Tag Archives: Seumas Milne

May 30 2013

Thoughts on the Guardian while at the Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism

EncJud_anti-semitism-band3-kolonne143-144a-karikatur-Rothschild-1898

Along with my CAMERA colleagues, I’ve been participating in the Global Forum for Combating Antisemtism, a three-day conference in Jerusalem organized to allow activists from around the world the opportunity to strategize on best practices in combating the various manifestations of anti-Jewish racism.

During one of the plenary sessions, I was able to ask Itamar Marcus of Palestinian Media Watch if he could shed some light on a phenomenon addressed often at this blog: the Guardian’s consistent failure, when reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, to report on the pervasive  antisemitism within the Arab and Muslim Middle East – what we’ve characterized as their glaring antisemitic sins of omission.

Marcus replied to my query concerning the putatively liberal media group’s silence in the face of such bigotry by suggesting that Guardian contributors may find it easier to accept the ‘grievance excuse’ rather than acknowledging the existence of hateful, violent ideologies.  Those who embrace the ‘grievance excuse’ argue, with varying degrees of explicitness, that it is indeed Jewish (or Israeli) behavior which often incites anti-Jewish racism and violence.

One moral corollary of the grievance excuse for antisemitism pertains to the similar tendency to contextualize terrorist attacks by radicalized Muslim citizens of Western countries  as understandable responses to U.S. or UK foreign policy – a narrative advanced, among others, by Glenn Greenwald, Seumas Milne and Rachel Shabi.  

Though the lethal terror attack against Lee Rigby in London by Michael Adebowale did not have an antisemitic component, the failure by these Guardian commentators to deal honestly with the extremist, reactionary interpretation of Islam which inspired his unimaginable savagery follows the same antisemitic logic, denying moral agency to the perpetrator while demanding a moral accounting from the victim.

‘Jews’, the Israeli Holocaust Studies professor Yehuda Bauer insisted during his keynote speech at the Forum, just a few minutes ago, “don’t cause antisemitism’.  ’Only antisemitic logic and ideology causes antisemitism’, he declared.

While we should acknowledge our inability to know with any degree of certainty whether Judeophobia haunts the thoughts of the Guardian contributors we scrutinize, the intellectual poverty which feeds their polemical obfuscations and moral abdications in the face of even the most grotesque expressions of Jew hatred is undeniable, and shameful.

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May 22 2013

Top 10 warning signs you may be a ‘Guardian Left’ anti-Semite

H/T Seumas

The Guardian’s associate editor Seumas Milne – who, in case it needs reminding, worked for the pro-Stalinist communist publication ‘Straight Left’ earlier in his career – was kind enough to Tweet a link to a piece in Foreign Policy Magazine by Stephen Walt.

The piece is titled ‘Top 10 warning signs you are a liberal imperialist‘.

The essay itself, written by the co-author of a book widely condemned for its shoddy scholarship and for arguing that Jews wield too much power in Washington, D.C., is unintentionally quite comical – a kind of ‘Western Guilt-Driven Guide to the Universe for Dummies’ – and includes, as #1, the following:

You frequently find yourself advocating that the United States send troops, drones, weapons, Special Forces, or combat air patrols to some country that you have never visited, whose language(s) you don’t speak, and that you never paid much attention to until bad things started happening there.

Whilst I don’t speak fluent academic-ese like the esteemed Harvard professor, I have become adept at deciphering an even more obscure dialect – the language of the Guardian Left.

So, in the spirit of Walt’s mockery of those who ‘unknowingly’ are compromised by a deep-seeded imperialism lurking in their subconscious, here is CiF Watch’s own ‘Top 10 warning signs you may be a Guardian Left anti-Semite‘ – a list, per the links below, inspired by real life Guardianistas!)

1. You claim the mantle of human rights yet find yourself running interference for anti-Semitic world leaders and helping to spread the propaganda of Islamist extremists - and even terrorist leaders who openly call for the murder of Jews.

2.  You claim to condemn racism at every opportunity yet are strangely silent or seriously downplay even the most egregious examples of antisemitic violence.

3. You claim to be a champion of progressive politics yet often use terms and advance tropes indistinguishable from classic right wing Judeophobia - such as the argument that Jews are too powerful, use their money to control politics, and are not loyal citizens.

4. You support nationalism, and don’t have a problem with the existence of more than 50 Muslim states, yet you oppose the existence of the only Jewish state in the world.

5. Even when putatively condemning antisemitism you can’t help but blame the Jews for causing antisemitism.

6. You condemn the Holocaust yet also obsessively condemn living Jews for their alleged ‘inhumanity’ and even argue that Jews haven’t learned the proper lessons from the attempt to annihilate their co-religionists from the planet.

7. You not only support Palestinian rights, but support their “right” to launch deadly terrorist attacks on Israeli Jews, under the mantle of anti-imperialist ”resistance”.

8. You characterize extremist reactionary Islamist movements as “progressive“.

9. You accuse Jews of cynically misusing the charge of antisemitism to “stifle” debate about the Jewish state.

10. You champion diversity and multiculturalism of all kinds, yet suggest that Jewish particularism represents an inherently tribal, ethnocentric and racist identity.

I’m sure there are more than ten – so please feel free to add to our list in the comment section below.

(This post was revised at 15:15 EST to correct a mistake concerning Seumas Milne’s work at Straight Left.)

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May 14 2013

Guardian’s Milne diligently promotes Assad propaganda

It is the publication of thinly veiled ideologically inspired polemics such as the one by Seumas Milne on the subject of Syria which appeared in the ‘Comment is Free’ section of the Guardian on May 7th that has done so much to destroy that paper’s reputation as an organ of serious journalism.

Milne’s puerile student rag-style rant against “The West and its allies” predictably devotes a good deal of column space to Israel from its very beginning.

“If anyone had doubts that Syria’s gruesome civil war is already spinning into a wider Middle East conflict, the events of the past few days should have laid them to rest. Most ominous was Israel’s string of aerial attacks on Syrian military installations near Damascus, reportedly killing more than 100.

The bombing raids, unprovoked and illegal, were of course immediately supported by the US and British governments. Since Israel has illegally occupied Syria’s Golan Heights for 46 years, perhaps the legitimacy of a few more air raids hardly merited serious consideration.”

According to whom or what (apart from his own opinion) these alleged air strikes are “illegal” is an issue with which Milne does not trouble his readers, failing to produce any source or factual backing for his mud-slinging accusation. But even more jaw-dropping is Milne’s use of the word “unprovoked”. Obviously, Milne cannot be unaware of the existence of UN SC resolution 1701 which reiterates the previously recognised need to disband and disarm all militias – including and especially Hizballah – in Lebanon and prohibits the sale or supply of arms into Lebanon except with the authorization of its government. 

Milne’s description of an alleged defensive air strike on a banned consignment of advanced missiles destined for a terrorist militia which should – according to the UN – have been disarmed and disbanded nine years ago, as “unprovoked” is therefore ridiculous enough in itself. The fact that those weapons would be likely to be used against civilian targets in at least one Middle Eastern country makes Milne’s use of the words “unprovoked and illegal” nothing less than malevolent.

Next Milne comes up with a fine example of baseless rhetoric designed to paint Israel as a favoured protectorate of the West.

“But it’s only necessary to consider what the western reaction would have been if Syria, let alone Iran, had launched such an attack on Israel – or one of the Arab regimes currently arming the Syrian rebels – to realise how little these positions have to do with international legality, equity or rights of self-defence.”

In fact, we already know the answer to Milne’s ‘hypothetical’ question, and it is not the one he implies. Iran has – via its proxies Hizballah and Hamas, and enabled by its ally Syria – been launching attacks on Israel for well over a decade. The “western reaction” to thousands of Iranian made and/or financed missiles fired at Israeli civilian communities in the south of Israel since the Gaza Strip disengagement in 2005 has been an occasional tame and meaningless finger-wagging punctuated by shrill hypocritical condemnation whenever Israel takes action to defend its civilians. The same is the case on Israel’s northern border where around four thousand missile attacks were launched at Israeli civilians in 34 days by a terrorist militia which the international community had previously vowed – and failed – to dismantle. The “western reaction” to Israeli actions in defence of its civilians was, once again, hypocritical condemnation of those actions. 

In the subsequent paragraphs Milne tries to advance a patently ridiculous theme prevalent in Syrian regime propaganda whereby Israel has thrown in its lot with the rebel forces in that country. He also makes the accusation that Israel is “clearly intervening in the war”, based on deliberately contorted “evidence”.

“…  Israeli officials have been pushing claims that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons. Since Obama declared that the use of chemical weapons would cross a “red line”, allegations of their use have become a crucial weapon for those demanding increased western intervention, in a bizarre echo of the discredited orchestration of the invasion of Iraq a decade ago.”

One senior IDF officer stated that there is reason to believe that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons. To interpret that as “Israeli officials have been pushing claims” of course requires an exceptionally blinkered imagination, especially as British and French sources had made the exact same observations prior to Itai Brun’s statement. Milne continues:

“That effort came unstuck this week when the UN investigator Carla Del Ponte reported that there were “strong concrete suspicions” that Syrian rebels had themselves used the nerve gas sarin. The claim was hurriedly downplayed by the US, though the rebel camp clearly has an interest in drawing in greater western intervention, in a way the regime does not.”

Perhaps deliberately, Milne fails to inform readers that the UN quickly distanced itself from Del Ponte’s remarks.

” “The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic wishes to clarify that it has not reached conclusive findings as to the use of chemical weapons in Syria by any parties to the conflict,” the U.N. said in a statement. “As a result, the commission is not in a position to further comment on the allegations at this time.”

Later on, Milne once again rolls out the Syrian regime propaganda:

“The irony of the US and other western governments – let alone Israel – once again making common cause with al-Qaida, after a decade of a “war on terror” aimed at destroying it, is one factor holding Obama back.”

Like his ideological heroes in Damascus, Milne probably does not for one moment really believe that Israel is collaborating with Al Qaeda or – no less absurdly – that Al Qaida would agree to join forces with Israel. Such nonsense is just part of the propaganda strategy of the Assad regime.

When such clearly identifiable absurdities come out of the Presidential Palace in Damascus, those who know the Middle East well are not surprised. Professional journalists take such bizarre claims in context. Political activists ideologically aligned with the Assad dictatorship repeat and even embellish such fatuities. 

With this article, Seumas Milne once again makes it patently clear to which of those categories he belongs. 

Apr 25 2013

Guardian removes claim about Iran’s nuclear “weapons” program from ‘the pages of time’

If you go to the Guardian’s business page you’ll see a report by Rupert Neate about a British company which allegedly earned millions of pounds selling goods to Iran, “including to a state-owned firm that supplies the regime’s nuclear programme”

The title of the report, as it now appears, is “Glencore traded with Iranian supplier to nuclear programme”.

after

However, the if you go back in time a few days (to a cached page), you can see the title they originally used: “Glencore traded with Iranian supplier to nuclear weapons’s programme”.  

orig

Cached page, as it originally appeared

At some point after the story was published on April 21 the word “weapons” was deleted from title.

Whilst we’ll likely never know for sure what prompted the Guardian “correction” to the evidently counter-revolutionary suggestion that Iran is working on a nuclear weapons program, the paper’s history in denying the obvious about the regime’s nuclear ambitions provides some context.

For instance, there was Seumas Milne’s attempt, in a 2011 Comment is Free post, to obfuscate on the issue, which included an urgent plea for readers to prevent a “covert US-Israeli campaign against Tehran” from exploding into a global war.  He further argued that ”a US-Israeli stealth war against Iran” would be “shocking” as “the case against Iran is so spectacularly flimsy.” He concluded thusly:

“There is in fact no reliable evidence that Iran is engaged in a nuclear weapons programme…. the evidence suggests Iran suspended any weapons programme in 2003 and has not reactivated it.”

In fact nothing could be further than the truth.  A Nov. 2011 IAEA Report included the following conclusions:

  • Iran has been conducting research and experiments geared to developing a nuclear weapons capability
  • Iran had carried out tests relevant to the development of a nuclear device.

Even a Guardian story (which included a pdf of the full IAEA report) characterized the IAEA findings as establishing that that “Iran appears to be on a structured path to building a nuclear weapon.”  Further, as recently as early April 2013, IAEA head Yukiya Amano said in an interview that his agency “has information indicating that Iran was engaged in activities relevant to the development of nuclear explosive devices in the past and now.”

But the award for great achievements in ideologically driven propaganda goes to their former veteran journalist Brian Whitaker, who actually served as the Guardian’s Middle East editor for seven years.  In a ‘CiF’ piece in Nov. 2011 titled “Why do the US media believe the worse about Iran?”, Whitaker not only ignored IAEA reports but suggested that the clandestine Iranian program may not even be a military program at all, but merely a ‘peaceful civilian project’ to manufacture nanodiamonds.

nanodiamonds

Nanodiamonds – a substance used in polishing compositions, coatings, lubricants and polymers.

Though the question of whether or not the Islamist regime in Iran will be able to successfully carry out their mission to develop nuclear weapons depends on the resolve of Western political and opinion leaders to stand up to the threat, the Mullahs in Tehran can always count on the Guardian Left to run interference on their clear aspirations to regional hegemony.

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Apr 24 2013

The moral ‘trooferism’ of Richard Falk and the Guardian’s Seumas Milne

Richard-Falk-Memo1UN official Richard Falk, a self-professed believer in 9/11 conspiracy theories, has been widely condemned for arguing that the Boston terror attack was the result of US foreign policy, as well as Obama’s recent trip to Israel, in a commentary in the April 21 edition of Foreign Policy Journal.

Falk said the Boston Marathon bombings – which killed three and injured over 180 – were “expected” given Washington’s ongoing policies around the world, especially its support for Israel and its military involvement in the Middle East.

“The American global domination project is bound to generate all kinds of resistance…the United States has been fortunate not to experience worse blowbacks,” wrote Falk

Falk added the following on the Boston attacks:

“It is horrible, but we in this country should not be too surprised, given our drone attacks that have killed women and children attending weddings and funerals in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” 

American leaders, argued Falk towards the end of his Foreign Policy Journal essay, “don’t have the courage to connect some of these dots.”

It’s interesting that, up until now, it seems that even the most ardent critics of American foreign policy haven’t attributed blame to the U.S. for the Boston Marathon bombings, and, encouragingly, the comments by Falk (who also has a history of antisemitism) elicited a strong rebuke from, among others, US Ambassador Susan Rice.

American politicians may not, as Falk complained, have the “courage to connect the dots“, but the Guardian’s associate editor Seumas Milne seems to, as least based on his recent ‘Comment is Free’ entry on April 23.  Though his piece deals with the ‘scandal’ of the continuing use of Guantánamo Bay to hold enemy combatants, Milne was able to seamlessly tie in the Boston bombing towards the end of his essay, where he wrote the following:

We don’t yet know the motivations of the two men accused of carrying out last week’s atrocity in Boston, which killed three people and seriously injured many more. But we do know that 61 were killed the same day in bomb attacks in Iraq that were blamed on al-Qaida, brought to the country by the US-British invasion. And 16 were killed in Pakistan the following day in a suicide attack claimed by the Pakistani Taliban, which mushroomed as a result of the invasion of Afghanistan.

What is certain is that so long as the US and its allies intervene, occupy and wage war across the Arab and Muslim world – whether directly or by proxy, with daisy cuttersor drones – such outrages [such as the Boston attack] will continue. It’s the logic of a war of terror without end.

So, although Milne evidently “doesn’t yet know the motivations of the two men accused of carrying out last week’s atrocity in Boston”, he does know enough about the attack to claim that such “outrages” will continue “so long as US and its allies intervene, occupy and wage war across the Arab and Muslim world”.

Milne_sqThe only surprise about Milne’s decision to publish an essay implicitly blaming American policy in the Middle East for the deadly attacks targeting innocent American citizens by two Islamist-inspired terrorists is that he waited over a week since the bombing to do so.

If you recall, a mere two days after the 9/11 attacks which killed nearly 3000 Americans, Milne complained, at ‘Comment is Free’, that “most Americans simply don’t get…why the United States is hated with such bitterness, not only in Arab and Muslim countries, but across the developing world”.

Milne expressed bitterness that only a minority of Americans were likely to “make the connection between what has been visited upon them and what their government has visited upon large parts of the world”, though it was vital they “make that connection…if such tragedies are not to be repeated.”

 He added that the US was “reaping a dragon’s teeth harvest” it had itself sowed.

Although the Guardian associate editor hasn’t gone so far as to claim, as Falk has, that 9/11 was an inside job, Milne and his political allies on the far left who continually blame the US and its support for Israel – for deadly attacks targeting its civilians by reactionary and malevolent Islamist terrorists are advancing an equally insidious lie, one which obfuscates cause and effect and blurs the ethical distinction between victim and perpetrator.

Whilst 9/11 conspiracy theories are rightly mocked as a vice of the intellectually deficient, and the mendacious propaganda of extremists, the moral ‘trooferism’ of those whose contempt for America, Israel and the West inspires such a spectacular misunderstanding of the civilizational dividing lines in our time should similarly be named and shamed as the dangerous political charlatans they are.

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Apr 11 2013

The Guardian’s Seumas Milne cynically exploits a Holocaust survivor

Seumas Milne’s Yom HaShoah Tweet was a few days late, but it seems that his delay in honoring the millions of Jewish victims was merely the result of the Guardian assistant editor’s patience – waiting for just the right opportunity to  cynically exploit the words of a Holocaust survivor to advance his own political ends.

Yesterday, Milne Tweeted the following:

The link takes you to the blog of Richard Silverstein - who recently was exposed shamefully using rhetoric to impute Israel-Nazi analogies - where he cites a survivor named Havka Folman-Raban, who said the following in a ceremony attended by Israeli youth at the Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum in northern Israel:

Continue the rebellion.  A different rebellion of the here and now against evil, even the evil befalling our own and only beloved country.  Rebel against racism and violence and hatred of those who are different.  Against inequality, economic gaps, poverty, greed and corruption.

Strengthen humanistic education and values of ethics and justice.  These too are [a form of] rebellion against alcoholism among our youth and the terrible phenomenon of attacks against the elderly.

Rebel against the Occupation. No–it is forbidden for us to rule over another people, to oppress another [people].  The most important thing is to achieve peace and an end to the cycle of blood[letting].  My generation dreamed of peace.  I so want to achieve it.  You have the power to help.  All my hopes are with you.  If only [you could].

Folman-Raban was expressing her hope, in the context of a longer humanistic message about the need to overcome social and economic problems in the Jewish state (her “beloved country”),  that the occupation should end (as with the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict more broadly) in a decidedly peaceful manner.

Contrary to Folman’s-Raban’s message of non-violence, the “rebellion” Milne himself has ‘dared’ to imagine is not of the non-violent Gandhi variety but, rather, the bloody ‘resistance’ of Arafat.

On Nov. 20, Milne, in a column at ‘Comment is Free’, explicitly justified the murder of Israelis by Palestinian terrorists, while simultaneously arguing that, “as an occupying power” in Gaza, Israel DOES NOT have the right to defend itself.  Here are the relevant passages:

“So Gazans are an occupied people and have the right to resist, including by armed force (though not to target civilians), while Israel is an occupying power that has an obligation to withdraw – not a right to defend territories it controls or is colonising by dint of military power.

Even if Israel had genuinely ended its occupation in 2005, Gaza’s people are Palestinians, and their territory part of the 22% of historic Palestine earmarked for a Palestinian state that depends on Israeli withdrawal from the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem. Across their land, Palestinians have the right to defend and arm themselves, whether they choose to exercise it or not.”

A few days later, he spoke at a London rally, sponsored by ‘Stop The War Coalition‘, again inciting violence against Israelis.

Anyone familiar with the political stylings of Milne – who worked for the communist rag ‘Straight Left’ earlier in his career - would not be surprised that he’d shill for Hamas.  However, the mere predictability of his most recent apologia for Islamist resistance and abuse of Holocaust memory doesn’t render it any less odious.  

Dec 17 2012

BBC Watch report reveals the malice of Seumas Milne’s anti-Israel propaganda

As our sister site, BBC Watch, recently reported, on November 5, about an article in the Middle East section of the BBC reported the following:

“A Palestinian has died after being hit by Israeli gunfire as he approached Gaza’s border fence with Israel.

The Israeli military said the man was shot after ignoring warnings to stop. Palestinian medics said the man was unarmed and mentally ill.”

The same incident was cynically exploited by the Guardian’s Seumas Milne in his ‘Comment is Free’ essay on Nov. 20, which explicitly endorsed the right of Palestinians to commit acts of terrorism against Israelis (while rejecting the right of Israelis to defend themselves), titled ‘It’s Palestinians who have the right to defend themselves‘.

Milne wrote:

“In fact, an examination of the sequence of events over the last month shows that Israel played the decisive role in the military escalation: from its attack on a Khartoum arms factory reportedly supplying arms to Hamas and the killing of 15 Palestinian fighters in late October, to the shooting of a mentally disabled Palestinian in early November, the killing of a 13 year-old in an Israeli incursion and, crucially, the assassination of the Hamas commander Ahmed Jabari last Wednesday during negotiations over a temporary truce.”

[emphasis added in both quotes]

The man shot near the border fence (mentioned by the BBC and Milne) was named by Palestinian sources as Ahmed Tawfiq ‘Awadh al Nabahin. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), which purports to document all casualties in Gaza, stated the day after the incident that al Nabahin suffered from epilepsy.

As Hadar Sela of BBC Watch noted, epilepsy is not a “mental illness” or a “mental disability” but, rather, a neurological condition.

Further, The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Centre’s weekly report for the the week of October 31 to November 6 reports as follows:

“On the evening of November 4 an IDF force identified a suspicious Palestinian approaching the security fence. They called to him to halt and fired shots in the air. However, when he did not comply and continued towards the fence, he was shot and killed (IDF Spokesman, November 5, 2012).

The Palestinian media reported the death of Ahmed Tawfiq al-Nabahin, 23, a resident of Juhr al-Dik. The reports claimed he was “mentally disturbed.” A picture of the same “mentally disturbed” individual, wearing a body-armor vest and armed with a rifle, was posted on the Hamas forum…Hamas posted a notice of al-Nabahin’s death on its website and appealed to the residents of the Al-Bureij refugee camp to participate in his funeral. His body was wrapped in the Hamas flag (Alresala.net website and Safa News Agency, November 5, 2012). (Safa News Agency, November 5, 2012)”

al-nabahin

So, the ‘martyr’ in Milne’s tale was, in fact, a Hamas member who likely had epilepsy.

Moreover, the case represents another example of Israel being held to expectations that no army in the world could meet.  

In the case of Ahmed Tawfiq al-Nabahin, the IDF was somehow supposed to make a split second assessment of the security threat posed by a Palestinian approaching their border, determine whether he was armed, and, evidently, complete a psychological and neurological assessment of the suspect before taking action to prevent a possible terror attack.  

In other words, even if Tawfiq al-Nabahin was mentally disabled (which he evidently wasn’t), how could any security force have possibly made that determination while the border breach was occurring?

The truth, as plainly revealed by Milne’s Nov. 20 essay, is that the Guardian associate editor doesn’t seem to much care whether Israelis (faced with such terror attacks) live or if they die.  

However, it is the duty of those who lay claim to truly universal human rights to call out such crude propaganda and double standards – especially when such moral malice insidiously passes as ‘liberal’ commentary.

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Dec 6 2012

Guardian features prominently in watchdog group’s ‘Top 10 Media Fails of the Gaza War’

HonestReporting published their ‘Top 10 Media Fails of the Gaza War‘ and the Guardian claimed the number 5 and 9 slots.

Placing at number 5 was Steve Bell’s cartoon of hapless British statesmen being controlled by a seemingly omnipotent Jewish leader.

bell

HonestReporting’s Alex Margolin wrote the following about the cartoon:

“When it comes to building a Hall of Shame in coverage of the media war against Israel, you can always count on The Guardian to compete for a high place on the list. And this year is no exception.

This cartoon of Benjamin Netanyahu published on the first days of the war offers so many different aspects of media bias, it’s hard to pick out the worst ones. Start with a classic anti-Semitic trope of Israel manipulating and controlling Western leaders. Then there is the strong implication that the real motive behind Israel’s operation is to manipulate the election.”

Seumas Milne’s essay’s explicitly endorsing the right of Palestinians to kill Israelis placed at number 9.

milne

Margolin:

It takes a man of extraordinary bias to look at thousands of rockets flying into Israeli cities, and to conclude, despite all evidence, that it’s the Palestinians and not the Israelis who have the right to defend themselves. Seamus Milne is that kind of man.

“To portray Israel as some kind of victim with every right to “defend itself” from attack from “outside its borders” is a grotesque inversion of reality,” he writes, dismissing the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza as irrelevant.

“So Gazans are an occupied people and have the right to resist, including by armed force (though not to target civilians), while Israel is an occupying power that has an obligation to withdraw – not a right to defend territories it controls or is colonising by dint of military power,” he adds.

It’s unclear which war Milne is watching, but the Palestinian attacks consisted of nothing but attacks on civilians and Israel has already withdrawn entirely from Gaza. Talk about a grotesque inversion of reality, Seamus…you lead the way in showing how it’s done.

You can read the complete top 10 list here.

If you recall, the Guardian was also the undisputed winner of HonestReporting’s 2011 ‘Dishonest Reporting’ Award.  

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Nov 27 2012

Seumas Milne tells thousands at London rally that Palestinians have a right to kill Israelis

On Nov. 20 at ‘Comment is Free’ the Guardian’s Associate Editor, Seumas Milne, explicitly justified the murder of Israelis by Palestinian terrorists, while simultaneously arguing that, as an occupying power, Israel has no right to defend itself. 

“So Gazans are an occupied people and have the right to resist, including by armed force (though not to target civilians), while Israel is an occupying power that has an obligation to withdraw – not a right to defend territories it controls or is colonising by dint of military power.

Even if Israel had genuinely ended its occupation in 2005, Gaza’s people are Palestinians, and their territory part of the 22% of historic Palestine earmarked for a Palestinian state that depends on Israeli withdrawal from the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem. Across their land, Palestinians have the right to defend and arm themselves, whether they choose to exercise it or not.”

So, as long as terrorists who launch violent lethal assaults against Israelis, including suicide bombings and rocket attacks, can claim they weren’t specifically targeting civilians, killing Israelis is justified – a refrain which Milne repeated to an anti-Israel rally on Nov. 24 sponsored by ‘Stop The War Coalition‘.

(Milne’s rhetorical flourish about the Palestinians’ “right to resist” can be seen in the video at roughly 1:20.)

 

Milne’s CiF essay, as with his speech on Nov. 24, represents incitement – the moral legitimization of lethal attacks against Israelis by the most extreme antisemitic movements in the Middle East under the banner of national liberation, indeed under the guise of “liberalism”!

The malice of the Guardian Left has rarely been on clearer display. 

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Nov 21 2012

Minutes after Tel Aviv terror attack, Glenn Greenwald praises Seumas Milne’s defense of ‘armed resistance’

At a little past noon today a terrorist attacked Israeli civilians on a bus traveling through Central Tel Aviv, injuring 21.

Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. 

Here are a few highlights from Glenn Greenwald’s latest post, ‘The “both-sides-are-awful” dismissal of Gaza ignores the key role of the US government‘, Nov. 21, published roughly 20 minutes after the attack.

“Israel has turned Gaza “into an open-air prison that is designed to collectively punish hundreds of thousands of human beings.“

the US government is doing nothing of the sort. It is fueling, funding and feeding the Israeli war machine, and, with its own militaristic conduct, is legitimizing the premises of Israeli aggression.”

Greenwald also praises the recent essay by Seumas Milne:

“As my Guardian colleague Seumas Milne superbly detailed in his column Tuesday night, the overarching fact of this conflict is that the Palestinians, for decades now, have been brutally occupied, blockaded, humiliated, deprived of the most basic human rights of statehood and autonomy though the continuous application of brute, lawless force (for that reason, those who like to righteously condemn Hamas’ rockets (Pierce, defending Obama; “he happened to be correct the other day. No country can tolerate the bombing of its citizens”) have the obligation to state what form of legitimate resistance Palestinians have to all of this). [emphasis added]

…

That one should vehemently condemn rocket attacks on civilians and bombs on Tel Aviv buses outside of an Israeli military facility does not mean sanctioning the years-long fueling of the Israeli side of this conflict by the US government.” [emphasis added]

First, what significance does Greenwald place in the fact that the civilian bus happened to be near an Israeli military facility?

The military facility wasn’t targeted – innocent men, women and children were.

More importantly, however, here’s the key passage from the piece by Milne ‘It’s Palestinians who have the right to defend themselves” - an essay which Greenwald praised as superb.

“So Gazans are an occupied people and have the right to resist, including by armed force (though not to target civilians), while Israel is an occupying power that has an obligation to withdraw – not a right to defend territories it controls or is colonising by dint of military power.”

Milne is, in effect, defending Palestinian terrorism while arguing that Israel has no right to defend itself.

Greenwald’s own vitriol evokes a crude caricature of a villainous Israel, suggests there is no moral difference between Islamic extremists and a Jewish democracy, and he also evidently sympathizes with the moral logic of those who champion the “right” of Palestinians to murder Israelis.

Hamas simply couldn’t ask for more effective hasbara.

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Nov 21 2012

Guardian claims Hamas scored political points from photo of Egypt PM cradling dead baby

An official Guardian editorial (Gaza: storm before the quiet, Nov. 21) on talks of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas cited legitimate claims of victory both sides could make if a truce is signed.

[Netanyahu] can say that while Gilad Shalit is back with his family, the man who kidnapped him, Hamas’s military chief Ahmed al-Jaabari, is dead; he can say that the stock of missiles in Gaza is depleted and that the Iron Dome missile defence system proved itself. He can say the operation gave the lie to those who claimed Israel cannot act militarily now that the regional environment has been changed by the Arab spring. 

Now, here’s the Guardian assessment of what Hamas will gain:

“Hamas has a different narrative. Whether a ceasefire takes effect or not, they will say their rockets established their reach over the majority of the population from Jerusalem to north of Tel Aviv. And far from being wiped out in the initial Israeli bombardment, they kept firing to the very end.”

Then, parroting Seumas Milne’s recent triumphant polemic about Hamas’ ‘victory’ in establishing themselves as the main Palestinian resistance movement, the editorial continues:

“At home, Hamas will have reaffirmed its role as the main resistance to the occupation – a role which it was in danger of surrendering to competitive militant groups in the Gaza Strip.” [emphasis added]

The editorial continues:

“More significant, Hamas claims, would be the political gains achieved during the past traumatic week – the pictures of the Egyptian prime minister and Turkish foreign minister clutching dead Gazan children, the stream of visits and support from the entire Arab League. What did the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, sitting all on his own in Ramallah get? Tony Blair.” [emphasis added]

It is worth noting that the Guardian is once again suggesting that Hamas, unlike the “craven” Palestinian leaders in Fatah, is more deserving of our moral sympathy, more justified in claiming the mantle of the authentic Palestinian resistance movement. 

Further, the picture of the Egyptian prime minister clutching a dead Gazan child, which the Guardian is referring to, is an incident which was revealed to be a fraud.

Though media reports initially claimed the child in question, 4-year-old Mahmoud Sadallah, was killed by an Israeli strike, it later was revealed that he was almost certainly killed by an errant Hamas rocket.

This cynical manipulation of a dead Palestinian boy to score public relation points should be a source of shame for Hamas, not a source of pride.  

However, as long as the Guardian remains enamored of Hamas, and sympathetic to their claims of legitimacy, don’t expect even the most specious moral and political claims by the Islamist group to be subjected to critical scrutiny.

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Nov 20 2012

The Guardian’s Seumas Milne defends Palestinians’ right to kill Israelis

Guardian Associate Editor Seumas Milne just published an essay at ‘Comment is Free’ brimming with anger at Israel, and crowing about the glory of Hamas “resistance”.

In ‘Palestinians have the right to defend themselves‘, Nov. 20, Milne lashes out at Western leaders who have dared to proclaim that Israel has every “right to defend itself”, mocks reports by the “western media echo[ing] Israel’s claim that its assault is in retaliation for Hamas rocket attacks”, and condemns Netanyahu for “unleash[ing] a new round of bloodletting” which he attributes, naturally, to the upcoming Israeli elections.

Milne vilifies those who “portray Israel as some kind of victim with every right to ‘defend itself’ from attack from outside its borders” as engaging in “a grotesque inversion of reality”.

Declaring Gaza still “occupied”, Milne defends Hamas “resistance”, thus:

“So Gazans are an occupied people and have the right to resist, including by armed force (though not to target civilians), while Israel is an occupying power that has an obligation to withdraw – not a right to defend territories it controls or is colonising by dint of military power.

Even if Israel had genuinely ended its occupation in 2005, Gaza’s people are Palestinians, and their territory part of the 22% of historic Palestine earmarked for a Palestinian state that depends on Israeli withdrawal from the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem. Across their land, Palestinians have the right to defend and arm themselves, whether they choose to exercise it or not.”

Seumas Milne is arguing that Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and ‘East Jerusalem’ have the right to murder Israelis.

And, if you’re wondering about the one qualification in Milne’s essay – that civilians can’t be intentionally targeted – a subsequent passage seems to clarify his meaning.

“Emboldened by the wave of change and growing support across the region, Hamas has also regained credibility as a resistance force, which had faded since 2009, and strengthened its hand against an increasingly discredited Palestinian Authority leadership in Ramallah in Ramallah. The deployment of longer-range rockets that have now been shown to reach Tel Aviv and Jerusalem is also beginning to shift what has been an overwhelmingly one-sided balance of deterrence. [emphasis added]

The Hamas rocket attacks he’s so proud of – ‘operations’ he’s hopeful may change the balance of power in the region – seem to fall outside of his definition of prohibited acts (which target civilians) and thus consistent with the overall Palestinian right of armed “resistance”.

Based on his text it seems the following is definitely justifiable:

  • Suicide bombings and other armed attacks which target the hundreds of thousands of Israelis serving in the IDF

And, the following is most likely justifiable:

  • Rockets launched indiscriminately at Israelis cities

While Milne’s justification, under the Guardian’s imprimatur, for the intentional killing of citizens of the Jewish state is not surprising in light of his history of praising anti-imperialist “resistance movements” across the globe, the mere fact that his latest argument is derivative - consistent with his broader political orientation – doesn’t make it any less repulsive.

 

Oct 29 2012

Seumas Milne, antisemitism and “the usual internet suspects”.

An apparatchik named Seumas Milne, who worked for the decidedly pro-Stalinist magazine called Straight Left, and who’s currently serving as the Guardian’s Associate Editor, has written a book.

I don’t intend on reading it because, well, life is short, my personal list of ‘books to read’ grows larger by the day and I never really did fancy the political musings of unrepentant communists – even during my turbulent college years when I was most receptive to the mindless clichés of the delusional left.

So, I am indebted to  for having penned a Guardian review of the book, ‘The Revenge of History’, a collection of Milne’s essays in the Guardian over the last 10 years.

Relevant to those who follow this blog, Hatherley’s literary criticism takes a brief detour to lash out at those believed to be Milne’s critics.

He writes:

“Although slandered by the usual internet suspects as an “antisemite”, he’s been one of the few to expose this polite, Council of Europe-sanctioned form of Holocaust revisionism.” [emphasis added]

Intrigued by the suggestion that Milne – who has praised the anti-imperialist “resistance movements” in Kabul, Baghdad, and Gaza City, and parroted the lie of the Jenin “massacre” – may have been a closet philo-Semite all along, I did a bit of research in an attempt to learn more about the heroic defender of Holocaust memory.

The only thing even remotely related to Hatherley’s characterization I could find was an essay at ‘Comment is Free’ by Milne in 2009 titled “This rewriting of history is spreading Europe’s poison‘.  

Writes Milne:

“…across eastern Europe, the Baltic republics and the Ukraine, the drive to rewrite history is being used to relativise Nazi crimes and rehabilitate collaborators. At the official level, it has focused on a campaign to turn August 23 – the anniversary of the non-aggression pact – into a day of commemoration for the victims of communism and nazism.

In July that was backed by the Organisation of Security and Cooperation in Europe, following a similar vote in the European parliament and a declaration signed by Vaclav Havel and others branding “communism and nazism as a common legacy” of Europe that should be jointly commemorated because of “substantial similarities”.

That east Europeans should want to remember the deportations and killings of “class enemies” by the Soviet Union during and after the war is entirely understandable. So is their pressure on Russia to account, say, for the killing of Polish officers at Katyn – even if Soviet and Russian acknowledgment of Stalin’s crimes already goes far beyond, for example, any such apologies by Britain or France for the crimes of colonialism.

But the pretence that Soviet repression reached anything like the scale or depths of Nazi savagery – or that the postwar “enslavement” of eastern Europe can be equated with wartime Nazi genocide – is a mendacity that tips towards Holocaust denial.”

To those still under the illusion that Soviet repression wasn’t indeed as murderous as Nazism, I’d recommend the book “The Black Book of Communism” – a thorough account of the mass murder committed in every Communist country — the Soviet Union, the East European countries, China, Vietnam, North Korea, Cambodia, Laos, Cuba, Mongolia – which quantifies the death toll of Marx’s little theory at no less than 100 million.

More importantly, while reasonable people can debate the relative crimes of the Soviet Union and German Nazism, it certainly isn’t antisemitic, nor an offense to Holocaust memory, to unapologetically condemn the atrocities of Josef Stalin – whose purges, forced collectivization, starvation, and ethnic cleansing of ‘counter-revolutionaries’ arguably extinguished 20 million souls.

Milne wasn’t condemning Holocaust revisionism. He was merely defending Stalinist revisionism.

Those of us among “the usual internet suspects” need not offer an ounce of gratitude to those who cynically champion the cause of dead Jews but seemingly remain indifferent to the aspirations of living Jews.

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Oct 22 2012

Former BBC MidEast reporter Llewellyn: ‘Zionists scattered at strategic points in UK business’

Cross posted by Richard Millett

Milne, Alibhai-Brown, Llewellyn, Rowland listening to Jenny Tonge’s rant last nigh

The reputation of the Jewish community was dragged through the gutter at last night’s book launch of The Battle for Public Opinion in Europe: Changing Perceptions of the Palestine-Israel Conflict. The event was staged by anti-Israel pressure group Middle East Monitor at the University of London’s Senate House.

The panelists were Tim Llewellyn (former BBC Middle East correspondent and now adviser to Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding), Jackie Rowland (Al Jazeera correspondent) and Seumas Milne (The Guardian associate editor). Yasmin Alibhai-Browne (The Independent) chaired the event.

Seumas Milne

Llewellyn and Rowland described a persistent manipulation of the British broadcast media by a well-moneyed pro-Jewish lobby. Llewellyn said, inter alia, that:

“The BBC is very sparing in the amount of delegations or visitors it allows from the Palestinian side. Whereas from remarks that have been heard from the head of BBC News, Helen Boaden, the British Board of Deputies (of British Jews), for example, practically lives at the BBC. They’re there all the time.”

And:

“I was there (at the BBC) when we weren’t interfered with. But the last 10-12 years, since the beginning of the second Intifada, has coincided with Israel’s decision  to mount a tremendously well organised, careful, assiduous and extremely well-financed propaganda campaign in this country, especially in Britain.

The BBC has completely and utterly become feeble and has misreported, in my view; misrepresenting the situation in Israel-Palestine. It has done this maybe because of intense Israeli and pro-Israeli pressure from within this country, from political elements like the Friends of Israel of our three main political parties.

Also through the higher level of pro-Israel Zionists who are scattered at strategic points throughout the British establishment, throughout British business and among the people whose voices are respected.

The propaganda can sometimes be extremely intense, it can be bitter, it can be angry, it could be violent, it can be other forms of coercion. But it’s something the suits at the BBC find very hard to resist. So what has developed over the past 10 years at the BBC, and at other broadcasting institutions like ITN, not so much Channel 4, is a kind of self-censorship.

It is known now by the reporters if they are reporting on an atrocity by the Israelis, in the occupied territories or elsewhere, that they have to add-on to the end of their story some kind of appeasing story of how terrible the Palestinians are or how the Israelis have suffered.”

And:

“The pressure of this Israeli campaign has had a tremendous effect, especially at the institutional level of the BBC and inside the political parties. These people are extremely tough, tough-minded. I have just read a book by Anthony Lerman called The Making and Unmaking of a Zionist. If you studied the internecine warfare that goes on inside the Jewish community between the different groups; the anti-Zionists, the Zionists, the liberal Zionists, the non-Zionists, it is vitriolic, it is dreadful, I mean what chance have we got outside that community.”

Llewellyn even described Jews as “an alien people”. He said:

“The situation in Palestine now is the direct result of British deviousness, betrayal…dividing Syria in at least three parts; Lebanon, Syria as it is now, and Palestine, and setting the stage for the imposition and the implanting of an alien country, an alien people in that region.”

Rowland described how the BBC’s obligation for accountability, because it is publicly funded, has been “used and exploited by very well organised pro-Israeli, pro-Jewish lobby groups.”

She said that she knew someone who worked in the complaints department of the BBC who told her “that 85% of the complaints he dealt with were complaints by pro-Israeli, pro-Jewish lobby groups complaining about the perceived bias of the BBC’s Middle East coverage.”

She said this gives an idea of “how well organised, well-funded people use the idea of public accountability to tie up a lot of BBC resources on one very narrow focus.”

Alibhai-Browne told of how she had been given a rent free home in England by Professor Hugh Blaschko for seven years after she fled Uganda and how he had said to her that “Israel will bring the worst out in us Jewish people”.

Alibahi-Browne also compared Israel to apartheid South Africa.

Milne said “there are well-funded and well organised organisations that campaign in support of Israel. If you’re editing in these area you will find pressure and campaigning constantly by those groups.”

During the Q&A I couldn’t resist mentioning, seeing she was in the audience, that I took the footage that contributed to Jenny Tonge’s exit from the Liberal Democrats. In a bizarre outburst right at the end she took to the microphone to announce:

“I’d like to say, I hope he hasn’t gone, a big, big ‘thank you’ to Richard Millett, the Jewish Chronicle, the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the entire pro-Israel lobby who have relentlessly attacked me for eight years but making sure that the Palestinian cause gets heard.”

I have no problem at all with the Palestinian cause getting heard. The main problem for the Palestinians is that it is heard via the likes of Tonge, Milne, Rowland, Alibhai-Browne and Llewellyn.

Meanwhile, it will be interesting to clarify exactly what Helen Boaden did say that led to Llewellyn’s accusation that the Board of Deputies of British Jews “practically lives at the BBC”.

Click HERE for Jonathan Hoffman’s view of last night.

Click HERE for MEMO’s version with photos.

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Oct 11 2012

‘CiF’ writer dismisses ‘bourgeois freedoms’ in Venezuela, and the “distraction” of antisemitism

In South America there is a leader who tramples on civil liberties, foments antisemitism and supports some of the world’s most reactionary and murderous regimes.

Naturally, Hugo Chavez a darling of many on the Guardian Left.

While you can read a recent post written by a former Stalinist – currently Guardian Associate Editor – named Seumas Milne here, expressing euphoria over the re-election of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a more interesting piece was published at ‘Comment is Free’ by Jonathan Glennie.

The post, ‘Chavez’s power-hungry style could further radical change in Venezuela‘ (placed at the Guardian’s ‘Global Poverty’ section) is truly a leftist propaganda tour-de-force, framing the assault on liberal values under Chavez as thoroughly consistent with progressive sensibilities.

First, a bit of background:

A recent report by HRW concluded that “the accumulation of power in the executive and the erosion of human rights…have allowed the Chávez government to intimidate, censor and prosecute critics and perceived opponents in a wide range of cases involving the judiciary, the media and civil society”. 

The report includes the following details:

“Chávez and his supporters in the National Assembly have taken dramatic steps to ensure their political control over the Supreme Court, which has been packed with political allies since 2004…The Supreme Court’s record has only worsened in recent years, with justices openly rejecting the principle of separation of powers and publicly pledging their commitment to advancing Chávez’s political agenda”

…

“The government has targeted media outlets for sanction and/or censorship for their critical reporting on the government’s response to issues such as water pollution, violent crime, a prison riot, and an earthquake.”

…

“When Human Rights Watch released its last report at a news conference in Caracas in 2008, Chávez responded by having the group’s representatives forcibly detained and summarily expelled from the country.”

The human rights organization Freedom House corroborates these findings.

Further, as Carl Packman at ‘Left Foot Forward’ – a popular British left-wing blog – argued, the regime has demonstrated a consistent willingness to use antisemitism to advance its political agenda.

“The problems surrounding anti-Semitism in the [Chavez] camp have only been bolstered by the fact Capriles [his opponent in the election] is of Jewish extraction, despite being a devout Catholic today. An article that appeared on the website of Venezuelan National Radio in February of this year accused Capriles of belonging to a secret Jewish movement in Venezuela and working on behalf of Zionist ideology.” [emphasis added]

…

“…blatant anti-Semitism of colleagues Martín Sánchez of the Venezuelan Consul General in San Francisco and Gonzalo Gómez, an active member of the governing PSUV party, whose website aporrea.org is awash with anti-Semitic, and historical revisionism.

Packman then cites posts by the blog, Judeopshere, which translated some of the material found on apporrea.org:

“Failed Zionists, Jews, Fascists, Murderers”:

“[Zionists] coolly determined that killing thousands of Palestinians in a single operation [in the Gaza war] would facilitate the final dispossession of the ancestral lands of the village that gave birth to the Messiah, whom their predecessors murdered 2009 years ago.”

“Hunting Jews”:

“If we stop a moment and review the history, we should ask: Why has the supposed extermination of the Jews had and still has more notoriety than the actual extermination of African people? Why has the alleged extermination of Jews achieved major fame?… Does this have to do with a particular project which has sought to make Israel and the Zionist Jews the real owners of this world?”

Packer also writes that, last year, the state-run radio station “broadcast a reading of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  During the show, the journalist reading it expressed her admiration for “Jews and ‘non-Zionist’ Israelis” before praising “little pearls” of wisdom from the book which, she believes, explain why “Zionists have been able to amass a concentration of power and wealth.”

In 2008 on the same station, there was a broadcast which included the following: 

“Hitler’s partners were Jews… like the Rockefellers, who were Jews [Editors’ note: The Rockefellers are not Jews]. These were not the Jews murdered in the concentration camps. [Those killed] were working-class Jews, Communist Jews, poor Jews, because the rich Jews were the ones behind the plan to occupy Palestine.”

Packer also notes that “Chavez’s former adviser and confidante Norberto Ceresole was also a known Holocaust denier” and that “Venezuelan attacks on Jews have risen significantly.”

Finally, what Latin American “anti-imperialist” could possibly gain respect on the Guardian Left without the requisite support for anti-American, anti-Zionist dictatorial regimes around the globe?

Sure enough, Chavez is one of Iran’s few allies in Latin America, was a strong backer of Gaddafi (even during the civil war), and still continues to support Syria’s Bashar al-Assad.

None of this is evidently a problem for the ‘Comment is Free’ contributor.

Glennie – though he did at least acknowledge the report by HRW cited above – argues thus:

“…it is important not to mistake a negative report of this nature with an overall analysis of the progress in, and challenges facing,Venezuela, for two main reasons: first, because the state of political freedom is more complex than the report implies, and second because restricting the actions of some can sometimes be necessary to further change in highly unequal and politically polarised contexts.” [emphasis added]

Did you follow that? A more exquisite example of ideologically inspired rhetoric in the service of defending repressive regimes would difficult to find.

Glennie continues:

“Second, and somewhat more awkwardly for liberals in established democracies, the complete freedom of the press is not always a sign of a functioning democracy – in some contexts it can actually militate against progress for the majority poor.”

In Glennie’s tortured logic, freedom of the press can be anathema to genuine democracy. 

Again, Glennie:

“There are some who argue that democracy is important for poverty reduction, and others who suggest that democracy can actually throw up barriers to progress on social and economic rights….There are many examples where more freedoms are indeed crucial to progress for the poorest, but there are also certainly examples where clamping down on media and other freedoms can be justified for development purposes.”

Freedom is arguably – according to the CiF contributor – subservient to the more important goal of poverty reduction.

Glennie, sensing possible objections, then writes:

“This is anathema to most westerners who don’t understand the political complexities in countries very different from their own…”

…

“Unfortunately there is little doubt that many important constituencies will wield it in precisely that way, preferring simplistic condemnations to a mature analysis of the complexities of political change after centuries of inequality and repression.” [emphasis added]

Simpletons, we are – unable to understand the logic, and ageless wisdom, of such sophisticated revolutionaries.   

Glennie doesn’t address the regime’s other demonstrably right-wing political leanings but, in fairness, did admit there is a problem with antisemitism on the left in a personal Tweet.

However, he contextualized its manifestation in Venezuela with a subsequent Tweet:

The erosion of press freedom, an independent judiciary under attack, support of tin-pot dictators around the globe, and state-sponsored antisemitism? Right-wing propaganda or, at best, concerns animated by a false liberal consciousness. 

The status of individual rights in Venezuela represent, for Glennie and his fellow political travelers, mere distractions – irrelevant bourgeois freedoms which can justifiably be sacrificed in the quest to achieve a worker’s paradise.

Glennie’s attempt to undermine faith in Western democratic freedoms, as with his related Marxist-inspired anti-imperialist delusions, represent the genuine fault lines separating the genuinely progressive left from the political charlatans and mere posers.

And, finally, speaking of posers, a fellow Guardianista recently expressed his support for Glennie’s defense of Chavez:

The “blinding irrationality” of the socialism of fools: same as it ever was.

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