Showing posts with label racism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label racism. Show all posts
Saturday, March 7, 2020
Friday, March 6, 2020
Israel lobby scores own goal as football charity stands by Ken Loach
Asa Winstanley
Lobby Watch
6 March 2020
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israel-lobby-scores-own-goal-football-charity-stands-ken-loach?
A leading UK anti-racist charity has rejected Israel lobby demands to distance itself from socialist filmmaker Ken Loach and children’s author and poet Michael Rosen.
Show Racism the Red Card on Thursday stated that it stands by the “decision to work with Ken and Michael, who are both long-standing supporters.”
Last month the group, which works to combat racism in football, announced Loach and Rosen as judges of its annual competition for school children.
The announcement was immediately condemned by leading pro-Israel lobby group the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which called Loach a “poor choice” to judge the competition.
The Board wrote to the charity soon after, with a misleading series of decontextualized quotations it attributed to Loach. The quotations condemned Israel and its official ideology Zionism.
But this week the charity rejected the Board’s demand that it dump Loach, stating that it had “taken time to reflect and listen, and we stand by our decision.”
The charity’s decision was enabled by a massive show of support for the pair from more than 200 prominent figures in sport, the arts, academia and the law.
“We believe that demands for Ken Loach’s removal as a competition judge reflect political differences, including over Israel-Palestine,” stated a letter of support to the charity. “Misplaced accusations of anti-Semitism against Ken Loach risk degrading the real threat of anti-Semitism and other forms of racism.”
“Baseless campaign”
The letter was signed by football legend Eric Cantona, former Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson, the UK Labour Party’s outgoing shadow finance minister John McDonnell, civil rights lawyers Geoffrey Bindman and Michael Mansfield, former government minister Clare Short, British-Palestinian campaigners Ghada Karmi and Ben Jamal, Israeli academics Ilan Pappe and Avi Shlaim and many others.
A second letter of support was signed by Miriam Margoyles, an actor who starred in the Harry Potter movies, musicians Roger Waters, David Gray, Brian Eno and Peter Gabriel, actor and comedian Steve Coogan, and directors Mike Leigh and Peter Kosminsky.
Margolyes, an outspoken Jewish critic of Israel said she was “delighted” by the charity’s decision to stand by the pair as “the best way of responding to a baseless campaign of accusations. Ken Loach is a man who has dedicated his life to opposing racism and he has my full support.”
Former African National Congress MP Andrew Feinstein wrote that criticism of Loach and Rosen “by the Jewish Board of Deputies, an organization that does not represent me or, in fact, the majority of British Jews, is yet another attempt to conflate criticism of Israel and its occupation of the Palestinian territories with anti-Semitism.”
Feinstein said that the “conflation is false and extremely dangerous as it undermines the real and essential struggle against anti-Semitism and all forms of racism.”
More than half a million young people have taken part in the school competition since it was launched in 1998, the charity said.
The Board of Deputies reacted with anger on Thursday, lashing out at Show Racism the Red Card as “a so-called anti-racist charity.”
Amanda Bowman, a vice-president of the Board, called the decision on the judges “shameful” and claimed that “the Jewish community” would “no longer have any confidence” in the charity.
Although the Board habitually claims to speak in the name of all Britain’s “mainstream” Jews, defending their concerns, it spends most of its time lobbying for Israel and attacking the left.
Another key enemy of Loach has been the Jewish Labour Movement, an organization affiliated to the UK Labour Party which has strong ties to the Israeli embassy.
Loach has been one of many people to come under attack over the last few years for his rejection of the manufactured anti-Semitism “crisis” within the Labour Party, and support for its leader Jeremy Corbyn.
He made several election broadcasts for Labour under Corbyn.
MLK Jr's Son Among Justice Advocates Urging Alabama Governor to Halt Execution of Nathaniel Woods
"Killing this African American man, whose case appears to have been strongly mishandled by the courts, could produce an irreversible injustice. Are you willing to allow a potentially innocent man to be executed?"
Jessica Corbett, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/05/mlk-jrs-son-among-justice-advocates-urging-alabama-governor-halt-execution-nathaniel?
Civil rights groups and the son of Martin Luther King Jr. are calling on Alabama Republican Gov. Kay Ivey to halt the execution of 44-year-old Nathaniel Woods, who is scheduled to die by lethal injection Thursday evening despite serious questions about his guilt and serious concerns about the legal process that led to his sentence.
Unless Ivey or the courts intervene, Woods is set to be killed at 6pm local time at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama. Martin Luther King III appeared on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" and CNN Thursday to draw attention to the planned execution and pressure the governor to stop it:
After his request for a private call was allegedly denied, King on Tuesday sent Ivey a letter, which he also shared on Twitter. Recalling how the state treated his father and fellow civil rights advocates during the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March, King warned Ivey that "under your watch, Alabama is about to produce yet another injustice."
"Killing this African American man, whose case appears to have been strongly mishandled by the courts, could produce an irreversible injustice," King added. "Are you willing to allow a potentially innocent man to be executed?"
King and the King Center, along with other individuals and organizations, have taken to Twitter in recents days to increase pressure on the governor, tweeting with the hashtag #SaveNate:
The Innocence Project, which works to exonerate the wrongly convicted, highlighted that Woods' co-defendant, who is also on death row, told The Appeal in February: "Nate ain't done nothing. ...My n**** is actually 100 percent innocent. All he did that day was get beat up and he ran."
The Associated Press reported on the details of the case Thursday:
Woods and Kerry Spencer were convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in the slayings of the three Birmingham officers that rocked Alabama's largest city that year. Carlos Owen, Harley A. Chisolm III, and Charles R. Bennett died in the gunfire while trying to serve a misdemeanor domestic assault warrant on Woods at a suspected drug house.
Prosecutors argued Woods helped set an ambush and should die for the killings even though he did not pull the trigger on the high-powered rifle that killed the men. Such convictions are allowed under state law, and other people have been executed for "non-triggerman" slayings. A jury recommended Woods receive the death penalty by a 10-2 vote.
Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) is a Montgomery, Alabama-based organization fighting to end mass incarceration and excessive punishment nationwide. The group's deputy director, Randy Susskind, told the New York Times on Thursday that "historically, unanimity has been a hallmark of our jury system."
"In a death penalty case," Susskind added, "where the jury is tasked with deciding whether someone should live or die—and they're the conscience of the community, and they have already convicted the defendant of capital murder—the idea that the state is unable to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt is a pretty important factor."
EJI has worked to shine a spotlight on the concerns surrounding Woods' case. The group has noted that "in addition to the concerns about his culpability, the appropriateness of his sentence, and the lack of adequate appellate review in the case due to the abandonment by appellate counsel, there are serious questions about the date of the scheduled execution."
Chief U.S. District Judge for the Middle District of Alabama Emily Marks on Monday dismissed Woods' request for a stay of execution. Woods' petition accused the state of engaging in "unlawful and unconstitutional" actions, and claimed that he was "targeted" by the state to be killed earlier than other inmates because he did not opt in to a newly approved but unused execution method.
"Woods' attorneys on Thursday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the execution over what they said was a lack of information given to inmates when they had to decide whether nitrogen hypoxia—an execution method authorized but not yet implemented by the state—would be their preferred execution method," the AP reported. "Woods didn't pick a method. Attorneys said inmates did not know that would affect the timing of their execution."
The state set Woods' execution date earlier this year, after the U.S. Supreme Court turned down another appeal by the inmate last year. Members of Woods' family have maintained that he is innocent and worked to save his life. The Times noted that his sister Pamela Woods attended a recent celebration of the 55th anniversary of the march in Selma to recruit civil rights activists to her brother's cause.
Pamela Woods—joined by their father, Nathaniel Woods Sr.—spoke about the case on the steps of the state Capitol Wednesday, after Woods' advocate Molly Cole delivered letters Ivey's office asking her to halt the execution.
"I stand here speaking on his behalf to say that what happened to those officers is not his fault," Pamela Woods said Wednesday, according to Al.com. "And that's not something he'd wish on them. It's not something he planned. It's not something he schemed. He didn't lure anybody."
"We really just want people to see that he really is innocent, that he didn't have anything to do with the murders of those officers," she said. "We do feel really bad for what happened that day. We don't wish that on anyone, for their family to have to deal with that. It was very unfortunate that the shooter did what he did. But the main point is that Nathaniel had no parts in those actions of another man, Kerry Spencer."
The AP reported that "no execution date has been set for Spencer, who was convicted before Woods and is on death row at Holman prison."
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