The leader of Israel's Labour writes to Corbyn.

Letter from Isaac Herzog, leader of the Israeli Labour Party, to Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the UK Labour Party:

Mr. Leader,

I have been appalled and outraged by the recent examples of anti-Semitism by senior Labour Party officials in the United Kingdom. Knowing that the British Labour Party has a proud and distinguished history of fighting racism in every form, has only added to my profound disappointment at recent events, which must act as a red alert and prompt immediate action.

As someone whose father served in the British army and risked his life fighting against Hitler and the Nazis, the views expressed by Ken Livingstone, the former Mayor of London and member of Labour’s national executive, in which he claimed that Hitler “was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews”, were particularly horrific, and unthinkable for a British politician in the 21st century.

That this followed the revelation that another of your MPs, Naz Shah, shared a sentiment that Jews should be forcibly transported from Israel, the land to which so many came to for refuge after having been transported to concentration camps, sickens all those of moral conscience to the core.

Mr Corbyn, part of the story of Israel’s establishment, was the context of centuries of anti-Jewish discrimination and dehumanisation, and the subsequent need for a state from which the Jewish people could defend themselves.

While there are many within the British Labour Party that support Israel, and fight every day against anti-Semitism, and despite the fact that the views recently expressed represent a minority within the British Labour Party, this cannot diminish the importance of dealing with this serious problem.

I would like to take this opportunity, in the week leading up to Holocaust Memorial Day in Israel, to invite you to bring a delegation from the British Labour Party to Israel’s national Holocaust museum, Yad Vashem, in order to witness that the last time the Jews were forcibly “transported”, it was not to Israel, but to their deaths. While Ken Livingstone is surely anti-Semitic beyond hope of redemption, I’m sure there remain many Labour Party activists with a willingness to engage and better understand the scourge of anti-Semitism. By doing this, perhaps we can ensure that the anti-Semitism expressed in recent days is not the example set to British young generation, but rather one of tolerance and acceptance of all people, regardless of faith.

MK Isaac Herzog
Leader of the Opposition Chairman of the Labour Party

Shameless Milne, apologist for Hamas

This mornings news continues to be dominated by Labour's crisis over anti-Semitism. Corbyn remains in almost complete denial despite having to agree to the suspension of MP Naz Shah and one of his long term allies Ken Livingstone.

As the Times pointed out in it's editorial yesterday, Corbyn has seemingly never engaged with anyone he doesn't agree with and has surrounded himself with unsavoury types such as Andrew Fisher and Seamus Milne.

Milne is an old fashioned unreconstructed Stalinist who still pursues what use to be called "Third Worldism" and is now known as "anti-imperialism. This nefarious ideological outlook just hates democracy and the West.

Any movement that has potential to undermine the West and it's allies is to be praised. With the rise of Islamism the left has found new allies to achieve our destruction. The focus on the destruction of Israel is THE key element of the left in the UK.

The fact that groups like Hamas (which are NOT liberation organisations but theologically based religious terrorist groups is ignored. In their charter HAMAS make their genocidal views quite clear:

This Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS), clarifies its picture, reveals its identity, outlines its stand, explains its aims, speaks about its hopes, and calls for its support, adoption and joining its ranks. Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. It needs all sincere efforts. It is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps. The Movement is but one squadron that should be supported by more and more squadrons from this vast Arab and Islamic world, until the enemy is vanquished and Allah's victory is realised.

Here is Corbyn's adviser cheering on Hamas despite this.

Is it any wonder Labour (and the bulk of today's left) has an anti-Semitism problem?

Turkey sentences opposition journalists to prison over Muhammad cartoon

Cross-post from the National Secular Society



Two Turkish journalists have been sentenced to two years in prison for republishing a cover of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo with a cartoon of Muhammad, amid rising concerns about freedom of expression in Turkey.

The court in Istanbul convicted Cumhuriyet newspaper columnists Ceyda Karan and Hikmet Cetinkaya of inciting "hatred and enmity." The pair were however acquitted of the separate charges of "insulting religious values."

The journalists' lawyers immediately appealed the verdict.

The pair went on trial in July 2015 after featuring the cover image of Charlie Hebdo's survivors' edition – which featured an image of a weeping Muhammad – in their columns for the secular, opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper in an act of support for freedom of expression.

The verdict was met with cries of "Allahu Akbar" in court, according to Cumhuriyet reports.

When the edition was published Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu condemned the publication of cartoons of the Muslim prophet as an "open provocation".

The convictions come amid fears of a worsening government crackdown on press freedom in Turkey with an alarming number of journalists facing criminal sanctions or violence and opposition news outlets being officially harassed or obstructed.

Meanwhile, Index on Censorship has warned of a "stark deterioration" of press freedom' across Europe. The group's Mapping Media Freedom project has identified a 30% rise in incidents involving journalists, voicing particular concern about Turkey and Ukraine.

Earlier this week the Turkish Prime Minister sought to calm fears that the country's secular constitution isunder threat after parliamentary speaker Ismail Kahraman, who is overseeing the redrafting the country's constitution, said the Muslim-majority country needed a new "religious constitution".

Also worth reading: Turkey's Islamic Supremacist Foreign Policy

Musical Interlude: Number 1 this week in 1981!

Since I'm literally speechless about Ken Livingstone's remarks today and so much already having been written about this fascists disgraceful views I thought to myself (after eating nearly a packet of Golden Oreos in literary frustration) it was time for a musical interlude.

So with the Eurovision song contest coming up on 14th May I though this little number from 1981 would make for good memories of when we Brits could send a decent song to Europe.

This video (featuring the late, great Terry Wogan) shows the very first TV performance of Bucks Fizz singing their winning entry, Making your mind up.

We can't vote for our own entry as usual this year (not that I would anyway, tis complete rubbish I tell ye) but closer to the date I'll put up some of my favourite choices from this years entries.

In the mean time. Take it away Bucks Fizz!

Naz Shah apologises, but is this just because she got caught?

Naz Shah, the woman who replaced the awful George Galloway in the Bradford East constituency has been suspended from the Labour Party after her Face book Post calling for the ethnic cleansing of Israel and the relocation of Jews to the USA.

The IB Times  reported:

"Jeremy Corbyn and Naz Shah have mutually agreed that she is administratively suspended from the Labour Party by the general secretary," a Labour spokesperson said. "Pending investigation, she is unable to take part in any party activity and the whip is removed."

This comes after a whole series of cases involving anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. This is probably the most serious so far as it involves a Member of the Parliamentary Labour Party. To their credit she has been suspended pending an enquiry but this issue isn't going to go away. Already the fool Ken Livingstone has been defending her saying her post was not anti-Semitic.

Shah has apologised, but is this just because she got caught? 

We'll never know but the relationship between Labour and the Jewish community is at an all-time low.

The discussion on one of the larger Labour supporting Face book groups called simply The Labour Party Forum has been worrying. One comment posted simply said:

I despise anyone who supports Israel. Even if they're bloody Jewish.

I told the poster he was as bad as Shah. Can't print the reply. It wasn't pleasant, but then I expect no better from the so-called anti-Zionist brigade.

And since we've been told anyone who quotes from the groups page will be removed, I've quit before I am pushed.

The new left is the new right.

Turkey: A country founded on genocides that Erdogan wants the world to forget

Despite the efforts of Turkish nationalists and Islamists the genocide committed by the Ottoman Turks towards the end of the First World War has become common knowledge and was commemorated all over the world yesterday.

However this is only part of the story. There is another hidden and tragically less remembered genocide. That of the Assyrians.

RT reported earlier today:

Turkey’s embassy in Stockholm asked Sweden’s TV4 television network to pull a documentary on the mass killings of Assyrians by the Ottoman Empire because the film “will fail to serve the principle of objectivity.”

Ahead of Sunday evening’s scheduled broadcast of a documentary titled “Seyfo 1915 – The Assyrian Genocide,” TV4 said it received an email from Turkish embassy press officer Arif Gulen, in which he opposes the film’s use of the term “genocide,” which is often used to describe the tragic death of as many as 275,000 Assyrians at the hands of Ottoman Turks during WWI.

The letter, which was subsequently published on TV4’s official website, asks the station to “reconsider your decision on broadcasting of the… documentary film with a balanced and sensible attitude,” while cautioning that “only a competent international tribunal can determine whether a particular event is genocide.”

His statement provoked a sharp reaction from the broadcaster, which denounced Gulen’s attempt to pressure the channel to cancel its broadcast, and aired the documentary.

“We can never accept this. We will protest against any attempt to exert pressure that threatens freedom of expression,” said TV4’s program director, Viveka Hansson, in a statement on the company’s website.

Erdogans Turkey is founded on the blood of innocents. The genocides committed against Armenians, Assyrians and let we also not forget Pontiac Greeks must be remembered because the Turkish state today is committing crimes against it's Kurdish population.

So long as the Islamists remain in denial of their own countries history is it any wonder Holocaust denial is rampant throughput the Muslim world.

These crimes against humanity must be remembered. Never Again!

DWP Pay Offer: Divisive Blackmail!

On the way to work on Friday I read the following in The Times (no link£):

The cabinet Office announced that 10 per cent of the senior civil service, roughly 400 officials, would get the cash to reward "outstanding performance" and to help people in specialist roles. The money given to senior officials earning £64,000 to £200,000 comes as teachers and policemen have been capped at 1%

Remember that in 2015 MPs gave themselves a whacking 10% pay rise followed by another 1.3% this year with no changes to their terms and conditions of service. One word..expenses.

Shortly after arriving at work the government announced the Pay Deal for civil servants working in the Department of Work & Pensions. It's not straightforward and is entirely based on staff accepting radical changes to their terms and conditions of service.

There will be new contracts changing the hours worked so Job Centres open earlier and later into the evening and more drastically Saturdays in due course as the DWP tries to implement its new Universal Credit Benefit.

The offer sounds good for some, but is based on their signing up to new anti-social hours of working. Those lower down the pay scale (over half) will benefit over the next four years, but those who have been around for years and are on or near the max of their pay scale will just get 1% a year.

Although signing up to the new contract is "voluntary" for those on old contracts, there is a penalty. If a member of staff refuses the "award" will reduce to 0.25%.

Of course there are other factors. Many of those at the higher end of the pay scales are (like me) approaching retirement so the Department has no incentive to pay more, but if refused then these loyal, long standing members of staff will have their pensions affected.

In other words pure bloody blackmail.

Of course this also comes at a time when the junior doctors have been fighting their new contracts. Jeremy Hunt (no spoonerisms please) hasn't listened to them despite a huge amount of public support and that just will not be there for civil servants, let alone Job Centre staff.

And with the largest of the unions (having shrunk in size and influence under it's far-left Socialist Party dominated leadership) having already voting to recommend the pay deal by 18 to 9 at their recent group executive committee, the possibility of any campaign against aspects of this deal is already lost.

Of course there are difficult problems for the unions to consider. Pay strikes are notoriously difficult to motivate, in the main due to the simple fact that if it lasts more than a couple of days or so most of the financial gains will be lost by those taking part.

The divisive nature of the offer will mean a general acceptance by those who stand to gain from the financial side but how they will react to the change of hours doing what is a very stressful and difficult job on the front line of a benefits office is more difficult to judge.

No doubt these arrangements may suit many, making this dreadful deal even more difficult to oppose.

In these circumstances I find my heart saying vote no, but my head says yes. Not an ideal way of looking at things but realism it has to be at the end of the day. But if management are reading this don't expect us to be happy about this deal.

Conditions in Job Centres are difficult enough with all the pressure put on less staff to do more and be expected to have knowledge of all benefits without proper training.

This deal in no way makes up for the way we have been treated. 

Morale is at an all-time low and will only get worse.

One things for certain we are not "all in this together" as so many millionaire government politicians try to tell us. They simply have no idea.

And just which Minister was late for a Cabinet meeting because he "wasn't used to working on a Saturday"? Answers on a postcard to the Cabinet Office.

The Prospect unions DWP Committee meets on May 4th to discuss the forthcoming ballot. I will be casting a vote, let me know what you think.