Wednesday, August 26, 2020
Two weeks after powerful windstorm, Iowa faces humanitarian crisis
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/25/iowa-a25.html
By Jessica Goldstein
25 August 2020
More than two weeks after the powerful derecho windstorm devastated a large swath of the US Midwest on August 10, the working class and poor in the hard-hit state of Iowa are still suffering from the catastrophic damage caused by the storm in the face of a lack of resources or urgency from local, state and federal government agencies.
A total of 1.9 million residents across the region lost power due to the storm, with 1.4 million maximum simultaneous outages, broken down by state to 759,000 in Illinois, 585,000 in Iowa, 283,000 in Indiana, and 345,000 in other states such as Nebraska and Wisconsin.
Four total deaths due to the direct impact of the storm were reported, three in Iowa and one in Indiana. To add to the criminality of the response of the ruling class and government, there exist no warning systems for derechos although they have occurred in the past, a repetition of the failure to warn residents of tornados in many parts of the Midwest and South or to raise alarms in California over the wildfires that swept through the northern part of the state in 2018.
In Linn County, Iowa, where winds reached their highest velocity at 140 mph, residents face a serious humanitarian crisis. In the city of Cedar Rapids, the second-largest city in the state with a population of 126,326, every one of the city’s 60,000 homes and businesses were damaged to some degree, according to Mayor Brad Hart. Across Iowa, the storm severely damaged an estimated 82,000 homes. In the immediate aftermath of the storm, roads were impassible, cell phone service was very spotty, and trash removal was stopped across much of the state.
At a Monday press conference on the state of emergency in the city, Cedar Rapids Department of Public Works officials explained that crews are continuing to work to remove an estimated 48,000 tons of debris from curbsides. To underscore both the city and state’s utter lack of preparation for such a disaster, officials noted that massive piles of debris in Cedar Rapids are continuing to pile up, with residents responsible for moving and hauling felled trees and other debris to their curbs for pickup. The total timeframe for cleanup and removal of tree debris in the Cedar Rapids area is expected to take months.
The city is using an outside contractor for pickup, meaning that it does not have the resources itself to coordinate cleanup from a natural disaster despite the recent experiences of major floods in the city in 2008 and 2016.
Meanwhile, traffic signals are still not fully operational, and most street and safety road signs have not been repaired. A curfew in Cedar Rapids that had been set following the storm to keep residents off hazardous roads, blocked by felled trees and power lines, has now been lifted indefinitely, yet roads are still blocked or unsafe for travel in several areas.
Beth Malicki of local Iowa news station KCRG spoke to PBS about the anger of the residents toward the callous response of officials at all levels of government toward their immediate needs “What residents say they need most is the basics. Shelter, food, water, ice to keep insulin cold. They're not asking...to rebuild everything, because right now, this is a humanitarian crisis," she said.
Describing the popular response to the pace of aid and lack of any organization, she continued, "They're outraged; that's an understatement. There's been this lack of urgency in covering it. It's so desperate that people from nearby communities that weren't as hard-hit are going door-to-door to check on people”
The anger, she noted, is directed at "decision-makers who they feel did not move quickly and effectively enough at all levels," local, state and federal. "We've found people stuck in their homes...that's not our job as media...we're not supposed to be emergency responders, or advocates of anything but the truth."
Malicki went on to admit that FEMA had called her newsroom because they were not able to get through to Cedar Rapids city officials to find out where aid was needed. "These people are living in imagery that is unimaginable to be happening in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in the United States of America."
With the lack of any coordinated government response, residents must rely on charitable organizations for food assistance. At the press conference, the Salvation Army reported that 1,250 people were served lunch and dinner by the organization in the past week, but because the gym cafeteria was damaged by the storm, it has only the resources to provide grab-and-go meals twice daily on Wednesdays and Thursdays, hardly enough for the number of residents who are in need.
Cedar Rapids officials could not provide an update on exactly how many residents have been displaced, but estimate that 1,700 housing units were impacted by the storm—far lower than reported across other media outlets—and that the need for housing assistance for families will likely extend to two to three months in an area where temporary housing in hotels and motels “is continuously in flux.”
Among the many residents who had their homes completely destroyed are several hundred families living in an apartment complex in Cedar Rapids that is home mainly to refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Micronesia, who are all the more vulnerable due to their tenuous immigration status and inability to understand English. After the storm, most residents had nowhere to go and many stayed in dangerous apartments with no roofs and with wires hanging down and nails and sharp objects jutting from walls.
Volunteer Kelly McMann described the desperate conditions to PBS, explaining, "It feels like [we’re] in a third-world nation here, this is like our version of a [Hurricane] Katrina, minus the deaths." The comparison to the devastating 2005 hurricane was apt, in both the scope of its damage and the government’s negligent response.
Cedar Rapids city manager Jeff Pomeranz defended the city's highly inadequate response to the crisis in saying, "This is an unprecedented disaster...we've got council members working around the clock trying to make sure residents have a place to go."
Alliant Energy, which supplies power to Linn County, where Cedar Rapids sits, reported that 99 percent of customers finally had power restored 13 days post-storm. Mayor Hart told reporters at Monday’s press conference that all power should be restored in the city in the coming days—over two weeks after the storm ended—and that “only” 650 city residents still remain without power. In his comments, he made clear that the city is relying heavily on volunteer firefighters for recovery efforts, further underscoring the total lack of preparedness for the storm.
Hart went on to detail the austerity aid packages for residents that are being provided through Federal Emergency Management Agency grants requested by Republican Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds. These include disaster loans of up to $200,000 in low-interest loans to homeowners, and additional assistance to homeowners and renters of up to $40,000 for terms of up to 30 years.
Governor Reynolds is scheduled to visit Cedar Rapids Tuesday to announce the distribution of Small Business Administration loans to businesses, many of which have been completely destroyed.
The widespread damage from the storm also threatens a possible food shortage in the US in the coming year, as over 14 million acres of crops were wiped out as wind gusts whipped across the state, exacerbating the hunger crisis brought on by job losses and rising food prices during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The impact to Iowa’s farmland was so great that it was visible on satellite images taken by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Crops were flattened by the winds and had leaves stripped away by hail. Lance Lillibridge of the Iowa Corn Growers Association told Fox News that the storm destroyed 8.7 million acres of corn and 5.3 million acres of soybean, resulting in "a looming natural disaster that could affect the nation's food supply."
According to Lillibridge, without federal aid, many farmers will be in a dangerous situation where they "will probably just go under and be done." Even greater of a concern is the destruction of giant grain storage bins across the state that imploded under the force of the winds, which reached sustained speeds of 80-140 mph lasting for 40-50 mins, equivalent to a category 4 hurricane. The duration of high wind gusts was longer than derechos of the past, which typically endured less than 30 mins.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration expects the August 2020 derecho will be one of the costliest storm events in the past decade, with agricultural economists estimating damage of $4 billion. While the state at all levels has been utterly slow to respond with even the bare minimum of aid, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, whose company announced in February the opening of its first fulfillment center in the state just outside of Iowa City, increased his net worth by $13 billion during a single day in July.
As it was with the wildfires in California and the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, the criminal nature of the ruling class is revealed in its response to the humanitarian crisis in Iowa. The government and the corporations are allowed to get off scot-free, and the working class is left to pay for its negligence.
The Trump administration has treated the derecho as if it was another thunderstorm that residents will push through, a mirroring of the same attitude taken by the ruling class toward the coronavirus pandemic. Governor Reynolds waited until August 13 to declare a disaster in the state and did not request federal aid until August 16, asking for only $4 billion from the federal government.
The Trump administration approved a paltry $45 million of Governor Reynolds' aid request on August 17, covering 16 counties, for debris removal and repairs to government buildings and utilities. The administration did not immediately approve the individual assistance request for 27 counties that includes $82.7 million for homes destroyed or with major damage and $3.77 billion for agriculture damage to farmland, grain bins and buildings and $100 million for private utility repairs. An amended individual assistance plan, with cuts that Reynolds agreed to, was implemented on August 20.
Feds propose 10-year oversight of UAW, Detroit News reports
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/25/fede-a25.html
By Jessica Goldstein and Marcus Day
25 August 2020
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has proposed federal supervision of the United Auto Workers union for 10 years and the appointment of an independent monitor in a potential agreement that would defer prosecution of the UAW, according to a report published in the Detroit News last week.
The report stated that US Justice Department officials “proposed subjecting the United Auto Workers to 10 years of federal oversight to eliminate corruption within the union, one of the longest periods of federal supervision in recent history,” and that the proposal had been in the works for “several weeks.” The agreement would stop short of a full federal takeover of the UAW under the auspices of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, according to the News, avoiding the type of government trusteeship which the Teamsters union underwent following its prosecution in the late 1980s.
Since the Detroit News’ report, there has been virtually no further media coverage of the proposal. Throughout the years-long UAW corruption and bribery scandal, the News has served as a conduit for the FBI and the federal prosecutor’s office.
If federal oversight of the UAW or some cosmetic “reform” measures are implemented, they will do nothing to change the character of the UAW as an arm of the corporations run by company agents vehemently hostile to workers. Instead, the UAW would be even more dependent upon the capitalist state—which is not a neutral party, but rather represents the interests of the corporate and financial aristocracy—for its continued existence, and even more beholden to the demands to implement the brutal policies of the ruling class.
The possibility of an independent monitor for the UAW was earlier floated at the beginning of July in talks between UAW President Rory Gamble and US Attorney Matthew Schneider, the federal prosecutor overseeing the years-long investigation into UAW corruption and bribery. That federal criminal investigation, along with a more recent civil racketeering suit by General Motors against its rival Fiat Chrysler, revealed what autoworkers long suspected: that the UAW is a cesspool of criminality, run by bribed operatives of the companies.
To date, 10 UAW officials, including former UAW President Gary Jones, along with the widow of one high-ranking UAW officer, have pleaded guilty to charges ranging from violation of labor laws, racketeering, embezzlement, conspiracy and tax fraud. While forcing through year after year of concessions contracts and auctioning off workers’ rights, UAW officials lived the high life, with months-long getaways to luxury resorts, lavish meals, endless golf junkets, designer clothing and jewelry, bottles of Cristal champagne and high-end cigars.
In the most recent and explosive revelations brought to light in the course of GM’s lawsuit, top UAW officers, including among others former Presidents Ron Gettelfinger and Dennis Williams and former Vice President Joe Ashton, were alleged to have been given control of secret foreign bank accounts by FCA into which tens of millions of dollars were funneled, in a scale of bribery far beyond that which had previously been revealed.
Former UAW President Gary Jones and former UAW-GM Vice President Joe Ashton are each still awaiting sentencing following their earlier convictions. Jones pleaded guilty in June to charges that he conspired to embezzle $1.5 million in members’ dues money for the personal use of top union officials, and Ashton pleaded guilty last December to money laundering and wire fraud charges. Former UAW-FCA Vice President Norwood Jewell, who pled guilty in April 2019 for his part in the bribery conspiracy with FCA, served five months of a slap-on-the-wrist prison term in a minimum-security facility before being released early in May to serve the remainder of his sentence at home.
Former President Dennis Williams, whose home was raided by the FBI last year, reportedly returned $55,000 in “inappropriately” used expenses earlier this year. While Williams was one of the unnamed co-conspirators in the case against Jones, according to sources cited by the Detroit News, he himself has yet to be charged. The UAW, which has doled out over $2 million in union funds to cover its officers’ legal fees, just recently stopped covering Williams’ legal defense, in a possible indication that an indictment may still be in store for him.
Current UAW President Rory Gamble, who has been leading the talks with the DOJ, was himself previously reported to have been under investigation for potentially taking kickbacks from a highly paid union apparel vendor. As with Jones before him, Gamble was held up as representing a clean slate and “reform from within” by the UAW upon assuming the role of acting president after Jones stepped down.
Significantly, the Detroit News again cited comments in its report last week by US Attorney Schneider that he favored implementing the direct election of union officials to the UAW’s executive board, rather than the current antidemocratic set-up, in which UAW executives are elected by tightly vetted delegates to its conventions.
This proposal, worked out between the UAW and the Trump administration’s Justice Department, would do nothing to change the corporatist character of the UAW, which cannot be undone simply via the replacement of a few “bad apples,” or make it a genuinely democratic organization. One should consider the role of Schneider: the federal prosecutor now improbably posing as a champion of union democracy played a leading role in the enforced bankruptcy of Detroit, which stripped retired public employees of pension and health benefits, and has backed the use of Trump’s federal forces in Detroit.
Nonetheless, this has not stopped the proposal from being trumpeted by the Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD) faction within the union as a means to supposedly reverse the UAW’s decades-old transformation into a tool of management and cheap labor contractor. Earlier this year, the UAW squashed a bid by the UAWD to hold a special convention to amend the union’s constitution to allow direct elections.
Scott Houldieson, former UAW Local 551 vice president at Ford’s Chicago Assembly Plant, founding member of the UAWD, and longtime supporter of the pseudo-left Labor Notes publication, told the Detroit News, “We have been pushing for direct elections for international officers, and we want to see that come to fruition. Along with that, we would like to have the ability for a monitor or a judge to be able to intervene if the elections weren’t going properly. Without direct elections, it’s nearly impossible to hold officers accountable.”
An ardent supporter of the Democratic Party, Houldieson has worked throughout his career to keep workers’ opposition from breaking out of the confines of the UAW, promoting illusions in the possibility of various reform efforts, and seeking above all to prevent the development of a movement of workers independent of both the unions and Democratic Party.
For Houldieson and others like him, it is not unlikely that they smell an opportunity to win lucrative positions in the UAW leadership through federal oversight.
Anyone harboring lingering hopes that things will improve for autoworkers through the intervention of the state, the direct election of union executives or some other “reform” measures should consider the disastrous outcome of previous such experiences in the unions.
In the early 1970s with the United Mine Workers of America (UMW) and the late 1980s and beyond with the Teamsters, the federal government intervened under the pretext of combating corruption, overseeing union elections in the case of the UMW and carrying out a takeover of the Teamsters under the RICO act, placing it under trusteeship. The reform factions which came into the leadership as a result of this process—the Miners for Democracy and Arnold Miller in the first case (and later Richard Trumka, now president of the AFL-CIO), Teamsters for a Democratic Union and Ron Carey in the latter—immediately came into conflict with workers.
Wherever these or other “reform” factions in the unions, including New Directions in the UAW itself, came into power, they worked just as consistently to enforce the will of management, with the result being the decimation of workers’ rights won over generations of struggle.
As with previous interventions by the federal government to supposedly clean up union corruption, the state criminal cases against UAW officials have not been driven by a desire to make the UAW into an organization which represents workers. Rather, it has been aimed at heading off a full-scale rebellion by autoworkers outside the control of the union.
After the US auto industry was restarted in May following its shutdown—which itself was the result of wildcat actions taken by rank-and-file workers in North America and Europe, which the unions tried to halt—anger has continued to grow, as workers are confronting the danger of exposing themselves to the coronavirus at their workplaces on a daily basis. Workers have begun to organize rank-and-file safety committees independent of the unions at auto plants across the Midwest in order to fight for safe and humane working conditions.
There have been earlier indications that the state is growing nervous about the potential impact of any additional revelations of UAW criminality adding further fuel to this opposition. Judge Paul Borman, who has also been overseeing the federal criminal cases, has twice now blocked GM’s racketeering suit from proceeding any further, referring to it as “waste of time and resources.” If the government does reach a deal with the UAW which avoids a full takeover, it would not be because it has become any less corrupt, but rather because the state feels that the UAW can still be relied upon the enforce the will of management without more drastic, and potentially destabilizing, measures (such as a full federal takeover) being taken at this point.
US autoworkers must not take a “wait and see” approach to the outcome of the talks between the federal government and the UAW. Rank-and-file safety committees, genuinely democratic workers’ organizations independent of the unions, must be formed and expanded, forming a network across the auto industry and linking up with the vast opposition developing among teachers and other workers in a movement fighting to secure the interests of the entire working class.
The WSWS Autoworker Newsletter will provide workers every assistance in building these committees. To get involved, contact us today.
The author also recommends:
Judge blocks GM’s bid to reopen racketeering case against Fiat Chrysler
[17 August 2020]
The United Auto Workers: A criminal conspiracy against the working class
[7 August 2020]
UAW president meets with prosecutor to avoid government takeover
[2 July 2020]
This is the bogus anti-Semitism report that sank Jeremy Corbyn
Asa Winstanley The Electronic Intifada
24 August 2020
https://electronicintifada.net/content/bogus-anti-semitism-report-sank-jeremy-corbyn/31026
The road to Jeremy Corbyn’s political downfall began at Oxford University Labour Club in February 2016.
A rogue inquiry by a Labour staffer with close ties to the Israeli embassy included fabricated allegations of anti-Semitism.
It destroyed the lives of several pro-Corbyn students sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.
It also triggered Labour’s “anti-Semitism crisis” in earnest. The manufactured crisis continues today, even with Corbyn now marginalized.
After an internal Labour disciplinary investigation, some of the accused were cleared of anti-Semitism the following year.
But by that time the damage had been done.
After a four-year investigation, The Electronic Intifada has obtained the full Rubin report, which has never been published.
Michael Rubin, who wrote it, was chair of the right-wing group Labour Students. But the “inquiry” was his own initiative and had not been mandated by either Labour’s leader or its ruling National Executive Committee.
Rubin was also collaborating with Shai Masot, an Israeli “diplomat” who would be kicked out of the UK the following year.
Soon after writing the report, Rubin was hired by Labour Friends of Israel, a group which secretly coordinates with the Israeli embassy in London.
Masot was caught in undercover footage recruiting to the Israeli front group.
Influence
After years working for them, Rubin was promoted in July this year to director of Labour Friends of Israel.
He also met with Corbyn’s right-wing successor, Keir Starmer, to discuss their opposition to the party’s policy of sanctions against Israel.
The inquiry conducted by Rubin directly influenced the far better known Royall and Chakrabarti inquiries into alleged Labour anti-Semitism.
The Electronic Intifada has protected some names in the report so as not to further Rubin’s disinformation campaign. You can read redacted extracts below.
The document shows how vague or fabricated allegations of anti-Semitism against left-wing supporters of Corbyn were laundered into serious accusations.
It states that Rubin reported to Labour staff six Oxford University Labour Club students he claimed were guilty of “repeated and potentially criminal anti-Semitism over a sustained period of time.”
But the document fails to support this allegation.
Rubin’s “evidence” is at best tenuous. But it also includes outright falsehoods.
Israeli embassy spy Shai Masot worked closely with Michael Rubin for several years. Al Jazeera
The timing is also notable: The club had just voted to endorse Israeli Apartheid Week, an annual fixture in the Palestine solidarity movement’s calendar.
One former student attacked in the report, who asked not to be named, told The Electronic intifada that the document had misattributed an anti-Semitic quote to them.
According to the student, someone had falsely inserted the word “Jewish” into a statement the student had made about the influence of the wealthy over elections.
“As I recall, what I actually said was that there is ‘influence wielded over elections by high net-worth individuals.’ I would never blame this on Jewish people,” the former student said.
“The sections of the report on me are false. Labour Students never even contacted me to get my side of the story.”
In other examples, one of the six allegedly “rolled [their] eyes” when a Jewish student spoke. On another occasion, the same accused individual supposedly “jeered” when the name of a former Israeli prime minister was mentioned.
One anonymous Jewish student alleged only that they were sent “a message that was aggressive and delegitimized the feeling I had.”
But astonishingly, Rubin concluded that all four of these allegations constituted “sufficient evidence” of anti-Semitism to report to Labour’s disciplinary staff.
The document also inadvertently proves that Rubin’s “witnesses” were often only relating hearsay and gossip.
One anonymous student said they “heard from other students” that one of the accused “engaged in songs which glorify rocket attacks against Tel Aviv” but admitted that they hadn’t actually seen this.
No one seems to be able to explain what this song supposedly was, how its lyrics went, or to have heard it sung.
Rarely in the Rubin report are there any specific or dated incidents, or any direct claim to have actually witnessed anti-Semitism.
Yet in such cases, Rubin often still claimed there was “sufficient evidence” to report individuals for disciplinary action.
Right-wing racism
The full document also suggests Rubin covered up allegations of racism by right-wingers in the Labour club – even alleged anti-Semitism.
It records several such allegations against right-wingers, but they were either ignored or marked “not sufficient evidence.”
One anonymous student quoted in the document states that during the club’s debate over Israeli Apartheid Week, a Palestinian student was “shouted down by the chair of the meeting, Alex Chalmers, called a terrorist sympathizer and subject to particularly aggressive questioning and speeches,” especially by David Klemperer, another right-winger.
A Jewish campaigner for Palestinian rights reported being on the receiving end of hostility from Chalmers: “Alex wanted to make me feel I was a traitor” and “a self-hating Jew,” the individual said.
Chalmers’ main right-wing accomplice, former club co-chair Klemperer, was accused of anti-Semitism too.
According to an anonymous student quoted in the report, Klemperer allegedly said: “You’re exactly the sort who should’ve died in the Holocaust.”
Rubin recommended no disciplinary action against either of the two, claiming there was “not sufficient evidence.”
Chalmers quit Labour and Klemperer was kicked out after they supported Liberal Democratic candidates in local elections. But Klemperer now appears to be back in the party.
Chalmers did not reply to a request for comment. Klemperer set both of his Twitter accounts to private soon after The Electronic Intifada emailed him a request for comment, but did not otherwise respond.
The lie that got around the world
Chalmers’ false allegations of anti-Semitism against the Oxford University Labour Club made international headlines after his resignation as co-chair on the night of the vote for Palestinian rights on 15 February 2016.
The Israeli embassy accused Oxford students of “disgraceful activity.”
Former Labour leader Ed Miliband canceled a speaking event there and the government’s minister for universities Jo Johnson demanded Oxford investigate Chalmers’ allegations – despite how blatantly false they appeared even at the time.
As The Electronic Intifada revealed soon after, Chalmers had also worked for BICOM, a pro-Israel advocacy organization.
The “Labour anti-Semitism” controversy rages on to this day. Some Israel lobbyists are even calling for Corbyn to be kicked out of Labour.
It has for years been reported that two of the main targets of the Rubin report’s false accusations were James Elliott and Max Shanly – then leading pro-Corbyn activists in Labour’s youth wing.
Shanly was a left-wing member of Young Labour’s national committee and a supporter of Corbyn. Elliott had advised Corbyn on youth policy during his 2015 leadership campaign.
Elliott was also standing for election to a seat on Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee.
Rubin’s “inquiry” was wrapped up in about a week. Details from the report were then almost immediately leaked to the right-wing press – days before the NEC election.
After the press smears about the pair, combined with a whispering campaign organized by Elliott’s right-wing rival, Elliott lost the seat by a single vote.
“Mental health destroyed entirely”
In 2018, on his podcast All the Best, Shanly opened up about the effects of what he called a smear campaign against the pair.
He revealed he had been suffering from serious depression for the previous two years, from “February 2016 when all the [Oxford University Labour Club] stuff kicked off.”
“I had my mental health destroyed entirely,” he said.
Shanly explained that in the years he was under investigation, the Labour Party refused to hear his side of the story – even Janet Royall when she did her investigation into Oxford. He said that Labour Students also never bothered to speak to him.
“The allegations that were made against me were all false,” he said. “There was no evidence. It was all ‘I heard of.’ It all comes down to Michael Rubin’s report.”
“The reason I ended up getting so depressed is that no one wants to employ someone” at the heart of an internationally reported, alleged anti-Semitism scandal, he said.
That same year, Shanly was hospitalized after a severe mental health crisis.
All that summer, Labour’s civil war over allegations of anti-Semitism had been raging.
“I knew Shai… we did a couple of things together”
Michael Rubin and Labour Friends of Israel did not reply to requests for comment for this article.
In 2016, The Electronic Intifada asked Rubin in person if he regretted his part in the smear campaign against left-wing students at Oxford.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, before rushing away.
But he has admitted to conducting the investigation, in undercover footage released in 2017. The document itself confirms this in its metadata.
Rubin had been close with Israeli embassy agent Shai Masot even before he started working for Labour Friends of Israel in May 2016.
In the undercover footage Rubin admitted: “I knew Shai in my role at Labour Students, we did a couple of things together.” You can watch him make this admission in the video above.
The footage was filmed by Al Jazeera for its investigative series The Lobby.
Masot was expelled from the UK after it hit headlines in January 2017.
The footage shows Rubin admitting to an undercover reporter that Labour Friends of Israel was essentially a front for the Israelis, but that “publicly we just try to keep the LFI as a separate identity to the embassy.”
It also revealed that the embassy finances Labour Friends of Israel’s activities.
Rubin discussed launching a youth wing with events funded by the Israelis: “the Israeli embassy are able to get a bit of money.”
Masot apparently told Rubin he would “help fund a couple of events.”
“I don’t think money should be a problem,” Rubin told Al Jazeera’s undercover reporter, who had been posing as a pro-Israel Labour activist.
After Al Jazeera’s film was broadcast, Boris Johnson – then foreign minister – said in Parliament that Masot’s “cover” had been “well and truly blown.”
Posing as a “senior political officer” at the London embassy, Masot was according to all indications an agent for Israel’s secretive Ministry of Strategic Affairs, which is staffed by former officers from Israel’s spy agencies.
Since 2015, the ministry has been Israel’s semi-covert dirty tricks agency dedicated to fighting a war against BDS, Palestine’s boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.
Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist with The Electronic Intifada.
https://electronicintifada.net/content/bogus-anti-semitism-report-sank-jeremy-corbyn/31026
The road to Jeremy Corbyn’s political downfall began at Oxford University Labour Club in February 2016.
A rogue inquiry by a Labour staffer with close ties to the Israeli embassy included fabricated allegations of anti-Semitism.
It destroyed the lives of several pro-Corbyn students sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.
It also triggered Labour’s “anti-Semitism crisis” in earnest. The manufactured crisis continues today, even with Corbyn now marginalized.
After an internal Labour disciplinary investigation, some of the accused were cleared of anti-Semitism the following year.
But by that time the damage had been done.
After a four-year investigation, The Electronic Intifada has obtained the full Rubin report, which has never been published.
Michael Rubin, who wrote it, was chair of the right-wing group Labour Students. But the “inquiry” was his own initiative and had not been mandated by either Labour’s leader or its ruling National Executive Committee.
Rubin was also collaborating with Shai Masot, an Israeli “diplomat” who would be kicked out of the UK the following year.
Soon after writing the report, Rubin was hired by Labour Friends of Israel, a group which secretly coordinates with the Israeli embassy in London.
Masot was caught in undercover footage recruiting to the Israeli front group.
Influence
After years working for them, Rubin was promoted in July this year to director of Labour Friends of Israel.
He also met with Corbyn’s right-wing successor, Keir Starmer, to discuss their opposition to the party’s policy of sanctions against Israel.
The inquiry conducted by Rubin directly influenced the far better known Royall and Chakrabarti inquiries into alleged Labour anti-Semitism.
The Electronic Intifada has protected some names in the report so as not to further Rubin’s disinformation campaign. You can read redacted extracts below.
The document shows how vague or fabricated allegations of anti-Semitism against left-wing supporters of Corbyn were laundered into serious accusations.
It states that Rubin reported to Labour staff six Oxford University Labour Club students he claimed were guilty of “repeated and potentially criminal anti-Semitism over a sustained period of time.”
But the document fails to support this allegation.
Rubin’s “evidence” is at best tenuous. But it also includes outright falsehoods.
Israeli embassy spy Shai Masot worked closely with Michael Rubin for several years. Al Jazeera
The timing is also notable: The club had just voted to endorse Israeli Apartheid Week, an annual fixture in the Palestine solidarity movement’s calendar.
One former student attacked in the report, who asked not to be named, told The Electronic intifada that the document had misattributed an anti-Semitic quote to them.
According to the student, someone had falsely inserted the word “Jewish” into a statement the student had made about the influence of the wealthy over elections.
“As I recall, what I actually said was that there is ‘influence wielded over elections by high net-worth individuals.’ I would never blame this on Jewish people,” the former student said.
“The sections of the report on me are false. Labour Students never even contacted me to get my side of the story.”
In other examples, one of the six allegedly “rolled [their] eyes” when a Jewish student spoke. On another occasion, the same accused individual supposedly “jeered” when the name of a former Israeli prime minister was mentioned.
One anonymous Jewish student alleged only that they were sent “a message that was aggressive and delegitimized the feeling I had.”
But astonishingly, Rubin concluded that all four of these allegations constituted “sufficient evidence” of anti-Semitism to report to Labour’s disciplinary staff.
The document also inadvertently proves that Rubin’s “witnesses” were often only relating hearsay and gossip.
One anonymous student said they “heard from other students” that one of the accused “engaged in songs which glorify rocket attacks against Tel Aviv” but admitted that they hadn’t actually seen this.
No one seems to be able to explain what this song supposedly was, how its lyrics went, or to have heard it sung.
Rarely in the Rubin report are there any specific or dated incidents, or any direct claim to have actually witnessed anti-Semitism.
Yet in such cases, Rubin often still claimed there was “sufficient evidence” to report individuals for disciplinary action.
Right-wing racism
The full document also suggests Rubin covered up allegations of racism by right-wingers in the Labour club – even alleged anti-Semitism.
It records several such allegations against right-wingers, but they were either ignored or marked “not sufficient evidence.”
One anonymous student quoted in the document states that during the club’s debate over Israeli Apartheid Week, a Palestinian student was “shouted down by the chair of the meeting, Alex Chalmers, called a terrorist sympathizer and subject to particularly aggressive questioning and speeches,” especially by David Klemperer, another right-winger.
A Jewish campaigner for Palestinian rights reported being on the receiving end of hostility from Chalmers: “Alex wanted to make me feel I was a traitor” and “a self-hating Jew,” the individual said.
Chalmers’ main right-wing accomplice, former club co-chair Klemperer, was accused of anti-Semitism too.
According to an anonymous student quoted in the report, Klemperer allegedly said: “You’re exactly the sort who should’ve died in the Holocaust.”
Rubin recommended no disciplinary action against either of the two, claiming there was “not sufficient evidence.”
Chalmers quit Labour and Klemperer was kicked out after they supported Liberal Democratic candidates in local elections. But Klemperer now appears to be back in the party.
Chalmers did not reply to a request for comment. Klemperer set both of his Twitter accounts to private soon after The Electronic Intifada emailed him a request for comment, but did not otherwise respond.
The lie that got around the world
Chalmers’ false allegations of anti-Semitism against the Oxford University Labour Club made international headlines after his resignation as co-chair on the night of the vote for Palestinian rights on 15 February 2016.
The Israeli embassy accused Oxford students of “disgraceful activity.”
Former Labour leader Ed Miliband canceled a speaking event there and the government’s minister for universities Jo Johnson demanded Oxford investigate Chalmers’ allegations – despite how blatantly false they appeared even at the time.
As The Electronic Intifada revealed soon after, Chalmers had also worked for BICOM, a pro-Israel advocacy organization.
The “Labour anti-Semitism” controversy rages on to this day. Some Israel lobbyists are even calling for Corbyn to be kicked out of Labour.
It has for years been reported that two of the main targets of the Rubin report’s false accusations were James Elliott and Max Shanly – then leading pro-Corbyn activists in Labour’s youth wing.
Shanly was a left-wing member of Young Labour’s national committee and a supporter of Corbyn. Elliott had advised Corbyn on youth policy during his 2015 leadership campaign.
Elliott was also standing for election to a seat on Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee.
Rubin’s “inquiry” was wrapped up in about a week. Details from the report were then almost immediately leaked to the right-wing press – days before the NEC election.
After the press smears about the pair, combined with a whispering campaign organized by Elliott’s right-wing rival, Elliott lost the seat by a single vote.
“Mental health destroyed entirely”
In 2018, on his podcast All the Best, Shanly opened up about the effects of what he called a smear campaign against the pair.
He revealed he had been suffering from serious depression for the previous two years, from “February 2016 when all the [Oxford University Labour Club] stuff kicked off.”
“I had my mental health destroyed entirely,” he said.
Shanly explained that in the years he was under investigation, the Labour Party refused to hear his side of the story – even Janet Royall when she did her investigation into Oxford. He said that Labour Students also never bothered to speak to him.
“The allegations that were made against me were all false,” he said. “There was no evidence. It was all ‘I heard of.’ It all comes down to Michael Rubin’s report.”
“The reason I ended up getting so depressed is that no one wants to employ someone” at the heart of an internationally reported, alleged anti-Semitism scandal, he said.
That same year, Shanly was hospitalized after a severe mental health crisis.
All that summer, Labour’s civil war over allegations of anti-Semitism had been raging.
“I knew Shai… we did a couple of things together”
Michael Rubin and Labour Friends of Israel did not reply to requests for comment for this article.
In 2016, The Electronic Intifada asked Rubin in person if he regretted his part in the smear campaign against left-wing students at Oxford.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, before rushing away.
But he has admitted to conducting the investigation, in undercover footage released in 2017. The document itself confirms this in its metadata.
Rubin had been close with Israeli embassy agent Shai Masot even before he started working for Labour Friends of Israel in May 2016.
In the undercover footage Rubin admitted: “I knew Shai in my role at Labour Students, we did a couple of things together.” You can watch him make this admission in the video above.
The footage was filmed by Al Jazeera for its investigative series The Lobby.
Masot was expelled from the UK after it hit headlines in January 2017.
The footage shows Rubin admitting to an undercover reporter that Labour Friends of Israel was essentially a front for the Israelis, but that “publicly we just try to keep the LFI as a separate identity to the embassy.”
It also revealed that the embassy finances Labour Friends of Israel’s activities.
Rubin discussed launching a youth wing with events funded by the Israelis: “the Israeli embassy are able to get a bit of money.”
Masot apparently told Rubin he would “help fund a couple of events.”
“I don’t think money should be a problem,” Rubin told Al Jazeera’s undercover reporter, who had been posing as a pro-Israel Labour activist.
After Al Jazeera’s film was broadcast, Boris Johnson – then foreign minister – said in Parliament that Masot’s “cover” had been “well and truly blown.”
Posing as a “senior political officer” at the London embassy, Masot was according to all indications an agent for Israel’s secretive Ministry of Strategic Affairs, which is staffed by former officers from Israel’s spy agencies.
Since 2015, the ministry has been Israel’s semi-covert dirty tricks agency dedicated to fighting a war against BDS, Palestine’s boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.
Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist with The Electronic Intifada.
Court rules against Florida governor but schools to remain open
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/25/flor-a25.html
By Alex Johnson
25 August 2020
On Monday, a Florida judge issued a temporary injunction against an order by the state mandating that schools provide full in-person instruction by the end of August or risk losing state funding. Within hours, the state filed an appeal, placing a stay on the preliminary injunction and effectively reinstating the criminal state order.
The Florida Education Association (FEA), which filed the initial lawsuit, said it will file a motion to reinstate the judge’s ruling. Whether this is granted or not, the final outcome for educators, parents and students will only be slightly altered.
While the unions and the media presented the judge’s ruling as a major victory for teachers, the reality is the school districts such as Duval County that have already opened will likely stay open. Meanwhile, educators in other districts will be herded back into unsafe classrooms, albeit under plans outlined by local district officials working with the unions, not under the timetables and rules set by Governor Ron DeSantis and his state education officials.
Facebook groups opposed to the Republican governor’s reopening of schools have formed across Florida, attracting thousands of members and serving as a means to organize protests. Last Thursday, roughly 80 teachers in Duval County (Jacksonville) organized a wildcat “sickout” strike on the first day of in-person learning. More than 1,200 Jacksonville school bus drivers and aides are conducting a strike vote. In addition, hundreds of teachers across the district and thousands statewide have resigned out of fear of returning to unsafe conditions.
Faced with this revolt, the FEA filed the lawsuit to try to corral the opposition and contain it behind appeals to the courts and local school officials to work with the unions to open the schools. The FEA and its parent unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT), have adamantly opposed any mobilization of the union’s 150,000 members in any form of statewide protest or strike action.
Instead, numerous districts have been allowed to reopen across the state, producing at least 626 confirmed COVID-19 infections among students and staff, the largest confirmed total of any state.
In early July, the FEA filed the lawsuit against DeSantis, the Department of Education, and Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran, asserting that the state’s edict violates the state constitution’s guarantee of “safe and secure” public education.
Leon County Circuit Judge Charles Dodson ruled in favor of the FEA, arguing that local school boards should be able to “make safety determinations for the reopening of schools without financial penalty.” Dodson’s decision also concluded that the state order overrode the constitutional authority of local school boards to operate their own school systems and delay the resumption of in-person instruction.
Dodson made reference to the Hillsborough County school board decision in early August to delay reopening of its classrooms by four weeks, before being warned by Corcoran and other state officials they stood to lose up to $23 million a month. Bending to this pressure, the district later advanced its reopening date to August 31.
Dodson’s ruling is a highly calculated political decision. Given the popular opposition to the unsafe openings, the judge and the Democratic Party hope to breathe new life into the largely discredited teacher unions. Having declared in July that they would not organize any nationwide struggle to prevent the reopening of schools, the NEA and AFT have fully acquiesced to and facilitated the homicidal campaign to reopen schools.
Outgoing NEA President Lily Eskelsen GarcÃa hailed the court decision as “a victory for students and educators from being forced into unsafe school buildings.” AFT President Randi Weingarten declared, “The judge ruled that decisions about reopening should be made locally, not dictated by the state, either directly or through funding decisions.”
In reality, the ruling does nothing to ensure public health and prevent the reopening of schools, simply shifting responsibility to the local level. If the stay remains in effect, as an overturn is far from a guarantee, it will be as if the judge’s order doesn’t exist. The DeSantis administration would then be able to revert back to their original July order and compel school districts to fully reopen schools or risk losing funding.
Moreover, Dodson’s ruling also maintained that DeSantis and Corcoran’s order would become “constitutional” if the “unconstitutional” portions were deleted. This included removing language relating to required dates to begin in-person classes, mandatory reopening plans, and funding waivers. Therefore, language such as saying all schools “must open” was struck and instead replaced with language saying those decisions must be made by local district officials, such as the superintendent, school boards, and local unions.
Having set a precedent of mass openings, few districts will now voluntarily return to online learning without immense pressure from educators, parents and students. If the stay is overturned, local officials may utilize the considerable difficulties accompanying the establishment of distance learning as a pretext to resume in-person learning.
Many students in the state from low-income or rural communities have very unreliable or non-existent access to high-speed internet in their homes, which has made online instruction nearly impossible. There is also increasing concern over the inability of non-English speakers and homeless minors to have stable learning environments, with large numbers of both demographics not having access to learning devices or the internet. No extra funding is being allotted to address such dire circumstances.
Educators, parents and students must not be fooled by Monday’s judicial decision or harbor any illusions that the corporate-controlled legal system will defend their rights and safety. The chief task is to form an interconnected network of rank-and-file safety committees, independent of the unions and both big business parties, to prepare for a nationwide general strike to halt the reopening of schools and stop the spread of the pandemic.
There is tremendous support for such a struggle within the working class, but what is required is organization and leadership. The Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee was formed to help guide this work, and we urge all those who agree with the need for a broader struggle to contact us today, join our Facebook group and make plans to attend our next online call-in meeting Saturday, August 29. Register today and share the event widely with your coworkers!
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