Posts Tagged 'Alex Tiffin'
Outrage as Rachel Riley Endorses Photoshopped Image of Corbyn Anti-Apartheid Protest
Speaking of the Labour anti-Semitism smears, how crass, arrogant and insensitive is Rachel Riley in her determination to smear Jeremy Corbyn? And how long before her antics are too much for Channel 4 and they sack her? These are not idle questions, as today Riley showed how low she would stoop to libel Corbyn as an anti-Semite by publicly wearing a photoshopped image of the Labour leader. There's nothing unusual about that, as people have been producing them for years. There was a particularly odious one a few years ago which showed Corbyn sat next to Adolf Hitler in a limo. But this time the smear merchants have excelled themselves. They took a photograph of the Labour leader when he was arrested at an anti-apartheid demonstration outside the South African embassy in the 1980s. Corbyn was wearing a sandwich board with the slogan "Defend the right to demonstrate against Apartheid. Join this picket". However, this has been removed and replaced with the words 'Jeremy Corbyn is a racist endeavour'. Riley tweeted a picture of herself wearing it on a T-shirt.
Riley obviously thought this was a good idea, but the good peeps on Twitter thought otherwise. They considered that it showed just how unhealthy Riley's obsession with smearing Corbyn was, as well as being massively offensive in its erasure of apartheid. Mike Williams, for example, tweeted
"Jeremy Corbyn's showing people he's committed to reducing living costs by living rent-free inside Rachel Riley's head" and continued
"Imagine having the confidence to smear Jeremy Corbyn as a racist, while simultaneously erasing apartheid history for your own twisted agenda. Rachel Riley, everyone".
He concluded
"Is Rachel Riley behind this and is she ok? I'm all for freedom of expression but this just wrong".
Similar comments were made by Mark Hebden, and Alex Tiffin, Socialist Voice remarked
Jeremy Corbyn was protesting against black peoples' struggle in apartheid South Africa. Rachel Riley has erased this to smear Jeremy Corbyn in an attempt to portray herself as a victim.
Tonight she reached a new low. What a disgusting and repulsive individual she really is.
Novara Media's Aaron Bastani stated that it was the craziest thing he'd seen a twitter, and that a white person erasing an anti-apartheid message reached a new level of bizarre. It was something you expected from the Alt-Right. He noted that she had fronted anti-trolling campaigns, to which he just added 'Good grief'.
'Good grief' indeed.
Evolve Politics wrote
Rachel Riley slammed after erasing anti-apartheid message to label Jeremy Corbyn a racist https://evolvepolitics.com/rachel-riley-slammed-after-erasing-anti-apartheid-message-to-label-jeremy-corbyn-a-racist/ …
Naturally some of the people most unimpressed with her latest smear were Black people and Whites, who had been active in the anti-apartheid campaign.
Chardine Taylor Stone tweeted
Rachel Riley needs to be cancelled. YOU DO NOT treat apartheid as joke to make a statement. I don't care who is holding the placard or what statement she thinks she is making here. #Blacktwitter we need to sort this out.
Coco (Vote Labour) tweeted
"How many times is Rachel Riley going to shit on black history before mainstream outlets will start calling her out… I… I'm tired".
Andrew Feinstein, a White, Jewish anti-apartheid activist, who had lost family in the Holocaust, also sent this message:
As a former MP under Nelson Mandela, as the son of a Holocaust survivor who lost 39 members of her family in the camps, as a [South] African anti-racist, I find what Rachel Riley has done offensive, appalling & deeply repugnant".
See: https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/11/rachel-riley-channels-katie-hopkins.html
Labour's Black PLP with the hashtag 'Register to Vote' tweeted
Rachel Riley should apologise for the hurt and upset that she has caused to many whose families and loved ones suffered under the Apartheid regime!
The disrespect and lack of care shown to the Anti-Apartheid struggle is truly hurtful.
https://metro.co.uk/2019/11/21/rachel-riley-sparks-backlash-erasing-jeremy-corbyns-anti-apartheid-message-photoshopped-t-shirt-11192944/ …
Frank Owen's Legendary Paintbrush also compared her tasteless T-shirt with Jonathan Freedland's smearing of an innocent Muslim Labour councillor as an anti-Semite, remarking that it was funny how those trying to smear Corbyn as a racist ended up exposing themselves.
And then came the demands that Channel 4 should inflict some kind of censure on her for her actions. Peter Goldup asked the broadcaster to reconsider her position. 'Andy' sent them the message
I call on @Channel4 to condemn Rachel Riley's disgraceful actions and to terminate their association with this unhinged individual. She has misused her fame & brought politics, by association, onto Countdown, a programme which I can no longer watch because of her presence.
Lu Vegan was more pessimistic, feeling that she probably wouldn't get any work-related backlash for her slur.
Mike has taken this as an opportunity to once again ask his supporters to donate to his crowdfunding campaign to help him defend himself against a libel action from Riley. Riley, he reminds his readers, accused a 16-year old schoolgirl of being an anti-Semite for criticising her smears against Corbyn. The girl was then subjected to a torrent of abuse from Riley's followers, some of whom issued death threats. When Mike wrote a piece about this, Riley became offended and threatened to take him to court. Mike continues
My belief is that she thought she could bully me into paying her some money because I could not afford to defend myself.
Instead, I started a CrowdJustice page and members of the public helped me fight back.
There could be no better demonstration of why I need to win this case than this latest incident. It is clear that Ms Riley will continue with this abhorrent behaviour unless she is made to face legal consequences for it.
He states that he doesn't think 'think there will ever be a better time to contribute to my appeal, so please forgive me for asking', before going on to inform people how they can contribute to his fund.
See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/11/21/if-you-think-rachel-riley-went-too-far-with-photoshopped-t-shirt-please-support-my-court-case/
In my opinion, Riley and her pal Tracy Ann Oberman have a fanatical fixation on the Labour leader, and are bullies, deliberately picking on ordinary people, who they believe won't be able to defend themselves from rich celebrities such as themselves. And they will go on doing so as long as they're allowed.
If you can support Mike, please do so. All contributions are gratefully received, as is the great support he's also received morally from followers of his blog and his work.
As for Riley, Zelo Street is right when they say that she's now reached the level of 'Hatie Katie' Hopkins, the former apprentice contestant and right-wing gob, who's become so racist that she's lost her position at a string of media outlets, including the Daily Heil.
How long before Riley goes the same way, and Channel 4 gives her the order of the boot?
Tags:'Andy', 'Coco (Vote Labour), 'Frank Owen's Legendary Paintbrush', Aaron Bastani, Alex Tiffin, Alt Right, Andrew Feinstein, anti-semitism, Anti-Semitism Smears, Apartheid, Blacks, Bullying, Channel 4, Chardine Taylor Stone, Children, Demonstrations, Evolve Politics, Holocaust, Jeremy Corbyn, Jews, Jonathan Freedland, Katie Hopkins, Libel, Mark Hebden, Mike Williams, MPs, Muslims, Nelson Mandela, Novara Media, Peter Goldup, Rachel Riley, racism, Socialist Voice, Tracy-Ann Oberman, Trolls, Twitter, Vox Political, Zelo Street
Posted in Art, Democracy, Education, Fascism, Judaism, Justice, Nazis, Persecution, Politics, South Africa, Television, The Press | 5 Comments »
Multi-Millionaire Right-Wing Corporate Donor David Koch Dies
This weekend the papers reported that David Koch, one of the infamous Koch brothers family of oil billionaires had finally dropped off his perch. He had become an ex-Koch. He had ceased to be. Like Monty Python's parrot, he had gone to join the choir invisibule.
I know it's poor form to speak ill of the dead, but the Koch brothers are an utterly malign family, and their political legacy is absolutely toxic. I dare say that individually they may be absolutely charming men. But they were also greedy, rapacious, and dedicated to attacking almost every progressive advance in American society and economics since the 19th century. They were one of the main founders and ardent promoters of Libertarianism, and founded a network of extreme right-wing think tanks and pressure groups to push through their noxious agenda. And as oil billionaires, they were most notorious through their campaigns denying climate change, attempting to discredit or suppress proper climate science and remove environmental legislation so that they could continue dumping carcinogen sludge into America's rivers and waterways.
The video below by the Rational National, presented by David Doel, concisely shows how deeply unpleasant the Kochs were and are. And this was personally as well as politically. David Koch and two of his brothers joined together in a plot to blackmail a fourth brother into giving his share of the family business to them. This brother had never had a girlfriend. They thought he was gay, and threatened to tell their father about his lifestyle. Yes, they really were that low and scummy, ready to stab their own brother in the back just for a share of the corporate profits. They were an example of why Ripley says in the James Cameron film, Aliens, why the xenomorphs are better than humans. Or at least the corporate types. Because 'you don't see them fucking each other over for a percentage'.
The Rational National then goes on to show how the Koch brothers were instrumental in getting the anti-union legislation passed through one of their political groups, AFP. This stands for Americans For Prosperity. In the case of the US's working people, the blue collar Joes and Jos, who really built the country, the name should be called Americans For Poverty. As the Rational National argues, the unions were one of the major forces bringing prosperity to working men and women. When their power was broken, there was a massive transfer of wealth upwards to the rich.
The video then shows a tweet from the Sunrise Movement about how the Koch brothers blocked environmental bills going through Congress, promoted fake science denying climate change, and attacking the environmental legislation preventing them from dumping carcinogens into the water. Thanks to them, Americans' health in this regard is being affected for the worse. There's also a clip of the report Christopher Leonard on The Morning Show discussing how the Koch brothers derailed America's last best attempt to introduce regulations against climate change and greenhouse emissions in 2010. He compares them unfavourably with other big oil companies like Exxon, who were prepared to accept some legislation, including a carbon tax. But their influence wasn't just confined to America. They also back Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, the Fascist maniac now torching the country's forests and threatening us all with runaway global warming and extinction. Bolsonaro was funded by the ATLAS Network, another Koch pressure groups, which exists to spread Libertarianism globally.
Doel also cites a tweet by Rational National contributer Keith Boykin, about the other subjects he can't go into in this short video. These are the Koch brothers' desire to abolish state schools, social security, rent control, Medicare and Medicaid. He funded the Tea Partyand groups that denied climate change . They also used dark money to fund right-wing causes and Republican politicos.
Doel also makes the point that the Kochs also weren't philanthrophists in any sense of the word. All their funding was entirely in their own selfish interests. He cites an article from the New Yorker that quotes the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, who found that the Kochs' donations were to organisations that directly affected their profit margins. And Koch didn't even try to hide. He admitted that the family issued tight ideological control. If the organisations to which they gave didn't do what they wanted, then the money was withdrawn.
Doel concludes by summarising David Koch's career, stating that he was a horrible person. And I can't see any reason to argue with that.
One of the beneficiaries of the Koch brothers' money over here is the infamous Spiked magazine, which was given $300,000 by the millionaire dirt-wads. And so editor Brendan O'Neill smears the international concern about the destruction of the Amazon as racist and imperialist. O'Neill was torn to shreds for his shameless lying and gross propaganda on twitter, by people strongly criticising him for his patronising attitude towards the working class as well as his defence of the destruction of the world's supply of oxygen. One, Alex Tiffin, said of O'Neill that if Corbyn demanded tougher sentencing for child abuse, O'Neill would immediately write an article demanding its legalisation. See Zelo Street's excellent article on about this sorry piece of spurious journalism at
https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/08/brendan-oneills-david-koch-memorial-dump.html
He concludes: 'Brendan O'Neill spouts his climate change denial garbage because those who have fucked the climate pay him to do so. End of story.'
I'm left wondering what other right-wing groups in the UK are also being funded by the Kochs, not least the Tory party. I'm sure the surviving Koch brothers are absolutely delighted by BoJob.
Tags:'New Yorker', Alex Tiffin, ATLAS Network, Blackmail, Boris Johnson, Brendan O'Neill, Christopher Leonard, Climate Change, Conseratives, Corporate Donations, David Doel, David Koch, Gays, Housing, Imperialism, Jair Bolsonaro, Jeremy Corbyn, Keith Boykin, Koch Brothers, Medicaid, Medicare, Millionaires, National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, Paedophilia, Pollution, racism, Republican Party, Spiked, State Schools, The Amazon, The Morning Show, The Rational National, the Rich, Twitter, Working Class, Zelo Street
Posted in America, Brazil, Charity, Comedy, Crime, Democracy, Education, Environment, Fascism, Film, Health Service, Industry, Libertarianism, Medicine, OIl, Politics, Poverty, Science, Television, The Press, Trade Unions, Water, Welfare Benefits | 1 Comment »
Vox Political: Guardian Journos Outraged at Speaking Invitation to Editor of The Canary
Mike over at Vox Political today also put up another story about an attempt to silence a very able and outspoken woman of colour. This time it's Kerry-Anne Mendoza, the editor-in-chief of the Canary. She's another friend of Mike's blog, and mentioned it and other leading members of the new left media when she appeared on Newsnight in 2016.
Mendoza has been invited to give this year's Claudia Jones Memorial Lecture. These talks are organized by the National Union of Journalists Black Members' Council in honour of the pioneering Black lady journalist. It has zilch to do with the Guardian-Observer branch of the NUJ, but for some weird reason they're outraged that Mendoza's been given this honour. They sent an email out to their members, asking them to send in complaints to the NUJ's equalities people and were threatening to hold a vote.
The Guardian journos' audacity as White, university-educated people complaining and threatening to vote to stop one of the very few BAME editors from giving a talk to commemorate a black journalist as part of Black History Month provoked an immediate backlash. Mendoza herself said
I'm a proud member of the National Union of Journalists and honoured to be invited to give the Claudia Jones Memorial Lecture this year.
It's a sign of the entitlement of our establishment journalists that they would behave so poorly in response.
I think we've reached peak Guardian. A group of mostly white, middle class journalists trying to stop one of Britain's only working class, BAME editors in chief from giving a speech for Black History Month.
And the Groan's hacks also shot themselves in the foot with the timing of their outburst. It came just when a national boycott was being organized against the Guardian under the hashtag,#BoycottTheGuardian for the hours between 7 and 9 pm, September 27, 2018. This shot the hashtag campaign up to No.1.
And the peeps on Twitter also weren't silent themselves about the Guardian and its presumption. Tom Pride, Aaron Bastani, Craig Murray, Alex Tiffin, Nadeem Ahmed, Jimmy Lacey and the MP, Chris Williamson, also sent Tweets wondering what the Guardian thought it was doing, alienating its left-wing readers when nobody on the right reads it. They deplored its political coverage, and said that while Britain needs a left-wing paper, it seems increasingly irrelevant. They also pointed out that it was Neoconservative and had done its level best to damage Corbyn and the Labour party, especially by running stories linking them to anti-Semitism.
Mike makes the point that the tweets attacking the rag's attacks on the Labour party would have received far less attention if the hacks had kept their mouths shuts and their mitts away from the keyboard. He goes on to say that it's not clear what will happen next. He concludes
It is possible that the Establishment will try to hush up the fact that there has been a huge protest against what can be seen as a clear example of racism by mostly white, middle-class university-graduate journalists.
If that happens, we'll just have to run another campaign – bigger, louder, and impossible to ignore. Repression always incites rebellion.
https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2018/09/28/journalists-outrage-at-canary-editors-speech-invitation-leads-to-boycott-the-guardian-campaign/
Despite its reputation, the Groaniad isn't a far left rag. In at least seven elections since the 1970s, the newspaper has urged its readers to vote Liberal/Liberal-SDP Alliance/Lib-Dem. The last time they did so was in 2010, and the result was the disgusting coalition between the Lib-Dems and the Tories. And they do seem to have a very strong Neocon bias. There have been articles in Lobster pointing out that the newspaper has a very long history of supporting Zionism and Israel at the expense of the Palestinians. And I have a very strong suspicion that they, or some of their journalists, were also busy writing articles defending and promoting Blair's wars in the Middle East. From a left-wing point of view, of course.
They're also massive hypocrites when it comes to the use of unpaid, intern labour. They got into Private Eye several times a few years ago because they published articles attacking the use of unpaid interns by big companies, while at the same time they were the newspaper that most extensively exploited such unpaid aspiring journalists.
Quite why they should take it upon themselves to decry Mendoza's invitation to give this year's Claudia Jone's lecture is a mystery to me. I have no idea why they think it is any business of theirs, but there seems to be more than an attitude of entitlement, as if they feel that as one of the country's leading left-wing papers, they somehow have some kind of right to decide who gets to speak on issues like this. It seems very strongly to me that they feel threatened not just by Mendoza herself, but also by what she represents. The Guardian, like the rest of the national papers, is losing readers and money. Private Eye has reported in its 'Street of Shame' column several times that the Guardian Media Group is at least tens of millions in debt. I think the real figure may even be over a hundred million.
By contrast, people are increasingly turning to the internet for their news and information. Mendoza's invitation to speak shows just how influential the Canary has become, and, by implication, the new left media of which it, and Vox Political, are a part. The Guardian, like the lamestream media generally, is losing its audience and its influence. The previous editor, Alan Rusbridger, used to speak regularly at political gatherings and events. It seems that the people at the Groan felt that it should have been someone from their paper, or who at least worked in print and shared the lamestream media's bias. And it really couldn't tolerate that the Black Members' Council had chosen someone different. Someone from outside. Hence the tantrum about Mendoza being invited to speak.
I've only heard her on the radio and TV, but she came across very strongly as an excellent speaker with a keen, critical intelligence, able to dismantle and rebut the arguments and lies of the right. I have absolutely no doubt that she is an excellent choice of speaker, and wish her all the best.
Tags:Aaron Bastani, Alan Rusbridger, Alex Tiffin, Anti-Semitism Smears, Black History Month, Blacks, Boycotts, Chris Williamson, Claudia Jones, Claudia Jones Memorial Lecture, Conservatives, Craig Murray, Ethnic Minorities, Internet, Interns, Jeremy Corbyn, Jimmy Lacey, Journalists, Kerry-Anne Mendoza, Labour Party, Lib-Dems, Liberal-SDP Alliance, Mainstream Media, Middle Class, Middle East, MPs, Nadeem Ahmed, Neocons, Newsnight, NUJ, Palestinians, Private Eye, The Canary, The Guardian, The Observer, Tom Pride, tony blair, Universities, Unpaid Internships, Vox Political, War, Whites, Working Class, Zionism
Posted in Arabs, Israel, Judaism, Persecution, Politics, Radio, Television, The Press | Leave a Comment »