There is an appalling ignorance among the public as to what leftism is, in particular, left perspectives on Israel and zionism. Some people think that the Mearsheimer and Walt or Pat Buchanon approach is from the left. And of course the SWP's hosting of Atzmon has their grass roots members in denial, indeed in ignorance, about his racism and people coming to the issue cold believe that Atzmon's antisemitic "beliefs" are left wing.
Do they apply this to anybody who complains that an item was insulting to black people or gays or offensive to women, or is this reserved for complaints from Jews? Were all the people contacted by Tony assumed to be part of the non-existent group, or just those with what looked like Jewish names?
It seems to me that the only bullying here was by the character at Indymedia who thought they could intimidate people from criticising by labelling us all as some kind of Jewish cabal.
Who runs Indymedia anyway? Who are they independent of? Their readers, evidently, and the radical milieu for which they purport to speak. Honestly you would get better treatment if you protested over something in the capitalist press.
How do we know whether Indymedia has been infiltrated by fascists or police? Judging from some of the things you quote their level of tolerance for racism seems pretty high. Or is that justified by "free speech"? Not so free when you try to answer back.
I would say let;s have nothing to do with Indymedia until it can prove itself clean and apologised. We can do without them.
Am I "bullying" them? You've seen nothing yet.
It's a part of the whole ethos of direct action that you start to give up using your brain and therefore lose sight in the end of what is the aim and purpose of that direct action. As Mao, not my favourite person, said - before you put a gun in someone's hand you have to put something in their head.
Mark
I think the name of this 'freethepeeps' character is -
Roy Bard freethepeeps at gmail.com
Sun Nov 18 15:19:25 PST 2007
Here is the page I have taken this email header from -
[Imc-uk-features] for the Atzmon moderation page
Which itself can found at the bottom of this list of emails by IndyMedia moderators -
November 2007 Archives by date
The reason I think 'Roy Bard' is 'freethepeeps' is if you read the above email messege he gives his email address as -
freethepeeps at gmail.com
- and signs himself off as 'ftp'.
In the rest of the IndyMedia moderator email list 'freethepeeps' does not reveal their real name.
I think this is pretty conclusive.
Just so as you know mate.
I'll not write any more on this comment in order to keep this info nice and clear.
all the best JSF!
The material is weighted to the mindless activist school, which is obviously easily manipulated by all sorts of "men in black".
So, like all mass media of this nature, including Hyde Park Corner, letters pages in the local press, local radio phones in etc....
It's worth using, but not a substitute for a socialist press - even one controlled by a pug-ugly sectarian with a Hegel fixation.
Sorry Alex, I need more clues
Charlie's former boss Gerry Healy - described as 'the leading pug-ugly' by Joseph Hansen.
Comment by goodwin sands 20 November, 2007 @ 3:21 pm
'There are no gatekeepers just anti-racists'
by Tony Greenstein
Socialist Unity website
I quite agree with this interpretation of atzmon and the trial balloons he floats - successful ones he'll run with such as ones beloved of conspiracy theorist-types, such as his recently accusing JSF, Tony Greenstein, JAZ etc, of being in league with the American ADL, and even being involved in the illegal criminal spying of Jeff Blankfort.
It's a part of the whole ethos of direct action that you start to give up using your brain and therefore lose sight in the end of what is the aim and purpose of that direct action.
- And Tony puts this into practice with his erudite knowledge of atzmon writings. It can't be easy for him to wade through atzmon, a jew-baiter who tries to cause as much offence as he can and use any reaction to prove Jews control the world, Jews are gatekeepers etc
atzmons ideas/conclusions are non-sequitors by the way - his chains of reasoning don't follow. It's just so obvious.
For instance -
Israel claims it is Jewish therefore it is valid to ask what is 'Jewish'. I would have thought it would be more important to ask, for the sake of ALL of Israel's victims, why this government claims to do what it does on behalf of a group of people who have no control over it.
And anyway,
atzmon deliberately exploits the always inherent difficulties in defining what is a human race/ethnic identity/nationalism/religion.
This has always been an interesting field of thought, especially where Holy Scripture comes into contact with realities on the ground, especailly so with Jewish folk, as everybody knows.
This isn't a weakness or some kind of inbuilt fault, as atzmon tries to imply and which is to be seen as a threat, but something that is seriously interesting.
Human diversity is democracy but not to jew-baiting atzmons.
All the best JSF!
ps
I see rizzo is accusing Tony Greenstein of sexism on the PeoplesVoice.org thread over his 'atzmonette' epithet -
http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/
c...ti_racis#c11364
- wasn't rizzo the one who refered to Sue Blackwell as 'appassionata' or something?
It sounded sexist to me at the time - I have lost Sue's website address so I can't look it up
And rizzo refer's to Mark Elf as Tony's boyfriend etc
http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/
c...ti_racis#c11371
sounds a bit homophobic to me!
atzmon and rizzo - it's always a very high falutin debate with them.
Someone sent me this link some time ago saying that it shows when Atzmon changed his own texts.
http://web.archive.org/web/*/
htt...www.gilad.co.uk
Funnily enough I never checked it until tonight and I still don't know how it is supposed to work but a quick browse shows that there is no excuse for anyone who has been politically active for more than five minutes to believe that Atzmon is anything other than an antisemite and this Bard guy is from the same kennel.
Internet Archive Wayback Machine
to my other handy internet gadget -
News Sniffer
Anway,
the files on the 'Wayback Machine' as seen, are splash pages, but the links they contain are active and point to atzmons writings.
I think the search for any textual amendments will be a physical job for the reader, rather than one that the website provides, which is what the 'News Sniffer' does so well.
all the best!
Joe - yes, I thought it looked like hard work. I just checked your goodwin sands link above and it loops back to this thread here.
by Tony Greenstein
Socialist Unity blogsite
20 Nov 2007
Godwin Sand's comment here, No. 16 -
http://www.socialistunity.com/?p...4#comment-
18168
Another excellent comment by Godwin -
http://www.socialistunity.com/?p...4#comment-
18258
Statement in Atzmonese: Im not against Jews, Im against Jewishness.
Translation from Atzmonese: I dont want to burn books, I only want to burn the words in them.
Whether the Jews were actually historically responsible for the crime against Jesus Christ or not didin't matter to hime, he was only interested in the concept.
I told atzmon that it was a legal, constitutional and historical impossibility that any Jew was responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ (whoever this person was).
1 - Crucifixion was the traditional Roman punishment for traitors and enemies of the state cf Spartacus
2 - The Governor of any Roman Province was ultimately responsible for that province, for all its legal and judicial workings.
The 'buck stops' with the Governer.
3 - Giving Jews the blame for 'Christ-killing' was a Christian invention for propaganda purposes. It wouldn't look good giving potential early Christian converts, pagan Roman citizens, the blalm for the murder of their own Messiah.
If anything,
the interest lies in the way Jewish folk have been maligned and mistreated down the years, especially in the Christian West, for something they had no control over and was nothing to do with them. Even the supposed Jewish culprit was named by the early Christains 'Judas'.
As I have said before,
the successor state to the old Roman Empire, centred on Rome, is the current Vatican state - the old title for the chief priest in Rome 'Pontifex Maximus' is the Pope's official title in the official language of The Vatican, Latin!
I could go on - anyway, just like the Protocals are a forgery, so is the accusation that Jews killed Christ. It is an impossibility.
ps
remember atzmon said something along the lines of Jews being involved in the struggle to help Palestinians was like putting Germans in charge of the British WWII effort!
What a plonker - he obviously knows very little about the British Establishment and British history!
Hirsh's behaviour tonite was even weirder. Given 3 minutes to speak from Engage all he could do was ask for a vote that the Israeli speaker against the Boycott, Aeyal Gross, leave the room (presumably because he is Israeli and we are boycotting them). His 'joke' or is it irony was lost on most people, including Jon Snow, who said we're not removing anyone. And that was it. I spoke, as did Mike Cushman but Debbie Fink didn't get in.
What I noticed most about the PeoplesOrganisation article I did was how Mary whined and howled about the fact that the article appeared, even though it replied to an article complaining about how we were trying to silence them. And of course she resolutely avoided the substance of the points I made instead reiterating her political ignorance and stupidity in not understanding that you can support the right of the Palestinians to choose who they wish, without having to agree with the views of Hamas.
I also note that she claimed Pappe as a good supporter of hers and Atzmon. Interesting that Pappe tonight made an especial emphasis on the fact that Jews should speak up as Jews against what Israel has done. Someone better tell him he's behaving like one of the worst racial and tribal/ethnic activists and is in fact a Zionist in the pay of the ADL.
And speaking of idiots, there are none more so than the SWP. There was John Rose and Sabby Sagal (who organised it) giving out leaflets for a Camden PSC festival which includes Atzmon. A number of people expressed their outrage over this tonight. They really don't get why this is so damaging.
http://www.camdenpalestine.org.u...ocal/
events.php
Joe says that 'atzmons ideas/ conclusions are non-sequitors by the way - his chains of reasoning don't follow. It's just so obvious.
For instance -
Israel claims it is Jewish therefore it is valid to ask what is 'Jewish'. I would have thought it would be more important to ask, for the sake of ALL of Israel's victims, why this government claims to do what it does on behalf of a group of people who have no control over it.'
I would have thought the first question was what it means by its claim to be 'Jewish', in what way is it Jewish. Is there a single definition of being Jewish? Of course anti-Semites will accept the claim that Israel and the Zionists make at face value, and that is why Atzmon is objectively a Zionist, despite his alientation from them, because his logic and thinking merely reflect their own claims.
It has been a real eye-opener and a bit of an education for me, to see these racists and conspiracy-theorists at their work, and all on the back of one atzmon article being initially published on UK IndyMedia.
Of course, there is no single definition of what it is to be 'Jewish' Tony. I was looking at things from the perspective of Israeli government's crimes, rather than the basis for its claims as to why it does what it does.
Being Scottish, we have been pummelled for years by the Imperialist British establishment regarding our own character, and how crap Scotland is, how we are just a bunch of subsidy junkies, how we have a cultural cringe, etc.
The fact is, there are many parts to Scotland as there is to any other collective kind of identity the world over.
Most Scots would identify exactly with Jewish folk and the delight that is the multi-facet character of all its different threads and strands and histories.
As I always say, diversity is democracy - and this 'essentially' is what humanity is all about and not a homogenised, deoderised, industrialised, pastuerised, grey monoculture which the likes of Rupert Murdoch and corporate capitalism wants to turn it into. Indeed, this seems to be what some of the higher echelons of the SWP would have all the diversity that is human society, converted into (if I've read recent comments correctly).
Just to quote the great Hugh MacDiarmid, one of the most important figures of 20th century Scotland and an anti-British imperialist at the heart of the British Empire (I have anglicised this for non-Scots Lallans readers ie homogenised a unique dialect!) -
"If there is anything in Scotland worth having, there is no distance to which it is unattached"
These sentiments apply, not just to Scotland, but to all human cultures, at all times, in all places!
all the best!
ps
more racist abuse from rizzo -
http://freethepeeps.wordpress.co...-fool/
#comments
- over at Roy Bard's(?) freethepeeps blog
I see rizzo is still making claims about jewish gatekeeping despite the fact atzmon himself says his stuff is published all over the internet - not very efficient gatekeepers, are you at JSF JAZ etc?
How Jews ever managed to get control of the Whitehouse, I've no idea - probably some kind of cunning ploy I expect blah blah
The reason why Roland and I initially took up this Shamir & Atzmon guy, and I remember writing to Roland along much the same lines as what Mark is saying, i.e. just ignore him, is that because this anti-Semitism doesn't hurt Jews - we are white not an oppressed minority in this society - but because it hurts the Palestinians by playing into the hands of the Zionists.
Atzmon is one of the best friends the Zionists could wish for and if he didn't exist - with his racial obsessions - they'd probably have to invent him (that is if they didn't!).
I remember seeing a TV docudrama about the Crucifiction of Jesus in which Pontius Pilate came off as a rather cynical Roman bureaucrat. The writers had the scene where Pilate washes his hands to prove that the Jewish Sanhedrin and not he were responsible for Jesus' fate. But they wittily had the slave pouring water "over" his hands actually pour the water behind them--so that from a distance it looked like Pilate was washing his hands, but in reality they remained dry. The writers were cleverly making the point that Pilate was just going through the motions of renouncing his guilt, EVERYONE knew he was the real judge, jury and executioner. The Sanhedrin were just his sock puppets, if you will.
was how to get round the ultimate problem of the fact that Roman Authority was responsible for executing Jesus.
Don't forget that the staging of the decision taken to execute Christ involved -
1 - 'Judas' betraying Jesus
2 - the Jewish crowd choosing Jesus for execution
3 - Pontius Pilate 'washing' his hands
This is what literary critics call an 'over-determined' plot.
The writer(s) of the New Testament went out of their way to make sure Jews, not Romans, were going to get the blame, and for pretty selfish motives as well.
all the best!
Harry's Place like Peace Palestine, is a site where truth is irrelevant.
HP is just a bunch of muslim-baiting neo-colonialist western racists.
Anyway, I suppose I'll have to visit the comments again to read what Tony has to say.
I did like the way Mikey, the intellectual midget, refers to the fact his targets are insignificant dwellers of insignificant political factions which no-one bothers about - not only is he an intellectual midget but a megalomaniac as well.
Mikey, the performing thought-monkey, has obvious delusions of granduer about his place in the world - since when has HP sauce been in the newspaper headlines, on the TV news or on the lips of the nation every morning?
JSF, JAZ etc are so insignificant to Mikey, the intellectual non-entity, that he spent a lot of time putting together his dross of an article, as he himself confesses to.
I mean, really - I could go on.
all the best JSF!
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