rss
In the least surprising news this year, the BBC is regurgitating antisemitism smears against Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn in an attempt to undermine their new political party.
The BBC has written a piece on Sultana's recent comments about how Labour capitulated to IHRA guidelines under Corbyn's leadership and how those guidelines are used to silence legitimate criticism of Israel. An excellent Twitter thread by Jamie SW breaks down a series of errors made by the BBC in its article. I struggle to believe these errors were unintentional.
The BBC says the IHRA guidelines give examples of "antisemitic acts", the implication being that anyone who rejects the IHRA guidelines must support such antisemitic acts.
As Jamie SW points out, the IHRA guidelines do not give examples of antisemitic acts, but rather examples that could be considered antisemitic in certain contexts. This is crucial because the implementation of IHRA guidelines has meant that actions similar to the given examples are automatically considered antisemitic, regardless of context. It is a slight of hand used to silence critics of Israel and is one of the key reasons the guidelines are rejected by many human rights groups.
Absurdly, the BBC says, "The IHRA's working definition of antisemitism is the internationally accepted standard definition, adopted by the government and most British institutions." Last time I checked, being accepted by British institutions was not the same as being accepted internationally!
The IHRA guidelines are not accepted by the UN or a majority of countries around the world. They are heavily criticised by human rights groups for stifling free speech around Israel. Such controversial guidelines cannot sensibly be considered "internationally accepted".
Council Estate Media is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
The BBC dedicated a chunk of its article to quoting Zionists laying into Sultana, but it did not quote one person defending her position. As Jamie SW points out in his thread:
"You quote three critics of Sultana's position but no defenders of it. Did you reach out to Kenneth Stern, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B'Tselem, Professor David Feldman, Antony Lerman, or any other critic of the IHRA definition for comment?"
The BBC quoted Labour Against Antisemitism co-director Alex Hearn who denied Kenneth Stern was an author on the IHRA guidelines. This was misleading as Stern describes himself as the lead drafter, not author. The BBC fails to clarify and instead leaves you with the impression that Sultana and others are lying about Stern's role to justify their rejection of the IHRA guidelines.
Here is a quote from Kenneth Stern that the BBC could have included in its article:
"Fifteen years ago, as the American Jewish Committee’s antisemitism expert, I was the lead drafter of what was then called the “working definition of antisemitism”. It was created primarily so that European data collectors could know what to include and exclude. That way antisemitism could be monitored better over time and across borders.
"It was never intended to be a campus hate speech code, but that’s what Donald Trump’s executive order accomplished this week. This order is an attack on academic freedom and free speech, and will harm not only pro-Palestinian advocates, but also Jewish students and faculty, and the academy itself."
The working definition of antisemitism was first published in 2003 but was not adopted by the IHRA until 2016 and suddenly every institution was expected to adopt it. This then led to many people being wrongly fired or expelled for criticising Israel.
The IHRA guidelines provide a non-legally binding working definition of antisemitism which is used to argue unlawful discrimination. The guidelines are so broad that any criticism of Israel can potentially be described as antisemitic. Six of the guidelines relate to how you can and can't criticise the state of Israel.
Ironically, defenders of Israel often use language to describe Palestine that would be considered antisemitic if you used such language against Israel. For example, I've seen many Zionists argue that Hamas has infiltrated western institutions, that it has its tentacles everywhere. I've seen many Zionists hold Palestinians collectively responsible for the actions of Hamas. I've seen many Zionists deny the Nakba and the ongoing genocide. All of these criticisms would fall foul of IHRA guidelines if you made equivalent statements about Israel.
Perhaps if we are going to have IHRA guidelines, we need INHA (International Nakba Remembrance Association) guidelines too! The fact there is no set of guidelines for anti-Palestinian or anti-Arab racism, and Zionists are never shut down when they resort to such racism, tells you everything you need to know. No one has ever been kicked out of a political party or fired from their job or expelled from their university for Nakba denial.
The BBC's article made some claims that are just not true, such as "Corbyn rejected the human rights watchdog's critical findings that there had been three breaches of the Equality Act during his tenure, claiming complaints had been 'dramatically overstated' by political opponents."
Corbyn accepted the findings of the EHRC on the three breaches of the Equality Act, one of which involved Corbyn unlawfully interfering by telling his complaints team they were taking too long to handle complaints - something his critics agreed with!
The BBC did not mention that Labour's antisemitism complaints mostly related to Ed Miliband's time in charge; that most of them upon investigation had nothing to do with Labour members; that Corbyn inherited a complaints system run by political opponents; that the Forde Report found these opponents were mishandling complaints to undermine Corbyn's leadership; and that the complaints procedures dramatically improved when Corbyn ally Jennie Formby took charge and complaints were no longer used as a factional weapon.
Instead of providing this essential context, the BBC dedicated the final paragraphs of its article to laying into Corbyn, ending with the following quote from a Labour source:
"The electorate has twice made their view clear about a Jeremy Corbyn-led party. Keir Starmer's Labour Party rightly tore antisemitism out at its roots. Corbyn almost led the party to extinction. We're not going back."
The BBC did not bother finding a single person to defend Corbyn or Sultana which is interesting because whenever it discusses Israel's war crimes, it never fails to find someone to defend those. Corbyn and Sultana are two of the UK's leading voices when it comes to calling out Israel's genocide and the establishment is desperate to silence them. Only problem is it won't work this time. We are fighting back.
your_party_updates
A post shared by @your_party_updates
Thank you for reading. All of my content will always be freely available, but if you wish to support my work, you can do so at Ko-fi or Patreon. Likes, shares and comments also help massively.
From Council Estate Media: Dystopian Times via this RSS feed
This is a transcript, for the YouTube video found here:
Bullets:
Thanks for reading Inside China / Business! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Top AI experts from Silicon Valley were stunned upon seeing China's enormous head start across all segments of applied artificial intelligence.
Of particular concern was China's access to cheap electricity, which is simply not available in the United States, and very likely never coming.
The experts conclude that the AI race is likely already over.
In China, the power demand increases each year by the equivalent of an entire Germany’s worth of electricity consumption. But China's energy supplies are growing much faster, and add two Germany's worth of power annually.
This abundance, which is typical of "overcapacity" of so many other critical building blocks of industry, is the result of a deliberate strategy, executed over decades: Chinese planners develop infrastructure far in advance of when it will be needed.
Report:
Good morning.
Top policymakers in Western countries complain about China’s overcapacity, like it’s a problem the Chinese need to solve. But China sees overcapacity and abundance as the solution to problems, today, and as guarantees that the problems never come.
We have done several reports about our own experiences here in China with AI, and how China’s industrial sector uses AI in powerful ways in design and manufacturing. Artificial Intelligence is used everywhere in Chinese industry, from the mining of raw materials to the finished products that roll out the door on the other side. AI is deeply embedded here in everything, right now.
And that is what the Magnificent 7 companies, and our politicians in the US are also hoping for. But there are huge obstacles in Europe and the United States that need to be overcome.
The biggest bottleneck for building data centers is how much stress they place on the electricity grid. Deloitte surveyed executives in power utilities and Big Data, and they agreed that if the big boom in data center construction was ever going to happen, a lot of new power generation needs to be built, first. If American households don’t like what their power bills look like, lately, when AI data center demand is 4 gigawatts, they’re going to be very unhappy when that demand from AI data centers grows more than 30 times in 10 years, to 123 gigawatts.
We’re saying here that this chart will not happen—it’s impossible, in our political environment—unless the US can generate a lot more electricity than we’re doing now, and to do so at a FASTER rate than demand. It’s only that way that the power bills don’t go up along with that new supply—the supply must race ahead faster than the demand for it. And the entire bull thesis for all these AI and Magnificent 7 stocks depends on this chart of future power demand, which in turn depends on the United States building out its power grid to meet it.
Today, we are not, and we cannot. We don’t have the supply chains to produce the equipment for natural gas power plants, for example. It takes forever to build a nuclear plant, and we don’t even have any under construction in the United States. Solar and wind power are the lowest-cost sources of electricity, and can be deployed quickly at scale, but the Trump Administration killed many of those projects.
In the United States, power is the problem. But in China, power is not a problem. A group of top experts in AI came to China, looked around, and concluded that the race may already be over. Rui Ma runs TechBuzz China, but works in Silicon Valley full time. She came to a big tech conference in Shanghai, went home, and posted what her group saw on their trip to her X account. It is a long report, and here, in part 4—in China, energy is a solved problem.
Electricity supply is secure, cheap. It’s taken for granted. Everywhere she and her group went, energy availability is a given. That’s a stark contrast to the US, where AI growth is already a political problem, and our executives don’t have any idea where the electricity will come from. Or if.
David Fishman is quoted here; he has studied China’s power systems for years. In China, electricity isn’t even a question. The Chinese add more demand that Germany, every year, and yet it’s not a problem. This is what overcapacity looks like, if you’re not Janet Yellen or the EU: decades of deliberate overbuilding and investment, at every node in the industry -- generation, transmission, and future technologies.
As a result, China’s reserve margin has never gone under 80-100% nationwide. It consistently has at least twice the capacity it needs. Every year China’s demand for electricity grows by the equivalent of an Germany’s entire demand. China adds one Germany of electricity demand, and every year China adds two Germany’s of electricity supply.
In the US, that number is 15%, and sometimes less. China operates from a position of abundance, and we do not.
A big reason is the incentive problem. China’s policymakers at all levels, even provincial level and below, build out a lot of infrastructure, long before the demand shows up, because it never will show up unless it’s built. If you’re the mayor, say, of a Chinese city that wants to attract industry years from now, he needs to get busy building out all the infrastructure for it, and that also means power supplies. The overcapacity isn’t a problem to be solved; it’s an approach, a deliberate strategy.
Back home the system is obviously very different. Even for urgent public projects, like utilities, it’s still private investment that gets it built, and private investors demand faster returns. Chinese industrial planners build capacity for demand that they hope will come; we only build for demand that is already there, and when we know our investments will earn big profits.
When it comes to private capital, nobody has more of that than Silicon Valley. But even they have their priorities wrong. Nobody needs this new power more than the Silicon Valley companies themselves—but that’s also long term. They have more interest in upgrading to version 5.0 of something, than in solving the power problem.
Be Good.
Resources and links:
Reuters, Yellen pushes for joint G7 response to China's industrial overcapacity
Overcapacity: the economic buzzword fuelling Europe’s clash with China
Deloitte, Can US infrastructure keep up with the AI economy?
TechBuzz China
https://techbuzzchina.com/team/
https://www.lantaugroup.com/people/David+Fishman
https://x.com/ruima/status/1955040979259650267
Fortune, AI experts return from China stunned: The U.S. grid is so weak, the race may already be over
https://fortune.com/2025/08/14/data-centers-china-grid-us-infrastructure/
Magnificent Seven Hit Record $19.6T on AI Surge
https://www.voronoiapp.com/markets/-Magnificent-Seven-Hit-Record-196T-on-AI-Surge-3004
Will we have enough natural gas turbines to power AI data centers?
Number of nuclear reactors under construction worldwide as of June 2025, by country
https://www.statista.com/statistics/513671/number-of-under-construction-nuclear-reactors-worldwide/
Ranked: America’s Cheapest Sources of Electricity in 2024
https://www.motive-power.com/ranked-americas-cheapest-sources-of-electricity-in-2024/
Thanks for reading Inside China / Business! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
From Inside China / Business via this RSS feed