Gonzalo Lira a Chilean Blogger from Kharkiv has Disappeared and his Life is in Danger from Ukraine’s Secret Police
Injustice Across Borders – Ugly Patel’s Racist Refugee Plan – BBC Bias – US Police Racism – Ukraine and Assange
George Galloway Appeal for Disappeared Ukrainian/Chilean Blogger Gonzalo Lira – the list of names below are those of ‘disappeared’ journalists in Ukraine – some of whom are feared to have been murdered by Ukraine’s Secret Police
A few days ago I watched a video interview by Zuby with Gonzalo, a Chilean blogger living in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second biggest city, describing conditions there and pouring scorn on the mainstream media’s narrative about how the Russians are war criminals.
In it he expressed his fear that he, like other bloggers, could disappear and said that the Ukrainian authorities were trying to locate him to silence him.
In the West the media portrays Ukraine as a normal western democracy but this is a lie. Its security forces have absorbed fascist militias like the Azov Battalion. All independent media have been shut down and recently all 11 left-wing parties, including the Opposition Platform for Life with 39 seats in the Ukrainian parliament were banned.
The Double Standards of our Rulers Knows No Limits
This Blog is slightly different from normal. I have decided to include a number of odds and ends, memes, graphics and videos. As I write blogs I accumulate a lot of interesting things which don’t merit a blog on their own (or for which I don’t have time).
Plus, despite my best attempts to avoid COVID, being immuno-compromised I have nonetheless caught it. I took 8 lateral flow tests in the past 3 days, four negative and four positive. But today a PCR result arrived confirming I have it.
However I have no symptoms or ailments (yet) so I may be lucky. Also I have had 4 jabs so I’m as prepared as anyone can be.
Nonetheless in the past week nearly 2,000 people have died, including on one day over 600 people from COVID. This high rate of death is directly due to the criminally negligent lifting of all restrictions by Boris Johnson in order to save his career. If we had an opposition then Labour’s leader might have laid into him because of this.
I should also say that the anti-vaxxers have a lot to answer for. Thousands of people died who might still be alive but for the fake information that was spread by conspiracy theorists like Piers Corbyn.
A fact check by the Poynter Institute showed that for people age 80 and over, the death rate among the unvaccinated was 156 per 100,000 — more than three times higher than 49.5 for the vaccinated.
The difference was highest among people aged 50 to 59 where the rate was 12.4 deaths per 100,000 among the unvaccinated, compared with 1.4 deaths among the vaccinated, i.e. more than 8 times higher.
End Israeli Apartheid – Scrap the IHRA Definition of Anti-Semitism
The Israel Lobby, which spearheaded Corbyn’s removal as Labour Party leader with anti-Semitism smears, has been focussing on UK universities, with the strong support of the Government.
How can we defeat this censorship campaign and go on the offensive against those who smear life-long anti-racists for the ‘crimes’ of supporting Palestinian freedom and opposing the political ideology of Zionism?
Meeting on UN Israel Anti-Apartheid Day
On March 19 we held a meeting on UN Anti-Racism Day, which was established to remember the massacre in 1960 at Sharpeville by South Africa’s Apartheid Police of 69 Black African demonstrators protesting against South Africa’s Pass Laws. The speakers were:
Ramzy Baroud Editor of the Palestine Chronicle. Ramzy has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist and author of several books. His latest book is These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons
Haim Bresheeth, Israeli academic and professor at the School of African and Oriental Studies is a filmmaker and photographer. He is the co-author of The Holocaust for Beginners and his latest book is An Army Like No Other for Verso.
David Miller set up the UK’s lobbying watchdog, Spinwatch, which has tracked corporate power for 15 years. Professor of Sociology who was dismissed by Bristol University after a massive Zionist and Establishment campaign against him headed by Caroline Lucas MP and racist Tory MPs such as Bob Blackman.
Huda Ammori – is of Palestinian and Iraqi descent, and an active campaigner against the military industrial complex and Israel’s apartheid regime. She is a co-founder of Palestine Action, a direct action network targeting Israel’s largest private arms company, Elbit Systems. PA’s achievements include the closure of Elbit’s Oldham factory.
Farid Esack is a professor at the University of Johannesburg, a writer, and political activist who was appointed by Nelson Mandela as a gender equity commissioner. He is a member of Africa for Palestine.
Tony Greenstein was the first Jewish person to be expelled as part of the ‘antisemitism’ witchhunt, a member of the Steering Committee of the SLN and a co-founder of PSC. He is bringing out a new book Zionism During the Holocaust which has already been condemned as ‘anti-Semitic’ without the Zionists having read a word!
The meeting explored the use of the IHRA Definition of anti-Semitism as a means to suppress free speech and action in solidarity with Palestine. It also looks at resistance to this effort to silence and suppress pro-Palestinian activism
Despite receiving an overwhelmingly positive response from those who have actually seen it, The Occupation of the American Mind has been repeatedly attacked and misrepresented by right-wing pressure groups and outright ignored by virtually all mainstream media outlets and North American film festivals. To bypass this campaign of misrepresentation and suppression, the film has been made available for FREE online so that people can make up their own minds about its analysis of U.S. media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Please watch and share widely!
Noam Chomsky: A Left response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine
Noam Chomsky isn’t a socialist but he is an anti-imperialist. Unfortunately much of the left such as the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty and Anti-Capitalist Resistance have abandoned anti-imperialism. Chomsky’s interview on Real News Media is a must if you want to learn the background to the invasion and the potential consequences.
It is a lesson in the reality of a world dominated by a war-mongering hegemon, the USA which has stoked and created the war in Ukraine.
Gaoled Ukrainian Blogger
You will have heard of the Russian law which imposes up to 15 years in prison for ‘fake’ information about the war. The mass media won’t let you forget Putin’s repression. But have you heard of the Ukrainian blogger Gleb Lyashenko who has been gaoled and is facing 15 years in prison?
No? That’s strange. I guess that the BBC and Guardian didn’t have room in between all their anti-Russian stories! The Morning Star reported that
The Galician District Court in Lviv jailed Gleb Lyashenko for 60 days pending trial for blaming Ukrainian political decisions for the Russian attack.
“For eight years Russia has been asking and even begging Ukraine to change its course. Ukraine has refused for eight years. And here is the result,” he wrote.
Gleb was referring to the Minsk agreement signed between Russia and Ukraine, which aimed to end conflict in the eastern Donbass region which erupted in 2014.
Ukrainian security forces accused Mr Lyashenko of being a “traitor who supported the criminal actions of the aggressor country.”
The Morning Star reported that:
The charges of treason were brought after President Volodomyr Zelensky banned all private TV stations, merging them into one state-controlled TV channel amid a broader crackdown on media.
He has been widely criticised for banning 11 left-wing and progressive parties.
Purges of the Ukrainian left have continued, with priests, communists and human rights defenders disappearing in a mirror image of Russia’s harsh crackdown on peace activists and critics of the war.
The fate of trade union leader Yuriy Bobchenko remains unknown nearly two weeks after he was abducted from his home in the east Ukrainian city of Krivoy Rog.
He is chair of the Trade Union of Metallurgists and Miners of Ukraine, an affiliate of global labour federation IndustriALL, at the city’s ArcelorMittal mine.
Gleb wrote:
“Zelensky was wrong. It has been years that the Russia has been asking us for a reasonable agreement, that is to stay out of the Nato. But there was no change of course. This is why our government takes orders from others, who use us Ukrainians for their purposes. The result was this absurd war.”
“All wars start with lies. But all wars can be stopped by the truth! “
Ugly Patel’s attempt to send asylum seekers to Rwanda is a blatant flouting of the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. If Ugly’s parents had not been admitted to Britain as refugees from Idi Amin in Uganda in 1973 we wouldn’t have this despicable racist at the Home Office.
Her scheme is not new. It was first tried in Israel when Netanyahu tried to get rid of its 40,000 Black African refugees who were guilty of two crimes – they were not Jewish and worse, they were Black.
As the International Refugee Rights Initiative reported in September 2015 after a study based on interviews with Sudanese and Eritrean refugees who had left Israel, any promises made today will be broken tomorrow. Their paper documented the experiences of asylum seekers who were subjected to Israel’s “voluntary departure” procedure.
It focused on the reasons they left Israel, their status in the receiving countries, Rwanda and also Uganda and the reasons they left these countries shortly after arriving in them.
Almost two thirds of the asylum seekers who left Israel with the assistance of Israel’s “voluntary return unit” did so as a result of their detention or upon receiving a detention order.
These asylum seekers were sent to Rwanda with a promise from the Israeli authorities that they would be provided with the necessary papers to enable them to stay legally in the receiving country.
Their findings were that,
‘in reality, they do not receive any legal status: they are left with no valid legal documents upon arrival and are either encouraged to leave these countries, live below the radar and without legal status, and/or hide the fact that they came from Israel.’
Whatever promises are made by Ugly will be broken. The experience from Israel is not promising. See Sent to Rwanda by Israel: ‘We have no food or work. Don’t come here’
Three years ago Netanyahu was defeated in his attempts to deport the refugees. Israeli pilots refused to fly the refugees out. This must be the reaction of British pilots. See The Other Israel Demonstrates that it hasn’t completely forgotten the lessons of the Holocaust and Judaism
Rwanda’s dictator Paul Kagame has ruled for over 20 years and shows no sign of stepping down. He runs a ruthless regime which is applauded in the West. It is no accident that he has agreed to a corrupt deal with Ugly Patel to take Britain’s Black asylum seekers. We can be sure that no White person will be sent to Rwanda. That is reserved for non-White and Black people. See How President Paul Kagame crushed Rwanda’s free press and Rwanda’s human rights record from genocide to torture – as UK plan to send asylum seekers
But what stopped Rwanda’s corrupt deal with Israel was the actions of asylum seekers themselves. They protested and demonstrated outside Rwanda’s Embassy in Israel. Kagame and his regime were embarrassed into retreating. They did it once and we can do it again.
There is limited purpose in protesting outside the Home Office though there is certainly a head of steam building up against Ugly’s scheme, even from within the Home Office. However crucial to ensuring this scheme does not go ahead will be pressure on Rwanda’s corrupt state. We should be picketing outside the Rwandan Embassy until they back down.
US POLICE RACISM – Cop arrested a man for not walking on a sidewalk
Joseph Davis from Terre Haute, Indiana, was arrested for not walking on a sidewalk. In Indiana there is a law that says if there is a sidewalk use it and don’t walk in the road. Fair enough you might think.
The only problem is that the road didn’t have a sidewalk. However that didn’t stop the racist cop from arresting him! He turned off his body camera and thought no one else was filming. The Police Accountability Report investigated and obtained body camera and dashcam video evidence that offered a rare glimpse into American law enforcement—evidence that not only contradicted the allegations made by the racist pig but that also revealed how difficult it is to escape the US’s law enforcement-industrial complex. Read the transcript of this interview. This is American justice and the pig involved will suffer no consequences.
The Origins of Ukraine’s Fascists & Why It Matters, w/ Historian Tarik Cyril Amar
For those who only discovered Ukraine two months ago, the fact that Ukrainian nationalism has been dangerously intertwined with fascism might sound like Russian propaganda. But is it?
How powerful is the Ukrainian far right? Are they really linked to Nazis? Why is the corporate-owned media denying this?
To place this war and the Ukrainian far-right in its historical context, Rania Khalek was joined by Tarik Cyril Amar, a historian from Germany, who is currently associate professor of history at Koc University, Istanbul.
18 months ago I took part in a picket of The Guardian over their shocking abandonment of Julian Assange. The only genuine journalist at the Guardian was its cartoonist, Steve Bell who was given notice that his contract was being ended. I was interviewed at the picket by Real Media.
Even worse Guardian ‘journalists’ like Luke Harding, an MI5 asset, penned demonstrably fake stories about Trump’s former election manager, Paul Manafort, having held secret talks with Assange in Ecuadorian embassy. There was no evidence whatsoever for this story.
All the evidence shows this was Black Propaganda. To this day the Guardian’s useless editor Kath Viner has refused to take the story down or substantiate it. There were CCTV cameras at the entrance to the Embassy as well as a signing in book. They provided no evidence for a fake story without legs.
The Guardian betrayed Assange even to the extent of making public a secret password which destroyed his careful work spent ensuring that no one would be hurt by its disclosures (though why he would want to protect CIA assets is another matter). The Guardian ran a series of front page exposes based on Assange’s revelations yet when he was incarcerated with false allegations of rape in Sweden the Guardian helped the prosecution.
‘Journalists’ on the Guardian did their best to undermine Assange when he was under attack. The despicable Suzanna Moore posted a tweet calling Assange a ‘flattened pigeon’ (possibly a reference to her hair style). George Monbiot refused to cover the issue at all. James Ball, a lightweight ‘journalist’ even by the Guardian’s standards wrote in January 2018 that:
‘The only barrier to Julian Assange leaving Ecuador’s embassy is pride – The WikiLeaks founder is unlikely to face prosecution in the US, charges in Sweden have been dropped – and for the embassy, he’s lost his value as an icon’
See Why Did The Guardian Fail to Cover the Extradition Proceedings of Julian Assange in September?
Other Highlights
A good video by Apsama Begum MP on why the government is introducing racist legislation. To divide and rule among the working class.
See this excellent video on what you didn’t learn in school. It describes how Ruby Bridges, a 6 year old Black child, was forced to walk through lines of vicious white women spitting their hate on her as she was accompanied into school in Arkansas by 4 federal marshalls. School integration had been mandated by the US Supreme Court (when it was still in the hands of liberals).
Ruby was forced to take classes by herself, was alone in the playground and suffered as no child should have to suffer. This is what racism was like in the Deep South. We should remember that to this day schools in Israel are segregated between Jew and Arab.
John Pilger Interviewing ex CIA Chief Duane McClarridge about Salvador Allende’s Overthrow in Chile in 1973
What took me aback about this interview is the brazenness of McClarridge. It throws into sharp relief those who believe that the West is on the side of the ‘good guys’ in Ukraine. Those charlatans consider themselves on the Left. Figures like Fourth International supporter Gilbert Achcar who offers intellectual and political support for the American war effort.
Why I Welcome the Abolition of the BBC License Fee
Unlike much of the soft, liberal left I welcome the government proposal to abolish the BBC’s license fee as I made clear in a letter to the Morning Star recently. The license fee itself is a regressive form of taxation. Rich and poor pay the same amount.
But more importantly the BBC, as it has demonstrated over the Ukrainian War is a Government/NATO propaganda station. Stripped of its cultural and sporting output it is the Voice of the British Establishment. We should leave it to the ruling class to pay for the BBC!
Goodbye Andrew Marr Enter Tory Laura Kuensberg
For those who still retain any doubts about the BBC’s impartiality, you should watch Andrew Marr’s report in Downing Street at the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003 as British and American troops did what they are attacking Russia for now, but with far less justification. Marr spoke of how:
Mr Blair is well aware that all his critics out there in the party and beyond aren’t going to thank him, because they are only human, for being right when they’ve been wrong…
But I think this is a very very important moment for him. It gives him a new freedom and a new self-confidence….
I don’t think anybody after this is going to be able to say of Tony Blair that he is somebody who is driven by the drift of public opinion or focus groups or opinion polls.
He said that they would be able to take Baghdad without a bloodbath and that in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating. And on both of those points he has been proved conclusively right. And it would be entirely ungracious even for his critics not to acknowledge that tonight he stands as a larger man and a stronger Prime Minister as a result.
The only thing we have to console ourselves with is that Andrew Marr’s replacement is Tory Laura Kuensberg, privately educated daughter of a tax dodging family.
Favourite Quote of the Day
Is from Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid who said that the “killing of innocent civilians” was why Israel had voted to suspend Russia from the (human rights) council.’
Israel had been doing nothing else but killing innocent civilians since the day it was formed in 1948. One wonders just how these righteous hypocrites can sleep at night.
This is an irreverent cartoon making a point that simply because someone says that they’ve transitioned doesn’t necessarily mean that they have.
Of course crocodiles are not the same species as newts and this is therefore no analogy! However the point is still one that is relevant although undoubtedly it will be claimed that it is transphobic.
The Labour Debate on Palestine that Never Was – Day 3 of Labour Party Conference Never Happened
That Labour Party motion that described Israel as an Apartheid State at the 2021 Conference didn’t get passed after all. In fact there was no such debate. Indeed there was no Day 3 of the Conference at all.
Starmer has ruled that Day 3 of the Labour Party never happened as he affirmed to the Jewish Chronicle that in the eyes of the Labour Party Israel is a democratic state and that kosher pigs really do fly. Apparently Labour Party HQ have removed all evidence of Day 3 and the Palestine debate from their own conference recording showing that Stalinism is alive and well in Labour under Starmer.
The Death of an Elderly Palestinian Shepherd
This is an amazing segment on MSNBC from Velshi in which he describes Israel as an apartheid state – a taboo word in the American media. For example the New York Times still has not covered the Amnesty International Report describing Israel as an apartheid state.https://www.youtube.com/embed/gKkjPtleWEU
Velshi seems the odd one out in the American media in being willing to call Israel’s criminal behaviour out, explain the process of colonisation and land theft and even call Israel an Apartheid State (whilst still supporting its ‘right to exist’) Below is another Velshi programme describing how Israel troops and those demolishing the bread oven of an elderly Palestinian shepherd literally ran him over and let him bleed to death whilst they scarpered.https://www.youtube.com/embed/3sEQjQrDeQU
Zionists Call for Me To Be Gaoled Whilst Trying To Get Me a Ticket to Dignitas!
And to end on a lighter note. My good friend Jonathan Hoffman, who I even defended once in the letters pages of the Jewish Chronicle, is getting all worked up.
In the attached Facebook post he declares his wish to sue me but unfortunately he realises that the costs of so doing would inevitably fall on him. In the restrained polemics that we have come to love and adore Hoffie says that ‘he (me!) is already in debt up to his putrid scraggy neck.’
Hoffie objected to my labelling him a Tommy Robinson supporter despite copious evidence that he befriends fascists such as Britain First’s Paul Besser. The photo below shows him dancing down the street outside Ahava with Roberta Moore of the Jewish Defence League, the EDL’s Jewish arm.
His friends naturally commiserated, none more so than Mel Gharial, who is pictured here with Danny Tomo, Tommy Robinson’s bodyguard. Mel wanted to ‘do something together’ with Hoffie, which opens up all sorts of possibilities!
Mel recently assured me that reports of her having once been a page 3 girl are wrong. I have to confess that I myself was surprised at the news as surely the Sun had better taste. But that’s what her friends assured me. They also told me that Mel had been a lady of the night, but again I find it hard to believe as Mel can hardly be described as a lady of anything. Who knows?
Mordko Rainer jumped in assuring his comrades that ‘No reasonable person would buy anything he is selling.’ But I don’t sell anything. Everything is given away!
Sharon KKKlaff jumps in. Sharon has an ecumenical approach to British fascists. This racist shrew who left South Africa as it abandoned Apartheid informed the gaggle that ‘sadly BLM supporting anti-Semites buy his libellous lies and use them to label people as racist’. Perish the thought that Pegida supporting Sharon, who led the campaign against a mosque in Golders Green could be labelled a racist, despite having labelled all BLM supporters as anti-Semites!
In a most unfriendly comment Sharon stated ‘surely jail time is called for’. Sharon unfortunately is homesick and often imagines herself back in the laager when political opponents could indeed be gaoled for ‘defamation’.
But the kindest comment came from Nigel Lawrence who asked for the phone number of Dignitas, where people can go in order that they have a dignified exit from life if they suffer from incurable illnesses.
And it is very true. Although I am hale and hearty at the moment, in the event that I fall ill with a terminal and painful illness I would be very grateful for a ticket to visit Dignitas. All I can say is that it is most comforting that even my worst enemies are looking out for me!
Tony Greenstein
