Calls for anti-Semitism probe into hard-left Corbynite who is set to become the next leader of British education union
There have been calls into a hard-left Corbynite who is set to become the next leader of Britain's biggest education union after he become embroiled in an anti-Semitism row.
Daniel Kebede, who will succeed joint secretaries Dr Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney as head of the National Education Union (NEU) in September, was seen speaking at a rally where the crowd allegedly chanted a song calling for violence against Jews.
Members of the audience chanted 'Khaybar, oh Jews', a song the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) says 'can be perceived as a threat of armed violence or forcible expulsion against Jews today'.
While Mr Kebede is not thought to have taken part in the chant video of the rally, which took place in Newcastle in 2021, showed him calling for people to 'globalise the intifada' - a phrase referring to uprising against oppression.
The primary school teacher, who was once forced to apologise for using an anti-Semitic slur while defending Jeremy Corbyn, was backed by the NEU, which said he condemns 'all acts of anti-Semitism and any attacks on Jewish people'.
The self-professed 'anti-racist' had been speaking at a Palestine Solidarity Campaign rally in Newcastle two years ago when the video was taken.
In footage he can be seen holding a microphone telling people it's 'time to stand together and oppose Apartheid, oppose occupation and fight for Palestinian liberation'.
He went on to say: 'Let's do it for Palestine, Ramallah, West Bank, Gaza - it's about time we globalise the intifada.'
As he handed the microphone over to someone else, there were chants of 'Allahu akbar' from the crowd.
The term intifada has long been used by people fighting what they see as the illegal occupation of Palestinian territory by Israel, and is commonly used by people to mean a legitimate uprising against oppression.
The Telegraph reports that at the same rally the audience chanted 'Khaybar, oh Jews', a song referring to battles between Muhammad, the founder of Islam, and Jews living in the oasis of Khaybar in modern day Saudi Arabia.
These battles, which the Quran claims took place after treachery by Jewish people, eventually led to the subjugation, mass expulsion, or slaughter of the area's tribal Jewish communities, the ADL says.
It adds: 'Invoking this slogan today at such a demonstration problematically shifts the complex Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a religious battle between Islam and Judaism.
'Moreover, in celebrating a past military defeat of Jews, this chant can be perceived as a threat of armed violence or forcible expulsion against Jews today.'
Mr Kebede's presence at the rally has sparked calls for an investigation from the Conservative Friends of Education, a Tory campaign group, which said it had 'serious concerns' about the impact these allegations could have on Jewish teachers and students in the union.
'It is essential to ensure that the biggest teaching union is free from discrimination and prejudice, and anti-Semitism,' it said in a statement
It added:' Ensuring a safe and inclusive environment for all members is a priority, and addressing this controversy is crucial to upholding those British values.'
A spokesperson for the NEU told the Telegraph: 'Daniel Kebede was present at a Palestine Solidarity Campaign rally in solidarity with Palestinians facing eviction in Sheikh Jarrah in 2021.
'In speaking to the rally Mr Kebede called for peace and justice in the Middle East and expressed solidarity with the Palestinian people.
'He used the slogan 'globalise the intifada' which is an expression of such solidarity, and of support for civic protests; it did not convey any support for violence.
'He wasn't aware of the chanting of 'Khaybar, oh Jews' and both he and the National Education Union completely condemn such chants, all acts of anti-Semitism and any attacks on Jewish people.'
It comes after Mr Kebede was forced to apologise after using an anti-Semitic slur while defending former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn online.
The 35-year-old claimed those close to the downfall of Mr Corbyn were being paid '30 pieces of silver' for book deals – the price for which Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus Christ in the Bible.
The phrase was used by the Nazis to suggest that the Jews were traitors and responsible for Christ's death.
Mr Kebede told the Mail in January that he was ignorant of its meaning: 'I did not know at the time that can be read as anti-Semitic. As soon as I learned this, I deleted it and my apology remains on my Twitter feed.'
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Is the cult of victimhood turning violent?
Brendan O'Neill
This week I read the most extraordinary and chilling statement. It was issued by a fringe group called the Trans Resistance Network. It was about the horrific gun attack at the Covenant School, a private Christian school, in Nashville this week.
The suspect in the attack is Audrey / Aiden Hale, a young woman who, according to the police, identified as a trans man. Hale was a former student at the Covenant School. She shot her way through the school doors and opened fire on anyone who crossed her path. Three kids, all aged just eight or nine, were killed, as well as three teachers. Eventually Hale was shot dead by cops.
Shockingly, the Trans Resistance Network’s statement contains just one paragraph on the barbarism at the school and six – six – on the troubles facing trans people like Hale. That is, it expresses fleeting sympathy for the slaughtered, and lingering sympathy for the person suspected of carrying out the slaughter.
The statement says there were two tragedies in Nashville yesterday. The first was ‘the loss of life of three children and [three] adults’. The second was that the killer ‘felt he had no other effective way to be seen than to lash out by taking the life of others’. It then goes on at length about the ‘virtual avalanche’ of hate and oppression faced by trans folks. It sounds paranoid in parts. Some right-wingers seek ‘nothing less than the genocidal eradication of trans people’, it says.
It ends by reminding the media not to misgender Hale. ‘[We] remind the media to respect the self-identified pronouns of transgender individuals…’ That is, respect this person suspected of shooting to death three children.
Everything about the statement feels morally warped. To equate the tragedy of the murder of children with the ‘tragedy’ of the suspect’s alleged gender confusions is moral relativism of the most depraved kind. To try to contextualise the grim atrocity that unfolded in the halls of that school by talking about the ‘near constant drumbeat of anti-trans hate’ borders on apologism. It should go without saying that nothing – absolutely nothing – explains extreme violence against children.
There is still much we don’t know about the Nashville massacre. The police have confirmed that Hale is the suspect, and that she was a biological woman who used he / him pronouns, and that her gender identity might have played a role in her decision to carry out the attack. ‘There is some theory to that’, they said. The vast majority of trans people will of course be as horrified by this school shooting as the rest of us are.
And yet, that statement from the Trans Resistance Network does speak to a broader problem today – the increasingly volatile nature of the cult of victimhood. It speaks to that modern urge to view oneself as belonging to the most abused and aggrieved social group on earth. And it points to something we should all be concerned about: the possibility that this fashion for victimhood, this ceaseless coveting of suffering that we see in various identity movements these days, is now giving rise to a belief that ‘lashing out’ is an understandable response to one’s ‘oppressors’.
Is the politics of victimhood moving into its violent phase? It’s something we need to think about. There have been some febrile and heated incidents in recent years that suggest that hyper-victimhood, the belief that your identity group is the most put-upon of all and might even be on the cusp of eradication, is nurturing a vengeful attitude among activists; an unstable level of intolerance against all those you judge as your persecutors.
Consider the events in Auckland on Saturday, when the British women’s rights campaigner Posie Parker was set upon by a heaving, fuming mob of trans activists and their allies. How else do we explain this feral hatred for a diminutive mum other than as an expression of weaponised victimhood, an outburst of the delusions of oppression that have gripped many in the trans lobby?
It was striking that some of the activists who descended on Auckland to abuse Parker talked about her as the great ‘Nazi’ oppressor and about themselves as the poor, puny victims of global transphobia. And yet we all saw with our own eyes that the opposite was the case: Parker was the victim here and it was the activists who covered themselves in the garb and slogans of victimhood who were the oppressors. It seems it is a short step indeed from the narcissistic fantasy that you are the world’s greatest victim to thuggishly lashing out against those you imagine are your victimisers.
Or consider recent acts of Islamist intolerance, such as the hounding of the Batley Grammar schoolteacher into hiding or the mob demands that the ‘blasphemous film The Lady of Heaven be withdrawn from cinemas. Here, too, fantasies of victimhood underpinned the intemperate cries for punishment and censure.
We don’t have to look too far into the past to see how truly menacing the cult of victimhood can become. The massacre at Charlie Hebdo in 2015 – wasn’t that the militant wing of identitarian self-pity? A ‘lashing out’ fuelled by the vain, fact-lite belief that Muslims are wounded even by cartoons?
It remains to be seen what motivated the atrocity in Nashville. But it seems increasingly clear that the self-pity and paranoia that underpin modern identity politics pose a grave threat to the sense of community that is essential in a healthy society. The more we incite people to view themselves as victims, and to view others as their tyrannical erasers, the more we will foster division, intolerance, instability and possibly worse. It is time to end this dangerous victim game.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/03/is-the-cult-of-victimhood-turning-violent/
***************************************************Learn the Lesson From Minnesota: Price Controls Don’t Work
In 2006, when Congress was negotiating the Medicare Modernization Act, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., proposed that a $41 per month cap be placed on premiums for Medicare Part D, the prescription drug benefit.
He worried insurers might offer a low entry rate, get customers hooked, as it were, then raise the rates to the point they were unaffordable. The proposal was rejected. Premiums opened at about $22 per month on average. Even today, 17 years later, they stand at about $32.
That has made Part D the rare government program that does its job for less than expected. Part D expenditures are down about a third from projections, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services says nearly all those savings resulted from the clause in the Medicare Modernization Act that forbids the federal government from being involved in drug negotiations.
Americans have saved billions of dollars because a top limit price control was not enacted. Millions have been saved or given better quality of life by drug makers being incentivized to create new and better products rather than settle for a hefty payday from the government.
Lawmakers may not have learned the lesson behind what happened with Part D, but drug makers have. That’s why, in Minnesota, they are scrambling to influence the legislature to accomplish what Waxman could not and place a series of price restrictions on prescription drugs.
The proposal, HF 17 in the Minnesota House and SF 168 in the state Senate, is to create a seven-member Prescription Drug Affordability Board, appointed by the governor and leaders of the state House and Senate, along with an executive director and staff. It also calls for a 12-member Prescription Drug Affordability Council, appointed by the governor, to represent stakeholders, including patients, health care providers and, of course, pharmaceutical companies.
The Prescription Drug Affordability Board would review the prices of brand-name drugs, biologics, generic drugs and biosimilars based on the wholesale acquisition costs of those drugs within certain time periods or introductory prices. If the board determines a drug is priced too high, it would have the authority to set an upper limit at which insurance companies will have to pay, effectively disincentivizing pharmaceutical companies from ever trying to become more efficient or otherwise take action to lower the price.
Prices should not be based on wholesale acquisition costs, which essentially is a list price and does not come close to reflecting what patients actually pay for drugs after negotiations among pharmaceutical companies, pharmacy benefit managers, insurers and pharmacists. Locking in this higher price as the point of comparison will make Minnesota’s drug program significantly more expensive.
States spend more on health care than they do on higher education, roads, police or corrections. Only welfare payments and schools take bigger bites out of their budgets. So it’s doubly puzzling why Minnesota’s legislature would want to create a two-headed bureaucratic monster that will only make its third-leading expenditure more expensive.
Unless, that is, one considers who supports this measure. State Rep. Carlie Kotyza-Witthuhn, who led the hearing on the legislation in the House Commerce Committee, is the wife of Rory Witthuhn, senior director of actuarial consulting at United Health Group, one of the state’s largest health insurance vendors.
Two other Democratic-Farmer-Labor cosponsors in the House – Kristin Bahner and Steve Elkins – worked for Optum and Optum Technology, respectively. Rep. Jessica Hanson has worked for Anthem, a major insurer in the state, for 14 years. Another, Rep. Liz Reyer, worked for nearly 20 years at Blue Cross/Blue Shield.
Since 2017, employees at United Healthcare and Optum have given more than $25,000 to current sponsors of this legislation.
Two other groups that prominently support left-leaning health measures also are involved – AARP and the National Academy for State Health Policy. Both have conflicts of interest that aren’t mentioned in these debates. The state policy group receives funding from insurance companies and from Arnold Ventures, which funds Civica RX, a prescription drug non-profit attempting to produce its own generics to compete with other drug companies.
AARP receives more than a third of its income from United Health Group and Optum, two of the primary proponents of this measure.
The people who sell us our pharmaceuticals are all for this because they understand what Henry Waxman did not – that fixed prices are higher prices and the customers who are forced to rely on them do not benefit. The drug companies are doing fine. Time for Minnesota’s lawmakers to take care of the people instead.
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There is no good racism: Including anti-white racism
There’s been intense pressure to “do better” on racism over the past few years. Even, surprisingly enough, for children’s entertainment.
Dr Seuss’ books were pulled from shelves for allegedly racist imagery, Roald Dahl was scrubbed of potentially offensive references to race, sex and weight, even The Muppet Show received a content warning for unspecified “negative depictions of people or cultures.”
And the latest example of this activist overreach is Dilbert, whose creator, Scott Adams, has been dropped by every publication known to man just because he…oh, uh, called the whole of black America a hate group and advocated for racial segregation.
During a YouTube live stream, Adams reacted to a Rasmussen poll that asked 1000 Americans whether they agreed with the statement “it’s OK to be white.”
And after discovering that 8% of the 130 black respondents somewhat disagreed, with another 18% strongly disagreeing (that’s 34 black people in total), he offered some advice to any white people thinking about “helping" the black community:
If nearly half of all blacks are not okay with white people, according to this poll, not according to me…that’s a hate group…and I don’t want to have anything to do with ‘em.
And I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from black people. Just get the f**k away. Wherever you have to go, just get away. Because there’s no fixing this. […] You just have to escape.
Hmmm…
Setting aside Adams’ tenuous grasp of statistics, you might have noticed that 8% + 18% does not equal 50%. To make the numbers seem as damning as possible, he decided that the 21% of black respondents who weren’t sure how they felt about the slogan were also “not okay with white people.”
You might also have noticed that he chose to ignore the 7% of white respondents who disagreed with the slogan (or 20% if we’re using Adams’ “not sure means hate” counting system).
And last but not least, you might have noticed the odd wording of the question. Participants weren’t asked how they felt about statements like, “black people and white people are equal,” or better yet, “I do/don’t hate white people,” but specifically, “it’s OK to be white.”
The pollsters chose this phrasing because “it’s OK to be white” is a meme (popularised by, amongst others, the former grand wizard of the KKK), used to bait “the libs™” into objecting to a seemingly innocuous statement:
These k*kes will keep saying that if you think it is okay to be white, you are evil. They will be screaming that as they get shoved into cattle cars.
Hmmmmmmm…
Ironically, Adams reacted with all the fragility the trolls and white supremacists were hoping to provoke. Just, sadly, for the wrong team.
So Adams was a dumbass, cancel culture worked its magic, and we can all pat ourselves on the back for solving racism, right?
Well, not quite. Believe it or not, there have been dozens of similar racist remarks in the past few years. And hardly anybody batted an eyelid!
Take, for example, Elie Mystal writing for the Nation back in 2021:
I’ve said, here and elsewhere, that one of the principal benefits of the pandemic is how I’ve been able to exclude racism and whiteness generally from my day-to-day life. […]
I have, of course, still had to interact with white people on Zoom or watch them on television or worry about whether they would succeed in reelecting a white supremacist president. But white people aren’t in my face all of the time. I can, more or less, only deal with whiteness when I want to.
Or pick any one of New York Times editorial board member Sara Jeong’s tweets from her #cancelwhitepeople era:
White people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.
White men are bullshit.
White people have stopped breeding. You’ll all go extinct soon. That was my plan all along.
And who could forget Aruna Khilanani, who shared these thoughts about white people during a lecture at Yale:
White people make my blood boil […] I had fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got in my way, burying their body and wiping my bloody hands as I walked away relatively guiltless with a bounce in my step, like I did the world a favor.
Hmmmm…
It goes without saying that you couldn’t publish comments like these about any other “race,” right?
I mean, don’t get me wrong, as Adams proved, you can say them, and yes, there are several hate groups dedicated to preaching this kind of bile about people of colour. But you’re not going to hear it during a lecture at Yale. Or see it at the Emmys. Or read it in the broadsheets.
Yet none of these people lost their jobs. None of them had to offer carefully-worded, sycophantic apologies. The New York Times (one of the many publications that dropped Adams) even defended Jeong after her tweets went viral. And while some will claim that this is just payback, or karma, or better yet, that it isn’t racism at all, what it really is, is an attempt to maintain racism under different rules.
Martin Luther King warned against this mistake decades ago:
We will not seek to substitute one tyranny for another, thereby subverting justice. We will not seek to rise from a position of disadvantage to one of advantage. This is why I say that a doctrine of black supremacy is as dangerous as a doctrine of white supremacy.
God is not interested merely in the freedom of black men and brown men and yellow men, but God is interested in the freedom of the whole human race and the creation of a society where all men will live together as brothers.
Try as we might, we can’t have a partial ban on racism. We can’t pick and choose which skin colours we’re allowed to hate. We can’t keep clinging to this corrosive, divisive stupidity and wondering why we’re still not free of it.
Racism isn’t a competition where you win or lose. It’s not a game where you take turns being “it.” It’s a cancer that spreads until it infects everything. The only way to get rid of it is to cut all of it out.
In his spectacularly good essay, I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup, Scott Alexander argues that you only earn the right to call yourself “forgiving” if you forgive things that genuinely hurt you.
And in the same way, I’d argue that you only earn the right to call yourself “antiracist” if you oppose racism, whether or not it affects you.
Adams lived through the end of Jim Crow and contract buying and the war on black people…excuse me, drugs. He read the same news as everybody else about Charleston and Winthrop and Buffalo. He saw what happened to Rodney King and James Byrd Jr and Ahmaud Arbery, and not a word of “advice” for black people.
But one edgy survey and this man’s first idea is to call for racial segregation.
And while Mystal only advocated self-segregation, and Khilanani only fantasised about racial genocide, I think we can all agree that none of this leads anywhere productive.
The goal of antiracism isn’t to swap around who it’s acceptable to be racist towards every few hundred years. The goal is to outgrow this destructive, meaningless tribalism once and for all.
And I speak for at least 34 people (and therefore, apparently, all people) when I say we could all do better.
https://medium.com/illumination-curated/is-it-okay-to-be-racist-5c4fbeb28498
****************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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