Is Your Vote Going to the Henry Jackson Society?

THERE's more to politics than party leaders appearing on television and supporters canvassing for your vote.  Amid all the messages I'm seeing on Facebook concerned with the May 7 general election, and what politicians said or did, comes this posted by an old friend:

Brendan Simms, president of the Henry Jackson Society, will be speaking alongside UKIP's Patrick O'Flynn in favour of Britain leaving the EU, at the New Statesman and Cambridge Literary Festival.

And he provides a link:
http://www.newstatesman.com/2015/03/new-statesman-and-cambridge-literary-festival

I first met Marko Attila Hoare at a Bosnia rally in Trafalgar Square, and got to know him in Workers Aid for Bosnia, which sent aid convoys chiefly to the mining town of Tuzla. Marko also wrote for our paper Workers Press (alas now gone), and now he is the author of several books on Bosnia and its history, particularly during World War II.


Brendan Simms is Cambridge professor of the History of International Relations. I knew his name as the author of Unfinest Hour, which sharply criticised Britain's role in Bosnia, the appeasement of Serb aggression by Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, and the British army's reluctance to carry out its UN mandate protecting humanitarian aid routes or defending civilians from ethnic cleansing and massacre.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/nov/04/politicalnews.politics


Simms' revulsion from what he called "conservative pessimism" was shared by others, and undoubtedly influenced the formation of the Henry Jackson Society. Taking its name from a US Democrat Senator who believed in asserting US power to promote his ideas of freedom, the Society sought to combine an activist foreign policy and support for democratic values. For some this might seem to echo Robin Cook's call for foreign policy to have a "moral dimension" (Described succinctly as "bollocks" by an anonymous FCO civil servant).

For others, like the signatories of the 'Euston Manifesto', it could mean endorsing US or Israeli wars and denouncing opponents as supporters of dictators like Saddam Hussein or reactionary Islam. The Society's statement of aims stresses the importance of maintaining the military strength of the United States, and Britain in Europe. Asserting that Western liberal democracies are the model for the world to follow, it says that international organisations which include undemocratic regimes have no right to pronounce on human rights issues. (So much for the UN!)

The Henry Jackson Society says it is "A cross-partisan, British-based think tank with a strong British and European commitment towards freedom, liberty, constitutional democracy, human rights, ...".  http://henryjacksonsociety.org/

Others, including former members, don't hesitate to call it neo-conservative or simply right-wing, even 'hard-right'.

 Marko Attila Hoare was Greater Europe Co-Director, then European Neighbourhood Section Director of the Henry Jackson Society from 2005 until 2012. Nowadays strongly critical, he remarks on Brendan Simm's appearence alongside a UKIP MEP to show how much the HJS leadership has moved from its commitment to British leadership in Europe to calling for British exit.  Indeed, Brendan Simms is co-chair of the Brexit-euroexit project and author of Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy.

But it goes further. Raheem Kassam, who was variously described as "Director of Marketing" or "Campaigns Director" for the Henry Jackson Society, is now a senior advisor to UKIP's Nigel Farage.

We have met Mr.Kassam before. He was linked with a story which the BBC and the Jewish Chronicle ran about people at a conference in London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) drowning out a Jewish audience speaker with antisemitic chants. The supposed victim was Zionist Federation chairman Jonathan Hoffman. The BBC eventually withdraw the story after other Jewish people who had been at the conference said it wasn't true, and a recording of the conference contained no antisemitic chants. The Jewish Chronicle took longer to withdraw, but did so after Jewish people involved in the conference went to the Press Complaints Commission over it.

Kassam has been a busy man. Besides being a spokesman for Student Rights, which seems to be a Henry Jackson Society project with not many actual students, he found time to run a Climate Change skeptic campaign called 'Greencease' (geddit?)  More recently with the 'Jihadi John' excitement he was introduced on TV as a "former student" and "expert" on how the ISIS killer's "radicalisation" might have started at the University of Westminster.

Before joining Nigel Farage's entourage, Raheem Kassam was managing director of the London end of Breitbart, a conservative American news agency website noted for its unconservative, creative news stories.  Not even other conservatives are immune from attack.

The Fictitious "Friends of Hamas"

On February 7, 2013,  Breitbart.com in the United States ran a story by Ben Shapiro claiming former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, a nominee for Secretary of Defense, might have been paid to speak at an event sponsored by a group called "Friends of Hamas"  Breitbart.com said that the story was based on "exclusive" information by "Senate sources". The story was repeated by websites, and commented upon by Senator Rand Paul.

But other reporters could not find any evidence that "Friends of Hamas" even existed. On February 19, New York Daily News reporter Dan Friedman said that the story had originated from a sarcastic comment he made to a Congressional staffer.  "Hagel was in hot water for alleged hostility to Israel. So, I asked my source, had Hagel given a speech to, say, the 'Junior League of Hezbollah, in France'? And: What about 'Friends of Hamas'?".  But Breitbart continued to claim its story was from reliable sources, and Friedman was denounced as a hack.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitbart_%28website%29


"Democracy"?  But not at home!

In 2012, Marko Attila Hoare, who had known Brendan Simms at Cambridge, and been a founder member of the Henry Jackson Society, decided he'd had enough.
  

"Earlier this year, I resigned from the Henry Jackson Society (HJS) and requested that my name be removed from its website. The HJS is a UK think-tank frequently described as ‘neoconservative’. It includes among its Trustees Michael Gove, the current Secretary of State for Education, and it is alleged to have influenced the foreign policy of David Cameron and William Hague. It currently serves as a secretariat, at the House of Commons, to the All-Party Parliamentary Groups for Transatlantic and International Security and for Homeland Security. I had held a senior post within this organisation for seven years, first as Greater Europe Co-Director, then as European Neighbourhood Section Director. However, I reluctantly had to face the fact that the HJS has degenerated to the point where it is a mere caricature of its former self. No longer is it a centrist, bipartisan think-tank seeking to promote democratic geopolitics through providing sober, objective and informed analysis to policy-makers. Instead, it has become an abrasively right-wing forum with an anti-Muslim tinge, churning out polemical and superficial pieces by aspiring journalists and pundits that pander to a narrow readership of extreme Europhobic British Tories, hardline US Republicans and Israeli Likudniks. The story of the HJS’s degeneration provides an insight into the obscure backstage world of Conservative politics.

There are three factors that define this degeneration. The first is that almost all the people who founded and established the HJS have either left or been edged out of the organisation. ...

The second factor is that there is absolutely no internal democracy in the HJS, nor any transparency or rules of procedure. Absolutely none whatsoever. Less than in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Probably less than in the Syrian Arab Republic. As someone with an early background in far-left politics, I grew up with groups like the Socialist Workers Party, in which total power is held by one or two leaders, but the totalitarianism is disguised by window-dressing consisting of branch meetings, annual conferences, meetings of the Politburo and the like. Well, the HJS is like that, but without the window-dressing: there isn’t even the pretence of democracy or consultation. Instead, the organisation operates on the basis of cronyism and intrigue. Sole power is held by one individual – Executive Director Alan Mendoza. He was not elected to the post and is not subject even to formal or technical restraints, nor to performance review and renewal of contract.

The third factor is that, although the HJS was intended to be a centrist, bi-partisan organisation, its leadership has now moved far to the right, and abandoned any pretence of being bi-partisan or pro-European (its Associate Director, Douglas Murray, is on record as having stated that ‘the EU is a monstrosity – no good can come of it… The best thing could just simply be for it to be razed to the ground and don’t start again [sic]’).

Alan Mendoza is an ambitious young professional politician of the Conservative Party and a former Tory local councillor in the London Borough of Brent. ... Once he took over the running of the HJS from Rogers and Simms, Mendoza had his hands on all the levers of power within the organisation, of which the most important was control of the website. Mendoza set about converting the HJS into his personal fiefdom, packing its staff with his own apparatchiks recruited via his personal network.

The practice of regular staff meetings was now ended, and staff members were no longer consulted or even informed about major policy or organisational decisions. In practice, Mendoza just did whatever he wanted to, adding or removing staff to and from the website and inventing or erasing their virtual job-titles as and when he felt like it.

 Praise from 'Mad Mel' to Audience with AIPAC

Marko describes how HJS members who differed from the changing line on Europe were sidelined or sat upon.  But he also noted another aspect of Mendoza's takeover.

The people who replaced the HJS founders at the head of the organisation were staff members of another think-tank: the Israel-advocacy organisation ‘Just Journalism’, of which Mendoza was a member of the Advisory Board and which shared the HJS’s London office. At the time of Just Journalism’s launch in March 2008, the Spectator columnist Melanie Phillips wrote of it that ‘A very welcome and desperately-needed initiative has just been launched to monitor distortions, bias and prejudice in British media coverage of the Middle East.’

Neo-con former Daily Mail columnist Melanie Philips acquired a name for linking her support to Israel with Islamophobia.  Her book "Londonistan", claiming Britain was harbouring a "terror" state within was a hit with the far Right, while she became known as "Mad Mel" to many Jewish people, even Zionists.

We can't blame Alan Mendoza for that, but we can for the line he took adressing members of the main Israeli lobby organisation in Washington, AIPAC:

“Immigration is also a reason for rising anti-Israel feelings [in Europe]. In 1998, 3.2 percent of Spain was foreign-born. In 2007, that percent had jumped to 13.4 percent, Mendoza said. In cities such as London, Paris and Copenhagen, 10 percent of residents are Muslim.”
“The European Muslim population has doubled in the past 30 years and is predicted to double again by 2040.
“For all the benefits that immigration has brought, it has been difficult for European countries to absorb immigrants into their society given their failure to integrate newcomers. Regardless of their political views, Muslims in Europe will likely speak out against Israel whenever any Middle Eastern news breaks, just as they will against India in the Kashmir dispute. Their voices are heard well above the average Europeans, who tend not to speak out Mendoza said, adding that the Muslim immigrants do this with full knowledge that they would not be allowed to speak out like that in many Middle Eastern countries.’

This line that European criticism of Israeli actions is solely motivated by fear of Moslems has been widely repeated in US, particularly Murdoch-owned media, which has followed up with stories about parts of British cities becoming entirely Muslim, no-go areas for non-Muslims.

 The HJS website is currently running a piece by Douglas Murray, originally published on March 18 in the Spectator, in defence of Benyamin Netanyahu against criticism. Murray, Associate Director of the Henry Jackson Society, also founded the Centre for Social Cohesion. If that sounds harmless enough, this is what it means, in Douglas Murray's words:

‘Conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board: Europe must look like a less attractive proposition. We in Europe owe – after all – no special dues to Islam. We owe them no religious holidays, special rights or privileges. From long before we were first attacked it should have been made plain that people who come into Europe are here under our rules and not theirs. There is not an inch of ground to give on this one. Where a mosque has become a centre of hate it should be closed and pulled down. If that means that some Muslims don’t have a mosque to go to, then they’ll just have to realise that they aren’t owed one. Grievances become ever-more pronounced the more they are flattered and the more they are paid attention to. So don’t flatter them.’


If that sounds like a slightly more articulate version of the lumpen who follow the English Defence League, it should be no surprise that Murray has described the EDL as acceptable, and spoken favourably of Robert Spencer, a leading Islamophobe in the United States who denies the Srebenica massacre.  That's coming full circle from 'Unfinest Hour'.

https://greatersurbiton.wordpress.com/2012/08/13/alan-mendozas-putsch-in-the-henry-jackson-society/

https://greatersurbiton.wordpress.com/2012/11/13/alan-mendozas-henry-jackson-society-and-william-shawcrosss-charity-commission/

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/articles/middle-east/5440-the-henry-jackson-society-and-scaremongering-with-aipac 

http://leftfootforward.org/2013/05/labours-links-with-the-anti-immigration-right/

http://liberalconspiracy.org/2013/06/05/exclusive-top-libdem-resigns-from-controversial-think-tank-henry-jackson-society/

Alan Mendoza is now the Tory candidate for Brent Central. I trust his views will be made known to voters, even if not by him.

 A top Lib Dem resigned from the Henry Jackson Society.

But several Labour MPs remain members, including the Labour Party leader in Scotland, Jim Murphy, who is on the Society's Political Council. .  If he has resigned from it, I will be happy to apologise and record that.

No, I am not 'Charlie'

NOR ARE MILLIONS OF MUSLIMS TO BLAME FOR A HANDFUL OF KILLERS.

NO, I am not 'Charlie'. And if  this nonsense continues much longer I might have to seriously consider changing my first name!

I am NOT 'Charlie'.  And if you want to know why I am not joining those generally good people who have unthinkingly hastened to identify with that awful magazine, here is one reason why:

I learnt a new French word from this cover. Les Allocs, from les allocations familiales, family allowances, and roughly translatable in a current British context as 'Benefits'.  We are used to British media and politicians whipping up hostility against so-called "benefits scroungers" and immigrants, but not to anyone suggesting the papers that target both are somehow left-wing or anti-establishment.

The 'Charlie Hebdo' cover refers to the "sexual slaves of Boko Haram", a subject whose humour is a bit above my intellect, then depicts a crowd of ugly women in Muslim attire, all heavily pregnant,  screaming "Hands off our 'Allocs'(Benefits)".

Tres drole, and very amusing.

Of course, I may not have grasped the hidden subtleties of this cartoon, nor be sufficiently au fait with sophisticated French thought and humour to understand that this was really aimed against racism and misogyny, rather than appealing to both; and to the age old bitterness against the lower orders and lesser breeds living and multiplying - "parish-fed bastards" as was the cry of the Yeomanry at Peterloo.

I don't know whether the liberating aim would have been what the thugs had in mind who attacked a pregnant Muslim woman in the Paris suburb of Argenteuil last Thursday, tearing off her veil and headcovering, and kicking her in the stomach for good measure. The young woman suffered a miscarriage and lost her baby on Monday. I don't know whether she appreciated the irony.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/19/world/europe/muslim-woman-suffers-miscarriage-after-attack-in-france.html?_r=0

I had been going to add another 'Charlie Hebdo' cover featuring a black-clad bearded Orthodox Jew with an extra-long proboscis talking about the Holocaust , which I had seen posted on the internet, but it appears this was a spoof-cover produced by supporters of the antisemite Dieudonne.  I don't know whether 'CH' itself has done anything as unpleasant, but I note that friends who are normally sensitive to anything resembling antisemitism elsewhere were trying to find excuses for this caricature,  so long  as they thought it was genuine.  Such was the wave of enthusiasm for unrestrained freedom of speech.

I am not "Charlie", and nor am I any kind of apologist for the gunmen. Since they are dead, we don't know for sure what their motives were, or those of whoever sent them.  I don't buy the "lone nutters" theory, for these killers were either well-briefed and efficient, or very lucky, managing to strike at the CH office just when an editorial meeting was taking place. Perhaps if the French security services had been as effective at surveillance of those who'd already come on the radar, and stopping them getting guns, both the 'Charlie Hebdo' attack and the supermarket siege might have been prevented.

Still, I don't want to indulge in armchair detection, still less to be smug about those inferior French cops.  The two worst shooting incidents in Britain, at Hungerford (1987) and Dunblane(1996), were carried out by local characters, both white and neither of them Muslim, obsessed with guns, and with legally held firearms. Since then the law has been changed. But Nigel Farage, who blames events in France on "multiculturalism" , said last year that the restriction on hand guns should be scrapped. Maybe those journos who hang on Farage's every word should remind him and his fellow gobshites that culture and headscarves don't kill, guns do.

As for the disgusting media baron Rupert Murdoch, who wants us to hold all Muslims responsible for the killings in France, I don't recall him as a 'born-again Christian' apologising for the actions of his co-religionist Anders Breivik in Norway, any more than for the Inquisition, the Nazi Holocaust, or the massacres of mainly Muslim people at Sabra and Shatila camps in Lebanon, and Srebrenica in Bosnia, committed by men proud to wear the cross.  But I do remember that it was one of Murdoch's former minions, ex-Fox News commentator Glenn Beck, who blamed Breivik's victims, comparing the young people at a Norwegian Labour Party summer camp to Hitler Youth.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/norway/8660986/Norway-shooting-Glenn-Beck-compares-dead-teenagers-to-Hitler-youth.html

The gunmen who attacked 'Charlie Hebdo' were not "representatives of the oppressed", however, and there is no point in misguided leftists appointing themselves defence lawyers, and dragging in everything from bombing of Iraq to joblessness in France to "explain" if not exonerate the gunmen.
As for those who killed customers in a kosher supermarket, their crime did nothing for the Palestinians, but came as music to Mossad ears, boosting Netanyahu's effort to persuade Jews to leave France so he use them to reinforce his armed camp. The real hero of the day, and some would say, true Muslim, was the young shopworker Lassana Bathily, from Mali, who helped people hide and saved their lives.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/paris-shootings-muslim-man-hailed-a-hero-for-hiding-hostages-in-jewish-supermarkets-walkin-refrigerator-9970045.html

Had the CH gunmen, or whoever sent them, really cared about France's Muslims, or been confident of their support, they could have mobilised a popular campaign against the paper's insults, instead of relying on guns. It might even have had longer-lasting results. But that would have involved convincing people, persuading them to act, and that their actions count. Once they are mobilised, they might want to take up other issues, like unemployment or exploitation. And as they gain confidence, and allies, they might be less likely to stay within the bounds of religion or outmoded authority. Who knows where it might end?

There are of course plenty of French Muslims and innigrants who are politically articulate and as capable of organising as anyone else. It is my guess that the last thing whoever planned these gun attacks wants is to encourage mass organisation or participation in politics. That two supposed heroes could find nowhere to hide among an estimated five million Muslims is significant. It also symbolises the kind of isolation their mentors would like to see imposed on the entire Muslim community.

That so many of my friends on the Left are torn between "free speech" fundamentalism and deferential respect for 'Charlie Hebdo''s intellectual pretensions on the one hand, and a
patronising assumption that the gunmen are legitimate expressions of an otherwise cowed,uneducated and inarticulate poor community on the other; with no attempt to look critically at either terror or bourgeois 'freedoms'.  These are two faces of the emptiness that lies today behind so much phrasemongering and "theoretical" erudition.

Tenants' Win, and Russel Vindicated

 I'VE never been a fan of Russel Brand. Just not my cup of tea. I've never watched his programme, didn't like his treatment of Andrew Sachs or talk about "booky-wook", and I went as far as to unfriend two trying-to-be-trendy academics who got on my tits admonishing me for being insufficiently admiring of Brand, and telling me how useless the more conventional Left was.

But even a doubter like me had to rally to Brand's side when he was attacked by the 'Sun' and other media for turning up to support tenants on the New Era estate in Hoxton who were facing massive rent rises and evictions. The 'Sun' had a massive front-page headline screaming that Brand was a "hypocrite" because he payed high rent and his landlord was, it alleged, a tax-dodger. How Brand or anyone else is responsible for their landlord's tax affairs was a bit of a mystery, though I was impressed to see one of Murdoch's mighty organs suddenly getting upset about whether people are paying enough tax in this country.

The bigger question was how someone paying a rent that he can presumably afford  becomes a "hypocrite" by showing concern for people who are less well off and were being asked to pay rents that they could not afford, for what had originally been built as low-income housing. Most people would say the comedian was simply showing his decent side. But at a time when we'd been hearing from various celebs and has-beens how they feared the effect of Ed Miliband's proposed mansions tax, and might have to deprive us of their company and flee the country if Labour got in, Russel Brand had broken the rules.

He had showed ingratitude to the rich and ruling class, and genuine concern for the less well-off, and worst of all, instead of patronising us, and showing what a good chap he can be on some BBC charity show, he took sides with working class people who had organised themselves to fight injustice. There has been nothing like it (well not as publicised, that is) since Robbie Fowler broke the silence over the Liverpool dockers' struggle, by revealing his dockers' support tee shirt to the cameras on 'Match of the Day' , for which he was fined by UEFA, as well as badmouthed by the Beeb.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lgq-KPfLGVI     

 But the good news now is that, with help from Russel Brand, and support from socialists and trade unionists, the New Era tenants who organised themselves to defend their homes have won, at least for the time being. First their Tory MP landlord and now the big American corporation that had wanted to develop the estate by getting rid of working class tenants, have backed off. 

http://www.channel4.com/news/new-era-housing-estate-sold-after-protests


Here  is an account by one of the tenants, Lindsay Garret, published in the 'Independent':

It all began on a Monday morning in June, when I received a letter from the owners of the New Era estate. It said that Westbrook Partners, who had bought the property in March, were planning on evicting 93 families, and more than doubling everyone else's rent.

My initial feeling was of shock and devastation. I cried - I couldn’t believe this was happening. And then my disbelief turned into anger. For all my life New Era has been my home. I couldn't stop thinking about my daughter's future, and what would happen to my parents, who are both in their late sixties and also live on the estate.
If we were evicted, we would have had no choice but go wherever Hackney Council could rehouse us - places that were being named were Hastings, Clapton, Birmingham - anywhere but London basically.
I cried, and then I thought: fuck this, and called the press. I had read an article about a similar housing problem in The Mirror a few weeks earlier, so I thought they might listen. Suddenly, our story was on the front page, and I realised that people were interested in what we were going through, as we received so much attention.


Everyone felt the same. We were upset, and wanted to fight back. So we organised a Tenants Association. We had a meeting and I got voted in as Chair.We then built a community around our campaign, and started getting out there, trying to get more people to listen. We launched the petition on Change.org, got down to Hoxton Market to hand out leaflets to people with the link to our petition. We contacted local housing groups like Digs, who gave us advice...

I don’t think we’d be here now without Russell Brand's support. We stopped him at the market in the middle of September, and met again a week later. He was really interested and impressed with what we were doing, and told us he was going to help us save our homes.
By getting involved he gave us a bigger voice. And rather than taking over, he gave us a much bigger audience to speak to. The amount of publicity that came with him really helped us.
He's been criticised for joining our campaign, but this has actually made more people interested in us. People who hadn't heard about what we were doing were suddenly asking what this New Era campaign was all about. I think the only people that the media harmed was themselves - it made them look a bit stupid, because everyone could see that what Russell was doing was a good thing.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/without-russell-brands-help-my-family-and-countless-others-would-have-been-evicted-from-our-homes-this-christmas-9938601.html

And while I am at it , without becoming a "Brandite", because I like his style (with words, I could not possibly copy his hairstyle), let me commend the reply he wrote to a bank employee who complained that his lunch break was spoiled by an incident in which Brand was involved: Apology for a Cold Paella:

http://www.russellbrand.com/2014/12/8164/

Plots against Labour

WITH all the interest shown in various anniversaries this year, one slipped past almost unnoticed last month which might have topical relevance. It was 90 years since the Daily Mail published a front-page story, four days before the October 1924 General Election, about instructions supposedly sent from Moscow to British Communists, on how to subvert the armed forces and bring about a revolution, - supposedly with the help of the first Labour government.

Labour had opened trade and diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union that year, then lost a confidence vote from the Liberals for deciding to drop the prosecution of communist John Ross Campbell under the 1797 Incitement to Mutiny Act, for publication of an open letter in Workers Weekly calling on soldiers to "let it be known that, neither in the class war nor in a military war, will you turn your guns on your fellow workers."

New national elections were scheduled for October 29.

On October 10, the Foreign Office received a document purporting to be the letter signed by Grigori Zinoviev and Arthur McManus of the Communist International, and hence referred to as the "Zinoviev Letter".  Thought to have been the work of Czarist Russian emigres out to sabotage Anglo-Soviet relations, or possibly even commissioned from them, the forgery was nevertheless treated as genuine,  and through the collusion of the intelligence services and Tory Central Office it was passed over to the Mail for publication.

"CIVIL WAR PLOT BY SOCIALISTS' MASTERS" was the Mail's headline. Plainly aimed to strike fear into the middle class, it certainly put the wind up Labour's Ramsay MacDonald. Whether or not it made a big difference to Labour's vote, it made clear that senior officialdom in the state would not let an elected our government do as it pleased.

A leading part in the behind the scenes collaboration between state intelligence services, Tory party and media was played by Major Joseph Ball, whose shadowy career took him from MI5 and the Zinoviev Letter to Conservative Research Department, and links with an antisemitic magazine that was used to smear Leslie Hore-Belisha, and remove him as War Minister.  Handling secret contacts between Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Mussolini's diplomats, Ball also set up spying operations not only against Labour but against those anti-Appeasement Tories around Winston Churchill. Ball then had a hand at the start of the Second World War in deporting "enemy aliens" -often anti-Nazi refugees.

All this may seem a long way in the past, though we do get occasional echoes. The Mail went for Ed Miliband's refugee father as "anti-British" , though he served in the Royal Navy. Unable to frighten us with Zinoviev or the Soviet Union, the Tories make do with denouncing Len McCluskey and Unite the union as "masters" of the Labour Party.  Alas, as a Unite member I regret its not true.

But nowadays, the stories can be more subtle, and plots more insidious. Lynton Crosbie, the Aussie whom the Tories hired as campaign strategist may not be a tough guy like Major Ball, but he has a reputation though he operates in different times.

This weekend the big story was supposed to be Labour MPs wanting to ditch Ed Miliband as a loser before he is even put to the test. It was the Observer's front-page lead.  Now the Observer has not got the Mail's reputation as a right-wing rag, nor its history. (Well not quite. I'll deal with the so-called "Red House" story and the police raid on the WRP school another time).

it's certainly not aimed at the same readership.

But pro-Labour blogger Tom Pride noticed something odd about this story. He asks:

Why is the Observer employing a Mail journalist to smear Ed Miliband?
by Tom Pride


The Observer has a naughty little article today claiming there are "at least" twenty shadow ministers calling for Ed Miliband to stand down.

I say naughty, because the article fails to name even one shadow minister.

And considering there are only about 24 shadow ministers in the entire shadow cabinet, "at least" 20 would have to be just about all of them. Including Ed Miliband himself.

In fact, the whole article is so ridiculous in its anti-Labour spin and propaganda, it's exactly the kind of thing you'd expect to see in the Daily Mail.

Which is not very surprising considering the journalist who wrote the Observer piece - Daniel Boffey - used to write exactly the same kind of political smear articles for the Mail on Sunday:

Miliband and his £18m holiday villa
Fury over Gordon Brown’s ‘cynical’ letter to murder victim’s local paper
Jacqui Smith's cleaner hasn't had a pay rise for five years
Labour's army of spin, G20 summit is 'choreographed' by private firm

We reveal explosive report Ed Balls refused to make public

So why is the Lib Dem Guardian/Observer employing a hack who writes anti-Labour articles for the Tory Mail?  Another example of the Lib Dem /Tory coalition in action perhaps?

:
http://tompride.wordpress.com/2014/11/09/why-is-the-observer-employing-a-mail-journalist-to-smear-ed-miliband/

Maybe where there is a whiff of smoke, there is fire, or maybe it is something decomposing. At the Labour Representation Committee's conference on Saturday, left-wing Labour MP John McDonnell
said if there was a move to get rid of Ed Miliband now it was a right-wing plot. Referring to one of the suggested replacements for Miliband, LRC political secretary Pete Firmin, a retired postman, said "If anyone thinks Alan Johnson's the answer they must have asked a bloody silly question!"  Johnson, a former Communications Workers Union general secretary who was Home Secretary
from 2009-10, ruled himself out as a leadership contender today. and warned that remov Miliband now would be political suicide for Labour.

So if there are some hardened Blairites willing to take that risk, it suggests that rather than worrying Labour might lose, they fear what might happen if it wins, and finds an aroused working class demanding the reversal of austerity cuts, and trade unionists demanding their rights. The Party is already in difficulty explaining why the railways can't come back under public ownership, a call which has widespread public support. Energy and utility companies would be next. What with creeping big business tyranny under  TTIP, to which public awakening has just begun, some MPs might fancy a quiet time staying in opposition (without actually doing any opposing) or a weakened Labour Party entering yet another coalition, where it can pretend its hands are tied.  This is the basis for a fifth column feeding stories to, and taking leadership from, the class enemy and its press,

Not to be outdone by the Observer with its anonymous quotes , the Independent has another story about people being against Miliband, of a more specific kind. It claims wealthy Jewish donors regard Miliband as "toxic" because he and other Labour MPs voted for recognising Palestine.

One prominent Jewish financial backer, a lifelong Labour supporter, said he no longer wanted to "see Mr Miliband in Downing Street or Douglas Alexander as Foreign Secretary".

A senior Labour MP warned that Mr Miliband now had a "huge if not insurmountable challenge" to maintain support from parts of the Jewish community that had both backed and helped fund Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's election campaigns.

At the same time, a former cabinet minister privately admitted that Labour's fundraising efforts were in disarray. The former minister said the party would struggle to raise anywhere near the £19m a party is entitled to spend under electoral law in the run-up to next May's poll. "We will have to pass the begging bowl round to the unions," they said. "That would send a bad signal. In return, they [the unions] would demand to call the shots on policy."

It's an ill wind that blows no good!

But are Jewish donors that important to Labour nowadays?  And are so many presumably intelligent professionals and shrewd business people really taking their line from 'Beaty' (Maureen Lipman) and Mr.Netanyahu and his embassy, when there is so much dissent within the Jewish community over Israel's stubborn and aggressive policies?  A very large number of prominent Israelis, including former intelligence chiefs, wrote to British MPs before the vote, urging them to vote FOR Palestinian recognition. Unlike the sources quoted by the Independent, these people not only know what thet are talking about and were only too willing to give their names, and positions held.

Assuming the people quoted in the Independent are genuine, but too shy to give their names, who was it it, I wonder, who put the reporter on to the story, and to them, in the first place? I suppose we could make some intelligent guesses. And they would not be Labour Party members.

Besides telling possible pro-Israel and Jewish donors what attitude they are supposed to take, rather than leaving them to think for themselves, the article has also woken the sleeping dogs of prejudice, for whom any mention of Jews and money in the same or nearby sentences sets them yapping, even if they haven't a clue what its all about.  

And between now and the general election in May I expect there'll  be all sorts of stories.  

By the way, getting back to the Tories campaign manager, here's what the Telegraph, of all papers, had to say when he was appointed 

...Lynton Crosby had concentrated on the visceral issues that have been proven to bring out the core Conservative vote. This is how he has always operated – and he should under no circumstances be underestimated. He is the genius behind the most successful Right-wing politician of the last quarter-century, Australia’s John Howard, who was elected four times between 1996 and 2004, and remains the second longest-serving Australian prime minister, after Sir Robert Menzies. Working for him, Crosby developed what opponents labelled “dog whistle” politics – campaigning techniques which sent out a covert message. John Howard’s enemies claimed that this was sometimes implicitly racist.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9637490/Cameron-should-beware-the-Australian-master-strategist.html

Mr.Farage Finds a Friend

IT's always nice to follow a character's career, having noticed them early on, and today we heard news of Raheem Kassam, a young man whose latest employer, a right-wing American outfit called the Breitbart network,  was pleased to announce that its London editor Raheem Kassam was moving on to become an adviser to the United Kingdom Independence Party(UKIP)'s leader Nigel Farage.
Extolling UKIP's recent successes, Breitbart says

"As a result, the party is moving onto an election footing, with Kassam set to lead on advising Mr Farage in developing party messaging, strategy, fundraising and publicity. The role is the first of its kind as UKIP grows and professionalises, and Breitbart London understands from senior UKIP sources that Kassam was picked specifically for his political nous and campaigning prowess.
Executive Chairman of the Breitbart News Network Stephen K Bannon said: "Raheem is a huge piece of manpower, as proven by one of the most important political movements in the world bringing him onboard. The entire company will miss his intelligence and drive."

UKIP leader Nigel Farage MEP said: "I'm delighted that Raheem has joined the People's Army of UKIP. His experience in media as well in political campaigning will be important to us on the run up to the general election in 2015."

 http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/10/23/Breitbart-London-Editor-Becomes-Senior-Aide-to-UKIPs-Nigel-Farage

Hat-tip to my friend Marko Attila Hoare for bringing this news to my attention. I must admit I'd hardly heard of Breitbart before, though its name reminds me of the crazy far-Right Norwegian gunman Breivik. Breitbart is not quite that far to the Right, but is named after a 'conservative' American called Andrew Breitbart and specialises in circulating news stories "exposing" what it calls "big government", that is anything resembling the Welfare State and taxing the rich to pay for it.

This would fit Nigel Farage's promises to outdo the Tories in cutting NHS jobs and spending, though his supporters have been denying on TV that they're against the service. (Apparently it is bad manners to remind UKIP spokespersons of anything they or their leader said from one week to the next, or before different audiences).

Breitbart has also been behind sensational stories smearing unlikely political figures by association with "terrorism", described by others as hoaxes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitbart_%28website%29

Andrew Breitbart himself died in 2012. Conspiracy theorists claim he was assassinated on orders from President Obama. We are in the world of the Tea Party, and perhaps its wilder fringes.

Breitbart's London edition was launched on February 16, 2014 headed by right-wing journalist and climate change skeptic James Delingpole as executive editor and Raheem Kassam as managing editor. 

Raheem Kassam's work came to my notice in 2009. On December 17 that year the BBC carried a report that a man called Jonathan Hoffman had been barracked during a university debate at the London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS),  by people chanting that he was "Jewish", and as such, not welcome. This referred in fact to a public event held by the SOAS Palestine Society and the British Committee for Universities in Palestine (BRICUP), with speakers from South Africa, one of whom Ronnie Kasrils is himself Jewish, as is academic Steven Rose, who also spoke.

It would have been surprising if Jonathan  Hoffman had not encountered some hostility at this meeting, since he had become notorious as an aggressive leader of the Zionist Federation, and his 'question' at the SOAS meeting was an attack on one of the speakers. But Hoffman was allowed to make his point without interruption, which is more than he allowed Holocaust survivor Hajo Meyer at a House of Commons meeting the following year. The Zionist federation chair was escorted out by police after persistent heckling of Dr.Meyer.
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/02/445742.html?c=on

Several other members of the SOAS audience were also Jewish, including Naomi Wimbourne-Idrissi, who can be heard on video of the meeting introducing herself as Jewish before she spoke, and being applauded. None of them experienced any anti-Jewish chanting, and indeed it seems Jonathan Hoffman himself did not notice it or think it worth mentioning in his blog about the meeting on December 13.

The person who supplied the "antisemitism" story was Raheem Kassam. The BBC referred to his membership of Student Rights, describing this as an "anti-racist" campaigning organisation, though its own website prefers to identify itself as against "extremism". We don't know who else was in Student Rights.


According to a website called Standpoint in which some of his ideas appeared, "Raheem Kassam manages the counter-radicalisation pressure group 'Student Rights' from within the Henry Jackson Society. That's a society dedicated to aggressively bringing American-style 'democracy' to other countries. He also airs his views on the Conservative Home site, which says: 'Raheem Kassam hails from Uxbridge, studied Politics at university and is now a freelance political campaign strategist'".

The BBC had to pull its story about the SOAS event after complaints from people who had been there. But it seems to have continued treating Raheem Kassam as a reliable source on the subject of "extremism", particularly the Islamic variety, in British universities.

Having travelled from the ostensibly liberal Henry Jackson Society to the determinedly conservative (even by American Republican standards) Breitbart outfit, will Kassam be continuing to report extremism from his post in UKIP, with its known contingent of Holocaust deniers and believers in the famous Protocols? He takes up his new job in the same week that the Board of Deputies of British Jews, not known for exagerating (when right-wing parties are concerned) had this to say, about UKIP's links in Europe:

Board Vice President Jonathan Arkush said: “The Board is gravely concerned by reports that UKIP may sit in the same parliamentary grouping as a far-right Polish MEP in a bid to save its funding.  Robert Iwaszkiewicz belongs to an extremist party whose leader has a history of Holocaust denial, racist remarks and misogynistic comments.  He belongs to the far-right Polish JKM, led by Janusz Korwin-Mikke who has reportedly called into question the right of women to have the vote.

 “Furthermore, we entirely reject UKIP’s justification that ‘All groups in the European Parliament have very odd bedfellows (and) The rules to get speaking time and funding are set by the EP, not UKIP’.  Extremists and racists should be roundly rejected, not embraced.  Even France's far right Front National rejected the JKM as being too extreme.

 “For UKIP to choose such a figure as Robert Iwaszkiewicz as a bedfellow, apparently for money, is beyond belief. Nigel Farage now has some very serious questions to answer.  He has placed in issue the credibility of UKIP."  

http://www.bod.org.uk/live/content.php?Item_ID=1302

Pony Express

WITH the Tories trumpeting their intention to slash benefits and tear up the European Convention on Human Rights, and their papers plainly convinced they're on a winner, we have to face two of the less pleasant features of British politics.

One is the readiness of too many people to forgive and forget whatever our rulers are doing to us, so long as we are persuaded it is doing things a damn sight worse to "them", the less deserving poor, and "foreigners"  (that category can be extended to include "the enemy within", whom Thatcher was preparing to denounce before the Brighton bombing). This is what some are satisfied and even proud to call "British justice".

The other is that whatever contrary facts or pictures of reality you try to raise will only exasperate those who are already, while waxing indignant, comfortable in their prejudice.  It is thus out of a sense of duty to their readers and viewers that some media endeavour to keep nurturing ignorance and are reluctant to admit anything which might disturb it.

As my fellow blogger Tom Pride reveals this week:

The Daily Express - like most of the UK press - doesn't like to be criticised. And - like most of the UK press - it doesn't like to give a right of reply to anyone, not even to respected organisations such as the British Red Cross.

That's why the newspaper is refusing to publish a joint letter from the British Red Cross, Refugee Action and the Refugee Council which is critical of it. This is the letter the Daily Express doesn’t want you to see. So please share it as widely as possible.

Dear Sir,

The stream of aggressive stories about asylum seekers appearing in this paper in recent days is of serious concern to all of us who work with and support people fleeing persecution.

Your readers would be forgiven for thinking the UK is being flooded by asylum seekers. This couldn’t be further from the truth, with asylum applications around the 23,000 mark a year the UK is home to less than 1 per cent of the world’s refugees and takes proportionately below the EU average.

To characterise the people housed in Folkestone as having a ‘lovely break’ by the sea that Brits would be envious of is hugely misleading and dangerous.

Asylum seekers are people who have often fled horrifying experiences in their home countries. Some have been raped. Some have been tortured. Many have witnessed the death of a loved one. Be assured, people who have suffered extreme trauma and whose lives are hanging in the balance will not be focusing on the sea view of temporary room.

There are no refugee visas available for people fleeing persecution. The fact that people are forced to travel clandestinely is recognised within the Refugee Convention and British Law. Entering Britain illegally can be a necessity; it is not an indication of the validity of someone’s asylum claim.

Additionally, appealing a refusal does not indicate someone cheating the system. Decisions on asylum claims can be life or death and the appeal overturn rate shows the Government frequently gets it wrong the first time.

Stirring up hostility against asylum seekers is as unwelcome as it is unsavoury in a country with a proud tradition of protecting refugees.

Maurice Wren, Chief Executive, Refugee Council
 Mike Adamson, Acting Chief Executive, British Red Cross
 Dave Garratt, Chief Executive, Refugee Action

.

Which reminds me, talking of human rights, I'm sure we'll be hearing they are safe in the Con Dem government's hands, but I wonder how the government is getting on with its Lobbying Bill, not the price of big business lobbying, but the law which besides requiring trade unions hand over lists of their members, restricts what charities like the Red Cross can spend or do on putting their views across.

That could be handy before the elections coming up.

But hang on. Besides his ownership of the Express, over whose contents he modestly disclaims control, Richard "Dirty" Desmond likes to be known for his charitable works. He started up the Health Lottery, and has even donated to the Labour Party. Perhaps he will come out against what the government is doing?  Not that I'm holding my breath.


That pony?  Pony and trap, cockney rhyming slang.




http://tompride.wordpress.com/2014/10/04/daily-express-censors-letter-from-british-red-cross-criticising-it/

https://www.publicaffairsnews.com/articles/analysis/unanswered-campaign-questions


http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2014/4/contents/enacted

http://www.private-eye.co.uk/sections.php?section_link=in_the_back&article=106& 

Who is that marching in Brick Lane? It's the Media 's favourite Muslim!

A GROUP claiming to uphold Muslim law announced its attention of marching in Brick Lane this afternoon, against the evils of alcohol. Well, I can understand some residents might be tired of the swell of boozy tourists (and worse) on their street at weekends, and I could manage a curry without the obligatory pint of lager.

They would not be the first place in Britain to declare a dry area, after all some Welsh communities did it long before the arrival of any Muslims. And though you would not think so to look at most of today's Left and labour movement, Temperance and teetotalism have been traditional among some socialists.    

Still, a quieter Brick Lane without a pub might not be so good for the restaurant trade, nor popular with the young men out on the street touting for its customers. And if residents wanted a change or even stricter licensing they are quite capable of raising the issue with their local councillors.

My suspicion that this march might not be quite what it seems was reinforced by reading the report in the East London Advertiser.

It quoted a spokesman for the "Sharia Project" called Abu Rumaysah, 30, who said: “There’s a lot of problems in the area like anti-social behaviour caused by drinking and a lot of the Muslims are involved in selling alcohol in their shops.”

He added: “The one who is not a Muslim is already going to the hell fire. The one who drinks or sells alcohol ... God can forgive if he mends his ways.”

Mr Rumaysah, who lives in Waltham Forest where the group is based, said hate preacher Anjem Choudary is one of its “mentors”.

Well fancy that! And they know all about anti-social behaviour in Waltham Forest, only it's not all fuelled by alcohol. There's more than one kind of booze.

Last week three young men were jailed for a campaign to impose their version of Sharia Law. The court heard that two Muslim converts, Jordan Horner, 19 and Ricardo McFarlane, 26, roamed the streets in the early hours of the morning and confronted members of the public, berating them for their alleged anti-Islamic behaviour. They threatened to ‘kill non believers’ and ‘shank’ - stab - them and uploaded videos to Youtube criticising non-Muslims for being inappropriately dressed.

Around 4am on January 6 of this year Horner, McFarlane and a group of men in Muslim dress approached a group of five men walking along the street, snatched cans of beer out of their hands before emptying them into the gutter. Horner, who is white and sports a ginger beard,  demanded: 'Why are you poisoning your body? It is against Islam. This is Muslim Patrol. Kill the non-believers.'

Horner, described as close to preacher Anjem Choudary, punched two of the men, but denied hitting a third. He and a 23-year-old also threatened a man and two doctors Claire Coyle and Robert Gray around the Bethnal Green Road and Great Eastern Street areas of east London on December 19 last year and January 13 this year.

At an earlier hearing the prosecutor said:
: 'The victims describe the main aggressor as being ginger with a ginger beard. And one victim said the white ginger male punched him in the jaw. It was a group attack and a religiously aggravated assault.'

The 23-year-old of Finsbury Park, north London, who has convictions for section 4 offences in April of last year, handling stolen goods and dishonesty, was remanded back into custody.


 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2500727/Pair-Islamic-converts-joined-Muslim-patrol-impose-Sharia-Law-London-confiscated-alcohol-threatened-stab-non-believers.html#ixzz2nIa7iD5o

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2519519/Muslim-Patrol-jailed-harassing-couple-holding-hands-men-drinking-bid-enforce-Sharia-law-East-London.html#ixzz2n4jS71VM



The Daily Mail had a picture of the not too bright looking nineteen year old slugger standing in a group with "hate preacher" Anjem Choudary, an ex-solicitor whom other Muslims say has few qualifications as preacher. and none whatsoever in Sharia law. But it was not the first time that paper featured Horner, or Choudary, in Waltham Forest. An article published in 2011 claimed Choudary and his chums had support from local Muslims to impose Sharia law in the London borough, and was illustrated with a photograph of "Jamaal Uddin" -alias Jordan Horner -putting up a poster announcing this was now a "Sharia law zone".

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2020382/You-entering-Sharia-law-Britain-As-Islamic-extremists-declare-Sharia-law-zone-London-suburb-worrying-social-moral-implications.html

This kind of publicity, way out of proportion to Choudary's miniscule following, was presumably what encouraged the English Defence League(EDL) to think it could march into Walthamstow in 2012 and be welcomed by the non-Muslim population grateful to be liberated from alien rule. As we know not all the Metropolitan Police could get them through, though they did get a "warm welcome"!
As for imposing Sharia law, the nearest we got was Jordan Horner, encouraged perhaps by the publicity he'd got in the Mail to believe he was acting for local Muslims.

But of course this wasn't the first time Anjem Choudary's activities and their publicity provided an excuse for the English Defence League. In 2009, after a week campaigning and thousands of leaflets he managed to muster fewer than 20 supporters to stage a protest in Luton against a parade by the Royal Anglian Regiment, returning from Afghanistan.  There are more than 20,000 Muslims in Luton, and whatever their views on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, shared by many non-Muslims, they like their neighbours were probably glad to see the soldiers back. Choudary was banned from a Luton mosque. But of course his protest, which led to scuffles with local people, was extensively covered by the media, from the BBC to the Nazi Stormfront site.  

And sure enough it was in Luton that what became the EDL was formed, supposedly as a response to Choudary's Muslim protest. Even if it did seem to be quick off the mark.

Born in Britain, Choudary went to Southampton University, where is said to have been a bit of a lad for the 'birds' and the booze, and other substances, and liked a game of cards, before he got into religion. He is often described as leading Al Muhajiroun, in succession to Omar Bakri, who was banned from Britain, although Al Muhajiroun is supposed to be banned by law for glorifying "acts of terrorism". Since then he has turned up under various names, such as Islam4UK, usually announcing provocative actions which tend to not happen, or be damp squibs, but always get lots of publicity.



I once chanced on a copy of the paper Al Muhajiroun, many years ago, and was struck by an odd phrase accusing Jews of subverting "natural aristocracy". Somehow the concept of "natural aristocracy" did not sound very Islamic. I discovered this particular phrase came not from the Koran but the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Of course that was a secret police job.

By way of a change, Choudary -and Horner -turned on another target this year, attacking Shia Muslims.
http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/wfnews/10617213.Muslim_protestors_accused_of_attacking_rival_sect_bailed/

Sure enough, Anjem Choudary announced his intention of leading today's march, but only gathered a handful of supporters. The local paper had already reported that people were not impressed:

 An East London Mosque official said the rally was a publicity stunt that would “antagonise local people and business owners”.

He said The Shariah Project is “strongly linked” to Anjem Choudary’s group Al-Muhajiroun, members of which were recently sentenced to jail for threatening people drinking alcohol in east London in so-called “Muslim Patrols”.

http://www.eastlondonadvertiser.co.uk/news/court-crime/video_fear_allah_hate_preacher_anjem_choudary_tells_shopkeepers_at_anti_alcohol_march_1_3111141

The EDL faced united opposition and failed to get into the London borough of Tower Hamlets in September, when it was promising to free the people from Islamic dominance. It's Luton-based founder Tommy Robinson, alias Stephen Yaxley Lennon, was among those arrested, and since then he has quit, because of "extremists". If the EDL or similar forces were hoping today's fiasco would improve their chances, it looks like they have a long wait coming..

But maybe until someone else comes along the reactionary media will keep on trying to boost Anjem Choudary. It's all part of the game.

And for a States' side view see:
http://www.salon.com/2011/03/02/anjem_choudary_america/

History in the Mail

THE Tory Daily Mail has worked wonders, projecting Labour leader Ed Miliband into the limelight in the week of the Tory party conference, lending him not just sympathy but respect, and raising fighting morale both within and beyond the ranks of the Labour Party. None of this was intentional of course, but though it might have served temporarily to divert attention from some of the nasty stuff the Tories are preparing, it has been a bonus to the labour movement on top of Labour's own conference and the massive TUC-backed demonstration for the NHS and against austerity which greeted the Tories on their arrival in Manchester at the weekend.

The Mail has it in for Miliband, it's said, because he dared come out for press regulation after the results of the Leveson inquiry. How dare any elected leader try to interfere with the power of billionaire press barons to  do and say what they like in their idea of "democracy"?  But that's not all.

Miliband's promise to freeze fuel prices, and Labour conference calls to reverse privatisation of the Royal Mail and railways are hardly revolutionary, but along with the emotive issue of healthcare they could help persuade working class voters that Labour is back on their side, and they also appeal to middle class people long disillusioned with privatised utilities and services. The Mail and the Daily Express both ran stories accusing Miliband of wiping millions off share prices, and the Express even carried an "Exclusive" predicting that this would cause power cuts and blackouts in 2015.

But then realising perhaps that readers might be more worried about the prices on their bills than of shares, and fear a freeze on homes this Winter rather than one on prices, the Mail must have decided to go for a "Red" scare instead and the kind of patriotism that is the last refuge of scoundrels.

How to present mild-spoken Miliband, previously depicted as an ineffectual Mr.Bean-like character, as some dangerous fiery red revolutionary inciting class war? The job was entrusted to a Mail hack called Geoffrey Levy, more often turning out little stories about the royals. He seems to have turned to a book about Ed and Dave Miliband's father Ralph, , the Marxist academic, who was brought to this country as a refugee from Nazism, and gleaning from it a remark the teenage Ralph Miliband made in his diary about nationalist Englishmen, produced an article headlined "A Man Who Hated Britain". 

To be fair the article did mention that Ralph Miliband went on to serve in the Royal Navy - he was on a destroyer during the Normandy landings. But understandably it forgot to mention that the Mail's pre-war hero Sir Oswald Mosley had meanwhile served his sentence under Defence Regulation 18B, or to acknowledge that if papers like the Daily Mail, hostile then as now to asylum seekers had  their way, people like the ungrateful Milibands would never have been allowed into this country.

 For a period in the 1930s the Mail ran articles such as that by Tory MP Sir Thomas More headed "The Blackshirts Have What Conservatives Need",(April 25, 1934) and "Hurrah for the Blackshirts!" by the newspaper's proprietor, Viscount Rothermere. (July 8,1934). The paper's enthusiasm for Mosley later cooled, whether because of his declining fortunes or their decreasing advertising revenue, But Lord Rothermere (below, left) had a more important hero figure on the Continent.

As he had written in 1933:

" I urge all British young men and women to study closely the progress of the Nazi regime in Germany. They must not be misled by the misrepresentations of its opponents. The most spiteful detracters of the Nazis are to be found in precisely the same sections of the British public and press as are most vehement in their praises of the Soviet regime in Russia. They have started a clamorous campaign of denunciation against what they call "Nazi atrocities" which, as anyone who visits Germany quickly discovers for himself, consists merely of a few isolated acts of violence such as are inevitable among a nation half as big again as ours, but which have been generalized, multiplied and exaggerated to give the impression that Nazi rule is a bloodthirsty tyranny."

Rothermere fully understood one special feature of Nazi policy. As he explained:

 "The German nation, moreover, was rapidly falling under the control of its alien elements. In the last days of the pre-Hitler regime there were 20 times as many Jewish Government officials in Germany as had existed before the war. Israelites of international attachments were insinuating themselves into key positions in the German administrative machine. Three German Ministries only had direct relations with the Press, but in each case the official responsible for conveying news and interpreting policy to the public was a Jew. It is from such abuses that Hitler has freed Germany."

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/printArticlePdf/83404381/3?print=n

Hitler responded with a letter appreciating Lord Rothermere's support, and the friendship continued as the Nazis went on to extend the benefits of their rule and methods to neighbouring countries. In a message to Hitler congratulating him on the annexation of Czachoslovakia, Rothermere urged the Fuhrer to carry on further:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1484647/When-Rothermere-urged-Hitler-to-invade-Romania.html

Some people have complained that it's wrong to judge a newspaper by bringing up "an article written eighty years ago", but apparently it is OK to attack the leader of the Labour Party on the basis of what his father confided to his diary when he was 16 years old. 


The Mail's normally outspoken editor Paul Dacre has been a bit quiet so far, or maybe he is otherwise engaged.  His father Peter Dacre performed outstanding service during the War, covering the West End for Express newspapers about the time Ralph Miliband was in the Navy. Doesn't sound like a reserved occupation, but Express owner Lord Beaverbrook was in the government.
http://politicalscrapbook.net/2013/10/did-a-tory-peer-help-daily-mail-editors-father-dodge-the-draft/ 


The present day owner of the Mail and 4th Viscount Rothermere loves Britain to the tune of a £40m neo-Palladian stately home in 220 acres of grounds in Wiltshire, where he spends time with his family, plus a flat in London’s Eaton Square, handy for the Mail's Kensington offices or his seat in the House of Lords, but he is no narrow-minded patriot, also owning a chateau in the Dordogne. This may explain how he manages to claim foreign domicile and therefore exemption from tax on income, including dividends from the Daily Mail and General Trust plc, that he keeps offshore. Just because you love this country and its venerable institutions does not mean you must contribute to their upkeep. Leave that to the mugs on PAYE.

Keeping up the French connection, the Mail has given support to a more recent fascist than the two we've named.   http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2132611/French-elections-2012-Marine-Le-Pen-responsible-vote-France.html
And to round things off, one man who has written in praise of the attack on the Milibands is the British National Party's Nick Griffin, fresh back from telling his own party conference about  his "peace mission" to Syria.
http://politicalscrapbook.net/2013/10/at-least-someone-supported-the-daily-mail-today-nick-griffin/

Oddly enough, nasty Nick takes the accusation back to Miliband's grandfather Samuel, and this is not the first time one of the Miliband brothers has been attacked this way. In 2007 one of Putin's aide's suggested then incoming Foreign Secretary David Miliband had inherited an anti-Russian gene from his Polish-born grandfather, whom he alleged belonged to an "organisation commanded by Trotsky" -presumably he meant the Red Army!  The Mail back then had no difficulty detecting a whiff of antisemitism about this targeting.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-474753/Putin-aides-attack-Milibands-family-bid-undermine-Litvinenko-saga.html

I've never met either of the Miliband brothers, though I wrote to David Miliband on behalf of the Jewish Socialists' Group complaining about the denial of visas to a Palestinian under-19 football team who had been invited to train and play a couple of friendlies in this country. I don't know what the Foreign Secretary thought about my arguments for welcoming such contacts, as he passed the matter on to some Foreign and Commonwealth Office civil servant who stuck to the technicalities of applying for and issuing visas. Well, Miliband was new to the job, and perhaps he did not want to discuss an issue that would not help his position in government.

I was introduced to the Milibands' mother, Ralph Miliband's widow Marion some years ago, oddly enough at a meeting about the Middle East, in Brussels. (Perhaps she would have made a better Foreign Secretary than her son David). She was asking me whether people still read Ralph Miliband's books. It occurred to me afterwards that contrary to Jewish mother stereotypes she had not said anything about her sons, who were already prominent in the Labour Party.

The joke used to be that Ralph Miliband had written books arguing that socialism was nothing to with parliament and the Labour Party, and his two sons had loyally set out to prove the old man right. I see Len McCluskey has used that gag already. http://www.unite4len.co.uk/len-mccluskey-ralph-miliband-lecture/

I missed the chance to meet Ralph back in 1982, when he attended a meeting in County Hall to protest the war in Lebanon, bringing with him the Belgian Jewish scholar Marcel Liebman (author of Leninism Under Lenin). 

Friends who studied under Ralph Miliband at Leeds speak of his "warmth", and "inspiration", saying he was fair and encouraging even when you disagreed with him.  More surprisingly, even a former Thatcher aide is disgusted with the Daily Mail and praises Ralph's integrity:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/02/thatcher-ally-daily-mail-ralph-miliband-lies

But then, let's face it, this is not really just a row about the Milibands, father and sons, nor the leadership of the Labour Party.  When even Tories like Cameron and Michael Hesseltine are uneasy about what the Mail has done, we may sense it has gone too far, but it has not strayed far from the direction it has always gone.  

Defending its claim that Ralph Miliband "hated Britain", the Mail now says, "... what is blindingly clear from everything he wrote throughout his life is that he had nothing but hatred for the values, traditions and institutions — including our great schools, the Church, the Army and even the Sunday papers — that made Britain the safe and free nation in which he and his family flourished."

With the Tory party holding its conference yards from where the Peterloo massacre took place, we might remember with what struggles and sacrifice such freedoms and rights as we still enjoy were really won, and note the British traditions and institutions which are not part of the Daily Mail list, such as our trade unions, our right to protest, our co-operatives and the NHS, and yes, the socialism developed here by Owen and William Morris, and the immigrants Fred Engels and Karl Marx. In other words, the Britain that the Mail hates!

Because there are two different, opposed Britains, or as another immigrant's son recognised, in a phrase recently adopted but seemingly misunderstood, Two Nations. Or two classes, to be correct.

Many people probably know that it was the Daily Mail which used the so-called Zinoviev Letter to attack Labour, referring to "instructions" given the Socialists by their supposed "Masters" in Moscow. We might also point out that the slogan "For King and Country" which ran at the masthead of the Mail for many years was originally the headline for an editorial attacking the miners and trade unions in 1926. That editorial did not appear because the Mail's printworkers back then refused to print it, and that was how they joined the General Strike.

Conditions have changed, but the sides are the same. Once again our enemies want to denounce opponents as traitors and outlaws, as they wrap their greed for profit in the flag.

Meanwhile, Marion Miliband may like to know that it's an ill wind that blows no good, thanks to whoever took this pic:

War of Shadows, and Weapons Stories

TRUTH, it's been said, is the first casualty of war. And we might add that presenting what's said as truth can bring another casualty, in credibility.

On September 5, in a posting saying that the use of sarin gas in Syria was a crime, whoever committed it, I quoted an article which said Syrians in Ghouta were accusing Saudi-backed rebels of using chemical weapons in the conflict.

"...the following article does merit attention, even if we cannot vouch for its reliability", I said.
  http://randompottins.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/syrian-tragedy-whoever-guilty.html

The article, which had appeared on a site called Mint Press News on August 29, was bylined as from two journalists, Dale Gavlak and Yahya Ababneh.
 http://www.mintpressnews.com/witnesses-of-gas-attack-say-saudis-supplied-rebels-with-chemical-weapons/168135/

Alas, though we still cannot say whether the article was true, two things have cast doubt on the author's reliability (apart from the fact that the Russians, who might have been expected to welcome the report, and according to some were behind it, appear to have put it aside by deciding to concentrate on getting the Syrian government to register and hand over control of its chemical weapons.

First, Dale Gavlak, who has worked for Associated Press, and was supposed to be one of the authors, has denied having anything to do with the story. "Yahya Ababneh is the sole reporter and author," she said.
http://www.al-bab.com/blog/2013/september/yahya-ababneh-exposed.htm#sthash.mNHaJqzt.Fgv5gmKu.dpbs

This was not quite the whole truth, apparently.  It seems Gavlak had recommended the story to Mint Press, having received it in Arabic, and maybe they credited her in the byline thinking that her name as an established freelance with AP would give it more credence.   After the story had circulated for a week or so and some journalists began questioning elements of it, Gavlak dissociated herself from it, leaving them looking bad.

And what of Yahya Ababneh, the man who got the scoop?  Well, his credibility is looking less since Guardian  writer and Comment is Free editor Brian Whitaker has posited that Ababneh and a man called Yan Barakat, a Jordanian journalist who has written for the Jerusalem Post, a right-wing Israeli paper, are one and the same.


One does not need to start building conspiracy theories or attributing allegiances to journalists who may just have an eye for a good story and use their creativity to provide what different editors need. Having more than one name and identity presumably helps their flexibility.

My fellow blogger Richard Silverstein has more to say on this.
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2013/09/23/jordanian-journalist-who-fabricated-syrian-rebel-chemical-weapons-story-likely-fabricated-jerusalem-post-story-as-well/ 

For my part, I am still not ready to throw away the story about Saudi-supplied chemical weapons as being entirely disproved or untrue.

But for the sake of my own credibility and conscience I think it only right to acknowledge that some doubts have been cast on the reliability of the author of this report. 

Truth v.Lies. From Hillsborough to Wapping

 LIVERPOOL mourns. But not for Thatcher. Banner at Saturday's match. 

THOUSANDS of people gathered at Liverpool football club's Anfield ground today to mark the 24th anniversary of the day of horror when over 1,000 went to a football match at Hillsborough, in Sheffield, and 96 did not come back.

Among those remembering the victims of the man-made disaster at Hillsborough were parents whose teenage children were killed. To their grief at the loss was added the anguish of seeing Liverpool fans vilified by the media, and specifically Rupert Murdoch's newspaper The Sun,whose front-page carried lies fed by the police, blaming the crush in the stadium pen on drunken fans, and accusing them of hampering rescue efforts and robbing the dead.

It has taken years of hard campaigning for the truth to be admitted, that it was the South Yorkshire police who forced people back into the crush, and held up ambulances from reaching the injured.Sadly, some who lost loved ones at Hillsborough have not lived to see the truth acknowledged.

Margaret Aspinall, chair of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, told the 7,000-strong crowd at Anfield that there could be no delay in the IPCC  investigation into police conduct at the 1989 game.
.
The inquiry followed the Hillsborough Independent Panel's report in September, which revealed the extent of the establishment cover-up and attempt to blame Liverpool fans for the tragedy. It is believed it could take two years to complete. Aspinall, who lost her 18-year-old son James, said: "The truth has finally been revealed and now justice must follow… We [the families] are all getting older and some have been diagnosed with incurable illness. Delays are not acceptable under any circumstances."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2013/apr/15/police-watchdog-hillsborough-inquiry-fast

At Saturday's game with Reading, whose chair had hastily switched from calling a silence for Thatcher to saying it was for the Hillsborough victims, Liverpool fans held banners not only remembering the 96, but making clear their emnity for Thatcher. People have not found it hard to see the connections between Thatcher's gratitude to the police for their action against the miners, her support for cover-up, and her assistance to Rupert Murdoch in crushing the print unions at Wapping.

Phil Scraton, proessor of Criminology at Queens University, Belfast, and primary author of the hillsborough panel's report, says:
'Instructively, the Report carries a photograph of Margaret Thatcher and Douglas Hurd at Hillsborough in animated conversation – an unrecorded briefing – with senior officers and club officials. Sir Bernard Ingham has since noted they “learnt on the day” that a “tanked-up mob” had stormed the terrace. While Mrs Thatcher’s public face displayed empathy, behind the scenes her earlier condemnation of the “enemy within” was revitalised – a “spectrum” aligning football “hooligans” with “militant” trades unionists and “terrorists within our borders”.

'Disclosed documents show how South Yorkshire Police officers, supported by their Chief Constable, Peter Wright, successfully extended a damage limitation exercise to orchestrated manipulation. Fabricating a story of drunk, ticketless, abusive fans arriving late, forcing entry and causing the fatal crush on the terraces, they sought to shift blame from the actions or inactions of senior officers.'


24-years-on. The Voices of the Victims will be Heard

Dr.John Drury, a social psychologist at Sussex University, considers the problem was that police approached the event beforehand as one of "crowd control", ignored what was actually happening, such as fans trying to help each other, and then tried to cover for themselves with lies - and kept doing so.

A professor of psychology critically examines the attitude of the police.

 But though it was the police and a Tory MP who provided the disinformation, it was the media, and especially Murdoch's Sun, who worked up the smear, and proclaimed the accusations to be "The Truth".

'The man personally responsible for mocking up the notorious “The Truth” front page was Kelvin MacKenzie. MacKenzie apologised for printing the allegations that LFC fans picked the pockets of dead fans, urinated on police trying to help stricken fans and abused the corpse of a young girl – but he then retracted his apology. He has since been unrepentant on the matter.
Here’s what The Sun’s newsroom made of the front page, recounted by Peter Chippendale and Chris Horrie in their book Stick it Up Your Punter!: The Uncut Story of the “Sun” Newspaper.

'As MacKenzie’s layout was seen by more and more people a collective shudder ran through the office, [but] MacKenzie’s dominance was so total there was nobody left in the organisation who could rein him in except Murdoch.
“Everyone seemed paralysed, ‘looking like rabbits in the headlights’, as one hack described them. The error staring them in the face was too glaring. It obviously wasn’t a silly mistake; nor was it a simple oversight.
“Nobody really had any comment on it – they just took one look and went away shaking their heads in wonder at the enormity of it. It was a ‘classic smear’.”'
 Smear that caused shudder in the news room

Even the journo who wrote up the story later claimed he was shocked by the way it was presented:
"When I saw the headline, 'The Truth,' I was aghast, because that wasn't what I'd written. I'd never used the words the truth... I still believe [I wrote it] in a balanced and fair way.
"So I said to Kelvin MacKenzie, 'You can't say that'. And he said 'Why not?' and I said, 'because we don't know that it's the truth. This is a version of 'the truth'."
Aghast at headline

But then McKenzie had history.

IT was him who during the miners' strike got hold of a photograph of Arthur Scargill raising an arm and wanted to use it on the front-page with the headline “Mine Fuhrer” .Some cheek when the Sun was notorious for right-wing, anti-immigrant propaganda and Scargill was a patron of the Anti-Nazi League.  But hey! There was a strike going on and the Sun wanted Maggie to win, so anything goes.

Except this time it didn't  Print trade union members refused to publish the paper's attack on Scargill. They even suggested that the miners' leader should be given a chance to reply to such attacks. Instead the Sun appeared with a front page saying: “Members of all The Sun production chapels refused to handle the Arthur Scargill picture and major headline on our lead story.
“The Sun has decided, reluctantly, to print the paper without either.”

Neither MacKenzie nor the big boss in America could forgive this humiliation. Nor, I imagine could Thatcher. They got their chance to smash union power and establish their way of running things in the battle which broke out at Wapping in 1986. As the Sun had done the dirty work for the police, so now it was the police who galloped to the aid of Murdoch.

MacKenzie's onetime colleague Roy Greenslade says:

"Post-Wapping (from January 1986), he became more reckless and even more mercurial.
Freed from the constraint of unions, more arrogant than before in his dealings with internal management (except for Rupert Murdoch himself, of course), he became over-confident in his own judgement. I detected a master-of-the-universe feel about him. ...

By April 1989, when the Hillsborough disaster, occurred, MacKenzie was at the zenith of his powers and his paper's grotesque coverage of the police allegations was entirely due to his waywardness." 

Geenslade on Kelvin Mackenzie.

But as the Liverpool fans with their banner in our picture rightly understand, the conduct and demeanor of characters like Mackenzie was part and parcel of the arrogant government and ruling class they served. It formed part of the link between the swing of police batons at Orgreave and the clatter of hooves at Wapping.When Thatcher's fawning admirers say she "freed" Britain from the the grip of the unions, what they are really talking about is how we were driven back from exercising any restraint on our rulers or their well-paid liars.

As for "freedom", the fear that silences journalists from standing up to the boss and criticisng a word of the lies being printed is just one example of how much freedom you can enjoy when you have not got a union to back you.

Not that the Metropolitan Police were Murdoch's only allies at Wapping. He had the help also of my old trade union, the EEPTU, which recruited strikebreakers. Not all EEPTU members went along with this disgrace, and some formed the breakaway electrical and Plumbing Industries  Union, EPIU, when the EEPTU was cast out of the TUC. The EPIU is now part of Unite the union, as ironically by a different route have arrived the EEPTU's successors. Without wanting to to dwell on the past, there is a history there to be examined.

Meanwhile, let us praise the 'ordinary' Liverpool folk whose extraordinary tragedy and determined fight for the truth and justice led them to take on the powerful and corrupt forces that dominate us. Their fight is ours, and their heroism and dignity are an example to us.