Ken Loach Calls for Purge of Labour Party “Enough is Enough” Protestors.

Ken Loach: Wrong Kind of Witches.

Kick them out’: Ken Loach demands removal of Labour MPs who attended rally against antisemitism

Ken Loach accuses MPs who marched against antisemitism within Labour of ‘dirty tricks’

Film-maker Ken Loach has demanded that the Labour MPs who demonstrated against antisemitism in Parliament Square be kicked out of the party.

Referring to the group of more than 30 MPs from Jeremy Corbyn’s party who joined the Enough is Enough protest organised by the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council, Mr Loach said: “These are the ones we need to kick out.”

In a speech delivered to 1,500 supporters near Bristol, the I Daniel Blake director said: “Unless we get Labour MPs who believe in that manifesto last year we won’t get in power.

“If they’ve been going to the demonstration against him outside Westminster… those are the ones we need to kick out.”

Loach has tried to wriggle out of these reports,

When contacted by the newspaper over his remarks at the meeting, Loach, who produced party broadcasts for the Labour Party during last year’s general election, said the quotes “do not reflect my position”.

He continued: “Reselecting an MP should not be based on individual incidents but reflect the MP’s principles, actions and behaviour over a long period. Being an MP is not a job for life.

Independent.

Loach spent years in Respect, supporting the unspeakable George Galloway.

He did not raise a public protest at these comments of leading Respect figure and election candidate Yvonne Ridley,

Ridley said: “[Respect] is a Zionist-free party… if there was any Zionism in the Respect Party they would be hunted down and kicked out. We have no time for Zionists.” She explained that government support “goes towards that disgusting little watchdog of America that is festering in the Middle East”.

She went on to attack the Tories and Lib Dems, saying that all the mainstream parties are “riddled with Zionists”. I found it hard to comprehend how the notion that “[Respect] encompasses a broad church of ideas and opinions” could be compatible with the hunting down of supporters of an Israeli state.

Or,

Addressing a Viva Palestina meeting, 2009:  “The Zionists have tentacles everywhere. We’ve seen with the disgraceful behaviour from the BBC that this interference goes right to the very top of the media, into the very heart of our homes.”

Further back in his dodgy record on the issue of anti-semitism there was his production of Perdition (The “Perdition” affair.)

Loach is now a supporter of the fringe ‘anti-Zionist’ band of Stop the Labour Witch-hunt (somewhat out of kilter with his call for a witch-hunt against people he dislikes).

His views get no respect from me.

Nor apparently from some people in Belgium as he is about to be honoured for his (overrated) films.

(Conspiracy Watch)

 Pas en leur nom » : la mise à l’honneur de Ken Loach fait polémique en Belgique.

Following the announcement that the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) intends to honour Loach on the 26th of April with a  docteur honoris causa a  “Collectif Ken Loach docteur honoris causa – not in our name”   has called for this to not take place.

In a detailed indictment, the Collective opposes awarding this distinction on three grounds.

That Loach is guilty of trying to

• rewrite the history of the Holocaust, presenting in particular  “the Kasztner affair”  emblematic of an alleged “Zionist collaboration” with the Nazis in order to facilitate the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine;
• of Holocaust denial, stating in an interview with the BBC that  “the Holocaust is a historical fact that deserves to be debated”  (Ken Loach later returned to this statement following the media storm provoked by his words held at the end of September 2017 );
• relativise  the problem of anti-Semitism inside the Labour Party by denying, against all the evidence, the cases that have arisen over  the last months.

Some reasonable reactions have followed Loach’s call for a purge.

Let us make something very clear – calls for MPs who attended #EnoughIsEnough rally to be deselected are unhelpful, unwelcome & do not help Labour. They also contribute significantly to the genuine concerns among the Jewish community that the Labour membership is hostile to them.

— Jewish Voice (@J_VoiceUK) April 11, 2018

Ken Loach is one of Britain's best ever filmmakers.

His call to expel MPs who attended the Enough Is Enough rally – which Jeremy Corbyn backed the right of MPs to attend – is bang out of order and the vast majority of the left will oppose it.

— Owen Jones🌹 (@OwenJones84) April 11, 2018

Advertisements

Michel Collon, Conspiracies, Political Confusionism and…… Steve Hedley (RMT).

 

Michel Collon, Conspiracy Theorist and Confusionist. 

Michel Collon is a member of the Parti du travail de Belgique  PTB (English here) and sits on its central committee. This party, which counts around 10,000 members, has 47 local councillors and 2 MPs in the Federal Parliament and a number of other representatives, and at present is said, according to opinion polls to be the second largest political force in Wallonie. It is of a ‘Marxist-Leninist” origin, that is pro-Chinese ‘Maoism’, publishing in 1994  a book in support of Stalin, Un autre regard sur Staline (éditions EPO) and supported Kim Il Sung. Since 2008 it claims to have become an “open” party, turned towards electoral campaigning as a party of the working class, with references to other European lefts from different traditions, including the Portuguese Communist Party (Parti du travail de Belgique : du maoïsme au parlementarisme ?). It’s success in the last year owes a lot to the massive corruption scandals affecting the Belgium  Parti socialiste  and the PTB’s ability to carry out grass-roots campaigns on immediate issues such as public services.

Collon has his own past which includes, “Il a participé à la conférence “anti-impérialiste” Axis for Peace, organisée en 2005 par Thierry Meyssan du Réseau Voltaire“. That is he took part in a conference held by the far-right, conspiracy (9/11 Truthers) Meyssan and the Réseau Voltaire which has been accused of anti-Semitism. It is at present, pro-Assad in Syria. In 2015  Collon claimed that the murderers of the Charlie Hebdo and the Hyper-Cacher were armed, trained and indoctrinated by French Socialist Minister Laurent Fabius as part of the war in Syria and Libya, “en réalité, ils ont été armés, formés militairement, endoctrinés par Monsieur Fabius et ses amis ; qui ont envoyé pendant trois ans des milliers, des dizaines de milliers de frères Kouachi, faire encore pire qu’à Charlie, en Syrie et en Libye. ” (Michel Collon sur les attentats de Charlie Hebdo : « les frères Kouachi ont été armés par Fabius »).

In his most recent book Collon has nevertheless attacked the conspiracy theories Alain Soral, on the grounds that Soral does not understand the mechanisms of capitalism behind these affairs. (Pourquoi Soral séduit  2017). It goes almost without saying that he is a writer for RT (Russia Today) defending Putin’s regime against US plots to demonise the state. (A quoi sert la diabolisation de la Russie ?)

Collon now runs a web site, Investig‘Action (founded in 2004) which publishes in French, Arabic, Italian, Spanish and (American) English. It is a classic “conspi” site, whose aim is as follows, “Investig’Action’s mission is to provide an alternative point of view about the world news and denounce medias’ lies.

 This is from their mission statement,

How did the Western media cover the various wars that followed the first Gulf war? Are there similarities regarding the way the media covered each of these events? Are there major “war propaganda” principles? Yes, there are.

 Hiding the interests. Our governments fight for human rights, peace, or whatever noble ideal it might be. A war should never be presented as a conflict between divergent economic and social interests.Each war must be preceded by a spectacularly big media lie in order to win public support. And after that, keeping on demonizing the enemy, especially by showing continually pictures of atrocities the latter committed.Hiding History. Hiding the historical facts and geography of the region, making local conflicts that are stirred, or even provoked by the Great Powers themselves, incomprehensible. Organizing the amnesia. Avoiding any serious reminder of past cases of media manipulation – it might make the public too suspicious.

Without tiring the reader this is an example of their approach to the popular protests in Iran,

Q: Why do you think the western countries are trying to use people against Iran and not use military force? What is the difference?.

Followed by,

Iran: Surviving another attack supported from abroad

Venezuela,

Western Journalists Threaten Venezuela.

North Korea, (Robert Charvin).

In spite of everything, and paying the price for it, the People’s Republic of Korea has remained sovereign, counting only on its own capacities, creating a spirit of uncompromising resistance to this day, blending in its ideology Marxism and Confucianism, in which journalists from the great Western press do not have the least bit interest.

I think we can guess before reading what their views on Israel and Zionism are.

But here it is, (November 2017)

Two stories reported by Haaretz on Wednesday underscore the unchanging goal of Zionism: the destruction of the Palestinians as a people and as viable communities, and the theft of their land for exclusively Jewish colonial settlement.

The site has received numerous criticisms from the French speaking left including this,  Michel Collon, un militant de la confusion ! (2014) which amongst other descriptions in the same vein calls it an “une imposture journalistique”. Ornella Guyet notes that Collon has attended events, alongside figures from the far-right,  to support the following, “Mouammar Kadhafi et de Bachar Al-Assad”.

Steve Hedley is a former member of the Socialist Party (resigned in 2013).  He is Senior Assistant General Secretary of RMT (National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers. An active campaigner for leaving the European Union he attended the ‘European’ Rally of the small Trotskyist party, the Parti ouvrier indépendant démocratique (POID) in May 2016.

He has now found another odd far-left  crew to talk to, Investig’Action.

Brexit, Corbyn and trade unions: interview with Steve Hedley (January the 14th 2018).

Responding to the question as to why he and his union are against the Eu Hedley replies.

Very simply, because the European Union was and is a rich man’s club. It was set up as a bulwark against the Soviet Union. NATO was the military arm and the European Union was the economic arm. It’s a trading bloc that is competing against other trading blocs. If you look at the history of the European Union, it has free movement of capital, free movement of labour, and a neoliberal economy written into the treaties. Therefore to be part of the European Union is to accept all of those things.

More grist to the mill of Collon’s conspi site.

 

Far-Right – N-VA – Belgian minister: Catalan Leader Puigdemont can seek asylum here.

 

Belgium Far-Right Flemish Separatist Minister Francken offers  Puigdemont Asylum.

A Belgian minister said Catalan ex-President Carles Puigdemont, removed from office by the Spanish government last week, could apply for asylum in Belgium.

By LAURENS CERULUS

“Catalan people who feel politically threatened can ask for asylum in Belgium. That includes President Puigdemont. This is 100 percent legal,” Theo Francken, the state secretary for asylum and migration, told public broadcaster VRT late on Saturday.

This has immediately been rejected by the Prime Minister of Belgium as adding fuel to the Fire.

Francken prêt à accueillir Puigdemont en Belgique, Charles Michel demande de ne “pas jeter d’huile sur le feu”.

Background Wikipedia.

Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie, N-VA)^[4] is a Flemish nationalist^[5] and conservative^[6][7][8] political party in Belgium, founded in 2001.^[9] The N-VA is a regionalist^[10][11] and separatist^{[12][13][14][15]}movement that self-identifies with the promotion of civic nationalism.^[16] It is part of the Flemish Movement, and (This bit is not coincidence whatsoever)  strives for the peaceful^[17] and gradual secession of Flanders from Belgium.

Its best known member is their leader Bart De Wever.

Theo Francken

In October 2014 several political parties demanded Francken’s and Ben Weyts‘ resignation after the two were present at the birthday of Bob Maes, a former member of the Vlaams Nationaal Verbond, a party who collaborated with the Nazis in the Second World War.^[2] In the same month Theo Francken also came in stormy waters after the leaking of some old mails with allegedly homophobic statements and a Facebook post where he questioned the “added value” that immigrants from Morocco, Congo and Algeria bring to the Belgian economy. Subsequently, Theo Francken apologised in the federal parliament.^[3]

Spectacular Rise in Polls for Belgium Far-left Parti du Travail de Belgique/Partij van de Arbeid van België.

 

The public broadcaster in Belgium, the RTBF, led with this story this morning:

Le PTB, futur lider maximo? Le parti marxiste progresse dans les trois régions du pays, même si cela reste mesuré en Flandre (+1,4% pour +5,6% à Bruxelles et + 12,9% (!) en Wallonie). Tel est à nouveau le principal enseignement du baromètre Dedicated pour la RTBF et La Libre.

Autres vainqueurs: le Vlaams Belang et Groen! qui, en Flandre, font toujours jeu égal avec les partis traditionnels.

The PTB future lider maximo? The Marxist Party has risen in the opinion polls in three regions: up 1 % in Flanders, 5,6% in Brussels and plus 12,9% in Wallonie. This is the result from the latest poll by Deciudated, for the RTBF and La Libre.

The other winners are the far-right Vlaams Belang and the Greens, Groen!, who in Flanders are neck and neck with the traditional parties.

La Libre Belgique  says that  the Workers’ Party of Belgium (Partij van de Arbeid van België, PVDA; Parti du Travail de Belgique, PTB) is scoring 18,4% of voters amongst voters in Wallonie.

The PTB/PVDA is a Marxist political party with its roots in ‘marxism-leninism’ (Maoism) about which there is much to say. It is one of the few parties that operates as a single Belgian party. Site (French): here (Flemish): here.

Wikipedia notes that the PVDA-PTB hosts the International Communist Seminar, which in recent years has become one of the main worldwide gatherings of communist parties.

 

La  Libre Belgique.

Also see: Le PTB convainc 18% des électeurs en Wallonie Le Soir.

 

Brussels: Against the Grief Police.

There are plenty of people feeding off the deaths in Brussels.

From the far-right, UKIP, to a host of others, there was a call to bring in tough border controls and halt migration.

Marine Le Pen has called for an immediate crack down Islamic fundamentalism and on areas where she considered it flourished.

She  said,

Dans l’urgence, et pour la sécurité de tous, il est impératif de procéder à la fermeture immédiate de la frontière franco-belge, fermeture réelle et non pas fictive comme depuis plusieurs semaines, et au rétablissement de contrôles sur l’ensemble des frontières nationales de notre pays.

In this emergency, for the security of everybody, it is imperative to immediately close the French-Belgian frontier, a real shut down and not a gestural one that’s been in place for the last few weeks, and reestablish controls over all our national borders

The far-right leader has repeated this today saying on France-Info, “”Il faut arrêter Schenguen.” – we have to end the Schengen agreement on free movement within (continental) Europe.

Reacting after the Brussels bombing George Galloway took another step towards  a common front with the far-right in announcing (RT),

Free movement between European states should have been abandoned after the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) attacks in Paris last November, former MP George Galloway said in the wake of Tuesday’s bombings in Brussels.

The Respect Party’s candidate for mayor of London argued that suspending the right to free movement could have prevented attacks on European soil.

Socialist Worker  has jumped into the fray:

Nordine Saidi of the Brussels Panthers group spoke to Socialist Worker

“I’m wholeheartedly with the wounded and the families of victims. I’m shaken by these terrorist acts which nothing can justify, but unfortunately I am not surprised. Our foreign policy in Libya, Mali, Syria and Iraq, and its effects here—state racism and Islamophobia—cannot be ignored if we want to understand this chaos and escape from it.

“I am enraged by the inhumanity towards deaths that take place ‘elsewhere’. These are deaths in which we are complicit and responsible. Without that double standard, perhaps we could have avoided these deaths at home.

I will not have people tell us that we cannot mourn the deaths in Brussels.

I will not have people lecture us about our feelings, which should apparently be “elsewhere”.

I will not have some SWP mouthpiece tell me that I, “we’, are “complicit in the genocidal acts of Daesh.

I will not accept the dictates of the Grief Police. *

 

Cartoonists for Peace.

*From Sunny H. 

Brussels: We love you.

Bruxelles pleure en dessins.

Like many people I love Brussels.

The city and the people have a gentle warmth that remains within you for a long time.

Not all of the vast conurbation, but enough of it to make today’s attacks leave deep wounds, and rouse profound feelings of solidarity to those affected.

It is with some distress that we saw this:

Brussels, de facto capital of the EU, is also the jihadist capital of Europe. And the Remainers dare to say we're safer in the EU! #Brexit

— Allison Pearson (@allisonpearson) March 22, 2016

 

The Huffington Post reports:

 

Ukip defence spokesman Mike Hookem went further, saying that the attack were a “result of Schengen free movement and lax border controls”, adding: “I am appalled at the loss of life and injuries. our thoughts and prayer go out to the families of those killed and injured.

“This horrific act of terrorism shows that Schengen free movement and lax border control are a threat to our security.

“The head of [Europol] said in February that 5,000 jihadists are at large in EU having slipped in from Syria.

“There are 94 returned jihadists current living in Molenbeek, Brussels. This fact alone should alert people to the fact that open borders are putting the lives of European citizens at risk.”

Speaking on LBC, Ukip’s London mayoral candidate Peter Whittle also linked the attacks to the EU debate.

He said: “We have to take control of our borders, this has happened as a result of people going over borders and having free movement.

“At the moment the way things stand, Our membership of the EU means we actually have a problem with our security and that is appalling.”

Others, including Ukip spokesperson Michael Heaver, also joined in.

Rampant jihadism combined with open borders is a cocktail for disaster. #Brexit

— Michael Heaver (@Michael_Heaver) March 22, 2016

 

Brussels Attack: Ed Miliband Hits Out At Brexiters Using Terror Attacks For ‘Political Capital’.

After a Labour In event this morning, in which Miliband urged his parties voters to back Remain in the June 23 Referendum, the former party leader said: “All of us have been deeply shocked by what we’ve seen unfolding in Brussels today. This is a place where my dad was born I think it’s an awful, awful and terrible situation.

“On a day like this I really don’t think it’s a day for either side in this referendum to try and use this terrible tragedy to make political capital.

“I think that honestly will be the response of right-thinking people right across the country, whatever position they take.”

Let us not forget the reaction of the Islamists:

As the death toll rose amid continuing rescue operations, Isis supporters were championing the attacks on Twitter.

“What a beautiful day today,” one man wrote, calling the victims “Belgium supporters” who did not count as civilians.

“F***. Belgium Belgium wanted to bomb the Islamic state Now enjoy what your hands have sown.

“A lot of duas [prayers] were answered today.”

The supporter claimed to have received a message from an Isis militant to the group’s supporters in Belgium reading: “We have come to you with slaughter.”

In Arabic, the hashtag #Brusselsonfire was being used by those praising the slaughter in a similar wording to the #Parisonfire trend seen when the French capital was hit.

Independent.

Dieudonné Sentenced to 2 Months in Gaol in Belgium for Anti-Semitism: Will his ‘Peace’ Concert go ahead?

 

Brussels (AFP) – A Belgian court sentenced controversial French comedian Dieudonne Wednesday to two months in jail for incitement to hatred over alleged racist and anti-Semitic comments he made during a show in Belgium, a lawyer said.

Dieudonne M’Bala M’Bala, who has faced similar court cases in France, was also fined 9,000 euros ($9,500) by the court in the eastern city of Liege, said Eric Lemmens, a lawyer for Belgium’s Jewish organisations.

He was not in court for the verdict.

The judgement “says that all the accusations against Dieudonne were established — both incitement to hatred and hate speech but also Holocaust denial” relating to a show in Liege in 2012, Lemmens told AFP.

“For me this is more than satisfying, this is a major victory,” he said.

Earlier this month the European Court of Human Rights ruled against Dieudonne in a separate case, deciding that freedom of speech did not protect “racist and anti-Semitic performances”.

Dieudonne was protesting a fine he received from a French court in 2009 for inviting a Holocaust-denier on stage. He was fined 10,000 euros ($11,000) for what that court referred to as “racist insults”.

In March, a French court also handed Dieudonne a two months suspended sentence and fined him heavily for anti-Semitic remarks after he caused uproar by suggesting he sympathised with the attacks against satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket in Paris.

“I feel like Charlie Coulibaly,” he wrote on Facebook, a play on the slogan “Je suis Charlie” that became a global rallying cry against extremism and Amedy Coulibaly, one of the attackers.

The performer, who made his name in a double act with Jewish comedian Elie Semoun, is infamous for his trademark “quenelle” hand gesture that looks like an inverted Nazi salute but which he insists is merely anti-establishment.

French courts have hauled him up over a string of comments which opponents say are bluntly racist while supporters champion his right to free speech.

Dieudonne, who can appeal the decision, was not immediately reachable for comment.

Le Monde gives recent background, including other convictions for anti-semitism and his expulsion from his theatrical base at Saint-Denis.

Dieudonné condamné en Belgique pour antisémitisme

L’humoriste français Dieudonné a été condamné en Belgique, mercredi 25 novembre, à deux mois de prison ferme et 9 000 euros d’amende pour antisémitisme. Le jugement « considère que toutes les infractions reprochées à Dieudonné sont établies : à la fois l’incitation à la haine et diffusion de propos haineux, mais aussi l’infraction de négationnisme », a expliqué M^e Eric Lemmens, qui représentait les organisations juives de Belgique.

Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala était poursuivi pour différentes préventions liées à de l’incitation à la haine et à la diffusion de propos discriminatoires, antisémites, négationnistes et révisionnistes lors d’un spectacle qu’il avait donné à Herstal, dans la province de Liège, le 14 mars 2012, selon Le Soir.

Le polémiste peut faire appel de la sentence, qui le condamne également à publier la décision du tribunal à ses frais dans les deux grands quotidiens francophones belges Le Soir et La Libre Belgique.

Expulsé de la Main-d’Or et privé de théâtre à Saint-Denis

Au début d’octobre, l’humoriste avait déjà été privé de théâtre à Saint-Denis, le tribunal de Bobigny ayant donné raison au groupe Madar, spécialisé dans l’immobilier de bureaux et d’entreprises, qui avait refusé de lui louer un espace de 1 500 mètres carrés au sein des anciens ateliers Christofle, situés en Seine-Saint-Denis.

L’humoriste avait par ailleurs été expulsé de la Main-d’Or après que le tribunal de grande instance de Paris a validé, à la fin de septembre, la demande d’expulsion de l’humoriste du Théâtre de la Main-d’Or.

Dieudonné a également été condamné en mars 2015 à 22 500 euros d’amende pour des déclarations antisémites proférées lors de son spectacle Le Mur.

 

“In July 2008, Jean-Marie Le Pen became godfather to Dieudonné’s third child. Philippe Laguérie, a traditionalist Catholic priest, officiated at the baptism, which was held in the Saint-Éloi congregation in Bordeaux.^[59]

On 26 December 2008, at an event at the Parc de la Villette in Paris, Dieudonné awarded the Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson an “insolent outcast” prize [prix de l’infréquentabilité et de l’insolence]. The award was presented by one of Dieudonné’s assistants, Jacky, dressed in a concentration camp uniform with a yellow badge. This caused a scandal^[60] and earned him his sixth court conviction to date. On 29 January 2009, he celebrated the 80th birthday of Faurisson in his theater, in the midst of a representative gathering of Holocaust deniers, right-wing radicals, and radical Shiites.^[61] Dieudonné and Faurisson further appeared together in a video making fun of the Holocaust and its commemoration.”

Dieudonné remains popular amongst a wide range of people.

Some, including the writer of this Blog, do not think that the law is the best way to deal with him or his admirers’ racism. 

Whether his participation in this Concert for Peace will go ahead is unclear.

A LIRE ATTENTIVEMENT / CONCERT POUR la PAIX @BFMTV @France24_fr @people @NonStopPeopleES @NonStopPeople pic.twitter.com/ptM5TRCa3t

— Dieudonné Officiel (@MbalaDieudo) November 23, 2015