Time passes slowly when the days are uneventful and for the most part lived in the horizontal. It seems far longer than twenty days since I wrote my last substantive post, a photo-record of the Palestine March in Central London of May 16.
In that post I wrote:
As for ‘racism’ (since antisemitism is not unproblematically labelled as such, while an International Human Rights Welfare Association (IHRWA) definition that could have been crafted by Smotrich and Ben-Gvr serves to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism) or indeed any form of ‘othering’, these images bear witness to diversity in spades.
To which I added a footnote:
The DNA of most of today’s Palestinians shows them to be Semites who probably and over millennia converted from Judaism to Christianity or Islam, while that of many Israeli Jews, blue eyed Ashkenazi in particular, suggests a reverse trajectory in Eastern Europe. So whatever antisemitism is – and I deny neither its reality nor the infamies done under its malign star – it has little in common with the racism endured by black, brown and hispanic peoples who to this day in the West, unlike Jews, feature disproportionately in low pay jobs, in the criminal justice system and, in the case of the lead imperialism, on death row.
If we do not understand Zionism as a colonialist/imperialist project – for reasons given here and here – then our grasp of its inhumanities may be heartfelt and actionable, and on both counts invaluable, but will also remain painfully limited and easily exploited by dark forces which thrive on confusion and are perfectly capable of appropriating our most decent and laudable instincts.
And if we do? Then we will also know that empire’s excesses in far off lands – which by a zillion objective measures erode rather than protect the interests of the vast majority of Westerners, whether we slice this economically or by the Orwellian degraded term, ‘security’ – have a way of blowing back on the imperial hub itself. Witness the erosion of hard won civil liberties across the West.
My cue for handing over to Jonathan Cook, writing yesterday. His focus is on Britain’s increasing de facto pro Zionist policing, echoed in Europe, North America and Antipodes, but I was glad to note his fleeting reference to #MeToo – a perfect example, in its seemingly innocent fusion of postmodern elevation of narrative over truth with Stalinesque conflations of accusation with guilt which ditch the presumption of innocence. For those with eyes to do so, we have seen – never more starkly than in the desertion of brave Julian Assange by what should have been his most ardent support base in the liberal intelligentsia – empire neoliberalism’s Borglike ability to co-opt the best within us for its own nefarious ends.
But that’s quite enough from me. Here’s Jonathan.
UK policing culture – from the Nowak murder to crushing protest – grows ever more rotten
The goal of the Israel lobby has been to loosen evidence thresholds, constrain critical thinking, and redefine racism and criminality. The effects have bled into dangerous new policing norms.
Here are two things that can be true at the same time:
First, the actions of police officers in Southampton in handcuffing 18-year-old student Henry Nowak and reading him his rights as he lay on the ground taking his last gasps of air, his lungs filling with blood from a stab wound, are barely comprehensible.
Vickrum Digwa, the Sikh man who stabbed Nowak, had lied to police, claiming that Nowak had initiated a racist attack against him.
Police officers attending the scene ignored all the visual evidence in front of them – clues the rest of us can see from the bodycam footage. Nowak was all too obviously in desperate need of medical attention and compassion. Instead he died alone in the most appalling circumstances.
Second, all statistical and anecdotal evidence continues to show that British police forces are deeply racist – not against white people like Henry Nowak, but against members of ethnic minorities, especially black people.
Every report into policing – from Lord Scarman’s in 1981 into the Brixton riots to Sir William Macpherson’s in 1999 into the Stephen Lawrence murder and Baroness Casey’s in 2023 into grooming gangs – has found severe failings by the police on issues relating to race.
And yet nothing leads to meaningful change. Black people are still 40 times more likely to be stopped and searched under special police powers. Police continue to use force, including tasers, far more often and for far longer against members of ethnic minorities than against white people. And of the many hundreds of children subjected to strip searches each year by the police, black children are 11 times more likely to be invasively searched.
Read the rest on Jonathan’s substack …
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My other third party post today needs little introduction. It inspired me to write this to its Media Lens authors, David Edwards and David Cromwell:
Another great post, Davids. I write next to nothing on this, despite sharing all your dread of catastrophic global warming. One, others like you guys do a great job on this front and I, like you, must choose my fights. Two, like you I trace the eco-insanity to the same roots as those of the wars of a dying hence triply dangerous empire, ruling class larceny, and their attendant economic illiteracies.
My brother has an effective way of dealing with climate ‘sceptics’.
“Help me out will you? I’m not a climate expert so have a choice. I can believe you, or I can believe the overwhelming majority of climate scientists with no axe to grind like big oil funding. Who do you suppose I should believe?”
Without further ado, here’s Media Lens on global warming and, their specialty, its lamentably low coverage – given the systemic inadequacy of neoliberalism and its dutiful stenographers to address root causes – in our lovely corporate media.
Invitation To A Turkey Shoot – How To Debunk Climate Denial
We, of course, post on all kinds of emotive and controversial issues on social media: genocide in Gaza, the war of aggression on Iran, the weaponisation of anti-semitism to undermine democratic choice and defend Israel, and so on. Perhaps because we don’t post out of anger and hate, we don’t generally receive a lot of hostility in response.
Remarkably, the one issue that is all but guaranteed to generate snarling dismissals and abuse is climate change. Discussion of highly sophisticated and complex climate science has become a ‘populist’ cause among people raised on a diet of trashy tabloids and hard-right politics (Reform, Restore, MAGA). Their passionate conviction: climate scientists and ‘alarmist’ politicians are faking data to secure research grants and tyrannical control of society. With great, mocking confidence, scientists are accused of the most childish errors – like all ‘Bad Guys’ they are as stupid as they are corrupt.
On 26 May, the Met Office posted on X:
‘Today is now the hottest day in May on record with Heathrow and Kew Gardens provisionally reaching 35.0°C.
‘Until yesterday the highest temperature in May was 32.8°C, but we’ve now exceeded that record on consecutive days by a full two degrees Celsius.’
The Met Office emphasised the ‘full two degrees’ because in the last century records have usually been broken by tenths or hundredths of a degree. Despite what many people appear to believe, this spring was actually the warmest on record for England and Wales. The last three years are the top three warmest on record. Nine of the top ten warmest springs have been since 2007 …
Read the full piece on the Media Lens substack …
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