BLM
Questions raised over pro-Trump, anti-BLM, anti-Labour comments of Labour candidate
Joe Johnson’s social media record includes defence of racist comedy, admiration of Thatcher and Trump, support for far-right views and opposition to Labour – yet he has been selected to stand for the party
Sefton council candidate Joe Johnson, from his Facebook profile
A Labour candidate’s social media output has raised serious questions about his suitability to stand – yet he was apparently waved through by Keir Starmer’s party, either without vetting or in disregard of his record, to stand for the party in the St Oswald ward in Bootle, near Liverpool.
Locals have raised flags about what they say are:
- Historic racist views
- Support of Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party
- Admiration of Margaret Thatcher
- Support of Donald Trump
- Support of far right views on social media (TwitterlX: @joejbsg)
- Public opposition to the Labour Party
In 2020, the BBC reported that a Dover footballer, who was racially abused by Hartlepool fans, said that Johnson had implied he earned the abuse by celebrating his goal:
The ref was saying that I sparked it all off with my celebration. As a ref, you shouldn’t really be saying … it’s sort of saying that, because I did a celebration, I should now be receiving racial abuse.
In the same month the BBC was reporting the Hartlepool incident, Johnson was commenting on his social media that police should be baton-beating and tasing Black Lives Matter protesters:
Johnson also defended the police after video emerged of a Black man being kneed in the face – commenting that the police ‘should be allowed to do their jobs’:
Johnson also commented that ‘blackface’ was ‘comedy at its best’:
In 2019, he supported Boris Johnson over Brexit and in 2020 he defended Johnson’s appalling handling of the pandemic and his wilful ignoring of the advice of government scientists:
And on Brexit he went further, supporting a far-right account’s recommendation that Johnson should invoke emergency legislation to force through a hard Brexit:
Johnson needn’t have bothered: the sabotage by Keir Starmer and the Labour right handed Johnson the hardest of Brexits anyway. He was also apparently a fan of the hated Margaret Thatcher, ‘liking’ a post calling her an ‘inspiration’:
Johnson praised far-right former US president Donald Trump more than once:
And his ‘likes’ included an anti-refugee post by far-right political figures Nigel Farage and former Home Secretary Priti Patel:
Johnson’s likes and comments also indicate a deep distaste for Labour under Jeremy Corbyn – and approval for a video mocking Diane Abbott, Britain’s first Black woman MP:
Johnson’s ‘like’ of a post about Abbott
Contacted for comment about his posts an locals’ concerns, Johnson replied:
I am not surprised, although disappointed by putting myself up for local election to help the area that some people would try and shoot me down for past views, beliefs and opinions.
Labour’s regional director for the north-west, Liam Didsbury, did not respond to a request to confirm whether Labour did any vetting before allowing Johnson to become a candidate.
SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
Israel planning to transfer Palestinians to Congo
Ethnic cleansing plans outed further but still ignored by western ‘mainstream’ media
Image: ActionAid
Israel is negotiating with Congo – it is unclear from reports which of the two neighbouring Congos – and other African nations to transfer the Palestinian people, according to reports in the Times of Israel and its sister site Zman Israel.
Both the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) regularly see serious human rights violations, including massacres. A 2022 US Department of State report on human rights in the Republic, which is commonly known as Congo Brazzaville after its capital city to distinguish it from its neighbour – states that:
Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: unlawful or arbitrary killings, including extrajudicial killings; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by the government; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest or detention; political prisoners or detainees; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; arbitrary or unlawful interference
and more.
In the DRC, human rights groups have noted massacres and other human rights violations. Amnesty International said in 2022 that the DRC:
continued to experience serious human rights violations, including mass killings in the context of armed conflict and inter-communal violence, a crackdown on dissent and ill-treatment of detainees. People from regions affected by armed conflict, including eastern DRC, were particularly affected amid mass displacement and a deepening humanitarian crisis. The authorities continued to show a lack of political will to hold the perpetrators of human rights violations to account. The right to education was violated.
The Times quoted a ‘senior’ security cabinet source and comments by Israeli minister Gila Gamliel:
Israeli officials have held clandestine talks with the African nation of Congo and several others for the potential acceptance of Gaza emigrants.
“Congo will be willing to take in migrants, and we’re in talks with others,” a senior source in the security cabinet tells [journalist] Shalom Yerushalmi.
Yerushalmi quotes Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel saying at the Knesset yesterday: “At the end of the war Hamas rule will collapse, there are no municipal authorities, the civilian population will be entirely dependent on humanitarian aid. There will be no work, and 60% of Gaza’s agricultural land will become security buffer zones.”
The UK government has disgraced itself by continued attempts to transfer desperate refugees to Rwanda, attempts continually blocked by the courts – but the Israeli regime was the first to do it, sending around 4,000 Black refugees fleeing war in Eritrea and Sudan to Rwanda between 2013 and 2018 before discontinuing what it called ‘voluntary’ departure – similar to the ‘voluntary emigration’ euphemism it uses for its ethnic cleansing plan, alongside ‘humanitarian migration’.
Israel has an appalling record toward Black people, even Black Jews – and last year threatened to deport them, too. The SAGE Race & Class Journal notes that:
Ethiopian Jews who have been brought into Israel in several mass transfer operations, have found themselves relegated to an underclass. They are not only racially discriminated against in housing, employment, education, the army and even in the practice of their religion, but have also been unwittingly used to bolster illegal settlements.
Now, as well as the already-outed plan to force huge numbers of Palestinians out of Gaza into the Egyptian desert, Israel is actively working on plans to force more out of the Middle East altogether and into Africa. The Israeli regime’s war crimes continue to pile up.
Despite the similarities with the UK’s racist government, at the time of writing the UK’s so-called ‘mainstream’ media have not reported Israel’s plan – as has been the case with much of Israel’s racism and criminality.
SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
This constituent’s glorious letter roasting Lammy over Gaza and careerism is priceless
Jessica Straker’s political and moral dismemberment of Starmeroid Tottenham MP is a masterclass as she demands he call for a ceasefire and then resign
Tottenham’s right-wing Labour MP David Lammy has been one of the most prominent faces attempting to excuse and justify Keir Starmer’s disgraceful support for Israel’s war crimes against Gazan civilians. He has also been one of the most eager to enjoy corporate junkets and donations.
And Jessica Straker’s decision to write to Lammy, under a heading of ’23 years of disappointment’, about his appalling record is a master-class in political and moral dismemberment of the politically unfit and morally vacuous – and even better when she tweeted it:
23 years of disappointment
Dear Mr Lammy MP
You have been my MP out of reluctance since the death of Bernie Grant – who was a family friend, with my grandfather being one of the pallbearers at his funeral. Your brother, my uncle Karl, is also a long-standing family friend and is Godfather to my sisters. My family attends St. Philip The Apostle. I have lived in Tottenham all my life and have been disappointed with you as an MP since before I could vote. Bernie Grant has been consistently spinning in his grave for the past 23 years.
You once told my teenage friend, a young black girl from White Hart Lane to not bother pursuing a career as a lawyer at university when she came to you for inspiration and
advice. She is now an award-winning Barrister at a leading chambers. That was my first personal understanding of you in relation to my own network.
So, from a young age I have learnt to ignore you – your politics, your suggestions, your views and perhaps ignorantly, your existence as my serving MP. I have voted for you in the past out of learned loyalty as a Caribbean person, and after that, as a means to avoid Conservatives getting into power. I have never voted for you because I want you as my mouthpiece. It has always been for the greater good (a good which has increasingly become a centrist malaise of purple politics), and I think you will find that many people have done the same.
Your comfortability within your seat is without merit and I believe deep down you know this. The only votes you can probably claim are that of the liberal-guilt afflicted gentrifiers who have been hoodwinked by your rebrands, soothing their disruption of the community by voting ‘Black’ as their shame at driving the prices up on houses along roads with names that make them uneasy after they block local commuters from driving down. You are a careerist, that is clear, and your alignment to Windrush, the diversity conversations that arose from BLM and your moments of condemnation for Grenfell had many of us remain silent – happy that for once your personal interests finally lined up with the community interests. But this current siding with Israel on genocide is abhorrent.
Your recent comment on BBC Radio 4 should have ended without the adage of ‘but’ and all that came after it.
Dropping six bombs on a refugee camp cannot be ‘legally justified’.
I know you identify as English, I sympathise with the sort of tokenism and self-devaluation you have had to do in order to get to where you are – but in turn know that all that has been a choice you didn’t have to make.
I don’t want a response from you, I want you to simply do better – in life. As a member of your constituency, I am asking you to call for a ceasefire and also to resign.
Regards,
Jessica Straker
Casting Director
www.jessicastraker.com
Ms Straker, we salute you. Now will a Holborn and St Pancras constituent please do the same for the Kid Starver?
SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.