Too much you could say here, but let's start with this: in 2008, the US authorities arranged the overnight extradition of Colombian death-squad leaders because they were about to start talking about Alvaro Uribe's support for their campaign of mass murder. 1/
The paramilitaries thought Uribe had betrayed them when a Colombian court ruled they would have to serve actual jail time for their crimes, so they were about to sing like canaries. The US legal system stuffed their mouths with gold in the form of absurdly light sentences. 2/
The extradition happened literally overnight when Alvaro Uribe realized his allies were about to start talking. He had them bundled out of the country before the Colombian courts could intervene. Washington jumped to assist him without delay. 3/
The US authorities made sure the paramilitaries were "handsomely rewarded", as the New York Times put it, and brushed their record of mass murder under the carpet. 4/
The paramilitary leaders and their victims both felt that Uribe had one motivation: to prevent them from testifying in a Colombian court about pervasive state collaboration with far-right death squads. Washington did everything in its power to assist him. 5/
One of the judges openly stated that he gave special treatment to these drug traffickers because they didn't just sell cocaine for profit: they used the cash to fund a campaign of mass murder to exterminate the Colombian left, "activity" which had some "positive perspectives". 6/
One of the US prosecutors in the trials of these death-squad chiefs said that all things considered, he couldn't be sure he wouldn't also have done the same thing—in other words, ordered his underlings to slaughter innocent men, women and children with machetes and chainsaws. 7/
Full details here—a brilliant piece of in-depth reporting by the NYT. Now tell us again how the US ruling class is deeply concerned about democracy and human rights in Latin America and can be trusted to do the right thing. 8/
Ireland's ambassador to Israel puts our name to a statement that doesn't mention the mass murder of Palestinians since October 7, while approvingly quoting von der Leyen's claim that "Europe stands with Israel" in whatever it chooses to do to the civilian population of Gaza. 1/
Von der Leyen's statement was clearly intended and clearly understood to offer a blank cheque to Netanyahu for war crimes, with no mention of international law. It was a license to kill that she had no authority to dispense on the EU's behalf. 2/
Irish MEPs from across the spectrum, including the government parties, harshly criticized von der Leyen and accused her of doing "irrevocable damage" to the EU's reputation with the statements that our ambassador has now retrospectively endorsed. 3/
"Again vindicated" implies that it has been vindicated even once. Martin Forde found that its central claims were "wholly misleading"—and indeed turned reality on its head—in a report that Keir Starmer immediately accepted without any reservations or demurrals.
Ware hasn't sued Martin Forde, or Jeremy Corbyn for that matter. He targeted a little-known blogger for making claims about his motives, rather than his actions, that would be difficult if not impossible to prove, especially under English libel law.
This notably tendentious ruling says absolutely nothing about the truth or falsity of the claims made in the Panorama documentary (although it does see fit to mention how proud Ware was of it and how angry he was to see it questioned—we knew that!).
The Forde report supplies useful corroboration of what was clear by autumn 2018 at the latest: the media narrative about Labour & antisemitism was detached from reality & reflected the political needs of Corbyn's party opponents rather than the evidence.
We didn't need Forde to tell us that the standard media framing—"does Labour have a problem with antisemitism?"—was a bait-and-switch game that diverted attention from the real question: what kind of problem—marginal or pervasive, episodic or systemic?
We didn't need Forde to tell us that a media narrative which contains some isolated, decontextualized facts can still give us an utterly misleading picture of reality. That was precisely what happened with this meta-controversy.
Once again, the JC confirms precisely what this has always been about for their editorial staff: keeping the boot on the necks of the Palestinians. Starmer is apologizing because Corbyn indicated that he might suspend a few deliveries of boot polish.
The JC editor who conducted this interview compared protests against an especially nasty, bigoted Israeli ambassador, who brazenly denies the right to Palestine to exist, to Kristallnacht, simultaneously slandering the protesters and trivializing Nazism.
Starmer and his front-bench team endorsed the demonization of those who protested against Tzipi Hotovely, just as they denounced one of their own MPs for suggesting Israel might face any consequences, however mild, for expanding its illegal settlements.
In the latest edition of Catalyst, I've an essay on the Brexit crisis, showing how Britain's centrist bloc in politics and media consciously chose to facilitate the hardest form of Brexit in order to defeat the left. It's all there on the public record.
Tom Baldwin's interview for the Brexit Witness Archive includes a frank statement of what actually motivated the campaign leadership (not just "people" as he puts it here—Roland Rudd, who certainly saw things this way, owned the People's Vote campaign lock, stock and barrel).
The Labour MPs who attended a "Get Corbyn" meeting in the summer of 2018 were quite happy to inform Gabriel Pogrund & Patrick Maguire that ousting their party leader mattered far more to them than Brexit, for all their public grandstanding about Brexit's supreme importance.
I was trying to avoid this earlier in the week but here it is again. FWIW, I had completely forgotten that George Monbiot said positive things about Lisa Nandy back in 2020, which probably tells you how frequently it is brought up in what you might call "Corbynite circles". 1/
By way of contrast, I don't think I've gone a week on Twitter in the last 18 months without seeing someone share Paul Mason's tweet about Starmer, Marxism and social democracy, which is only fair because it was both wildly wrong-headed and very, very funny. 2/
That said, a positive view of Lisa Nandy in the Labour leadership contest does not particularly inspire one with confidence in the person expressing it. She ran a destructive campaign, frequently lying about the 2015–19 years for the delectation of Britain's atrocious press. 3/