Labour Against the Witch-hunt (LAW) to Participate in ‘Unite the Left” Initiative, “not without its problems”.
The Rialto Theatre is a brand new theatre in the heart of Brighton. Set in a gloriously gothic grade II listed building; we’ll be showcasing the best of local talent in the form of cutting-edge new plays, music and comedy.
Dear *****
The steering committee of Labour Against the Witchhunt proposes to hold the next all-members’ meeting on Saturday August 28 at 6pm (for a maximum of 2 hours). We want to collectively discuss a number of important issues and our campaigning strategy for the next few months, including:
1) Bans and proscriptions and how to fight them
Including an update from ‘Defend the Left’ campaign
2) ‘Unite the Left’ initiative
We have been invited to participate in this initiative. The steering committee has decided to participate, pending the final decision by this members’ meeting. We will hear an update about this initiative, which is not without its problems
3) Our plans at Labour Party conference 2021
We are encouraging as many comrades as possible to come to Brighton in order to participate in the ‘Resist at the Rialto’ events (please register at https://www.theresistevent.com)
Reading matter for Cdes attending these meetings,
The narcissism of small differences (German: der Narzissmus der kleinen Differenzen) is the thesis that communities with adjoining territories and close relationships are especially likely to engage in feuds and mutual ridicule because of hypersensitivity to details of differentiation.
The term was coined by Sigmund Freud in 1917, based on the earlier work of British anthropologist Ernest Crawley. In language differing only slightly from current psychoanalytic terminology, Crawley declared that each individual is separated from others by a taboo of personal isolation, a narcissism of minor differences
Many of us of course welcome the differences between, roughly, the CPGB (PCC), the Monster Raving Greenstein Party, Walker and Tina Werkmann.
Racism Sans Frontières: Police officer under investigation for ‘tweets mocking 9/11 and non-Muslims’.
#
A Metropolitan Police officer praised for facing down anti-lockdown protestors is being investigated after allegedly posting a series of racist tweets.
Footage of Ruby Begum, 26, among colleagues on the front line during demonstrations last year went viral as she was hailed an ‘inspiration’.
But months before signing up to the force in 2016, Ms Begum allegedly posted on Twitter mocking the 9/11 terror attacks, according to the Mail on Sunday.
![Miss Begum also mocks the 9/11 attacks in her tweets, even as recently as 2019 when she was a full-time officer in the Met. On September 11, 2019, as the world marked the 18th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Miss Begum tweeted: 'Omg [O my God] it's 9/11 today? Jokes, I only noticed.' On the same anniversary in 2014, she tweeted: 'Must be stupid if you think I'm gonna do 2 mins silence for 9/11'](http://web.archive.org./web/20210809173802im_/https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/08/07/21/46412735-9872649-image-a-30_1628369212942.jpg)
Comment.
This is under investigation but on face-value it looks that the woman is unfit to be in the police and indeed should be classed in the same bag as Tommy Robinson.
Green Party in Crisis.
After Electoral Rise in Local Elections Green Party Faces Major Internal Crisis.
There are some genuine concerns and some strange views expressed in this piece about the latest crisis in faction-torn Green Party in England and Wales.
The Greens have also hit the news for their backing for the ‘More Borders’ Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP).
Why I resigned from the Green Party.
Andrea Carey-Fuller is a former member of the Green Party of England and Wales and Green Left.
This conversation about the divisions and toxicity within our party is long overdue as it is currently tearing the party apart. GPRC, GPEX and the CEO have a shared responsibility to ensure that the Green Party of England and Wales is adhering to UK law – both the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) as well as the Equality Act 2010 – which sets out protection for sex-based discrimination.
…
In these laws, women are defined and are supposed to be protected by their biological sex – hence the term sex-based rights. There is no discrimination against Trans Women – because they have their own protection set out in the Equality Act under the protected characteristic of gender reassignment.
Prior to Conference I alerted members to the LGBTIQA+ group claiming that the Women’s Rights motions were against Green Party values – this was untrue, and used as a propaganda tool to create yet more hatred against women’s rights whilst gathering support for the E03 Self-ID motion which impedes upon women’s rights to single-sex services, and also the E05 Recognise Trans Parents Motion which ignores Article 12 of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child which again the UK ratified in 1990.
Under our Rights and Responsibilities policy RR201 – GPEW states “Accepting interconnectedness means that individuals and groups share rights to equitable status, treatment and freedoms. The Philosophical Basis of the party (PB303/304) states that the “legitimate interests of all people are of equal value.” The Green Party rejects all forms of discrimination whether based on race, colour, sex, religion, national origin, social origin or any other prejudice. The Green Party promotes the implementation of policies which protect human rights and rejects all forms of exploitation for any purpose whatsoever.’ CEDAW is one of 9 UN Conventions that make up Universal Human Rights.
Under the Equality Act 2010 there are 9 Protected characteristics and the Green Party only has policies for 8 of them: age; disability; gender reassignment; marriage and civil partnership; sexual orientation; pregnancy and maternity; race; religion or belief (limited to Traveller’s rights), but, nothing on sex (based rights for women linked to CEDAW/or the UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against women).
We all know that women continue to be discriminated against based upon their sex – only 26% of women in the House of Lords & 34% of female MP’s (hence the 50:50 campaign to aim to have 50% of female MP’s in Parliament: https://5050parliament.co.uk/) which I was the GPEW representative for (and resigned from after the Conference motion fell); 3-4 women are killed by men in the UK every week; 1 in 4 women will experience domestic abuse in her lifetime; 1 in 5 women will experience sexual assault during her lifetime; in 2018 6,500 women and girls reported FGM; women and girls are subjected to trafficking for sexual exploitation, and there are only 5% of female CEO’s in the top 100 UK companies.
GPRC need to do something about this before more and more women (and men) feel they can no longer in all conscience stay in the party – one of the latest resignations is of Cllr Dom Armstrong who has made this statement on Facebook here:
https://www.facebook.com/Cllr-Dom-Armstrong-404663170083504/
If you have been sitting on the fence on this issue, or if you have been put under the spell of the Trans Rights Movement (which make no mistake about it is being funded by Big Pharma who have a vested interest in the drugs used as part of the Transition process) then I would urge you to listen to evidence given this week by:
…
I left the Green Party because I could not bear to be part of this unjust, punitive system a minute longer! When I didn’t agree with the continuation of suspensions and voted against most of these suspensions bar two – one related to harassment and one related to a member using sexually explicit materials at some meeting (both of these in my view are the real kinds of cases which justify suspension), a complaint was put in about me and efforts to get me removed from GPRC.
A different view:
‘I lost my candidacy because I’m trans’: English Green Party member Kathryn Bristow
I’ve been deemed a risk to the party’s reputation for being transgender,’ Bristow tells openDemocracy in an exclusive interview
Far Right Gets Involved in French anti-Health Pass and anti-Vaxx Protests.
Far Right Ligue du Midi out in July Demonstrating Against the Health Pass in Montpellier..
(Richard Roudier, président de la Ligue du Midi, en chemise blanche, suivi par son fils Olivier Roudier, en polo et short, notamment condamné pour saluts nazis | Le 24 juillet 2021 à Montpellier lors de la manifestation contre le pass sanitaire)
France braces for nationwide protests against Covid-19 health pass
Thousands of French protesters will take to the streets on Saturday for a fourth consecutive weekend to demonstrate against the government-imposed Covid-19 health pass. The pass, which is an extended version of the EU’s Covid-19 travel pass, comes into force on Monday, and is mandatory for access to public spaces such as bars and restaurants.ADVERTISING
Days after France’s top constitutional authority approved the pass, calling it a “balanced trade-off” between public health concerns and personal freedom, protests are expected Saturday across the country for a fourth weekend in a row.
The health pass limits access to inter-city trains and planes to the vaccinated, and to people who can prove they have tested negative for the virus.
Critics accuse French President Emmanuel Macron of running a health “dictatorship” by forcing people to get vaccinated against their will. They say the pass limits their movements outside home — and implicitly makes vaccinations mandatory.
But on Friday, France’s Constitutional Council ruled that the measure complied with the republic’s founding charter.
Le Monde reports on the leading role of the far-right in the movement. Philippot has his own group, Les Patriots.
Florian Philippot tente de surfer sur le mouvement anti-passe sanitaire
Some things do not change about Florian Philippot. Four years after leaving the Front National (forerunner of Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National Rally, RN), the technocrat still gives his appointments in the chic 6 th arrondissement of Paris and believes he has a national destiny. In this gloomy August, Mr. Philippot is in a good mood. The movement against the health pass has had a growing and unprecedented mobilisation for a summer.
This is something you are unlikely to come across in the English speaking media:
During the Montpellier demonstration on July 31, a few dozen far-right activists marched again, including members of the Ligue du Midi, Jeunesse Saint-Roch , a group nostalgic for royalty, and the late Jeunesses Nationalistes. Revolutionaries (JNR), dissolved in 2013 after the murder of Clément Méric by one of its members. The JNR were represented at the demonstration by Gilles Dussauge, neo-Nazi skinhead, former bodyguard of Serge Ayoub, “the man who for 30 years has been whispering in the ears of murderers” as StreetPress documents .
A man of Franco-Algerian origin:“I was accompanied by my wife and my cousin for whom it was the first demonstrations. I had heard that there were “fascists” and that they had attacked someone the week before, so we tried to avoid them by getting as close as possible to the head of the procession. It was festive, but when we got to the station, a group of several men and a woman passed us quite quickly and positioned themselves in front of us. I recognized them by their attire. One had a chain hanging down his jeans. Going up to the Comédie (Theatre) , I sang the famous Gilets Jaunes slogan “we are here!” and there, they kept staring at me insistently. They weren’t chanting any slogan, they really didn’t seem like they were there to protest.
One of them, a bearded hipster, He was really giving me hateful looks and before he got to the theatre he stared at me and started shouting “bamboulaaa” (a very racist expression) with a sneer. I took it upon myself because I didn’t want any aggression.
(L’un d’eux, un barbu hipster, me lançait vraiment des regards haineux et avant d’arriver à la Comédie, il m’a fixé et s’est mis à crier “bamboulaaa” !!!!!)
Marine Le Pen has been more discreet.
Galloway Flunks out of Court Challenge to Batley and Spen Election Result.
A Labour source said: “There continues to be an enormous gulf between Mr Galloway’s fanciful claims and reality. He’s little more than a purveyor of low-grade fertiliser.”
In 2015, Mr Galloway said he would bring a challenge over the result in Bradford West, where he lost his seat to Labour’s Naz Shah by more than 11,000 votes.
Is he downhearted? The biggest ponce in British politics, well, okay, the second biggest ponce after Nigel Farage, says,
Former MP Mr Galloway, who lost to Labour’s Kim Leadbeater in the poll on July 1, said he had “multiple grounds” to overturn the result after the outcome was announced, and his campaign manager James Giles promised “the mother of all court cases”.
Still the geezer has still this,
News from the ‘Chatham House Left’: Will they invite LAW and LIEN to their ‘Unite the Left’ Conference?
From this letter,
The Morning Star editorial description of Labour’s reintroduction of a proscribed list of left organisations as using a sledgehammer to crush “a small bag of nuts” was quite right.
The membership of the four groups picked on by the party’s rightwing NEC majority – Labour Against the Witchhunt, Labour in Exile Network, Socialist Appeal and Chris Williamson’s Resist – can probably be numbered in the hundreds, while what the right is concerned about is the hundreds of thousands who flooded into the party full of hope in Corbyn……
Comment.
Who are these 25 (!) underground organisations? Some have previously said that some are believed to be linked to sections of the left involved in UNITE the union. If this report is true, such manouvres, do not inspire confidence about the democratic intentions of such a ‘Unite the Left’ conference. Socialist Appeal are a messianic sect as can be seen here: Marxism on the march worldwide: IMT Congress 2021 “The International Marxist Tendency is advancing, confident of the future and firmly dedicated to the struggle for socialist revolution”. And anybody who imagines that Walker, Greenstein in LAW, or Tina Werkmann in LIEN, are part of the future of the left should be treated with compassion if not pity.
Even this sad case, Skwawkbox, does not report on these doings. No mention of the Unite the Left event here: TWT fringe says it will act as ‘rallying point for a new left in Labour’ ‘Festival of ideas’ has support from ‘major institutions of the UK left’.
Anti-Rootless Cosmopolitan Campaigner Paul Embery Wins Employment Tribunal Case. Triumph for the Red-Brown Front.
Embery faced criticism for tweeting on Sunday: “I fear this encapsulates the divide in our society – between a rootless, cosmopolitan, bohemian middle-class […] and a rooted, communitarian, patriotic working-class.”
A trade union official has been instructed to cease all social media activity for the moment, after he referred to “rootless cosmopolitans” in a tweet.
Fire Brigades Union official Paul Embery will be meeting with the union’s executive council to discuss his social media activity, but a date has not been confirmed
This comes after Embery faced criticism for tweeting on Sunday: “I fear this encapsulates the divide in our society – between a rootless, cosmopolitan, bohemian middle-class […] and a rooted, communitarian, patriotic working-class.”
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A spokesperson for the Fire Brigades Union said: “Racism in all its forms weakens and undermines trade unionism. The FBU has a longstanding history of standing up to and challenging racism.
“These traditions are not reflected in the recent comments made by someone who is an official of the FBU, whether this was done knowingly or not.
“We sincerely regret the use of this phrase (“rootless, cosmopolitan”) by an FBU official, and have requested that the person in question ceases all activity on social media until our executive council is able to meet to discuss.
“The FBU will deal with any potential abuse of policy in accordance with our organisational rules.”
Paul Embery: Pro-Brexit fire union official unfairly sacked, tribunal finds
A firefighter was unfairly dismissed from his union job after speaking at a pro-Brexit rally in Westminster, an employment tribunal has found.
Paul Embery was also barred from being a Fire Brigades Union (FBU) official for two years after appearing at the Leave Means Leave rally in March 2019.
Norwich Employment Tribunal ruled he was unfairly dismissed after a “witch hunt” with a pre-determined outcome.
But it found Mr Embery was not dismissed for supporting Brexit itself.
The FBU said it was disappointed with the findings and that it was assessing its options.
Mr Embery, a prominent “left-leaning” sure, red-browner as some say) political activist and writer, was employed by the London Fire Brigade but released to conduct union duties as a full-time regional official in the capital between 2008 and 2019.
Over a three-day hearing in February the union argued Mr Embery displayed gross misconduct in his role.
This was because, it claimed, he did not exempt FBU officials from criticism during his speech at the rally and went against the union’s anti-Brexit policy.
Mr Embery called for Brexit to go ahead, without a deal if necessary, during the 29 March event, which was held on the day the UK was due to leave the European Union.
The tribunal heard there had been regular disagreements between Mr Embery and FBU General Secretary Matt Wrack over the issue of Brexit. Mr Embery was warned of reprisals and at one point accused of siding with the far right.
The conflict appeared to come to a head as Mr Embery planned to attend the Leave Means Leave rally in Parliament Square.
Before the rally, the tribunal heard Mr Embery was told by FBU President Ian Murray that he should not attend as a speaker and that to do so could breach the union’s policy against Brexit, which passed in 2016.
Mr Murray was also said to have suggested it could contravene a statement prohibiting FBU officials from campaigning with political opponents during the referendum campaign.
Mr Embery believed Mr Murray was wrong, and that the policy had lapsed once the referendum was held, the tribunal was told.
The activist was introduced at the rally as an organiser of Trade Unions Against the European Union (backed by the Socialist Party and funded by the far-right millionaire Aron Banks) and used a speech to describe a battle to defend the principle of democracy, after a majority voted to leave the EU in June 2016.
Mr Embery said in the speech that the “message to the leaders of my movement is, if you want to stay relevant, then it’s about time you put yourself on the side of the people over the establishment and big business, and you better do that damn quickly”.
Other speakers at the rally included Nigel Farage, Brexit Party chairman Richard Tice and then Labour MP Kate Hoey.
The Red-Brown Front, Spiked, comments,
A particularly sorry episode in the Brexit wars has come to a just end. Paul Embery – firefighter, trade unionist, writer and good friend of spiked – has won his claim for unfair dismissal from the Fire Brigades Union.
Those who went after Embery have only proved him right. Congratulations to Paul on a hard-fought, but no doubt bittersweet, victory.
Tom Slater is deputy editor of spiked. Follow him on Twitter.
Members of the Communist Party of Britain/Morning Star have also supported Embery. Their reaction has yet to be published.
Honte à Norwich Tribunal Honte, Honte, Honte!
Far Right Fellow Traveller Douglas Murray Attacks Cde Owen Jones.
The above is a major part of a pile-in against Owen Jones on Twitter today,
Douglas Murray is associate editor of The Spectator and author of The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity, among other books.
The far right comes in from the cold
By Andrew Coates Chartist Magazine 2019.
The Christchurch Mosque massacre of March 2019 brought some of the ideas of the far right to international attention. The murderer of 51 people had published a manifesto, The Great Replacement. This echoes the ideas of the European ‘identitarian’ movement, and the French far-right writer Renaud Camus (Le grand Remplacement (2011)). Douglas Murray had written in The Strange Death of Europe (2017) that European civilisation is “committing suicide”.
The Spectator writer continued that both a lack of faith in Europe’s traditional values and the “mass movement of peoples into Europe” were at fault. Murray is far from advocating violence to halt “white genocide”. Yet he cited Camus and rejected the idea that our homelands could be “great melting pots”.
More:
Douglas Murray’s The Madness of Crowds avoids developing views on the threat of migration. The idea that “the mass movement of peoples into Europe” is happening as Europe has “lost faith in its beliefs, traditions and legitimacy.” (The Strange Death of Europe. 2017).
An authority on this, Yves Camus, and his theory of the Great Replacement, cited at length in that work, does not pop up in the present volume. It is not the suicide of a Continent that preoccupies The Madness, but ‘“a great crowd derangement”. This new Tulip Mania is ‘Identity politics’. “It atomises society into different interest groups according to sex (or gender), race, sexual preferences and more.” (Page 3) These “rights issues have moved from being a product of a system to being the foundations of a new one.” (Page 7). These “destabilising foundation of liberalism” lead to “ugliness” to “believe things that are unbelievable”. This “crowd madness” needs, like a minefield, to be “cleared”.
One could be forgiven for thinking that Murray was a contributor to Spiked, and an acolyte of Frank Furedi. Yet the former Revolutionary Communist Party guru is absent from his pages; his warnings about the post-68 left’s turn to a “bitter conflict between competing lifestyles – symbolic struggles”, the “culture wars”, are unmentioned. (4)
The Madness of Crowds. Gender, Race and Identity. Douglas Murray. Culture Wars seen from the Right.
From today’s pile on:
The view of this Blog is that Owen Jones is a good thing, and anybody attacking him – not disagreeing with him attacking him – is a class enemy.
Populism. Before and After the Pandemic. Michael Burleigh. Review.
It is traditional to begin any writing on populism by noting that it is a protean, slippery. word. The historian Michael Burleigh starts Populism by saying something a lot clearer, “By Populism I mean the identification of the people as an organic and uniquely virtuous whole, ignored or malignly divided by corrupt and oligarchic elites”. Reminding us of the difference between today and era of mass totalitarian movement these illuminating talks, taken from the Engelsberg Lectures, also speaks of the Majoritarian Right which has appropriated minority “grevance culture” – of as we would call it, right wing identity politics, the political project of GB News.
.At one time it was on some sections of the left it was the fashion to approach populism in the terms laid down by Chantal Mouffe. “We are currently witnessing in Western Europe a “populist moment” that signals the crisis of neoliberal hegemony. The central axis of the political conflict will be between right- and left-wing populism. By establishing a frontier between “the people” and “the oligarchy,” a left–populist strategy could bring together the manifold struggles against subordination, oppression and discrimination.” (For a Left Populism. 2019)
Burleigh makes little reference, although poor old Yanis Varoufakis gets a mention, to any form of left wing populist politics. That horizon has already receded into the far distance. ‘Left’ populisms have made no headway. In Spain Podemos is in alliance with the Socialist PSOE, in France La France insoumise of Jean-Luc Mélenchon remains far from the handles of power, in Britain Corbynism no longer dominates the Labour Party and is a crisis of disillusion. Post-Brexit, after the rise and fall of Donald Trump, and the enduring influence of right-wing governments that appeal to the ‘real’ national peoples in Poland and Hungary, many now speak of national populism. That influence, extending to participation in a variety of European coalition governments, Burleigh calls the “springtime of the nationalists”.
Does this make populism itself an “organic whole”? British populist ideologues, he observes, are divided between those who demand more spending, A “Wagnerian “magic spear which heals all wounds” and those animated by “the happy vision of “Singapore on Thames” which excites some hedge-fund bosses” (Page 7) Brexit was propelled by the well-heeled southern shires, Wiltshire posh persons” more than by the ‘left-behind’. The ‘left’ supporters of leaving the European Union have reaped little benefit from this alignment with the backers of national neo-liberalism and an ‘anglosphere’, but no doubt they too contributed to the diversity of the ‘people’ standing up the EU ‘elite’.
These multiple forms occur across the nations. Appeals to the ‘real’ people, sovereigntist economics and cultural preference to the nation, are only one side of the populist mixture. Conspiracy theories, now tricking down from ‘Soros’ to vaccination, have surfaced from in the depths to emerge in large, if shallow, anti-lockdown movements. The straight-forward racist-populists in France, like Renaud Camus and Eric Zemmour, can be countered by the multiple views and ressentiments of the Gilets Jaunes, at present back with protests against Health Passes and Vaccination. How far this mean for political support for the far-right, like Florian Philippot (the ‘Patriotes’) deeply involved in the marches, is hard to tell. The ‘confusionnisme’ of sections of the left towards populist ‘anti-elite’ calls has opened the way in France, in Britain, and in many other countries to ‘red-brown’ populisms, like George Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain, or the former Revolutionary Marxists of Spiked who backed the Brexit Party. There is a recent French book onto such phenomena La grande confusion. Comment l’extrême–droite gagne la bataille des idées. Philippe Corcuff. (2021).*
Populism Before and After the Pandemic is full of insights into such issues. A striking chapter compares the difficult aftermaths of empire in Britain and Russia. Burleigh speculates that today an angry and resentful post-imperial “Engerland” might act like “Rossiya” and become a perpetual nuisance for the European Union.
Burleigh observes that the populist political style has been ill-adapted to the pandemic, “something one cannot attach a sinister face to”. Fringe anti-vaxxers apart that seems a fair judgement. How will the populists fare after the pandemic? Optimists believe this is the moment for ‘liberals’ to fight back, one would hope that it’s the democratic left that could lead the charge, on economic and social justice to begin with. He is pessimistic in the sense that some forms of populist demagogy work well in channelling people’s fears but claims that libertarian anti-lockdown protesters will never rub well with Q Anon and the satanic conspirationnistes .Hedging his bets the author suggests that If recession kicks in populism may be back. For the moment the “experts and technocrats” have proved their worth in making sense of the pandemic threat.
It is good to be reminded of that, and encouraging to see a work of such clarity and observation on tangled issues – all in 98 pages
######
*
Dans « La Grande Confusion », Philippe Corcuff dresse le panorama de l’extrême confusion idéologique actuelle
Le sociologue et politiste signe un méticuleux travail d’analyse dans lequel il dissèque les manquements, les incohérences et les errements de la gauche, dont la droite et plus encore l’extrême droite font leur miel.
The book is long..670 pages..
Morning Star Offers Advice to the Die Linke over the ‘Ban’ on the German Communist Party.
DKP: Peace with Russia!
Communists win in Karlsruhe
The legal attempts to exclude the German Communist Party from the Bundestag Elections have failed — but no thanks to some parts of Die Linke, writes KEITH BARLOW
Monday 2nd Aug 2021
Later than top international news sites, like Tendance Coatesy, the Morning Star carries this story.
IN A shock decision on July 8, without any warning, Germany’s Federal Election Commission (FEC) ruled that the German Communist Party (DKP) was to lose its status as a political party.
No mention either of the same loss for the highly regarded Anarchist Pogo Party.
This would have meant it not being eligible to contest the coming elections for the Bundestag, the federal parliament, on September 26. A number of other parties were also affected for various reasons.
In the FEC, parties with seats in the Bundestag are represented. Normally, decisions of the president of the FEC regarding the admittance of parties seeking to contest Bundestag and also European parliamentary elections are accepted.
The basis for this is whether the legal criteria have been fulfilled or not. In the event of rejection, there is right of appeal to Federal Constitutional Court located in the city of Karlsruhe. There were just four days for appeals to be lodged.
Political parties in Germany are bound by law to submit their annual reports to the president of the German Bundestag within six years.
In the case of the DKP, it was claimed that in recent years it had often been late in the submission of its annual reports — the president of the FEC, Georg Thiel, defended this ruling by stating that “deadlines are deadlines.”
The DKP rejected Thiel’s claims. Its report for 2017 had already been submitted and it was aiming to submit its report for 2018 by the end of July.
[More detail from Der Spiegel DKP wird nicht zur Wahl zugelassen – und vermutet politische Motive. “The reason given for the decision was that the Communist Party, which was founded in 1968, had always delayed the required financial statements over the past six years and had not submitted them within the legally prescribed deadline. The reports would not have met the minimum legal requirements.
Deadlines are deadlines,” said Federal Returning Officer Georg Thiel. The DKP and other parties would have been made aware of the shortcomings in their reports long beforehand. Other parties quickly submitted reports.]
The word on the street is that the DKP was as useless in getting its registration in as another Morning Star favourite, the Whippets of the Northern Independence Party (NIP)
In its verdict on July 27, Karlsruhe stated that the ruling of the FEC regarding the DKP “not adequate” for it to lose its status as a political party.
Put another way, the election commission’s ruling was seen to be political and Karlsruhe wanted no part in it. The appeals of other small parties to Karlsruhe were unsuccessful, but the DKP can now proceed with its election campaign.
Communists, especially in Germany, are only too aware of the possible implications if this ruling had been allowed to stand.
Not only would there have been the loss the DKP’s right to contest the coming elections, it would have opened the way for the minister of the interior to ban it by the stroke of a pen.
(Sure…)
Another implication of the loss of party status is financial: the loss of public funding (through topping up subscriptions and donations), with members and donors no longer being able to include any payments on their tax returns. This works to the disadvantage of smaller parties, especially those on the left.
In the FEC, only the representative of the Greens opposed this ruling against the DKP. All the other party representatives there supported it. To the dismay of many of its members and supporters, this includes Germany’s Die Linke (Left party).
A number of the Die Linke’s MPs, groups within the party, as well as well-known people, both inside and outside the party, came out in solidarity with the DKP.
Also significant was the widespread international solidarity with the DKP.
Most notable are the words of the chairman of the Die Linke’s council of elders, the last-but-one prime minister of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), Hans Modrow.
In an edited statement on the coming Bundestag elections in the Morning Star’s sister daily newspaper in Germany, Junge Welt, on July 20, Modrow expressed fears of attacks on democratic rights and a hard hand against the left opposition if the DKP could “be silenced through legal tricks.”
He reminded us that in the 1950s Federal Republic of Germany banned the KPD and previously the Free German Youth organisation because there were active anti-fascists and war opponents campaigning against rearmament and the rehabilitation of Nazis.
The case concerning the DKP is of a political and in no way of a formal technical matter and it is more than just one of simply being allowed to contest the Bundestag elections, he said, and therefore “the DKP needs right now our solidarity and support in its appeal to the Federal Constitutional Court … An exclusion which could lead to an outright ban must be prevented.”
With Modrow’s words, the handling of this matter by Die Linke leaders lies in ruins.
Formed in 2007, the Die Linke had clearly forgotten that following the loss of the GDR over 30 years ago, its predecessor, the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), was subject to vicious attacks coupled with calls being made for it to be banned. Solidarity with the PDS was crucial in preventing this. Solidarity came also from the DKP.
Over the years prominent Die Linke members, to put it mildly, have taken to not wanting anything to do with the DKP and of simply seeking to ignore it.
The result of all this became evident in the way the party’s representative voted in the FEC on July 8.
Now follows the advice from the Morning Star, Communist Party of Britain, 1,110 members, no MPs, to Die Linke 60, 350 members, 69 MPs in the Bundestag.
In effect, it put itself in a position of being discredited whichever way Karlsruhe was to decide. This has not helped the Die Linke election campaign in any way at all. Some serious thinking is needed.
There have always been differences among left parties. As far as the DKP is concerned, there is one thing the Die Linke often forgets: its enemies lie to the right of it, not on the left.
The attack on the DKP was an attack against the entire German left. Solidarity was crucial in defeating this.
More.
DKP darf doch bei Bundestagswahl antreten
Der Spiegel.
If several account statement were not submitted on time, that did not justify the loss of the status as a party, the court said. An “overall appraisal” of the DKP suggests that it is “able to seriously participate in the expression of the political will of the people at the federal or state level”.
The party had not cancelled their election campaign anyway, and the order for the election posters was not dropped either. Köbele sees the decision of the Federal Returning Officer as a welcome sign. “I wouldn’t have thought that the class opponent would take us so seriously. That gives us courage, ”he said. He had previously suspected political motives behind the non-admission. For the time being, however, Köbele does not expect a large increase in votes.
In 2017 the DKP had 7517 first and 11,558 second preference votes nationwide.
Chris Williamson Finds His Court Historian.
Recommended by (Stalin ate my Brain) Sayle, Ken Loach, and Machover.
Book by “LeeGarratt@dayofthemutant“.
The author is a prolific scribbler. Here are some of his better known works:
For reference:
WHAT’S WRONG WITH CHRIS WILLIAMSON?
Here are just a few of the things. I’m starting with some that have nothing to do with antisemitism. And the antisemitism issues I’m including having nothing to do with Israel-Palestine, so please don’t tell me that all Williamson has done is criticise Israel. Some of this was in my older posts about him (here and here). A lot of the material is via Twitter, because Williamson is a prolific tweeter, but Williamson blocked me on Twitter on Holocaust Memorial Day this year, so I also drew for the antisemitism section on Twitter threads by Marlon Solomon and Barny Skinner and Daniel Sugarman’s article.
RED TORY
I want to start with Williamson’s politics. The #IStandWithChrisWilliamson online army see him as being under attack because he represents the left of the party. How does that claim stand up?
1. The time Williamson entered into coalition government with the Tories and drove through privatisation
Chris Williamson entered politics in his thirties via local politics in Derby, eventually becoming leader of Derby council. How did that go? He formed an alliance with the Conservatives, demolished council flats to make way for a 5* hotel, and supported PFI initiatives for housing, which he later said did not deliver value for money.
3. The time Williamson promoted a Syrian war crimes denier
For me, one of the most unforgivable things Williamson has done, last summer, was promote Vanessa Beeley, a war crimes denier and fake news merchant. Here is an extract from Oz Katerji in the New Statesman on this incident:
Williamson, who was attending the Beautiful Days festival, tweeted of his “privilege” in meeting Vanessa Beeley, a blogger who described meeting the Syrian regime’s war criminal president Bashar al Assad as her “proudest moment” and has waged a relentless campaign of lies and distortion to promote the Assad regime abroad… Responding in kind to Williamson’s endorsement, Beeley said in a Facebook post “Hats off to Chris Williamson, Labour MP – a genuine human being.”…
Williamson’s tweet provoked immediate condemnation, drawing a strong response from James O’Brien, who called Williamson a “disgrace” and referred to Beeley as “Assad’s very own Alex Jones.” The Washington Post’s Middle East correspondent, Louisa Loveluck, responded to Williamson’s endorsement of Beeley’s “reporting” with: “Beeley has justified the use of incendiary weapons against civilians, recycled and championed debunked conspiracy theories, and described a meeting with Assad as her proudest moment. This is cheerleading, not reporting.”
Noting that Beeley has viciously slandered the late Jo Cox (Beeley “has shamelessly accused her of being a “warmongering Blairite” and “al-Qaeda advocate” endorsing a policy of “wholesale devastation” on Syria.) Oz argues that the Labour Party has a choice between being the party of Jo Cox or the party of Chris Williamson.
Hamid Nouri to be tried in Sweden for his role in the mass execution of political prisoners in 1980s Iran.
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The suspect was not named but has been widely identified as Hamid Nouri, 60.
In 1988, Iran was at war with Iraq. Iran’s supreme leader ordered the mass execution of prisoners linked to an armed opposition group allied to Iraq.
The suspect was working in a prison near the Iranian capital Tehran, prosecutors say. His lawyer told news agencies he denied the charges.
Human rights groups have long campaigned for justice over the executions across Iran, in which an estimated 5,000 people were killed.
Today Libération publishes a major investigation including an analysis of the present regime leader’s past.
Iran : la longue traque de Hamid Noury, bourreau des massacres de 1988.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raissi caught up in 1988 massacres
More background: 1988 executions of Iranian political prisoners
The 1988 executions of Iranian political prisoners was a series of state-sponsored execution of political prisoners across Iran, starting on 19 July 1988 and lasting for approximately five months.[1][2][3][4][5][6] The majority of those killed were supporters of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, although supporters of other leftist factions, including the Fedaian and the Tudeh Party of Iran (Communist Party), were executed as well.[7][8]
According to Amnesty International, “thousands of political dissidents were systematically subjected to enforced disappearance in Iranian detention facilities across the country and extrajudicially executed pursuant to an order issued by the Supreme Leader of Iran and implemented across prisons in the country. Many of those killed during this time were subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment in the process.”[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_executions_of_Iranian_political_prisoners
Dealing with leftists
After 27 August, the commission turned its attention to the leftist prisoners, such as members of the Tudeh, Majority Fedayi, Minority Fedayi, other Fedayi, Kumaleh, Rah-e Kargar, Peykar. These were also assured they were in no danger and asked:[citation needed]
“Are you a Muslim?””Do you believe in Allah?””Is the Holy Qur’an the Word of Allah?”
“Do you believe in Heaven and Hell?”
“Do you accept the Holy Muhammad to be the Seal of the Prophets?””Will you publicly recant historical materialism?”
“Will you denounce your former beliefs before the cameras?”
“Do you fast during Ramadan?”
“Do you pray and read the Holy Qur’an?”
“Would you rather share a cell with a Muslim or a non-Muslim?”
“Will you sign an affidavit that you believe in Allah, the Prophet, the Holy Qur’an, and the Resurrection?”
“When you were growing up, did your father pray, fast, and read the Holy Qur’an?”
Prisoners were told that authorities were asking them these questions because they planned to separate practicing Muslims from non-practicing ones. However, the real reason was to determine whether the prisoners qualified as apostates from Islam, in which case they would join the moharebs in the gallows.
Iran: Protests Against the Islamist Dictatorship.
Growing Protests in Iran Renew Calls for Regime Change.
It has been sixteen days since the protests began in Khuzestan province. These protests, which initially started due to the water shortages, have turned political, continued, spread to other cities. People have been targeting the regime and its Supreme Leader in their slogans. The regime has increased its oppressive measures. Over 12 people have been killed in Khuzestan in the past few days, and to freely oppress people, the regime has imposed an internet blackout in Khuzestan.
Yet, the regime has so far failed in controlling society by taking these measures.
On Friday, July 30, dozens of mothers of the victims of the November 2019 protests in Tehran started a march and protests in solidarity with the people of Khuzestan.
While holding the pictures of their slain loved ones, they marched and chanted anti-regime slogans and encouraged people to rise against the mullahs’ regime.
In this regard, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the opposition’s president-elect, said:
“Hail to the brave mothers of the November 2019 martyrs who have risen to seek justice for their children and the children of Khuzestan. Your cries are the cries of Iran, seeking justice for 42 years of slaughter, executions, torture, plunder, poverty.”
Summary Report from the Second Week of Khuzestan Protests; Protests in 41 Cities.
In the two weeks since their start on the evening of July 15, public rallies in cities throughout Khuzestan over water cuts and provincial officials’ resource mismanagement have spread to at least 41 cities.
According to HRANA, the news agency of Human Rights Activists, dozens have been killed and injured during the protests, and hundreds were detained. HRANA has identified a number of victims along with 171 detained citizens in Khuzestan and other parts of Iran. The following report also reveals some of the human rights violators and addresses issues such as internet cuts, the security atmosphere, and reactions since the protests started.
Arvan cloud; a private company or a partner in massacre.
Islamic republic regime has been violating Iranian citizens’ right to the internet access by imposing censorship, blocking and Internet content filtering. In November 2019, the government shut down the Internet and so many people were shot while posing no threat whatsoever shows the sheer ruthlessness of the security forces. At least 1500 people, including 400 women and 17 teenagers, were killed in the uprising and that “many were shot directly in the head. Since November 2019 nationwide protests, the regime has being practice the Internet blackout as a strategy to suppress peaceful protests and to massacre the civilians. Currently, Iranian people in Khuzestan and other provinces are protesting over water shortage and difficulties in accessing the drinkable water. Again, the government has shut down the Internet in Khuzestan and many people have been killed.
The facilities of Internet blackout are provided by a private company called Arvan cloud. This company is established in Germany by Softqloud GmbH. Also, Arvan cloud has the ongoing project on Iranian national Internet network which will isolate the Iranian’s Internet access from the world wide web. The CEO of Arvan cloud believes that they are only a private company which is providing the blackout services to the government. We believe this company contributes to the Internet blackout policy and massacre of demonstrators in Iran. This social movement urges the United Nations and human rights organizations to take an action against the brutal Iran’s regime and also German parliament (Bundestag) to control Softqloud GmbH and its services to Iran’s regime which have been used against human rights and freedom speech.
Piers Corbyn Goes Arse Over Tip: “Took £10,000 he thought came from AstraZeneca to stop criticising their vaccine.”
Piers Corbyn tricked into ‘accepting’ £10,000 on condition he stops criticising AstraZeneca vaccine
Piers Corbyn was tricked into ‘accepting’ a fake £10,000 donation on the condition that he stops criticising the AstraZeneca vaccine, pranksters have claimed.
YouTubers Josh Pieters and Archie Manners pranked the anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist by posing as investors in the vaccine who wished to support his cause on the condition that he layed off AZ and focussed on other vaccines instead.
In a video they explained that they contacted Corbyn to arrange a meeting. To film and prank Corbyn legally, they said, they had to actually invest in the company so bought one share for £100.
The pranksters then arranged to meet him and took out £10,000 in cash, which the showed Corbyn then switched with Monopoly money when he was distracted.
Upon meeting Corbyn, Pieters said he was an investor in the jab. He said:“It’s not from a personal standpoint it’s more of a case of, it’s good business.”
…
Pieters concluded: “Whether people choose to get a vaccine or not is entirely their business. But listening to people who spread misinformation about vaccines, particularly when they are willing to accepting £10,000 made from vaccines is a different matter altogether.”
Too right.
Far Right, Gilets Jaunes and Confusionnistes, Demonstrate in France Against anti-Virus Pass.
Travelling to the mass anti-Health Pass, anti-vaxx demos in France today (he is said to be with royalists and Gilets Jaunes). “Freedom is a Gift of God.” ©Marie Docher.
Passe sanitaire contre le Covid-19 : troisième samedi consécutif de manifestations.
Le Monde.
In Paris, four events took place One of them, which brought together mainly “Gilets Jaunes” supporters ,began at the metro Villiers (in the 17 th arrondissement) in late morning. Before the procession began, one of their leading figures of this citizens’ movement, Jérôme Rodrigues, attacked “members of the government, members of the media who are there to sell you the effectiveness of a vaccine without having real proof it works” , saying he felt “ demonised ” .
Another event, which was called by Florian Philippot, former number two of the Front National (now the Rassemblement National ) at present president of the ‘Patriots’ party, started in the early afternoon near the Montparnasse train station (6 th arrondissement) . Featuring many red, blue and white (French) flags or a ripped European flag protesters without a mask headed to the Ministry of Health (7 th arrondissement).
Fascist Florian Philippot Leading one of the Big Anti-Health Pass Demos in France today.
French police clash with anti-virus pass protesters in Paris
Some 3,000 security forces deployed around the French capital for a third weekend of protests against the pass that will be needed to enter restaurants and other places. Police took up posts along Paris’ Champs-Elysees to guard against an invasion of the famed avenue by violent demonstrators.
Anti-pass marches were being held in scattered cities across France, and four separate protests were held in Paris, the third weekend of anti-health pass protests.
Tensions flared in front of the famed Moulin Rouge nightclub in northern Paris during what appeared to be the largest demonstration. Lines of police faced down protesters in up-close confrontations during the march. Police used their fists on several occasions.
As marchers headed eastward, police fired tear gas into the crowds, plumes of smoke filling the sky. A male protester was seen in the chaos with a bleeding head.
Another less tension-filled march was led by the former top lieutenant of far-right leader Marine Le Pen who left to form his own small anti-EU party. But Florian Philippot’s new cause, against the virus pass, seems far more popular. His contingent of hundreds marched Saturday to the Health Ministry.
Liberation carries this analysis:
If Philippot managed to take the lead in a protest initiated by conspiracy circles, left movements are also mobilising.
Left movements are also mobilising to protest against what they consider to be a “society of generalized control” or “the establishment of a totalitarian state”. Marked by the “failure” of the gilets jaunes, they refuse to abandon the protests to the far right and to the conspiracists..
As in Mélenchon’s call to respect and understand the marches and protests.
George Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain Exposed in the Weekly Worker: “most trusted political lieutenants…. ultra-Stalinists who believe that every accused old Bolshevik in the Moscow trials of the 1930s was guilty as charged.”
CPGB-ML, The Cades of Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain Exposed in the Weekly Worker.
All spotters are aware of the world of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Left). This cult, ruled by a family dynasty, are M-L ultras who defend “Comrade Kim Jong Il’s lifelong contribution to the Korean revolution“, “The struggle waged by Stalin and the Bolsheviks” and the Chinese Communist Party, Greetings to the Communist Party of China on its 100th anniversary They called on their ‘cadres’ to vote for the Brexit Party in the 2019 European elections.
Recently they have got involved in setting up George Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain, which present itself as a kind of Communist/Socialist Blue Labour, patriotic, right wing values, married to the remnants of the anti-imperialism of fools, economic nationalism or sovereigntist socialist economics. In short. red-brown confusionniste politics.
Yet despite information (some of it reproduced on this Blog) on the CPGB (M-L), on, to start with, the Brar royal family, and their long love affair with Galloway even the most hard -bitten gumshoes have failed to get the latest inside dope on the Workers Party of Britain. How does it operate? How does this group of cadres run things? It is unlikely that anybody from our part of the left would get to find out easily, but some quarters seem to be trusted enough to get information. Yet in this case a lengthy letter, a hands on personal account of the ne’er-do-wells and their operations is now in the public domain.
Hats off to the Weekly Worker for publishing the low-down on this.
(Extracts).
Blocked by George
Given the recent extensive coverage in your paper of George Galloway and the Workers Party of Britain in relation to the Batley and Spen by-election and beyond, I thought your readers might be interested in my experience of the WPB, its leader, and his activist supporters in the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist).
In the autumn of 2019, I had been a member of the Communist Party of Britain for two years, was the branch secretary for the Merseyside branch and a member of the CPB’s Popular Sovereignty Commission (PopSovCom). In this latter capacity, I was involved with the, rather belated attempt to establish a new left Brexit grouping, to be called ‘Leave, Fight, Transform’. I was tasked with the leading role in setting up a public launch meeting in Liverpool.
I already had speakers in place for a meeting to take place at a well known local venue for socialist meetings. A representative from Counterfire would speak, a sympathetic leading figure in Young Labour, plus perhaps myself, and with one of our leading local trade union comrades to chair. This was all well and good, but I decided to be a little more bold and imaginative, and took it upon myself to contact George Galloway online, figuring that his presence would likely double, at least, the possible attendance. To my surprise and delight, in a late night messaging exchange, George agreed to appear.
The next day, also to my surprise, but much less to my delight, leading comrades on the CPB PopSovCom rejected Galloway as a speaker, on the grounds that his presence would upset many of our ‘left allies’. I relayed this news to George the next day, and he expressed disappointment. Looking back, perhaps he saw such a meeting as a route back into the left mainstream? Anyway, during our latest messaging exchange I remarked, “We need a new party, George.” To which he replied simply, “Yep.”
At this stage, before the 2019 election had been announced, I had no idea that such a party was on George’s radar, if indeed it was. I should also make it clear that I had long shared many of Galloway’s socially conservative views, and long believed that a mass alternative to Labour could only be established by a party that met the British working class where it is ideologically: that is, economically leftist, generally pro-Brexit and patriotic, supportive of the family, law and order – and uneasy, to say the least, about the increasing extremity and domination of the left by the proponents of identity politics.
I was well aware of the CPGB(M-L), and had met their forerunners back in my Socialist Labour Party days in the 1990s. I well remember a day school at Bolton Socialist Club, where certainly Ella Rule, and possibly Joti Brar and others, were present. It was after this meeting that most of those attending from Manchester decided that if the SLP was to be taken in the direction that the likes of Harpal Brar and Royston Bull wished to take it, it was time to exit. Those of us who soon resigned from the SLP included a member who would reappear in my life as a member of the executive committee of the CPB 20 years later.
By the time of my contact with George over the proposed Liverpool meeting, I was also one of a sizable number of CPB members who believed that a ‘Vote Labour everywhere’ line was indefensible, now that Labour had adopted a ‘second referendum’ policy on Brexit. Most of this oppositional group chose to bide their time and stay within the CPB, but I was already looking for alternatives. This included attending a few of the CPGB(M-L)’s ‘study sessions’ in Liverpool – an area where they had no real presence. I found these sessions to be dull in the extreme. I was not inspired to join them, though I remained on good terms, it seemed, with the members I met, including Joti.
When the general election was called and Galloway announced that he would stand in West Bromwich, initially against Tom Watson, with open CPGB(M-L) support, I was excited, and did the honourable thing in resigning from the CPB in order to campaign for Galloway.
All told, I made the relatively lengthy trip by train from Liverpool to West Brom to campaign with George and co on four occasions. It was an enjoyable experience, and the derisory vote that Galloway ultimately received came as a huge disappointment to me.
However, I was surprised to find that on the Saturday of my last visit, just after I had caught my train back to Liverpool, the Workers Party of Britain had been formally founded at a meeting to which neither I, an active campaigner for George on the ground, nor another Liverpool supporter, a woman who had taken on the responsibility for setting up the stall every single day, had been invited. This particular dedicated female comrade left in disgust immediately, before the general election result had even been announced.
As more news of this semi-secret meeting was leaked, I became increasingly dismayed. It seems that this meeting was to be regarded as a full congress, with no new one under the newly established party rules until December 2023. This ‘congress’ also ‘elected’ a leader (George, naturally and rightly), a deputy leader (Joti) and a 40-strong members’ council. Even worse was the fact that this council, which couldn’t be changed by the membership for another four years, reserved the right to coopt new members or to dismiss old members on whatever grounds it chose. It also got to decide which of the party rank and file would be classed as ‘active’ members and thus eligible for full voting rights. Unsurprisingly, this nascent party machine was, apart from Galloway, entirely dominated by members of the CPGB(M-L).
(Note, this is the typical democratic centralist structure of a Stalinist sect.)
Despite my strong misgivings about the way the WPB had been established and the lack of a real democratic structure, I still believed it was a project worth pursuing. I thus joined on day one. I spoke from the floor at the inaugural national rally in Birmingham in January 2020 and again at the Liverpool rally in March.
I actually quit in disgust a month or so later when it seemed that I was the only member during a Zoom meeting who was not called upon to speak/ask a question (which would have been on whether or not our proposed Independent Britain should retain an independent nuclear deterrent). However, I quickly decided that my decision to leave had been rather hasty. I had already formed the opinion that ultimately Galloway and his CPGB(M-L) backers would split, and still hoped to be inside the WPB when that split happened. With this in mind, I quickly attempted to re-establish my monthly direct debit with the party.
I found that my membership was blocked. The main reason given in an email was the informal criticisms over the lack of democratic structures and transparency that I had raised during my brief period of membership.
When, in the run up to the Batley and Spen by-election, I made generally favourable pro-WPB statements online, established friendly relations with some of their new recruits, and re-established contact with some members who, like me, had been involved from the beginning. I then tried again to reinstate my direct debit and was again blocked, without explanation. Two party members volunteered to speak at the members council on my behalf, but, as I heard nothing, I decided just before the election to take a chance and contact George directly online, reminding him of my early involvement, and expressing regret that I was not able to be a part of his current election campaign. His reaction was to block me.
Essentially, that was my involvement with the WPB over. I have never had much respect for the CPGB(M-L), but I did greatly respect George Galloway. No longer. His refusal to give full backing for the victimised Batley grammar school teacher tells us all we need to know about his principles. He was clearly quite happy to sacrifice the supposedly pro-free speech, pro-worker, anti-woke credentials of his party when he thought it might cost him Muslim votes.
…
How will it all end? Eventually, George and the CPGB(M-L) will fall out, as recent contributors to your paper have pointed out. There is no doubt that the WPB is building as a party, but growth within a larger organisation always poses problems for a sect like the CPGB(M-L). Put simply, they will win some raw recruits for their particular brand of simplified Stalinism, probably enough to call the whole venture a success once it is over, but it will not be enough to maintain control of the WPB, should it really begin to take off as a viable party.
…
How will George react when and if his most trusted political lieutenants are exposed as ultra-Stalinists who believe that every accused old Bolshevik in the Moscow trials of the 1930s was guilty as charged?
Despite his oft-quoted remark that “If you don’t run, they can’t chase you”, I believe that he will begin to run, faster and faster, to put as much distance between himself and his current leading comrades as possible.
Tony Green
Liverpool
Comment.
Tony Green’s experience confirms what most of us had intuitively guessed.
Welcome to the (very large) Blocked by Galloway! society some time ago I was blocked, despite never having contacted him, or commented on his Tweets…. The only reason I know is that I was once looking for his latest mad tweets…
Socialist Party on Labour Proscriptions: It’s all about Militant.
Lenny Shail, Socialist Party national committee. 28th of July.
The news that Labour’s national executive committee (NEC) has proscribed, aka expelled, a number of left-leaning groups that have clung desperately onto the Labour Party comes as little surprise.
The SP cannot bring itself to mention the words Socialist Appeal (whose split from the Socialist Party’s forerunner, the Militant took place in 1992, nor the names LAW, nor LIEN, nor even there recent new best friend Chris Williamson’s Resist.
Here is SA’s view on their former comrades, the SP, led by Peter Taaffe, expressed only a couple of years back.
The split was caused by the Militant tendency’s majority adoption of the Open Turn, Grant’s continued support for the tactic of entryism within the Labour Party and what Grant and Woods claimed was the bureaucratic centralist degeneration of Militant’s internal regime
Socialist Appeal have commented on why the division took place,
The CWI split of 1991-1992: setting the record straight August 2019.
The recent convulsive faction fight and split in the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI), driven by Peter Taaffe, the General Secretary of SPEW, the Socialist Party of England and Wales, is now plastered all over social media for the world to see. Despite the stream of allegations coming from the Taaffe faction, and the rebuttals from the other side, the dispute in reality centres around prestige politics, a highly pernicious tendency that is invariably fatal in a revolutionary organisation.
….
Unlike Ted Grant, who was a Marxist theoretician of considerable stature, Peter was a very superficial thinker with no ideas of his own. Insofar as he expressed any, they were all filched from Ted. But Taaffe felt no gratitude to Ted, of whom he was intensely envious. On the contrary, he spent most of his time systematically undermining Ted behind his back, whispering in corners to his group of adepts that Ted was “impossible” to work with.
What Taaffe wanted was an organisation of yes-men and women – unconditional supporters who would never contradict him. Lenin once warned Bukharin: “If you want obedience, you will get obedient fools.” That reads like the epitaph on the grave of the CWI. Over a period, the yes-men and women in the Militant – raw, young careerists, politically ignorant, but greedy for personal advancement, crystallised into a clique, which, behind the backs of the elected bodies, was deciding everything.
That was the real basis of the 1991-1992 split. The rest is pure fable. After nearly 30 years, it is about time we put the record straight.
The SP do not comment on the other groups either, Labour Against the Witch-hunt (LAW), Labour in Exile Network (LIEN), or Resist, yet the latter is the fond offspring of Chris Williamson.
Not long ago the Socialist published this:
Ex-MP Chris Williamson joins TUSC to challenge ‘resurgent Blairism’ November 2020.
(Williamson seems to have cold on them since he fell in with George Galloway…
Here is their present ‘analysis’: Starmer want things under control and with his own mark. It’s all a return to Blair..
Since the resignation of Corbyn, and under Starmer’s leadership, every action by the Labour bureaucracy has been in the direction of destroying any remnants of Corbyn’s leadership and strengthening the right wing’s control. These expulsions follow the suspension from the party of Corbyn himself, one of the Unite representatives on the NEC, Howard Beckett, and hundreds of ordinary members on trumped-up charges….
Working-class people have seen the cuts carried out by Labour locally over the course of the last ten years, including during the period of Corbyn’s leadership. For many of those who remember the Blair years, Labour is still the party of illegal wars, privatisation and selling out.
It is not long before an old tune recurs, and recurs, and, more.
Supporters of Militant, the Socialist Party’s predecessor, were expelled from the Labour Party by the right wing in the 1980s and early 1990s. We explained back then that this would be the thin end of the wedge, and that a purging of socialist ideas would follow close behind. (continues in this vein at length)
It’s all about them!
The piece ends with this resounding call:
The RMT (who themselves were expelled from Labour in 2004) should approach all unions – affiliated and non-affiliated to Labour – to call a conference that would be open to the Labour left and socialist organisations like the Socialist Party and those who work with us in the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, to discuss how to organise a political force that can best represent workers and stand up to the stark Covid economic and health consequences for workers.
Come and join us!
Things that are not going to happen….Socialist Appeal getting together the SP, or as they call them, SPEW.
As anybody wishing left unity with the hard-line Brexiteers of TUSC, they are having a laugh.
Tony Greenstein back in the news again as Labour is said to threaten to sue him for Defamation.
Labour Party threatens to sue activist over criticism of Israel debate ban
The Electronic Intifada.
This is their take on things…(extracts)
Britain’s main opposition Labour Party is threatening to sue a Jewish activist for criticizing a party official who blocked local activists from debating sanctions on Israel.
It marks another escalation in leader Keir Starmer’s war on the left, particularly supporters of Palestinian rights.
It also comes after similar legal threats from the party against The Electronic Intifada.
They continue.
“Earlier this month, activist Tony Greenstein received a letter from London law firm Edwards Duthie Shamash accusing him of defamation over a 26 June blog post.
That post is about how two Labour officials, Kim Bolton and Scott Horner, banned members of the Hove and Portslade Constituency Labour Party from debating a motion calling for sanctions on Israel following its bloody attack on Gaza in May.
As The Electronic Intifada reported, Horner, Labour’s South East regional officer, had advised Bolton, chair of the local party, that debating the motion “would undermine the party’s ability to provide a safe and welcoming space for all members, in particular Jewish members.”
“Aggressive” body language (something we all know Greenstein shows…)
The lawyers, who say they represent Horner and the Labour Party, gave Greenstein 14 days to withdraw his comments, apologize and pay legal expenses, or face the prospect of “proceedings against you without further notice” under Britain’s Defamation Act.
They also demand Greenstein promise “not to publish any future statements, articles or social media posts relating to our client.”
The lawyers claim that Greenstein’s accusations caused Horner “emotional distress due to their seriousness in nature and in a climate of increased anti-Semitic hostilities.”
Greenstein’s own take written is his own inimitable language.
EXCLUSIVE: The Labour Party has threatened to sue me for libel because I called Regional Organiser, Scott Horner, a racist and anti-Semite!
Imagine my surprise when I recently received a letter from solicitors for the Labour Party threatening to sue me for libel. What was my crime? I had posted a blog on 27 June accusing Kim Bolton, the Chair of Hove CLP and Scott Horner, Labour’s South-East Regional Organiser, of being racists and anti-Semites. Which they are!
Recent activities of the Monster Raving Greenstein Party:
Bankruptcy Orders
GREENSTEIN, TONY
PO Box 173, BRIGHTON, BN51 9EZ
Tony Greenstein also known as Anthony Greenstein and also known as Anthony Nathan Greenstein of current address unknown, England lately of (a) PO Box 173, Brighton, BN51 9EZ; Currently unemployed.
In the High Court Of Justice
No 159 of 2021
Date of Filing Petition: 1 June 2021
Bankruptcy order date: 14 July 2021
Time of Bankruptcy Order: 10:46
Whether Debtor’s or Creditor’s Petition—Creditor’s
Name and address of petitioner: CAMPAIGN AGAINST ANTI-SEMITISMPO Box 2647, LONDON, W1A 3RB
K Jackson 1st Floor, Spring Place, 105 Commercial Road, Southampton, SO15 1EG, telephone: 03030031735
Capacity of office holder(s): Trustee
14 July 2021
Update:
There is a theory that “Greenstein appears to be on a “take ’em all down with me” mission at the moment.”
Splinter German Communist Party, the DKP, Wins Appeal allowing it to take part in September Federal Elections.
Communists win in Karlsruhe
The constitutional court overturns the decision of the federal electoral committee. DKP can take part in federal elections in September.
On July 8th, the federal electoral committee decided with a majority of ten to one that the communist party, founded in 1968, was “not recognised as a party” because it had not submitted for six years an accountability report to the Bundestag administration that met the minimum requirements. According to the party law, a party loses party status if, among other things, it has not submitted an accountability report for six years. The accountability reports submitted late by the DKP up to and including 2017 were considered by the federal electoral committee under its chairman Georg Thiel as not having been submitted in the sense of the legal norm: the majority, to which the representative of the party Die Linke belonged, put the norm in question in this way as if it were also recording late reports.
This issue created some noise, from the obvious circles:
Not everybody was impressed:
New Break-away Groupuscule from Labour?
EXCLUSIVE: Thousands of exiled Labour members could form new political party
Members of the far-left organisation Labour Against the Witch-Hunt, which campaigns to put an end to the wave of suspensions and expulsions of Labour Party members by the current leadership, have vowed to continue their cause – possibly even forming a new party – during an emergency meeting held on Saturday evening via Zoom.
The Steering Committee instructed the group’s members to lie if asked about their membership of any proscribed organisations, with one member commenting in response that “some people deserve to be lied to”.
(Note they talked of using ‘cadre names’ as well).
Ms Werkmann argued during the call that the constitutional clauses used by the NEC to proscribe these organisations were “supposed to exclude people from the Labour Party who campaign against the Labour Party, and who actively support political organisations or candidates who stand against the Labour Party – we don’t do that”.
She added that in her view, however, various right-wing factions within the party did in fact do exactly this under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, but had not been proscribed. She also encouraged members who had not yet been expelled to “stay and fight, and make sure that the next time we get as close to the levers of power in the Labour Party as Corbyn did, we will not be tempted to appease the Right, but fight them with everything we have”.
…
But another proscribed group, the Labour In Exile Network – which is run by many of the same people as Labour Against the Witch-Hunt – has indeed begun organising ‘Shadow CLPs’, which are alternative structures designed to replicate local Labour Party organisations for those who have been suspended or expelled, and expressed a desire to print their own membership cards.
….
The group will be organising an event called Resist!, to be held in Brighton in parallel with the Labour Party Conference, as a ‘counter-Conference’. Several of the proscribed organisations have also formed a new initiative called Defend the Left in protest.
It also voted through a motion to consider merging the two organisations of Labour Against the Witch-Hunt and the Labour In Exile Network together during this meeting.
This of course is one those “exclusives” that has been common knowledge all day,
David Walsh writes on Tendance Coatesy,
And with the inevitability of Halley’s Comet returning from its sojourn in the Oort Belt beyond Pluto, is the chimera of yet another mini-‘mass left party’ outwith Labour being canvassed. This time it was from last weekend’s zoom conference of “Labour Against the Witchhunt’ where a formal move to unite with LIEN was agreed, and where the bolder spirits, including the Brighton one-man intifada called for it to become yet another party in the left’s alphabet soup. One for a new post ? See the meeting notes and links here; https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_io3fuZgUOdgBAMQ6bgN0z_ZUuVGo3PPS7PnMiBrpnk/edi
The likelihood of this coming to anything is about as probable as the Campaign for a Marxist Party creating a new left-wing party in the early years of the new millenium.
In my view the CPGB (note Weekly Worker group, the same people and their fellow travellers at the centre of LAW etc) were never interested in building a broad, democratic and open Campaign for a Marxist Party right from the start. They had a Machiavellian calculation of what they could get out of it – if anything – and saw any growth in the CMP as a potential rival to itself, rather than as an ally in building a mass movement where they would be one section.
Conspiracy theories: the Illuminati.
The Tendance used to have a photocopy of this chart, from back in the days in Leamington Spa. How I got it I cannot remember, either from Warwick Uni library, local library or from the CC of the Illuminati, I am not sure.
It is certainly an eye-opener!
Nesta Helen Webster (24 August 1876 – 16 May 1960) was an English far-right conspiracy theorist, who revived theories about the Illuminati.[1][2][3] She claimed that the secret society’s members were occultists, plotting communist world domination, through a Jewish cabal, the Masons and Jesuits.[2][4] She blamed the group for events including the French Revolution, 1848 Revolution, the First World War, and the Bolshevik Revolution.[5]
In 1920, Webster became a contributor to The Jewish Peril, a series of articles in the London Morning Post centred on the (forged) document The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.[6][7] These articles were compiled and published in the same year in book form under the title of The Cause of World Unrest.[8] Webster claimed that the authenticity of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was an “open question”.[9]
Background:
“Proofs of a Conspiracy” was written by John Robison, a Scottish professor, to warn Britain and other kingdoms that the forces which toppled the French monarchy and started The Terror were still active. In his book, Robison traced the story of the 1776 founding of the Bavarian Illuminati by Adam Weishaupt, a professor at Ingolstadt and the suppression of the order by the royal and church authorities of Bavaria in 1785. The Illuminists went underground all over Europe and used existing Masonic lodges or set up their own as a cover for their activities. In Paris, the Duc d’Orleans headed the Illuminist front called the Grand Orient Lodge, his base to conspire against the ruling House of Bourbon.
The English and Scottish lodges were generally apolitical amd many worked actively to keep out Illuminists as insincere applicants, but Robison maintained that some continental lodges remained hotbeds of revolutionary plotting, and therefore dangerous, at the time he wrote. Robison was a contemporary and collaborator with James Watt (with whom he worked on an early steam car), contributor to the 1797 Encyclopaedia Britannica, professor of philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, and inventor of the siren. Although Robison was very much an advocate of science and rationalism, he became an ardent monarchist later in life due to his disillusionment with the French Revolution.
In “Proofs of a Conspiracy,” Robison laid the groundwork for modern conspiracy theorists by implicating the Bavarian Illuminati as responsible for the excesses of the French Revolution. The Bavarian Illuminati had an inner core of true believers, who secretly held radical atheist, anti-monarchist and possibly proto-feminist views, at that time considered beyond the pale. They recruited by infiltrating the numerous (and otherwise benign) Freemasonic groups which were active at the time on the continent. Today, the Illuminati have today become a byword for a secret society which hoodwinks its junior members and puppet-masters society at large-a reputation which is in no little part due to Robison’s book.
This was a great hit amongst my mates in the late 1970s
See:
I last bumped into Piers during his no-hoper campaign to become mayor of London in May, as he was handing out leaflets outside Kingsland Shopping Centre two days before the vote.
“It’s going really well,” he informed me. “We could win. I’m serious.”
…
Shemirani, Icke and Piers Corbyn would once have carried no more weight than Stanley Green, a man who spent decades walking up and down Oxford Street carrying a billboard bearing the slogan ‘LESS LUST BY LESS PROTEIN’.
Who Remembers the Northern Independence Party (NIP, the ‘Whippets’)?
Whippets Make Come-Back in the Guardian.
Yesterday the Guardian published this letter form a Thelma Walker.
A Labour spokesperson, responding to questions about the proposed purge of Labour left groups, is quoted as saying: “Labour is a broad, welcoming and democratic party and we are committed to ensuring it stays that way.” I have left the Labour party after 40 years, as it had ceased to be broad, welcoming or democratic. Under the current leadership, Labour has lost its soul and its core purpose of opposing the Tories and achieving social, economic and climate justice. For those on the left, now feeling alienated by Keir Starmer’s regime, the wider socialist movement is organising and we welcome you.
Labour currently works, as Tom Nairn described in his work The Break-Up of Britain, for a “two-party equilibrium”. Those of us on the left are upsetting that equilibrium in offering another choice, liberation from Westminster control and true democratic socialism.
Thelma Walker
Labour MP for Colne Valley, 2017-2019
The letter did not refer to Walker standing against Labour this year in May in Hartlepool, with the backing of the Northern Independence Party. She lost her deposit in the by-election 250 Votes (0,8%)
She has the cheek to tweet this (I am blocked from following her but I don’t think she realises there are ways around this):
The whippets are still around, trying to divide the working class and progressives.
When the Whippets (many thought their symbol looked more like a weasel) began there were pages of articles about their ground-breaking importance, from the New Statesman, to more overtly ‘alt news’ sites like Skwawkbox, the Canary and Novara Media. There was even an oleaginous interview in the anti-Labour Morning Star.
The Northern Independence Party: ‘standing up for socialism’?
Niall Christie speaks to THELMA WALKER, the former Labour MP hoping to pip her former party to Westminster as the Hartlepool candidate for the NIP.
I know there are accusations of us splitting the vote and enabling the Tories. That is nonsense. We are the only fully democratic, socialist, left party standing and you have to look at the national polls.
By far the strangest reaction to the Whippets comes in a recent New Left Review.
The leading intellectuals of NLR felt fit to published a lengthy article which begins
”In November 2020, Britain’s company register welcomed a curious newcomer onto its rolls: the Northern Independence Party. With the slogan of ‘A free Northumbria and fairer North for all’, the private company was to run for elections in 2024. Like the Brexit Party, or for that matter the Scottish Nationalists, the outfit’s ambitions were openly plebiscitary—a referendum on Northern secession, completing a miniature of Britain’s European uncoupling. The nip is demanding that the uk Parliament hold a referendum on an Independent Northern England, with a ‘yes’ vote leading to ‘the establishment of a sovereign Northern Republic.’ The petition ended with a quote from a Guardian article by Tom Hazeldine: ‘It is a mistake to present the North–South divide as a challenge for a well-intentioned government to overcome, rather than a geographical reflection of how Britain is run, and for whom.
The nip is no British unicum. One of the most striking by-products of the age of globalization has been a remarkable rise in regionalist sentiment; conflicts between Catalans, Basques and Spaniards, Northerners and mezzogiornisti, Flemings and Walloons all puncture the post-national age. Political economy remains a major driver. As Wolfgang Streeck noted in 2017, a ‘new nation-state nationalism in Europe shares with regional separatism its opposition to market-opening political centralization: the one fights to prevent, the other to undo it. Amid these cases, Britain has undulated with a centre–periphery dynamic unlike any other. The United Kingdom is the most regionally unequal country in the European Union, with a political system more reminiscent of Jacobin centralism than its French neighbour.
ANTON JÄGER
REBEL REGIONS
How anybody took a small protest party so seriously can be easily explained: if you look for something to attack Labour post-Corbyn you will find it very easily, from the professionals of the Morning Star to the dilettanti politicians of New Left Review and the ‘alt-News’ sites of amateur journalists like Skwawkbox, you will find anything you latch onto.
Biggest Far Right Confusionniste ‘Anti-Lock-down’ anti Vaccine, Rally in London for Decades Passes off without Anti-Fascist Opposition.
Confusionnistes soil our much-loved Trafalgar Square.
France: Attacks Against Vaccination Centres.
Urrugne, in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques: arson attack against a marquee hosting a Vaccination Centre
Anti-vaccination activism against Covid-19 measures has moved to a higher stage – with serious attacks and damage against vaccination centres and death threats – after the government decided on ‘health passes’ (pass sanitaire) and he compulsory vaccination of nursing staff and carers.
People having been setting fire to vaccination centres.
Swastisjas, New Genocide, Assacin (word play on assassin and vaccin).
Last week.
More than 100,000 people rallied across France on Saturday to protest President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to require a Covid-19 “health pass” to access public places such as cafés and cinemas starting next week. In addition to traditional concerns about curtailed civil liberties, conspiracy theories have fuelled the opposition to making proof of vaccination obligatory.
The move has provoked furious opposition among many in France: some 137 rallies took place across the country on Saturday, gathering nearly 114,000 demonstrators (including 18,000 in Paris), according to the interior ministry.
Many appeared to have taken to the streets out of a libertarian belief that obliging people to be vaccinated if they want to access public venues and activities is an infringement on their basic rights. “In no way does a president have the right to decide on my individual health,” one Paris protester, who gave her name as Chrystelle, told Reuters.
Lucien, a young shop manager demonstrating in Paris, told AP he was by no means an “anti-vaxxer” but that the state should not effectively coerce people to get inoculated. “The government is going too far,” he said.
Some mainstream politicians have echoed these arguments. François-Xavier Bellamy, a prominent young MEP for the conservative Les Républicains party, and Loïc Hervé, vice-president of the Senate’s Centristes bloc, penned a joint opinion piece in Le Figaro this week in which they laid out their reasons for opposing the measure.
“Opposing the health pass does not make someone an anti-vaxxer,” they wrote. The “essential problem” with the pass is that, “for the first time in our history, people will have to present a document in order to do the most simple, ordinary things”.
But most of the political opposition to the health pass has come from extremes on both sides of the political spectrum. Macron’s plans mark a “backward step for personal freedoms”, said leader of the far-right National Rally (Rassemblement National or RN) party, Marine Le Pen, earlier this week. The health pass is an “abuse of power”, thundered Jean-Luc-Mélenchon, leader of the extreme-left France Unbowed (La France Insoumise or LFI).
LFI firebrand François Ruffin went further on Friday as he urged people to rally, characterising the health pass as a means of “humiliation” coming from an “absolute monarchy” in the form of Macron’s government. Florian Philippot, Le Pen’s former right-hand man and leader of the right-wing populist Les Patriotes party, declared ahead of Saturday’s protests that they would demonstrate the “power of the people” in the face of a “disgrace”.
Various populists have argued against the health pass on civil libertarian grounds, avoiding anti-vax statements. But many of Saturday’s protesters thought differently.
Tellingly, when Philippot was addressing the Paris rally and introduced a man called Benjamin onto the stage, saying, “He got vaccinated, but that was his choice,” there was an awkward moment of hesitation in the crowd, Le Figaro reported. It then erupted into cheers when Philippot said, “But he’s against the health pass!” as Benjamin ripped up his vaccination certificate.
Embedded in the crowd, Le Figaro’s reporter repeatedly overheard conspiracy theories such as that the pandemic “was orchestrated in advance” and “it’s all to make money for the laboratories”. When Richard Boutry – a former France Télévisions journalist who now tours the country propagating conspiracy and anti-vax ideas – arrived on the scene, many demonstrators chanted his nickname: “Ricardo! Ricardo!”
“We’re members of the Resistance; you’ve only just go to look at what happened under Vichy – one minute different people have different rights, the next …” a demonstrator told Le Figaro’s reporter – one of several comparisons he heard to the Nazi Occupation.
On Friday night, a vaccination centre in rural southeastern France was broken into and vandalised with the Cross of Lorraine (a symbol of the French Resistance) and graffiti saying “Vaccination = genocide” and “1940”, presumably a reference to the year the Vichy regime was founded.
“I feel there were likely fewer avowed and strident civilian libertarians than there were conspiracists at these demonstrations,” said Andrew Smith, a professor of French politics at the University of Chichester.
French anti-vaxxers likening themselves to the Resistance constitutes a “worrying manipulation of history”, he continued.
“It also shows something very specifically French about the anti-vax movement in the country. That language about defeat, collaboration and Nazism – it’s a big difference from what you see in Anglo world, where Nazis are, of course, often the bad guys many people evoke but it’s much more abstract.”
Rise of QAnon
Polling data shows that French anti-vax sentiment has waned as the vaccination rollout proceeded in the first half of the year. Nevertheless, an OpinionWay survey published in May found that 20 percent of French adults would turn down a jab while 13 percent are undecided.
The French Academy of Medicine has said the country needs 90 percent of its adult population to be fully vaccinated to receive herd immunity and defeat Covid-19.
The popularity of French pseudo-documentary “Hold-Up” shows that Covid disinformation has a big audience in this country. Endorsing an array of debunked claims, the online film got more than 2.5 million views after its release in November, with several famous faces including iconic actress Sophie Marceau sharing the video.
It is in this context that the QAnon conspiracist phenomenon – which weaves falsehoods about the coronavirus into a broader tapestry of fantasy, including warning of a worldwide cannibalistic cabal of paedophiles – has grown in France over the past year, boosted by French-language misinformation websites such as DéQodeurs and FranceSoir (a renowned broadsheet in the years after the World War II, which closed in 2012 before re-emerging two years ago as a conspiracist Internet publication).
Today from the same le Monde article,
Selon une note des renseignements territoriaux, s’y côtoient l’ultradroite et l’ultragauche, militants politiques, militants antivax, complotistes, personnels soignants, professionnels concernés par les mesures sanitaires ou encore « gilets jaunes »
According to a note from territorial intelligence, there are the ultra-right and the ultra-left, political activists, anti-vax activists, conspirationnistes, nursing staff, professionals concerned by health measures and also “Gilets Jaunes’.
Example:
More confusionnisme (from a French FB mate).
Les jaunes victimes d’apartheid ….
Labour Against the Witch-hunt (LAW) Emergency Meeting as Weekly Worker calls for new “mass Communist Party”.
Stan Keable LAW Secretary at this week’s NEC Protest.
Also Stan was for many years the Labour Party Marxist and some say still it.
Also:
The CPGB-PCC (Note – the Weekly Worker group) stood Stan Keable against New Labour’s Ken Livingstone in Brent East in the 1997 general election; Keable stood on the CPGB’s programme but was listed as an SLP candidate after Scargill had disowned the contest. The CPGB-PCC kept a token presence inside the SLP right up until the early 2000s, essentially to report the internal goings on.
The far left inside Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party Lawrence Parker July 2021.
General election 1997: Brent East[Votes
Labour Ken Livingstone23,74867.3+14.5 Conservative Mark Francois 7,86622.3−14.3 Liberal Democrats Ian M.C. Hunter2,7517.8−1.1 Socialist Labour Stan E. Keable4661.3 New ProLife Alliance Andrew J. Shanks 2180.6 New Rainbow Dream Ticket Claire M. Warrilow1200.3 New Natural Law Dean Jenkins1030.3 NewMajority 15,88245.0+28.8 Labour hold Swing+14.4
Labour Against the Witch-hunt.
| July 24, 6pm: Emergency LAW members’ meeting All members of Labour Against the Witchhunt will receive a Zoom invite in the next few days – if you join LAW before July 24 here, you may attend. If you are unsure if you’re a member, you can check your status here – login with your usual email address, then make sure to select ‘Labour Against the Witchhunt’ from the drop down list (a few groups use membersmojo and your email address gives you access to all your memberships managed by that system). You can of course also email us and we’ll check if you are a member. We totally understand if you wish to attend the meeting with your camera switched off or by using a false name (but please email us if you do so: info@labouragainstthewitchhunt.org). Please be assured that the Labour Party has of course no access to our membership lists. Please send any motions or proposals in writing asap to info@labouragainstthewitchhunt.org) |
| LAW’s sponsors include:Alexei Sayle, comedian Ken Livingstone Professor Moshé Machover, Israeli socialist and founder of MatzpenIan Hodson, president of the Bakers Union Ken Loach, film director Noam Chomsky, author and activist LAW’s honorary president is Moshé Machover |
Weekly Worker.
22.07.2021
more by: ‘derek james‘
Sir Keir’s road to Brighton
Organisations can be banned, but powerful ideas still live and flourish. Derek James of Labour Party Marxists reports on the growing opposition to the latest stage of the witch-hunt
This latest attack is just part of Starmer’s strategy to prove that his Socialist Alternatives past as a Pabloite deep entryist is truly dead and buried.
……..
It is not enough to simply defend the left and oppose bans and proscriptions. We also need to pose an alternative to these anti-democratic restrictions that raise the wider issues of building a militant working class movement to transform society. It means that we have to take the Labour Party seriously and not play with lowest-common-denominator projects of left regroupment outside the party – the only worthwhile project here is one that has the potential to become a mass Communist Party, not a micro version of the Labour Party.
LPM comrades are countering Starmer’s bans and proscriptions with the demand that Labour be refounded as a united front of all socialist and working class organisations. All should be able to affiliate and take part in the battle of ideas.
The Labour Party remains an important site of struggle for a Marxist programme, and we should not easily abandon it. Comrades should take elementary security measures to guard their membership. Making oneself an easy target for the witch-hunters is pointless. Inevitably secretaries and editors will be fingered. But we have a very wide rank and file and, of course, organisations such as LPM can recruit, recruit and recruit again. More than that, we can fight the battle of ideas, whatever the Starmer leadership says and does. They can ban organisations, but they cannot ban ideas – crucially the ideas of Marxism.
Thus, we urge the militant left not only to stay and fight back against Starmer’s latest attacks, but also to use the opportunity he has given us to deepen the struggle to win the working class movement to the Marxist programme of republican democracy, ecological sustainability and universal human liberation.
Comment.
, ideas of republican democracy .ecological sustainability. and human liberation do not need a ‘mass communist party’ one which in any conditions, is not going to be created by the Labour Party Marxists of the CPGB (Provisional Central Committee -aka the Weekly Worker) and factionalists, amiable though they may be. like Stan Keable.
Campaigners for Éric Zemmour Face Storm After Using Images of Victims of Terrorism in far-right Campaign.
Campaign Already Faces Storm.
«Zemmour boys» et instrumentalisation des victimes du terrorisme : une plainte déposée
Libération yesterday.
The 13onze15 association has filed a complaint after the broadcast, Tuesday afternoon, of photomontages of victims of terrorism by supporters of the editorialist who wish to see him as a candidate for 2022.
Associations and families of victims of the attacks do not have harsh enough words to denounce the exploitation of their loved ones who fell on November 13, 2015 by circles campaigning for the candidacy of Eric Zemmour in the presidential election of 2022. This The campaign was organised and broadcast by the networks of the columnist convicted of inciting racial hatred – but who however carefully kept his distance – with the keyword #NosViesCountent on Twitter. An unworthy and dangerous manipulation according to relatives of victims contacted by Liberation.
From Tuesday, July 19, the “Generation Z” group, which claims to be a youth movement supporting a potential candidacy of the far-right polemicist Eric Zemmour for the presidential election, as well as Twitter accounts supporting the editorialist, has been disseminating photos of victims of attacks as part of a digital campaign. A complaint was lodged by an association.
Among these photos, victims of the Bataclan, the terraces of November 13, but also the couple of police officers killed in Magnanville (Yvelines), in June 2016, Father Hamel killed in his church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray in 2016 The faces of victims who died during various events which had marked the national debate are also found, such as the young Victorine , found dead in Ville (Isère) in September, Brigadier Eric Masson , killed during a check in Avignon in May , or Adrien Perez , killed leaving a nightclub in 2018 while trying to defend a friend.
Will French Ultra-Right Pundit Zemmour Run For President?
By Samy Adghirni and Daniel Zuidijk29 June 2021,
Zemmour is a controversial television pundit, who makes the leader of the anti-immigration National Rally look soft. There’s been speculation for weeks about whether Zemmour would enter the race in April 2022. He hasn’t confirmed his intentions — but his supporters have taken matters in their own hands, plastering placards of him wearing an enigmatic half-smile on walls across the country.
While Zemmour and his supporters have often benefited from great media visibility, he’d get only 5.5% of votes in the presidential election, according to a recent poll by Ifop. That places him way behind Le Pen, who’s polling second behind President Emmanuel Macron.
While this may split the Rassemblement National vote for Maine Le Pen, – if it is more than self-publicising for Zemmour and his friends – this campaign indicates just how far the extreme right in France is prepared to go publicly these days.
It goes without saying that using the victims of terrorism for this so-called Presidential bid is about as low as you can get.
Is the Maddest Post Skwawkbox has ever done?
The Maddest Post Steve Walker has ever posted?
Answer, no it is not the maddest post.
The Squawking fellow is now attacking Keir Starmer for having a child who has tested positive for Covid.
Keir Starmer has been forced to self-isolate today after one of his children tested positive for the coronavirus. Starmer infamously pushed the government to re-open schools, “No ifs, no buts, no equivocation” – and schools promptly became the main driver for the new ‘Delta’ third wave of the pandemic – although he subsequently tried to claim he had been advocating caution on the re-opening when cases predictably rocketed.
Starmer also spent time in the Commons chamber before finding out he might be infectious.
The UK is dying – in many cases literally – for want of an actual opposition.
Meanwhile Tina Werkmann- one time stalwart of the CPGB (Provisional Central Committee), Weekly Worker has been busy.
Labour NEC Backs proscription of four organisations.
Labour NEC approves proscription of four organisations
The party backs Starmer’s plans as groups protest.
Labour’s NEC backed the proscription of four groups at just before 7pm on Tuesday after a marathon session.
While the meeting took place, a protest outside Labour headquarters organised by groups opposing the expulsion of hundreds of members who denied claims of antisemitism in the party included a speech by Covid-denier Piers Corbyn and “notorious antisemite” Tony Greenstein.
The protest took place as the National Executive Committee was voting on whether to proscribe four Jeremy Corbyn-supporting groups which have denied the extent of Labour’s antisemitism problem and which are said to promote communism.
..
Comment.
This, much as many of us on the left dislike the politics of and in some cases personally, the people involved, is a blanket ban. It is anti-democratic, and should be strongly opposed
Piers Corbyn’s Gang Disrupts Labour NEC Lobby Against Expulsions.
Piers Corbyn Joins Protest against Labour Plans to some Proscribe Left Groups.
While we are waiting for the NEC’s decisions…..
Heiko Khoo above. This is the noted Red-Browner’s background (standing for the confusionniste Let London Live anti-Lockdown slate in the London elections, led by Piers Corbyn, “Stop All Lockdowns and Covid Rules“. He claims to have been in Socialist Appeal.
Heiko Khoo Central West London
Heiko Khoo Let London Live candidate Central West-London
Dr. Heiko Khoo is a researcher, a journalist, and a radio producer. He organizes the highly acclaimed Karl Marx in London Walking tour (Marxwalks.com). But he is best known for his oratory at Speakers’ Corner, Hyde Park, where he has spoken since 1985. Heiko 57 was born in London and lives in Ladbroke Grove.
We have spent a year under a regime of petty diktats that robbed us of our dignity and our basic rights and freedoms.
The coronavirus crisis concealed a global power grab by finance, tech and Pharma giants. It is time for the people of London to stand up to the global capitalist elites and their governments and stop this descent into dystopian madness.
Heiko is standing for the London Assembly to give voice to the anger and discontent of the people at the disaster that has befallen our city and the world. This means empowering the people to challenge state and corporate power. London has played a decisive role in world history for centuries. Now we need to stand up the powers that be and create London anew out of the wasteland.
Heiko has prepared a comprehensive document explaining the events of the last year, which you can find on www.unmask.org.uk
Here is how it began:
Piers Corbyn addresses protest outside Labour HQ against antisemitism expulsions
Jewish News.
Brother of ex Labour leader spoke alongside Tony Greenstein at demo opposing the party’s actions against far-left groups whose members are accused of antisemitism
Speaking outside the Southside building in Victoria, central London, Piers initially heaped praise on Tony Greenstein – the “notorious antisemite” who was among the 100-odd activists present.
he ex Labour leader’s brother then said he was present to give “100 percent support” to those he said were “being purged from the Labour Party.”
He then added:”It’s not just for my brother – I support his right to go back into the PLP fully, and everybody who is being purged.”
As Piers continued to speak he then openly linked current attempts to tackle the pandemic with the climate under the Nazis in 1930s Germany.
At one stage he appeared to suggest compliance with the vaccine was a replica of submission to Hilter’s Nazis.
“You know what happened in Germany.. they believed in Hitler, “ he said.
You know what happened, the rest is history. “
Corbyn then attended that “the Jews” were “locked up” and that “the rest is ..what they were told to stay safe.”
The article says, “When Piers Corbyn spoke some of the activists present attempted to distance themselves from a “Covid denier.”
In the anti-vaxx/conspiracy/mad Pier’s gang a speaker Heiko (above) said he, like Corbyn, was on the left.
This is the kind of the ‘left’ they are: 11th of July.
Laurence Fox and Piers Corbyn lead anti-lockdown and vaccine passport protests outside Wimbledon
Backer of the Labour Purge Wants to Piss on the Grave of Comrade Owen Jones’ Dad.
The degré zéro of politics.
Owen is a respected and liked socialist political commentator. This is the stripe of the Purgers.
Oppose the Purge!
Hard Right Express Gloats at “Labour Civil War” as call comes to widen purge to Labour Representation Committee.
Keir Starmer’s Group in the 1980s: the International Revolutionary Marxist Tendency.
Labour CIVIL WAR: Starmer to purge party and expel 1,000 members from ‘poisonous’ groups
KEIR Starmer has made plans to expel 1,000 Labour Party members who are considered far left and “poisonous”.
These groups have been said to promote communism, claim anti-Semitism allegations are overblown and demand the reinstatement of Jeremy Corbyn as a Labour MP.
The Labour national executive committee (NEC) meeting next Tuesday is expected to pass the new motion to ban the select groups.
The ban will affect approximately Labour Party 1,000 members who could be “auto-excluded”.
These groups have been said to promote communism, claim anti-Semitism allegations are overblown and demand the reinstatement of Jeremy Corbyn as a Labour MP.
Two of the groups that will be banned are Resist and Labour Against the Witchhunt.
Another group to be proscribed are the communist leaning Socialist Appeal.
It has been reported in the Daily Mirror that anyone found to be a member of any of the four groups will face an automatic expulsion from the Labour Party.
A Party source said: “Under Corbyn, those from the far left fringes with poisonous beliefs and warped world-views were welcomed into the party.
“Keir is right to stamp out anti-Semitism and toxic extremism.”
Call to widen the Purge.
,
….we hope that this is not the limit of current action on antisemitism. Other groups such as the Labour Representation Committee (whose President is John McDonnell MP) played a significant role in mainstreaming anti-Jewish racism and they too should be proscribed. Moreover, Keir Starmer must also address the provocative and inflammatory actions of some of his MPs who continue to promote the anti-Israel extremism that is described in the most recent CST report ‘A Month of Hate. There is still a long way to go and much work to be done.”
Socialist Appeal was formed in 1992 and was not threatened with expulsion under Tony Blair or any other previous Labour leader.
Keir Starmer was a leading figure in this small revolutionary Marxist group in the 1980s. Its international main body was, many would consider, far to the left of Socialist Appeal.
Socialist Alternatives was the British section of the International Revolutionary Marxist Tendency (IRMT), a formerly Trotskyist Pabloite group based in Paris.[1]
A small group in the UK it was best known for the Marxist magazine of the same name partially edited by Keir Starmer from 1986 to 1987.[2] The magazine is believed to have been produced by the Pabloist International Revolutionary Marxist Tendency (IRMT)[3] and advertised its events and publications, although one of the authors identified it as being an outgrowth of the Socialist Society connected with Ralph Miliband and Hilary Wainwright.[4] Paul Mason has called it a “Trotskyite front magazine”[5] although this is disputed.[4] The French Troksyite journalist Maurice Najman was also cited as a key supporter.[4]
Its politics were defined by one of its later authors Andrew Coates as being “aligned to the European ‘alternative’ movements of the time which stood for ecology, feminism and self-management. These were forerunners of later radical green-left groups, Los Indignados, Podemos, the left of Labour and similar currents within social democratic parties.”[6]
It was described by the left wing magazine Chartist as “the human face of the hard left”.[7] Peter Hitchens described Socialist Alternative’s “preoccupation with sexual politics and green issues” as presaging the politics of all today’s major British politicians.[8]
The magazine included articles by Michalis Raptis,[9][10][11] the leader of the International Revolutionary Marxist Tendency and the left wing Labour MP Eric Heffer, Peter Tatchell[6] as well as an interview with Tony Benn.[12][13] There were also advertisements for Michael Raptis’s “Self Management Lectures”[14] and IRMT publications.[15] Keir Starmer wrote articles on the Wapping strike,[16][17] the 1986 TUC conference,[18] criticising labour leader Neil Kinnock‘s moves towards the market economy,[19] a book review of Eric Heffer’s Labour’s future,[20] Trade Unions and pluralism,[21] an interview with Tony Benn[12] and left wing approaches to local government.[22]
This call for a purge has got completely out of hand and should be strongly opposed by democratic socialists.
Daily Mirror: Labour Against The Witch-hunt and Socialist Appeal among groups Labour is set to Proscribe.
Keir Starmer set to expel 1,000 far left Labour members in four ‘poisonous’ groups
EXCLUSIVE (as in widely trailed by SA and sites like this Blog)
Labour Against The Witchhunt and Socialist Appeal are among the groups to be proscribed by the party’s ruling body as the leader bids to stamp out “toxic extremism”
Keir Starmer is preparing to purge far left Labour members part of “poisonous” campaign groups in a bold confrontation with operators loyal to Jeremy Corbyn.
Labour ‘s ruling National Executive Committee will be asked to proscribe four “toxic” organisations which promote communism, claim anti-Semitism allegations are overblown and demand whips restore Mr Corbyn as a Labour MP.
Those to be banned include Resist and Labour Against the Witchhunt, which claim anti-Semitism allegations were politically motivated, and Labour In Exile, which expressly welcomes expelled or suspended members.
The openly communist Socialist Appeal will also become a forbidden group.
The Mirror understands anyone found to be a member of any group will be automatic expelled from the Labour Party.
The plans on the agenda at the NEC meeting on Tuesday are expected to pass and more than 1,000 members could be “auto-excluded” as a result.
……
A Labour spokesman said: “Labour is a broad, welcoming and democratic party and we are committed to ensuring it stays that way.
“From time to time, there are groups the NEC will proscribe. The NEC will be asked on Tuesday to consider whether these four organisations are compatible with Labour’s rules or our aims and values.”
Questions continue to be asked about whether Mr Corbyn will continue to sit as the independent MP for Islington North.
Comment:
This Blog is totally opposed to ‘purges’ – people of sick of this kind of politics as much as we are of Labour Against the Witch-hunt.
It is not a good move. Just because Socialist Appeal are not highly regarded it is not right in principle to suppress ‘Communists’ who are in fact (dogmatic) Trotskyists opposed to Stalinism. That ban is directed against a very minor cult. The other targets are much more wide-ranging Apart from the principles involved – democratic socialists defeat people politically by argument and debate not by bureaucratic means and this violates such norms – it is hard to see how it could be put into practice. To begin with, given the hard to pint down affiliations of people supporting network groups like LAW and the other named organisations (., Labour In Exile, & Resist) it is a potential nightmare of dispute and court cases.
Note Keir Starmer’s own past, at his event held by Tendance marxiste-révolutionnaire internationale (TMRI).
Nigel Farage to have Prime-Time Show on GB News, Anti-Rootless Cosmopolitan Campaigner Paul Embery to become Pundit on same station.
Farage to put the final mockers on Far-Right GB News.
He will be joined on the alt-right station by anti-rootless cosmopolitan campaigner, Brexiter and, during the Referendum a close ally of the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC – the Socialist Party, ex-Militant), Paul Embery:
Union official told to ‘cease’ social media after ‘rootless cosmopolitans’ tweet
Paul Embery refused to apologise despite criticism over an ‘antisemitic’ comment about Brexit referring to ‘rootless cosmopolitans’
A trade union official has been instructed to cease all social media activity for the moment, after he referred to “rootless cosmopolitans” in a tweet.
Fire Brigades Union official Paul Embery will be meeting with the union’s executive council to discuss his social media activity, but a date has not been confirmed yet.
The wits of the Internet are onto his case:
Socialist Appeal Claims it is facing ‘purge’ from Labour.
Rumours and reports are circulating that Socialist Appeal, along with three other left-wing campaigning groups (Note, which ones? They do not say) , are to be officially proscribed from the Labour Party. This is a direct political attack on the left and the ideas of socialism. The whole left must mobilise to fight this purge.
The Labour Party’s national executive committee (NEC) is scheduled to meet next Tuesday, 20 July. According to various sources, a motion is being proposed by right-wingers on the NEC that would see Socialist Appeal deemed a proscribed organisation.
the motion states that this clause applies to Socialist Appeal and its activists, making support for Socialist Appeal ‘incompatible with membership of the Labour Party’.
The grounds given are that Socialist Appeal has its own programme, membership, and structures; that we are part of an international organisation, the International Marxist Tendency; and that our organisation is a continuation of the Militant Tendency, which was similarly proscribed by the Kinnock leadership in the 1980s.
Finally, the proposed motion suggests that the above clause should apply to anyone who declares themselves a supporter of Socialist Appeal; sells our newspaper, or writes articles for our publications; or runs Socialist Appeal street stalls.
Like many on the left, I cannot stand this bureaucratic sect whose ‘Marxism is rote-learned gibberish in the ‘Militant’ tradition with dollops of Lenin and Trotsky. But to some extent this Blog agrees in general with this statement,
Socialist Appeal, however, has always supported the Labour Party and its candidates. We are not a separate party, but a tendency within the Labour Party and the wider labour movement, organising socialist activists around Marxist ideas.
As with groups like Momentum, our activists are loyal Labour members, who have worked tirelessly to build the party in their local areas; and who have enthusiastically campaigned for Labour in every election.
First they came for the Marxists…
This latest McCarthyite move is therefore the thin end of the wedge. First the right wing will decapitate the left of its most militant layers. And if they are successful in this, next they will come for the rest of the left.
Yet they also call for their own purge of people they disagree with!
Election Boost for Stop Sizewell C Campaign.
Greatly Loved Countryside Menaced by Sizewell C.
East Anglian Daily Times. (extracts)
I don’t normally get over-excited by a council by-election, but last week’s double election in the Aldeburgh and Leiston ward was one of the most interesting we have seen for many years.
And the result was eye-opening, especially in the context of it being home to the existing nuclear power stations and the proposed Sizewell C that may join them in the future.
Two of the three seats in this ward were up for grabs. Going into the election all three were held by the Conservatives.
The background is that despite all the controversy that built up before the construction of Sizewell B in the late 1980s, the Leiston area itself has been pretty strongly pro-nuclear.
The local people appreciated the jobs the power stations brought and the money their employees brought to the local economy. They weren’t seen as blots on the landscape (a matter of Opinion), indeed the Sizewell B dome is now a well-known local landmark.
Both main parties in the area (note, and the union, UNITE) have been broadly supportive of the nuclear power plants in the past.
Now the Conservative-dominated East Suffolk Council is desperately trying to take a neutral stance on Sizewell C . . . but the mood in the immediate area has shifted significantly.
People who have been supportive of Sizewell A and B are now firmly opposed to Sizewell C. This is largely because of the threat it poses to the local environment.
I won’t repeat my arguments here – but there has been a really major change in attitudes among residents since Sizewell B neared completion 30 years ago over the plans that many people see will lead to the destruction of the nationally-important Eastbridge marshes.
However, I don’t really think the victory of a Green Party candidate (and with his fellow party member falling just two votes short) will have local MP and cabinet minister Dr Therese Coffey quaking in her boots.
Also the Sizewell issue prompted many voters who would not subscribe to the Greens’ national politics to lend them their vote for this council election. Come the next general election and they will return “home.”
However, if I were a betting man, I’d put my dosh on the Greens taking all three seats in the next council elections in the seat in May 2023. They can now claim to be the only party capable of beating the Tories here – and there was a reasonable Labour vote to be squeezed.
And it is very difficult to dislodge a Green councillor once they have been elected – ask the Tories about that in Beccles, Lavenham, and Mendlesham! (very true, and note this: May 2021 County Council Election, Suffolk: “And it was the Green Party’s success that was the real story of the day as it increased its number of county councillors from three to nine. It won seats in Sudbury, Stowmarket, and Halesworth. It doubled its number of seats in Beccles – costing former council leader Mark Bee his seat in the process – and it took advantage of a Tory split to snatch the division that includes Woolpit and Elmswell. EADT)
As I said, I don’t see the result causing Dr Coffey any sleepless nights, and I don’t really see it having any impact on the government which will still have the final say on whether Sizewell C gets the go-ahead.
I don’t think the government could give a fig for the environment of the Suffolk coast. If it decides it wants to go ahead with Sizewell C it will just be seen as collateral damage.
But I do have serious doubts about whether the project can go ahead because it is not economically viable. (note, something many of us think).
There is no way that EDF can make the sums add up without billions of pounds of government aid.
The government is also past the point of no return with two other massive infrastructure projects – HS2 and the Hinkley Point power station – and Boris Johnson does like shiny hi-tech projects.
But Chancellor Rishi Sunak is starting to raise serious concerns about the level of debt – and is believed to be trying to rein in public spending.
And many MPs would like to see what public spending there is concentrated on the “Red Wall” seats in the north of England – not an attractive area on the East Anglian coast where unemployment levels are pretty low and where there is already an energy boom from service offshore wind farms.
So in my view it’s 50-50 whether the government eventually gives the Green Light to Sizewell C.
Last week’s election was an interesting diversion and an excuse to look again at the issue – but ultimately it will be Rishi Sunak’s economics and not the election of a few more Green councillors that will finally influence the government’s decision. (note very obviously true but it has the issue nationally again).
*****
Many people know and love the area under threat, and a fair number of us have personal links to the Leiston and Aldeburgh district. These are some of the reasons it is close to our hearts. One good point to begin or end a visit is at the Eels Foot Eastbridge just by Minsmere.
Lee Chadwick, who lived on Leiston Common, wrote this book, much of which covers the area.
Stop Sizewell C! Wrong Project, Wrong Time, Wrong Place.
EDF’s plans to build two new nuclear reactors at Sizewell in east Suffolk will have a devastating impact on this unique and magical place and is too slow and expensive compared to alternatives in the fight against Climate Change.
How can we stop Sizewell C?
- Money! If no one will invest, it cannot go ahead. You can help by writing to pension funds or other potential investors.
- Politics. If Sizewell C, or the tax needed to finance it, is unpopular, Ministers will listen. Sign our Petition with Together Against Sizewell C at www.stopsizewellcpetition.com or write to The Rt Hon Kwasi Kwarteng MP: enquiries@beis.gov.uk, Dear Secretary of State.
- Planning. If enough holes are found in EDF’s plans and the impacts outweigh the benefits, it could be refused consent. The planning process decision is expected mid April 2022. See Take Part in the Planning Process for more information.
- Visit Why Stop Sizewell C? to find our multiple reasons for campaigning against this damaging project. There are more campaigning ideas on our Take Action page.
‘Anti-Woke’ Right Fall Out as GB News Gets Zero Viewers.
Boycott due to presenter Guto Harri taking the knee in support of the England football team.
Something to cheer us all up…
GB News attracted zero viewers during some of its broadcasts this week, according to official television audience figures produced by rating agency Barb, after a viewer boycott prompted by one of its presenters taking the knee in solidarity with the England football team.
The story is not just about the Channel’s plunging ratings but a boycott of its programmes because a presenter took the knee in support of the England team. One can guess what kind of viewer refuses even to look at this act of solidarity….
People are reacting to the latest embarrassing GB News blunder.
This week, the channel reportedly received a grand total of zero viewers for some of its broadcasts following a boycott due to presenter Guto Harri taking the knee in support of the England football team.
According to Barb, an official television ratings agency, the broadcasts that attracted no views were the ones presented by former Labour MP Gloria De Pier and business editor Liam Halligan, which airs for 30 minutes from 1pm on Wednesdays, and another at 5pm led by Simon McCoy and Ukip spokesperson Alex Phillips.
After the channel’s viewers criticised Harri’s decision to take the knee, the channel tweeted on Thursday (15 July): “GB News stands four square against racism in all its forms. We do not have a company line on taking the knee. Some of our guests have been in favour, some against. All are anti-racist. We have editorial standards that all GB News journalists uphold.”
However, the channel caused confusion after completely reneging on this in reply to its own tweet, calling Harri’s act “an unacceptable breach of our standards”.
GB News viewers plummet to zero after presenter takes the knee
GB News has seen its viewers plummet to zero for some shows after a boycott over one presenter taking the knee in solidarity with the England national team.
The audience fell to zero at 5pm on Wednesday, during a programme co-hosted by ex-BBC presenter Simon McCoy and former Ukip spokesperson Alex Phillips, according to official television audience figures produced by rating agency Barb.
Presenter Liam Halligan and former Labour MP Gloria De Piero’s show also attracted no measurable audience meanwhile their rivals Sky News had 50,000 and BBC News registered 62,000 for the same period.
It came after viewers were outraged by former Boris Johnson spokesman Guto Harri taking the knee after the England team suffered racist abuse after the Euro 2020 final defeat.
The Mail has a different angle..
GB News presenter Guto Harri is condemned by bosses for an ‘unacceptable breach of standards’ after he took the knee live on air and provoked viewer boycott
- GB News presenter Guto Harri has been condemned by bosses after taking the knee live on television
- Mr Harri made the anti-racist gesture on air while talking about racist abuse England footballers suffered
- GB News publicly rebuked its presenter Mr Harri for his alleged ‘unacceptable breach of standards’
- But the ex-BBC political correspondent defended his actions on Twitter last night, calling it ‘free speech’
We await the Spikey ones responses…
Protests Across France Against ‘Health Pass’ Rules.
Manifestations anti-pass sanitaire : un gloubi-boulga aux airs de gilets jaunes
Libération.
After Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain , there was there was only France, which had not been shaken by a major protest movement against Covid health measures. The many spontaneous gatherings that arose on Wednesday, a national bank holiday (14th of July), all over France, bringing together numbers from a few dozen to several thousand participants, marked the end of this French exception. Spontaneous demonstrations? Not quite: enraged after Emmanuel Macron’s speech on Monday evening, conspiracists, gilets jaunes, supporters of (far right) Florian Philippot, care-workers and people and opposed to compulsory vaccination, but also left-wing collectives, participated on Wednesday in numbers against the establishment of a compulsory health pass needed to get to access public places, denouncing the establishment of a ” health dictatorship ”.
France’s new health pass rules raise questions as many scramble to adapt
France 24:
While the extension of France’s health pass and other new anti-Covid 19 measures announced by President Emmanuel Macron Monday night are yet to be hammered out in detail, what’s certain is that a full-throttled return to a normal life of frequenting café terraces, restaurants, cinemas, theatres and other culture and leisure activities will now hinge on having a pass sanitaire (or health pass).
From the moment Macron announced new anti-Covid measures Monday evening that include an extension to the health pass requiring holders be either fully vaccinated or have proof of a recent (taken within 48 hours) negative Covid-19 test, the French have been gripped by panic. Thousands rushed to online medical appointment sites, like Doctolib, which had a record 926,000 people book their first dose within hours of Macron’s address – a record for the site. Hundreds of thousands more continued to book jabs on Tuesday, a vast number of whom are health professionals now subject to mandatory vaccination under the new rules. Simply put, the changes mean that anyone in France – except for those aged 12-17 years – who wants to visit or, indeed works in, a café, restaurant, cinema, theatre, bar or other places of leisure and culture will need to have a health pass.
FRANCE 24 takes a closer look at the changes to the government’s health pass rules.
12-17 year olds exempt from health pass until August 30
Everyone will have to have a health pass if they want to access most leisure and culture spaces from July 21, except those aged 12 to 17 who will have until August 30 to meet the requirement. That means they will need to get “vaccinated quickly”, said health minister Olivier Véran on Tuesday, who added they will have to also continue to wear a mask where necessary.
“We have identified a solution for teenagers aged 12 to 17, so as not to spoil families’ holidays. For them, the health pass will apply in all places where it applies, from August 30,” the minister said on France 2.
Voluntary vaccination has been available to teenagers since June 15, provided they have the consent of both parents and are accompanied by one of them when they receive their shot.
Health pass valid one week after second dose
Under the new health pass rules, a person is fully vaccinated one week after they receive their second dose and no longer than two weeks, the health minister said. However, under EU regulations they would need to be vaccinated at least 14 days before travelling outside of France to other EU states.
Health pass for long-distance travel but not for local commutes
A health pass will be required for all long-distance travel, for both passengers and employees, and will be subject to on-board checks. However, it will not be necessary for local commutes such as on buses and metros, said Minister for Transport Jean-Baptiste Djebbari on BFMTV.
“It will essentially concern the TGV and intercity trains, coaches making interregional journeys, and domestic travel by plane”, said Djebbari, as journeys by plane to foreign countries.
Questions remain over how foreign non-EU visitors to France can prove their health status under France’s pass sanitaire scheme, which will from August be required to go to restaurants and cafes and for long-distance trains and coaches and many other activities in France.
It will also be needed to access cultural venues such as cinemas and concerts from Wednesday next week (July 21).
The Connexion has identified no information on this from the UK’s foreign office travel advice for France or the American embassy in Paris, which simply states that access to some spaces in France “may be subject to… presentation of a health pass”.
France’s tourism minister has stated on Twitter that he is looking into the issue, especially on behalf of French people living abroad, and The Connexion has asked the French Health and Foreign Affairs Ministries if it is able to confirm if the same proofs that travellers use to enter the country will be widely accepted for other
From the Connexion.
Cuba Protests, One Death and 140 Arrested or Missing.
Cuban Regime Cracks Down
Cuba protests: One dead and scores missing after rare demonstrations
BBC.
One man has died in Cuba and more than 140 have been arrested or reported as missing during rare demonstrations against its Communist government.
Diubis Laurencio Tejeda, 36, died in a suburb of Havana on Monday during a clash between protesters and police.
Cuba’s interior ministry did not say what the cause of death was but alleged he was part of a group that attacked a government facility.
However, witnesses said security forces had attacked the protesters.
…
Posts on social media showed people overturning police cars and looting state-owned shops that price their goods in foreign currencies. For many Cubans, these shops are the only way they can buy basic necessities but prices are high.
‘
President Miguel Díaz-Canel has called the demonstrators “counter-revolutionaries”.
His government blamed the United States, and its economic sanctions, for both the protests and Cuba’s wider problems.
US sanctions have restricted trade with Cuba since 1962. They were tightened under former US President Donald Trump, who also imposed sanctions on Venezuela, which is Cuba’s main supplier of oil.
Cuba’s foreign minister called it a “policy of economic suffocation to provoke social unrest in the country”.
But the White House said that Cubans had suffered “decades of repression”.
Speaking on Monday, President Joe Biden said the US “stands firmly with the people of Cuba as they assert their universal rights”.
Cuban Socialists Out of Jail but under House Arrest
Left Voice.
Cuban Marxist Frank García Hernández was arrested last Sunday during mass mobilizations against food and vaccine shortages and the government’s handling of the pandemic. These conditions have been exacerbated by the imperialist embargo which has been ongoing for six decades. The Trump administration placed 200 additional sanctions on the country — measures which have been continued by the Biden administration.
Police forces violently repressed the demonstrations — the most important since 1994 — with pepper spray and truncheons. According to his friends and comrades, Frank was violently detained together with other socialists.
Frank, a sociologist, historian, and member of Comunistas Blog, was released along with Maikel González Vivero, director of the LGTBQ community magazine, Tremenda Nota, who was also arrested on Sunday.
However, according to their comrades, Frank and Maikel are under house surveillance, and are not permitted to carry out any activity or meeting without prior authorization from the state. This is clearly political persecution, and an attack on their most basic democratic freedoms.
Other socialist activists who were arrested on Sunday, including Marco Antonio Pérez Fernández and Leonardo Romero Negrín, are still being detained. We demand their immediate release, and the termination of all judicial proceedings — including the house arrest — and persecution against Frank and his comrades.
Spanish Socialist PM says Cuba is not a democracy and should be encouraged, without direct external interference, to take a path (implicitly, in that direction) helped by the international community.
Fed-up Cubans are taking to the streets in unprecedented protests — and they’re voicing their outrage through a song called Patria y Vida — homeland and life.
The slogan is a spin on the communist regime’s decades-old slogan of “patria o muerte” — homeland or death. In strong terms, the song accuses the government of destroying the quality of life in Cuba, a message that quickly found traction with protesters who are demanding change.
“No more lies. My people demand freedom. No more doctrines!” the song says. It calls for people to shout “patria y vida … and start building what we dreamed of/ what they destroyed with their hands.”
Cuba, Call to Release Detainees, including Communists.
Cuban State have imprisoned our comrade.
#Cuba Cet article du @BlogComunistas est une demande de liberté pour tous les détenus et en particulier contre la détention arbitraire de Frank García Hernández @frankgH28, historien et marxiste cubain.
Frank Garcia Hernandez (standing), introducing the opening session of the 2019 conference in Havana on Leon Trotsky. Frank explained that he is not a Trotskyist, but that he believes the ideas of such Marxists as Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, and others like them should be known and discussed, and can strengthen the struggle against imperialism and capitalism, and for socialism, in Cuba and around the world. At the table are Eric Toussaint, Paul Le Blanc, Suzi Weissman, Bob Brenner.
From Paul le Blanc.
Cuba: Freedom for Frank García Hernández and Other Detainees
On Sunday, Cuban communist Frank García Hernández was arrested at a protest in Havana. The government of Miguel Díaz-Canel is attacking critical communists whose aim is to defend the gains of the Cuban Revolution.
On Sunday, mobilizations took place in Havana and across Cuba to protest the health crisis, shortages, and various government measures — problems that have been aggravated by the tightening of the U.S. blockade.
As part of the police repression against demonstrators, Frank García Hernández and others were arrested. His friends and comrades are denouncing this arbitrary detention, which was carried out violently by the repressive forces, who used pepper spray against the activists and bystanders.
Frank is a Cuban Marxist, sociologist, and historian, and a member of the Comunistas Blog collective. He was arrested along with Marco Antonio Perez Fernandez (a high school student who had been arrested previously, on April 30, for carrying a sign that read “Socialism Yes, Repression no!”). Also arrested were Maikel González Vivero (director of the LGTBQ community magazine Tremenda nota), as well as Mel Herrera, a trans activist for LGTBQ+ rights. All of the detainees identify as socialists. The whereabouts of Perez and Herrera are unknown.
The Comunistas blog published this demand for the freedom of the detainees in Cuba.
We join those in Cuba and other countries in demanding the immediate release of Frank Garcia and his comrades.
Repression and arbitrary detentions by the Cuban government must end. Yes to the democratic right to protest and to free trade union, social, and political organizations.
U.S. Hands Off Cuba! End the Blockade! Defend the Gains of the Cuban Revolution!
Reclamo por la libertad de los detenidos en Cuba!
En la manifestaciones de esta tarde en La Habana fue detenido Frank García Hernández, entre otros miembros de la izquierda cubana.
Nota: no todos los miembros del colectivo editorial de Comunistas Blog suscriben esta comunicación.
En la tarde de hoy el pueblo cubano salió a las calles. Un pueblo que no estaba convocado por ninguna organización que no fuera la aguda crisis económica que enfrenta Cuba y la discapacidad del gobierno para manejar la situación. Cuba salió a las calles con la consigna equivocada “Patria y vida”, pero salió a las calles más allá de una consigna, salió para exigir al gobierno un socialismo verdadero. Los que estaban en las calles no eran artistas e intelectuales solamente, esta vez era el pueblo en su más amplia heterogeneidad.
Esta nota de Comunistas blog no busca analizar la situación de Cuba. Busca denunciar la detención con violencia de los manifestantes, denunciar que esta vez la fuerzas represivas del Estado se pusieron en el lugar contrario, que reprimieron a cubanos, que usaron gas pimienta y todos los recursos disponibles. Esta nota es un reclamo por la libertad de todos los detenidos y en especial por la detención arbitraria de Frank García Hernández, historiador y marxista cubano. Por la detención de Leonardo Romero Negrín, joven socialista estudiante de Física de la Universidad de La Habana. Por la detención de Maykel González Vivero, director de Tremenda Nota, una revista marginal. Por la detención de Marcos Antonio Pérez Fernández, menor de edad, estudiante de Preuniversitario. Por todos los detenidos violentamente en esta tarde negra que Cuba no olvidará. Comunistas apela a la solidaridad de la comunidad marxista internacional y también a la conciencia del gobierno cubano. Esta vez se trata de un pueblo que necesita respuestas y diálogo.
Se trata de una sociedad civil que no quiere la anexión, sino participar y decidir el destino de su nación. Comunistas blog condena la represión y dice basta a la burocracia.
Shining Path Establishes Australian Branch.
From Victor O and Simon H
Red Eureka Journal Founding Statement
By Red Eureka Journal Editorial Board
12/6/2021
Red Eureka Journal has been formed to provide revolutionary theory to the Australia people. As far as we are aware, it is the only theoretical journal in all of Australia that upholds Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, which is Marxism today and the only ideology of the Proletariat. For this reason we see it as an important step towards the reconstitution of the CPA, the initiation of People’s War and the establishment of Socialism.
We feel it necessary to clarify that principally Maoism is distinct from Mao Tse-Tung Thought and that we have no affiliation with the revisionists in the so called “CPA-ML”, who despite popular misconception, officially reject being called Maoists. They are not genuine followers of Mao Tse-Tung Thought or of Maoism.
Principally Maoism was synthesised by Chairman Gonzalo in Peru. We vehemently uphold him as the greatest living Communist on the face of the Earth. Accordingly, we also uphold the Communist Party of Peru (PCP) and the Peruvian People’s War which is still being waged to this day.
It is a common sentiment among mainly younger and richer students that the working class movement is rife with splitting and in fighting, and that the weak position held by the working class is due mainly to sectarianism and struggling among ourselves. This sentiment is often shamefully exploited by the revisionists to trick students into “unity” with revisionism. On the contrary, we hold that there has been far too little fighting in the working class movement by Marxism against revisionism which has allowed many (many) various opportunist and petty bourgeois sects to appear and go largely uncontested by Marxism, internally and externally.
We remind our readers that the organisation you choose to affiliate with is the organisation you choose to die for. Every so called revolutionary organisation has to understand, at least in words, that we are headed for war. When that time has been brought about there will be no mercy, no “unity” between Communists and revisionists, you have to be prepared to die for your organisation. To give your blood to see their political line fulfilled. There is a general lack of understanding of this point among mainly the richer students, a tendency to see this as a game or a hobby. The revisionists will take full advantage of this ignorance to throw those vulnerable into the front lines to die for them. They will take these youth and unapologetically use their blood to push a political line that does not even represent their interests. We emphasise this to give people a bit of reality, to free their minds from narrow thinking that does not realise that our lives are dependent on our politics.
It is commonplace for young members of “parties” such as the “ACP” or SAlt to be unaware of what their organisation’s line is. Not just on minor points but on central issues. These members become attracted because they see activity coming from these organisations but are easily led astray and fed a bankrupt line which takes a distorted Marxist form. What we are urging these people to do is to widen their thinking. They should take in all the views around them, including the correct, incorrect and potentially incorrect ones and then make an assessment of the situation. If you aren’t even aware of your own organisation’s political line or the political line of those who oppose them then how can you make an accurate assessment? The issue is too important to be ignorant.
In the rebellious spirit of The Red Eureka Movement this journal is dedicated to struggling and eradicating revisionism. We are unapologetically and completely subordinate to the Proletariat, their movement and their ideology which is Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism. Despite being a new effort, we will do all in our power to serve their interests and contribute to bringing about the seizure of political power in Australia.
We encourage our readers to send in their questions or comments on the articles published. We may in some cases publish articles sent in from readers.
GLORY TO THE PEOPLE OF AUSTRALIA!
LONG LIVE MARXISM-LENINISM-MAOISM, PRINCIPALLY MAOISM
Comment.
To be honest, what a bunch of loony-bin social fascist scum!
My earliest memory of Peru is a newspaper photograph from 1980 of dead dogs hanging from lamp posts in downtown Lima. Their stiff bodies were wrapped in posters that said: deng xiaoping son of a bitch. In the picture, bewildered policemen are cutting down the bodies in the early-morning light. Some of the dogs drip blood, others are painted black, but most are simply dead.
I was living in Mexico, where my family had been granted political asylum. My father was neither a terrorist nor a bomber. He was just a left-wing journalist. But back in those years, that was reason enough to be exiled. We would avidly read any news about Peru, and on this occasion the papers carried a photo of cops cutting down dogs. The street beyond the dogs looked filthy, dismal. To me, the black-and-white photo was the real colour of the city. I was five years old and that, insofar as I understood things, was my country.
In our house, the picture – and the murders that came later – was the subject of lengthy deliberations. My father’s friends wondered if the time was ripe for a revolution in Peru. For all of them, revolution in Latin America was imminent, as inevitable as hurricanes in the Caribbean. They never wondered if it would come but only when, and in which countries it would triumph. At home, in long sessions cloudy with cigarette smoke, bearded men in tortoiseshell glasses would debate, conspire, or just hide out.
While my ‘uncles’ were changing the world, we, their children, would play in my room. We must have been a rather picturesque gang – preschool kids with Sandinista Front for National Liberation T-shirts and Che Guevara notebooks. Our identification papers all said ‘political refugee’. I had a T-shirt with Saddam Hussein’s picture on it. My favourite game was ‘guerrilla warfare’.
I lived in this alternate reality until the day democracy returned to Peru, and freely elected President Fernando Belaúnde guaranteed all exiles a peaceful return. My parents were happy to return to our country. But I remembered those dogs hanging from lamp posts and didn’t think it was such a good idea.
In the mid-1980s, the Shining Path was fast becoming the most lethal guerrilla force on the continent. These revolutionaries looked nothing like my father’s friends; in point of fact, they were more radical than most Latin American subversive groups: they considered Cuba a right-wing state; the Soviet Union an imperialist equivalent of the United States. And the ‘open’ China of Deng Xiaoping was for them a revisionist regime that had betrayed true revolutionary values. They also held Che Guevara, whom they called a ‘bourgeois clown’, in contempt. And they were right about one thing: Che’s military strategy was useless in the nations of the Andes. After all, he had been captured and put to death in Bolivia, a country geographically similar to southern Peru. So rather than copy the tactics of guerrillas all over the continent, the Shining Path studied Mao’s experiment and designed a war for poor peasants, or peasants who were in a pitiable state beyond poverty.
Instead of buying weapons from Cuba or Nicaragua, the Peruvian Maoists killed people with rocks, clubs and knives in hand-to-hand combat. That gave them operational independence. But it also desensitized them when it came to using violence. Besides, the senderistas wore no uniforms but disguised themselves as civilians and under this cover harassed the army. In turn, the armed forces began firing on the civilian population. Finally, the senderistas tried not to win over the population because it was equally effective to terrorize them. For instance, in the early 1980s in the village of Lucanamarca, they used machetes to kill sixty-nine people in a single day. And ten years later, on 16 July 1992, they packed a car with half a ton of plastic explosives and blew up a business street called Tarata during the rush hour. Twenty-six people died that night, with 150 wounded. More than four hundred businesses and 164 apartments were destroyed. Doing things like that made them into the most lethal guerrilla force on the continent.
The Shining Path took control of a third of rural Peru. But to win the war against the state they would have to conquer the capital, which is where I lived. The senderistas’ strategy was to seize control of the poor neighbourhoods around Lima and from there to attack the population within the city. Tales of hordes of beggars who would some day charge down from the hills to attack our houses and steal our belongings fuelled my childhood nightmares.
The violence also created daily inconveniences. We learned to put tape on our windows so they wouldn’t shatter when the shockwave from a bomb blast hit. We learned to dive for the floor when we heard shots. If we ate out, we would dine early so we could get home before curfew or, conversely, we would go to parties very late so we could return after curfew. We learned never to park opposite military installations because the soldiers had standing orders to fire on any parked car. Over time, you can get used to anything.
The most frequent – the signature senderista terrorist attacks – were power outages, which they produced by dynamiting the towers carrying high-tension wires. They always chose Christmas or New Year, when families would be at home, to inflict maximum inconvenience. And always at midnight. Power outages were the only events in Peru that took place punctually.
Call for a General Strike in Cuba.
Call for a General Strike in Cuba Today.
Thousands march in Cuba in rare mass protests amid economic crisis
Guardian.
The biggest mass demonstrations for three decades have rippled through Cuba, as thousands took to the streets in cities throughout the island, demonstrating against food shortages, high prices and communist rule.
The protests began in the morning, in the town of San Antonio de los Baños in the west of the island, and in the city of Palma Soriano in the east. In both cases protesters numbered in the hundreds.
With millions of Cubans now with mobile internet on their phones, news of the protests quickly swept to Havana. By early afternoon, thousands marched through central Havana, chanting “homeland and life” and “freedom”.
I’m here because of hunger, because there’s no medicine, because of power cuts – because there’s a lack of everything,” said a man in his 40s who didn’t want to give his name for fear of reprisals.
“I want a total change: a change of government, multiparty elections, and the end of communism.”
The protesters were met by uniformed and plainclothes police officers, who bundled hundreds of demonstrators – many of them violent – into police cars. Youths tore up paving slabs and hurled them at police; police used pepper spray and beat protesters with truncheons.
One policeman, hit on the head with a cobblestone, was sped away in a car that nearly ran over a protester.
…
A game of cat and mouse ensued, where young anti-government protesters tried to occupy iconic parts of the capital, only to be blocked off by older government supporters, state security and the army.
Aylin Guerrero, 52, was one of thousands who came out to support the government, in central Havana. “We are the people and we have come out to support our conquests”, she said, surrounded by thousands of government supporters some bearing wooden clubs. “Even if we’re not communists, we’re patriots.”
..
The protests were concentrated in Havana’s more impoverished municipalities. The underlying grievance of those interviewed was longstanding scarcity and privation.
Cubans are living through the gravest economic crisis the country has known for 30 years. The Trump administration hammered the island with more than 200 new sanctions aimed at sabotaging the island’s’ economy and stirring discontent, measures that have so far been left untouched by the Biden administration.
Police initially trailed behind as protesters chanted “Freedom,” “Enough” and “Unite”.
Cuba is going through its worst economic crisis in decades, along with a resurgence of coronavirus cases, as it suffers the consequences of US sanctions imposed by the Trump administration.
An official in the Biden administration tweeted support for Sunday’s demonstrations.
“Peaceful protests are growing in #Cuba as the Cuban people exercise their right to peaceful assembly to express concern about rising COVID cases/deaths & medicine shortages. We commend the numerous efforts of the Cuban people mobilising donations to help neighbours in need,” tweeted Julie Chung, acting assistant secretary for state for Western Hemisphere affairs.
There is a lot more detail from Spanish speakers and those who know the region about protests across the country.
German election officials exclude small communist party (DKP), and Pogo anarchists from September vote.
DKP in the Streets (Der Spiegel).
On Thursday, the committee ruled that a number of parties would be excluded from this year’s vote.
They included the German Communist Party, known by its German acronym the DKP.
It would be the first time since it was founded in 1968 that it was not allowed to compete in the Bundestag election.
In 2017, the DKP picked up a total of around 11,500 votes nationwide, not enough for a seat. The Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany (MLDP) was more successful with almost 30,000 votes, but still fell miles short of the hurdle to enter parliament. German socialist votes tend to go towards the more moderate Left party (die Linke), which secured 9.2% of the 2017 vote.
Another fringe party that missed out was the the Anarchistic Pogo Party of Germany, or AAPD, which took part in the 1998 election with the promise to pay voters with free beer.
Running with a slogan “work is s***,” election officials also rejected their application to stand because it had only been submitted electronically.
Their relaxed reaction.
..
But the South Schleswig Voters’ Association, or SSW, had more luck.
The party represents the Danish-speaking minority in Schleswig-Holstein, northern Germany, close to the border with Denmark.
Once a party has been approved by the election committee, there is another hurdle to surmount to get on the ballot paper in September.
Parties now need a maximum of 500 supporter signatures for Germany’s state electoral lists, and just 50 for district nominations.
Spiegel on line:
DKP wird nicht zur Wahl zugelassen – und vermutet politische Motive
DKP is not allowed to vote – and suspects political motives.
For the first time since its founding, the DKP will probably not be allowed to take part in the federal election. The chairman wants to take action against the decision. The Anarchist Pogo Party is also angry about their rejection.
..
What happened? The federal electoral committee found on Thursday that the DKP had lost its legal status as a party. The reason given for the decision was that the Communist Party, which was founded in 1968, had always delayed the required financial statements over the past six years and had not submitted them within the legally prescribed deadline. The reports would not have met the minimum legal requirements.
Deadlines are deadlines,” said Federal Returning Officer Georg Thiel. The DKP and other parties would have been made aware of the shortcomings in their reports long beforehand. Other parties quickly submitted reports.
The Communist Party of Britain in the ‘People’s Daily’ the Morning Star, wholly independent of the CPB and owned by the co-op stands up for the DKP, as the CPB always does for everybody whose democratic rights are threatened, from China, onwards.
Communist Party of Britain general secretary Rob Griffiths sent a message of solidarity to the DKP, paying tribute to its courage in speaking out against “the increasing militarisation of the EU and its interlock with Nato.
“The ban constitutes a blow to the democratic freedom of all Germans and a blow to the whole international communist movement worldwide. It must be condemned by all who value democracy,” Mr Griffiths said.
German Communist Party (Deutsche Kommunistische Partei, DKP)
The DKP received national public attention in early 2008 when Christel Wegner, elected to the state parliament of Lower Saxony on the list of the Left Party as the first DKP member of a state parliament, allegedly endorsed the Berlin Wall, the Stasi and other aspects of the East German state in an interview. This caused embarrassment to the national Left Party leadership.[2] Despite denying that she made the controversial statements (at least in the form that was reported) she was expelled from the Left Party faction a few days later.
The DKP ended its observer status in the Party of the European Left on 27 February 2016.
Election Results. Bundestag.
Anti-Labour Morning Star Touts Chris Williamson and the Grayzone.
Chris Williamson: Top Morning Star Commentator and Leading Red-Browner.
Even for Williamson this is a new low:
British foreign policy – cui bono?
Questions remain unanswered over the government-funded Integrity Initiative. What have ministers got to hide, asks CHRIS WILLIAMSON
Just take a gander at this drivel!
A group of EU remainiac MPs refuse to believe that the British people willingly voted to leave the European Union.
Instead, they are insisting that it was all Russia’s fault. These jokers are so obsessed with this fanciful notion that they are taking the government to court for not launching an inquiry.
They are incapable of acknowledging that people rejected the EU’s neoliberal project and want something better. Something that serves the interests of the people instead of the elites.
The tout continues,
That was the political programme of the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and it precipitated the very British coup that deposed him, in which those same parliamentarians participated.
The fourth estate, and the deep state, were deployed to crush the Corbyn project. A project that defied the neoliberal consensus and prioritised peace and disarmament over war and arms sales — in short, a project that challenged the imperialist status quo, and that was unconscionable to the powerful vested interests behind the coup.
Mouth froths as Williamson sips his quinoa tea,
The plot was disclosed in a series of documents that were leaked earlier this year.
Max Blumenthal broke the story in the Grayzone, and investigative journalist Kit Klarenberg also covered the scandal.
They revealed that the Reuters Foundation, and BBC Media Action, were engaged in a covert information warfare campaign.
These supposedly impartial media giants were working alongside intelligence contractors known as “the Consortium.”
The project was overseen by a mysterious FCO department called Counter Disinformation and Media Development.
It ran a series of training programmes for Russian journalists to produce an “attitudinal change in the participants.”
I had raised the FCO’s shady shenanigans in the House of Commons through a series of oral and written questions.
I was particularly interested to find out more about why the government was bankrolling the Integrity Initiative, which has received millions of pounds in public money.
This supposed charity was established by the Institute for Statecraft to counter Russian disinformation.
But I was stonewalled at every turn by ministers citing national security for their reticence.
My persistence seemed to upset the Foreign Office Minister, Alan Duncan.
He referred to me in his recently published diaries, when he wrote the following revealing passage: “It’s all being pushed by the odious Chris Williamson, the hard-left Labour MP who’s probably the most hated man in Parliament.”
What an accolade! Given the calibre of our present parliamentarians, I would be more concerned if he had said I was the most liked man in Parliament.
Which brings me back to the question I posed at the beginning — whose interests does British foreign policy serve?
If more of us started asking that question, policy-makers would find it impossible to justify the existing status quo.
Chris Williamson was MP for Derby North from 2010-15 and 2017-19.
This is the stripe of the man these days:
This tout has form:
Tony Greenstein Facing Bankruptcy.
Greenstein and Comrades.
Tea-leaf Tony has been up before the Beak again.
Tony Greenstein loses appeal over being called a ‘notorious antisemite’
The Court of Appeal throws out appeal by the anti-Zionist activist, brought after he unsuccessfully attempted to sue Campaign Against Antisemitism for libel.
A Jewish anti-Zionist activist who was ordered to pay £68,000 after unsuccessfully suing for libel after being called a “notorious antisemite” has now lost an appeal.
Tony Greenstein lost his defamation claim against Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) in November last year, after a court ruled they were entitled to call him an antisemite.
Greenstein – who was expelled by Labour – has now lost an appeal meaning he now owes increased costs of a total of £81,854, according to CAA.
“Three Lord and Lady Justices sitting at the Court of Appeal have dismissed an appeal by Tony Greenstein against aspects of a High Court ruling, deciding in favour of Campaign Against Antisemitism,” said the group.
“The High Court had struck out Mr Greenstein’s libel claims against us, ruling that it was permissible for us to call him a “notorious antisemite” in articles on our website, in an example of litigation humiliatingly backfiring.”
Greenstein had appealed on grounds that the CAA’s references to his spent convictions was made in malice, a claim which was rejected by the Court of Appeal.
Judges ruled that among other reasons it was acceptable to include the spent convictions because “the law has long recognised that it is only fair for someone to know the character of a person who is attacking the character of another.”
Bankruptcy proceedings have been issued against Greenstein by the group, which is seeking permission from the High Court for officials to seize his assets and pay the court costs from them.
A hearing is due on July 14.
Last month, Jewish News reported how a Labour councillor had been forced to fundraise £20,000 to pay costs incurred after successfully defending a libel claim made by Greenstein.
The anti-Zionist activist had accused ex-Cllr Josh Jones of calling him a Holocaust denier, a claim which was struck out because it had no reasonable chance of success.
Talk about taking a bleeding liberty!
The barrack room lawyer loses a case and it’s the bloke he lost against who has to pay his expenses!
Those who know the full backstory behind Tea-leaf Tony’s career will not be surprised.
…..
The dapper gent’s latest scuffle with the law is being widely reported.
Notorious Antisemite Tony Greenstein Facing Bankruptcy. David Lange
Three Lord and Lady Justices sitting at the Court of Appeal have dismissed an appeal by Tony Greenstein against aspects of a High Court ruling, deciding in favour of Campaign Against Antisemitism.
The High Court had struck out Mr Greenstein’s libel claims against us, ruling that it was permissible for us to call him a “notorious antisemite” in articles on our website, in an example of litigation humiliatingly backfiring.
Mr Greenstein’s attempt to appeal our successful defence over references to him as a “notorious antisemite” failed earlier this year when the Court of Appeal refused him permission to appeal. They did, however, allow him a hearing to argue that his claim that Campaign Against Antisemitism’s reference in one of the articles to his string of spent criminal convictions was made out of malice. That appeal has now been dismissed as well.
The Court of Appeal’s decision adds to Mr Greenstein’s financial woes. The High Court had ordered Mr Greenstein to pay £67,886 to Campaign Against Antisemitism, of which £10,000 had stayed pending the outcome of the appeal. Now that the appeal has been dismissed, the £10,000 is now payable, along with £13,968 of additional costs relating to the failed appeal, making a total of £81,854.
Mr Greenstein now faces being made bankrupt at a hearing on 14th July after he failed to comply with a court order to send us payment, leading us to petition the High Court to appoint an Official Receiver in Insolvency to take control of Mr Greenstein’s assets and pay our costs from them.
Link to the Judgement:
THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE QUEEN’S BENCH DIVISION
(MEDIA & COMMUNICATIONS LIST)
The Honourable Mrs Justice Tipples
[2020] EWHC 2951 (QB)
Before :
LORD JUSTICE POPPLEWELL
LORD JUSTICE DINGEMANS
and
LADY JUSTICE CARR – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Between :
TONY GREENSTEIN Appellant
- and –
CAMPAIGN AGAINST ANTISEMITISM Respondent
A ‘Notorious Anti-Semite’ who gets published on these sites.
People might suggest that these ‘news’ outlets have lost any semblance of authority they have by publishing politically bankrupt Greenstein.
Communist Party of Great Britain (M-L) (now cadres of Galloway’s party) on “heroic and self-sacrificing” 9/11 Murderers.
Marxist update (2011)
Via this, (John will provide his own article, which promises to be interesting).
Two statements from the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist). For the sake of clarity, I need to point out that the CPGB(ML) did not exist in 2001, but the statements carried in Lalkar at the time are in complete continuity with the thinking of the party to be founded in 2004.
Extract, from,
The Significance of the September 11th Events
Heroic fighters for national liberation
Those who flew the planes into the Pentagon and the twin towers of the WTC, far from being terrorists pure and simple, whom every educated philistine and stupid yokel from the imperialist countries denounces without much thought, were actually some of the most heroic and self-sacrificing representatives of the national liberation movement of the Arab peoples. Their actions were a continuation, and an extension, of the vibrant national liberation struggle of the Arab peoples.
These actions were greeted with limitless jubilation by the masses, not only in the Middle East but also in the vast continents of Asia, Africa and Latin America, notwithstanding the contrary condemnatory statements of the heads of state and governments in these countries who dare not speak the truth for fear of provoking retaliation from the almighty, and yet so vulnerable, US imperialism.
As a result, far from revealing themselves as a tiny clique of conspirators or senseless maniacs, whose actions aroused no sympathy among the masses, they have shown themselves to be the ardent champions of national liberation and irreconcilable enemies of imperialist plunder and oppression, whose actions are an inspiration to tens of millions of people in the Middle East and beyond, who are already actively participating in their respective countries in the movements aimed at expelling imperialism and removing its stooges.
Note: the Deputy Leader of the Workers Party of Britain (leader George Galloway) , Jodi Brar is also the Vice-Chair of the CPGB (M-L) and the daughter of the leading figure of Lakkar and the CPGB (M-L) behind this obscenity, Harpal Brar.
Introducing the Workers Party
LEADER: George Galloway :: Deputy leader: Joti Brar
The establishment of the Workers Party, with the anti-imperialist and socialist politician George Galloway at its head, can provide inspiration to those who, like himself, find themselves politically homeless or desire to put their talents, creativity and energies at the service of the working class.
We reject a future of parasitism where the British people, through the operation of the City of London, degenerate into an unemployed feckless rump living off cheap imported food and the plastic-electronic consumables of global capitalist anarchy
Update, John has now written this:
George Galloway, the CPGB(ML) and 9/11.
Afghanistan: Women Bearing Arms March in Defiance of the Taliban.
The Stop the War Coalition, a long-standing opponent of Western Intervention, claimed that this withdrawal was ‘hushed up’. In a statement on the 2nd of July they went through the damage wrought. They expressed no solidarity with those who now risk being brought under the boot of the Taliban.
DEFEAT AND HUMILIATION: THE HUSHED-UP END TO THE US’S LONGEST WAR
This weekend marks the humiliating end of one of the most disastrous wars the western powers have ever fought. For twenty years US and British troops, later joined by NATO allies, have occupied Afghanistan claiming to be forces of liberation against the Taliban.
This weekend the western forces are pulling out.
For Afghans, the US/UK invasion was one more foreign intervention in decades of occupation. As we in the anti-war movement predicted when Bush and Blair took the decision to invade, the result was a disaster for ordinary Afghans. Though no accurate records have been kept, hundreds of thousands have died as a result of the fighting.
instead of covering up or making excuses for this defeat, our politicians should be apologising first to the Afghans, and then to their own people for a catastrophic folly that has made the world a much more unstable and dangerous place. We in the anti-war movement must ensure that nothing like this can happen again.
Instead of covering up or making excuses for this defeat, our politicians should be apologising first to the Afghans, and then to their own people for a catastrophic folly that has made the world a much more unstable and dangerous place. We in the anti-war movement must ensure that nothing like this can happen again.
Socialist Worker is worried that the US may launch future attacks on the Taliban
Many now agree with Dannatt and predict a new civil war between various warlords and the Taliban.
It’s a horrifying prospect for people who have known nothing but brutal conflict since the Russian occupation that began in 1979.
But for Biden, the last moves have not yet been played.
The CIA is now in negotiations with the Pakistani government to reopen a US airbase once used for drone attacks on Afghanistan.
This is despite Pakistan kicking out the Americans in 2011, and the country’s ISI secret service being the main backers of the Taliban.
US diplomats are also exploring the option of regaining access to bases in former Soviet republics that once were used for Russia’s Afghanistan war.
Yet this time around, there will be no boots on the ground.
In order to “liberate” Afghanistan, Biden will now rely solely on missiles launched on the territory from military bases thousands of miles away.
People in the country are also worried at the fight between war-lords, but that the Taliban will take over.
“The Taliban are now notorious for their human rights abuses. The group emerged in 1994 after years of conflict. Many of their members were former Mujahideen fighter who had been trained in Pakistan during Afghanistan’s civil war in the ’80s and ’90s. They came together with the aim of making Afghanistan an Islamic state. The Taliban ruled in Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001.”
Amnesty International
Under the Taliban, women and girls were discriminated against in many ways, for the ‘crime’ of being born a girl. The Taliban enforced their version of Islamic Sharia law. Women and girls were:
- Banned from going to school or studying
- Banned from working
- Banned from leaving the house without a male chaperone
- Banned from showing their skin in public
- Banned from accessing healthcare delivered by men (with women forbidden from working, healthcare was virtually inaccessible)
- Banned from being involved in politics or speaking publicly.
“During the five-year history of the Islamic Emirate, the Taliban regime interpreted the Sharia in accordance with the Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence and the religious edicts of Mullah Omar.[1] The Taliban forbade pork and alcohol, many types of consumer technology such as music,[1] television,[1] and film,[1] as well as most forms of art such as paintings or photography,[1] male and female participation in sport,[1] including football and chess;[1] recreational activities such as kite-flying and keeping pigeons or other pets were also forbidden, and the birds were killed according to the Taliban’s ruling.[1] Movie theaters were closed and repurposed as mosques.[1] Celebration of the Western and Iranian New Year was forbidden.[1] Taking photographs and displaying pictures or portraits was forbidden, as it was considered by the Taliban as a form of idolatry.[1] Women were banned from working,[1] girls were forbidden to attend schools or universities,[1] were requested to observe purdah and to be accompanied outside their households by male relatives; those who violated these restrictions were punished.[1] Men were forbidden to shave their beards and required to let them grow and keep them long according to the Taliban’s liking, and to wear turbans outside their households.[1][24] Communists were systematically executed. Prayer was made compulsory and those who did not respect the religious obligation after the azaan were arrested.[1] Gambling was banned,[1] and thieves were punished by amputating their hands or feet.[1] In 2000, the Taliban leader Mullah Omar officially banned opium cultivation and drug trafficking in Afghanistan;[1][25][26] the Taliban succeeded in nearly eradicating the majority of the opium production (99%) by 2001.[25][26][27] Under the Taliban governance of Afghanistan, both drug users and dealers were severely prosecuted.[1]
The US, which helped fund the Taliban’s Islamist predecessor, the Mujahideen, as a force to defeat the pro-Soviet Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA), and troops from the USSR, is guilty of having wreaked havoc in Afghanistan. The Saudis have their own responsibilities, “The Taliban, or “students” in the Pashto language, emerged in the early 1990s in northern Pakistan following the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. It is believed that the predominantly Pashtun movement first appeared in religious seminaries – mostly paid for by money from Saudi Arabia – which preached a hardline form of Sunni Islam.” “Afghans, weary of the mujahideen’s excesses and infighting after the Soviets were driven out, generally welcomed the Taliban when they first appeared on the scene. Their early popularity was largely due to their success in stamping out corruption, curbing lawlessness and making the roads and the areas under their control safe for commerce to flourish.”
The attention of the world was drawn to the Taliban in Afghanistan in the wake of the 11 September 2001 World Trade Center attacks in New York. The Taliban were accused of providing a sanctuary for the prime suspects – Osama Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda movement.
On October 7, 2001, a US-led military coalition launched attacks in Afghanistan, and by the first week of December the Taliban regime had collapsed. The group’s then-leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, and other senior figures, including Bin Laden, evaded capture despite one of the largest manhunts in the world.
This history (Who are the Taliban? concludes,
Having outlasted a superpower through two decades of war, the Taliban began seizing vast swathes of territory, threatening to once again topple a government in Kabul in the wake of a foreign power withdrawing.
The group is thought to now be stronger in numbers than at any point since they were ousted in 2001 – with up to 85,000 full time fighters, according to recent Nato estimates. Their control of territory is harder to estimate, as districts swing back and forth between them and government forces, but recent estimates put it somewhere between a third and a fifth of the country.
The advance is more rapid than many had feared. General Austin Miller, the commander of the US-led mission in Afghanistan, warned in June that the country could be on a path towards a chaotic civil war, which he called a “concern for the world”.
A US intelligence assessment the same month reportedly concluded that the Afghan government could fall within six months of the American military departure.
Neither Counterfire (who lead the StWC) nor the SWP have learnt anything from their failure to offer an independent stand on the war in Afghanistan. They have concentrated all their fire on attacking the Western coalition, and have few words left over to criticise the armed Islamistes and their totalitarian history and project. These ‘anti-imperialists’ have no strategy on how the reactionaries, the Taliban and other jihadists, may be fought or any idea of what forces the left might give concrete help to.
Armed Afghan women take to streets in show of defiance against Taliban
Women in north and central regions of country stage demonstrations as militants make sweeping gains nationwide by Emma Graham-Harrison in Kabul
Women have taken up guns in northern and central Afghanistan, marching in the streets in their hundreds and sharing pictures of themselves with assault rifles on social media, in a show of defiance as the Taliban make sweeping gains nationwide.
One of the biggest demonstrations was in central Ghor province, where hundreds of women turned out at the weekend, waving guns and chanting anti-Taliban slogans.
They are not likely to head to the frontlines in large numbers any time soon, because of both social conservatism and lack of experience. But the public demonstrations, at a time of urgent threat from the militants, are a reminder of how frightened many women are about what Taliban rule could mean for them and their families.
The article is thorough.
It concludes,
The Ghor provincial governor, Abdulzahir Faizzada, said in a phone interview that some of the women who came out in the streets of Firozkoh, the provincial capital, had already battled the Taliban, and most had endured violence from the group.
“The majority of these women were those who had recently escaped from Taliban areas. They have already been through war in their villages, they lost their sons and brothers, they are angry,” he said. Faizzada added that he would train women who did not have experience with weapons, if the government in Kabul approved it.
The Taliban’s conservative rules are particularly unwelcome in Ghor, where women traditionally wear headscarves rather than covering themselves fully with the burqa, and work in fields and villages beside their men, Parastish said.
The Taliban have banned women even from taking care of animals or working the land in areas of Ghor they control, she added. They have closed girls schools, ordered women not to leave home without a male guardian and even banned them from gathering for weddings, saying only men should attend.
Women from these areas were among those who marched. “More than a dozen women have escaped from Allahyar in Shahrak district last week and came to us and asked for guns to go and fight for their lands and freedom. The same situation is in Charsadda region,” Parastish said.
“Women said: ‘We are getting killed and injured without defending ourselves, why not fight back?’ They were telling us that at least two women were in labour in their region, with no medical things around and they couldn’t come with them.”
For now, she said, the main thing holding the women back was the men in power. “The governor said there is no need for us now and they will let us know.”
…….
Instead of gloating at the US and allied failure we should explore ways of giving solidarity to this resistance.
Workers Party of Britain aims to build Red-Brown Base in Batley and Spen.
Galloway’s Core Cadres; the CPGB (M-L).
From Yorkshire Live.
Defeated Batley & Spen by-election candidate George Galloway is understood to be setting up a base in the area in order to fight next year’s local elections.
Campaign manager for Mr Galloway, James Giles, said support was growing and that the party was intending to set up groups across the country “from Penzance to the Shetland Islands”.
The Workers Party is also embroiled in a legal tussle over the by-election and is seeking to have the result set aside. Mr Giles said it was hoping to have the case heard in the High Court.
””
Locals who lived through what has been described as a bitter and divisive by-election period say Mr Galloway’s support is actually drifting away.
One said: “It was like a frenzy during the by-election but people are now realising that they’ve been taken for a ride.
“It’s only after Galloway lost that people came to their senses. A lot are now questioning the whole thing.
“They’re leaving in droves. Support is dwindling. People feel they made a mistake.”
Who are the real cadres of the Workers Party of Britain?
Joti Brar@joti2gazaAnti-imperialist, scientific socialist, truthseeker, mum. Workers of the world, unite; we have a world to win! @WorkersPartyGB@CPGBMLhttp://t.me/JotiBrar
The Deputy Leader of the WPB and daughter of the former Dear Leader r of the CPBML, Harpal Brar who is now herself also the Dear Leader of the of CPB (M-L)
Galloway and the CPGB-ML: notes on a romance
Extract)
…..the CPGB-ML, if it has inherited anything from its patriarch, should not be dismissed as a mere nothing. Even though the formation of another pure Stalinist sect in 2004 was of no significance to the strategic woes of the revolutionary left, it was reasonably astute to form the CPGB-ML in 2004 in order to mop up what remained of the old ‘anti-revisionist’ communist milieu in the face of the terminal decline of older organisations such as the New Communist Party, the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) and the Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist). Also, the Morning Star’s CPB had started to become more agnostic, at least in public, on issues such as Stalin’s legacy, which annoyed some of its members. By contrast, the CPGB-ML is defiantly unambiguous in praising Stalin’s Soviet Union, in a manner that echoes the personality cults of the 1930s and 1940s. Allied to this, the CPGB-ML is clearly a well-disciplined, well-financed, ‘cadre’ organisation that punches beyond its weight in terms of the money and commitment it gets from its members. It has obviously recruited younger members in some numbers, although there has recently been some internal controversy around the issues of identity politics and transsexual rights that I’m not qualified to comment on.
The Communists
Communist party of great britain (marxist-leninist)
In the above organ of the ‘party’ they publish this statement,
The following statement was issued by the Workers Party of Britain on 27 April 2021.
*****
The Workers Party of Britain is opposed to the mandatory use of identity card documents, or digital applications, linked to personal medical information, in this instance Covid status, either by proof of vaccination or recent test result.
Workers Party statement: No to Covid passports
It is hard to tell their exact weight within the WPB, although as a centralised group they clearly play a greater role than mere foot-soldiers. The mix of ‘anti-imperialism’, nationalism, right wing cultural views, odd bits of libertarianism, and sovereigntist ideology masquerading as socialism is a characteristic of many other red-brown confusionniste groups.
On the far-right GB News:
After Marine Le Pen’s Regional Election Setback the Rassemblement National Retrenches.
Marine Le Pen gets re-elected to lead France’s far-right National Rally
Marine Le Pen won re-election as head of France’s far-right National Rally Sunday at a party congress, where she is seeking new impetus for her 2022 presidential bid after performing badly in regional polls.
The National Rally (RN), which had been tipped for strong gains in last month’s regional elections, was left floundering after failing to win any of the 13 regions in mainland France.
The results raised questions about Le Pen’s strategy of trying to detoxify her party’s brand and position it as a more mainstream right-wing force.
But she faced no challenge for the party leadership, with her quest for a fourth term winning the backing of 98.35 percent of members in an online and postal ballot, RN announced on the second day of its congress in the southern city of Perpignan.
Note (there was some pretty good coverage in the British press, this is from the Guardian)
In the run-up to the elections to mainland France’s 13 regional governments, the leader of the far-right RN party was confident of capturing three or even five regions, with pre-vote polls giving her party a first-round lead in six.
In the end, she failed to win one. The RN’s highest hopes were for the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region that includes Marseille and Nice, but its candidate, Thierry Mariani, managed only 43%, against 57% for the centre-right’s Renaud Muselier.
The party’s usually reliable voters failed to turn out; candidates, including Mariani, recruited from the mainstream right in an attempt to broaden its appeal performed dismally; and in many areas the RN fared markedly worse than last time.
The conference marked therefore an electoral setback in the campaign to ‘de-diabolise’ the RN. But Marine le Pen announced its conclusion there would no going back to the days of the Front National, the close of the 17th Congress of the RN, the presidential candidate repeated her plan to “implement a government of national unity” in 2022. The underperformance of her party at the regional level had (still) prevented the dynamic of “opening” on the right that she thought they had begun. Congrès du RN : «Nous ne reviendrons pas au FN», Marine Le Pen le jure.
The below reminds us of their limits: the number of their elected representatives.
| Députés | 6 / 577 |
|---|---|
| Sénateurs | 1 / 348 |
| Députés européens | 21 / 79 |
| Conseillers régionaux | 252 / 1758 |
| Conseillers départementaux | 26 / 4108 |
| Maires de communes de plus de 30 000 habitants | 2 / 279 |
In case anybody thinks that the French National Populist RN is a ‘normal’ party, and not something resembling the fringes of Trumpism, the Brexit Party Spiked and the Tory Party’s ‘anti-woke’ Common Sense group here is a key note speech at the Conference,
Sébastien Chenu criticises Jean-Paul Sartre at the Rassemblement national congress
Le Monde.
The deputy of the North explained in a speech, Saturday July 3 in Perpignan, why, according to him, the philosopher “was wrong about everything”.
After fifteen rather classic minutes, during which the speaker declared, after the Italian communist philosopher Antonio Gramsci: “the fight that we lead is a cultural battle before being a political fight” ……….(note added) he went into this rant, worthy of Brendan O’Neill or Frank Furedi.
The sickness, for Sébastien Chenu, dates back to May 68, and in particular to… Jean-Paul Sartre, around whom he drew an unpublished portrait, but perfectly in line with the thought of the extreme right. “Since 1968, the thought of Jean-Paul Sartre ha circulated and influenced all intellectuals, academics, and he media” , began the deputy. The great French philosopher (1905-1980) is for him “the man of all errors, of all blindness” , and not the least: “He is the one who hated the people at the time of the Popular Front, the one who loved the Germans at the time of the Occupation, he wrote it moreover with Simone de Beauvoir, they were fascinated by these events, declared Sébastien Chenu. This is the man who hated de Gaulle and who preferred dictators like Mao, like Stalin. It is the one who made Mitterrand vote in 1981, it is the one who is alongside Ayatollah Khomeini when he was hosted in France. We can still see that this intellectual has planted everything. “
Details on the allied currents now integrated into the RN, Hervé Juvin, of the Parti localiste, and Thierry Mariani, of, La Droite populaire, and a loss of influence of the openly ‘identarian’ individuals in this article:
A Perpignan, au congrès du RN, Marine Le Pen verrouille le parti avant la présidentielle
La députée du Pas-de-Calais a été réélue triomphalement, dimanche, à la tête de la formation d’extrême droite. Son numéro deux, Jordan Bardella, assurera l’intérim pendant la campagne pour l’Elysée.
Allies:
Official account of the European Political Party Identity & Democracy – #IDParty
th European Parliament[edit]
| Country | National party | European party | MEPs | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Austria | Freedom Party of Austria Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ) | ID Party | 3 / 19 | |
 Belgium | Flemish Interest Vlaams Belang (VB) | ID Party | 3 / 21 | |
 Czech Republic | Freedom and Direct Democracy[19] Svoboda a přímá demokracie (SPD) | ID Party | 2 / 21 | |
 Denmark | Danish People’s Party Dansk Folkeparti (DF) | None | 1 / 14 | |
 Estonia | Conservative People’s Party of Estonia Eesti Konservatiivne Rahvaerakond (EKRE) | ID Party | 1 / 7 | |
 Finland | Finns Party Perussuomalaiset (PS) | None | 2 / 14 | |
 France | National Rally Rassemblement national (RN) | ID Party | 23 / 79 | |
 Germany | Alternative for Germany Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) | None | 10 / 96 | |
 Italy | League Lega | ID Party | 25 / 76 | |
 Netherlands | Party for Freedom Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV) | None |
Chris Williamson Goes Mad: “Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) has been colonised by Zionists, apologists for Zionism and cowards.”
Red Brown Front, (2019), “Chris Williamson MP hanging out with George Galloway and Lee Stranahan (currently Sputnik, formerly Breitbart).
Trigger warning: Greenstein attacks just everybody from Socialist Action, Emily Thornberry, to Jeremy Corbyn in this stream of consciousness rant.
Jeremy Corbyn
Corbyn himself is an example of the poverty of PSC’s politics. He was extremely close to PSC’s leadership. He attended every AGM for a decade or so. He was PSC’s human rights ambassador but he simply mouthed 2 state platitudes. PSC never provided him with any explanation of Zionism.
I knew Jeremy well in the early 1980s when I was Chair of the Labour Movement Campaign on Palestine. He was a sponsor. Our motion to the Labour Party conference in 1982 supporting a Democratic Secular State in Palestine passed. Jeremy chaired the Labour Movement Conference on Palestine which called for the disaffiliation of Poale Zion (JLM).
Background to the man they call the Vegan Lord Voldemort.
Following his resignation from the Labour Party in 2019, Chris Williamson initiated The Resistance Movement, with the stated aim of fighting for change and social justice for allAn international conference, titled The Resist Festival and featuring Lowkey, Noam Chomsky, Max Blumenthal and speakers from the French Yellow vests movement, was planned for June 2020 but postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic The Resistance Movement also has a YouTube channel, Resistance TV.
Labour in Exile.
Video: Not the Forde Enquiry (June 5 2021)
Testifying to the inquiry were:
- Jackie Walker
- Chris Williamson
- Graham Bash
- Leah Levane
- Tina Werkmann
- Rebecca Massey
- Kevin Bean
- Greg Hadfield and many many more
- The inquiry also heard a special message from film director Ken Loach
Some of his mates:
German Greens Face Leadership Crisis.
Car Parks into Parks.- German Green Poster.
Earlier this year it was widely said that across Europe the Greens were the future, including the future of the left.
Greens are taking hold all over England and Wales. Greens have record results this year:
- Highest ever vote in London with 3 Greens elected to the London Assembly
- Highest ever Senedd Cymru Green vote share at the regional level
- More Green Councillors on more Councils than ever before at the English local elections.
Some notable highlights:
- Greens in first place across Bristol West and Sheffield Central constituencies
- Gained representation on 18 councils, bringing the total tally of councils with Green representation to 141.
- Gained 99 seats – now 445 councillors across England and Wales
- Won 24 seats on Bristol City Council – now joint largest party with Labour.
Now with the Green Party in England and Wales facing deep internal crises, notably over Trans rights, it looks like the biggest Green hope in Europe is stumbling.
BERLIN, Aug 8 (Reuters) – The co-leader of Germany’s Greens on Sunday defended the party’s candidate for chancellor at next month’s federal election, and brushed off suggestions that he should replace her after she made a string of costly mistakes.
The ecologists briefly surged in the polls to overtake Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc after they named Annalena Baerbock as their chancellor candidate in April, but have since waned.
Baerbock’s error-strewn campaign has included mistakes in her resume and a scandal over a Christmas bonus payment that she failed to declare to parliament. Baerbock has also said that sexist scrutiny is holding her back. read more
“Ms Baerbock is suitable for the office of chancellor, and our task is to ensure that the Greens are strong,” the party’s co-leader, Robert Habeck, told broadcaster ZDF in an interview.
Adding to the Greens’ woes, the party will be excluded from the ballot in the state of Saarland in the Sept. 26 national election due to irregularities in the selection of regional candidates following internal squabbling.
“The Greens campaign had a few problems but … I’m looking forward to August and September,” said Habeck, who is party co-leader with Baerbock. “Everything is possible.”
An opinion poll published earlier on Sunday showed the left-leaning Social Democrats (SPD) drawing level with the Greens on 18%, behind Merkel’s conservatives on 26%.
POLITICO. reports.
Germany’s Green party will be excluded from the ballot in the state of Saarland during September’s national election, the country’s federal election committee decided Thursday, citing irregularities in how the party ranked its candidates.
The decision came after an internal fight over the nomination of the regional lead candidate. In a controversial last-minute move, the party switched its lead candidate from Hubert Ulrich to Jeanne Dillschneider. Several party members complained about irregularities in the nomination process.
Regional election administrator Monika Zöllner said the Greens had “violated democratic principles,” according to a statement.
They at present trying a sustained fight-back for the Septmeber elections.
The French Greens, Europe Ecologie les Verts (EELV) are holding a primary election for members to selecte their candidate for next year’s presidential election. They do not appear to wish for agreements with the main other parties on the left.
Présidentielle 2022 : la primaire écologiste lancée à quatre candidats
Delphine Batho, Yannick Jadot, Sandrine Rousseau et Eric Piolle se sont réunis à Paris, lundi, pour lancer le processus d’investiture de la famille écologiste.
Yannick Jadot a MEP, is the best known of the candidates. He is the favourite to win their internal elections, promising a wider appeal to the left (but with no detail on agreements with parties like the Socialists and Communists. or Mélenchon’s Rally La France Insoumise). The Mayor of Grenoble Éric Piolle, who leads an alliance that runs the large town talks of building a similar broad ‘arc humaniste’.
Opinion polls give Jadot between 7% and 10% of the vote.
A such polls demonstrate, it is mathematically impossible on present evidence for them, or any left candidate, to win the second round, or indeed get a good score in the first election round for the left. Agreements and alliances look, for the moment not to be happening. One can only remark that the EELV are another contributing factor to the nationally fractured French left.
