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September 2017

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MY SAY: GENDERALIZING LOSS

By on September 29th, 2017

The last First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama, delivered some palaver this past Wednesday explaining why some women voted for Donald Trump, thus adding to the myriad explanations of “what happened.”

Her words:

“As far as I’m concerned, any woman who voted against Hillary Clinton voted against their own voice. To me, that doesn’t say as much about Hillary . . . and everyone is trying to wonder, well what does this mean about Hillary? No, no, no, what does this mean about us as women? That we look at those two candidates, as women, and many of us said, that guy [scoffs], he’s better for me. His voice is more true to me. Well, to me that just says, you don’t like your voice. You like the thing you’re told to like. The voice you’re told to like…..We have been socialized to sort of sit there and be quiet. We think 12 times before we open our mouths, we argue with ourselves in our head, and we think, before I can speak up, it has to be perfect. While the guy is like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He’s not thinking about perfect, right, or anything, he’s just like, “I’m used to hearing my voice.” That’s what happens to a lot of people.”

First of all, her grammar is like off…..it should be “Any woman who voted against Hillary Clinton voted against her own voice. But, like, never mind, how dare she demean women who think for themselves, vote for their principles, and speak out in their own strong voice?

She delivered more like blah, blah, blah, blah blah. Pure, unadulterated patronizing folderol. rsk

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Chelsea Manning: Hero? No. Traitor? Yes Canadian border officials were right to block the former soldier convicted of disclosing classified U.S. military and diplomatic documents. By Deroy Murdock

By on September 29th, 2017

Canada dared call it treason.

American’s northern neighbor slammed the door on Chelsea (née Bradley) Manning when she tried to drive into Quebec last week. Canadian authorities blocked Manning “on grounds of serious criminality,” according to official records, “that would equate to an indictable offense, namely treason.”

Canada’s red light mocked the laurels and hearty welcomes offered to Manning since she waltzed out of the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth on May 17. Manning was feted like a conquering heroine in New York City’s gay-pride parade last June. This month’s Vogue magazine showcases Manning in a one-piece swimsuit, snapped by celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz. Manning will be a headliner at October’s New Yorker Festival. And Harvard recently named Manning a visiting fellow.

“She speaks on the social, technological and economic ramifications of Artificial Intelligence,” Harvard breathlessly announced. “As a trans woman, she advocates for queer and transgender rights as @xychelsea on Twitter.” Tragicomically, Harvard described Manning as “a Washington D.C. based network security expert.”

These plaudits are outrageous, given why Manning landed behind bars: In July 2013, Bradley Manning was convicted of 20 of 22 charges filed against him, including six violations of the Espionage Act of 1917.

Manning received “the stiffest punishment ever handed out in the U.S. for leaking to the media,” the Associated Press reported, “for spilling an unprecedented trove of government secrets.” This included “more than 700,000 classified military and diplomatic documents, plus battlefield footage, to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. By volume alone, it was the biggest leak of classified material in U.S. history, bigger even than the Pentagon Papers a generation ago.”

Manning was acquitted of “aiding the enemy.” Nonetheless, presiding judge Colonel Denise Lind ruled that Manning had “reason to believe the information could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.” Further, Manning possessed “knowledge that intelligence published on the Internet was accessible to al Qaeda.” She added: “Manning’s conduct was of a heedless nature that made it actually and imminently dangerous to others. His conduct was both wanton and reckless.”

Despite these high crimes, Obama granted Manning clemency, thereby slashing her 35-year prison term to seven years already served. It’s inconceivable that Obama would have spared Manning 80 percent of her sentence were she still named Bradley.

All of this has given intelligence experts fits.

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FBI Stats Demolish NFL Protest Narrative Yet another surge in black homicides — and police had nothing to do with it. Matthew Vadum

By on September 29th, 2017

The Black Lives Matter fairy tale that police use black Americans for target practice took another hit as new FBI statistics showed the black homicide rate is skyrocketing and that cops had nothing to do with it.

Apart from the FBI data, four separate studies were published last year refuting the claim that police shootings are racially-biased, but facts often have little effect on committed left-wingers who hate America. Democrats, whose party officially endorsed the violent, subversive Black Lives Matter movement, won’t allow their bubbles to be burst by hard evidence, no matter how persuasive.

Although police, who are routinely demonized by left-wingers nowadays, don’t run extrajudicial anti-black death squads, as the radicals claim, the Left will no doubt find creative ways to dismiss the new FBI study.

“Contrary to the Black Lives Matter narrative, the police have much more to fear from black males than black males have to fear from the police,” writes Heather Mac Donald, Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor at City Journal.

The data in the FBI’s newly released official report on crime for 2016 undermines the virulently anti-cop rhetoric that is increasingly flowing from the mouths of overpaid, under-educated professional athletes who signal their contempt for America by kneeling during the playing of the national anthem.

Nearly 900 additional blacks were killed in 2016 compared with 2015, bringing the black homicide-victim total to 7,881. Those 7,881 “black bodies,” in the parlance of Ta-Nehisi Coates, are 1,305 more than the number of white victims (which in this case includes most Hispanics) for the same period, though blacks are only 13 percent of the nation’s population.

The spike in black homicide deaths in 2016 comes after a previous 900-black-victim increase in 2015, she adds. Who killed these black victims? Mostly other blacks, she writes.

Comparatively few blacks were killed last year by police officers or whites. “Among all homicide suspects whose race was known, white killers of blacks numbered only 243,” Mac Donald writes. Police fatally shot 233 blacks, most of whom were armed and dangerous, as well as 16 unarmed black men, some of whom may have assaulted officers or offered violent resistance to arrest.

Mac Donald notes that in 2015 “a police officer was 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male was to be killed by a police officer,” and that the 18.5 ratio no doubt worsened in 2016 “in light of the 53 percent increase in gun murders of officers—committed vastly and disproportionately by black males.”

Over the past decade, 42 percent of all cop-killers were black males, even though they constitute just 6 percent of the population.

Violent crime has been on the rise for two years in a row. The number of violent crimes went up 4.1 percent last year, while estimated homicides surged 8.6 percent. Violent crimes rose by almost 4 percent in 2015, while estimated homicides shot up almost 11 percent. The most recent period when violence rose two consecutive years was 2005-2006.

“The reason for the current increase is what I have called the Ferguson Effect,” she writes. “Cops are backing off of proactive policing in high-crime minority neighborhoods, and criminals are becoming emboldened.”

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University of North Carolina: Whitewashing Anti-Israel Terrorism UNC SJP invited the daughter of convicted terrorist Sami Al-Arian to campus. Sara Dogan

By on September 29th, 2017

As revealed in recent congressional testimony, Students for Justice in Palestine is a campus front for Hamas terrorists. SJP’s propaganda activities are orchestrated and funded by a Hamas front group, American Muslims for Palestine, whose chairman is Hatem Bazian and whose principals are former officers of the Holy Land Foundation and other Islamic “charities” previously convicted of funneling money to Hamas. The report and posters are part of a larger Freedom Center campaign titled Stop University Support for Terrorists. Images of the posters that appeared at UNC and other campuses may be viewed at www.stopuniversitysupportforterrorists.org.

University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill:

UNC-Chapel Hill has supported the Hamas inspired and funded BDS movement on its campus in multiple ways, promoting apps that help consumers boycott Israeli products and inviting BDS proponents such as disgraced former University of Illinois Professor Stephen Salaita to campus. During his address, Salaita accused Zionists of making phony claims of anti-Semitism to hide Israel’s purported war crimes. UNC’s SJP chapter has also invited Laila Al-Arian, daughter of infamous University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian, to campus. Sami Al-Arian is the number two leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, responsible for over 99 murders in the Middle East, who pled guilty to charges of terrorism. At a campus event, his daughter promoted the idea that her father was forced into a guilty plea. UNC SJP has celebrated “Israeli Apartheid Week” and has held numerous events to promote Hamas propaganda on campus including a “Vigil for Palestine” which claims to commemorate victims of the “Israeli Occupation” and screenings of films that vilify Israel such as “Occupation 101.”

Supporting Evidence:

In March 2016, UNC SJP hosted Laila Al-Arian, daughter of Sami Al-Arian, a former professor at the University of Southern Florida who was indicted and pled guilty in 2006 of conspiring to aid the terrorist organization, Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The event also involved a screening of the film, “USA vs Al-Arian.” The film was promoted by SJP this way: “Is Al-Arian a threat to national security or is his First Amendment right to free speech at the heart of this case? At this time of heightened anti-Muslim rhetoric and sentiment, the film USA vs. Al-Arian is a sober reminder of the vulnerability of Arab Americans and Muslims living in the US and all of our civil rights.”

In March 2016, UNC SJP re-posted a link from anti-Israel activist Noura Erakat which celebrated the GS4’s decision to divest from Israel, thereby supporting the Hamas backed and funded BDS movement:

“G4S announces plans to drop its Israeli subsidiary to extract itself from ‘reputationally damaging work’ over the next 12-24 months. Translation: they’re about to divest from Israel. They’ll also divest from juvenile detention centers in the US and UK. What a tremendous success for a 4-year campaign. Mabruk to all the fierce ones who laid these tracks! #BDS #AnotherOne #Onward”

In December 2015, UNC SJP shared a video on social media about Israel’s security fence, which reduced Jewish deaths from terrorist attacks by more than 1,000 in its first year, labeled it an “Apartheid Wall” and falsely claimed that its key purpose is not security but rather to occupy more Palestinian land.

On November 18, 2015, UNC SJP hosted a screening of the anti-Israel film “Occupation 101” which falsely claims that Israel is occupying Palestinian land. According to the Amcha Initiative, “The film contains several anti-Semitic themes, including that Israel is guilty of ‘ethnic cleansing;’ that Israel’s actions against the Palestinians are a form of colonialist aggression; and that Jews in America wield excessive power over American foreign policy.”

On October 29, 2015, UNC SJP held a “Vigil for Palestine” to commemorate the Palestinians killed as a result of the “Israeli Occupation,” making clear that SJP takes the Hamas perspective that Israel is the aggressor in the Middle East rather than the victim of constant terrorist threats from the Palestinians. The event description states: “Since October 1, 52 Palestinians have been killed and over a 1,000 have been injured as a result of the Israeli occupation. Please join us in commemorating the lives of the dozens of Palestinians who have died in this month alone. This is an opportunity for students and community members to mourn and to remember the victims of this violent military occupation. The recent spike in violence exposes the ugly reality of the occupation and the incredible harm it does to those who have to endure it.” Of course there are no Palestinian deaths as a result of “Israeli occupation.” They are casualties of a terror war that Arabs have waged against Israel since 1948.

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Daryl McCann Standing Up for the House of Freedom

By on September 29th, 2017

Mainstream reviews of Donald Trump’s recent Warsaw speech laid bare the modern Left’s modus operandi in attempting to criminalise any opinion that gainsays identity politics and political correctness. Conflating “the West” with “the white national right” is nothing less than perverse

President Trump’s Warsaw speech, delivered on July 6 in Krasinski Square, scene of Poland’s 1944 uprising against Nazi occupation, was—depending on your political point of view—either a cry of freedom or duplicity of the greatest magnitude:

The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive. Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost? Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders? Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilisation in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?

The Churchillian urgency of the Warsaw Speech was, for many, not at all misplaced. Western civilisation is indeed in peril because it happens to be confronting a global jihad, and whether we have the will or even the lucidity to meet the challenge remains an open question. For the naysayers, on the other hand, the primary danger facing the West was the speaker of these words.

Jamelle Bouie, writing for Slate magazine, was one of the many pundits on the Left who viewed President Trump’s vigorous defence of Western civilisation, the passage above especially, as an allusion “to ideas and ideologies with wide currency on the white nationalist right”. Similarly, Jonathan Capehart, in the Washington Post, detected “white-nationalist dog whistles” in an appeal to “preserve our civilisation”. Not to be outdone, Sarah Wildman, in Vox magazine, considered Donald Trump’s performance to be straight out of the so-called alt-right’s playbook: that is to say, racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic and so on. Peter Beinart, in the Atlantic, clarified the situation for anyone who might have thought Trump’s words about freedom and civilisation sounded like John F. Kennedy or Ronald Reagan defending the West in times past: “The West is a racial and religious term.”

Here, in a nutshell, is the modern-day Left’s modus operandi for criminalising any opinion that gainsays their identity politics and ideology of political correctness. Conflating “the West” with “the white national right” marginalises conservative or traditionalist thinking of every kind. It is also, we might note, perverse. Western civilisation, as Roger Scruton explained in The Uses of Pessimism, is not about race or any other form of tribalism but about individual self-determination. The West has the led the way in creating a workable social arrangement “that confers security and freedom in exchange for consent—an order not of submission but of settlement”. Vaclav Havel’s eassay “The Power of the Powerless”, as encapsulated by M.A. Casey in the July-August edition of Quadrant, is an instructive example of the freedomist Western impulse challenging, in this case, the “post-totalitarianism” (or soft totalitarianism) of late communism in Eastern Europe: “life, in its essence, moves towards plurality, diversity, independent self-constitution and self-organisation, in short towards the fulfilment of its own freedom”.

The Western ethos, by this account, is neither racial nor religious per se but, ultimately, a project of individual autonomy and liberty. Our post-tribal sense of individual uniqueness, choice and conscience has its roots in long-standing Christian principles. Even the Age of Science, notwithstanding the New Atheists, was not a rebellion against Christian culture but, as writers such as David Bentley Hart have argued, a product of it. Participation in a Western society is open to people of all races and all religions, with the caveat that they embrace a civilisational code that demands not submission but settlement—freedom, in other words.

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Clash Erupts Inside Berkeley ‘Empathy Tent’ By Tom Knighton

By on September 29th, 2017

It’s impossible to parody the left these days.

For example, the University of California-Berkeley has created an “empathy tent,” as the campus continues to be inundated with protests. Even more hysterically, a fight broke out in the aforementioned “empathy tent.”

So much for empathy. Members of opposing political groups clashed Tuesday inside a so-called “empathy tent” on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley.

At least four people were arrested, police said.

The empathy tent was reportedly in place to offer protesters a calm place to unwind amid the choas around them. But the tent ultimately offered little respite — and nearly toppled during clashes between conservative students and leftist activists, the Los Angeles Times reported.

“It’s tough, but we do what we can to foster dialogue,” said Edwin Fulch, who reportedly used the tent for talks about the virtues of meditation and the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Yes, it’s hilarious and a bit ironic that this happened. Unfortunately, it’s also indicative of the nature of political discourse these days.

Politics has moved from “the art of the possible” to being a bloodsport. The desire to compromise is dead, killed by constituencies that view compromise as surrender, where even the mere hint that you might be willing to work with the other side gets you targeted by your own party.

What happened in that “empathy tent” was someone who wanted both sides to sit down and talk found out that at least one side wasn’t interested. Yes, it sounds like it came from a Mel Brooks movie. I do know that such things are going to happen more and more often unless people take a step back and recognize that our system doesn’t work when people act like this. Instead, it simply bogs down.

While I tend to prefer gridlock to senseless legislation that only makes our lives more complicated, I also know that gridlock isn’t anyone’s ideal way of governing. Add laws, repeal them, whatever. We need active discussion and effort for anything positive to happen.

We don’t need “empathy tents.” We need some grownups who are willing to recognize that not everyone who opposes you is evil.

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Julian Assange Says He Will Provide Evidence Russia Narrative Is False in Exchange for Pardon By Debra Heine

By on September 29th, 2017

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has offered to provide evidence that the Russian collusion narrative is false in exchange for a pardon from President Trump.

The president, apparently, has not yet gotten the message. On Saturday, President Trump told reporters that he has “never heard” of Assange’s offer to make a deal.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) told The Daily Caller that Trump is being blocked from knowing about the potential deal with Assange. “I think the president’s answer indicates that there is a wall around him that is being created by people who do not want to expose this fraud that there was collusion between our intelligence community and the leaders of the Democratic Party,” Rohrabacher said.
Report: Wikileaks Turned Down Leaks About Russian Government During Campaign

“The congressman spoke to chief of staff John Kelly two weeks ago about the potential deal with Assange,” The Daily Caller reported. “The Wall Street Journal reported that Kelly told Rohrabacher to bring the information to the intelligence community.”

“This would have to be a cooperative effort between his own staff and the leadership in the intelligence communities to try to prevent the president from making the decision as to whether or not he wants to take the steps necessary to expose this horrendous lie that was shoved down the American people’s throats so incredibly earlier this year,” Rohrabacher said.

Rohrabacher called the collusion narrative “a massive propaganda campaign” and “historic con job” meant to conceal the ideological conspiracy between the intelligence community and the Democrat party.

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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Chaos By David P. Goldman

By on September 29th, 2017

In the Weekly Standard, one Dominic Green writes that “there is no reason why an independent state in Iraqi Kurdistan should destabilize the region.” Mr. Green means well–he supports the Kurds, as do I–but the root of our problem lies in our misguided desire for stability. Of course a Kurdish state will destabilize the region. That’s precisely why we should support Kurdish national aspirations, although we may have to take care to keep the control rods in the fission pile. Our problem is that we have diplomats and generals who don’t want to make waves, and we face opponents who know how to shift the burden of uncertainty onto us.

At a twenty-year horizon neither Turkey nor Iran can be stabilized, for demographic reasons I have detailed in Asia Times. Iraq and Syria, the twin products of Sykes-Picot colonial state-construction, cannot be put back together again. What Vladimir Putin understands well, and we refuse even to consider is that the question isn’t whether chaos, but whose.

I explained why in a March 14, 2006 essay for Asia Times, entitled, “How I learned to stop worrying and love chaos.”

The US is in large measure responsible for the chaos that overstretches the world from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean. Trade, information and entrepreneurship have turned the breakdown of traditional society in the Islamic world into a lapsed-time version of the Western experience. The West required the hideous religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries, the Napoleonic Wars of the 18th, the American Civil War, and the two World Wars of the 20th century to make its adjustment. To export a prefabricated democracy to a part of the world whose culture and religion are far less amenable in the first place is an act of narcissistic idiocy.

As a policy, what does the pursuit of chaos entail? In essence, it means going back to the instrumentalities of the Cold War: containment, subversion, proxy wars, military intervention where required, and a clear distinction between enemies and friends. Given the absence of a competing superpower – Russia’s diplomatic embarrassment in the Iranian matter being proof of the matter – it is a far easier policy to pursue.

It does not necessarily mean “realism” in the sense of the Kissinger era of diplomacy of the administration of president George H W Bush, namely preserving the status quo. When the administration of president Ronald Reagan set out to bring down the Soviet Empire, it did not inquire as to the consequences for Russian or Ukrainian; its object was to reduce a threat to the United States.

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Europe: What do Islamic Parties Want? by Judith Bergman

By on September 29th, 2017

Sweden’s Jasin party is not unique. Islamist parties have begun to emerge in many European countries, such as the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, and France.

In the Netherlands, Denk ran on a platform against the integration of immigrants into Dutch society (instead advocating “mutual acceptance”, a euphemism for creating parallel Muslim societies); and for establishment of a “racism police” that would register “offenders” and exclude them from holding public office.

“I consider every death of an American, British or Dutch soldier as a victory”. — Dyab Abu Jahjah, leader of a group called Movement X and possibly starting an Islamist party in Belgium. The Belgian political magazine Knack named Jahjah the country’s fourth-most influential person.

The “I.S.L.A.M” party, founded in 2012, is working to implement Islamic law, sharia, in Belgium. The party already has branches in the Brussels districts of Anderlecht, Molenbeek and Liege. The party wants to “translate religion into practice”.

In France, as the journalist Yves Mamou recently reported, the PEJ has already approved 68 candidates and wants to abolish the separation of church and state, make veils mandatory for schoolgirls in public schools, introduce halal food in all schools and fight “Islamophobia”.

Sweden’s brand new first Islamic party, Jasin, is aiming to run for the 2018 parliamentary elections. According to the website of the party, Jasin is a “multicultural, democratic, peaceful party” that is “secular” and aims to “unite everyone from the East… regardless of ethnicity, language, race, skin color or religion”. Jasin apparently knows what the Swedes like to hear.

In an interview, the founder and spokesperson of the party, Mehdi Hosseini, who came from Iran to Sweden 30 years ago, revealed that the leader of the new political party, Sheikh Zoheir Eslami Gheraati, does not actually live in Sweden. He is an Iranian imam, who lives in Teheran, but Jasin wants to bring him to Sweden: “I thought he was such a peaceful person who would be able to manifest the peaceful side of Islam. I think that is needed in Sweden,” said Hosseini.

The purpose of the Jasin party, however, does not appear to be either secular or multicultural. In its application to the Swedish Election Authority, the party writes — with refreshing honesty — that it will “firstly follow exactly what the Koran says, secondly what Shiite imams say”. The Jasin party also states that it is a “non-jihadi and missionary organization, which will spread Islam’s real side, which has been forgotten and has been transformed from a beautiful to a warlike religion…”

In mid-September, the Swedish Election Authority informed Jasin that it failed to deliver the needed signatures, but that it is welcome to try again. Anna Nyqvist, from the Swedish Election Authority, said that a political party with an anti-democratic or Islamic agenda is eligible to run for parliament if the party’s application fulfills all formalities. Nyqvist considers it unproblematic that the leader of the party lives in Iran. “This is the essence of democracy, that all views should be allowed. And it is up to them to choose their party leader”, Nyqvist said.

Sweden’s Jasin Party is not unique. Islamist parties have begun to emerge in many European countries, such as the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, and France.

In the Netherlands, two Dutch Turks, former members of the Socialist party, founded a new party, Denk, only six months before the Dutch parliamentary elections. Despite the short timeframe, they managed to get one-third of the Muslim vote and three seats in parliament. The party does not hide its affinity for Turkey: Criticism of Turkey is taboo just as is their refusal to name the Turkish mass-slaughter of the Armenians during the First World War a genocide. The party ran on a platform against the integration of immigrants into Dutch society (instead advocating “mutual acceptance”, a euphemism for creating parallel Muslim societies); and for establishment of a “racism police” that would register “offenders” and exclude them from holding public office.

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The fringe has the momentum as farce and hatred go hand in hand at the Labour conference Marcus Dysch

By on September 29th, 2017

Tuesday morning’s row on the conference floor over how Labour will challenge and punish Jew-hatred was in equal parts shambolic and frightening.

Jews attacking Jews. Israel hated at every turn. Age-old tropes spewed from the podium. How the antisemites must have loved the Labour conference.

What an absolute shower. If ever there was an example of farce combined with despicable antisemitism, this was it.

Tuesday morning’s row on the conference floor over how Labour will challenge and punish Jew-hatred was in equal parts shambolic and frightening.

It is now beyond doubt who is truly running Labour. The mainstream has been blown away and the hard-left is tightening its grip on the party’s soul.

The absence of moderate MPs was noticeable in Brighton. Those who came were largely silent in public. This is a different party now and all discussion of leadership challenges or post-Corbyn reformation is redundant.

All the old boys were back — Ken Livingstone and Ken Loach all over the airwaves offering their unwanted views on Jews and the Holocaust; and amid it all, there was Mr Corbyn, on the dais, watching silently. Oh, Jeremy Corbyn.

The atmosphere around the main conference centre was horrible. I watched a group of delegates scream “f*** off” as Tom Watson, deputy leader, spoke, before bemoaning missing the opportunity to “bodycheck” Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC political editor, as she ran by. Then they asked John McDonnell, Shadow Chancellor, to sign autographs — and all of this within five minutes.

The depth of the party’s problem with antisemitism was all too visible – and this year it came with a new level of frightening warnings.

“Be careful,” one opponent of the proposed rule changes said from the podium, in what seemed to be a thinly-veiled threat followed swiftly by an antisemitic trope about collusion with right-wing media.

There was criticism of the Jewish Labour Movement after it put out leaflets on the eve of the rule change vote urging people to “help Jeremy Corbyn fight antisemitism”.

Mr Corbyn, remember, keeps telling us how much he hates abuse, but could not bring himself to utter just three words in his main speech: “Don’t be antisemitic”.

It was embarrassing to hear Emily Thornberry try to explain that he was not at the Labour Friends of Israel reception because he was preparing his speech, while he was partying his way through at least four other events.

JLM’s efforts in the past 18 months have been worthwhile but bringing up the leader’s name — with all that he implies for Jewish voters — amid days of foul rhetoric looked a misstep.

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