Should Corbyn remain as Labour leader?

[Jairzinho]

Just now, Pidge said:

Any chance you could summarise the really interesting bits, as I fear I won't be able to cope with 13 full minutes of being so incredibly interested.

Too interesting to summarise. 

 

You'll have to watch Vince Cable appearing on holocaust denying Al-Jazeera TV yourself.

[Section_31]

The party is utterly fucked at the moment. The idea of having a deputy leader and a leader who are independently elected is fucking barmy. It's internal structures have been eroded to the point a lot of CLPs are beset by infighting fuelled often by personal agendas. 

 

I think Corbyn thought he was somehow giving the party back to the people, but it's been given over largely to bullies in many cases and people looking to settle scores. 

 

It simply cannot win an election in its current state IMO.

[Jairzinho]

9 minutes ago, Section_31 said:

The party is utterly fucked at the moment. The idea of having a deputy leader and a leader who are independently elected is fucking barmy. It's internal structures have been eroded to the point a lot of CLPs are beset by infighting fuelled often by personal agendas. 

 

I think Corbyn thought he was somehow giving the party back to the people, but it's been given over largely to bullies in many cases and people looking to settle scores. 

 

It simply cannot win an election in its current state IMO.

That is basically the plan for the likes of Watson, Hodge etc. 

 

My biggest annoyance is the softly, softly approach from Corbyn's team. He shouldn't have allowed this shit to continue. These cunts should have been flung out of the party.

 

 

[skend04]

1 minute ago, Jairzinho said:

That is basically the plan for the likes of Watson, Hodge etc. 

 

My biggest annoyance is the softly, softly approach from Corbyn's team. He shouldn't have allowed this shit to continue. These cunts should have been flung out of the party.

 

 

Corbyn is in no shape or form a 'leader'. Great at being a protestor but once it comes to actually leading it's sorely lacking. How can anyone let this fester and grow for 3 or 4 years? He and his team really need to go, it's just error after error whilst we have an absolute shitshow on the government benches.

[Section_31]

2 hours ago, skend04 said:

Corbyn is in no shape or form a 'leader'. Great at being a protestor but once it comes to actually leading it's sorely lacking. How can anyone let this fester and grow for 3 or 4 years? He and his team really need to go, it's just error after error whilst we have an absolute shitshow on the government benches.

Apparently the Tories are pushing for an early election as soon as Spetember as they feel Corbyn is beatable.

 

Let that sink in.

 

If Corbyn stays KNOWING he can't win then it's a gross betrayal of the very people he says he cares about.

[Scooby Dudek]

Louise Ellman now on Sky

[Stickman]

I agree Corbyn isn't a leader, never has been never will be but then who takes over from him who would also ensure that you have a manifesto that is similar to the one in 2017 ?

You pick Starmer I don't think he would or go with the likes of McDonnell and the same thing about being a Marxist and terrorist sympathiser rears it's head with the same shit-bag MP's like Phillips, Streeting and Coyle undermining  the party.

[torahboy]

25 minutes ago, Scooby Dudek said:

Louise Ellman now on Sky

Old wooden teeth lying through the timber and just doing another smear job for the Zionist lobby. Awful fucking old hag who the people of Riverside mistook for a socialist. Probably asked more questions and moved more motions in Parliament about her future homeland than she has about the situation in Liverpool. Absolute cunt who needs a bath in the Mersey before being deslected by her CLP.

[aRdja]

 

The only way to prove he isn’t an antisemite is to resign apparently.

[Creator Supreme]

Pathetic from Lord Winston, honestly how can such an intelligent man talk such cobblers?

[Jairzinho]

The cat is currently in a different solar system to the bag.

[Scooby Dudek]

Yeah;

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49031917

 

Labour peers consider Corbyn no-confidence vote

 

 

[Rico1304]

Lord Winston obviously part of the cabal too. I wonder who’s next?  

[aRdja]

27 minutes ago, Scooby Dudek said:

Yeah;

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49031917

 

Labour peers consider Corbyn no-confidence vote

 

 

I genuinely feel for him. He’s a bigger man than me obviously, but this constant attack surely must take its toll.

 

Anyway, really good response this I thought.

 

 

[Stickman]

1 hour ago, viRdjil said:

 

The only way to prove he isn’t an antisemite is to resign apparently.

 

 

Maybe he should pull off his moustache to prove he's not Grouch Marx.

 

So basically resign and you're not a racist but stay and we'll keep calling you one till you do....

I think Witches got a better deal with the ducking stool

 

 

[Nelly-Szoboszlai]

Not a single one of these clowns put forward any sort of evidence when claiming that Corby is an antisemite. Just cheap slurs, with no substance. 

 

A bit like some posters on here. 

[Stickman]

Interesting article and one of the few (if any) putting a different perspective on things even if it's a few months ago 

 

Labour’s civil war on Israel has been a long time coming

 

                        

Jonathan Cook

Published date: 7 March 2019 10:48 UTC

 

Threats by a Jewish group to split from Labour is not evidence of anti-semitism, but of the party’s long indulgence of anti-Palestinian racism

 

An announcement this week by the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) that it is considering splitting from the British Labour Party could not have come at a worse moment for Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour leader is already besieged by claims that he is presiding over a party that has become "institutionally anti-semitic".

 

The threats by the JLM should be seen as part of concerted efforts to oust Corbyn from the leadership. They follow on the heels of a decision by a handful of Labour MPs last month to set up a new faction called the Independent Group. They, too, cited anti-semitism as a major reason for leaving. 

On the defensive, Corbyn was prompted to write to the JLM expressing his and the shadow cabinet’s “very strong desire for you to remain a part of our movement”. More than 100 Labour MPs, including members of the front bench, similarly pleaded with the JLM not to disaffiliate. They apologised for “toxic racism” in the party and for “letting our Jewish supporters and members down”. 

Their letter noted that the JLM is "the legitimate and long-standing representative of Jews in the Labour party" and added that the MPs recognised the importance of "calling out those who seek to make solidarity with our Jewish comrades a test of foreign policy". 

That appeared to be a swipe at Corbyn himself, who is the first leader of a British political party to prioritise Palestinian rights over the UK’s ties to an Israeli state that has been oppressing Palestinians for decades. 

Only this week the Labour leader renewed his call for Britain to halt arms sales to Israel following a UN report that said the Israeli army’s shooting of Palestinian protesters in Gaza’s Great March of Return could amount to war crimes.

Evidence ignored

Despite the media attention, all the evidence suggests that Labour does not have a problem of “institutional anti-semitism”, or even a problem of anti-semitism above the marginal racism towards Jews found in the wider British population. Figures show only 0.08 percent of Labour members have been disciplined for anti-semitism.

Also largely ignored by the British media, and Corbyn's opponents, is the fact that a growing number of Jews are publicly coming out in support for him and discounting the claims of an "endemic" anti-semitism problem. 

Some 200 prominent Jews signed a letter to the Guardian newspaper calling Corbyn "a crucial ally in the fight against bigotry and reaction. His lifetime record of campaigning for equality and human rights, including consistent support for initiatives against antisemitism, is formidable."

At the same time, a new organisation, Jewish Voice for Labour, has been established to underscore that there are progressive Jews who welcome Corbyn’s leadership. 

On the back foot

In the current hysterical climate, however, no one seems interested in the evidence or these dissenting voices. It is, therefore, hardly surprising that Corbyn and his supporters are on the back foot as they face losing from Labour an affiliate group of 2,000 members who represent a section of the UK’s Jewish community. 

But paradoxically, the loss of the JLM may be inevitable if Labour is serious about becoming a party that opposes racism in all its forms, because the JLM has proved it is incapable of meeting that simple standard. 

While the Labour Party has been dragged into an increasingly fractious debate about whether anti-Zionism – opposition to Israel as a Jewish state – equates to anti-semitism, everyone has been distracted from the elephant in the room. 

Zionism as racism

In fact, it is political Zionism, at least in the hardline form adopted by groups such as the JLM, that is racism – towards Palestinians.

Zionism, we should recall, required the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians to engineer a “Jewish state” on the ruins of Palestinians’ homeland. It fuelled Israel’s hunger for an enlarged territory that led to it occupying the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, and further dispossessing the Palestinians through illegal settlement building. 

Zionism has made it impossible for any Israeli government to offer meaningful concessions to Palestinians on statehood to create the conditions necessary for peace. It has justified policies that view "mixing between the races" – between Jews and Palestinians – as dangerous “miscegenation” and "assimilation". 

Furthermore, Zionism has kept Israel’s Palestinian citizens a segregated minority, hemmed up in their own ghettoised communities, denied rights to almost all land in Israel, and corralled into their own separate and massively inferior school system.

Efforts to oust Corbyn

All of these policies were instituted by Israel’s Labor Party, the sister organisation of the JLM in Britain. The JLM not only refuses to oppose these policies, but effectively shields Israel from criticism about them from within Britain’s Labour Party.

The JLM has remained mute on the structural violence of Israel’s occupying army, and the systematic racism – encoded in Israel’s laws – towards the fifth of its population who are Palestinian citizens. 

Meanwhile, the JLM’s mother body, the World Zionist Organization, has a division that - to this day - finances the establishment and expansion of settlements in the West Bank, in violation of international law. 

Times – and politics – move on. The JLM is a relic of a period when it was possible to claim to be anti-racist while turning a blind eye to the oppression of the Palestinian people. Social media and Palestinians armed with camera phones – not just Corbyn – have made that evasion no longer possible. 

Labour giving pride of place to groups such as the JLM or Labour Friends of Israel – to which 80 of its MPs proudly belong – is, in the current circumstances, as obscene as it would have been 40 years ago for British parties to host their own Friends of South Africa groups.

The Labour Party bureaucracy is being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the modern world by its members, who have felt liberated by Corbyn’s leadership and his history of supporting all kinds of anti-racism struggles, including the Palestinian one. 

While Britain has major and pressing issues to tackle, from dealing with its exit from Europe to imminent climate collapse, Labour’s energies have been sidetracked into a civil war about Israel, of all things.

The old guard want to be allowed to support Israel, even as it heads towards full-blown fascism, while much of the membership want to dissociate from what looks increasingly like another apartheid state – and one whose leaders are seeking to stoke conflict across a volatile region.

Redefining anti-semitism

Israel’s most ardent supporters, and Corbyn’s enemies, in Labour will play dirty to protect Israel and their own role from scrutiny, as they have been doing all along. 

The JLM led moves last year intended to divide the party by insisting that Labour redefine anti-semitism to include criticism of Israel.

Rumblings of dissatisfaction from the JLM will be cited as further evidence of the membership’s anti-semitism, because that is the most powerful weapon they have to silence criticism of Israel and deflect attention away from their role in shielding Israel from proper scrutiny within Labour.

Politics is about choices and values. Labour has for many decades sided exclusively with Israel and ignored the rights of Palestinians. 

Support for ethnic cleansing

In 1944 – four years before Israel’s creation – Labour’s annual conference recommended that the natives of Palestine, a large majority population, be ethnically cleansed to advance the goals of European Zionists colonising their land. The resolution declared: “Let the Arabs be encouraged to move out, as the Jews move in.”

That is exactly what Israel did by expelling 750,000 Palestinians, more than 80 percent of the Palestinian population, in events we now call the Nakba (Catastrophe). 

For decades after Israel’s creation, Labour Party members happily travelled to Israel to toil in agricultural communes, such as the kibbutz, that were built on stolen Palestinian land and which, to this day, refuse to allow any of the country’s 1.7 million Palestinian citizens to live in them.

In a speech in 1972, after Israel seized yet more Palestinian lands, including East Jerusalem, Labour leader Harold Wilson urged Israel to hold on to these conquered territories: “Israel’s reaction is natural and proper in refusing to accept the Palestinians as a nation.” 

Dark underbelly of racism

This is the dark, dishonourable underbelly of Labour racism, and the party’s decades-long support for colonialism in the Middle East. 

Labour created a hierarchy of racisms, in which hatred towards Jews enjoyed star billing while racism towards some other groups, most especially Palestinians, barely registered. 

Under Corbyn and a much-expanded membership, these prejudices are being challenged in public for the first time – and that is justifiably making the party an "unsafe" space for groups such as the JLM and Labour Friends of Israel, which hang on to outdated, hardline Zionist positions. 

The JLM’s claim to speak for all Jews in Labour has been challenged by anti-racist Jews like those of the Jewish Voice for Labour. Their efforts to defend Corbyn and Labour’s record have been widely ignored by the media or, encouraged by JLM, dismissed as "downplaying" anti-semitism.

History catching up

The JLM’s discomfort may be unfortunate, but it cannot be avoided. It is the price to be paid for the continuing battle by progressives to advance universal rights and defeat racism. This battle has been waged since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was published in 1948 – paradoxically, the year Israel was established by violating the core principles of that declaration.

Israel’s racism towards Palestinians has been indulged by Labour for too long. Now history is catching up with Israel, and with groups such as the JLM. 

Labour MPs have a choice. They can stand on the wrong side of history, battling the tide like some modern King Canute, or they can recognise that it is time to fully enter the modern era – and that means embracing a programme of anti-racism that encompasses everyone, including Jews and Palestinians

 

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/labours-civil-war-israel-has-been-long-time-coming

[moof]

Cook is pretty good. I’m sure someone will be along to tell me he’s a Jew hater in a few minutes. 

[moof]

26 minutes ago, Nelly-Torres said:

Not a single one of these clowns put forward any sort of evidence when claiming that Corby is an antisemite. Just cheap slurs, with no substance. 

 

A bit like some posters on here. 

Worlds most predictable neg 

[Nelly-Szoboszlai]

9 minutes ago, moof said:

Worlds most predictable neg 

Haha. At least it's consistent. 

[Spy Bee]

Interesting take on anti-semitism

 

https://truepublica.org.uk/united-kingdom/is-this-the-epicentre-of-corbyns-antisemitism-story/

 

Is This The Epicentre of Corbyn’s Antisemitism Story?

8th April 2019 / United Kingdom

By TruePublica: The British-American Project for the Successor Generation, to give it its full title, was officially founded in 1985 – “to perpetuate the close relationship between the United States and Britain,” and in the words of BAP’s official history, through “transatlantic friendships and professional contacts”. Today, It has a membership of over “1000 leaders and opinion formers”, drawn equally from both countries. It was conceived in 1982 by Nick Butler, a Labour Party insider of the old right and a research fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (known as Chatham House). It was funded by the far-right oil baron J. Howard Pew and launched by (neoliberal) US president Ronald Reagan and right-wing media baron Rupert Murdoch.

 

There is a very good reason why this organisation has a reputation for being described as the ‘Trojan Horse of America’s foreign policy in Britain’. Although it rarely features in the mainstream media and journalists are not invited to conferences or meetings, the organisation recruits Britons of liberal or left-of-centre inclinations of political talent (and connections) when they are young. As the Guardian article of 2004 said – “They are indoctrinated with propaganda about the virtues of American capitalism and of America’s role in the world and then watches them approvingly as they steer British politics in an ever more pro-Washington direction.”

The project’s greatest success was New Labour. One only has to think of a so-called liberal left-leaning political party cooking up lies such as the ‘dodgy dossier’ and using it to contribute to the killing a million innocent civilians – as it was in Iraq – such is the scale of their influence.

In the years immediately before the founding of BAP, the early 1980s days of Tony Benn and CND, the Labour party was sceptical about America. In the late 1990s under Blair and Co, it was swallowing almost anything the US did, said and asked of it. But that has now changed with the arrival of Jeremy Corbyn. Yesterday’s so-called revelations in The Times (a Murdoch asset) about anti-semitism in the Labour party, completely debunked by shadow attorney general Baroness Chakrabarti, is yet more evidence of the ever more desperate measures being deployed to save Theresa May’s government imploding neoliberal government.

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2016 – the rise of antisemitism

In June 2016, Ruth Smeeth resigned her position in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet as Parliamentary Private Secretary for the shadow Northern Ireland and Scotland teams. This was part of more than 60 coordinated resignations from Corbyn’s shadow cabinet organised by plotters with the aim of precipitating a no-confidence vote and forcing his resignation. The plot failed.

Smeeth then staged a stunt at a press conference where Corbyn was launching a report into the manufactured claims from Labour’s right wing that the party under his leadership was anti-Semitic. Smeeth stormed out of the meeting, with her office later claiming she had been reduced to tears. She made an official complaint to the party after claiming, “a Jeremy Corbyn supporter” had “used traditional anti-Semitic slurs to attack me for being part of a ‘media conspiracy.’

Smeeth claimed that under Corbyn, Labour was not a “safe space for British Jews”. She called on Corbyn to stand down as the leader of the party – “immediately and make way for someone with the backbone to confront racism and anti-Semitism in our party and in the country.”

In the meantime, the Chicago based news outlet – Electronic Infatada reported in December 2016 in an article entitled – UK Labour MP Ruth Smeeth was funded by Israel lobby:

 

“official records show that Ruth Smeeth was funded by two ultra-wealthy figures from the same pro-Israel organization she once worked for. But these relationships have been overlooked by the British press, which have extensively reported on her allegations of anti-Semitic abuse at the hands of Jeremy Corbyn supporters.”

 

Access to a system where disinformation like Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-Semitism story can be promoted, in this case, comes via the British American Project. This could partly be because Ruth Smeeth is married to Michael Smeeth, a member of the executive body of BAP.

BAP includes a number of prominent UK and US journalists and broadcasters among its membership. A UK journalist, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, told the Guardian of one BAP conference: “The amount of drink, the way you were treated, the dinners with everyone who was anyone used to come a lot. It was money that I’d never seen at any conference before. We used to joke, ‘this is obviously funded by the CIA.”

And as it turns out, joking may have been some sort of defence mechanism because it then transpired that Ruth Smeeth was, according to a Wikileaks cable – an intelligence asset of the United States.

 

“What is generally not known is that Ruth Smeeth was identified by WikiLeaks, via a US embassy diplomatic cable, as a “strictly protect” – US informant.”

 

The cable, dated April 24, 2009, was one of more than 251,287 made public by WikiLeaks and is headed “UK POLITICAL SNAPSHOT”. It notes, “Labour Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Burton [the seat she contested and lost, prior to winning another in 2015] Ruth Smeeth (strictly protect) told us April 20 that [former Labour Prime Minister Gordon] Brown had intended to announce the elections on May 12, and hold them after a very short (matter of weeks) campaign season.”

The cable ends: “(Note: This information has not been reported in the press.)”

 

Wikileaks – US cable published as “Classified – UK political Snapshot”. Ruth Smeeth is identified as a US Informant to “be protected.” CLICK HERE FOR FILE

 

The cable testifies to the intimate connections that Labour’s plotters have to the US state and its intelligence agencies. And this is more than likely just the tip of the iceberg as is usual in cases such as these. For instance, global corporations are involved in BAP.

Ruth Smeeth, is today, still right at the heart of the anti-semitism story. A quick Google search provides numerous mainstream media articles and never-ending hit pieces that roll on day after day.

 

And so to summarise, a Labour MP, with proven deep connections to right-wing Israeli organisations, married to an executive of a right-wing think tank that was funded by Murdoch and other neo-con organisations has been trying to bring down Jeremy Corbyn who has sympathy with the plight of the working class and that of the Palestinian people in particular.

 

Mehdi Hasan -Columnist at The Intercept and host of the Deconstructed podcast has stated publicly that:

 

“I’m being told by people I trust that the Sunday Times may have got parts of this Labour/antisemitism story seriously wrong, which wouldn’t surprise me. Watch this space.”

 

For balance, even Howard S Stern, the author of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism (which the Labour party has endorsed) has spoken against constant unfounded slurs against Jeremy Corbyn.

There is no doubt that in a party with over 500,000 members, the biggest in Europe, there are going to be those with views anathema to certain groups. And there is no doubt that antisemitism exists in the Labour party. But the same applies to all mainstream political parties and emerging voices on the right and left. For the Tories, it is a clear hatred of black people as Windrush demonstrates. For Tommy Robinson, it’s Muslims. For the left, it is conservatism, for the right it’s liberalism – the list goes on.

 

BAP, Blair and American Intelligence

Evidence of American infiltration of the British government emerged when it was leaked that following Tony Blair’s first election victory in 1997, the BAP released a private circular headlined, “Big Swing To BAP.” The circular stated, “No less than four British-American Project fellows and one advisory board member have been appointed to ministerial posts in the new Labour government.”

Joel Stein, a well known American journalist wrote of BAP in a Los Angeles Times article after attending one of the ‘conferences’ as a potential member – “the British-American Project is a CIA front, a tool for converting Brits into neocons.” He also wrote that BAP was funded by huge corporations such as JP Morgan, UPS and BP, and Paul Wolfowitz (the architect of the New American Century that Bush/Blair used to blow up the Middle-East) is on the advisory board.

To confirm corporate influence – John Pilger wrote in a December 2007 article published in the New Statesman, “Since 1985, BAP ‘alumni’ and ‘fellows’ have been brought together courtesy of Coca-Cola, Monsanto, Saatchi & Saatchi and Philip Morris, among other multinationals.”

Pilger went on to say that – “BAP conferences are held alternately in the US and Britain. This year it was in Newcastle, with the theme “Faith and Justice”. On the US board is Diana Negroponte, the wife of John Negroponte, Bush’s former national security chief notorious for his associations with death-squad politics in central America. He follows another leading neocon, Paul Wolfowitz, architect of the invasion of Iraq and discredited head of the World Bank.”

The British American Project, with its clear links to the American government, current links to global corporations, to finance, the nuclear industry, healthcare, government, strategic intelligence and politics uses its influence and persuasion, ethical or not, to shape the political environment of Britain. Is it a stretch to say BAP is distorting Britain’s democracy?

By the nature of the British American Project – it is obvious that Jeremy Corbyn and his vision of Britain’s is to be resisted at all costs.

And so it is that this story, the story of Corbyn’s antisemitism that sits with the same falsehoods we are all immersed in these days in Britain. They are the slogans of division. Taking back control was a lie. Leaving the EU would be the easiest thing in the world was a lie. The reasons for attacking Iraq and Libya were all founded on lies. Climate denial is a lie. Trickle-down economics is a lie. We are being immersed in a disgraceful environment of political propaganda, disinformation and downright lies cooked up by those with vested interests and promoted by the billionaire offshore owners of the press and fellow travellers such as Ruth Smeeth and contriving organisations such as BAP.

Little wonder that this very day, according to an alarming new study from the Hansard Society that more people in Britain would now favour a populist ‘strongman’ – an authoritarian to rule the country because faith in our democracy has now reached a new low never witnessed in Britain’s long history!

[Strontium]

The funniest thing about that article is how it approvingly cites Shami Chakrabarti's report even when she herself is a fellow of the very same British-American Project upon which all manner of crimes are hung.

[Bjornebye]

 

 

 

[SasaS]

1 hour ago, Spy Bee said:

Interesting take on anti-semitism

 

https://truepublica.org.uk/united-kingdom/is-this-the-epicentre-of-corbyns-antisemitism-story/

 

Is This The Epicentre of Corbyn’s Antisemitism Story?

8th April 2019 / United Kingdom

 

 

They lost me at "infatada".

[Gnasher]

The false anti semitism shit could well turn out to be vote winner for Corbyn. 

 

The downside is it does no good to those poor jewish kids who suffer real predujice on a day to day basis.