Assange: no hero of the Left

Above: screen grab taken from the X (formerly Twitter) account of WikiLeaks of Julian Assange on board a flight to Bangkok, Thailand, following his release from prison It is good that Julian Assange has been freed. It is good on purely humanitarian grounds: he'd spent more than five years in Belmarsh high security prison and …

SWP and Morning Star: bare-faced liars

By Darren Bedford (on the Workers Liberty website, where it is headed 'Obvious lies used in Ukraine debate) Sharp criticism of one’s political opponents, including within one’s own movement, is an inevitable, even necessary, aspect of political discourse.  What is neither inevitable nor necessary is telling outright lies about those one disagrees with.  In a …

Message to Western pro-Palestine activists: “Use your Western privilege to actually help the Palestinian people”

https://www.youtube.com/embed/1hk0IRqEECQ Ahmed talks about himself, his background and his view of the Palestinians' stuggle I first came across the name of Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib in an article by Jonathan Freedland (itself well worth reading) in last Friday's Guardian. Freedland notes that there is a large constituency of US Jews "with the potential to be a …

NEU: ‘Stop the War’, Stalinists, SWP block solidarity with Ukraine

With thanks to Lynn Perry at Workers Liberty: The National Education Union (NEU) conference took place in Bournemouth, 3-6 April. Motion 37 was "Solidarity with Ukraine". It was debated on the Thursday, following a packed fringe meeting that heard from Ukrainians who had lived under Russian occupation, a Ukrainian trade unionist, PCS Assistant General Secretary …

Palestine, Ukraine and the crisis of empires

London, 30 March 2022, on the demonstration calling for a ceasefire in Gaza By Simon Pirani on his blog People and Nature (NB: it should go without saying that Shiraz is republishing this because we consider it an important and well researched piece, and while broadly sympathetic to his position we do not necessarily agree …

Bristol Palestine Alliance: where “anti-Zionism” and antisemitism meet

By Zack Muddle The “Bristol Palestine Alliance” has doubled down on ignorant and poisonous antisemitism, deflecting and refusing to listen to criticism of renowned antisemite David Miller in a statement which reads as a playbook of antisemitic tropes. David Miller’s well documented antisemitism goes well beyond the type which is (unfortunately) widely espoused on the left. Even Socialist Workers’ Party have criticised him for …

Galloway: scum rises again

Above: George Galloway and friends One of the most loathsome figures to have polluted British politics is, all too predictably, using the Gazan massacre in a cynical attempt to make a comeback: George Galloway is standing in the Rochdale byelection. Here's a rundown on this chancer's recent political history (mainly gleaned from Wikipedia): On 14 …

Four recent books on antisemitism

By Dale Street “Nazis, Islamic Antisemitism and the Middle East”, “Three Faces of Antisemitism: Right, Left and Islamist”, “The Rebirth of Antisemitism in the 21st Century” and “Mapping the New Left Antisemitism” are four collections of articles and essays published at the close of 2023 by the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism. The purpose …

The nonsense of ‘Strike Germany’

By Dale Street French writer and Nobel prize winner Annie Ernaux, US academic and writer Judith Butler, and deputy director of the French National Museum of Modern Art Catherine David are the most prominent of the 1,500 signatories to have put their names to the “Strike Germany” statement to date. “Strike Germany” was launched in …

Pilger: from inspiring truth-teller to genocide denier and apologist for dictators

Above: Pilger standing beside the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum in Vietnam in the late 1970s. Photo: Hulton Deutsch/Corbis/Getty Images The death, on 30 December, of John Pilger brought very mixed feelings as far as I'm concerned. And, except in very extreme cases I am reluctant to speak ill of the dead - hence the delay …