Blog

egraded UK left and UK academia. So here is an idea: the party should turn for help to those of us on the left who have spent a good part of our professional and political lives understanding, fighting and defeating left-wing antisemitism. We just might know something.

That bit about "ringing up a Jewish Labour MP and calling her a ‘Zionist C***’"? Read about it at the JC:

A Jeremy Corbyn supporter is facing a jail sentence after pleading guilty to three counts of sending malicious communications to Jewish Labour MPs Dame Margaret Hodge and Dame Louise Ellman, and to the outspoken campaigner against antisemitism John Mann.

Westminster Magistrates’ Court  heard how Nicholas Nelson, 31, sent multiple emails and made numerous telephone calls to the trio, including branding Dame Margaret a “racist Zionist c**t” before adding, “I hope you die”.

ference happened at various stages of the complaints process and sometimes more than once in a case,” the report stated. […]

The EHRC said that its handling of antisemitism contrasted sharply with a thorough and clear policy on issues like sexual harassment complaints. Labour is now subject to a legal obligation to draw up an action plan, which must be agreed with the watchdog by December. Sir Keir committed to do so within six weeks.

This is the first time the EHRC has issued an unlawful notice against a body it was investigating.

The Jewish Labour Movement, the party’s Jewish affiliate, said the report was proof of a “deepening casual culture of anti-Jewish racism”. “The blame for this sordid, disgraceful chapter in the Labour Party’s history lies firmly with those who held positions of leadership,” it said.

In a joint statement, three Jewish community groups said: “This report is a damning verdict on what Labour did to Jews under Jeremy Corbyn and his allies. It proves why British Jews were so distressed and it disgraces those who attacked us for speaking out against anti-Jewish racism."

So not a whitewash – the name Chakrabarti somehow comes to mind – as some no doubt feared. The Labour Party under Corbyn stands indicted for its institutional antisemitism, seeping from the top down.

Of course Corbyn is unrepentant – "anyone claiming there is no anti-Semitism in the Labour Party is wrong", but "the scale of the problem was also dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party, as well as by much of the media". 

Keir Starmer has a job on his hands if he wants to restore Labour's reputation after the Corbyn disaster. 

Update: well, that's a good start:

Sir Keir Starmer has suspended Jeremy Corbyn after an inquiry found the party responsible for "unlawful" harassment and discrimination when he was leader….

"In light of his comments made today and his failure to retract them subsequently, the Labour Party has suspended Jeremy Corbyn pending investigation.

"He has also had the whip removed from the Parliamentary Labour Party."

6″ />

[Photos © Robert Götzfried]

p>

Fourrest is not the only one to complain of cultural imperialism. There is a sense in France that ideas largely imported from elite US university campuses — the likes of intersectionality and identity politics — run counter to French universalism and undermine France’s efforts to tackle its unique social challenges in its own way. To then be hectored by liberal America on how to do community relations on top of this unwanted ideological import, especially in 2020, has left a sour taste in the mouth.

Welcome to the club. The NYT in particular has long been printing offensively inaccurate pieces about the UK as a racist and poverty-ridden hell-hole. 

But yes, Macron deserves our unequivocal support. He's called out the Islamists, and we can't pretend it's a problem confined just to France. As Alaa al-Ameri argues today in Spiked, We must refuse to play the Islamists’ game:

Emmanuel Macron’s departure from conventional wisdom is to see the Islamist movement in its entirety as an infringement on French sovereignty. Rather than ‘peaceful’ Islamists and ‘violent extremists’, he sees a single movement whose tactics are mutually reinforcing. While France’s postcolonial history has done most of the work of marginalising many Muslim migrants and their descendants, Macron nonetheless realises that the Islamist movement has taken advantage of this failure in order to carve off a section of French society which it aspires to control for its own political ends.

His concern is corroborated by the Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual leader, Yusuf Qaradawi, who argues that the Muslim Brotherhood should ‘play the role of the missing leadership of the Muslim nation’, especially in the West. ‘Try to have your society within the larger society’, urges Qaradawi, ‘otherwise you will melt in it like salt in water’. While Islamists will opportunistically accuse Western societies of rejecting and alienating Muslims, they themselves have been working to create their ‘own Muslim ghetto’ (Qaradawi’s words) within the borders of Western countries, in order to leverage them in return for political influence.

The multicultural policies that have dominated Europe and the UK for decades were a perfect environment for the Muslim Brotherhood’s project….

In casting Macron’s attack on them as an attack on Islam and Muslims, Islamists in France and elsewhere are employing the increasingly threadbare tactic of using Western attitudes, values and sensitivities against themselves, in the hope that cries of ‘Islamophobia’ will be enough to ward off the attack….

What alarms Islamists the world over is that France has now openly acknowledged the rules of this game, and is refusing to play.

Hoboken, New Jersey, ca. 1905. "Entrance to Holland America Line piers."

[Photo: Shorpy/Detroit Photographic Company]

Kyle Lawler, who was 18 at the time, was told by Mohammed Agha, a colleague, that a member of the public had raised concerns about a man acting suspiciously.

Salman Abedi had been seen loitering with a large rucksack before the end of an Ariana Grande concert on May 22, 2017. He killed 22 people and injured many more when he detonated his homemade bomb.

Yesterday Mr Lawler told the Manchester Arena Inquiry that he had been “naive” about the danger of an attack which he felt “wouldn’t happen to me”. He added: “I felt unsure about what to do. It’s very difficult to define a terrorist. For all I knew he might have been an innocent young Asian male, sitting on the steps.

“I didn’t want people to think I was stereotyping people because of their race — he could have been someone waiting for his younger sister, people sit there often waiting for a train. I was scared of being wrong and branded a racist. If I had got it wrong, I would have got in trouble. It made me hesitant. I wanted to get it right and not mess up by judging someone by their race.”

8679.jpg” style=”width: 550px” title=”Flach-tern-” />
Peruvian Inca Tern © Tim Flach

Cockatoo © Tim Flach

Vulturine guineafowl © Tim Flach

Egyptian vulture © Tim Flach

Toco toucan © Tim Flach

Long-tailed broadbill © Tim Flach

Blue Throated Macaw © Tim Flach

More details of the birds on his Instagram page.

See also the books.

aph–size-medium–spacing-normal” style=”padding-left: 40px”>And now it appears that the refusal to permit dissent or debate about sex and gender could cost a man his job at a university. I hope not, and not just for the sake of Kevin Price.

A college porter having a clearer understanding of the issues than the undergraduates. Well, who'd have thought?

Round Finsbury Park:

y and we’ll get a statement later, but to not give our full backing to France right now would be deeply shameful, and, what is that word, perfidious. It would also go against the British people’s interests, which are best served by supporting our friends and neighbours, and fellow lovers of liberty, against the world’s tyrants and bullies — and I imagine that public opinion will overwhelmingly favour the French.

Somehow, for all his bluster, Johnson seems incapable of a taking a clear moral stance – on anything, pretty much.