Shamir: Jewish Lobby Ate My Morning Star Article.
Meets Every Night Chez Denham and Coatesy.
Israel Shamir is in a bit of a tizzy. (see Here)
Apparently the Morning Star ” can’t stand up to a few Jewish Marxists.”
At the start things were going swimmingly.
Here is the letter confirming that the Morning Star would publish his master-stroke against the Zionist-Marxist-Jews.
Dear Mr Shamir
I’m the arts editor of the Morning Star newspaper (see
www.morningstaronline.co.uk) and we’d like to reprint an edited version of
your Pussy Riot article.
Would you please grant permission? Unfortunately, we run on a shoestring so
we’re unable to pay a fee but I hope you will agree as it will bring your
challenging piece to a wider readership.
I’d be grateful for a swift response as we have a possible slot free in next
Saturday’s publication.With very best wishes
Clifford Cocker
Arts editor
Morning Star newspaperI gave my permission immediately, and they published it – and took it down in a few hours under pressure of the Jewish Lobby.”
AKA: the well-known Rabbinical families of Coates and Denham.
He then proceeds,
The British Jewish ‘tribal or kosher’ Marxists provide their support, for, in words of Gilad Atzmon, “Jewish Marxism is very different from Marxism or socialism in general. While Marxism is a universal paradigm, Jewish Marxism is basically a crude utilisation of ‘Marxist-like’ terminology for the Jewish tribal cause.” Indeed they were on the watch; they applied pressure to the Morning Star, and the British Communists surrendered immediately.
Poor Shamir whinges,
“They did not care that the attacks proceeded from Harry’s Place, the dirtiest Zionist leftist blog in Britain, viciously anti-Muslim, positioned against Iran and Syria, violently anti-Russian, and surely anti-Shamir.”
After some further whining about the need for “anti-imperialist unity” between browns and reds Shamir cites this letter, from an English reader, a certain Elisha Traven, complaining about the Morning Star decision.
I shall not cite most of the drivel but this is interesting,
George Galloway of the Respect Party is MP for Bradford West which is in south Yorkshire. He is well-known for his strong support of the Palestinian people. I’m sure you know of him. I salute you, Israel Shamir, for your love of Russia and defence of their elected president. You are a true and loyal servant of social democracy and the rule of law.
Bless!
Hat-Tip to Barthomew.
Tendance Coatesy 
Against Iran, Russia and Syria? Have they no shame?
Sarah AB
October 1, 2012 at 7:15 pm
Note that Shamir published his piece in deLiberation (motto “deLiberation is the future of journalism” – imagine the nightmare where that is true). They are the most rabid roost of bats excreting antisemitism in the blogosphere.
To do the Shamir creature justice, he doesn’t use the Zionist euphemism. It’s the “Jewish” lobby.
He gives the credit to Harry’s Place for whipping up the Jewish Lobby. But you published this first. I think you should complain. .
Rosie
October 1, 2012 at 8:07 pm
“Challenging piece”. That’s an interesting euphemism.
The Spanish Prisoner
October 1, 2012 at 10:48 pm
I don’t know about “Jewish lobbies”, but I expect that the Star editors may well have been alarmed at the letters of protest they got from some of their own long-standing readers. Since they have decided not to print any of those letters, this is what I sent in on 23 September:
“I was very disappointed to see the Morning Star, heir to a proud tradition of anti-fascism, giving space to the far-right conspiracy theorist Israel Shamir and his outlandish claims about ‘the invisible organisers behind’ the anarchist-feminist stunt group Pussy Riot. It is not as if the paper is ignorant of Shamir’s politics: the original version of the piece published in Counterpunch contained the lines: ‘Western governments call for more freedom for the anti-Christian Russians, while denying it for holocaust revisionists in their midst.’ That sentence, which clearly indicates Shamir’s sympathies, was omitted from the version the Star published.
“It would have been far better to have published the Counterpunch article by Chris Randolph to which Shamir was responding. It contained the passage: ‘Once upon the time the Left was in favor of free speech, feminism, and confrontational protest, and simultaneously suspicious of authoritarian predatory privatizers, misogynist clerics and prudish censors. … the American Left is now quite alright with misogynist religion, censorship, rigged trials and the like just as long as the oppressing government is a foreign policy foil of the United States. This turns so-called progressives into just another group of intellectually dishonest bigots.’
“In recent years, the Star has made great progress in broadening its political appeal to the wider left. But if it starts embracing the ‘red-brown’ politics of the likes of Shamir, all that good work will be rapidly undone.”
Francis King
October 2, 2012 at 1:20 am
Good letter Francis.
Now on to Counterpunch.
Despite the critical piece Francis cites there genuinelly seems to be some kind of ‘red-brown’ alliance at work there.
They published this very recently.
“Censoring Bricmont. The Death of Free Speech in France?”
It begins by a tendencious account of Caroline Fourest’s politics and a half-hearted defence of her right to speak at la fête de l’Humanité.
But the real meat is here,
“The Belgian physicist’s unequivocal anti-imperialist stance has also made him the target of a vile defamation campaign on the internet and in the mainstream French media where he has been called a “rouge-brun” , a brown-shirt red, a “confusioniste” etc.
Furthermore, the more extremist fringes of the internet’s thought-police have singled out Bricmont for special attention. A few days prior to the fête de l’Humanité, an “anti-fascist” anarchist organization called Antifa launched a campaign on Indymedia against Bricmont’s attendance at the festival, where they threatened to assault him if he spoke about humanitarian intervention. In the insane world of Antifa activism, Bricmont’s opposition to NATO-fomented terrorism in Libya and Syria makes him a “fascist”.
Antifa is just one of the international anarchist groups currently being used by the intelligence agencies of imperialist states to sow confusion and chaos among the ranks of disaffected youth, inciting them to mindless, violent acts that serve the agenda of an ever- encroaching police state. This organization, in particular, targets intellectuals who denounce Zionism as well as alternative media outlets which expose the mechanisms and institutions that promote US imperialism throughout the world. It does all this under the guise of “anti-fascism”.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/09/25/the-death-of-free-speech-in-france/
For a different view,
“Nous nous félicitons en tout cas que le service d’ordre de la Fête de L’Humanité ait refusé de protéger un négationniste patenté.
Dehors les rouges-bruns, dehors les fascistes ! Antifa vaincra !
http://paris.indymedia.org/spip.php?page=imprimer&id_article=11671
Here is who Counterpunch is defending,”In Defense of Gilad Atzmon By Jean Bricmont.”
http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/counterpunch-print-edition-in-defense-of-gilad-atzmon-by-jea.html
Andrew Coates
October 2, 2012 at 10:59 am
Here is my response to Bricmont’s article: http://thespanishprisoner.wordpress.com/2012/10/03/jean-bricmont-and-gilad-atzmon/.
The Spanish Prisoner
October 3, 2012 at 11:22 am
Spanish, I saw it first linked on Facebook! Very well expressed. The major problem seems to be with whom Bricmont’s mixed up with.
Andrew Coates
October 3, 2012 at 11:29 am
I don’t know much about Bricmont. I’ve heard many leftists express admiration for him, but after reading this article, I’m not impressed by him at all.
The Spanish Prisoner
October 3, 2012 at 12:50 pm
“Impostures intellectuelles”, which Bricmont wrote with Alan Sokal in 1997 was a very enjoyable attack, from a left-wing perspective, on postmodernism, and the po-mos’ pretentious misuse of scientific terminology. It said a lot of things which really needed to be said. Why JB is now fishing in the murky waters of Middle Eastern politics, I have no idea. I suppose one of the problems of becoming a public intellectual is that people listen to you on your area of expertise, and they listen to you on other things as well. The temptation to diversify must be hard to resist.
Francis
October 4, 2012 at 9:38 am
Francis, it took me a while to recall him as the joint-author of that excellent book.
It’s not just Middle Eastern politics in general that mark him now, it’s his associations shown for example by his introduction to Atzmon’s rubbish.
Here are some of the far-right and left groups which are detailed on this site which publishes him in France,
Gauche du travail, Droite des valeurs : pour une réconciliation nationale !
Eléments, (French far-right, the historic think-tank of the Nouvelle Droite)
Les Amis d’Alain de Benoist (founder of Eléments).
Dieudonné (Holocaust denier)
Parti Anti Sioniste (fascist)
Parti Ouvrier Indépendant (Lambertist)
ReOpen911. Qui remet en question la version officielle des attentats ? (9/11 ‘Truthers’)
http://www.egaliteetreconciliation.fr/_Jean-Bricmont_.html
” Égalité et Réconciliation préconise l’union de la « gauche du travail » (marxisme) et de la « droite des valeurs » (nationalisme et patriotisme) afin de répondre à la mondialisation capitaliste et à ses conséquences jugées néfastes, sur le modèle du Cercle Proudhon, qui réunissait syndicalistes anarchistes et maurrassiens” (syndicalist anarchists and fascists).
Cercle Proudhon: “Sous la présidence de Charles Maurras de l’Action française (AF), la première réunion se tient le 17 novembre 1911. Le Cercle explore les possibilités de concilier le syndicalisme révolutionnaire et le monarchisme.
Now Bricmont is not responsible for this site, but why does he let himself be published by them?
He says (in a recent Counterpunch)”Concerning my relationship with the far right, there are two distinct questions: what do we mean by “relationship” and what does “far right” mean? I’d love to protest alongside the entire left against interventionist policies. But the left in the West has been almost completely persuaded by the arguments in favor of humanitarian intervention and, in fact, often criticizes Western governments for not intervening as rapidly or as often as they should. So, on the rare occasions when I protest publicly, I can do so only with those who agree to protest, who are not all on the far right, far from it (unless, of course, one defines opposition to humanitarian wars as being on the far right), but who are not on the left in the usual sense, since the bulk of the left support the policy of intervention. At best, a part of the left takes refuge in the “neither-nor” position: neither NATO nor the country being attacked at the time. Personally, I consider that our duty is to fight first against the militarism and the imperialism of our own countries, not to criticize those who defend themselves against their onslaught, and that our situation, as citizens of the attacking countries, is anything but neutral, contrary to what the rhetoric of the “neither-nor” position suggests.”
Andrew Coates
October 4, 2012 at 10:44 am
OK, I’m convinced. Looking at Egalité et réconciliation, it does appear that JB has gone red-brown, which is a great pity. Overall, though, this bizarre “anti-imperialist” red-brown current makes absolutely no sense, especially in the French context. French nationalism has been thoroughly imperial for as long as France has had any sort of empire. I wonder where that current will end up?
Francis
October 4, 2012 at 11:55 am
Where will it end up? I like yourself am far from clear. It’s all very much a fringe movement.
But it does seem that the more you look on the Web – and not just there but in some political strands across Europe, including a certain UK ‘anti-imperialism’, you can see that there are wider echoes.
Counterpunch seems to be a – witting or unwitting – focus for some of these ideologues.
On France’s imperial destiny, that’s pretty clearly a major part of the far-right’s heritage. But Maurras was a decentraliser in a big way, and took Proudhon’s ideas on federalism seriously (I have read a fair amount of his stuff, you can download tonnes of it for free). He would, for example, have certainly supported Catalan and Scottish independence.
I suspect the key cross-over figure is d’Alain de Benoist.
His ideas on a culturalist (not biological) nationalism, which are in fact “integral” in the classic hard-right sense, are repeated by Shamir. He was an early critic of ‘globalisation’. Eléments has also had favourable articles on certain forms of Islamism – as appropriate for ‘their’ cultural entities. But then Benoist takes from just about every ideology going.
Andrew Coates
October 4, 2012 at 12:21 pm
Bradford -in South Yorkshire!? The residents of west yorkshire’s best loved city are crushing their flat caps in anger.
martin ohr
October 5, 2012 at 12:08 pm