TTIP of the Iceberg that could wreck NHS

DEFENDING NHS. Public meeting in Hanwell Methodist Church, part of campaign to save Ealing Hospital services. Now Ealing trades unionists have warned NHS is under threat from secret negotiations for Transatlantic Free Trade pact. 
(photo Raj Gill)

IF you had asked me a few weeks ago what I thought about TTIP, you'd have got a blank stare or maybe me turning away thinking you were trying to flog me some finance or insurance scheme.

If you'd managed to tell me the initials stood for Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, I might not have been much the wiser, even if you'd added that this is also called the Transatlantic Free Trade Area.

Governments and their media supporters rely on people like me being lulled into apathy over stuff that we don't think affects us, or distracted by sensationalised trivia, while they get on with doing what they like.

Fortunately, in between the Euro-elections and the FIFA world cup, friends have started to  put me right. This TTIP is not just some technical arrangement concerning tariffs and trade. It would very much affect things that concern me and you.

At its heart is a move to enable big business interests to dominate  countries, not only through influence, corruption and lobbying, but by law. Companies could take elected governments to court over anything which restricted their ability to profit. They could roll back legislation protecting the environment, food standards, workers' rights, safety at work - something of which we have already had a taste in this government's moves to deregulate and cut inspections - and provision of health services.

It is reported today that 'The European Union's trade commissioner Karel De Gucht has denied that the mooted trade deal between the EU and the US will give multinational corporations power over incumbent governments. Speaking at an event in London, De Gucht said that he will "launch a public consultation on exactly how the EU should approach these discussions"'.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ttip-eu-trade-commissioner-launch-public-enquiry-into-fears-over-multinational-power-1454140

We have already seen this Con Dem coalition taking steps to remove laws which get in the way of "fracking" companies. If the Tories and Lib Dems are happy with TTIP, Labour too is arguing that it will bring prosperity and be good for jobs. But the Labour Party admits there could be dangers for the NHS.

'The UK's shadow trade and investment minister Ian Murray has said that Labour will withdraw its support for the controversial Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) if safeguards are not inserted to protect public services including the NHS from US investors.

In an interview with IBTimes UK, Murray also said there is "no case" for including investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) instruments in the free trade agreement between the EU and US.

If included in TTIP, ISDS would allow multinationals to take legal proceedings against EU governments for loss of profits due to public policy decisions.

Asked whether Labour support was dependent on both these items being excluded, Murray replied: "That's certainly the position of the Social Democrat members of the European Parliament, and Labour is part of that. They're very much of the view that the general utilities reservation [which would exempt public services] and ISDS are the red lines for them – and for us as well."'

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ttip-labour-will-not-back-eu-us-trade-deal-without-nhs-safeguards-1453082

We have already seen how the last Labour government introduced the Tory idea of Private Finance Initiatives (PFIs), helping open areas of the service to private profit, and saddling hospitals with debts for which cuts are having to be made. With Con Dem policy treating health provision as just another business, the way would be open under the TTIP for big multinational companies to move in, claiming any requirements privileging the NHS were an unfair restriction on their right to profit.  

In the week before Ian Murray spoke to the press, thee annual conference of trades union councils in England and Wales,meeting in Cardiff on the weekend of June 14-15,  adopted this Emergency Motion from Ealing trades council in west London, one of the areas where people are resisting the cuts: 

Emergency Motion 2:
TTIP - The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership

Conference notes EU elections appear to have reinforced the likelihood of the TTIP being adopted, which could be a disaster for the NHS.

If the EU and the US agree to TTIP without excluding the NHS from its provisions, the result could mean the end of the NHS as a public service. Corporations could permanently have the legal right to run health services with or without approval of the British Government. The marketisation of the NHS under the Health and Social Care Act means that the NHS will no longer be categorised as a ‘public service’ and would therefore be included in the provisions of the TTIP which restrict or prevent national governments from determining how industries are run. TTIP can override not only health and safety, but pay arrangements, union agreements and other basic standards. The markets take legal priority.

We endorse the concerns that have been expressed by TUC General Secretary Frances O Grady, and many labour movement figures and health campaigns.

Therefore as secret negotiations on TTIP continue, we call on the TUC and Trades Councils to make this a key national and local campaigning issue in the coming weeks and months. We need to urgently alert the public to this threat to our NHS and as well highlight the dangers of the huge power of transnational corporations under TTIP and other agreements.

War on Want has produced a booklet by John Hilary warning against the TTIP, and called a series of meetings and events around the country as part of a campaign:

8 July, Birmingham, 7pmBerta Wright Room, Carrs Lane Centre, B4 7SX (map) - sign up via Facebook here

9 July, Manchester, 7pmNW UNISON Regional Centre, Arena Point, 1 Hunts Bank, M3 1UN (map) - sign up via Facebook here

10 July, London, 7pmMander Hall, NUT, Hamilton House, WC1H 9BD (map) - sign up via Facebook here

12 July, national day of action: No TTIP! events planned for around the country - sign up here

Make TTIP a national and local campaigning issue, says trades councils' conference resolution

(photo Charlie Pottins)



http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ttip-eu-trade-commissioner-launch-public-enquiry-into-fears-over-multinational-power-1454140

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/04/02/ttip-us-eu-trade-deal_n_5050117.html

http://www.waronwant.org/campaigns/trade-justice/more/inform/18078-what-is-ttip

Plague Rats invade North London

AS if we did not have enough racists and fascists crawling out of the woodwork to exploit conditions of austerity and decline, accompanied by the fears and hatreds stirred by government and media, the eastward expansion of the European Union has brought to these shores not just decent workers and people fleeing persecution, but some of the very bigots and thugs responsible for that persecution.

In the past, it must be said, British intelligence connived at bringing in East Europeans who had served in the wartime SS, and similar units, perhaps with the intention of putting them to use again against the Soviet Union. Later we had several Italians wanted in connection with bombings and the "strategy of tension" in their own country, for whom London seemed like a magnet and a safehouse,

While successive Home Secretaries pretended to know nothing, MPs were fobbed off or stopped asking questions, and Italian extradition requests seemed to disappear in the post, these fascists were able to coach British admirers, and one ran a business and fundraising "charities" here, till it became safe to return home without facing more charges and enter "respectable" politics as a fascist.

But the new breed of migrant fascist is brasher and more open about conducting activity here. We have had the Hungarian organisation Jobbik running fundraisers at a London pub in spite of local protests. Jobbik has risen to be a major party in Hungary, apparently unimpeded, if not boosted by its fondness for uniforms and attacks on Jews and Gypsies.

Considering that Nazi racism regarded Poles as an inferior species, only to be used as slave labour until they could be dispensed with like the Jews, it must take a peculiar mentality among some youg Poles today to not only adopt traditional antisemitism but form groups seeking to emulate the Nazis. But such groups exist, apparently, and one of them has carried out an organised racist attack in London.   

The gang identified as Polish neo-Nazis attacked people attending a music festival in Tottenham.
 They appear to have particularly singled out Jewish people for attack.
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/man-stabbed-during-violence-as-polish-neonazis-storm-tottenham-music-festival-9556346.html

Whether or not the Polish group was encouraged to launch this raid by our 'own' British Nazis we can bet they will take inspiration from it, and that it will be used by those in the media and elsewhere who make it their business to spread antagonisms, not least hostility to Polish immigrants.

So I am glad to hear there was a quick response by figures from the Polish and Jewish communities joining to condemn the attack, and by other local minorities in and around Tottenham, particularly Black and Muslim people, siding with the Jewish people who were attacked.

The Unite Against Fascism (UAF) campaign managed to call a vigil at very short notice last night at Tottenham Green.  The organisers were also able to read out a statement from the Jewish Socialists' Group. 

 :
"Greetings and congratulations from the Jewish Socialists’ Group on calling this solidarity vigil at such short notice. Unfortunately we cannot be here tonight with our banner but have spread the word through our networks.
We express solidarity with all communities in our multicultural city who experience abuse, intimidation and violence from the enemies of our common humanity.

This weekend Neo-Nazis are attacking Jews; a few weeks ago Britain First were abusing and intimidating the Bengali community in Brick Lane. Every day the right wing press are targeting migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. They do not distinguish between their targets. We should not distinguish between ourselves in fighting back.
We must stand united and proud of all who make up multicultural London. If we can deepen our commitment to each other across the divisions the racists and neo-Nazis wish to create, they are the ones who will remain small, marginalised and isolated,
Far right groups have been emboldened by the successes of racists in recent elections – whether UKIP in Britain or the ragbag of racist, antisemitic and fascist groups across Europe, but remember, London bucked that trend.
Ours is an anti-racist and anti-fascist city. We have an anti-racist and anti-fascist majority. When we have united, we have defeated them in the past and we will do so once again. No pasaran!

Taking fight for Truth to the Top

ERICA AND HUGH DUGGAN fighting for truth and justice for their son.

ERICA Duggan, whose son Jeremiah was found dead by the autobahn outside Wiesbaden in Germany after he attended a supposed peace conference in that city, in March 2003, has released a video of herself speaking outside the German embassy, where she had gone to accuse Chancellor Angela Merkel of complicity in a cover-up over Jeremiah's death. 

Earlier in the day on May 28, Mrs.Duggan had given evidence at a pre-inquest review in Barnet, accusing German police of institutional racism in their refusal to investigate fully the circumstances of Jeremiah's death, including the likelihood that he was murdered.

Jeremiah, aged 22, had been studying at the Sorbonne, in Paris. In 2003, worried about the world situation and the build-up to war on Iraq, he bought a copy of the paper Nouvelle Solidarite from a regular seller, and they discussed the imminent US-led assault. Jeremiah agreed to attend an anti-war conference hosted by the Schiller Institute in Germany.

What he probably did not know was that both Nouvelle Solidarite and the Schiller Institute were fronts for the political cult led by Lyndon LaRouche, a one-time American leftist who veered sharply to the Right. After acquiring a name for organising violent attacks on genuine left-wing groups in the States, and serving a prison sentence for fraud, La Rouche seems also to have acquired influential friends and considerable funds.

Former members of the cult allege it used brainwashing techniques. But supporters' loyalty is reinforced by belief that their leader survives in defiance of conspiracies against him, which have at times involved the Queen and Raisa Gorbachev, familiar agencies like the CIA, MI6. and Mossad, and the Tavistock Institute for psychiatry, in London.

At the Wiesbaden conference, Jerry Duggan was reportedly perturbed by speakers blaming the threat of war and nuclear holocaust on the British and the Jews. "But I am a Jew!", he reportedly protested. He was still interested in attending a cadre school scheduled to follow the conference. But before that, something happened to make him 'phone home, and his girlfriend, telling her and his mother that he was "in big trouble" and desperately wanted out.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/2004_48_mon_01.shtml

Within an hour of his terrified call to his mother, Jeremiah Duggan was dead. According to the version of events accepted by the German police, Jerry must have run three miles from where he had been staying, to the outskirts of Wiesbaden, then decided to take his own life by rushing out into the traffic. This was about 6am on March 27, 2003. An investigator hired by the Duggan family discovered the police had not even questioned the drivers of the two vehicles that were supposed to have hit the young man, nor made proper forensic examination of the vehicles or Jeremiah's clothes. He suggests Jerry was beaten up somewhere else, then taken to the autobahn where his body was found.

Rather than be eager for a full investigation, the La Rouchites have claimed Jeremiah was an unstable young man who committed suicide, and accused his mother of being party to a plot against them by the British Foreign Office and Tony Blair.

In fact, Erica Duggan has had little help from any authorities in her search for truth and justice for her son. After his phone call, mentioning Nouvel Solidarite, she called the police, who put her on to Scotland Yard, but they said they had never heard of it.  At an inquest in London in 2003 the court heard that a London Metropolitan Police memo described the LaRouche movement as "a political cult with sinister and dangerous connections." The coroner, Dr. William Dolman, accepted that Jeremiah had received fatal head injuries when he ran into the road and was hit by two cars, but added: "I really must add that he had earlier been in a state of terror. It is a word not commonly used in a Coroner's court but no other word would reflect his state of mind at the time."

Having obtained evidence that put the official explanation in further doubt, Erica Duggan and her family petitioned the Attorney General to let them approach the Higher Court for a second inquest. This was convened in June 2010. The court heard that Jeremiah may have been killed elsewhere, then the road accident staged to conceal this. It was also said that members of the LaRouche organisation might have decided Jeremiah was some kind of spy. The case was adjourned to let the Metropolitan Police make further inquiries. But their investigation does not appear to got very far.

Following the pre-inquest hearing on May 28, a full three day inquest has now been promised at North London Coroner's Court in February. But evidently Erica Duggan is not leaving it at that. By going to the German embassy and accusing Angela Merkel she is not only going for full publicity, but dragging out the whole question of the LaRouche organisation's real relations with the secret state.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY4E8vXKROc#t=10

Racism Today?

Among interesting points emerging from Erica Duggan's statement is that although the place where Jeremiah Duggan's  body was found is some distance from the apartment where he had been staying with a LaRouchite couple in Wiesbaden, it is not so far from the offices of Executive Intelligence Review, the magazine published by the LaRouche organisation.

That brings me to another strange, if as yet tenuous, connection.

It's some time since I stopped bothering with the RT (Russia Today) television channel, partly because the brash novelty had worn off, but also because I got sick of UKIP leader Nigel Farage being introduced as the reasonable voice on events in Britain. Couldn't they persuade anyone else to come on?  This was before Farage became a regular feature on the BBC's Question Time.

In the current issue of Searchlight, the anti-fascist magazine, editor Gerry Gable remarks about some other guests of the RT channel. One is Paul Weston, leader of a UKIP breakaway called Liberty GB, who has also been linked with the anti-Islamic English Defence League(EDL). Another is Manuel Ochsenreiter, editor of Zuerst! , a right-wing German magazine.

  (Shortly after Zuerst! began publication in 2010,  workers for its distributor, Bauer Media, threatened to strike, refusing to handle a pro-Nazi magazine.After more inforation about Zuert! was exposed , Bauer decided to drop the publication).

"To cap it all", says Searchlight, "a leading LaRouchite appeared again, presented as an expert from the Executive Intelligence Review, which is Lyndon LaRouche's weeekly international news briefing".





 

One man freed, though not a people

FIRST, a piece of good news.  Omar Sa'ad, about whom I blogged,  on May 15,(the day, as it happens, on which, in 1948, David Ben Gurion proclaimed the State of Israel) has been freed from having to do military service.

Which for Omar means he will no longer be spending time in jail.

The 18-year-old violist, a member of the Druze minority from the village of Maghar, in Galilee, was sentenced to his first term of imprisonment on December 5, 2013 in the Tiberias induction base. Since then, he was sentenced six more times for a total of 150 days.

Sa’ad first stated his intention to refuse in late 2012, when he sent an open letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu which declared his support for Palestinians under occupation, as well as his opposition to recruitment into the IDF “and any other army for conscience and nationalistic reasons.”

 Unlike Muslim and Christian Arabs with Israeli citizenship, who are exempt from military service,  Druze men are required to serve for three years. (Druze women, are exempt, as are religious Jewish women). Encouraged to see themselves as a separate minority, Druze have been valued as soldiers and provide an important part of the Border Guard, who are a professional unit.

But even ex-officers have still faced discrimination in what the government insists ia a Jewish state.
The 1982 Lebanon war, when the army faced Druze allied to the Palestinians, caused some unease, and so has the continued occupation of the Golan, unilaterally to Israel, though only 10% of its Druze population have opted for Israeli citizenship.

As for those Druze growing up within the Israeli state, whatever its material advantages, they may consider linking their identity to that of the Palestinians or of the 'other Israel' of its embattled peace camp and social justice campaigners.

"Although the Druze are considered to be an ethnic group that has assimilated well in the Israeli community, the voices of refusal have become stronger in recent years, and especially in the wake of Sa’ad’s refusal, " writes Edo Konrad in the online +972 journal.

As he notes,
"Sa’ad’s time in prison was not easy. In early May, he was hospitalized with a liver infection after complaining to his prison guards for three straight days. The guards at Prison 4 allegedly ignored his complaints, thinking he was just pretending or exaggerating. Sa’ad was then transferred to Prison 6, where it was decided to move him to a military medical clinic before a doctor finally decided that he must be transferred the emergency room. Sa’ad eventually recovered.


Upon his release from prison, Sa’ad released a statement thanking his supporters and reiterating his stance against military service:

  " I was sentenced 7 times for a period of 150 days, and 46 days ago between home and hospital, and every time before sending me out to prison, they ask me the same question: “Why you refuse to serve in the IDF?

    My answer was always the same: “I refuse because I am an integral part of the Palestinian Arab people. Refuse because your army is an army of occupation. Refuse because I am the owner of principle and conscience. I make peace with my musical instrument and I refuse to replace it with a weapon that generates death, and does not differentiate between a child , a woman, a man and an old man. So how can you ask me to kill, occupy and arrest my people? my weapon is my musical instrument and will not be replaced by any another weapon.

http://972mag.com/druze-conscientious-objector-omar-saad-released-from-idf-service/92283/ And now some bad news, which you;ve already heard, an interesting sidelight, and some not so bad news which you might not get to hear.

Following the disappearance of three teenage Israeli boys in the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces have carried out massive raids on Palestinian homes, making wide arrests of adults and children, and generally behaving as though not only Hamas, but the entire Palestinian population, must have kidnapped the boys.

The youth's unknown fate has raised not unnatural concern, and a hubbub reaching from Israeli prime minister 'Bibi' Netanyahu through to internet chat groups and the most backward beigel shop customer, even comment from British Prime Minister David Cameron, who has not, as far as I know expressed any similar concern over Palestinian youngsters incarcerated by the Israelis.

We don't know what these young Israelis were doing in the West Bank, where settler youth have sometimes gone on the rampage attacking Palestinians and property, but since nothing has been alleged, and no organisation has asserted responsibility, we must assume they are innocent, and hope for their safety.

The interesting sidelight comes from an Israeli officer, who told a religious paper that much of their current operation was planned before the boy's disappearence, and had nothing to do with it. He said this included deploying snipers around Jenin, and hoping local people would be provoked into coming on to the streets, with youths throwing stones, so they could be gunned down by the military.
http://972mag.com/west-bank-operation-was-planned-ahead-of-time/92295/ 

And now the one piece of additional good news I promised. It comes in the shape of an e-mail .
this morning from friends in Gush Shalom, the Peace Bloc, in Tel Aviv.  This is the English version of the message that has gone out in Hebrew and Arabic, and is also on Facebook, I see.

Say no to collective punishment!
Free all political prisoners!
Acts of oppression in no way help bring back the abducted boys!
Demonstrate Saturday, 21.6, 20:30, in front of the Kiria (Ministry of Defence), Kaplan Street, Tel Aviv.

The army, under government instructions, is embarking on hundreds of arrests and detentions, nightly raids on homes, closure of entire regions, arrests of journalists and Palestinian Parliamentarians, the collective punishment of the residents of Hebron, Nablus, Bethlehem, Jenin and many other locations, the detention of children and minors, threats of cutting off electricity and phone networks, and further acts of oppression. The true aim of all that is NOT to locate the abducted boys.

We hope with all our hearts that the boys will be found and safely returned to their homes. In practice, though, Netanyahu and his government are cynically using them as a pretext for an all-out offensive. The government  states openly and bluntly that they shall continue with the same tactics, regardless of the current search.

For the Government of
Israel, this is merely an excuse to crack down on Hamas, and break up the Palestinian Unity agreement.

The military budgets were about to be cut - now it's quite obvious that they are going to be increased yet again.

We shall gather, to call for an end to the daily violence and killing. Enough with the abuse and collective punishment of a civil population, living under military occupation!

Saturday, 21.6, 20:30, in front of the Kiria (Ministry of Defense), in Tel Aviv (Kaplan Street).

The demonstration is initiated by grassroots activists, involved in various organizations. We call upon all groups and movements to join in and endorse this initiative. Every day that goes by, is one day of silence too many!

Contact:
Vardit Goldner
+972-(
0)54-7374350
goldner.vardit@gmail.com

Iraq: Against the Oppressive Stooge Regime and the imported forces of Barbarism!

On recent events in Mosul and Other cities in Iraq  

Mosul and other cities in Iraq are experiencing dramatic, dangerous, and fateful changes.
The media, especially that which is allied with the Iraqi government and western states, has been focusing on the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant/Syria (ISIS) and its control over several Iraqi cities, provoking its audiences against the militant group. Indeed, ISIS terrorist groupings do exist among armed groups there and its influence in the recent events is clear.

However, it is also true that Iraqis generally reject ISIS, whether in the central or southern regions of Iraq or in parts of the country that are no longer under government control: the so-called "Sunni" areas or the "Sunni Triangle," a term that intelligence services, particularly the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), devised as part of a plan to engineer sectarianism in Iraq.

At the same time, Iraqis generally reject Maliki's regime and its policies, built as they are on an ethno-sectarian basis. This is especially the case in urban areas where sectarian discrimination is most concentrated, wherein the government treats ordinary people as political enemies.

The fall of several Iraqi cities in the hands of armed groups does not represent the dreams of the people who live there. Their demands to be rid of sectarianism are clear and direct. They expressed them through nonviolent sit-ins, but armed terrorist groups took advantage of this environment to take power. The people's demands against discrimination and sectarianism are just and fair, whereas Maliki's policies are reactionary and discriminatory, and are therefore rejected. In the meantime, ISIS' control of cities and people poses a serious threat to everyday life and to society.

Popular demands have morphed into a tool for reactionary forces to divide up the political pie, from the terrorists of al-Qa’ida, the Baath Party, and tribal leaders to the Shi'a religious leadership that has called for open warfare and the Kurdish nationalist forces that have achieved military and political gains. This all comes at a moment when Iraq has clearly become divided according to the wills of dominant political forces, whereas the will of the Iraqi people remains ignored.

Regional forces that benefit from Iraq's disintegration—especially Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey—operate in their own way to achieve political gains. All the while the US government—the prime cause of these problems to begin with—prepares to intervene however it chooses. President Obama has so far expressed his concern over Iraqi oil twice when talking about recent events. He has not shown any regard or concern for the fate of two million people now under the control of ISIS, or for the women who have started committing suicide in Mosul as a result of ISIS gangs.

The working class in Iraq is the common force that exists across the county, from the north of Kurdistan to the furthest points south. It is this force whose very existence and survival depends on the eradication of discrimination and the unification of the Iraqi people. This is the only force that can end fragmentation and division.

We reject US intervention and protest President Obama's inappropriate speech in which he expressed concern over oil and not over people. We also stand firmly against the brazen meddling of Iran.
We stand against the intervention of Gulf regimes and their funding of armed groups, especially Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

We reject Nouri al-Maliki's sectarian and reactionary policies.

We also reject armed terrorist gangs and militias' control of Mosul and other cities. We agree with and support the demands of people in these cities against discrimination and sectarianism.

Finally, we reject the interference of the religious institution and its call for indiscriminate warfare.
We aim to stand with those who represent the interests of the people and to empower them in the face of this dangerous and reactionary attack. We call for a clear international position to curb the deteriorating situation as well as regional interference, and to support the people of Iraq.

Falah Alwan
Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions in Iraq
13 June 2014

Remembering Kevin Gately

IT was forty years ago, on June 15, 1974, that Warwick University student Kevin Gately was killed in the 'battle' of Red Lion Square.  He was a few days short of his 21st. birthday. No one has ever been found responsible for the killing.

That day the fascists of the National Front were marching to a meeting in Conway Hall, traditionally a venue for left-wing and progressive meetings. Just how the hall's owners, the humanist South Place Ethical Society, had been persuaded to let their premises to a bunch of racists, I don't know.
 
A crowd assembled to demonstrate against the National Front. Among the organisations taking part in this protest were Liberation (the former Movement for Colonial Freedom), the Communist Party, the International Socialists (who later became the Socialist Workers' Party), and the International Marxist Group (IMG), then a growing influence among students.

Kevin Gately, a second year maths student, was not a member of any of these organisations. But he was opposed to racism and fascism, and was persuaded to go on this, his first, demonstration, particularly when he heard his girl friend was going.

Besides the fascists and their left-wing opponents, another element was out in force that day, and probably better prepared, and equipped, to determine the outcome.  This was of course, the Metropolitan Police, including the elite Special Patrol Group, formed to deal with "serious public disorder".

.At some point there was disagreement among the organisers as to whether to chance a serious confrontation with the police. This was not Cable Street in 1936, when a working class population aware of what fascism was doing in Europe, and sick of Mosley's Blackshirts' activities in the east End, turned out to say "they shall not pass".  The students might adopt the same slogan, but did they really know what they were getting into?

By the end of the afternoon the debate might have seemed irrelevant. Groups of demonstrators were not only attacked by police, but found their retreat blocked by more police. A section of the anti-fascist demonstrators apparently led by the IMG had managed to get into Red Lion Square, hoping to deny the National Front access to Conway Hall, but were subjected to repeated charges by police. The Warwick students, some of whom were IMG members, were caught up in this. Among them, standing out by his height (6 foot) and red hair, could be seen Kevin Gately.  

Photos show Kevin moving through the crowd, apparently trying to get away from the crush of bodies at the front being shoved back and forth against the police cordon. Later, the Warwick students got away from the square and were returning to their bus when they noticed they were without Kevin. The clashes in Red Lion Square had only lasted a quarter of an hour, but after them a St.John ambulance crew found the Warwick student lying on the ground.

A student who went to University College Hospital was shown Kevin Gately's body and asked to identify him. A pathologist later confirmed that Kevin had died from a blood hemorrhage as a result of a blow to the head.  Some say his height above the crowd, and red hair, made him a target for police batons.  The Warwick student on his first demonstration was the first person in over half a century to be killed on a demonstration in Britain.

Five years later, on April 23, 1979, it was the turn of New Zealand born teacher Blair Peach, killed by a blow to the head in Southall. Eye witnesses said he had been attacked by members of the Special Patrol Group. Thirty years later, after much campaigning, the Metropolitan Police issued a report acknowledging its men had killed Blair Peach.


A painting in honour of Kevin Gately hangs in the student's union at Warwick. But though there was a demonstration over his death in the immediate aftermath, neither he nor the circumstances of his death have received much attention over the years.

An item in the current issue of the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight, part of an editorial by Gerry Gable, says "Like we still remember Blair Peach, so should we recall the unresolved death of young Kevin".

"Some claim it was from a lethal akido blow, a martial arts technique favoured by many riot squad officers", observes Gable, going on to regret that "Nobody appears to have pursued the idea that the blow may have been struck by one of the agents provocateur who were seen seen assaulting people on what was supposed to be their own side and pushing people under the hooves of the police horses."

Maybe the idea has not been pursued because these suggestions have not been aired before, or perhaps because applying Occam's Razor, if a simpler explanation appears to hand, namely that Kevin was killed by a blow from an unidentified police officer, there is no need to chase after more complicated explanations. These might be put out by a police source keen to confuse and divert any investigation of their direct role. It would not be the only time they used such tactics.

On the other hand, if Gerry Gable or anyone else has evidence that provocateurs were at work in or around Red Lion Square that day, this should be looked at, not as any kind of excuse for the police, but on the contrary, to fully expose the methods used by the state and what the game was.

Gerry mentions the inquiry conducted by Lord Scarman, which "failed to establish the circumstances of Kevin Gately's death".  But this was not the focus of Scarman's inquiry, which was to "review the events and actions which led to disorder in Red Lion Square, London, on 15 June, and to consider whether any lessons may be learned for the better maintenance of public order when demonstrations take place".  

The IMG held its own internal inquiry into the events in which its members had been involved that day. The late Bob Pennington and Gery Lawless took part in the proceedings, and IMG members who had been at Red Lion Square gave evidence. I don't know whether any of this was published, or whether any of the IMG's successor organisations (Socialist Resistance,Socialist Action, etc) have had anything to say on the matter.
 
Sadly, the anniversary of Kevin Gately's death seems to have passed without much in the way of commemoration, or comment.

For additional reading:
http://hatfulofhistory.wordpress.com/2013/06/15/red-lion-square-and-the-death-of-kevin-gately/

The Strange "Anti-Fascists" rallying to Donetsk

UNDER strange banners, with strange comrades in arms. Donetsk "People's Governor" is member of Russian National Unity, above.

A young friend in London has been excited to post a picture on Facebook of some Italians whom he says are going off to fight fascism in Ukraine. He naturally admires their bravery, and wonders if he could emulate it. In the discussion people evoke romantic memories of those from many countries who went to fight fascism in Spain.

Aside from the fact that the International Brigade fought on the side of the Spanish Republic against General Franco's right-wing Nationalists, whereas Ukraine has more than one right-wing nationalist side, and these Italians were rallying to the side of the Russians in Donetsk, my immediate thought was that it was a pity they felt they had to travel so far to fight against fascism, when Italy itself has some nasty violent fascists to be fought against.

My next was to feel sorry for these young militants. If they thought they were going to join genuine anti-fascists, democrats and comrades on the Left, they would find themselves under peculiar flags and with some strange comrades in arms.   We already know the antisemitic and anti-Roma Hungarian fascist party Jobbik supports the nationalist Russians, and besides the Polish group Falanja it seems the British National Party sympathises.

There have been genuine fears of Russian-speakers in the Ukraine, with bitter memories of World War II, seeing the rise of right-wing Ukrainian nationalists and fascists in Kiev. There is not unreasonable concern as to what the EU's promise of prosperity might really mean for the mining and steel industries of the Don Basin, with their Russian links, and for the public good. People have seen what was done to Greece.

The flames which murdered more than 40 people taking refuge in Odessa's house of trade unions, besieged by Ukrainian nationalists, on May 2, while police stood aside, must also have destroyed many people's hope for compromise, or faith in the protection they could expect from the 'moderate' Ukrainian state. 

But the thuggish Russian chauvinist Vladimir Zhirinovsky has been one of several  right-wing politicians out to exploit the conflict in Ukraine from the start.  The well-armed separatist militias look more like trained professionals than ordinary people defending their rights, and reportedly include mercenaries fetched from afar as well as Russian regulars unsure why they are there but having their orders. As for the supposed 'anti-fascists' who have sprung to prominence in Donetsk,
Western observers have found them at least as easy to point out as any fascists in Kiev.

Pavel Gubarev, the self-styled "people's governor" of Donetsk, was a member of the ultranationalist group Russian National Unity, whose symbol bears a disturbing resemblance to a swastika. 

The far-right paramilitary organization was founded in 1990 by nationalist leader Aleksandr Barkashov, and its members have been implicated in violent crimes against ethnic minorities and in the 2009 killings of human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova.

Aleksandr Borodai, a Russian citizen who is the "prime minister" of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, was an editor and remains a contributor to the far-right -- and often anti-Semitic -- newspaper "Zavtra," founded by ultranationalist Aleksandr Prokhanov in the 1990s. The newspaper's website now serves as a recruiting platform for mercenaries fighting in eastern Ukraine.

Prokhanov, a fringe figure in the 1990s, has enjoyed a resurgence with the Ukrainian crisis, with his articles appearing regularly in the mass-circulation pro-Kremlin daily "Izvestia.'

The Donetsk People's Republic's self-styled "defense minister," Igor Girkin, aka "Strelkov," is also a contributor to "Zavtra"  Girkin, who Ukrainian authorities claim is an agent with the Russian Defense Ministry's Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), also reportedly served as a mercenary in conflicts in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Transdniester, and Chechnya.

http://www.rferl.org/content/gangsters-and-fascists-and-separatists----oh-my/25411895.html 

I first came across the Russian journal Zavtra when researching the career of Israel Shamir, the Russian-born Israeli "dissident" who appears to have doubled as an antisemite called Joran Jermas in Sweden, but was also employed by the BBC Russian service before writing for Zavtra.  The British Holocaust revisionist David Irving says he turned down an offer of World War II documents from Shamir, acting for some Russian group, because he suspected they had been stolen. But Shamir has boasted former National Front leader Martin Webster as a friend.

Prokhanov of the Zavtra journal was responsible for inviting American white supremacist David Duke, a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, to visit Russia. There's a lovely bunch of friends and comrades in this game.

But then this might not come as much surprise to the Italian "anti-fascist" group Millenium, which is rallying to the cause of Donetsk. Because it seems they are not genuine anti-fascists themselves, even if they had some wishful thinking leftists elsewhere fooled.
http://anton-shekhovtsov.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/italian-fascists-from-millennium-ally.html

Ireland's Second Holocaust

"NEXT to British imperialism, the Church has been the biggest enemy of the Irish people," declared a staunch Republican I knew, to the surprise of some naive young sympathisers at a meeting in the North West of England.

That was back in the early 1970s, and not long after Bloody Sunday in Derry, when British paras shot dead 26 people, seven of them teenagers, and five shot in the back.

Although I'd heard a little about the Church's history of opposing the Irish freedom struggle, the labour movement, and even quite modest attempts at social reform, I doubt if even the speaker ever dreamt of the grim meaning that would fill out his words, by revelations in the past week.  

It was reported  that almost 800 babies and children were buried in a mass grave near a home for unmarried mothers run by nuns. Historian Catherine Corless, who made the discovery, says her study of death records for the St Mary's home in Tuam, in County Galway, suggests that a former septic tank near the home was a mass grave.

Seeing headlines about babies buried in a septic tank at once brought to my mind the sensational propaganda sometimes used by anti-abortion campaigners. A bit ironic, that. For these were not aborted foetuses, but live infants, who might have played and run about, and grown into fine adults. It seems what I've often suspected was true, that those institutions and characters who proclaim they are for protection of "the Unborn Child" have not got a very good record of taking care of the poor children with the misfortune to be born.

It was as far back as 1975 that two young boys playing near the home at Tuam broke open a concrete slab, and uncovered the old septic tank filled with hundreds of small skeletons . A priest said prayers at the site and it was resealed. Local people thought the bones must have dated from the Great Famine of the 1840s.

Then hundreds of thousands of Irish people died from starvation, while their landlords continued exporting food. Some people now argue that the suffering and deaths of the Famine, which those who could escaped by emigration, were not just the result of a natural calamity - the failure of the potato crop which provided the peasant's staple diet - but of the ruthlessness of their rulers. That this was Ireland's Holocaust.

If so, has the horror uncovered at Tuam not been a second Holocaust?  

What was revealed this week is that the bodies in the septic tank are not those of 1840s Famine victims, but  of  hundreds of children who died in the care of Bon Secours nuns between 1925 and 1961.  St Mary's was one of several such 'mother and baby' homes to which thousands of unmarried pregnant women -- labelled at the time as 'fallen women' -- were sent to have their babies.

In a society where not only abortion but contraception were illegal, these women were ostracised and often treated worse than criminals, as in the now notorious Magdalen Laundries,in which s many as 30,000 women were incarcerated and used as forced labour . Mothers were often forced to hand over their children for adoption.

Health issues and problems associated with the homes have long been documented. As far back as 1944, a government inspection report of the Tuam home described some of the children as "fragile, pot-bellied and emaciated." Reports also described overcrowding and mental illness among the mothers.



It is alleged that children who could not be sold for adoption were deliberately starved. Disabled children were left in "dying rooms".

The recently discovered death records for St Mary's show the 796 children died from malnutrition and infectious diseases, such as measles and TB. These children were denied baptism by the Church, and therefore could not be buried in consecrated lands.

 "There was just one child who was buried in a family plot in the graveyard in Tuam. That's how I am certain there are 796 children in the mass grave," says historian Catherine Corless.

Geoff Knuper, a forensic scientist interviewed on RTE’s "Morning Ireland" program, said that if the remains are exhumed, it may be possible to determine the causes and dates of death. “Obviously it all depends on the state of preservation,” he explained. “After all this time of course, soft tissue will no longer be available but the harder tissue, skeletal structures, should have survived. In addition to providing opportunities for DNA identification, the skeletal structures could show evidence of physical violence, of disease, even malnutrition.”

Bon Secours


The Order of the Bon Secours Nuns, which ran the Tuam home from 1925 – 1961, said that they no longer hold any of the records from the home. In 1961 the Home was closed. All records were returned to the local authority, and would now be within the Health Service Executive, Co Galway,” read a statement issued on Thursday.

The home at Tuam has long been demolished, and local people tend graves in the grounds. But the
Bon Secours sisters, who began providing healthcare in Ireland in the 19th century, ran 10 similar homes across Ireland, and three of these are believed to contain plots with remains of 3,200 babies and infants. Bon Secours is now Ireland's largest private healthcare provider.


Martin Sixmith, the author of 'The Lost Child of Philomena Lee', says the mass grave at Tuam is ""not unique". . His book tells the true story of a woman incarcerated in a home, and forced to give up her three year old son. 

Other homes included Bessborough in Co. Cork, Sean Ross in Tipperary (where Philomena Lee had her son), and Castlepollard in Westmeath – all run by the Sisters of the Sacred Heart. The mortality rates at these homes were far higher than the national average, the Irish Examiner recently reported, ranging from 30% - 50% between 1930 and 1945.

There were Protestant mother and baby homes too, such as the Bethany Home in Dublin, where a similar scandal took place. Between 1922 and 1949, close to 220 children died and were buried in an unmarked grave at Dublin’s Mount Jerome Cemetery. They were memorialized in 2010.
The bodies in the septic tank sensation has encouraged publication of other reports, like this from Claire O'Sullivan:, in the Irish Examiner: 

Women who gave birth at the notorious Bessborough mother-and-baby home in Cork were not allowed pain relief during labour or stitches after birth, and when they developed abscesses from breast-feeding they were denied penicillin.

One nun who ran the labour ward in 1951 also forbid any “moaning or screaming” during childbirth. Girls in poverty, who could not afford to make donations to the Sacred Heart order, had to spend another three years after their babies were born cleaning and working on the lands around the Cork city home to ‘make amends’ for their pregnancy.

Such work often included cutting the home’s “immaculate lawns” on their hands and knees — with a pair of scissors.

Before they left the home, their three-year-olds, with whom they would have established a strong emotional bond, were removed from them and fostered, put up for adoption, or sent to an orphanage — often with only hours’ notice.

These revelations were all made by June Goulding, a midwife who worked at the mother and baby home for a year from 1951, in her book The Light in the Window. “I could not imagine why the babies were not placed in care immediately after the birth to avoid trauma on both sides” Ms Goulding wrote.

In the memoir, published in 1998, she recounts how, at her first Bessborough birth, she asked someone at the hospital what painkillers were used in labour. “Nobody gets any here, nurse, They just have to suffer,” she was told.

Just like in the Magdalene laundries, none of the women were allowed to talk to one another or to nurses at the home. They were also expected to wet-nurse other women’s babies.

When Ms Goulding asked why she could not access needles to stitch women who had been torn during childbirth, she was told she was not allowed to open the cabinet. “I’m afraid, nurse, the key to that cabinet has never been handed over. Girls must suffer their pain and put up with the pain of being torn — she [the nun] says they should atone for their sin.”

Goulding described the home in Blackrock, Cork City, as “a secret penitential jail”. She had grown up less than three miles from the home but had been blithely unaware of how approximate 320 pregnant women and new mothers were treated by the nuns.

Early in her time there she saw a young girl with a suppurating abscess trying to breastfeed a tiny infant. “The fact that she would have needed three hands to successfully complete this task was a minor obstacle compared to the obvious agony on her face....I had never before seen such an abscess that had actually created such an enormous wound." 

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/midwifersquos-memoir-reveals-the-horror-of-bessborough-271158.html

Medical Experiments

The mass graves and reports of malnutrition are not the only reminder of more notorious camps where crimes were committed. The Irish Daily Mail, which broke the Tuam story, has published a report that says old medical records show  2,051 children and babies in Irish care homes were given a one-shot diphtheria vaccine for international drugs giant Burroughs Wellcome between 1930 and 1936.

The report adds that no evidence exists that consent was ever sought. Historian Michael Dwyer who unearthed the documentations says that no records of how many may have died or suffered debilitating side-effects as a result are in existence.

Dwyer, a lecturer at Cork University’s School of History, told the Irish Daily Mail that he found the child vaccination data by trawling through tens of thousands of medical journal articles and archive files. He said the trials were carried out before the vaccine was made available for commercial use in the UK.

Homes where children were secretly tested included Bessborough, in Co. Cork and Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea, Co. Tipperary, both of which are at the centre of the mass baby graves scandal.The paper names other institutions where children may also have been vaccinated including Cork orphanages St Joseph’s Industrial School for Boys, run by the Presentation Brothers, and St Finbarr’s Industrial School for Girls, run by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd.

Dublin trials may have involved children from St Vincent’s Industrial School, Goldenbridge, St Joseph’s School for Deaf Boys, Cabra, and St Saviours’s Dominican Orphanage.

Dwyer warned: “What I have found is just the tip of a very large and submerged iceberg. The fact that no record of these trials can be found in the files relating to the Department of Local Government and Public Health, the Municipal Health Reports relating to Cork and Dublin, or the Wellcome Archives in London, suggests that vaccine trials would not have been acceptable to government, municipal authorities, or the general public.

“However, the fact that reports of these trials were published in the most prestigious medical journals suggests that this type of human experimentation was largely accepted by medical practitioners and facilitated by authorities in charge of children’s residential

A  spokesman for GSK -formerly Wellcome – told the Irish Daily Mail: “The activities that have been described to us date back over 70 years and, if true, are clearly very distressing.

“We would need further details to investigate what actually took place, but the practices outlined certainly don’t reflect how modern clinical trials are carried out. We conduct our trials to the same high scientific and ethical standards, no matter where in the world they are run.”

Church and State

The mass grave of 796 children at Tuam, is likely not the only one of its kind in Ireland, Prime Minister Enda Kenny has said. And Children's Minister Charlie Flanagan acknowledged that the government had not been entirely ignorant of the dire conditions at the Tuam home, where children suffered from malnutrition and other serious ailments.

“I understand that this has been known about since 1972 and clearly the Dáil [parliament] records themselves show references to inspections under the system that operated at health level way back in the 1930s – so it is an issue that we need to deal with,” he said.

The exposure of the Church's role in  this mass cruelty is also an exposure of the state, and of those politicians who found it expedient to give the Church such an important place in society. Many Irish people still remember how one man who dared to differ, Dr.Noel Browne, who did much to reduce tubercolosis in Ireland, was denounced as a "communist", and hounded from office in 1951, because he introduced a 'Mother and Child' Act providing for some public healthcare.


Ireland's Declaration of Independence pledged it to "cherish all its children equally".  Leaving that to the Church and accepting a bound on social responsibility did more than any geographical border to make a travesty of the republic.


http://www.canberratimes.com.au/world/bodies-of-800-children-longdead-found-in-septic-tank-at-former-irish-home-for-unwed-mothers-20140604-zrwtz.html

http://www.thejournal.ie/readme/mass-grave-galway-tuam-1494001-May2014/

The General Who Said No

ALTHOUGH Chinese authorities were determined to prevent open commemorations this week, with a police presence on Beijing's Tiananmen Square, and reported jamming of social media, they could not prevent people in China or abroad from remembering what has come to be known variously as the "Incident of June 4" or the "Tianenmen Square massacre".

It was 25 years ago on June 4, 1989. that the Chinese People's Liberation Army opened fire on the people and crushed the democracy movement in China, enabling the ruling Stalinist bureaucracy to proceed along its path of capitalist development, with all its contradictions - except a critical press and political opposition, and of course, without free trade unions. 

Opinions differ as to just what happened, with the Chinese leadership naturally reluctant to allow free discussion or awaken new generations to awareness of their history. Even in the West though some reporters gave graphic descriptions of the soldiers firing into a crowd, others say the "Tienanmen Square massacre" description is inaccurate, because most of the killing was off the square, and indeed the repression took place in many Chinese cities. There are those - it seems George Galloway MP is one - who say there was no massacre, that it was all exagerrated, if not invented by Western media.

Certainly the figures given for the number of deaths have varied widely, and we might note that the fighting was not all one way. Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times wrote on 21 June that "it seems plausible that about fifty soldiers and policemen were killed, along with 400 to 800 civilians." Then-U.S. ambassador James Lilley said that based on visits to hospitals around Beijing, a minimum of several hundred had been killed. In a 1990 article Time magazine asserted that the Chinese Red Cross had given a figure of 2,600 deaths on the morning of 4 June, though later this figure was retracted.  A declassified NSA (US intelligence) cable filed on the same day estimated 180-500 deaths up to the morning of June 4. Amnesty International's estimates puts the number of deaths at several hundred to close to 1,000. Presumably the Chinese government could if it wished allow a commission of inquiry to settle the matter.

On June 19, Beijing Party Secretary Li Ximing reported to the Politburo that the government's confirmed death toll was 241, including 218 civilians (of which 36 were students), 10 PLA soldiers and 13 People's Armed Police, along with 7,000 wounded. (Wikipedia)


Coming from a city where we still commemorate the massacre of a dozen civilian demonstrators in August 1819, I think it reasonable that even the lowest estimate of what happened in China in 1989 should qualify as a massacre. Notwithstanding China's bigger population, we are talking about human beings here, not percentages.

The Chinese bureaucracy denounced the movement on the streets as a "counter-revolutionary riot", and it would naturally suit the capitalist media and politicians here and in America to describe what was happening as a rising against "communism", but was it?



According to a writer quoted by Wikipedia, "... the party's nominally socialist ideology faced a legitimacy crisis as it gradually adopted capitalist practices.  Private enterprise gave rise to profiteers who took advantage of lax regulations, and who often flaunted their wealth in front of the 'have-nots' of society. Popular discontent was brewing over unfair wealth distribution. Greed, not skill, appeared to be the most crucial factor of success. There was widespread public disillusionment over the country's future. People wanted change, yet the power to define 'the correct path' continued to rest solely in the hands of the government."



Against this background the students and workers called for social equality, a "Communist Party Without Corruption", freedom of speech and of the press, socialism and democracy. This hardly amounts to a demand for capitalist restoration.

In Shanghai and elsewhere university academics and Communist Party branches supported the student protests at the start of the movement. And in parts of Beijing workers and local residents came out to the aid of the students against the army. In some places they also rescued individual soldiers who had been surrounded by a mob.

In the military itself not everyone was happy with the order from politicians to crush the protests.  A report in the New York Times says newly available documents confirm the discontent voiced by one of the army's senior commanders when they were called to a meeting with the leadership to prepare the crackdown on demonstrators.

In a stunning rebuke to his superiors, Maj. Gen. Xu Qinxian, leader of the mighty 38th Group Army, said the protests were a political problem and should be settled through negotiations, not force, according to new accounts of his actions from researchers who interviewed him.

“I’d rather be beheaded than be a criminal in the eyes of history,” he told Yang Jisheng, a historian.

Although General Xu was soon arrested, his defiance sent shudders through the party establishment, fueling speculation of a military revolt and heightening the leadership’s belief that the student-led protests were nothing less than a mortal threat to the Communist Party.

Contrary to rumors at the time, the documents show that army units did not fight one another. But they show that General Xu’s stand against the threatened use of lethal force fanned leaders’ fears that the military could be dragged into the political schisms and prompted party elders to mobilize a huge number of troops.

.

At the time, Deng Xiaoping, the party patriarch who presided over the crackdown, praised the military for its unflinching loyalty, and the image of a ruthlessly obedient army lingers even in some foreign accounts. But the military speeches and reports composed before June 4 that year, and in the months after, show soldiers troubled by misgivings, confusion, rumors and regrets about the task assigned to them.

“The situation was fluid and confusing, and we underestimated the brutality of the struggle,” Capt. Yang De’an, an officer with the People’s Armed Police, a paramilitary force, wrote in one assessment found among military documents acquired by the Princeton University Library. “It was hard to distinguish foes from friends, and the target to be attacked was unclear.”

Some former soldiers and officials who agreed to talk about their roles in the crisis said they were alarmed by the state-enforced censorship and silencing of witnesses that have left a younger generation largely ignorant about one of the most devastating episodes in modern Chinese history.

“I personally didn’t do anything wrong,” said Li Xiaoming, who in 1989 was among the troops who set off toward Tiananmen Square, “but I feel that as a member, a participant, this was a shame on the Chinese military.”


The interviews and documents show that even at the time, few in the military wanted to take direct responsibility for the decision to fire on civilians. Even as troops pressed into Beijing, they were given vague, confusing instructions about what to do, and some commanders sought reassurances that they would not be required to shoot.

In an interview, a former party researcher with military ties confirmed the existence of a petition, signed by seven senior commanders, that called on the leadership to withdraw the troops.

“The people’s military belongs to the people, and cannot oppose the people,” stated the petition, according to the former researcher, Zhang Gang, who was then trying to broker compromise between the protesters and the government. “Even less can it kill the people.”

There were fewer episodes of outright military defiance, like that of General Xu. No dissident, he had written a letter in blood during the Korean War begging to join the army as an underage youth, according to Mr. Yang, the historian who was among the few people to interview him after 1989. The elite 38th Group Army, which General Xu commanded from a base about 90 miles south of Beijing, was a bulwark protecting the capital.

Having witnessed the student protests during an earlier visit to Beijing, where he was receiving treatment for kidney stones, he feared the consequences of quelling them with troops trained to fight foreign invaders. Sending armed soldiers onto the streets, he warned, would risk indiscriminate bloodshed and stain the reputation of the People’s Liberation Army.

“If there was a conflict with ordinary civilians, and you couldn’t tell the good guys from the bad guys, who would shoulder responsibility for problems?” he later said, according to Dai Qing, a Beijing writer who had access to separate interview notes with the general.

In the end, General Xu agreed to pass the orders to his officers, but not to lead armed troops into the capital. He was arrested, expelled from the party, and served four years in prison, Mr. Yang said.

Copies of the petition spread around Beijing that May, but its origins and authenticity were unclear, diminishing its impact. But Mr. Zhang, who had contacts with senior military officers, now says that he wrote down the statement and names during a phone call from Colonel Wang and then passed it on to friends who made copies.

In interviews, several of those who took part in back-channel efforts to defuse the crisis described how Colonel Wang held a secret meeting with Wang Juntao and Zhou Duo, two liberal intellectuals who were trying to avert a military assault, even as they chided protesters for disorganization and naïveté. Both men recalled a long night in Mr. Zhou’s home when they peppered Colonel Wang with questions about attitudes in the army. He played down the risk of mass bloodshed, both men recalled.

“He said, ‘If the Communist Party fires on and kills ordinary people, then wouldn’t the Communist Party be committing suicide?’ ” Mr. Zhou, who lives in Beijing, said in a phone interview. He said they “absolutely never imagined it would turn out as brutally as it did.”

While the government and loyal commanders tried to fill the soldiers with propaganda about facing foreign-backed counter-revolutionaries, where they had any prolonged contact with the demonstrators they got a different message:

"For three days, as the weary, marooned soldiers clutched their rifles in the wilting sun, he recalled how residents and students brought them food and escorted them to toilets, all the while bombarding them with the message that theirs was a just cause. “Even in the restroom, there was no reprieve,” Mr. Chen said in an interview. “If one student would go hoarse yelling, another would take his place.”


Even as the troops imbibed the propaganda, the notion that they might have to shoot the demonstrators appeared remote, recalled Mr. Li, who was then 25 and a radar operator in the 39th Group Army. “Our unit was educated that we mustn’t fire the first shot at students, and if we fired the first shot at the public, we’d be responsible to history,” he said in an interview from Australia.


“They’re baffled why so many members of the public have taken part in the demonstrations,” Gen. Yang Baibing, whose older brother was a confidant of Mr. Deng’s, told military officers on May 31, according to a compilation of party and military speeches at Princeton. “Some comrades have all kinds of views and doubts about stopping the turmoil.”

The messages of restraint were jettisoned on June 3, when the troops received orders to retake the square by early the next day “at any cost,” former soldiers said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/03/world/asia/tiananmen-square-25-years-later-details-emerge-of-armys-chaos.html?_r=1


http://www.smh.com.au/world/how-top-generals-refused-to-march-on-tiananmen-square-20100603-x7f0.html

Class Struggle in Cambodia

http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/rmjEMwafjbs/Garment+Workers+Join+Protesters+Cambodia

AT the beginning of this year I was invited to join a demonstration outside the Cambodian embassy in London, part of an international day of solidarity with Cambodian workers. We heard that about two dozen workers were being held in prison after riot police attacked a demonstration by garment workers who had gone on strike in December.

It is good to be able to report that the Cambodian government has released the imprisoned trade unionists. But the struggle for decent pay and conditions, and workers' rights, continues in Cambodia, and since many of the garments produced cheaply there are sold here in countries like Britain, it is only right we concern ourselves with how the workers are treated.   

Here is a report by Ly Pisey, published a few days ago in Red Flag, the newspaper of the Australian group Socialist Alternative:

Workers are living in fear after a bloody crackdown and imprisonment of labour activists – the repressive response from the Cambodian government to a garment workers’ protest in January that demanded a US$160 monthly wage. Police fired on the strikers, killing at least four, and then arresting 25.*

It is almost impossible for social and political activists to gather in public spaces, including Freedom Park in Phnom Penh, a public venue where civil society should be able to express its problems and seek solutions.

Currently, this park is surrounded with barbed wire, and people have no access to it. Some people call it “Prison Park”. The government also bans gatherings of more than 10 people in public venues, claiming that this is to maintain public order and security.

We then ask, “Where can Cambodian civil society, including garment workers, meet and continue speaking about our issues until our demands are met?” Although there are restrictions on our ability to advocate our human and labour rights, we still find ways because we learned that silence allows the powerful to continue their exploitation and oppression.

We could not do much during International Labour Day, 1 May, this year because of the restrictions on protests. Therefore, workers came together with the assistance of the Workers Information Centre. We had a creative event that continues the living wage campaign and highlights the key players in the garment industry that are responsible for our conditions.

A fashion show was held on 25 May at the office of the United Sisterhood Alliance under the theme “Beautiful clothes, ugly reality”. This was an attractive, critical and political event that workers could conduct in a safer manner despite the current intimidating situation. This is a way to help break fear. All we want is rice, not bullets. Our objectives with the show were:

1. To highlight the income gap between Cambodian textile and garment workers and the CEOs of selected brand companies, including H&M, Adidas/Reebok, Levi, Marks & Spencer, Joe Fresh, Puma, Gap/Old Navy, Champion. They make billions of profits each year. We want to hold them accountable for the current wage campaign deadlock.

2. To express the views of garment workers toward the oppression and violence they have faced and to call for a just resolution between the government, the Garment Manufacturers Association and unions.

3. To call on the government to end all forms of violence and immediately to end the ban on public gatherings.

In addition, we want to restore the hopes of our workers and be united and strengthened, pursuing our struggle for decent working and living conditions, a fair wage for fair work and equitable treatment in our workplaces and society.

Workers from the textile industry continue to contribute so much to Cambodia’s economic growth and to the tremendous profits of the employers and brand corporations. For example, garment and textile exports to the US and EU accounted for 11.3 percent – $2.3 billion – of GDP last year.

The offer of $100 per month minimum wage remains a starvation wage, which we could not accept while we have to spend about $150 per month on living costs such as rented rooms, food, utilities, transport, health care and supporting our families. Speaking for the principle of egalitarian and equitable treatment, we want to highlight that we could not accept the current divided society and capitalist greed.

Why can the children of the prime minister go to higher education and the children of CEOs live privileged lives and have access to adequate health care, while we are living in desperately poor conditions and exploited as a workforce? We do not demand more than is possible but just to live in dignity.

* Editorial note: The 25 workers were tried and convicted on 30 May. However, in a sign that the government is feeling the pressure of support for workers’ rights, their sentences were suspended and they are now free.

http://redflag.org.au/article/struggle-cambodian-garment-workers

January 10, Demonstration outside Cambodian embassy in  solidarity with garment workers