One war criminal: bad, two war criminals: good

Perhaps it's just as well that this leader in The Independent. is pay-per-view. If too many people read it they might think that The Indie. is an uncritical supporter of Israel like the rest of our supine media. It is suggesting that Ariel Sharon can make a peace deal with the Palestinians by co-opting fellow war criminal (and personal friend) Shimon Peres into the government. Elsewhere in the paper today there is a report on the Israeli army killing a 7 year old girl by shelling her house in retaliation for a mortar attack on a Jewish settlement in which no-one was killed. The Israelis haven't yet "confirmed the kill" so we don't know Shimon Peres's reaction yet. Not much the butcher of Qana can say about it really though.

Jewish Chronicle lauds "enhancement"

Yesterday's Jewish Chronicle. opened in high spirits in the (probably justified) belief that the BBC will be even more pro-Israel in future than it has been in the past. This follows the completion of Malcolm Balen's (the BBC's Zionism tsar's) report into BBC coverage of the Middle East. The report is secret, that is, it is being kept from the public, but the JC. has been crowing for months about what it clearly sees as a Zionist victory by having the tsar imposed on the Beeb in the first place. The BBC itself has done nothing to distance itself from the Zionist belief that the recruiting of Malcolm Balen has been a victory for Zionism in the UK. For its part, the BBC has announced, somewhat enigmatically, that it is to "enhance" its coverage of Middle East issues. What the JC. has been hoping for is that any Israeli atrocity will either not be reported at all or will be put into "context". What "context"? Well they want any report on Israel to be accompanied by reports on suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. Now, there should be a problem here. If they report the suicide bombing, what about the context? If the bomber comes from Jenin will the BBC say that Jenin is a refugee camp? If they say it's a refugee camp, will they say where the refugees came from? The answer to that one is Haifa. Will they say that Haifa was ethnically cleansed in order to give Israel a Jewish majority that it wouldn't have without said ethnic cleansing? Would the JC. be so thrilled with the appointment of Malcolm Balen and the proposed "enhancement" if this was the case? I think not.

Archbishop of Canterbury defends Israel

Inside the paper there is a report from Simon Rocker. that Dr Rowan Williams has warned Christians not to challenge Israel's right to exist. Apparently "the suggestion that Israel does not have a right to exist because it is not good enough is a dangerous one". So what's he saying? Is he saying that Israel is not good enough to exist but Christians must not say so? Is he saying that Israel is not good enough but must continue to exist even though it's not good enough? Or is he saying that Israel, an apartheid state based on colonial settlement and ethnic cleansing, is good enough for him and his fellow Christians? If so what kind of Christians did he have in mind: Christian Phalangists?

JC. in denial

Last week the JC. reported on the conference "Resisting Israeli Apartheid - Strategies and Principles" at SOAS. As I reported, they were far more even handed in their report than The Guardian's. sorry effort. It wasn't to last. This week the JC. reporter Gaby Wine. is aghast that, "the keynote speaker was poet Tom Paulin, who at one point alleged that an Israeli army general has said that military operations in the West Bank should be like those in the Warsaw Ghetto". And that this caused Union of Jewish Students (not an interest group for Jewish students in general but a specifically Zionist group) leader Danny Stone to complain that "I could not believe that in a room of 300 students and academics, no one challenged the comparison with Nazis." Now, as far as the report goes, Tom Paulin was simply saying what the Israeli daily Ha'aretz had reported when covering the re-occupation of the refugee camps. Why didn't the JC. say so? What could anyone challenge here? If Danny Stone was there, why didn't he object to Tom Paulin making a simple statement of fact? I'm sure that even the Jewish Chronicle. reported the Israeli commander's "Warsaw Ghetto" speech at the time (though I could be wrong). So what's happening here? Is the JC. deliberately misleading its readers? Or is it agreeing a party line with a readership it assumes to be overwhelmingly Zionist? Whatever it is, an Israeli commander called on his troops to study the Nazi liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto. Yes, this is horrifying, but to express horror, not at the fact that the commander could say such a thing, but the fact that anyone should report on such a thing, represents a state of denial so characteristic of the Zionist movement.

Berlusconi "innocent"

The Independent. (again) providing a counterpoint to those reports suggesting that the arch criminal Berlosconi might actually be innocent of bribing a judge. The Independent., from its headline (Berlusconi proved to have bribed judge but avoids prison) through the whole article, makes it clear that Berlosconi is guilty which is more than can be said for The Guardian. in its headline (Court ruling clears Berlusconi) on the same story.

Welcome back from free Fallujah

The Independent. contrasts the homecoming of the Black Watch soldiers with the homecoming of those they helped to "liberate":

"there are no humanitarian workers working inside the city. When the first of Fallujah's refugees are allowed to return on Christmas Eve, they will be funnelled through five checkpoints. Each will have their fingerprints taken, along with DNA samples and retina scans. Residents will be issued with badges with their home addresses on them, and it will be an offence not to wear it at all times. No civilian vehicles will be allowed in the city in an effort to thwart suicide bombers. One idea floated by the US is for all males in Fallujah be compelled to join work battalions in which they will be paid to clear rubble and rebuild houses."

For a one state solution in Palestine

Another day, another blog for a one state solution. Looks like she's been blogging since 14/11/2004 and she's already picked up a Zionist troll called "Fred".

So that's a known unknown

Rumsfeld was caught out today by some known unknowns. They were soldiers in the US army complaining that their vehicles needed more armour. At present apparently the soldiers have to scavenge for waste on rubbish tips to find metal to coat their vehicles with. Did Rumsfeld know that? A known. Did he not know that? An unknown. Did he know that he didn't know that? A known unknown.

And what about the soldiers? They should be Rumsfeld's constituency. He knows them. But he didn't know they were "pissed", as they say, at running round the desert in vulnerable vehicles. So, known unknowns again. Two lots of known unknowns for the man who invented the expression specially to describe what America (and the UK) were getting into in Iraq.

David Aaronovitch: Damned by, ain't praise

It's strange this Galloway v Telegraph Group. business. Reports have been unanimous that Galloway won the case. That is, the judge in the case ruled that Galloway had been libelled by The Daily Telegraph. And yet Johann Hari, the BBC and now (well yesterday) David Aaronovitch have persisted in libelling Galloway in pretty much the same way that had The Telegraph coughing up £150,000 in damages and a possible £1.4 million in costs. Perhaps they think that the judge's ruling was on some technicality or that, post- Lord Hutton, a judge with integrity is an abberation. For those who think the former then here is the judgment itself. Sorry it's a pdf and it runs to 60 pages. I wouldn't have read it but I felt compelled to when David Aaronovitch wrote in yesterday's Guardian. , "The account of the finding of the documents by the reporter David Blair was not challenged, he himself was praised by the judge. " Now it struck me as very strange that a journalist might be praised by a judge for running with an article that had the judge describing his employers as "disingenuous", at best. Also for various reasons connected with his tenuous grasp of facts, I just don't trust David Aaronovitch. So let's search for "praise" or "praising" in the judgment. It appears in the following passage:

"There is something faulty about this logic. The documents did not publish themselves and the mode of their presentation was wholly under the control of The Daily Telegraph. The argument may have some superficial attraction. On the other hand, it is a little ironic that while the newspaper was, understandably., praising Mr Blair’s "superlative" detective work, and claiming that its scoop had led the news, it should also be seeking to distance itself from the consequences of the publication to the world at large."

So the closest the judge came to praising David Blair was to say that his "disingenuous" employers "understandably, praise[d] him". In other words he didn't praise him at all. But it gets worse. The judge looks into what the Telegraph. might have done to establish whether or not the documents it published were genuine. And the relevant passage in the judgment:

"Did the Defendant take any steps to verify the contents of the
Baghdad documents, in so far as they related to the Claimant,
by reference to independent sources of information, such as the
governments of the United Arab Emirates or Saudi Arabia, Mr
Fawaz Zureikat, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, the
Home Office or intelligence sources, before publishing the
articles complained of?"

And it continues (eventually): "No one on the Defendants’ behalf
suggests that they did make such enquiries."

Now given that David Blair found the documents, should it not have fallen to him to at least try to establish their veracity? Anyway, according to Mr Justice Eady this rudimentary check wasn't undertaken and taking the judgment in total it appears that the failure to try to prove whether the documents were genuine was, among other things, an aggravating factor leading to such a high level of damages.

In fairness to David Aaronovitch I should point out that the judge did praise David Blair as a witness:

"Like the other witnesses in the case, Mr Blair seemed to me to be impressive and straightforward in his evidence. I have no doubt that he believed the documents he found were genuine and that they gave rise to legitimate questions – at least requiring the attention of serious investigative journalists."

but, in that, he was, as the judge said "[l]ike the other witnesses in the case".

but, of course, that isn't what David Aaronovitch said.

Another aggravating factor that Aaronovitch doesn't. lie about, because he doesn't mention it, is the fact that The Telegraph's. barrister - James Price QC - falsely attributed a written statement to George Galloway that he had referred to Barbara Amiel as Conrad Black's "Jewish. wife". Here's the relevant passage:

"One aspect of aggravation was the unfortunate attribution in cross-examination of anti-semitism. I am quite prepared to accept that it was a slip, in the heat of the moment, and that it was not intended to be put forward as part of the Defendants' case. It is necessary for me to consider exactly how it came about. Mr Price wished to refer to a fund-raising letter written by Mr Galloway for the purposes of obtaining support in these proceedings. In it he suggested that he had been attacked by The Daily Telegraph. because of his views on the Middle East in general and the Palestinian cause in particular. Wisely or unwisely, he referred to Lord Black (formerly proprietor of The Daily Telegraph) and his wife Barbara Amiel as being among Mr Sharon’s most vociferous supporters. Mr Price wished to put this document to him in the course of cross-examination. Before he did so, and I believe when it was not actually in front of him, he somewhat unguardedly said that Mr Galloway had referred to Barbara Amiel’s hostility towards him being due to the fact that she was Jewish. The document, of course, said no such thing."

Now here I have to say that the judge was being very charitable to James Price QC given the way The Telegraph. hurls bogus allegations of anti-semitism around sometimes.

Anyway, please read the whole judgment. I'm no lawyer and I would welcome any alternative view to my own. Here it is in html.

Perdition II - this time it's personal

"ALAN RICKMAN is about to become the latest Hollywood star to light the blue touchpaper on the powderkeg that is Arab-Israeli politics." Or should that say "the latest ex. -Hollywood star" since "he is thought to be sympathetic towards the Palestinian cause". Anyway, Alan Rickman is directing a play titled My Name is Rachel Corrie. which is due to open at the Royal Court in 2005.....but will it open at the Royal Court next year? The last time that I know of the Royal Court planning on showing a play that would embarrass the Zionists it was pulled after pressure from various Zionists including academics and actors. The play was Jim Allen's Perdition. It eventually found a home at the Conway Hall after becoming far more famous for being pulled than it would have been if it had just been shown at the Royal Court in the first place. Zionist collaboration with the Nazis, which was the subject of the play, also received a long overdue airing.

Not all Jews are racists

Here are two letters to the Guardian. in response to a woefully inadequate report by Polly Curtis on the SOAS conference Resisting Israeli Apartheid: Strategies and Principles. The first is from a Jewish supremacist who seems to believe that without ethnic cleansing and apartheid laws, we wouldn't have, inter alia., mobile phones, treatment for breast cancer and Pentium chips. The other is a letter from Anne Selden, in the USA, pointing out that not all Jews support Israeli racism as Polly Curtis implies. It doesn't go nearly far enough in rectifying the shortcomings of the article but at least it exposes the anti-Semitic myth that "all Jews endorse Israeli racism".

From the belly of the beast

Well, from a. belly of a. beast. This chap was working at the Telegraph. when they libelled George Galloway. He has an interesting analysis of how Galloway could win a crap game in the establishment's in-house casino.

More on the fiddle

Yediot Aharonot's. Meir Shalev on the significance of the fiddler at the checkpoint.

Naomi Klein proves her point

Naomi Klein presents evidence, to the US ambassador to the UK, that US forces are "eliminating anyone - doctors, clerics, journalists - who dares to count the bodies" of the dead in Iraq.

"Mr Ambassador, I believe that your government and its Iraqi surrogates are waging two wars in Iraq. One war is against the Iraqi people, and it has claimed an estimated 100,000 lives. The other is a war on witnesses."

Guardian's Polly Curtis should read the JC

Apparently there's a conference tomorrow at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) titled "Resisting Israeli Apartheid: Strategies and Principles". According to Polly Curtis in The Guardian. , this has led to SOAS being "attacked" by Jewish groups". One such group is the Union of Jewish Students (UJS). Polly Curtis might not know that the UJS has two seats on the World Zionist Congress which makes policy for the World Zionist Organisation which participates in policy-making for Israel. If she does know, she isn't saying. She would prefer, it seems, to have people believe that all Jews want to silence opposition to Israel and its apartheid nature. Similarly, Professors Steven and Hilary Rose are mentioned as attending the conference. Again, maybe Polly Curtis doesn't know that they're Jewish. She certainly doesn't mention it.

Further into the article it is said that Danny Stone of the UJS has "attended a meeting with the university to ask for extra security to ensure the safety of Jewish students on campus".* No mention here of why Jewish. students need extra security just because a conference is taking place. There's a clear implication here, by the UJS and by Polly Curtis, that conferences criticising Israel's apartheid system are a threat to Jews. Now it is not being over-cynical to suggest that if people attending the conference are attacked by members or supporters of the UJS, the UJS will have got it's "concern" in first. Let's face it, Zionists are masters of the pre-emptive strike.

*In a report on the same event, even the Jewish Chronicle. doesn't suggest that it is Jewish students being threatened. On the contrary the JC. reports that it is the SOAS Principal - Professor Colin Bundy - who has been threatened for allowing the conference to go ahead. The JC. hit the streets yesterday. How did Polly Curtis miss this? Did she do it deliberately? Also the JC. refers to Tom Paulin (who should be addressing the conference) "advocating the killing of American settlers whereas Polly Curtis refers to him "saying that Jewish settlers "should be shot dead"". This could, of course, lead readers to the impression that Tom Paulin has a problem with the Jewishness of the settlers and not their priveleged colonial settler status. Of course it's possible that Polly Curtis is ignorant of her subject but it all looks deliberately misleading, particularly when compared to the Jewish Chronicle's. report on the same event.

Resisting occupation, ethnic cleansing and apartheid

Here's another thing I've, er, borrowed from the Jazzman. He has a post headed Why Zionists love Mahmoud Abbas. A must read except if you're not American you might have to google some names.

Destroying Jewish historical sites

I have nothing to add to this post from the Jazzman. I've even taken his headline. Just to make it easy to follow, here is the Rabbi's post that he links to.

Galloway in his own words

While other media try to salvage what's left of the Telegraph's reputation, Galloway puts his own case in today's Media Guardian.

Johann Hari: A liar and a fool

A few months ago Lenin (he of the Tomb) did a tremendous demolition job on a review by Johann Hari of a book by George Galloway. In an earlier post of mine I asked: Johann Hari: a liar or a fool?. Now, thanks to Lenin, I have the answer. My question was wrong. Hari is both a liar and a fool. I had thought that Hari tried to be sophisticated but he even accuses Galloway of anti-Semitism. I know that's a standard tactic among Zionist journos but it's so inept without back up. He should leave that sort of smear tactic to Melanie Phillips or Howard Jacobson. They're older, more experienced.

Telegraph lied about Galloway

George Galloway has just won his libel action against the Daily Telegraph. This case has a couple remarkable features. First was the fact that the Telegraph. didn't use the defence that what they had said (that George Galloway had been taking bribes from the Saddam regime) was true. They knew it wasn't true. Instead they argued that their lies were justified in the "public interest". Second, the judge (without a jury) found in Galloway's favour awarding him £150,000 and obscene amounts of costs. This must be very worrying for the war party in the UK. They'll carry on casting slurs on the anti-war movement in general but they might exercise caution over naming names in future.

It's funny I can't find the name of the journalist responsible for the libel anywhere in today's coverage. Let me word associate here. Lies...war....Iraq....more lies....libel....Telegraph.....more lies still.....Blair. That's it. His name was Blair.

Barghouti in the running

Marwan Barghouti has declared his candidacy for the Palestinian presidency. Supporters of Mahmoud Abbas have accused him of splitting the movement, but, of course, if he's that worried, Abbas can always stand down.

Leon Rosselson and Robb Johnson do Christmas at Cecil's

Yup, it took a while to find on the internet. There's no mention of it on Leon Rosselson's gig list on his site. Folk London didn't think it worth a mention. But it's happening. Leon Rosselson and Robb Johnson's non-office party night. It's on 10/12 (that's 12/10 if your flying in from the USA) at Cecil Sharp House, 2 Regents Park Road, London NW1. (Nearest tube Camden). You can get "details" from info@irregularrecords.co.uk. Luckily a certain Robb Johnson and I are both fans of Leon Rosselson or he'd never get mentioned on the internet. Personally I think he's worth a googlebomb or two. But since Leon Rosselson hates the internet I won't even bother linking to him but I might just get along to what promises to be the gig of the year.