a question of the formal process which enables candidates to appear on ballot papers in local elections.  That is why the comments of the trial judge, Peter Cooke, that this case ‘strikes at the heart of our democracy’, were ludicrous. 

Candidates for the Scottish parliament, the Welsh assembly and the Greater London authority regional list seats can all self-nominate without having to collect signatures.  Do these elections ‘strike at our democracy’? 

A 15-month prison sentence is totally disproportionate, even if the offences had been proven beyond reasonable doubt.  But what is most disturbing about this case is that there was, in fact, plenty of doubt. 

Eight candidates stood for the TUSC in the 2016 elections for positions on Derby City Council

TUSC National Election Agent Clive Heemskerk attended the trial and has raised serious questions about the CPS’s case which, unfortunately, were not addressed in the trial.

These include:

• There is no statutory test that canvassers are expected to make to ensure that ‘subscribers’ to nomination papers have ‘sufficiently understood’ what it is they have signed.  But the CPS, unchallenged in court, set the bar not far from the level of a Mastermind contestant;
• There is no statutory or even informal guidance on what political campaign material canvassers can or cannot take with them when they collect signatures for nomination papers and the closure of the pool was a burning local political issue;
• There was no discussion in court on what responsibility people have for their own actions when they sign a form headed, ‘Local government election – Nomination Paper’, which includes two declarations that the person signing is agreeing to nominate an election candidate;
• There was no questioning of the role of the police, yet officers visited the 80 electors who nominated the TUSC candidates, sometimes on two or three occasions, and spent more time with them than Chris Fernandez did!  How did that shape what people remembered from their earlier encounter with Chris?

As Chris begins his prison sentence it is impossible not to draw the contrast between the Crown Prosecution’s approach to this case and that of the Conservative Party’s ‘Battle Bus’ 2015 general election expenses scandal.

The Tories’ extra spending then on the 20 or so marginal seats involved may well have made the difference in their winning the election and everything that has followed from that.

Yet in the ‘Battle Bus’ case, while the CPS accepted that Tory candidates’ election returns ‘may have been inaccurate’ and therefore breaking election law, they decided it was ‘not in the public interest to charge anyone’.  Who said what on the doorstep during a municipal election in Derbyshire was obviously of greater concern! 

No Conservatives will face charges for breaches of expenses rules over the 2015 general election "battle bus"

The vindictive and disproportionate political prosecution of Chris Fernandez should not cower trade unionists, socialists and working class community activists or stop them from taking their battle against austerity and for a new society into the ballot box.  This was one case, with specific circumstances, tried in one court.  It does not establish ‘case law’, applicable to any other possible instance in the future.    

Chris Fernandez himself, when asked by the prosecution barrister whether he  supported democracy, replied that yes, the working class has always fought for the right for political representation, from the Levellers in the English revolution to the 19th century Chartists, and is still fighting today.  That should be the main message from this trial.

The full report on the trial, challenging the CPS case in close detail, is available here

Letters of support can be sent to Chris Fernandez (21-12-1957), A5447ED, B-wing, HMP Nottingham, 112 Perry Road, Sherwood, Nottingham, NG5 3AG.  The envelope should include your name and address on the back. 

The wider picture

Since 2008 the Electoral Commission and the police have collated over 2,000 cases of alleged electoral fraud. Just one referred to a possible charge regarding “a voter [being] tricked into signing a nomination form for a candidate under false pretences”.  But there is no record of an attempted prosecution in this case.  In fact, all the publicly available records of convictions for nomination offences since 2008 have been for cases of false signatures or candidate ineligibility.

Until now. 

Just weeks before the Chris Fernandez trial the ex-Tory MP for Castle Point in Essex, Bob Spink, who defected from the Tories in 2008 to become UKIP’s first MP (he lost his seat in 2010), was found guilty of ‘tricking voters into signing nomination forms believing they were petitions’ in the 2016 local elections.  So, no convictions, or attempted prosecutions for this offence (at least since the public records begin in 2008), and then two come along at once.  Is there something going on?

What were the CPS thinking?

Bob Spink was formally charged in March 2017, the same month as Chris Fernandez was charged in Derby.  In both cases, while local police officers collected the evidence, it was the decision of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) whether or not to proceed to court. 

Only a very small proportion of cases of alleged electoral fraud resulted in court action.  The publicly available police commentaries include many instances of prima facie breaches of electoral law which were “locally resolved” or “suitable advice given”.  In 2014, for example, a clear breach of electoral law in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea did not go to prosecution on the grounds that it was “not in the public interest as he [the candidate] was not elected”.  In 2016 a Tory election agent in Preston forged signatures on eight candidate nomination forms and “accepted a police caution”.

Clamping down on dissent

But perhaps the most important ‘interest test’ for the CPS tops – in Derby as in the ‘Battle Bus’ case – wasn’t actually a ‘public’ one but how best to look out for their own careers by appeasing their government masters.  This is not to say that the decision to prosecute Chris Fernandez was a ‘Tory conspiracy’ against TUSC (or, for that matter, against their UKIP enemies in the Bob Spink case).  But the Tories, as part of battening down the hatches against the accumulating rage at never-ending austerity, are clamping down on democratic rights.

This includes attacks on electoral rights, many of them emanating from the recommendations of the 2016 review, led by the former Conservative Party chairperson Sir Eric Pickles, including a call to prevent “sham nominations and ensure that nominations are validly made”.

The government response to Pickles on this issue is that it will consider giving council Returning Officers greater powers to reject nominations. But in the meantime there’s no harm in sending a message to council officers (and ambitious Police Economic Crime Unit officers and Crown Prosecutors) to make life as difficult as possible for protest candidates and others outside the establishment circles.

The nomination process in local elections is already an obstacle course for inexperienced campaigners and smaller parties.  Even getting hold of the electoral register to collect the necessary ten subscribers, for example, is not a straightforward task. 

Once someone has officially become a candidate they are entitled to a copy of the register of electors for the ward.  But the earliest someone officially becomes a candidate is when the official notice of election is published, just six working days before nominations have to be submitted. 

Bob Crow speaking at TUSC's 2012 London Assembly election campaign launch

Many council electoral services departments will release a copy of the electoral register to someone declaring themselves as a candidate or election agent before the official notice of election, once they have signed a legal form stating that they will only use the register for electoral purposes.  But some Returning Officers do not give the same leeway to local TUSC candidates and agents as they do the establishment parties.  Now they might feel further encouraged to be obstructive.

But events are moving against them

The CPS announced that they would not proceed with the Conservative ‘Battle Bus’ case on May 10th, when the 2017 general election was under way and just days after the Tories’ triumph in the local elections.  Predictions of a 100-plus seat Tory majority in the forthcoming June poll were widespread.  It was obvious to anyone why the CPS tops took the decision that they did at the time that they did.

But, like almost all the establishment, they were to be completely confounded by events.  Just five weeks later the rage that has been simmering away since the 2008 crash found an electoral outlet in the surge of support for Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-austerity message.

That process – of finding a vehicle for working class politics – is not over.  The Blairites – the capitalist establishment’s representatives within the Labour Party – are clinging on tenaciously to their positions, in parliament and in town halls.  Some on the left argue that Labour Party candidates should be supported regardless of whether they are ‘Corbynistas’ or Blairites. But it is also the case that some activists will decide to stand under an independent banner against the Labour right-wing cutters.  That is a debate for the working class: it won’t be stopped by servants of the ruling class creating bureaucratic obstacles.

See also:

No charges over 2015 Conservative battle bus cases

Derby election campaigner jailed for election fraud

Bob Spink handed suspended sentence over election fraud

TUSC chair Dave Nellist pays tribute to Bob Crow

Bob Spink told the court he had collected more than 1,000 signatures in his career - unlike socialist Chris Fernandez he received a 6 month suspended sentence

An ex-Tory and UKIP MP has been given a suspended six-month prison term after being convicted of election fraud.

Bob Spink, 69, former MP for Castle Point, Essex, committed the offences during the Castle Point borough council elections in May last year.

He was found guilty in December of four counts of permitting a false signature to be included on a nomination form for a UKIP councillor.

The judge in the case said the offences undermined "democratic structures".

Spink's prison sentence will be suspended for two years. He was also ordered to carry out 150 hours unpaid work.

Image copyright PA Image caption UKIP agent James Parkin was also given a suspended prison sentence

UKIP's election agent at the time, James Parkin, 39, of Canvey Island, who was also convicted of two counts of the same charge and had admitted two, received the same sentence at Basildon Crown Court on Friday.

Both men were ordered to pay £5,000 each towards the cost of the case.

During the trial last year, jurors heard how Spink tricked "elderly and infirm" voters into signing the forms in April 2016, without making it clear what the documents were or which party he represented.

The court heard people in Spink's constituency signed the forms believing they were petitions and had no idea they were supporting the UKIP candidate in the local council elections.

Spink had claimed everything was above board and that residents knew what they were signing.

None of the candidates included in Spink's deception won a seat on the council - although a handful finished runner-up, the court heard.

Sentencing the pair Judge Ian Graham said: "This sort of offending undermines the working of democratic structures in this country.

"The democratic process depends on the good faith of those who engage in it, because a lot of what happens is of course quite difficult to police."

Spink, from Benfleet, Essex, was Conservative MP for Castle Point from 1992 to 1997, and again from 2001.

In 2008, he defected from the Conservative Party and joined UKIP, effectively becoming its first MP.

Labour MEPs Join With UKIP, the Front National and assorted Racists and Fascists in opposition to ‘Anti-Semitism’

Open Letter to New Labour's Anneliese Dodds MEP Does Europe's Far-Right really opposes racism?

In Israel - relationships between Arabs and Jews are condemned by all Zionist parties

 It's not a good idea to underestimate the stupidity of Labour MEPs and what passes for social democracy these days.  However the decision to support the bogus International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism alongside nearly all of Europe's far-Right parties, marks a new low, even for people like Dodds.

Last Wednesday a motion on Combating Anti-Semitism was tabled at the European Parliament.  Naturally all good men and true are against anti-Semitism and indeed all forms of racism.  That was why Hungary's Jobbik and Greece's neo-Nazi Golden Dawn parties opposed the resolution.

UKIP - like most racists and anti-Semites they support Zionism

However part of this motion, Clause C2, called on Member States and EU Institutions and Agencies to adopt and apply the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism.

Readers of this blog will know that the IHRA is a bogus definition of anti-Semitism whose only purpose is to conflate and confuse anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, [see Bogus Definition of Anti-Semitism Suffers Its First Defeat at the University Colleges Union Conference].

I therefore wrote to the only Labour MEP in the South East, Anneliese Dodds, to ask her not to vote alongside an assortment of reactionaries and racists to ‘oppose’ the Zionist definition of anti-Semitism.

Very kindly, Ms Dodds replied almost immediately.  She didn’t agree with me but, I thought, at least she took the time and trouble to respond.  Imagine my surprise when a friend up north received an identical response from Labour’s North East EU office!  Leaving aside coincidence, it would seem that Ms Dodds in incapable of explaining, in her own words, how she voted last Wednesday. 

Of course I expect no better from a brain dead New Labour MEP however that didn’t deter me from responding to ‘her’ letter.

Empty headed - Anneliese Dodds - New Labour MEP for South-East

Letter to Anneliese Dodds, Labour MEP for the South-East

Dear Anneliese

When I received your email last Sunday, explaining why you were going to vote to support the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, I was of course disappointed that you didn’t engage with my arguments. However I accepted that there will always be times when socialists, if that is not too strong a word for you, disagree.

You will therefore imagine my surprise when a friend received an identical letter, from Jude and Paul at the North East Labour Office. I realise that brilliant (& stupid) minds work alike, but this was, as I am sure you will agree, a coincidence too far.  It would seem that you are either incapable of or unwilling to defend your decision to vote against deleting Clause C2 of the motion, which included the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism.  I would be interested to know whether it is normal practice for you to rely on a letter written by others when you correspond with your electorate and whether you inform correspondents that the letter is not in fact your own?

The Islamaphobic Danish People's supported the IHRA

You will I am sure understand why I am copying this letter to other people as it demonstrates your lack of integrity and dishonesty in passing a standard letter as your own.  You will I am sure understand why I will pass up your offer to subscribe to your newsletter since it is probably written by someone else anyway.

You state that the EU Parliament resolution on Fighting Antisemitism calls for a working definition of antisemitism.  Why is this a problem? Anti-Semitism is quite a simple concept.  Most people have no problem understanding what anti-Semitism is.  Anti-semitism is hostility or hatred directed against Jews as Jews.  

Dr Brian Klug of Oxford University, an academic expert on anti-Semitism drew up an equally simple definition of anti-Semitism.  In his lecture ‘What Do We Mean When We Say ‘Antisemitsm’? Echoes of shattering glass’ given at the Conference “Antisemitism in Europe Today: the Phenomena, the Conflicts” held on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, at the Jewish Museum, Berlin in 2014, Klug came up with a 20 word definition of anti-Semitism: Anti-Semitism is:

‘a form of hostility towards Jews as Jews, in which Jews are perceived as something other than what they are  

This is 20 words in total. You say the development of the IHRA definition is a ‘tool to help practitioners and law enforcement officers to identify antisemitic incidents.’   I fail to understand how a ‘definition’ of some 420 words can be of greater use than a simple 20 word definition in helping law enforcement. What are they supposed to do before arresting someone? Write a thesis?

There is one and only one reason why the IHRA is 420 words long and that is because its main purpose is to conflate anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.  It has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. It is no coincidence that the IHRA definition contains 11 ‘examples’ of anti-Semitism of which 7 are directly concerned with criticism of Israel and/or Zionism.

One such example is ‘Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.’  Hannah Arendt in her book ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem’ drew attention to the fact that Jews and non-Jews cannot marry in Israel.  In Israel, relationships between Jews and Arabs are actively discouraged because in a society based on Jewish racial supremacy, intermarriage threatens the established social and racial order.  Hence was why the Education Ministry banned from the high school syllabus Dorit Rabinyan's book Borderlife, which portrayed a relationship between Arab and Jewish teenagers.  Israel Bans Novel on Arab-Jewish Romance From Schools for 'Threatening Jewish Identity'

Arendt compared this situation to the Nazis' Nuremburg laws.  But according to this idiotic definition of anti-Semitism, the greatest Jewish political philosopher of the 20^th century, herself a refugee from Nazi Germany, is anti-Semitic.  There are plenty of other comparisons between Israel and the Nazis prior to 1941, e.g. segregation of education, housing, social amenities etc.

Another, equally fatuous example of ‘anti-Semitism’ is ‘Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.’  I agree this is terrible but Zionist organisations continually say that Israel is the embodiment of modern Jewish identity.  If that is the case then clearly Jews are responsible for Israel's actions.

In an article for the Telegraph the Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis held that ‘One can no more separate it [Zionism] from Judaism than separate the City of London from Great Britain.’  He is wrong, there is a very clear distinction between the two but is it really the case that the Chief Rabbi of British Jewry is an anti-Semite?  Surely that is a bit strong?

You, or rather your ghost writer also state that the IHRA definition is not legally binding.  Perhaps this is true at the moment, but its adoption by the European Parliament makes it one step nearer to it becoming legally binding.  There is already a clear attempt, along the lines of what has already happened in France, to make Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel illegal.  

If Israel's supporters have their way then the tactics used successfully against Apartheid South Africa will be rendered illegal if used against Apartheid Israel.  What you are doing is supporting a form of McCarthyism in which legitimate free speech and solidarity action is outlawed.

However I forgot the clinching argument in your email. Apparently ‘the definition specifically states that criticism of Israel cannot be regarded as antisemitic.’  One of the problems of having others do your writing and thinking is that you end up putting your trust in spin doctors and other varieties of the common fool. 

If you had bothered to actually read the IHRA definition you would know that it doesn’t say that criticism of Israel cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic.  If that were the case then why does the IHRA give examples of where criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic?  

What the IHRA does say is that ‘criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.’  In other words you can’t criticise Israel unless you criticise other countries in the same way. 

Or as the Parliamentary Select Committee Report on Anti-Semitism stated: 

‘Israel is an ally of the UK Government and is generally regarded as a liberal democracy,... It is not antisemitic to hold the Israeli Government to the same standards as other liberal democracies.' [Paras. 23 and 24]

In other words, if you criticise the world's only Apartheid state, a state which defines itself as a Jewish state, a state not of its own citizens but Jews worldwide, then that is according to the IHRA anti-Semitic.  Anyone with an ounce of grey matter will immediately recognise that the IHRA definition has nothing to do with the popular perception of anti-Semitism, i.e. hatred, violence or discrimination against Jews.  Its purpose is to protect Israel, the West’s main ally in the Middle East.

How can criticism of Israel be similar to that against other countries when Israel is unlike any other country?  Perhaps you can name any other country which deliberately sought to engineer the ethnic composition of its population by expelling 80% of the people living there, in this case the Palestinians?  Or a country which has ruled over 3 million residents for 50 years without giving them any civil or political rights and which characterises all opposition as ‘terrorism’?  A state which has two separate legal systems operating in the West Bank – one for non-Jewish Palestinians and another for Jewish settlers.  This is the quintessential definition of Apartheid as even John Kerry all but admitted last year.

The third paragraph of ‘your’ letter is tautological and engages in a circular argument.  You say that ‘The IHRA definition does not ... limit freedom of expression. This is because the definition is not legally binding and because it specifically states that criticism of Israel as such cannot be regarded as antisemitic.’  I have already dispensed with the latter point.  The fact that the definition is not, at the moment, legally binding, does not prevent it from being part of a well funded and well organised attempt to inhibit freedom of speech. 

The rest of your letter is an example of verbal incontinence.  I would suggest that if you are seriously interested in combating anti-Semitism as opposed to acting on behalf of the Israeli Embassy, then you read the article in May’s London Review of Books by Sir Stephen Sedley entitled ‘Defining Anti-Semitism’.  You might then understand exactly what it is you have voted for and why crying wolf over anti-Semitism, is the best way of giving succour and support to genuine anti-Semites.  The article begins:

Shorn of philosophical and political refinements, anti-Semitism is hostility towards Jews as Jews. Where it manifests itself in discriminatory acts or inflammatory speech it is generally illegal, lying beyond the bounds of freedom of speech and of action. By contrast, criticism (and equally defence) of Israel or of Zionism is not only generally lawful: it is affirmatively protected by law. Endeavours to conflate the two by characterising everything other than anodyne criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic are not new. What is new is the adoption by the UK government (and the Labour Party) of a definition of anti-Semitism which endorses the conflation.

You might also want to read the Opinion of Hugh Tomlinson QC re the IHRA where he states:

21.      In my view any public authority which sought to apply the IHRA Definition to decisions concerning the prohibition or sanctioning of activity which was critical of the State or Government of Israel would be acting unlawfully if it did not require such activity also to manifest or incite hatred or intolerance towards Jews.  If an authority applied the IHRA Definition without such a requirement it would be in  breach of  Article 10 of the Convention and would,  therefore,  be acting unlawfully under domestic law in the United Kingdom.

Voting Alongside an Assortment of Racists and Fascists

The breakdown of the vote last Wednesday in support of Clause C2 of the anti-Semitism resolution is very interesting.  

All the members of that well known anti-racist party UKIP voted to support the IHRA.  

The far-Right European and Conservative Reform Group voted by 57-4 to support the IHRA.  This included the racist and anti-Semitic Polish Law and Justice Party.  Perhaps you don’t remember when David Miliband, as Foreign Secretary in 2009 , ‘tore into the Waffen-SS sympathisers in the Latvian party Cameron had also embraced.’ Is Michal Kaminski fit to lead the Tories in Europe?

Robert Ziles of the Latvian LNNK - loves Israel and loves anti-Semitism

Miliband was referring to Robert Ziles, of the Latvian LNNK, who last Wednesday voted like you to support the IHRA.  Ziles likes to spend a weekend in March paying tribute to Latvian members of the Waffen SS and marching with them.  Ziles too apparently condemns 'anti-Semitism'.

Amongst other supporters of the IHRA were Le Pen’s Europe of Freedom & Direct Democracy Group, which voted by 25-5 to support the IHRA.  All members of the Front National and Herr Strache’s Austrian Freedom Party (formed as a neo-Nazi party) voted to support the IHRA.

Victor Orban's Fidesz hates refugees, loves Hungary's war time Nazi collaborators but supports the IHRA

We should not, of course, forget that other well-known anti-racist party, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz, which apart from its enlightened policies when it comes to refugees and asylum seekers smiles benignly on the growing rehabilitation of Admiral Horthy, the ruler of Hungary under the Nazis from March 19^th until July 7^th when some 437,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz.  Fidesz has openly tolerated and played along with anti-Semitism in Hungary yet 10 of its MEPs had no hesitation in voting in favour of the IHRA.

Perhaps I could refer you to an article by Randolf Braham, the historian of the Hungarian Holocaust, The Reinterment and Political Rehabilitation of Miklós Horthy

As Donald Trump has demonstrated, White Supremacists like Donald Trump's Strategic Advisor, Steve Bannon and Breitbart News demonstrates, support for Zionism and Israel goes hand in hand with anti-Semitism.  After all if you don't want Jews in your own country why not support their removal to the 'Jewish' state of Israel.  

I guess congratulations are in order for having voted alongside almost all the racists and anti-Semites in the European Parliament in support of a Zionist definition of anti-Semitism. 

Given all these allies that you have made in the fight against ‘anti-Semitism’ have you ever considered forming another parliamentary group, ‘Anti-Semites against ‘anti-Semitism’?  

Yours sincerely,

Tony Greenstein

 Letter from Ms Dodds and others in Defence of Their Vote to Support the IHRA

Sunday 28 May 2017

Dear Tony,

Thank you for your email concerning the European Parliament's Resolution on Fighting Antisemitism. This Resolution is intended to contribute to countering the rise in antisemitic attacks in the EU. It calls for a working definition of antisemitism, promotes the security of Jewish communities, and calls for the appointment of special envoys and all-parliamentary groups on fighting antisemitism.

The Resolution calls for the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism. This definition is not legally binding and serves as a tool to help practitioners and law enforcement officers to identify antisemitic incidents. The definition specifically states that criticism of Israel cannot be regarded as antisemitic.

We acknowledge concerns regarding freedom of speech and would not accept any attempt to equate antisemitism with criticism of Israel. The IHRA definition does not do this, nor does it limit freedom of expression. This is because the definition is not legally binding and because it specifically states that criticism of Israel as such cannot be regarded as antisemitic. The definition was adopted by the UK Government with the support of the Labour party in December 2016.

Labour MEPs support the European Parliament's resolution as it is an important measure to counter the rise in antisemitic attacks in the EU. Language or behaviour that displays hatred towards Jews is antisemitism, and is as repugnant and unacceptable as any other form of racism. This Resolution condemns this and calls on EU Member States to take further action to actively protect Jewish communities.

Labour MEPs will continue to raise these concerns and monitor the definition in practice.

Thanks again for getting in touch; If you are interested in keeping updated on my work, both here in the South East and in the European Parliament, you can sign-up for my report back e-newsletter here http://www.AnnelieseDoddsMEP.uk/e_newsletter

Yours sincerely

Anneliese Dodds MEP

Greek People Reject the Dictatorship of Merkel, the IMF and European Central Bank

Democracy not Eurobureaucracy

celebrations in Athens

Democracy - an alien concept in the EU of bankers

The vote by Greeks to reject the blackmail of the European leaders should be welcomed by any democrat.  The Greek people have said a resounding 60% NO to the bankers and speculators.  It is no surprise that our own UKIP, the ‘anti-Europe' party has been so quiet, because of course they too are led by a banker.

Burning the EU flag in Athens

On Sunday the Greek people voted, despite all the pressure put upon them, to reject the ‘offer’ of the IMF and European Central Bank.  They had been told that a no vote wouldn’t mean a revised offer but Greek ejection from the Euro zone.  Despite this blackmail Greek people have refused to accept permanent austerity, further unemployment and savage cuts to pensions.

Even the IMF has finally accepted, that Greece’s debt of €340 billion cannot be repaid and that much of it needs to be written off.  Previous bailouts have, according to Karl Otto Pöhl, a former head of the Bundesbank, been “about protecting German banks, but especially the French banks, from debt write-offs.”

In 1941 Nazi Germany invaded Greece and devastated the country.  Today democratic Germany is using the banks to achieve the same objective.  When Martin Schultz, the German ‘social democratic’ President of the European Parliament, declared that the best outcome of the Greek referendum would be a technocratic government, he gave the game away.  Europe’s banks and leaders intention is to overthrow a democratically elected government.

The weakness of Syriza and Alex Tsipras is that they have not mapped out an alternative strategy to further negotiations and the present freezing up of the economy.  What Syriza needs to do is to make it clear that unless there is a debt write off and an end to austerity, then Greece will exit the straitjacket of the Euro and go back to a devalued Drachma with all debt written off.  It’s strange that given such a clear example of the undemocratic bullying of Greece there hasn’t been a word out of UKIP.  Maybe that’s the price of being led by a banker!

Given that the Greeks  have the ability to print Euros it is surprising that they haven’t already done so!  Either way, there is no alternative other than to resist the dictatorship of Hollande, Merkel et al.  It is a great pity that Varoufakis, the Greek’s motor biking Finance Minister, has resigned.  He showed great panache and style.

Below is an interesting article presenting an alternative analysis to that of the BBC’s Robert Peston and all the other financial pundits.

Tony Greenstein 

Greece – What You are not Being Told by the Media

Woman walks by No posters

According to mainstream media, the current economic crisis in Greece is due to the government spending too much money on its people that it went broke. This claim however, is a lie. It was the banks that wrecked the country so oligarchs and international corporations could benefit.

July 5, 2015  Chris Kanthan | Nation of Change | Op-Ed

Every single mainstream media has the following narrative for the economic crisis in Greece: the government spent too much money and went broke; the generous banks gave them money, but Greece still can’t pay the bills because it mismanaged the money that was given. It sounds quite reasonable, right?

Varoufakis votes

Except that it is a big fat lie … not only about Greece, but about other European countries such as Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland who are all experiencing various degrees of austerity. It was also the same big, fat lie that was used by banks and corporations to exploit many Latin American, Asian and African countries for many decades.

Greece did not fail on its own. It was made to fail.

In summary, the banks wrecked the Greek government and deliberately pushed it into unsustainable debt so that oligarchs and international corporations can profit from the ensuing chaos and misery.

If you are a fan of mafia movies, you know how the mafia would take over a popular restaurant. First, they would do something to disrupt the business – stage a murder at the restaurant or start a fire. When the business starts to suffer, the Godfather would generously offer some money as a token of friendship. In return, Greasy Thumb takes over the restaurant’s accounting, Big Joey is put in charge of procurement, and so on. Needless to say, it’s a journey down a spiral of misery for the owner who will soon be broke and, if lucky, alive.

Now, let’s map the mafia story to international finance in four stages.

Stage 1: The first and foremost reason that Greece got into trouble was the “Great Financial Crisis” of 2008 that was the brainchild of Wall Street and international bankers. If you remember, banks came up with an awesome idea of giving subprime mortgages to anyone who can fog a mirror. They then packaged up all these ticking financial bombs and sold them as “mortgage-backed securities” at a huge profit to various financial entities in countries around the world.

A big enabler of this criminal activity was another branch of the banking system, the group of rating agencies – S&P, Fitch and Moody’s – who gave stellar ratings to these destined-to-fail financial products. Unscrupulous politicians such as Tony Blair got paid by Big Banks to peddle these dangerous securities to pension funds and municipalities and countries around Europe. Banks and Wall Street gurus made hundreds of billions of dollars in this scheme.

But this was just Stage 1 of their enormous scam. There was much more profit to be made in the next three stages!

Stage 2 is when the financial time bombs exploded. Commercial and investment banks around the world started collapsing in a matter of weeks. Governments at local and regional level saw their investments and assets evaporate. Chaos everywhere!

Vultures like Goldman Sachs and other big banks profited enormously in three ways: one, they could buy other banks such as Lehman brothers and Washington Mutual for pennies on the dollar. Second, more heinously, Goldman Sachs and insiders such as John Paulson (who recently donated $400 million to Harvard) had made bets that these securities would blow up. Paulson made billions, and the media celebrated his acumen. (For an analogy, imagine the terrorists betting on 9/11 and profiting from it.) Third, to scrub salt in the wound, the big banks demanded a bailout from the very citizens whose lives the bankers had ruined! Bankers have chutzpah. In the U.S., they got hundreds of billions of dollars from the taxpayers and trillions from the Federal Reserve Bank which is nothing but a front group for the bankers.

In Greece, the domestic banks got more than $30 billion of bailout from the Greek people. Let that sink in for a moment – the supposedly irresponsible Greek government had to bail out the hardcore capitalist bankers.

Stage 3 is when the banks force the government to accept massive debts. For a biology metaphor, consider a virus or a bacteria. All of them have unique strategies to weaken the immune system of the host. One of the proven techniques used by the parasitic international bankers is to downgrade the bonds of a country. And that’s exactly what the bankers did, starting at the end of 2009. This immediately makes the interest rates (“yields”) on the bonds go up, making it more and more expensive for the country to borrow money or even just roll over the existing bonds.

From 2009 to mid-2010, the yields on 10-year Greek bonds almost tripled! This cruel financial assault brought the Greek government to its knees, and the banksters won their first debt deal of a whopping 110 billion Euros.

The banks also control the politics of nations. In 2011, when the Greek prime minister refused to accept a second massive bailout, the banks forced him out of the office and immediately replaced him with the Vice President of ECB (European Central Bank)! No elections needed. Screw democracy. And what would this new guy do? Sign on the dotted line of every paperwork that the bankers bring in.

(By the way, the very next day, the exact same thing happened in Italy where the Prime Minister resigned, only to be replaced by a banker/economist puppet. Ten days later, Spain had a premature election where a banker puppet won the election).

The puppet masters had the best month ever in November 2011.

Few months later, in 2012, the exact bond market manipulation was used when the banksters turned up the Greek bonds’ yields to 50%!!! This financial terrorism immediately had the desired effect: The Greek parliament agreed to a second massive bailout, even larger than the first one.

Now, here is another fact that most people don’t understand. The loans are not just simple loans like you would get from a credit card or a bank. These are loans come with very special strings attached that demand privatization of a country’s assets. If you have seen Godfather III, you would remember Hyman Roth, the investor who was carving up Cuba among his friends. Replace Hyman Roth with Goldman Sachs or IMF (International Monetary Fund) or ECB, and you get the picture.

Stage 4: Now, the rape and humiliation of a nation begin under the name of “austerity” or “structural reforms.” For the debt that was forced upon it, Greece had to sell many of its profitable assets to oligarchs and international corporations. And privatizations are ruthless, involving everything and anything that is profitable. In Greece, privatization included water, electricity, post offices, airport services, national banks, telecommunication, port authorities (which is huge in a country that is a world leader in shipping) etc. Of course, the ever-manipulative bankers always demand immediate privatization of all media which means that the country gets photogenic TV anchors who spew establishment propaganda every day and tell the people that crooked and greedy banksters are saviors; and slavery under austerity is so much better than the alternative.

In addition to that, the banker tyrants also get to dictate every single line item in the government’s budget. Want to cut military spending? NO! Want to raise tax on the oligarchs or big corporations? NO! Such micro-management is non-existent in any other creditor-debtor relationship.

So what happens after privatization and despotism under bankers? Of course, the government’s revenue goes down and the debt increases further. How do you “fix” that? Of course, cut spending! Lay off public workers, cut minimum wage, cut pensions (same as our social security), cut public services, and raise taxes on things that would affect the 99% but not the 1%. For example, pension has been cut in half and sales tax increase to more than 20%. All these measures have resulted in Greece going through a financial calamity that is worse than the Great Depression of the U.S. in the 1930s.

After all this, what is the solution proposed by the heartless bankers? Higher taxes! More cuts to the pension! It takes a special kind of a psychopath to put a country through austerity, an economic holocaust.

If every Greek person had known the truth about austerity, they wouldn’t have fallen for this. Same goes for Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland and other countries going through austerity. The sad aspect of all this is that these are not unique strategies. Since World War II, these predatory practices have been used countless times by the IMF and the World Bank in Latin America, Asia, and Africa.

This is the essence of the New World Order — a world owned by a handful of corporations and banks; a world that is full of obedient, powerless debt serfs.

So, it’s time for the proud people of Greece to rise up like Zeus and say NO (“OXI” in Greece) to the greedy puppet masters, unpatriotic oligarchs, parasitic bankers and corrupt politicians.

Dear Greece, know that the world is praying for you and rooting for you. This weekend, vote NO to austerity. Say YES to freedom, independence, self-government, sovereignty, and democracy. Go to the polls this weekend and give a resounding, clear victory for the 99% in Greece, Europe, and the entire western world.