RandomPottins

Duty of Care? They Don't Care.

2012-01-31T13:31:00.000-08:00

SOME of the questions and discussion at the asbestos seminar I attended in Bart's hospital last year were above my head. These were seasoned campaigners and health service professionals as well as victims and relatives of victims attending the London Hazards Centre's event, on July 1.

But you didn't need to be an expert to be moved by Eileen Beadle's account of how she and her husband's plans for holidays, and looking forward to a happy active retirement, were shattered when he was taken to hospital, and died aged 54 from a painful asbestos-related condition. This had inspired her to seek out others affected, and form the East London Mesothelioma Society.

All you needed was to be a human being, unlike the two Tory pratts who had to be told to behave themselves at a mesothelioma event in the Commons in September.
('Tory 'schoolboys' disrupt asbestosis committee hearing'- Paddy McGuffin, Morning Star, September 16, 2011)

But what came as a shock to me, naievely thinking of asbestos as a problem in the building industry or factories working with the material, was when Carol Hagerdorn, the following speaker, introduced herself as a mesothelioma sufferer, and said she had been exposed to asbestos as a school teacher. As she pointed out asbestos had been used in many older schools and what were meant to be temporary classrooms, and could easily be exposed when children naturally engaged in boisterous behaviour. In one case she saw, lads bored waiting to use a pool table had poked holes in a false ceiling with their cues, unaware of what material lay above it!

Carol Hagerdorn said there needed to be a survey of schools so that authorities could take steps to remove asbestos wherever it was found.

Again, in my naievity, I had assumed that had already been done as soon as the dangers of
asbestos had been recognised, and that schools of all places would have been prioritised for its removal. We had the asbestos removers in at the block of flats where I live last year, and I know it is a tricky business, with what are like tunnels erected so it can be removed without contaminating the surroundings, and placed in a sealed skip for disposal. But if it can be done in a residential block then schools which are closed at the weekend and in evenings should be easier. They are meant to be safe places, to which parents can entrust their kids, assuming a duty of care from the authorities.

Sorry to go on about the obvious, but here's what the Independent reported this week:

The Government has deliberately excluded asbestos from an unprecedented review of the condition of the country's schools because it knows that tackling the risks to schoolchildren and teachers could cost hundreds of millions, critics claim.

Campaigners reacted with fury last night as it emerged a year-long survey of England's 23,000 schools will examine every aspect of buildings – from classroom decoration to whether fire alarms and toilets are in working order – but will specifically exclude asbestos, the most serious threat of all to staff and pupils.

An internal Department for Education email, seen by The Independent on Sunday, makes it clear that pressure to include asbestos in the assessment of the state of schools, which begins in April and will be used to inform future funding, had to be resisted due to "cost implications and the fact that asbestos management should already be carried out under existing legal requirements". The memo, dated September 2011, suggests that the survey programme "might well be able to provide some prompts and checks on that wider process, however".

The costs – and risks – of removing asbestos mean that authorities have to strike a delicate balance in managing it, and current policy is against removal for its own sake.

Critics claim the Government's attitude to the deadly disease is highlighted by comments that Nick Gibb, the Schools minister, is said to have made to asbestos campaigners three years ago. Referring to the potential costs of dealing with asbestos, at a meeting in the Commons, he is alleged to have remarked: "You are telling me that I will have to cripple the education budget to save the lives of a few thousand middle-aged people."

Mr Gibb, an opposition MP at the time of the 2009 meeting, denied the claims yesterday: "It is totally absurd to suggest that I said these things. It is not my view and has never been my view – my view is that the health and welfare of pupils and staff is absolutely paramount and should never be jeopardised."

The scale of the challenge is vast. Most of Britain's schools contain asbestos – more than 75 per cent, according to government estimates. Britain imported hundreds of thousands of tons of asbestos in the last century, when it was routinely used in construction for its fire-retardant and insulating properties. Although it was banned in 1999, a deadly legacy remains. Exposure to tiny amounts of the fibres can result in a number of diseases, some of which – like mesothelioma, a form of cancer – are fatal. Others, such as asbestosis, which permanently scars the lungs and makes it hard to breathe, have a severe impact on health.

Not everyone exposed to asbestos becomes ill, but it can take several decades for symptoms to appear.

There has been a 15-fold rise in mesothelioma deaths in Britain since 1967, with more than 2,300 in 2009 (men accounted for 83 per cent). The annual death toll from asbestos-related diseases in Britain alone is expected to be at least 5,000 by 2015.

More than 228 teachers have died of mesothelioma since 1980, according to the campaign group Asbestos in Schools, who, citing US government research, believe a further nine children will die for every teacher dying from the disease, resulting in more than 2,000 deaths of children in adulthood.

The Government admits that no national picture of asbestos in schools or the costs of dealing with it exists. It says responsibility lies with local authorities and schools. Strict controls have been in force for decades and government policy is for schools to manage asbestos – for instance, by sealing it with silicone – rather than remove it. But banging doors or bumping into walls can be enough to disturb it, and earlier this month the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) warned that school staff "should be instructed not to disturb or damage asbestos-containing materials, for example, by pinning work to walls".

The Government argues a national audit is unnecessary as the problem is dealt with locally. Despite this, it spent £4.5m on an audit of asbestos in Northern Ireland schools in 2003/04. The following year, £3.8m was allocated to pay for its removal in "top priority" cases. England has 19 times as many schools, meaning a similar exercise would cost at least £153m.

In a statement, the Department for Education said asbestos was excluded from the upcoming property surveys because any assessment could not "substitute for local asbestos surveys already required by the Control of Asbestos Regulations".

But education unions argue this policy is not matched in practice. Chris Keates, head of the NASUWT, the largest teachers' union, accused ministers of "reckless buck-passing", adding: "Local authorities have been stripped of the resources ... needed to carry out these responsibilities. While the Government behaves like Pontius Pilate, washing its hands of responsibility, the health of children and the workforce is being put at risk."

Echoing concerns over shrinking budgets, Russell Hobby, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: "Local authorities really haven't got the resources to take the lead on this, and schools haven't got the skills, and that only leaves central government to sort it out."

A spokesperson for the Department for Education said: "The HSE is ... clear that if asbestos is not disturbed or damaged, it is safer to leave it in situ, with robust processes in place to contain and monitor it. We are working hard with the HSE to make sure asbestos is managed properly in schools, and will not hesitate to take tough action where there is danger to the welfare of pupils and staff."

But Mary Bousted, of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, warned that asbestos is "poorly managed in many schools", while Christine Blower, head of the National Union of Teachers, accused successive governments of "dragging their feet". She said pupils and teachers across the country "are daily put at risk of developing asbestos-related diseases as a result of inaction from politicians".

Schools do not have to tell people if they have asbestos, or routinely report the condition it is in. Nor do they have to remove asbestos during refurbishment, according to the HSE. Inspections of 164 schools outside local authority control, including private schools, church schools and academies, in 2010/11, found one in seven to be "below acceptable standards". And of 42 local authorities in England investigated by the HSE in 2009, a quarter received formal warnings.

The paper also quoted a few individual cases:

Susan Langthorp, 58

"I wanted to be a vet or a doctor when I was a little girl. I never thought years later I would be dying from a disease caused by going to school. I was numb when I was told in 2009 I was suffering from an asbestos-related disease. To my knowledge, I have never breathed in any dust or anything like that. I had heard of school buildings containing asbestos and found out it was in the schools I went to. I feel angry ... I fear I won't see my children married or my grandchildren. It's criminal to have asbestos in a public place where there are young children."

Sarah Bowman, 43

Ms Bowman, from London, was diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2009. She claims she was exposed to asbestos at school. Brent Council admits that William Gladstone School, since demolished, contained asbestos, but claims any connection is "highly unlikely".

"I was 41 when I was diagnosed, You can't tell someone they are going to die at 41. I'd never even heard of mesothelioma. I had heard of asbestos and knew it was no good for you, but I didn't know it killed you. When I was diagnosed my world blew apart, I felt very alone, very scared. They know there was asbestos in the school I went to. I'll take this as far as I can. I remember one time when a kid threw a chair and it stuck in the wall and we all laughed – but now I know it's enough to disturb the asbestos, just like putting drawing pins into the wall.

"I think the Government should be more honest about the risks. They should manage it correctly and label it so that everybody knows about it.

"Asbestos is 'safe if it is managed correctly', but how can it be? Kids slam doors, that's what kids do, and that's enough to disturb asbestos."

Carole Hagedorn, 61

Ms Hagedorn lives in Chelmsford, Essex. After decades of teaching, she was forced to retire early when diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2008.

"All of the schools that I've worked in have been of a certain age and have all had asbestos. I've had no other career so I am convinced I was exposed at schools. The worst thing about it is the shock because you don't expect to get an industrial disease from working in a school; your life changes shape, becoming a round of treatments and operations.

"The Government has played down the risks over the years. The bottom line is that it is very expensive to remove asbestos, but there has to be a phased plan of removal; working out which are the worst schools and dealing with those first. There needs to be some kind of commitment from the Government.

"I feel like I'm collateral damage, and I will not be the last – there will be more. Far too many schools are failing to manage their asbestos and are putting the lives of staff and children at risk."

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/asbestos-new-blow-to-victims-of-a-shameful-legacy-6296347.html

http://www.lhc.org.uk/http:/www.lhc.org.uk/asbestos-in-schools-new-blow

http://www.lhc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/London-Hazards-102.pdf

http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2011/12/06/mesothelioma-victims-take-fight-for-compensation-to-the-supreme-court-92534-29900776/

Like I say, I had always associated asbestos issues with the building industry. Maybe that is because building workers I know have been among those campaigning on the issue, and coupled with the high number of serious and often fatal accidents on sites, it is one of the things motivating the Construction Safety Campaign (CSC).

CSC has been to the fore in organising a march each year in London on International Workers' Memorial Day, April 28. Maybe this year it would not be a bad idea for teaching union members and come to that school students and parents to join the march?

No Minister!

Meanwhile Tory Education Secretary Michael Gove, the man who considered it his business to send Bibles to schools, with his own introduction, and is busy removing vocational subjects from school exam league tables while proclaiming that schools should be "free", has taken a dim view of parents who, promised their say, have said things he does not like.

"When Mr Gove was asked about a campaign against turning Downhills Primary School in north London into an academy, he accused the protesters of being linked to the Socialist Workers Party - and described them as the "enemies of promise". "It's a pity that the Labour party hasn't spoken out against this Trot campaign," ...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-16809400

Oh dear! Just can't the lower orders under control these days!

Let's give Mr.Gove a real dose of the "Trots" and get him and his government running.

Release Bahraini Teachers' Leader!

2012-01-26T14:09:00.000-08:00

MAHDI 'ISSA MAHDI ABU DHEEB

TRADE UNIONISTS and supporters of political freedom are being urged to join an urgent online protest to get Mahdi 'Issa Mahdi Abu Dheeb, the President of the Bahraini Teachers Association (BTA), released from jail.

Friends say Mahdi's health is rapidly deteriorating and the authorities have refused him access to medical treatment. He was unjustly jailed for ten years for legitimately leading his union during the nation-wide protests of March 2011.

The Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) has called for the release of all political prisoners like Mahdi - a recommendation the authorities continue to ignore. The BICI report also describes detention and torture methods that have been inflicted on Mahdi and other detainees by the authorities. His retrial is on 19 February.

According to Amnesty International, Mahdi and Jalila al-Salman (the BTA's Vice President) appear to have been targeted solely for their leadership of the BTA and for peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly.

The Bahraini authorities have cracked down on teachers and trade unionists through arbitrary arrests, military prosecution, investigation, suspensions, dismissals, salary cuts and torture. While some workers have been reinstated in response to the global outcry, the situation remains dire for most. None of the 55 trade union leaders - including six national leaders - have been reinstated.

The Education International (EI) which unites teachers' unions in many countries is calling on the Bahraini authorities to immediately release on bail Mahdi 'Issa Mahdi Abu Dheeb, President of the Bahraini Teachers Association (BTA), given his deteriorating health condition.

The EI says: "The appeal of Jalila al-Salman and Mahdi 'Issa Mahdi Abu Dheeb, Vice-President and President of the BTA, held on 11 December, was adjourned by the Supreme Court of Appeal to 19 February, consequently prolonging the detention of Mahdi. Jalila, who is currently freed on bail, reported to EI that there are serious fears regarding the condition of the BTA President's health which is reported to be deteriorating day by day since he was transferred to Jaw Prison in October.

"Officials continue to deny him the medical help he urgently needs. The request of the BTA lawyers to release Mahdi on bail, given the state of his health, was rejected by the court. The report of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) describes detention and torture methods that have been inflicted on Mahdi and other detainees by the authorities. The BTA lawyers asked the court to include the BICI report as evidence in the case. They also requested for the so-called „
"confessions" obtained from both activists under torture to be dropped.

"Jalila and Mahdi are appealing the decision of the military National Safety Court that, in September, sentenced them to respectively three and ten years imprisonment, for unwarranted accusations, including inciting others to commit crimes, calling for hatred and overthrow of the ruling system, leaving work on purpose and encouraging others to do so and taking part in illegal gathering. Their strong involvement in the peaceful protests of March 2011 led to a crackdown where teachers and trade unionists became subjected to arbitrary arrests, military prosecution, investigation, suspensions, dismissals, salary cuts and torture.

"EI also condemns the dissolution and the arbitrary procedures against the BTA which are in clear violation of the free exercise of human and trade union rights in Bahrain, and violate Bahrain's own labour laws as well as Bahrain's obligations as a member state of the International Labour Organisation".

Please sign the labourstart action calling for his release.

For more information see:

Amnesty International (21 December 2011), Health fears for Bahraini teacher

Education International (9 December 2011) Bahrain: Drop all charges against teachers, unionists and student

Briefing document (300 words) issued 27 Jan 2012

Costs of the Newt's Crusade

2012-01-26T07:59:00.000-08:00

ALTHOUGH US Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich is thankfully still a long way from the White House, let alone the war that he would like to wage, some Americans may already be counting the cost - for themselves - of getting caught up in the Newt's Crusade.

New York City police commissioner Raymond W. Kelly issued an apology through a top aide, on Tuesday. regretting that he cooperated with the makers of “The Third Jihad”, a film which purports to expose a Muslim conspiracy to “infiltrate and dominate America.”

Although not officially adopted by the police department, the film was shown on continuous loop in a room where police officers were filling out paper work or were on break from training, for an extended period in 2010, Kelly acknowledged in a statement. More than 1,400 officers may have seen it. It was stopped after an officer complained.

The anti-Muslim film shown to police officers was first reported a year ago in the Village Voice. But it has become a topical and controversial issue because it is being linked to those financing Newt Gingrich's campaign, and because Ray Kelly, who appears in the film,been interviewed for the film has not made a good job of dissassociating himself from it.

In fact Kelly denied at first having been interviewed for the film, claiming that clips of him had ben culled from elsewhere. That was on Monday, after the New York Times ran the story. But on Tuesday, after the film makers said they had met the police commissioner, Kelly's spokesman Paul Browne revised that earlier statement, saying he was approached in 2007 by Erik Werth, a reporter and former policy adviser under President Bill Clinton, to interview Kelly about “foiled terrorist plots and the current threat matrix” for a video Werth was making for cable TV"

Also on Tuesday, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a longtime Kelly ally, said that in showing the film, “Somebody exercised some terrible judgment. Bloomberg, who has been under fire for some of his associates and appointees, may be under pressure to dump Kelly.

The New York Police Department was already facing criticism from Muslim and civil liberties groups over a CIA-advised program that involved "mapping" the city's Muslim enclaves, and some reports say 'The Third Jihad', which depicts even moderate Muslims as taking part in a centuries-old plan for world domination, was shown to thousands of officers as a training video.

The New York Times' report connects The Third Jihad, and its shadowy sponsor, The Clarion Fund, to the 2012 election:

The 72-minute film was financed by the Clarion Fund, a nonprofit group whose board includes a former Central Intelligence Agency official and a deputy defense secretary for President Ronald Reagan. Its previous documentary attacking Muslims' "war on the West" attracted support from the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, a major supporter of Israel who has helped reshape the Republican presidential primary by pouring millions of dollars into a so-called super PAC that backs Newt Gingrich.

The United States, though opposing Palestinian recognition in the UN, is still officially committed under President Obama to the so-called Two State solution meaning that a Palestinian state would be set up alongside Israel. But Gingrich has come out as a champion of the extreme Zionists' belligerent line that Palestinians are just an "invented" nation. The suspicion is that those who start by denying a people's existence move on to trying to wipe them out physically.

Gingrich isn't the only candidate with links to the Clarion Fund. One of Mitt Romney's Middle East advisers, Walid Phares, was a political adviser to the right-wing Christian Lebanese Forces which carried out atrocities during Lebanon's long civil war, before going on to be an "anti-terrorism" expert in the United States, and he remains on Clarion's adisory board.

The former Massachussetts governor has made an effort to quietly acknowledge those who believe American Muslims are quietly working to replace the Constitution with Taliban-style Islamic law (and force all of us to eat halal turkeys at Thanksgiving) by picking one of their more scholarly cohorts as an adviser on the Middle East, according to Mother Jones magazine's Washington DC correspondent Adam Serwer.

Neverthess, Gingrich's links with the Islamophobes and far Right Zionists seem strongest, and underwritten with financial backing. A report by Gal Beckerman in the Jewish daily Forward
says:

"It is safe to say that without multi-billionaire Sheldon Adelson’s help the chances of Newt Gingrich becoming the Republican nominee for president would be zero — and consequently the race itself, going into Florida at the moment, would not be the competitive, drag-out fight it has become. Adelson, the hotel and casino magnate, has kept Gingrich alive, first through an infusion of $5 million into a super PAC, which allowed the former speaker to defend himself against attacks by Mitt Romney and led to Gingrich’s thumping victory in South Carolina. And now we know that Adelson’s wife, Miriam, has committed another $5 million to the cause of Newt.

"One of Adelson’s passions — and a reason for his desire to play such a big role in American politics — is undoubtedly Israel. And his positions are unambiguously right-wing and hawkish to the extreme. When it comes to the Palestinians, there is no one to be trusted. The New Yorker quotes him as calling Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister widely respected in the West, as being one of the “terrorists” running the Palestinian Authoriy. Even AIPAC was not far enough to the right for him. After being a diehard supporter — funding a new building in Washington, D.C. — he split with the group in 2007 when it decided to support a congressional initiative, backed by the Israelis, to increase economic aid to the Palestinians. “I don’t continue to support organizations that help friends committing suicide just because they want to jump,” he said at the time by way of explanation. He had the same reaction when Ehud Olmert, whom Adelson had once befriended, came to the conclusion that he had to pursue negotiations with the Palestinian leadership.

"In short, Adelson does not believe in the two-state solution. As he told The Jewish Week last year, 'The two-state solution is a stepping stone for the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people.'

"What does it mean to have someone with these views have such an outsized influence on a candidate and the race he is in? Well, for Gingrich it seems this has translated into him tripping over himself to prove his pro-Israel bona fides, to the point where he was willing to say, this past December in an interview with the Jewish Channel, that the Palestinians were an “invented” people who “had the chance to go many places.’’ No Palestinians, no need to negotiate a state. And Adelson clearly showed his satisfaction with Gingrich’s line. As he told a group of Birthright participants at a Hanukkah party a few weeks later, 'Read the history of those who call themselves Palestinians, and you will hear why Gingrich said recently that the Palestinians are an invented people'.

"As Wayne Barrett recently reported in The Daily Beast, there has been a marked turn in Gingrich’s positions on Israel since his political life began depending on Adelson. Not that long ago, in a 2005 Middle East Quarterly article, Gingrich urged the “Palestinian diaspora” to invest in “their ancestral lands,” and even proposed that Congress “establish a program of economic aid for the Palestinians to match the aid the U.S. government provides Israel.”

"You will not hear anything like this from Gingrich again any time soon.

"But the greater concern is that because of his influence on Gingrich, Adelson has turned the Republican contest into a competition of extreme rhetoric, in which there is no room for compromise or diplomacy, and the only answer to any international problem is unmitigated toughness. No one wants to be outflanked by the right when it comes to foreign policy (no one, I should say, besides Ron Paul) and so Gingrich’s apparent parroting of Adelson’s hardline attitudes about Israel — and, I should add, Iran — means that the whole tone of the race is affected."

Like George Dubya before him, the Newt seems eager to afford other Americans the opportunity to participate in war, without having himself experienced it. Though raised partly by a stepfather who was in the military, Gingrich went to France, obtained deferment as a student, did not enlist and was not drafted during the Vietnam war. "Given everything I believe in, a large part of me thinks I should have gone over," he declared in 1985.

Still that dues not prevent him advocating war now, whether in the Middle East or elsewhere. In a recent debate in Florida, Gingrich advocated a war with Cuba to deal with the problem of Fidel Castro. Romney, keeping up with the spirit of the game, asserts that he would not be negotiating with the Taliban. When asked by Brian Williams, “Governor, how do you end the war in Afghanistan without talking to the Taliban?” Romney simply said, “By beating them.”

Rick Santorum, a former lawyer putting himself as the "True Conservative" said recently that he would demand the Iranians open up their nuclear facilities, “or we will degrade those facilities through air strikes — and make it very public that we are doing that.” This is one of the implicit options in Obama's repeated threat that “all options are on the table.” But for Santorum there seems to be no other option. Like the Islamophobes training for war at home, Santorum too has pointed to a domestic enemy, denouncing left-wing academics whom he alleges are "indoctrinating students".

Romney says that “if you elect Mitt Romney, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon,” and calls for regime change as well as “covert and overt” actions. Gingrich says he would “break the Iranian regime” within a year by “cutting off the gasoline supply to Iran and then, frankly, sabotaging the only refinery they have.”

Talk is cheap, though in America it is also very expensive. Were any of these gentlemen to gain office ordinary Americans, as well as people in other countries, could find themselves paying a much higher price than officials careers or the millions that have gone into the candidates' coffers. Hopefully anough Americans will sober up to see the danger when the war hysteria primaries are over.

Destroying homes and, like thieves in the night, bulldozing peace chances

2012-01-24T13:23:00.000-08:00

NIGHT OPERATION . Israeli troops ready for action...

Their target a family's home.

Jeff Halper, secretary of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, sent this message out to friends last night:
"Its 11 at night here on a cold, rainy night in Palestine. I just got a phone call from Salim Shawamreh, a Palestinian comrade, that Israeli army bulldozers have arrived at his home and have begun demolishing it and the home of his neighbor as well. Salim's home, which has been demolished already four times because the Israeli authorities refuse to grant Palestinian building permits, is one of 26,000 homes that Israel has demolished in the Occupied Territories since 1967. I'm rushing out there, but it will probably be destroyed before I get there. There isn't much to do -- you feel so powerless in these circumstances -- but at least you now know. I'll stay in touch with you. The American-European supported Occupation goes on..... "

For some reason Jeff's message was delayed in getting through. As was the media in covering what was going on. Western media usually is. And it was dark. But the bulldozers lost no time in getting to work.

By the morning, Jeff reports, eight homes had been reduced to rubble, and about 80 people were homeless. Like Arabiyeh sitting on her furniture out in the cold.

It was only the fifth time the home had been demolished.

"As its name suggests, Beit Arabiya is a home belonging to Arabiya Shawamreh, her husband Salim and their seven children, a Palestinian family whose home has been demolished four times by the Israeli authorities and rebuilt each time by ICAHD's Palestinian, Israeli and international peace activists, before being demolished again last night.

"At around 11p.m. Monday, a bulldozer accompanied by a contingent of heavily armed Israeli soldiers appeared on the Anata hills, to promptly demolish Beit Arabiya, along with residential and agricultural structures in the nearby Arab al-Jahalin Bedouin compound. 3 family homes were demolished along with numerous animal pans, and 20 people including young children were displaced, left exposed to the harsh desert environment. While standing in solidarity with Palestinians, ICAHD staff and activists were repeatedly threatened by Israeli soldieries. ICAHD Co-Director Itay Epshtain was beaten and sustained minor injuries.

"Beit Arabiya was issued a demolition order by Israeli authorities back in 1994, following their failure to grant a building permit. It has since been demolished four times, to be rebuilt by ICAHD activists. Following a reissue of the demolition order last Thursday, came last night's fifth demolition. ICAHD Director, Dr. Jeff Halper, standing astride the ruins, vowed to support Salim and Arabiya in rebuilding their home. "We shall rebuild, we must rebuild forthwith, as an act of political defiance of the occupation and protracted oppression of Palestinians" said Halper."

http://www.icahd.org/?p=8107

Reports by European Union officers and heads of missions in Jerusalem and Ramallah have criticised house demolitions and said the Israeli government is forcibly driving Palestinians from areas under Israeli control. in other words, "ethnic cleansing".

Warning that this would endanger chances of a "two state solution" the EU's latest report promises support to the Palestinians trying to keep their ground in the West Bank.

http://www.icahd.org/?p=8028

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/eu-report-israel-policy-in-west-bank-endangers-two-state-solution-1.406945

Whether this good intention will become real support remains to be seen. Interestingly, the British government, though it has abstained on Palestine's UNESCO membership, recently tried to arrange a meeting between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and UK Jewish leaders during his visit to London. It was rebuffed by the Board of Deputies, the main Jewish community body, on instructions from the Israeli government. Some members of the Board who only heard about this after the opportunity had been rejected may be asking what is the use of a "representative" body that takes orders from Netanyahu.

The head of the Jewish National Fund in Britain rejected calls from Jewish peace groups that it should stop funding development schemes in the Negev that involve evictions of Bedouin.

One group of people who don't seem to let small matters like the demolition of family homes or he arrest of Palestinian students for boycotting a lecture by Israeli president Peres bother them are the leading lights of the Labour Party students in Britain. No reality tours with the ICAHD for them, nor volunteering spells with the International Solidarity Movement. They enjoyed an all expenses paid trip to Israel and its illegal settlements in the West Bank, covered by the pro-Zionist Union of Jewish Students (UJS), itself subsidised, which as they admit "set the agenda".

Apparently the highlights included a meeting with Tony Blair, and Israeli officers, but all their rigorous "fact-finding" left students like Ruth Brewer from Liverpool Uni with time to tweet home about cocktails in Tel Aviv and what fine fellows the Israelis were.

Palestinian students have complained, but it's us who on past performance are likely to meet these bright young things in future making their careers as Labour candidates or even union officers. Still, things are changing and their prospects might not be the same now.

http://electronicintifada.net/content/uk-labour-party-student-officials-face-backlash-over-free-tour-israel-settlements/10819

More information about ICAHD and its support group in the UK.

http://www.icahd.org/

http://uk.icahd.org/icahdukdev/eng/

Bosses get off -for now. But workers get ready for another round by celebrating ground they have gained.

2012-01-21T11:33:00.001-08:00

FUNNY, does not look like the face of defeat! Raising a glass with supporters yesterday, Dave Smith (centre) says fight will go on. Next stop Strasbourg?
(photo by Frances McGinlay)

LONDON building worker Dave Smith was celebrating with friends and supporters yesterday afternoon, even while the tribunal which had heard his case against major building and civil engineering contractor Carillion was still deliberating in chambers.

Dave, a qualified engineer who was denied employment for years under the blacklist, had little illusion about the likely outcome. He and his dedicated lawyers had presented evidence showing how information about him - some of it false - was secretly circulated among building firms to effectively punish him and his family for his legitimate union activity and concerns about safety, by making sure he could not get work.

Carillion was unable to deny what it did. The company won, because it argued, and the tribunal evidently accepted, that it could not have infringed Dave Smith's rights, because he was - like a large proportion of Britain's workforce today - employed via an agency, and had no rights.

That is apparently the state of affairs under British law as it stands. It might not be the case under higher, international laws on human rights to which Britain is supposed to adhere.

As Dave Smith remarked on Facebook, "it's not a battle, it's a war". He is considering going to the human rights court in Strasbourg, and meanwhile a bigger case involving 100 workers is looming in Britain. Dave's parting shot, for now, in the Blacklist Support Group, on Facebook:
"Let's put it like this: I bet Carillion didn't have a celebration party".

Here is a press release from the Blacklist Support Group:

Agency workers have no legal protection against blacklisting by multi-national firms according to a shock decision in the Central London Employment Tribunal today. The court found that Dave Smith (an engineer) had been blacklisted by the respondents Carillion (JM) Limited and Schal International Limited (a wholly owned subsidiary of Carillion) because he raised concerns about asbestos on building sites and because of his trade union activities.

The firms actually admitted that their managers had supplied the malicious information to Mr. Smith's blacklist file in a signed statement to the court.

David Renton (pro-bono barrister for Mr.Smith) argued that the blacklist was a major breach of the Human Rights Act and therefore the law should be interpreted in such a way as to protect all "workers" including agency workers. However the court found that because Mr. Smith was employed through an employment agency, UK employment law does not protect him (or millions of other agency workers), so on that point alone the multi-national constrcution firms won on this legal technicality.

Mr. Smith said outside the court:

"The blacklisting conspiracy is a deliberate breach of human rights by big business. Human Rights are supposed to apply to everyone but Carillion and their subsidiaries have got away with systematic abuse of power simply because I was an agency worker. If the British justice system does not protect workers rights, then we will be taking our case direct to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg"

A secret blacklist file collated by the Consulting Association was presented as evidence and contained Mr. Smith's photograph, address, National Insurance number, work history, car registration, union credentials, information about his family and pages of information about times when Mr. Smith had raised concerns about poor toilet facilities or asbestos on building sites. This information was secretly supplied to the blacklist by managers from major building companies. The blacklist file was covertly shared amongst the 44 largest construction firms in the UK and resulted in periods of unemployment.

Despite the result, the evidence that came out in court about including invoices and hundreds of blacklist files is almost certain to become a key element in a larger "class action" style claim being brought to the High Court by 100 blacklisted workers in the next few months with representation by Hugh Tomlinson QC (the barrister representing celebrity clients in the News of the World phone hacking cases).

There is more to this case still. The evidence which has come up shows that spies attended union meetings and gathered information about people outside work.

Dave Clancy said in the hearing under oath:

"There is information on the Consulting Association files that I believe could only be supplied by the police or the security services"
He also told the court that the Consulting Association held information on elected politicians, journalists, lawyers and academics.

Dave Clancy is the Head of the Investigations Team at the Information Commissioners Office, the man who led the raid on the Consulting Association premises and discovered the blacklist. He is an ex-police officer.

Labour MP John McDonnell said after hearing these revelations:

“I am calling upon the Government to launch a public inquiry into the full extent and impact on people’s lives of blacklisting. These revelations are truly shocking and warrant a detailed and open, public investigation."

Mr. Smith was represented by: David Renton (barrister) and Declan Owens (solicitor) on a pro-bono basis via the Free Representation Unit

More reports:
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=27291

http://blogs.mirror.co.uk/investigations/2011/08/ten-years-of-pain-for-blacklis.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/jan/17/multinational-admits-engineer-blacklisted-uion

report on earlier hearing:

http://www.hazards.org/blacklistblog/2011/09/01/judge-backs-worker-against-blacklisting-carillion/

Blacklist case could break new ground

2012-01-19T13:33:00.000-08:00

WORKERS fighting the employers' blacklisting of those who stand up for their rights will know by the end of Friday afternoon whether or not they have won a historic case against a major construction company.

Carillion plc boasts of employing around 50,000 people, and having annual revenue of around £5bn, with operations across Britain and in Europe, Canada, the Middle East, North Africa and Caribbean.

Dave Smith is a skilled engineer who found himself blacklisted and unable to get work for which he was qualified, after he had raised concerns about asbestos and poor toilet facilities when he was a safety representative for the building trade union UCATT.

Dave was fired from a Schal site after presenting a petition from 150 workers complaining about “pigsty” toilets. One manager filmed Dave as workers protested against his dismissal from the Schal job in 1999. Schal and Mowlem are both part of Carillion now.

This week the Holborn employment tribunal has been hearing from Dave and his legal representatives, about how he and his family were affected by the blacklist, and from Carillon defending its part. When I managed to look in on Wednesday the room was packed, with a number of workers having come to support Dave Smith and follow the case. Dave's lawyer David Renton was attempting to elicit from Carrillion management an acknowledgement of responsibility for agency staff employed on their sites.

Two years ago the Information Commissioners Office(ICO) which is concerned with data protection ordered a raid on the Midlands offices of the Consulting Association(CA), a business established by a former officer of the notorious right-wing Economic League, whose anti-union, witch-hunting and intelligence gathering activities went back to 1919.

What they uncovered was a collection of confidential files on workers, to which companies could provide information, and which could then be circulated to those who subscribed, ennabling them to maintain a blacklist. This is particularly effective in the construction industry, where workers have to apply for work as it arises, but can find that a black mark against their name for whatever reason can affect them from way back. (By contrast, workers affected in later life by health problems such as caused by exposure to asbestos may have difficulty tracing past employers such as sub-contractors who are no longer in business, in order to pursue compensation claims).

In July 2009, Ian Kerr, the private investigator who ran the CA, was fined £5,000 under the Data Protection Act. But in the previous five years firms which subscribed had paid £500,000 to the CA for its services.

Evidence disclosed by the ICO investigation showed that senior managers from Carillion and two subsidiary companies, John Mowlem and Schal, gave information to the illegal CA operation which could be used in the blacklist.This information was circulated among the 44 largest contractors in the UK building industry. They used it to deny people like Dave work in the industry. An estimated 3,200 workers were effected by the blacklist, and doubtless many still are.

Dave Smith was the first person allowed to view the entire CA blacklist, without restrictions. He found that his own file, including information on his wife and friends, was 36 pages long. Dave is accusing Carillion of victimisation, and says he and his family were made to suffer as a result of his perfectly legitimate activity as a trade union representative concerned over health and safety. For over ten years he could not get work in construction or earn a decent wage.

As Dave says, “I was a qualified engineer during one of the longest building booms this country has ever known. My children were on milk tokens.”

In his closing submission today, David Renton said:. "This case is about companies telling lies about a worker. Lies that caused that worker detriment. Even now the companies are still not prepared to fully come clean about what they have done"

Besides being able to cite over a hundred files that show the extent of the blacklisting of which his was one case, Dave Smith could be breaking new ground for workers' rights under law. He argues that the blacklist breached Article 8 (right to privacy) and Article 11 (right to association) of the European Convention of Human Rights.

Under current UK law, only direct “employees” are entitled to legal protection at work. But the possible human rights breaches call for the Employment Tribunal to interpret legislation in such a way to cover all workers. A victory for Dave would set a precedent.establishing rights for for Britain’s 1.6 million agency workers, who are currently deprived of employment law rights.i
"If we win - we're told it will be a landmark decision for agency workers and blacklisting
If we lose - we're off to the European Court of Human Rights, " Dave promised yesterday.

There is more to this case still. The evidence which has come up shows that spies attended meetings and gathered information about people outside work.

Another Dave, Dave Clancy said in the hearing under oath:

"There is information on the Consulting Asociation files that I believe could only be supplied by the police or the security services"

He also told the court that the Consulting Association held files on elected politicians, journalists, lawyers and academics.

Dave Clancy is the Investigations Manager at the Information Commissioners Office, the man who led the raid on the Consulting Association and discovered the blacklist. He is an ex-police officer.

Labour MP John McDonnell said after hearing these revelations: “I am calling upon the Government to launch a public inquiry into the full extent and impact on people’s lives of blacklisting. These revelations are truly shocking and warrant a detailed and open, public investigation."

With thanks to Simon Basketter (Socialist Worker ) and John Millington(Morning Star) for their coverage of case.

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=27223
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/114294

IF CARLSBERG MADE PROFITS......Baltic trouble brewing

2012-01-19T04:49:00.001-08:00

THE well-known Carlsberg beer ads alomg the "If Carlsberg made ...(e.g. cars)" theme, suggesting that whatever the Danish brewery turned its mind to would excel, were amusing. Its lager isn't bad either, I've got a few cans waiting in my fridge right now. But as Carlsberg has gone global in pursuit of greater profit, its reputation as an employer is going a bit off.

Carlsberg is attacking trade union rights in Lithuania with the support of the country's legal system, which has declared beer production an "essential service". Since they were not only freed from the Soviet Union but brought into the European Union, the Baltic states seem to have become a laboratory for undermining workers rights, so we best sit up and pay attention.

Here is a report from the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel and Allied Workers(IUF):

On June 10 last year members of the IUF-affilitated Lithuanian Trade Union of Food Producers (LPMS) voted in favour of strike action at the Carlsberg brewery in Lithuania in support of their demand for a decent company-level collective agreement.

Management sought to stop the strike and applied to the court with a petition to declare the strike ballot procedure invalid and the strike illegal, and demanded compensation for litigation costs. The company not only tried to stop the strike and declare it illegal but also argued that no strike action was possible until the "high season" had passed.

The Klaipeda district court on June 20 suspended the start of the planned strike for 30 days based on a dubious determination that the production of beer was recognized as 'vitally essential' in Lithuania.

On the July 5, 2011 the Klaipeda city district court ruled that the strike was legal. Carlsberg Lithuania management appealed this decision. On August 5, 2011 the Klaipeda regional court annulled the decision of the lower court, ruling that the brewery strike announced in June was illegal.

The court decision to rule the strike illegal is based on the following astonishing grounds: "The collective agreement is in compliance with the Labour Code because the wages of Carlsberg employees are above the market level, jobs are maintained and wages are not reduced." With this absurd ruling, the court is attempting to legitimize Carlsberg's attempt to freeze wages for three years by declaring a legitimate strike unlawful.

The union has appealed the regional court decision to a higher court, where it is still under appeal, and submitted a complaint to the ILO which the IUF has formally supported and which will now be examined by the Committee on Freedom of Association.

The brewery sector is unlikely to be considered an essential service by the ILO Committee on Freedom of Association! We therefore expect the ILO to condemn a court decision to suspend a strike for an unreasonable period as denying the right to strike in contravention of international labour standards

Carlsberg Lithuania management has stepped up its anti-union aggression by pressuring union leaders and activists at the plant through disciplinary action. Furthermore the company initiated a police enquiry against workers who joined the picket line to protest the suspension of the strike. Since then, 9 workers who were active in protest actions have been dismissed on the grounds of 'lost production'. These 9 dismissed workers are now reengaged, but on temporary contracts, punishing them for their union activities in the plant.

Carlsberg's healthy 2011 profits have produced global job cuts and attacks on trade union rights in Lithuania. You can support the Lithuanian beer workers' struggle by sending a message to Carlsberg, the 4^th largest global brewery, and the government of Lithuania calling on the company and government to stop violating fundamental trade union rights in Lithuania. Use the form below to insist they act to ensure that rights are respected.

Click here to send a message.
[1]

Apparently Carlsberg's subsidiary in Cambodia has also run into trouble. Women employed to promote the brew demanded overtime payments, and thanks to support from hotel workes and bars deciding not to stock the disputed brew, and the local authority in Phnom Penh saying the workers should be paid in the interest of public order, the workers appear to have won.

http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php?option=com_jcs&view=jcs&layout=form&Itemid=458

http://www.scandasia.com/viewNews.php?coun_code=dk&news_id=9289

If we don't want workers' rights in the European Union to fall behind those in poor Cambodia then the Lithuanian brewery workers must get wide support. And whatever we think about beer as an "essential service", I don't mind doing without my Carlsberg if need be to help the strike.

"We are not dogs!"

2012-01-12T10:11:00.000-08:00

LONDON Mayor Boris Johnson will have to face some dogged questions when he and a couple of acomplices come to Hendon next Tuesday. The Mayor and his Transport Deputy, Isabel Dedring, are due to participate in a "Talk London" panel being held in Simpson Hall, at the Peel Centre on Aerodrome Road, Colindale. Barnet and Camden Greater London Assembly member Brian Coleman, who is also a Barnet councillor, is acting as chair.

Talk London is inviting people to ask questions about "investing in London". The trades unionists and campaigners coming to confront Boris and chums want to know what they are doing about investing in the people who provide essential services for the capital, ennabling its commercial and cultural activities to function. They want to raise the issue of facilities for their essential functions.

Not far from where Broris and co. are speaking, Brent Cross shopping centre boasts 120 stores, a huge car park, and a bus station with four stands served by several routes, some ranging from Barnet (326) Ealing (112), Finsbury Park (210), Hammersmith (266), Harrow Weald (182), Oxford Circus (189) and Watford (142). Besides acting as a terminus for the shopping centre, Brent Cross bus station is an important place for changing buses if you want to cross north London. I sometimes went this way from Stonebridge to Turnpike Lane when I had friends in Tottenham. Also to attend Peter Fryer's funeral at Islington cemetery which is in East Finchley.

Four bus companies use Brent Cross, under the overall aegis of Transport for London (TfL). But outside shopping hours, when the centre is shut, the bus station is lacking in vital facilities.

The "We are not Dogs" Campaign which intends to lobby Boris Johnson is protesting against the closure of the Brent Cross toilet and for decent toilet and messroom facilities for the bus drivers. In a statement it says:

"For years now Transport for London has treated Brent Cross drivers like dogs. They close the only toilet the male and female drivers have at the slightest excuse and force both sexes to use the bushes near the Brent River to relieve themselves when the Centre is closed. A driver was fined £80 for this last year at the Spires in Barnet because he had to use the bushes. The health and safety implications are obvious; must we wait until a woman is raped or killed to expose these shocking social attitudes from TfL?

"Since 28th November they have closed the toilet three times (25 out of 37 days on 4 January), and say it cannot be opened now until February. TfL are threatening to close it permanently unless “we” stop misusing it – just because some unknownperson, driver, member of the public or even a TfL official has carved swastikas on the wall we are “all” not responsible enough to be given this basic human right! The toilets have been fully functional during all this time, only closed to “teach you a lesson” as one official put it.

"A driver asked TfL official Mick Foley why he kept the fully functional toilet closed on New Year's Day when the drivers had nowhere else to go because Brent Cross Shopping Centre was closed? He said 'I know it is fully functional, Gerry. You will have to do something about it'

"So he knows of the petition and our complaints to the GLA members and he is laughing at us. They will close that toilet at random (apparently the graffiti now is a Christmas tree) and there is absolutely nothing the drivers can do about it, they are all totally confident.

"TfL closed the toilet at Turnpike Lane station for months also citing graffiti. An elderly driver from Ponders End garage on the 221 route arrived there late at night desperate and began to wet himself when he found it closed. He relieved himself into a bottle to make less mess. TfL forwarded the CCTV of his humiliation to his garage and they sacked him for it. Apparently these TfL officials enjoy their sadistic "right"to humiliate drivers like this all over London".

We demand:

1. The toilet be opened immediately and kept open while it is functional.

2. The present unventilated fly infested broom cupboard “mess room” is converted into expanded toilet facilities, properly ventilated and available at all times for the drivers.

3. A Muslim shower and prayer area. As the Qur'an advises Muslims to uphold high standards of physical hygiene and to be ritually clean whenever possible, bathrooms should be equipped with a Muslim shower situated next to the toilet, so that individuals may wash themselves. This ablution is required in order to maintain ritual cleanliness.

4. Proper mess room facilities for the 70 odd drivers who have to take their meal breaks at Brent Cross, either a room within the Centre or a portacabin with drinks machine, television and rest facilities. We cannot wait for 5 or 7 years for the new Centre, as they tell us, only to be put in another broom cupboard.

London Mayor Boris Johnson is holding one of his "TalkLondon" events in Barnet on Tuesday 17 January. We intend to hand our “We are not dogs” petition signed by as many bus drivers as possible to the Mayor at this meeting. As many busdrivers as possible need to attend this picket and meeting in uniform and ask as many questions of the Mayor as we can:

● Why do you punish all drivers for the graffiti of one?

● How can you make 70 drivers take their meal breaks at an unventilated, fly-infested converted broom cupboard?

● Why can they not afford to give us decent toilet facilities from the hundreds if not thousands of millions of pounds the customers we bring to Brent Cross spend at the Centre?

● Why do professional drivers get treated like dogs in 2012 in this ‘great city’ showcasing the Olympics?"

It seems that TfL officials are now claiming that damage to the toilets was worse than thought, and that closure was needed before contractors could put it right. One even quoted a figure of £5,000, which the drivers very much doubt. Oddly enough I hear that when Brent and Harrow GLA member Navin Shah visited the bus station and asked to see the damage for himself, the TfL officials would not permit this elected representative to access the toilet.

Who do these officials think they are? Who gave them the right to treat an older worker the way that man was at Turnpike Lane, and get away with it? Maybe they should adopt the swastika from graffiti to serve as TfL management logo, if this is how they treat the workers and our elected representatives.

Navin Shah has given his support to the workers, and Ken Livingstone, who is hoping to be returned to the mayor's job for Labour has added his name to the drivers' petition. Barnet trades union council is supporting the drivers campaign, as is Brent, and I assume my union Unite which represents most bus drivers will taking up the issue with TfL. At least I hope so.

The We Are Not Dogs campaign will be out next Tuesday, January 17 from 18.00 to 19.00 at

Metropolitan Police training college, the Peel Centre, Aerodrome Road, NW9 5JE

(nearest tube Colindale).

All welcome who support the workers and basic human rghts.

http://www.navinshah.com/news/article/109/lack_of_facilities_angers_bus_drivers
http://citizenbarnet.blogspot.com/2012/01/brent-cross-bus-drivers-demand-to-be.html
http://www.london.gov.uk/next-event/getting-there

Incidentally, Tory councillor and GLA member Brian Coleman is better known for taking taxis than for taking an interest in bus services or workers' conditions. But he is very keen on a more ambitious waste disposal project at Brent Cross. Maybe we'll hear this too raised on Tuesday.
http://www.times-series.co.uk/news/brent_cross/4678948.Expert_claims_Brent_Cross_plans_include_incinerator/

High Street Robbery

2012-01-11T18:38:00.001-08:00

SOME stories illustrate what the government is doing to young people. First there's Cait Reilly. This 22-year old studied geology at university, but found she could not get a job in her field. So while she had to sign on and claim unemployment benefit, Cait volunteered to help in a museum.

It seemed like a sound move. It might not bring any more money. but besides giving her some interesting activity it would be relevent experience to put in her CV when applying for a suitable job.

But the authorities had other ideas. At the suggestion of her Jobcentre Plus adviser Cait attended a retail jobs ‘open day’, which she was told would lead to a period of training and a job interview.

Miss Reilly and other candidates were sent to an employment skills training workshop for a week, aimed at improving attributes such as communication skills, followed by the five-hour-a-day stint at Poundland near Miss Reilly’s home in King’s Heath, Birmingham, in November.

She and five other claimants spent their time on the placement sweeping up and stacking and cleaning shelves, before they had to attend a final week of training under the ‘sector-based work academy’ scheme (SBWA). The promised job interview never materialised.

As she said: ‘I was actually doing something that was helping me work towards a job and was taken away from that to do something of no value to me. It was very frustrating.’

Under the scheme that is supposed to "encourage" the unemployed off benefits, claimants are being required to take part in an Employment, Skills and Enterprise Scheme in order to receive their Jobseekers Allowance (or dole as we old timers used to call it). The Department of Work and Pensions says that candidates who ‘express an interest’ in doing unpaid placements will lose their JSA if they pull out after the first ‘cooling off’ week on the scheme. But Cait Reilly says she was not informed about any cooling off period.

She said she felt she had to do it because ‘without my Jobseeker’s Allowance, I would literally have nothing’. She believes the placement allowed Poundland to use her as ‘free labour’ in the run-up to Christmas. She has now returned to her voluntary role at the city’s Pen Room Museum of writing and pen trade memorabilia, still looking for paid employment.

Cait is now pursuing legal action against the government. Her solicitor, Jim Duffy, said the practice contravenes article 4 (2) of the Human Rights Act, which states: ‘No one shall be required to perform forced or compulsory labour. ...This Government has created – without Parliamentary authority – a complex array of schemes that allow Jobcentres to force people into futile, unpaid labour for weeks or months at a time".

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2085142/Unemployed-graduate-sues-ministers-forced-stack-shelves-Poundland.html#ixzz1jCAInzrG

Talking about this case soon brings people relating similar experiences. One friend's son is doing a plumbing course at college but has been sent to fill shelves in Tesco. A well-known chain laid off all paid staff in the run-up to Christmas and relied on those working for their dole. God bless us all, said Tiny Tim.

Poundland says it had a ‘positive experience’ of the work placement programme which was ‘designed to provide on-the-job training for those looking to retail as a career opportunity’. Poundland's press website says the chain, which was recently acquired by Warburg Pincus, a leading global private equity firm, aims to continue its impressive growth with plans to open a further 50 new stores in 2010/11, creating an additional 2000 jobs.

"Highlights for the year ending 28 March 2010: Operating profit of £21.5 million - up 81.5 per cent (2008/9 £11.8million)• Turnover £509.8 million (net of VAT) - up 28.7% (2008/9 £396.2 million)• c2,000 new jobs created". It does not say how many were paid. It also boasts that £180,000 was raised for Macmillan Cancer Relief. So perhaps young people like Cait Railly should put down their shelf-filling stints on their CV as "working for charity".

http://www.poundland.co.uk/press-centre/2010-press-centre/full-year-results/

Meanwhile to see how the problem is people on the dole not wanting to go after jobs, we go over to Llandudno, north Wales, where DFS the furniture store is due to open a new branch on February 18. So far the company has received 1,385 applications for the 16 jobs that it advertised.

Latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show that 9.1 per cent of Wales’ workforce were unemployed in the period of August to October 2011 - up from 8.4 per cent between May and July last year.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2085142/Unemployed-graduate-sues-ministers-forced-stack-shelves-Poundland.html#ixzz1jCAzVOfy

In these troubled times it is not just "ordinary" folk who are getting in trouble. Take TV chef Anthony Worral Thompson. As a friend on Facebook comments, "Millionnaire AWT, a Tory party fundraiser, was caught five times stealing food and wine from Tesco’s worth around £100. He got off with a warning. Nicolas Robinson, a 23-year-old student, was arrested for stealing water worth £3.50 from Lidl during the London Riots. He was given a 6 month prison sentence."

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/anthony-worral-thompson-arrested-for-shoplifting-cheese-and-wine.html
http://politicalscrapbook.net/2012/01/anthony-worrall-thompson-ybf/

Others have chipped in to cite the person who was jailed for receiving a tee shirt that had been nicked,and the juvenile sent down for stealing a plastic dustbin. Some even recalled AWT denouncing the rioters last Summer.

Now come on, fellows, let's be fair. Anthony Worral Thompson could presumably have afforded to pay for the wine and cheese he stole from the store in Henley on Thames, but had his mind on other things. Whereas the people who were sent to jail could not prove their families did not need what they stole, and anyway, the government had told the magistrates what kind of sentences it expected them to pass after the riots. And there were no riots in Henley on Thames, were there?

Seems AWT is still down to speak in schools and colleges for the Tory Young Britain Foundation (unlike those trade unionists I know who have prepared talks to give in schools explaining about trade unions, but find they can't get invited). So he will be able to explain why shoplifting like his is different.
http://politicalscrapbook.net/2012/01/anthony-worrall-thompson-ybf/

If this seems like a recipe for discontent, even disorder, let us note that the government is being asked to consider other means, besides punitive sentences, for teaching the 'oiks' their place.

Plans to open military-run academies in deprived areas were condemned as "national service for the poor" today.

Right-wing think tank Respublica urged the government to open a pilot programme of military academies in underprivileged areas to "tackle poor discipline and educational failure" in the wake of last summer's riots.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

It claimed the academies "would open up new opportunities for those lacking hope and aspiration. They would change the cultural and moral outlook of those currently engulfed by hopelessness and cynicism."

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/114063

Yeah right. Stand up straight there and speak when you're spoken to! Get in line there!
Not that I suppose they will be giving out any proper military training and hardware to practice with in those deprived areas? That would be dangerous.

"It will be all right by the Olympics" . Mayor Boris faces Concrete Problems

2012-01-09T10:35:00.000-08:00

CYCLISTS were staging a road safety protest by Kings Cross yesterday evening. If they caused any disruption to traffic, motorists may not have noticed. At least not those trying to get in or out of the capital to the west, where five-mile long tailbacks were tending to gridlock, and all due to closure of the main artery linking London with Heathrow and the West.

On TV we saw Transport for London officers answering questions, but in a year that sees both mayoral elections and London hosting the Olympics, we were bound to hear in other reports from Tory London Mayor Boris Johnson:

Hammersmith Flyover 'will reopen before Olympics start'

The mayor of London's office has said it will know in a week whether the Hammersmith Flyover in west London can be reopened to traffic while critical repairs are carried out to strengthen it.

It gave assurances that the A4 route would be in full working order by the time the Olympics start on 27 July.

Boris Johnson said it would not be shut "one day longer than necessary".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-16440285

Boris Johnson took charge of the crisis on the Hammersmith flyover today as it emerged that the bridge could partially reopen to traffic within three weeks.

Mr Johnson visited the west London flyover and said he wanted to reassure drivers "suffering traffic hell" that he is doing everything in his power to ensure it is open again as soon as possible.

Transport for London today admitted that the crisis on the flyover was continuing and said it would be at least another week before engineers can decide whether the bridge is strong enough to support even light traffic.

But sources today told the Standard there are hopes the flyover can be at least partially reopened within two to three weeks. The Mayor gave his assurance that it would be fully reopened in time for the Olympics.

The 50-year-old flyover, which carries the A4 over the centre of Hammersmith, was shut suddenly on December 23 when steel cables were found to have been corroded by salt water from grit laid during successive winters.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-mayor/article-24025913-boris-pledges-to-sort-flyover-crisis.do

The Hammersmith flyover was completed in 1962. According to Wikipedia, " it was one of the first examples of an elevated road employing reinforced concrete balanced cantilever beam supports with a single central column. The deck spine and wings are of hollow prestressed concrete design, with each span being tensioned by longitudinal tendons (four clusters, each of sixteen 29mm steel cables). The flyover was designed by G. Maunsell & Partners, Consulting Engineers, led by Peter Wroth.

Marples, Ridgway and Partners, a Westminster-based civil engineering contractor, built the flyover at a cost of £1.3 million. The then Conservative Transport Minister Ernest Marples had been a Marples, Ridgway shareholder. To avoid a conflict of interest Marples undertook to sell his controlling shareholder interest in the company as soon as he became Minister of Transport in October 1959, although there was a purchaser's requirement that he buy back the shares after he ceased to hold office, at the price paid, should the purchaser so require."

I'm no enginer, but it sounds to me like the bridge is actually built employing the technique of post-stressed concrete, whereby cables are tightened within the concrete after it is laid. Back in the early 1970s I was sharing a house up North with a couple of friends, one of whom was employed as a technician on motorway construction. One day Steve came home not his usual carefree self, and told us that he had been testing the grout, a mixture of cement and sand in water, that was used to surround cables embedded in concrete, in order to seal them from the elements. Finding a batch that was not of the proper consistency - I think it was meant to be cement-rich - he had reported this, only to be told to let it go.

Steve explained that if the cables were not properly grouted and sealed, rainwater permeating through the concrete would cause them to rust, and you might eventually have lumps of loosened masonry from bridges falling down on to the motorway.

I told him somewhat naievely that he ought to go to the press with his story. He replied that if he did that "it would be the end of my career in civil engineering and construction". He was probably right. He won't mind me telling his story now, as last thing I heard he had gone into teaching instead.

In the case of the Hammersmith flyover however, there has been an anonymous whistleblower, who contacted the Hammersmith and Fulham Chronicle to tell them the flyover was unsafe, on December 14. While the most that Transport for London would admit was that it needed some repairs, the Chronicle’s source insists the:

post tensioned strands are severely corroded and in some cases completely severed… these temporary solutions [TfL] are considering involve temporary propping which any structural engineer with half a brain will tell you is almost impossible to do correctly with a structure of this kind. It’s not a question of whether the structure will collapse, it’s a matter of when

http://londonist.com/2011/12/hammersmith-flyover-is-unsafe.php

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-16316283

It is reported that the original design of the flyover provided for under-floor heating to keep the surface ice free in Winter. But instead the authorities have relied on putting down grit and salt. (which is more than some London roads have enjoyed !) This has resulted in saltwater seeping down which is far more corrosive to the cables.

The flyover was closed on the 23rd December 2011 after structural defects were discovered, Transport for London estimated that repairs would last until at least January 2012. Well it is January 10, and the flyover is still closed, causing chaos both to commuters and commercial road transport. If it reopens within a few weeks heavy vehicles may still be prohibited from using it.

Mayor Boris Johnson has only promised it will be alright by the Olympics. He may be hoping to take credit, but have to back away from taking responsibility if the problem proves as bad as some fear. Meanwhile, London bus drivers are hoping to tackle Boris over another pressing issue when he visits Hendon next week. They have no toilet facilities at Brent Cross. Of this more anon. Perhaps he'll promise they'll be opened before the Olympics. Boris is good at taking the piss.

A long way from Levenshulme to Liechtenstein

MENTION of Marples Ridgway will bring back memories of Ernie - not the fastest milkman in the West but a Tory minister with that touch of cheek that is supposed to entertain the electorate.

Ernest Marples had a respectable enough background. He was born in Levenshulme, Manchester, in 1907. His father was an engineering charge-hand and Labour supporter, and his mother worked in a local hat factory. Marples attended Victoria Park Council School and won a scholarship to Stretford Grammar, he even became involved in the Labour movement. He was selling fags and sweets to football crowds by the time he was 14, and playing football himself in a YMCA team.

He worked variously as a miner, a postman, and accountant and a chef, but it may have been the army that started him on the wrong path. Commissioned in the Royal Artillery in 1941, he rose to Captain before he was dischargd on medical grounds in 1944. That year he joined the Conservative Party, and in 1945 he was elected to MP for Wallasey In 1951 Winston Churchill appointed him a junior minister, and he remained a minister under Harold MacMillan and Sir Alec Douglas Home.

In 1957 Harold Macmillan appointed Marples Postmaster General, and as the telephone system was controlled by the GPO in those days, Ernest Marples was able to take credit for the introduction of Subscriber Trunk Dialling (STD), which gradually replaced the need for phone operators. On 2 June 1957 Marples started the first draw for the new Premium Bonds. The equipment housed at Lytham St.Annes was also called ‘ERNIE’ to represent ‘Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment’,,

Macmillan made him Minister of Transport in 14 October 1959, and Marples remained in this post after Alec Douglas-Home succeeded Macmillan as Prime Minister in 1963 and until the Conservatives lost the general election on 16 October 1964.

As Minister of Transport, Marples oversaw the introduction of parking meters and the provisional driving licence. The 1960 Road Traffic Act brought the MOT test, yellow lines and traffic wardens,

It was Ernest Marples who appointed Dr Richard Beeching as chairman of British Rail The Beeching Report ;in 1963 recommended closure of a further 6,000 miles (9,700 km) of the remaining 18,000 miles (29,000 km) of Britain's railways, and closure of approach routes, which was made up for by motorway expansion and more work for Marples Ridgway.

Marples had set up this company with Reginald Ridgway in 1948. Although it began small it grew with contracts for powers stations and roads in Britain and abroad. When he became a junior minister in 1951 Marples resigned his directorship of Marples, Ridgway to avoid a conflict of interest. When he was made Minister of Transport in October 1959, Marples further undertook to sell his shareholding in the company to avoid a conflict of interest. However, there was a purchaser's requirement to sell the shares back to Maples after he ceased to hold office, at the original price, if Maples wished this. The purchaser was later revealed to be Marples' own wife.

In 1959 Marples authorised the first section of the M1 motorway, Britain's first inter-city motorway, between London and Nottingham. Marples, Ridgway was given the contract. Marples, Ridgway built the Hammersmith Flyover in London at a cost of £1.3 million, immediately followed by building the Chiswick Flyover.

When Lord Denning investigated the security aspects of the Profumo Affair in 1963, and the rumoured affair between the Minister of Defence, Duncan Sandys, and the Duchess of Argyll, he confirmed to Macmillan that a rumours that Ernest Marples was in the habit of using prostitutes appeared to be true. The story was suppressed and did not appear in Denning's final report.

In 1974 Marples was elevated to the peerage, and his wife Ruth Dodson became Lady Marples.

Early in 1975 Lord Marples suddenly fled to Monaco. Among journalists who investigated his unexpected flight was Daily Mirror editor Richard Stott:

"In the early 70s ... he tried to fight off a revaluation of his assets which would undoubtedly cost him dear ... So Marples decided he had to go and hatched a plot to remove £2 million from Britain through his Liechtenstein company ... there was nothing for it but to cut and run, which Marples did just before the tax year of 1975. He left by the night ferry with his belongings crammed into tea chests, leaving the floors of his home in Belgravia littered with discarded clothes and possessions ... He claimed he had been asked to pay nearly 30 years' overdue tax ... The Treasury froze his assets in Britain for the next ten years. By then most of them were safely in Monaco and Liechtenstein."

As well as being wanted for tax fraud, one source alleges that Marples was being sued in Britain by tenants of his slum properties and by former employees. He never returned to Britain, living the remainder of his life at his Fleurie Beaujolais château and vineyard in France. He died in 1978.

He is buried in Southern cemetery, Manchester.

Info.from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Marples

Trade Unionists support Greek Resistance!

2012-01-09T09:42:00.000-08:00

THERE'S a demonstration taking place outside the Greek embassy this evening, and trade unionists awakening from the holiday period to a renewed struggle are focussing attention on Greece. There in the face of massive resistance to austerity measures a banker-led right-wing "unity" government is entrusted by European Union capitalists with saving their economy by imposing their will. That's why a court case re-opening tomorrow has meaning for us all.

As Eric Lee of the international news link LabourStart says:

" If you're a trade unionist fighting to ensure that workers don't pay the price for the global financial crisis they didn't create, 2012 looks like it will be a challenging year.

"On Thursday 24 November 2011, the Greek police arrested Nikos Photopoulos, President of the power workers' union GENOP/DEI, along with more than a dozen of his fellow trade unionists. They will appear in court on Tuesday 10 January 2012 to face charges that could see them jailed for up to five years.

"They were protesting against part of the Greek austerity measures - the cutting off of power to people unable to pay a new property tax, levied regardless of income or wealth and added to all electricity bills. The new tax is just the most recent 'austerity' action by the Greek government. The abolition of the national minimum wage and the lowering of employer-paid taxes are next.

"Please take a moment to send a message to the Greek Prime Minister in support of the campaign Greek trade union confederation GSEE, which is calling for the charges to be dropped.

Just go HERE to send your message.

And please don't forget to pass this message along to your contacts, and to use your Twitter, Google+ and Facebook accounts to help us get the word out.

Thanks.

Eric Lee

The TUC has also endorsed a call for solidarity with Greek workers with this statement from the Greek trade unions:

NO TO THE PENALISATION OF TRADE UNION STRUGGLE

The GSEE stands in full solidarity with GENOP/DEI President Nikos Photopoulos and our other colleagues who await trial on 10 January 2012 because of the protest sit-in last November at the Company's computing headquarters to prevent the levying of the brutal emergency property tax via electricity bills as part of the devastating austerity imposed on Greek people.

We once more call on the authorities to refrain from penalizing trade union action and drop the charges against trade unionists who defend the right of citizens to unimpeded access to a vital public good that is doubly essential in these trying times of utmost hardship.

We note that the court hearing comes at a time when DEH-the Greek Public Power Corporation S.A., regardless of the extreme adversity endured by Greek families, callously announced new raises of 15-20% in the price of electricity as of January 2012 to compensate for its use of environment-polluting lignite.

We also note that this hearing precedes by a few days the new advent of the Troika team in Greece with renewed outrageous demands dictating the abolition of the National Collective Labour Agreement and the minimum wage, new wage and pension cuts, immediate mass lay-offs in the public sector and lowering employers' social security contributions.

We firmly reiterate that the GSEE unequivocally refuses any discussion that will undermine the National Collective Labour Agreement and the minimum wage which is the last bastion of protection for workers and will firmly oppose any such attempt.

The Greek trade union movement united will continue its struggle against every brutality directed against our income, our rights, our families, our lives and the future of our country.

GSEE - Greek General Confederation of Labour

http://www.tuc.org.uk/international/tuc-20449-f0.cfm

ISLINGTON branch of the public service union Unison has sent a delegation to the Greek embassy and circulated an international appeal which it is urging British trade unionists to support. It is forwarding the letter of support to the Greek power union GENOP:

Statement by the International Liaison Committee of Workers and Peoples ( ILC)

Stop the prosecution of Nikos Photopoulos and his comrades from the GENOP-DEH union immediately!

We have just been informed by representatives of the Greek public power company union GENOP-DEH of the repression affecting 15 Greek members of the GENOP-DEH union:

On 24 November 2011, squads of riot police (MAT) stormed the power company’s offices in Mesogeion Avenue in Athens and violently cleared it of workers and trade unionists who had been staging a sit-in for a few days. The offices are responsible for cutting off the electricity supply to the thousands of working-class families that are refusing to pay the new property tax imposed by the Greek government by order of the Troika (IMF-European Commission-European Central Bank), which is being levied through the electricity bills. The same offices are in charge of cutting off the supply to the thousands of families which, due to the crisis, can no longer pay their bills.

On 30 November 2011, fifteen trade unionists, including GENOP-DEH General Secretary Nikos Photopoulos, appeared in court, charged with "obstructing the forces of order" and "obstructing the correct functioning of the public services". They face prison sentences of 6 months to 5 years without remission. On the eve of a new general strike called for 1 December by the trade union confederations GSEE and ADEDY, the government has decided it would be wiser to hold fire, and the court has postponed its ruling until 10 January 2012.

Throughout the world, the workers and peoples are standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the Greek workers and their trade union organisations as they engage in the battle against the Troika's barbaric plans being implemented by the Greek government. Their actions are legitimate, just as the actions of the Greek power workers and their trade union to prevent the power disconnections and to demand the withdrawal of the new tax imposed by the government are legitimate.

No worker, no labour activist and no democratic labour organisation can accept this threat of repression, which would be a blow against all labour and democratic rights .

This is why the International Liaison Committee of Workers and Peoples has decided to inform all labour organisations around the world of these extremely serious facts, and to invite them to build on the efforts, in whichever form they see fit, to demand that the Greek authorities immediately drop the legal proceedings against the GEOP-DEH union members, and to express their solidarity with them.

The co-ordinators of the International Liaison Committee of Workers and Peoples
Louisa Hanoune, General Secretary of the Workers Party (Algeria)
Daniel Gluckstein, National Secretary of the Independent Workers Party ( France )

Among those who have added their names in Britain are John McDonnell MP ; Neil Findlay Labour Member of Scottish Parliament ; Drew Smith Labour Member of Scottish Parliament Ian Hodson National President Bakers Food & Allied workers union BFAWU ; Alex Gordon President RMT ; Billy Hayes, General Secretary CWU; CJR Kitchen General Secretary National Union of Mineworkers ; Tim Wilson, National Chair, Napo ; . Tony Burke Unite the Union ; Helen Davies UNISON Nec ; Mike Calvert Deputy - Chair Islington Unison Dr. Nat M. Queen University and College Union Birmingham , Mick Hubbard, GMB ; Glyn Beagley King’s College London, Anthony Dooley, Ipswich Association, National Union of Teachers, Matt Wells PCS union Defra London Branch ; Nadim Mahjoub Teacher, LSE, Nick Phillips Vice-President Southwark TUC ; Michael Edwards Professor UCL London, Dr John J O'Dowd University and College Union (Glasgow University Branch) Health & Safety Representative, Henry Mott UNITE the UNION Southwark ; Helen Peters, UCU ; Rob Jackson University of Keele ; Roger MacKay President Ipswich & District Trades Union Council, John Calderon Hackney Labour Party ; Nick Kelleher, Secretary, Wolverhampton, Bilston & District Trades Union Council ; Ben Rickman, Secretary, Brent Trades Union Council, Lorraine Douglas ; Anne McCormack Branch secretary St Helens College UNISON ; Geoff Turner University and Colleges Union retired member Sheffield ; George Binette Camden UNISON Branch Secretary ; Ken Muller Assistant Secretary Isligton NUT ; Mark Hollinrake PCS/Unite Trade Unions ; Mark Hoskisson Secretary of Liverpool Trades Union Council ; Richard Morgan Sec Derbyshire Community Branch GMB Acting President, Derby Area TUC (DATUC) ; Marie Lynam, GMB Union ; Michael .Loughlin UCU Manchester University ; Jane Doolan UNISON Islington ; Rosemary Plummer Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap );Jenny Densham; Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ) ; Fiona Monkman Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); Alex Wood Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); Dean Ryan Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); Jenny Mackley Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); Andrew Berry Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); Keith Facey Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); Sonita Singh Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); Yesim Senler Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ) ; Diana James Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ) ; Lynne Moffat Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ) ; Mark Lysaght Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); Garwin Samlal Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ) ; Paul Murphy Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ) ; Alan Wylie Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); Alan Rylatt Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); John Philpott Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); Don Euripides Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ) ; Sean O'Neill Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); Kuldip Binning UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap);Jane Luke UNISON Islington ; Terry Luke UNISON Islington ; Jim Hollinshead (Liverpool John Moores University UCU ; John Williams Liverpool and North West UCU RMB ; M Sargent Secretary of Dover District trades council and RMT Dover ; Karl Rogers Learning Organiser – South TSSA Learning ; Prof. Philip Moriarty School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham ; Councillor Jim Mackechnie Glasgow City Council ; Fiona Monkman Islington Unison ; Councillor Richard Bertin Vale of Glamorgan Council ; Manchester University UCU Branch, Professor Anton Schütz School of Law Birkbeck College London Richard Carabine UCU Committee member & Health & Safety Rep Birkbeck College London ; Suriyakumari Lane Birkbeck College London ; ; Professor Costas Douzinas Birkbeck School of Law London ; Lucie Wibberley Barrister ; Fiona O’May, Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh ; Randy Banks President of the University of Essex Local Association of UCU ; Louise Mauborgne Universioty of Leeds ; George Paizis ; Barry White National Union of Journalists ; Vince Mills Chair, Labour Campaign for Socialism, Scotland ; Graham Dyer UCU President SOAS, University of London ; Dr Alan L Bogg Senior Tutor, Fellow and Tutor in Law Hertford College, Oxford ; Keith Ewing School of Law King's College London ;Professor Bill Bowring Barrister, Birkbeck College London, International Secretary of the Haldane Society of Socialist lawyers ; John Hendy QC ; Liz Davies, Barrister ; Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers ; Nicola Kountouris Faculty of Law University College London ; Pete Keenlyside National Executive member, CWU ; John R Holmes Retired member of the Communication Workers Union

Messages to be sent to:

GENOP-DEH Union :

main@genop.gr et press@genop.gr

(copy to be sent to the ILC : eit.ilc@fr.oleane.com)

Greek Prime Minister Papademos

internationalmediaoffice@primeminister.gr

Greek Minister of Labour

Ministry of Labour

40 Pireos Str. 10182 ATHENS, GREECE

Fax: +30 210 5295 186 info@ypakp.gr

Greek Minister of justice

Ministry of Justice

96, Messoghion Avenue 11527 Ambelopiki

Athens -

GREECE

Blair caught up in blood and oil row in Kazakhstan

2012-01-08T08:35:00.001-08:00

ARE there no limits to Tony Blair's energies and expertise? Middle East "peace envoy", £2 million a year adviser and rep for JP Morgan's bank, and more recently consultant to Kazakhstan's president Nursultan Nazarbayev, whose central Asian state doesn't just provide a butt for Ali G .'s ignorance-thriving humour but also produces oil, coal and other useful resources, including uranium.

Throw in writing a book, lecturing and appearing on TV not to mention the Iraq war inquiry (alas not yet a war crimes trial) and our ex-New Labour prime minister must really have his work cut out. And to think how I thought I was doing well some years back with a warehouse job, a weekend paper stall and penning unpaid articles for lefty publications. Needs must when the devil drives, and I guess the ex-PM's pension is not much when you've got more than one home and send your kids to private schools.

Blair's jobs are not just sinecures. His work for JP Morgan may be classed as part time but it did involve six trips to Libya no less for talks with the late Colonel. His work for the ex-Soviet republic of Kazakhstan's president places him in the company of princes, from Andrew to the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, so you can't go worrying him about "principles".

But now questions are being asked about the Blair billions and where they come from, not to say just where they go, at the same time as his latest client is in serious trouble.

Kazakhstan's Prosecutor-General's Office has launched a criminal investigation into actions taken by police during riots earlier this month in the western city of Zhanaozen that left more than a dozen protesters dead. Nurdaulet Suindikov, a spokesman for the office, told reporters in Astana that the investigation would seek to determine whether individual police abused their powers by firing on protesters with the intention of killing them.

According to official figures, at least 16 people were killed and more than 100 were injured, including 17 police officers, during the unrest, when sacked oil workers clashed with police guarding official "independence" celebrations. Unofficial figures put the number of protesters killed or wounded as much higher.

Amateur videos posted to the Internet by residents of Zhanaozen appeared to show police firing at people as they fled the scene of the protest, contradicting official claims that police only fired into the air or ground and only in self-defense. Before the inquiry was announced it was reported that police were pursuing investigations, not to identify those responsible for shooting demonstrators but to find those responsible for shooting the videos.

Umirzak Shukeev, the head of a government task force created to restore order in Zhanaozen announced on December 28 that a 20-day curfew imposed on the city in the wake of the violence would be extended. He did not say how long the special police measures would remain in effect.

Journalists and internet activists were arrested in raids, and on December 29, authorities announced that more than two dozen opposition activists had been detained as part of the prosecutor-general's investigation. Interfax reported that some of the detainees could face charges of arson and looting.

Impoverished oil workers in Zhanaozen and other parts of the Manghystau region have been holding peaceful protests since May, demanding better wages, improved working conditions, and greater rights. Many were fired by their employees -- subsidiaries of the state-controlled KazMunaiGaz company -- over the summer. Among thos arrested have been workers who blocked a railway line.

President Nursultan Nazarbaev, who visited the remote region last week, accused energy officials and the local government of failing to address the protesting oil workers' demands.
Nazarbaev fired his powerful son-in-law, Timur Kulibaev, as the chairman of Samruk-Kazyna, which controls almost all of Kazakhstan's major businesses, including oil and gas firms. He also fired the governor of Manghystau Oblast and the KazMunaiGaz board director. A state of emergency is in place in Janaozen until January 5.

Denying that workers' grievances had anything to do with what happened on December 16, however, Nazarbaev backed the heavy-handed response, saying the “police were carrying out their duty and acted legally within their authority”.

Western powers interested in Kazakhstan's resources as well as its central strategic position are likely to be concerned by the former Soviet republic's reported moves back into closer economic relations with the Russian Federation and Belarus. They are also anxious not to see a movement with parallels to the "Arab Spring" taking this country into political uncertainty. For this reason they may not want to be too closely associated with Nazarbaev if they fear he may fall.

Nazarbaev was reportedly hoping that Tony Blair's advice could help him secure a Nobel peace prize. He might have reconsidered his confidence in our ex-prime minister having seen what use all those meetings with Blair were to Colonel Gaddaffi in the end .

http://iwpr.net/report-news/simmering-tensions-boil-over-kazakstan
http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/newsquery1.pl?searchtext=Kazakhstan&language=en&number=100&Go=Go

On Kazakh trade unions:
http://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1862

Blair's connections:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/tony-blair/8999890/Tony-Blair-and-the-8million-tax-mystery.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/jan/10/blairjpmorgan
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/tony-blair/8857689/Oil-rich-dictator-of-Kazakhstan-recruits-Tony-Blair-to-help-win-Nobel-peace-prize.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1365907/Tony-Blair-Prince-Andrew-mutual-Kazakhstan.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2055223/Tony-Blair-billionaire-donor-Lakshmi-Mittal--major-deal-Kazakhstan.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/kazakhstan/8982290/Kazakh-activists-urge-Tony-Blair-to-give-up-adviser-role.html

Socialist Party/Committee for a Workers International reports:

http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/13247/24-11-2011/arrested-in-kazakhstan-free-georgii-epshtein
http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/12822/21-09-2011/kazakhstan-dictatorial-regime-threatens-socialist-activists

http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/13363/16-12-2011/70-dead-amp-500-wounded-by-riot-police-in-kazakhstan

Medic's Marathon for all our Health

2012-01-03T15:07:00.000-08:00

HEADING for Westminster, to say "Hands off our NHS", Clive Peedell is honouring Aneurin Bevan, here seen at start of NHS, who said service 'will last as long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it'.

IN just under a week a medical man with a mission starts out to run 160 miles, from Cardiff to central London, in support of the National Health Service. It's not another charity event. Clive Peedell is not running to raise extra funds, for a service we have all paid for, but to raise awareness of the threat which HM government is posing to our health, with its privatisation plans.

A leading member of the British Medical Association(BMA), Clive is a specialist working in the North East. He will be starting from the statue of Aneurin Bevan, the ex-miner and Health Minister who started the National Health Service. His planned route to London will take him through Prime Minister David Cameron's constituency, Witney in Oxfordshire.

Here in London he will be finishing up at the Department of Health, Richmond House on Whitehall.

This is what Dr. Peedell has to say in his 'Bevan's Run' page on Facebook:

"My name is Clive Peedell and I am Consultant Clinical Oncologist working for the NHS in the North East of England. I am co-chair of the NHS Consultants' Association and a member of BMA Council and BMA political board. I have been an active campaigner against NHS privatisation and market based reforms.

"I believe that a publicly funded, publicly provided and publicly accountable NHS is the most cost effective and equitable way to deliver healthcare to our nation's population.

"This aim of "Bevan's Run" and the associated Bevan's Run blogsite is to raise public awareness about the serious threats that the coalition Government's Health and Social Care Bill poses to the English NHS.

These threats were well summarised in a recent article in the Lancet:
'The proposals are ideological with little evidential foundation. They represent a decisive step towards privatisation that risks undermining the fundamental equity and efficiency objectives of the NHS. Rather than “liberating the NHS”, these proposals seem to be an exercise in liberating the NHS’s £100 billion budget to commercial enterprises”
Professor Margaret Whitehead et al, Dept of Health Inequalities and Social Determinants of Health, University of Liverpool. The Lancet, Volume 376, Issue 9750

"All the key NHS stakeholders have expressed serious concerns about the proposed NHS reforms. The BMA has a policy of calling for the bill to be withdrawn and opposes the whole bill. A recent survey of GPs by the Royal College of General Practitioners showed that three quarters want the bill to be withdrawn.

"In addition, a group of over 400 public health doctors recently wrote an open letter to the House of Lords arguing that the bill will cause “irreparable harm to the NHS, to individual patients, and to society as a whole,” that it will “erode the NHS’s ethical and cooperative foundations,” and that it will “not deliver efficiency, quality, fairness, or choice.”

"Despite this widespread opposition to the proposed reforms, the bill is continuing its passage through Parliamentary process and is likely to be enacted in the Springtime of 2012. It is therefore imperative that the public are informed about what is happening to the NHS, so they can apply pressure to Members of the House of Lords and the House of Commons to stop the passage of the bill.

"Anuerin Bevan, who spearheaded the establishment of the NHS in 1948, famously stated that the NHS 'will last a long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it'

"In recognition of Bevan’s words, I will be running the 160 miles from Bevan's Statue in Cardiff to the Department of Health, Richmond House, in London over 6 days in protest against the Health and Social Care Bill.

"I am very grateful to Dr David Wilson (a fellow Consultant Clinical Oncologist) who as an accomplished long distance runner, will be accompanying me on the journey".

For more of what Clive Peedell has to say on the NHS and where to meet and greet him, see Website:
http://bevansrun.blogspot.com/

For more on NHS issues and campaigning see:

http://www.healthemergency.org.uk/

http://www.keepournhspublic.com/index.php

Campus Capers target profs from Coventry to Beersheba

2012-01-01T01:31:00.000-08:00

COMPLAINTS by an Israeli post-graduate student, claiming that her dissertation was unfairly down graded, have been escalated into a public campaign against the academic allegedly responsible.
Smadar Bakovic claimed that Professor Nicola Pratt of the University of Warwick had unfairly graded her dissertation. She said the same dissertation was passed with a distinction after being re-marked by a second professor.
The Jewish Chronicle published two reports on its website, on December 22 and 29. Its reporter Marcus Dysch said Smadar Bakovic repeatedly told Warwick University she was uncomfortable with Nicola Pratt overseeing her master's dissertation on Israeli Arab identity.
Professor Pratt, associate professor at Warwick's politics and international studies department, has lived in Egypt, speaks Arabic and is an expert on women and gender in the Middle East. As Dysch tells us she " is a vocal anti-Israel campaigner who was refused entry to the West Bank by Israeli authorities in 2009. Following Operation Cast Lead she was one of more than 100 academics who wrote to the Guardian saying "Israel must lose", and calling for the UK to implement boycott, divestment and sanctions".
Ms.Bakovic's dissertation originally received a mark of 60%. After she complained and was allowed to resubmit it to another, unnamed supervisor, it scored 71% , a distinction. Both submissions also involved an external examiner.

Warwick University has denied that Ms.Bakovic complained more than once about Nicola Pratt as a supervisor. The university says it had bent over backward to meet the Israeli postgrad's complaint over her marks. It said she was allowed to resubmit because of her strength of feeling, but the higher mark could be attributed to the fact the dissertation was "substantially different" when it was re-submitted.The JC report claims to have seen e-mails indicating the paper had only been "tweaked" slightly.

Whatever the truth of that, it seems the marks were neither the beginning nor the end of the matter. The JC quotes Ms Bakovic as saying: "I knew Prof Pratt because whenever there was an anti-Israel event at the university I went along and she was often there. She moderated a Jews for Justice for Palestinians event, so I knew her stance. As soon as I saw her name a red light came on."
The JC reports that an online petition calling for Professor Pratt to be sacked has been signed by more than 300 people. It states: "Professor Pratt must go now. There must be zero tolerance of bigoted academics who do not have the wit to separate their prejudices from their academic objectivity."
Board of Deputies senior vice-president, Jonathan Arkush, has written to Warwick vice-chancellor Nigel Thrift asking for an inquiry.
http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/60846/anti-zionist-professors-low-marks-israeli-now-a-distinction
http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/61139/anti-zionist-warwick-professor-faces-investigation
While telling us who Nicola Pratt is, and illustrating its articles with a picture of the professor, supplied by the university, the Jewish Chronicle was less forthcoming about the background of its main source, the 35-year old student Smadar Bakovic, who told it "After a year of battling, I'm absolutely delighted. I feel vindicated. I did it for Israel."
It has been left to Asa Winstanley, a journalist contributing to the Electronic Intifada website, to reveal that Bakovic is listed as the media services coordinator on the website of MediaCentral, an agency in Jerusalem that aims to immerse foreign journalists in Israeli perspectives.The group is a project of HonestReporting, which once described itself on its website as “an organization dedicated to defending Israel against prejudice in the media” (“Our Mission”).
Its managing editor, Simon Plosker, is a reservist soldier in the Israeli army’s press office. He previously worked for the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM) and NGO Monitor, another Israel lobby group (“Meet the editors”).
Professor Pratt was one of many academic signatories to a seminal letter in The Guardian during the 2008-09 Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip, which asserted that “if we affirm the right to resist military aggression and colonial occupation, then we are obliged to take sides … against Israel, and with the people of Gaza and the West Bank” (“Growing outrage at the killing in Gaza,” 15 January 2009).
The Reut Institute, an influential think tank, issued a report in 2010 on how to counter the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, and “sabotage” the movement of solidarity with Palestine. To this end it spoke of “Mobilizing and training civil society partners … for example students and faculty in academia” (“The Delegitimization Challenge: Creating a Political Firewall, March 2010, p. 71).
http://electronicintifada.net/content/exposed-uk-university-student-claiming-bias-works-project-israel-pressure-group/10759

How fortuitous that someone like Smadar Bakovic should happen to have chosen Warwick and found a professor like Nicola Pratt whose extracurricular meetings she could keep an eye on.

Meanwhile back in the Land ...

In Israel the campaign against civil rights groups and their funding, and against university lecturers regarded as insufficiently loyal to Zionism, has been led by an extra-parliamentary right-wing group called Im Tirzu which seems to be increasingly influencing government moves.
So it is interesting to see where Im Tirzu gets its money, and, particularly after a year when so many young Israelis took to the streets over issues like housing and social justice, criticising the country's richest families, to read that big business has quadrupled its funding for the far-Right group. Coincidence, or what? No wonder Uri Avneri, who arrived with his parents from Germany in 1933 keeps saying he is reminded of Weimar.
An article by Uri Blau in Haaretz says that Leo Schachter, Israel’s second-largest exporter of processed diamonds, donated NIS 74,000 to Im Tirtzu last year.

"That same year, the company, which is headed by Elliot Tannenbaum, who immigrated from the United States in the early 1980s, exported $359 million worth of diamonds. Sources in the company say that Tannenbaum decides with his wife Debbie on the donations made by the company. Tannenbaum’s office said in his name that they are not interested in commenting on the matter".

"According to Im Tirtzu’s most recent financial report, in 2010 it spent NIS 1.14 million on hasbara (PR) and advertising ‏(more than 10 times what it spent in 2009‏). The report also reveals that last year it received donations totaling NIS 1.66 million, almost four times as much as in 2009, when they amounted to NIS 456,000. In 2010 the organization spent NIS 68,000 on “events and activities,” and under the heading “salaries and related expenses” reported spending approximately NIS 250,000. Incidentally, the cost of fundraising efforts in 2010 was close to NIS 70,000 ‏(nearly nine times the sum from the previous year‏).
"Aside from the Azrieli Group and Leo Schachter Diamonds, the group mentions three other bodies from which it received donations in 2010 exceeding NIS 20,000, the maximum amount for a donation whose source needn’t be listed. Keren Segal Leyisrael − a fund whose declared objective is “to establish, develop and manage educational and cultural projects about Israel’s heritage and the Jewish community in Jerusalem and Israel,” and which is headed by Jerusalem businessman Yotam Bar-Hama − donated NIS 77,000 to Im Tirtzu last year. In 2008, it donated NIS 190,000 to Im Tirtzu. Bar-Hama declined to explain the motives behind the donation, and said only that the fund’s money comes from his family abroad".
Another organization called The Forum for Religious Zionism donated NIS 74,000 to the movement last year. This is a new organization that was registered in 2010 in the name of Zvi Soibel, former director of the Bnei Akiva yeshiva in Kfar Haroeh. (Bnei Akiva is the religious Zionist youth movement linked with the National Religious Party. Major Peter Lerner, the Israeli army spokesman who joked about the killing of Mustafa Tamimi in Nebi Saleh, is a graduate of its UK section).
Since its founding, Im Tirtzu has also been supported by the Central Israel Fund, a U.S.-based NPO. The fund, which according to its latest U.S. income tax return, raised nearly $10.5 million in 2010, says that it aids the needy and supports various educational and community projects. Central Israel, which transferred NIS 95,000 to Im Tirtzu last year, raises money for strongly right-wing organizations like Women in Green, and the Hananu organization, which provides legal aid to rightists and in the past even gave money to Yigal Amir. (Amir is the assassin of Yitzhak Rabin)
"Some of the contributors to Im Tirtzu have been revealed in the past. In 2008, the organization received a donation of NIS 374,000 from the American organization Christians United for Israel, and in 2009 it received the same sum from them. This organization is headed by Father John Hagee, who once said that “God sent Hitler as a hunter to force the Jews to move to Israel in anticipation of Judgment Day.” This money, by the way, was not transferred directly to Im Tirtzu, but rather via the Jewish Agency.

http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/major-israeli-businesses-helped-quadruple-donations-to-right-wing-im-tirtzu-movement-1.404637

King's Karsh

It is not just money that is being mobilised from abroad to boost Israel's academic witch hunt. In November we heard how the head of Bar Ilan university was telling the Zionist Organisation of America about the "Bolshevik post-Zionists" who needed to be routed from other institutions, and how some academics at the Ben Gurion University(BGU) of the Negev were coming under fire.

Now a London-born academic at the Beersheba based BGU has had to refute allegations that he compared Israel to the Nazi regime, after he cited Pastor Niemoller's well-known poem about those who stood by when others were taken away during the Holocaust.

Professor David Newman, dean of BGU's faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences was accused by King's College London Professor Efraim Karsh of being anti-Israel and a "pseudo-academic" following an article that he wrote in the Jerusalem Post under the headline Speaking out against the threat.

Karsh, who has written that militancy is inherant in Islam, and not a response to western colonialism, is head of Middle East and Mediterranean studies at Kings College. He accuses Newman of sticking to a "colonial paradigm" about Zionism rather than recognising it as a legitimate movement for self determination.

A strong critic of the "new historians" in Israel who acknowledged responsibility for the Palestinian Nakba, Prof.Karsh has been characterised as the academic voice of Revisionist (right-wing) Zionism. Writing for the US conservative think tank, Middle East Forum, of which he is director, Karsh said that BGU had become a "hotbed of anti-Israel propaganda". Maybe other staff, and students, at Kings ought to look at what their college is becoming a hotbed for.

http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/61143/professors-duel-over-colonialist-line-israel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephraim_Karsh

Earlier posting on universities in Israel:
http://randompottins.blogspot.com/2011/11/from-battle-for-olive-groves-to-war-in.html

Continuity Man

2011-12-30T23:10:00.001-08:00

AWARD-winning American film maker Michael Moore is no mere "trendy" media type trying to keep up with the fashion of the day. He may be light as theoreticians go, and I'm not nominating him as a wonderrebbe or guru, as though I believed in such things. But giving credit where due, Mr.Moore has uncovered an important thread of continuity leading up behind the anti-capitalist "Occupy" movement, whether or not participants are aware of it.

"On this day, December 30th, in 1936 -- 75 years ago today -- hundreds of workers at the General Motors factories in Flint, Michigan, took over the facilities and occupied them for 44 days. My uncle was one of them.

"The workers couldn't take the abuse from the corporation any longer. Their working conditions, the slave wages, no vacation, no health care, no overtime -- it was do as you're told or get tossed onto the curb.

"So on the day before New Year's Eve, emboldened by the recent re-election of Franklin Roosevelt, they sat down on the job and refused to leave.

"They began their Occupation in the dead of winter. GM cut off the heat and water to the buildings. The police tried to raid the factories several times, to no avail. Even the National Guard was called in.

"But the workers held their ground, and after 44 days, the corporation gave in and recognized the UAW as the representative of the workers. It was a monumental historical moment as no other major company had ever been brought to its knees by their employees. Workers were given a raise to a dollar an hour -- and successful strikes and occupations spread like wildfire across the country. Finally, the working class would be able to do things like own their own homes, send their children to college, have time off and see a doctor without having to worry about paying. In Flint, Michigan, on this day in 1936, the middle class was born.

"But 75 years later, the owners and elites have regained all power and control. I can think of no better way for us to honor the original Occupiers than by all of us participating in the Occupy Wall Street movement in whatever form that takes in each of our towns. We need direct action all winter long if we are to prevail. You can start your own Occupy group in your neighborhood or school or with just your friends. Speak out against economic injustice at every chance you get. Stop the bank from evicting the family down the block. Move your checking and credit card to a community bank or credit union. Place a sign in your yard -- and get your neighbors to do it also -- that says, "WE ARE THE 99%."

"Do something, anything, but don't remain silent. Not now. This is the moment. It won't come again. 75 years ago today, in Flint, Michigan, the people said they'd had enough and occupied the factories until they won. What is stopping us now? The rich have one plan: bleed everyone dry. Can anyone, in good conscience, be a bystander to this?

"My uncle wasn't, and because of what he and others did, I got to grow up without having to worry about a roof over my head or medical bills or a decent life. And all that was provided by my dad who built spark plugs on a GM assembly line.

"Let's each of us double our efforts to raise a ruckus, Occupy Everywhere, and get creative as we throw a major nonviolent wrench into this system of Greed. Let's make the politicians running for office in 2012 quake in their boots if they refuse to tax the rich, regulate Wall Street and do whatever we the people tell them to do".

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/75-years-ago-today-first-occupy

Leave aside Michael Moore's adoption of the all too common confusion around between working and "middle class", which has the danger that it erects a false barrier between those workers still with jobs and skills in demand and the poor and unemployed. Moore's vision also limits itself to the possibility of restoring and defending the relative prosperity gained by sections of working people in heyday of boom and American industrial power.

But at least he reminds us that these gains were made in struggle and did not 'trickle down' from the generosity of the business tycoons and bosses, or the super rich. Evoking the struggles of the 1930s is also a healthy inoculation against the snake-oil salesmen, conspiracy theorists and middle class dumbwits who have been telling eeach other the system was fine until some wicked individuals spoilt it, and have remembered how Henry Ford once spoke ill about bankers, forgetting he also ordered gangsters and guns be used against workers.

Moore is wrong to think the big auto sit-downs of 1936 were the first time such things had happened, even in America, and they certainly were not confined there. In 1920, Italian workers occupied the big plants of Turin, though as one observer noted, while they had raised the red flag over the factories, the tricolore still flew over the barracks and police stations. We know which won, as a former "Socialist" backed by capitalists, landowners and the bankers JP Morgan arranged the "march on Rome" of his blackshirts.

But if the embers of working class resistance had been stamped underfoot with the rise of fascism they burst into flame again in 1943, in the factories of Turin as well as in the partisan movement, which was to leave il Duce dangling.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/62367983/4/THE-TURIN-STRIKES-OF-MARCH-1943

Between the wars sit-downs and occupations had taken various forms and places, from Italy to Poland, even Hungary under a semi-fascist regime, and often involving miners staying underground. In 1934 there was a major staydown strike at Terbovlye, in Slovenia. It may have been miners from Yugoslavia who brought that weapon with them to the anthracite mines in America.

In 1935 about 70 miners stayed down and on strike at Nine Mile Point colliery in South Wales. It was not to be the last time miners in Britain took such action.

http://www.labournet.de/internationales/usa/sitdown37.pdf
http://www.uncanny.net/~wetzel/ital1920revised.html

In 1936, strikers at Le Havre in Normandy occupied to prevent a lock-out, and their action spread right across France, involving big factories like Renault and the steel plants. It ended with workers winning gains from employers and government, not just national pay agreements but for the first time, holidays with pay and other benefits.

In both France and the United States the sit-down strikes boosted organisation and confidence in the working class, as well as securing immediate gains, and as Leon Trotsky pointed out, they did something more:

Sit-down strikes, the latest expression of this kind of initiative, go beyond the limits of "normal" capitalist procedure. Independently of the demands of the strikers, the temporary seizure of factories deals a blow to the idol, capitalist property. Every sit-down strike poses in a practical manner the question of who is boss of the factory: the capitalist or the workers?

Transitional Programme of the Fourth International
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/index.htm

Of course posing the question is not delivering an answer. In the 1970s there were several places in Britain, the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders being most famous, where workers fighting sackings and closure took over the workplace, and while perpectives varied they posed other questions, like how the workplace relates to society, the state and finance.

More recently we have had the occupations at Vestas in the Isle of Wight, and Visteon in Belfast and London. Both raised interest much wider than among "the usual suspects", and neither waited for supposed leaders from the TUC or Labour Party to initiate them. The Vestas strikers, defending wind turbine jobs, gained support from climate camp activists.

Though the main struggle here is currently over cuts and pensions, it is clearly related to who should pay for the capitalists' crisis, and could raise the issues of who is boss, and who owns what, in new ways.

The Occupy movement has sprung up outside the conventional organised labour movement, but if anti-capitalism is to mean anything positive it needs the working class as a political force, and for that the working class needs its memory. Whatever Michael Moore's political limits, we should welcome anyone, particularly with his creative skills, who is bringing out the connections.

And yet, still it moves!

2011-12-28T07:30:00.000-08:00

SPRING scene from Regueb, 'the land of free people', Tunisia. (photo by Fawzi Chihaoui)

AS the year draws to a close the enemies of the Arab peoples may be assuring themselves that the "Arab Spring' is all over bar the shooting, as reaction clamps down brutally in Egypt, while Islamic parties there and in Tunisa taste the fruits of others struggle and sacrifice. The Saudis have shown willing to put all that Western hardware to use in Bahrain.

In Libya the new regime brought forth by NATO help has promised sharia law, and a "freedom" that could make people nostalgic for the tyrrany of Gaddafi. There, as in Iraq after western "liberation", the oil companies are not the only ones taking advantage of opportunities. Al Qaida is reportedly moving into new quarters nearer Europe, and anyone who believed the imperialist guff about "winning the war on terror" may yet wonder why outfits like MI6 and the CIA are called "intelligence" services.

It is too soon to call what is going to happen in Syria, with or without interference from the West, whose sanctions are making people suffer more, or the Arab League, which send a human rights team headed by a Sudanese general accused of war crimes in Darfur.

In Israel, the movement for social justice inspired by Tahrir Square has folded its tents without, for the most part, its leaders worrying how it could achieve anything without acknowledging the rights of the neighbours Or perhaps the leaders did worry, and decided to settle for more modest advances, such as jobs for themselves in the establishment political parties which, including Labour, have created the mess.

Now, while settlers and ultra-Orthodox battle as to who can best finish Israel's pretence of modern democracy, the military come to the fore again with their panacea; whatever is happening in the rest of the world, never mind the Middle East - "Let's bomb Gaza!". They may think they can get away with it again, especially in an American election year, but counting on the Mid West instead of the Middle East, they may have miscalculated.

The Palestinians are no longer as divided as they were, and nor is the Egyptian border safe. Israel may try to compensate for loss of its Turkish ally by discovering the Armenian Holocause and the plight of the Kurds, but making propaganda is not the same as taking positions on the ground. As for the Arab masses, having shed their blood for changes in their own countries, they are not going to forget the Palestinians, nor forgive any regime, be it nationalist or Islamic in garb, that accepts humiliation in the name of compromise.

As to what is happening in the countries of the 'Arab Spring', we can see that in spite of any setbacks or suppression, this revolution is still moving, and its character is being decided, not by outside pundits or even political leaders, but by the people taking part.

In Tunisia, the combination of political dictatorship and economic neo-liberalism offering no hope led to a young man setting fire to himself and igniting the revolt. The aspiration to work and a future remains, and with it the awakening of women and awareness of minorities are aspects to which some attention has been drawn. Attacks on synagogues, whether perpetrated by Salafis or others, were seen as the work of saboteurs of the revolution, and the new Tunisian leader has urged Jews who left the country during past Middle East tension to return. It may be just a gesture but that does not mean it is insignificant.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/20/tunisia-elections-women-grow-anxious
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/27/equality-legacy-arab-spring

If women in Tunisia are anxious, in Egypt they have been enraged by police brutality, which forced US secretary of State Hilary Clinton to take her distance from Washington's allies. Rather than be intimidated, the women turned out in huge, almost unprecedented numbers in solidarity with their sisters.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKRe-MONpN0

While an important aspect of democratic revolution in Egypt is the establishment of works committees and free trade unions, it is also interesting to see how the struggle to determine the revolution's character finds a microcosmic echo in a battle within a professional body, in this case the doctors' union.
http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/24533.aspx

As in Bahrain, it seems the medical professionals in Egypt too are taking blows from the state for asserting their independence and duty to come to the aid of their people injured ghting for freedom.
http://english.ahram.org.eg/~/NewsContent/1/64/30199/Egypt/Politics-/We-are-targeted-by-police-and-army-for-treating-de.aspx

It was the historical failure of Egypt's bourgeoise to establish a democracy free from corruption and undertake modern development which doomed the country to decades of military rule, from Nasser's "Arab Socialism" through to Mubarak's regime. Replacing khaki with cleric's garb, or a coalition of both, will not deliver social justice. The Egyptian working class, so often brave in struggle, must have a political voice.

One group which has emerged are the revolutionary socialists, and they seem to have aroused the fear and hatred of both the regime and the religious reactionaries. For their part they are refusing to be silenced or intimidated, and this seems to be enlarging the hearing they receive . While we don't know enough yet to comment on their policies, let us hope the fears they arouse among the witch-hunters are justified!

It may even give people on the Left here something to think about.

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=27066
http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/12/28/184999.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPmmrBF5rSo&feature=share

EU takes account, and Veolia counts the cost

2011-12-27T14:19:00.000-08:00

IN an apparent change from the days when Britain used its presidency of the European Union to suppress a report criticising Israeli policy on the West Bank, the EUs ambassador to Israel has submitted a formal protest to the Israeli Foreign Ministry over plans to displace Bedouin, and demolition of Palestinian homes in the E1 area near the West Bank settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim.

The EU Ambassador, Andrew Standley, also expressed profound concern over the deterioration in the Palestinian residents situation in the West Bank Area C, under Israeli control. He cited the rise in the number of houses demolished by Israel, an excess of 500 in 2011, resulting in more than 1,000 Palestinians displaced.

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) is taking some credit for ensuring that European governments and the EU are kept aware of what is going on. It says that after a briefing and field visit lead by ICAHD Co-Director Itay Epshtain, and Advocates Michael Sfard and Emily Schaeffer, European foreign ministers received a report compiled by the European consuls in Ramallah and East Jerusalem on the situation of the Palestinians in Area C of the West Bank.

"The report cited a rise in the number of Palestinian houses demolished by Israel, and the growing distress of the Palestinians living in Area C. "ICAHD has long cautioned about the emergence of a greater Jerusalem" said Epshtain "linking the Judaization of East Jerusalem and displacement of Bedouin in E1, with the development of Ma'aleh Adumim, all the way to the Jordan Valley."

"The significance of this development is not only the creation of a greater Jerusalem that controls the center of the West Bank" says ICAHD Director Dr. Jeff Halper "but the emergence of Israeli Occupation territorial contiguity, that effectively eliminates the two state solution."

Halper referred to the EU protest saying: "The EU is picking up on ICAHD's long standing analysis which connects seemingly unrelated developments on the ground to the larger political picture."

According to Haaretz, EU foreign ministers have also received information from human rights organizations, referring to ICAHD's publication'Nowhere left to Go: Arab al-Jahalin Bedouin Ethnic Displacement', saying Israel is planning to forcefully transfer some 3,000 Bedouins of the Arab al-Jahalin tribe from their residence in the E1 area, to allow for the expansion of illegal settlement Ma'aleh Adumim.

In November 2011, Israel expropriated 1.5 km2 of Palestinian land in the northern Jordan Valley and de-facto annexed the land to a Jewish community within Israel proper. This is considered the first instance of Palestinian land in the Occupied West Bank to be annexed to Israel, (excluding East Jerusalem) in defiance of international law.

In his May 2011 address to US Congress, Israeli PM Netanyahu asserted that "Israel will never cede the Jordan Valley. Israel would never agree to withdraw from the Jordan Valley under any peace agreement signed with the Palestinians. And it‘s vital – absolutely vital – that Israel maintain a long-term military presence along the Jordan River."

The Path to Annexation – 2011 Fact Sheet published by ICAHD highlights the matrix of control laid over the Jordan Valley, the legal framework, fact and figures associated with the de-facto annexation of the Jordan Valley.

To download the fact sheet, press here…

http://www.icahd.org/?p=8028

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B1AOvsjv8IjdMjNlYTk5YjItZGU4Mi00ZmJiLWFlYjMtN2UwZWRkNTk1M2Q3&hl=en_GB

http://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/israel/about_us/delegation_role/index_en.htm

Meanwhile, in London, campaigners celebrated the good news before Christmas that French-owned company Veolia appears to have been left out of the bidding for a £485 million contract for the West London Waste Authority ('WLWA') , covering disposal and treatment of of residual domestic waste from o1.4 million inhabitants of the London boroughs of Brent, Ealing, Harrow, Hillingdon, Hounslow and Richmond-upon-Thames.

The reasons behind the decision by the WLWA to exclude Veolia from the short list are commercially confidential. The company has a wide range of business in Britain, from water supply to bus services. It has recently lost contracts in Richmond and Ealing, and been criticised for wanting to cut street cleaning it carries out in Brent.

But what has really engaged the activity of Palestinian solidarity and human rights campaigners is Veolia's involvent in projects assisting and profiting from Israel's occupation and colonisation in the West Bank. Together with another French company Alstom (formerly better-known in Britain as Connex) it has been involved in the Jerusalem light railway project which links illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank with Jerusalem, helping to reinforce the cordon of settlements which separates the city, including Arab East Jerusalem from its hinterland.

Veolia also runs bus services whose segregated character was exposed recently by Palestinian youth who were arrested for boarding the bus at certain points (and one of them simply for being at the stop).

Over the last six months campaigners in London lobbied local councillors and officials to exclude Veolia from the waste contracts, and submitted a letter to the WLWA documenting Veolia's direct complicity in grave breaches of international and humanitarian law in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Besides the transport issues, - including what amounts to discrimination in recruitment of staff - campaigners also pointed to Veolia involvment in taking waste from Israel and illegal Israeli Settlements and dumps this on Palestinian land at the Tovlan landfill, in the Jordan valley.

Some of this information came from the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem in its report on the Jordan valley, and in North London where councils are considering a contract similar to the West London one, they received a letter from the coalition of women;s peace groups in Israel and Palestine. The campaign in west London had support from the Green Party and more recently from Brent Trades Union Council.

There are signs that Veolia would like to divest from its controversial Palestine involvments as its business elsewhere starts to suffer. Alstom has already been hit by institutional investers in Holland and Norway deciding to pull out, and it suffered the loss of a major rail contract in Saudi Arabia following publicity over its Israeli operations.

http://www.thejc.com/blogs/suzanna/veolia-takes-severe-blow-as-it-fails-to-win-485-million-pound-contract-in-west-london-

http://www.palestinecampaign.org/index7b.asp?m_id=1&l1_id=4&l2_id=25&Content_ID=2312

http://wembleymatters.blogspot.com/p/letter-to-west-london-waste-authority.html

http://markets.ft.com/research/Markets/Tearsheets/Summary?s=fr%3AVIE

http://www.zawya.com/marketing.cfm?zp&p=/story.cfm/sidGN_28102011_291011/Alstom_loses_94bn_Saudi_rail_contract

Not much goodwill about

2011-12-25T06:59:00.000-08:00

SAD as it is to say, and without in any way doubting or disrespecting the hopes of millions for whom today is about more than expensive overindulgence or ostentation (not to mention the millions without clean water or enough to eat), the millennial message about "peace and goodwill to all" has still to penetrate or overcome power politics.

Today's news from Nigeria, where dozens of people have reportedly been killed in a string of church bombings, is a reminder of the way religion itself is used as a cover for hate-mongering and organised murder. Like the bombings in Iraq which it closely followed, and the ferocious attack on an Assyrian church in October 2010, these are not spontaneous outbursts by mobs, as suggested perhaps by the inadequate expression "sectarian strife", but planned attacks by trained groups with arms and explosives, and sometimes suspicious ability to get past security forces.

And before any self-righteous Christians smugly point their finger at Islam as a "religion of violence", we needn't remind them of what the Churches have sanctioned and exhorted over centuries, but just mention Sabra and Chatila in Lebanon, Omarska and Srebrenica in Bosnia. The UK too is no stranger to "sectarian violence"; and the Assyrians whom we mentioned have not been safe from attack in the United States.
http://www.atour.com/news/national/20010924a.html

Having unleashed so much destruction and misery in Iraq, and bombed Libyans to "free" them, the US and Britain are threatening to do the same for Syria, and meanwhile hitting its people with sanctions which starve the ordinary people they are supposed to save. "Suffer little children" seems to be the part of the Gospel they apply. Meanwhile right-wing American preachers and politicians are competing to promise Armageddon with Iran.

In Israel recent months have seen a spate of arson attacks on mosques, with which the police seem suspiciously unable to cope, as well as threats to Jewish peace groups, for which one suspect was caught and turned out to be the son of the head of the security services. It is just one manifestation of a shift towards intolerance and the politics of the far Right.

Last year we had the mayor of Nazareth Illit, which sits on the hill overlooking what we're told was Jesus' home town, announcing a ban on Christmas trees in the squares, because this was a "Jewish town". Arab residents, many of them Christians, got the message. Decorated trees may not be essential to Middle Eastern Christian tradition, but nor are they offensive to Judaism, which has a New Year for Trees, Tu b'Shvat. Besides, more than a few Jewish families in the West have been known to install festive trees indoors at this time of the year, "just for the kids".

But this wasn't just about religious intolerance, it was about showing who is boss, and telling others they don't belong. No wonder Palestinians put such an interpretation on the Israeli leaders' insistance that Israel is a "Jewish state", and Western government's injunctions on them to recognise this as the price for peace, particularly when they also see maps depicting the West Bank and Gaza as parts of Israel.

No wonder, either that the Christmas Tree has become so significant a symbol in Arab Palestine, from Beit Sahour east of Bethlehem, which claims the fields where shepherds saw a new star announcing hope, through Bethlehem itself, to Nazareth.

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=344641

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEs-quqSGPI

https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=342685249081443

http://www.indcatholicnews.com/news.php?viewStory=17371

In Britain, where we are used to stories in the right-wing press about Christmas and its symbols supposedly being banned or at least threatened in order supposedly to appease other religions, or in the name of "political correctness", the ban in Nazareth somehow escaped much attention. Maybe because it was real unlike their usual fabrications, or because they don't want their blinkered readers to realise Palestinians are not all fundamentalist Muslims.

Last week we had Prime Minister David Cameron turning from patriotism (evidently not quite the last refuge of a scoundrel) to the Bible, declaring on the 400 th anniversary of the King James Bible that the UK was still a Christian country and "we should not be afraid to say so".

I should not think the Prime Minister was signalling his intention to join Occupy LSX protesters and clear the money changers from the temple, nor even that he would listen to what the Archbishop of Canterbury has to say about social services and cuts. But that exhortation to "not be afraid", implying that somehow poor Christians were being intimidated by non-believers and those of other faiths was a signal to those who assert their "Christianity" by hostility to others that they are on the right lines. This might not upset Mad Mel at the Mail, who likes to think we are in it together, defending "Judeo-Christian values" against the rest, and maybe it won't trouble Tory Priti Patel MP who is busy campaigning against trade unionists to prove her worth to the Tory Right.

I don't know whether Baroness Varsi is comfortable with it. She complained last January that prejudice and hostility towards Muslims was becoming almost respectable in British society.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100072900/hatred-of-muslims-is-one-of-the-last-bastions-of-british-bigotry/

But then in October, remembering perhaps that she is chairman of the Tory party, the Muslim peeress adopted what could almost have been a foretaste of Cameron's speech, by saying Britain needed to become more Christian and people should not be afraid of saying they went to.church.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/8854355/Britain-should-become-more-Christian-says-Baroness-Warsi.html

I thought people were more afraid of being called liars when they claimed to go to church, for instance when trying to get their kids a place in religious schools.

The BBC report I saw of Cameron's speech did not get a quote from the baroness, but oddly did give us Michael Portillo: " We all know the classic cases of political correctness that you are not allowed to mention Christmas, and cards that you send out at this time of the year must not mention Christmas and things like this. I mean, absolute nonsense. So, as though my Jewish friends would not send out new year's cards at the time of their new year. Quite extraordinary."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16231223

If that is the message Portillo got, I think we can guess what the EDL and those who encourage them made of it.

Pride and Prejudice

If some people in whatever religion are unlikely to unite and love one another, they can sometimes unite in hatred of a common foe, be it wicked materialism (that of the have-nots, not the rich) or gay rights campaigners, who unlike some clerics tend to choose willing partners above the age of consent.

We saw the furore over a "Pride" march in Jerusalem, and here in Britain a body called the Christian Institure is boasting that retailers Tesco have been forced by the threat of a boycott to withdraw its sponsorship from London Gay Pride.
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2011/12/23/exclusive-tesco-drops-future-pride-funding-days-into-christian-boycott/
http://www.christian.org.uk/news/tesco-rethinks-its-sponsorship-of-london-gay-pride-festival/

The Christian Institute says it exists for “the furtherance and promotion of the Christian religion in the United Kingdom” and “the advancement of education”.

"The Christian Institute is a nondenominational Christian charity committed to upholding the truths of the Bible. We are supported by individuals and churches throughout the UK.

We believe that the Bible is the supreme authority for all of life and we hold to the inerrancy of Scripture. We are committed to upholding the sanctity of life from conception".

Though not happy that the government is doing enough to deal with gays and promote Christian family values, or remove supposed protection from Muslims, the Institute probably sees Cameron's speech as encouraging.

http://www.christian.org.uk/news/pm-bible-gives-us-values-and-morality-worth-standing-up-for/

But its exasperation with Tescos does not just extend to the subject of gays. Apparently the store chain, in common with various other institutions, has been causing poor unwitting Christians to purchase and consume Halal meat. What's more it was slow to refund them when they found out.

'But Mrs Robinson told him that if she had been a Muslim who had unknowingly bought non-Halal meat, the store would give her money back. She said: "I felt that as a Christian I had as much right to demand a refund. At that point he relented and reluctantly took the meat back.”

'If Tesco had continued to refuse her a refund when it would have given one to a Muslim, Mrs Robinson could have launched a legal action. She added: “If I’d known it was Halal I would not have bought it. It is an issue of conscience for me, something I feel strongly about'.

http://www.christian.org.uk/news/video-tesco-slow-to-refund-christian-over-halal-lamb/

Now maybe I am a bit slow to see the equation being made here. A Muslim or Jewish person required by their religion to only eat meat that conforms to their dietary laws will expect that meat that is labelled halal or kosher is as it is described. Especially if they have to pay extra for it as is usually the case with kosher meat, not because of any superiority but for the cost of religious supervision. They are unlikely to be satisfied with a refund for having inadvertedly broken their religious code.

Christianity, so far as I am aware, does not have any dietary rules. You can eat what you like. And until comparatively recently, kill it how you like. Good Christian English folk, clergy included, managed for centuries to spear, shoot, snare or ring the neck of creatures for the pot, as well as setting dogs on other animals to see them rip them apart, just for fun. It seems a bit late to become squeamish about other people's slaughter methods, if that is the issue. But assuming it is (and some of my friends have become vegetarians for the same reason), I don't see how this can be classed a religious objection, albeit apparently one than can be assuaged with a cash refund.

Still, whatever the genuine feelings of the lady in this case, I think we might discern other motives in the Christian Institute making a campaign around such things.

Another report on the Institute's website says that Ofcom is trying to clean up offensive language in broadcasting, especially when children might be exposed to it.

http://www.christian.org.uk/news/clampdown-on-offensive-language-on-the-radio/

But the Christian Institute is not that keen on censorship.
'Should the law criminalise "insulting" words or behaviour? Most people would say "no". The freedom to disagree and to challenge received wisdom lie at the heart of a democracy. But Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 outlaws "insulting" conduct. We believe it is having a chilling effect on free speech and particularly Christian evangelism.The Christian Institute is campaigning for the word "insulting" to be removed from Section 5, as part of the forthcoming Freedom Bill'.
They have the support of some Tory MPs.

I feel tempted to take this as encouragement to freely say what I think of the Christian Institute. But it is hard to find adequate words, and besides, this blog is a family site.

So peace on earth, goodwill to all. But don't expect it now.

A Consistent Freedom Fighter

2011-12-23T04:23:00.000-08:00

WHEN he died two years ago he was buried with full military honours in Warsaw, his coffin draped in the red banner of the Jewish Workers' Bund, inscribed "Bund - Yidisher Sozialistisher Farband," and the choir sang the Bund anthem, "Di Shvue."

Tributes flowed in to Marek Edelman, who had been the last surviving commander of the 1943 Warsaw ghetto revolt, and some of them came from political leaders who would not have understood let alone cared for his politics, and media that had little to say for him when he was alive.

From ghetto fighter to cardiologist, Marek Edelman was a consistent fighter for human rights and dignity, and whatever allies might have sought his support, his enemies were enemies of freedom. Having been a member from his youth of the Bund, which fought for Jewish workers' rights wherever they lived rather than looking for a Promised Land elsewhere, he remained stubbornly in his native Poland even when antisemitism reared its ugly head again under so-called socialism.

He went on to champion the workers' rights committee KOR and Solidarity, also extending his sympathy to the people of Bosnia, to the extent of comparing the Muslims fight for survival to that of the Polish Jews against Nazism.

Some left-wing dissidents in Poland, such as the Trotskyist Ludwik Hass, whose own death preceded Edelman's by a year, criticised the former ghetto fighter for what they saw as his naievity, both about the Solidarnosc leaders' aims and the goals of Western democracy. They did not doubt Edelman's own motivations and decency.

Edelman's survival, and refusal to join the Zionists claiming exclusive rights to the Holocaust and ghetto fight, or to Palestine, were enough to earn him emnity and ensure that his name was seldom mentioned in either Establishment media or "official" history. To make matters worse in August 2002 he wrote an open letter to Palestinian resistance leaders, in which he criticised the use of suicide bombers to hit civilian targets, but infuriated the Israeli government and its supporters by addressing the Palestinians as fellow-fighters against oppression. Edelman addressed his letter "To all the leaders of Palestinian military, paramilitary and guerilla organizations — To all the soldiers of Palestinian militant groups".

When Edelman's book "The Ghetto Fights" had been republished in English in 1994, by the Socialist Workers' Party publishers Bookmarks, it received a hostile review in, of all places, the anti-fascist journal Searchlight, which had entrusted the task to some hack bred by the Zionist Union of Jewish Students. It was hard to detect which aroused most ire, Marek Edelman's straightforward historical account or the politics of those who had published it.

The motives of former Israeli Defence Minister and Foreign Minister Moshe Arens, who visited Edelman in Warsaw in 2005, should have been above such suspicion, but his efforts to have the former ghetto commander's heroism officially recognised were unsuccesful.

When on my return from Warsaw I tried to convince a number of Israeli universities to award Edelman an honorary doctorate in recognition of his role in the Warsaw ghetto uprising, I ran into stubborn opposition led by Holocaust historians in Israel. He had received Poland's highest honor, and at the 65th commemoration of the Warsaw ghetto uprising he was awarded the French Legion of Honor medal. He died not having received the recognition from Israel that he so richly deserved.

Perhaps in retrospect they did him an unintended favour.

Now a homage to Marek Edelman has appeared, from those with most claim to honour the tradition from which he came. Freedom in his Heart: a tribute to Marek Edelman,, is published by Jewish Socialist Publications. Some of the articles that appeared in the Jewish Socialist magazine shortly after Edelman's death, and there are also short extracts from "The Ghetto Fights". The articles have been written in Britain, Poland and America. The title is a sly allusion to Edelman's profession as a cardiologist as well as the spirit that was his lifeblood.

Following the Introduction, there's an essay by David Rosenberg, For dignity and freedom, not territory, on Edelman's Bundist principles and how they were applied during and after the war, in the fields of Jewish thought, Polish political life and international issues.

In So faithful to the people of the ghetto, Wlodka Blit Robertson, who was smuggled out of the Warsaw ghetto as a child just a few weeks before the Uprising began, reflects on her personal interactions in Poland with Marek Edelman and the activist Alina Margolis who married Edelman).

Barry Smerin gives a first hand report of Edelman's funeral, Buried with his comrades, while Mike Shatzkin in A fateful promise tells the tragic tale of Edelman's attempts to help the daughter of a Bundist fighter, Zelman Frydrych, who perished in the ghetto uprising.

All this and extracts from The Ghetto Fights. A perfect present for Chanukah, even if it arrives a bit late If the lamp in the temple could last for eight days what's a few more days among friends, over Christmas?

You can order copies ( inside the UK it is £3 plus 65p p&p.) Cheques/POs to JS Publications. Send to JS BM3725 London WC1N 3XX

When they do it, it's not called a boycott

2011-12-20T23:18:00.001-08:00

NOT GIVEN HOUSEROOM? Images like this one from Larissa Sansour’s Nation Estate project proved too much for Lacoste, who have removed artist from Elysée Prize.

I'M not a great fan of the "Cultural Boycott" idea, though I can understand the legitimate motivation which leads friends to reach for this tactic, against the "normalisation" of oppressive regimes and occupations, like Israel's hold on the West Bank, now approaching its 45th year.

Sometimes such boycotts can hit the wrong people, as when a lecturer was banned from speaking at Leicester University back in the 1970s because he was a white South African, though he had been helping black African trades unionists and was no friend of the Apartheid regime. (An apparatchnik fell back on the excuse that the man was "not approved by the ANC", unaware as of course we all were that the London ANC office was being manipulated by the South African intelligence service).

I know my friends waging the anti-Israel boycott would not be so unjust or crude, but there was the hostility misdirected at Juliano Mer-Khamis in Hungary, foreshadowing his assassination outside the theatre he had founded in Jenin.

Besides, the other side - governments, business and reactionary outfits - are much more able to enforce their boycotts, as an army checkpoint is more effective than a couple of kids giving out leaflets. They don't use the "boycott" word, don't depend on voluntary adherence, and don't care whom they hit.

It does not do them any credit.

A big American DIY firm, Lowe's Home Improvement. decided recently to pull ads from a TVreality show about American Muslims, following protests from an evangelical Christian group. The North Carolina- based retailer stopped advertising on TLC's "All-American Muslim" after a group calling itself the Florida Family Association complained, saying the program was "propaganda that riskily hides the Islamic agenda's clear and present danger to American liberties and traditional values."

The show, premiered last month, simply chronicles the lives of five families from Dearborn, Michigan, just outside Detroit. The area has a large and long-established Muslim and Arab-American population, and the programme just shows ordinary families going about their lives, their kids going to school and saluting the flag, and so on. But evidently this suggestion that Muslims, Arab-Americans, are just plain folk, American citizens, even human beings, is too much for some good Christians to bear.

They mobilised supporters to write to the show's sponsors, and one company pulled its ads. It is reminiscent of the days of the Hollywood witch-hunts, when such tactics made sure actors or screen-writers labelled "communist" could not work in the United States. Except in this case the bullying is aimed not at individuals nor even a political spectre, but at an entire section of people defined by ethnicity or religious faith. The comparison with Germany in the 1930s need not be stressed. In America, fascism often appears in religious guise.

Slamming the Lowe company's decision as "un-American" and "naked religious bigotry", a state senator from Southern California has said he was connsidering calling for a boycott. Senator Ted Lieu, a Democrat from Torrance, said he would also consider legislative action if Lowe's doesn't apologize to Muslims and reinstate its ads. The senator sent a letter outlining his complaints to Lowe's Chief Executive Officer Robert A. Niblock.

"The show is about what it's like to be a Muslim in America, and it touches on the discrimination they sometimes face. And that kind of discrimination is exactly what's happening here with Lowe's," Lieu said.

Suehaila Amen, whose family is featured on "All-American Muslim," said she was disappointed by the Lowe's decision. "I'm saddened that any place of business would succumb to bigots and people trying to perpetuate their negative views on an entire community," Amen, 32, told The Detroit News on Sunday.

http://www.npr.org/2011/12/11/143552956/lowes-pulls-ads-u-s-muslim-reality-tv-show

WHEN it comes to Palestine and Palestinians, boycott can be applied so automatically and unhesitatingly that merely to utter the names can be treated as "political", indeed an act of rebellion. I well remember the American gentleman who was scandalised, and lectured me about the iniquities of Arab regimes, because I wore a tee shirt artistically depicting old Jerusalem rooftops and with the one word in small print "PALESTINE". More recently I heard of the crates of Taybeh beer which could not be imported into the United States because they were labelled "made in Palestine" and the US customs insisted there was "no such country". I thought maybe Pressident Obama, who had spoken about 1967 borders, should have a word with them, but evidently they had interpreted America's policy correctly, as we have seen by the US decision to boycott UNESCO.

And it is not just America, as the story below from Ali Abumineh's blog on Electronic Intifada indicates:
The high-end French clothing chain Lacoste has demanded the removal of work by Palestinian artist Larissa Sansour from the shortlist for the €25,000 Lacoste Elysee Prize that is awarded by the Swiss Musee de l’Elysee with sponsorship from the firm.

Sansour was among eight finalists shortlisted for the 2011 prize. According to a press release issued by Sansour, “Lacoste stated their refusal to support Sansour’s work, labelling it ‘too pro-Palestinian.’”

This latest instance of apparent censorship of Palestinian artists by a cultural institution comes just months after the Museum of Children’s Art in Oakland, California censored an exhibit of art by children in Gaza just before its planned opening under pressure from anti-Palestinian Zionist groups.

Sansour, who is based in London, is a native of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank. The press release explains:

As a nominee, Sansour was awarded a bursary of €4,000 and given carte blanche to produce a portfolio of images for the final judging. In November 2011, three photos for Sansour’s Nation Estate project were accepted, and she was congratulated by the prize administrators on her work and professionalism. Sansour’s name was included on all the literature relating to the prize and on the website as an official nominee. Her name has since been removed, just as her project has been withdrawn from an upcoming issue of contemporary art magazine ArtReview introducing the nominated artists.

In an attempt to mask the reasons for her dismissal, Sansour was asked to approve a statement saying that she withdrew from her nomination ‘in order to pursue other opportunities’. Sansour has refused.

Søren Lind, Sansour’s assistant, told The Electronic Intifada today that the Lacoste company had yet to give any public response on the matter. A Google-cached image of the official Elysée Prize website captured by The Electronic Intifada proves that Sansour’s name was on the shortlist until at least 12 December, and then removed on the current version.

Sansour’s multimedia project Nation Estate was “conceived in the wake of the Palestinian bid for UN membership. Nation Estate depicts a science fiction-style Palestinian state in the form of a single skyscraper housing the entire Palestinian population. Inside this new Nation Estate, the residents have recreated their lost cities on separate floors: Jerusalem on 3, Ramallah on 4, Sansour’s own hometown of Bethlehem on 5, etc.”

Sansour was born in Jerusalem and her multimedia work has been exhibited all over the world. The photo above, from the exhibit, is published courtesy of Sansour. More can be seen at her website.

Full text of press release

20th December 2011

LACOSTE: NO ROOM FOR PALESTINIAN ARTIST

French fashion brand demands the removal of Bethlehem artist Larissa Sansour from major photographic prize.

The prestigious €25,000 Lacoste Elysée Prize is awarded by the Swiss Musée de l’Elysée with sponsorship from Lacoste, the clothing brand.

Larissa Sansour was among the eight artists shortlisted for the 2011 prize. In December 2011, Lacoste demanded that her nomination be revoked. Lacoste stated their refusal to support Sansour’s work, labelling it ‘too pro-Palestinian’. A special jury will convene in January 2012 to select the winner.

As a nominee, Sansour was awarded a bursary of €4,000 and given carte blanche to produce a portfolio of images for the final judging. In November 2011, three photos for Sansour’s Nation Estate project were accepted, and she was congratulated by the prize administrators on her work and professionalism. Sansour’s name was included on all the literature relating to the prize and on the website as an official nominee. Her name has since been removed, just as her project has been withdrawn from an upcoming issue of contemporary art magazine ArtReview introducing the nominated artists.

In an attempt to mask the reasons for her dismissal, Sansour was asked to approve a statement saying that she withdrew from her nomination ‘in order to pursue other opportunities’. Sansour has refused.

Sansour says: “I am very sad and shocked by this development. This year Palestine was officially admitted to UNESCO, yet we are still being silenced. As a politically involved artist I am no stranger to opposition, but never before have I been censored by the very same people who nominated me in the first place. Lacoste’s prejudice and censorship puts a major dent in the idea of corporate involvement in the arts. It is deeply worrying.”

Sansour’s shortlisted work, Nation Estate, is conceived in the wake of the Palestinian bid for UN membership. Nation Estate depicts a science fiction-style Palestinian state in the form of a single skyscraper housing the entire Palestinian population. Inside this new Nation Estate, the residents have recreated their lost cities on separate floors: Jerusalem on 3, Ramallah on 4, Sansour’s own hometown of Bethlehem on 5, etc.

Regretting Lacoste’s decision to censor Sansour’s work, Musée de l’Elysée has offered to exhibit the Nation Estate project outside of the confines of the Lacoste sponsorship. Musée de l’Elysée is based in Lausanne, Switzerland. The Lacoste Elysée Prize 2011 is the award’s second edition.

http://electronicintifada.net/blog/ali-abunimah/french-clothing-firm-lacoste-censors-expels-palestinian-artist-larissa-sansour

http://electronicintifada.net/blog/ali-abunimah/evidence-lacostes-censorship-palestinian-artist-larissa-sansour-captured-google

I'd be tempted to call for a boycott of Lacoste, but to be honest I have never worn their stuff and could not afford it even if they catered for overweight old gits like me. But others might take the idea up., if they haven't done so already.

Where's Crocodile Dundee when you need him?!

Raising consciousness and solidarity

2011-12-19T13:00:00.001-08:00

BAHRAINIS at London May Day rally.
Now Manchester is centre of solidarity.

WITH scenes of police brutality in Egypt, the continuing death toll in Syria, and Israeli forces attacking the funeral procession of someone they had killed earlier, we can see why some people have said despondently that the euphoria of the "Arab Spring" has been succeeded by a Middle Eastern Winter.

But if we are looking for rays of light, one is that the people are plainly not giving up, nor going away, not even when the surely desperate forces of "order" have to drag women by their hair from Tahrir Square.

Another is that there is a movement of support and solidarity sprouting, more aware and conscious than anything we saw in the anti-war movement, maybe because it is centred on people with first-hand knowledge of the struggles because they and their families are directly involved. Refugees and exiles, from being merely people we ought to help, can help us know the score, the better to understand and fight the policies and regimes our governments are supporting.

Here's a report about Bahrain, and the arrest, physical violence and ill-treatment practiced against human rights defender Zainab AlKhawaj:

" We are deeply concerned about her safety after seeing the violence that she was subject to during arrest. Zainab Al-Khawaja is a 28-years-old member of Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, famous human rights blogger as @angryarabia and a mother of 2-years-old girl from Bahrain.

"On 15 December 2011, Zainab was arrested by Bahraini security forces from a roundabout on Budaiya highway, west of capital city Manama where she was taking part in a peaceful-sit-in-protest. The security forces responded with firing tear gas and stun grenades to disperse the protest, while Zainab continued the sit-in before the police moved in to rough her up. She was arrested, handcuffed, assaulted and punched in her back by the police officer as she was forcibly dragged off into custody. She, as well as another woman Masooma Al-Sayed were then taken to the police station.

"Zainab is a mother of a two-year-old child, whose husband Wafi Al-Majed is in prison along with her father, Bahrain’s most prominent political activist and human rights defender, Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja who was imprisoned for life in June by special military court. Zainab faces grave danger and is at risk of being tortured, as the regime has systematically attacked human rights defenders, health workers and professionals who are speaking up against the repression and human rights abuses.

"We condemn ill-treatment of Zainab Al-Khawaja in public in the strongest possible terms, and arbitrary detention and demand the authorities to release her and Masooma Al-Sayed immediately and unconditionally. We ask all concerned people to take immediate and urgent action in support of Zainab Al-Khawaja and Masooma Al-Sayed. Zainab Al-Khawaja and Masooma AlSayed are to be detained for seven days.

"According to their lawyer:
Masooma Alsayed was kicked in her leg and is now limping, was not seen by doctor
Zainab when arrested had something sprayed in her eyes and was unable to see for approx an hour. Zainab in police station was beaten on head, arms and legs, as she was unable to see
Zainab recognized the voice of the policewoman who beat her, but the prosecutor refused to write it down. When her lawyer attempted to show the prosecutor video of the arrest, he refused to see it. A policewoman came in with bandaged arm claiming Masooma and Zainab hit her.

Zainab refused to sign statement unless policewoman's name was taken who hit her. The prosecutor got angry and made everyone leave the room, awaiting decision.

The moment Zainab was arrested http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3Zdk98x9TM

http://www.rapar.org.uk/bahrain-solidarity-campaign.html

This information from Bahrain was relayed to us via Manchester, where there is a Bahraini people's solidarity campaign that has demonstrated with support from health workers and other local trades unionists and students against a Bahraini business conference, and in support of Bahraini doctors and nurses who were brutally attacked by the regime there.

At the weekend there was a conference in Manchester about the struggle for freedom and equality in Bahrain, addressed by among others, Tony Lloyd MP who is chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party. (Just for the record we note that Manchester Central MP Lloyd did vote against the Blair government on Iraq, and on the renewal of Trident.) This conference "In support of the Bahraini revolution" was made possible with the help of the refugee rights and political asylum research group RAPAR which says it will work with rather than merely for its clients, and has been assisting Bahraini students whose funds were stopped by their government.

As a Mancunian "exile" who grew up proud of Peterloo and the Chartists, and the area's historic lnks with colonial and Irish freedom and anti-Apartheid struggles , I award full marks to those who are maintaining the tradition in today's world! And best wishes to the Bahraini freedom struggle!

http://www.rapar.org.uk/bahrain-solidarity-campaign.html

http://menasolidaritynetwork.com/2011/10/15/bahrain-manchester-protest-highlights-medics-plight/

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=26378

And Iraq - Kurdistan

Meanwhile, and to set aside the mutual back-slapping between allies that has accompanied the US withdrawal from Iraq, here's a friend on Facebook posting pictures of an event that happened in London recently:

"On the occasion of International Human Rights Day our group Freedom Umbrella: Action for Kurdistan organised a seminar in UK parliament on the violation of human rights in Kurdistan. The seminar was hosted by Labour MP John McDonnell the speakers included Asos Hardi from Awene Newspaper in Kurdistan, Bashdar Ali Journliat and brother of journalist Sardasht Osman who was assassinated last year for criticizing the Kurdish authorities, Houzan Mahmoud from Organisaiton of Women’s freedom in Iraq and Mufid Abdullah journalist also editor of Kurdistan Tribune website. The seminar was chaired by Gona Saeed from Freedom Umbrella".

To which an Iraqi woman solidarity activist has commented:

"Great work Houzan, to have this meeting in parliament at this crucial time when the US/UK are congratulating themselves on what they have done to Iraq! The Kurdish region is often referred to by lobbies like 'Labour Friends of Iraq' as a shining example of people who benefited from the invasion and are living in democracy! Corruption, nepotism and lack of accountability are the main ills in Iraq today!"

To which Houzan Mahmoud replies:
"Thank you dear friend, well the so called Labour Friends of Iraq are standing with dictators not with the workers of Kurdistan. We know what is going on that's why we are hosting such meetings to make these issues known. best wishes".

To which I concur.

Witness faces trial by War Criminals

2011-12-17T21:48:00.001-08:00

AMERICAN soldier BRADLEY MANNING is the subject of a pre-trial hearing to decide whether he should face a full court martial on charges of taking classified material, and disclosing secrets that could "assist an enemy".

After months of being held in military cells, regularly stripped and treated like some dangerous terrorist, the former technician is having his supposed mental state, sexual inclinations and personal identity toosed around in public, before an investigating officer who must be impatient to proceed with the real business. Lt. Col. Paul Almanza, a reserve military judge who has also worked as a career prosecutor with the Department of Justice since 2002 until he went on reservist military leave to devote himself to the Manning case.

The military accuse Bradley Manning of "treason", which could incur the death penalty. Some politicians have been calling for his execution ever since he was identifed. But the information which Manning is accused of leaking through Wikileaks concerned actions by US forces in Iraq, which were hardly a secret to those at the receiving end, and diplomatic reports. They may have endangered America's reputation, but they assisted the American and allied public to know what has been done in our name. We are "the enemy".

The US colours were lowered in Iraq this weekend, and the "Last Post" played, before Defence Secretary Leon Panetta told troops: "You will leave with great pride, lasting pride, secure in knowing that your sacrifice has helped the Iraqi people to cast tyranny aside and to offer hope for prosperity and peace to this country's future generations."

The US forces are leaving behind some 700 "advisers" with Iraqi forces, and mercenary contractors no doubt to help look after the oil interests which Western companies have obtained. They are also leaving what was once among the more developed countries of the Arab world, but has been devasteated by sanctions and war, and torn apart by armed gangs, some imported, some covert foreign units, unleashed by the conquest.

Many educated Iraqis, doctors and engineers, have been killed or terrorised into leaving. along with Palestinian and others who had made their living there. "Aid" dollars and art treasures have gone missing from the country. And as American service personnel go home, many Iraqis have no homes left.

"Not far from where the speeches were taking place lay grim evidence which refuted the claims that the Americans were leaving behind a land of stability and prosperity. More than 8,000 people are living in squalor in a field of mud and foetid water, with huts made of rags and salvaged pieces of wood.

"The residents of Al-Rahlat camp are among 1.3 million refugees in their own country; families driven out of their homes by the sectarian violence spawned by the war. Another 1.6 million fled Iraq for neighbouring states, mainly Jordan and Syria. Those in Syria, with its escalating violence, are now having to seek another place of safety.

"Around 450,000 of the IDPs (internally displaced persons) are living in the worst conditions, crammed into 380 street settlements scattered around the country. They have little or no access to clean water, sanitation or medical care. Many of these people, deemed to be illegally squatting, cannot get the documents necessary to register for welfare relief or take up jobs, or enrol their sons and daughters in schools. The tension and claustrophobia of such an existence has led to psychological problems, especially among children. Domestic violence is rife.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/will-iraqs-13-million-refugees-ever-be-able-to-go-home-6277667.html

In the speeches at the leaving ceremeny particular tribute was paid to the bravery of US troops who went into Fallujah. For many that name evokes other memories, and living reminders:

"FPIF reports (November 23rd): Seven years after the U.S. invasion of Fallujah, there are reports of an alarming rise in the rates of birth defects and cancer. But the crisis, and its possible connection to weapons deployed by the United States during the war, remains woefully under-examined. "Thirty to fifty thousand people were still inside the city when the U.S. military launched a series of airstrikes, dropping incendiary bombs on suspected insurgent hideouts. Ground forces then combed through targeted neighborhoods house by house. Ross Caputi, who served as a first private Marine during the siege, has said that his squad and others employed "reconnaissance by fire," firing into dwellings before entering to make sure nobody inside was still alive. "By the end of the campaign, Fallujah was a ghost town. Though the military did not tally civilian casualties, independent reports put the number somewhere between 800 and 6,000. As The Washington Post reported in April 2005, more than half of Fallujah's 39,000 homes were damaged, of which 10,000 were no longer habitable. "Of the current problems in Fallujah, the most alarming is a mounting public health crisis. In the years since the invasion, doctors in Fallujah have reported drastic increases in the number of premature births, infant mortality, and birth defects-babies born without skulls, missing organs, or with stumps for arms and legs. Fallujah General Hospital reported that, out of 170 babies born in September 2009, 24 percent died within the first seven days, of which 75 percent were deformed".

That's an article from Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF), a project of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC. FPIF describes itself as a "Think Tank Without Walls"^[1] that brings together over 600 writers, scholars, academics, artists and activists seeking to make the United States a more responsible global partner. FPIF believes that "U.S. security and world stability are best advanced through a commitment to peace, justice and environmental protection as well as economic, political, and social rights".

But reports like their's on Falluja must surely be of assistance to the "enemy".

The high incidence of birth defects in Falluja has led some to wonder if it was linked to US chemical weapons or phosphorus, or depleted uranium munitions which the Western military leaders denied using in Iraq. But one authority has suggested that the culprit may not be depleted uranium.

"Professor Chris Busby, from the School of Biomedical Science, University of Ulster, believes that the United States severely overstepped the boundaries of international law and is the likely suspect in the use of not just deadly depleted uranium, a growing subject in the world, but actual U-235 enriched weapons-grade uranium from a neutron bomb.

Those are the weapons that kill biological life but leave structures and landscape otherwise intact. You could call it the ultimate irony; discovering that illegal nuclear weapons were used in Fallujah, Iraq by the United States; the country that led the world down the trail of deceit by falsely declaring that Iraq had 'weapons of mass destruction'

http://www.salem-news.com/articles/november042011/nuke-weapons-bn.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd6ix6swkXs

Some commentators have seemed in a rush to discredit Professor Busby and his findings.

We don't know how well-founded his research was or what motives he is supposed to have had for coming up with his version.

But of Bradley Manning's evidence on one incident there is little room for doubt. He provided an official video from a US helicopter gunship of the airstrike in which it killed eleven individuals on the ground, two of them being Reuters news correspondents, as well as firing rockets into a residential block, and destroying a van in which two children were passengers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrike

The crew remarked that people should not have brought kids into a "battle zone" - a Baghdad street, They don't appear to have faced any recriminations let alone trial. But then it would appear they were only following orders and acting in line with the procedure they had been given.

All the same it is some "justice" that ubjects the man who exposed such actions to an ordeal and threatens this witness with the death penalty.

The same "justice " that leaves George Dubya Bush with a grin, and Tony B-Liar Blair getting richer than ever from the war that the two of them started.

By way of a follow up:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/15/world/middleeast/united-states-marines-haditha-interviews-found-in-iraq-junkyard.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all

Two gun outrages, differently reported, both raising questions and echoes of the past

2011-12-16T00:55:00.000-08:00

TWO shooting outrages on the same day shocked two European cities this week. In the Belgian city of Liege, at least four people were killed in a gun and grenade attack at the Christmas market, and more than 123 people left wounded, some seriously.

In Florence's central squares a gunman killed two street vendors, both Senegalese, and wounded several others.

In both cases the killers appeared to have no rational motive, just opening fire on innocent people going about their ordinary lives. In both cases, the murderers were already known to the police, and each of them finished off by turning their guns on themselves, unlike the Norwegian killer Breivik who has lived to appear in court but whom doctors have declared insane.

Though neither outrage was on the scale of the massacre in Norway, both roused horor and anger, and both were rightly reported, but not to the same extent, at least in the UK. I saw the Liege shooting covered on TV, but not the attack in Florence. A report for the Institute of Race Relations wonders whether the difference in casualties in the two cities was big enough to justify their different coverage.

"The reporting was most obvious if you compare the BBC World Service's coverage between December 13 and 14 with that of BBC Radio 4. The World Service covered both incidents, while Radio 4 in its bulletins kept completely silent about Florence. In UK papers, too, the Liège story was front page news with the Florence incident, if covered at all, tacked on as an appendage. Was the reason that the victims in Florence were all Senegalese street vendors and violence against those without papers has become such an everyday feature of Italian life that it is not considered newsworthy?"

In both cases there are questions to be asked about how the killers were loose on the streets with firearms. Liege is, it's true, not only an industrial city but one historically associated with weaponry, from the Middle Ages through to the NATO-issue FN FAL automatic rifle produced at nearby Herstal.

All the same it is worrying that Nordine Amrani, a man who, according the BBC, was already "known to Belgian police as a gun enthusiast"(sic) was able to leave home in Liege that morning with an FAL assault rifle, hand grenades and a revolver, just off you might say for a day's shooting.

Amrani received a five-year prison sentence in 2008 for possessing a large arsenal and growing cannabis. However, a court of appeal acquitted him of the gun conviction a year later on the grounds that he had had the necessary permissions to keep them, his lawyer Jean-Francois Dister told La Libre Belgique newspaper.

When he was paroled in 2010, his guns were not returned because of his drug-dealing conviction but otherwise he was under no special gun restrictions, Mr Dister explained.

According to Liege public prosecutor Daniele Reynders, the paroled man showed no sign of mental instability.

At the time of the massacre, the 32 year old Ixelles-born man, a welder by trade, had been due to attend a police station for questioning about a vice charge. He had appeared in courts several times in his life and had a previous vice conviction from 2003. Apparently he felt the police were picking on him.

When he was arrested in 2008, police found 2,800 cannabis plants he was growing in a warehouse. They also found 10 guns and 9,500 gun parts. The arsenal included a Law rocket launcher, an AK-47 assault rifle, a sniper rifle, a K31 rifle, a Fal assault rifle and hundreds of cartridges, Le Soir reports.

"Amrani made silencers himself," its article notes."At the time, Amrani refused to say where the weapons had come from and where they were destined." He was acquitted of gun possession charges due to "grey areas" left by a change in the law, the paper says.'

Amrani opened fire in a square not far from the police station where he had been due to report on charges relating to a party in November and a woman's disappearence. He killed himself rather than face custody. After searching addresses associated with Amrani, and finding the body of a murdered woman, prosecutors said they had not found any message from the gunman. The woman, who had been shot through the head, was found in the same warehouse where Amrani cultivated cannabis in 2008, prosecutors confirmed.

If the Belgian killer felt driven beyond reason, or was a petty criminal who had become mixed up with something bigger than he understood, there is less doubt about the motivation of the gunman in Florence. Like Ander Breivik, the perpetrator of the Oslo massacre, Gianluca Casseri was inspired by the racist politics of the far Right. As the IRR report comments, the similarity with the Breivik case, even though on a much smaller scale, make it more remarkable that the Florence shootings did not rate more media attention.

Casseri was a member of CasaPound, a fascist group which takes its name from the American poet Ezra Pound, who moved to Italy and became an admirer of Mussolini and Hitler. A contributer before the War to Oswald Mosley's fascist paper Action, Pound was charged with treason for his wartime broadcasts for the Axis, but a diagnosis of insanity saved him from execution. As much as his poetic standing, or even his links to Mussolini, what may commend Pound to current day fascists is his early obsession with "usury" as the culprit for war and crisis, and his admiration (some say later repudiated) for the classic conspiracy work The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Casseri himself was the author of fantasy novels including The Key of Chaos about a wizard, a mathematician and an alchemist, which enjoyed some popularity. He also wrote an academic paper about Dracula folklore and was the editor of a niche magazine about fantasy and horror fiction and comics. CasaPound - known in Italian anti-racist circles for its attacks on Left targets - denies being extremist, though its vice president Simone de Stefano while acknowledging that Mussolini's racial laws were a mistake, calls his 'brand of fascism' to be the group's 'point of reference, a vision of the state and the economy and the concept of sacrifice'. CasaPound has also sponsored rock concerts at which supporters whip themselves with belts because, according to them, it is 'a way to risk pain, to confront yourself in ways society does not allow'.

Africans in Italy had no difficulty recognising what happened in Florence as a racist attack. About 300 people, many of them also street vendors, gathered in an impromptu protest at the killings, demanding to see Casseri's corpse. 'Don't tell us he was a madman', one told the Guardian, 'because if he was he would have killed whites as well as blacks'.

In both Italy and Belgium there are echoes from the past in these two attacks. Before they had the immigrants to target, Italy's modern day fascists made do with atrocities against their fellow-countrymen, such as the Milan bank and Bologna railway station bombings (August 1980). These actions were also part of a "strategy of tension" promoted by America's CIA and linked with elements in both Italy's own "secret state" and the so-called Gladio stay-behind network set up after the war supposedly to resist Soviet takeover. This was turned against the native Italian communists and left, both by 'false-flag' terrorism for which the Left was meant to take the blame, and creating a general mood of fear from which it was hoped a right-wing, even military government would benefit.

In Belgium a series of violent crimes between 1982 and 1985, culminating in another shopping centre shooting, in Brabant, were carried out by a gang later linked with supposed "rogue" policemen and the gendarmerie, as well as a shadowy fascist oufit called Westland New Post. There too the suspicion was raised of Gladio involvment and the aim of terrorising people into accepting a right-wing regime that promised "order".

[1] Tom Kington, 'Italy's fascists stay true to Mussolini's ideology' Guardian, 6 November 2011. [2] Tom Kington, 'Florence gunman shoots Senegalese street vendors dead', Guardian, 13 December 2011.

References in A tale of two cities, by IRR European News Team
http://www.irr.org.uk/2011/december/ha000016.html

Other references to see:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/13/florence-gunman-shoots-street-vendors?INTCMP=SRCH

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/27/ex-berlusconi-minister-defends-breivik?intcmp=239

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-16175019

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16175795

Italy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_of_tension

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_1980_Bologna_bombing

London connections:

http://lombardia.indymedia.org/node/29267

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Fiore

Belgium:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_Brabant#Gladio

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nijvel_gang

Electricians signal danger on the rails

2011-12-14T11:13:00.001-08:00

REMEMBERED

On a day when many sparks were striking at major construction sites around the country, about a hundred marched on Network Rail's headquarters at Euston today, to warn that a health and safety disaster could be looming if the bosses have their way. They said firms who pulled out of the Joint Industry Board (Jib) deal, replacing it with their shoddy Building Engineering Services National Agreement (Besna) would reduce workers' skill levels and put lives at risk.

The companies are trying to do away with skilled grades and impose what would amount to a 35 per cent pay cut. Workers who marched from Kings Cross in the main road to Euston, defying police, chanted "Pay cuts, no way!"

One electrician said, “We have protested at Farringdon, Blackfriars, and Kings Cross against the companies attacking us. So now we are protesting against the client that are hiring them, Network Rail.”

Balfour Beatty has a great share of work for Network Rail. A week ago its electricians were supposed to sign for its new terms, or face losing their jobs. But following a ballot result of Balfour Beatty workers 81 per cent for industrial action, Unite made December 7 the first day of action in the dispute. Balfour Beatty resorted to the anti-union laws, claiming the ballot was flawed because 25 office workers, members of Unite, had been left out. As though they were relevant to an electricians' dispute or their votes would have made any difference to the result.

Nevertheless Unite was threatened with an injunction, and felt obliged to re-ballot. The result will not be known until 6th January.

But workers in construction have had enough of being pushed around by employers who are not so strict about obeying the law, when it comes to workers' safety or to use of illegal data gathering for blacklisting.

Thousands walked out in unofficial action and there were pickets and protests at Balfour Beatty sites in Wales and Scotland as well as Humberside, Manchester, Liverpool and London. A day and night picket on Balfour Beatty's Blackfriars site was respected by scaffolders and others, as well as the electricians who refused to work that day.

In warning about safety issues that could be affected by under-rating and underpaying the skilled work of electricians, the demonstration at Network Rail today also touched on memories. Monday was the anniversary of the Clapham Junction rail disaster. I was working at St.George's Hospital when it happened and remember the ambulances streaming backward and forth fetching the injured. There were 35 dead and about 500 injured.

On December 12, 1988 the driver of the 07:18 from Basingstoke to London Waterloo saw a signal in front of him abruptly change from green to red. As required, the driver stopped his train at the next signal post telephone to report to the signalman at Clapham Junction 'A' signal box that his train had passed a red signal. He was advised there was no fault and that he was free to proceed. The driver told the signalman that he intended to make a formal report when he reached Waterloo. As the driver hung up the phone his train was hit from behind by a following train, the late-running 6.14 from Poole, at a speed of 35mph to 40mph. It had been given the green light, a false clear signal.

A second collision, consequent on the first, involved the second, third and fourth coaches of an empty train leaving Clapham Junction (travelling on an adjacent line in the opposite direction) which hit the wreckage of the Poole train, causing derailment and separation of the first carriage of that third train. A fourth train approaching, also under false clear signals at the time, managed to stop about 70 yd (60 m) clear of the rear of the Poole train. This fourth train had lost power as the accident had shorted and discharged the traction current from the third rail.

An inquiry heard that the immediate cause of the crash was incorrect wiring work in which an old wire, incorrectly left in place after rewiring work and still connected at the supply end, created a false feed to a signal relay, thereby causing its related signal to show a green, double yellow or single yellow aspect (depending on the position of traffic around Clapham Junction station) when the track beyond it was occupied when it should have shown red. Indeed, the signal continued to display a single yellow aspect after the accident even though there were now three trains occupying the section beyond it.

It also heard that the electrician wiring the signal had only had one day off in thirteen weeks.

The inquiry found that British Rail senior management had failed to recognise that the re-signalling of the Clapham Junction area and all the lines out of Waterloo, should have been treated as a major, safety-critical project, controlled throughout by a single, senior, named project manager. Instead the job was left to middle-level technical staff, stressed, poorly supervised by their seniors and poorly supported by their juniors. Staffing levels were inadequate and the staff, dulled by months of voluntary seven-days-a-week work, were carrying out the complete re-signalling of the largest and, on some measures, busiest junction on the whole British rail system.

The inquiry, chaired by Anthony Hidden QC, recommended changes in management, and restrictions on the working hourse of workers maintaining signals. It also recommended the introduction of the Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system, which automatically governs the speed of trains and stops them at red lights. This was put off as too expensive as the government was preparing the railways for privatisation, in 1993. It might not have prevented the Clapham disaster anyway, as the signals were on green, though its need was more clearly demonstrated by the crashes at Southall in 1997 and Ladbroke Grove in 1999.

Although not on the same scale as last week, yesterday saw more unofficial action by electricians. Rob Williams of the National Shop Stewards Network said workers at sites across Britain had walked out, including at Grangemouth in Scotland, Lindsey Oil Refinery and many places in Wales.Workers at Grangemouth operate under a separate agreement which is next in line if firms force Besna on employees.

Facebook: www.facebook.com/#!/groups/264935423529258/

To contact the Rank n File Committee: siteworkers@virginmedia.com

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/113169

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=27047

http://www.basingstokegazette.co.uk/news/3986819.Train_crash_survivors_who_will_never_forget/

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-441487-waterloo-commuters-daily-worry.do

http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/docsummary.php?docID=36

Remploy fight reaches Parliament

2011-12-13T00:10:00.001-08:00

REMPLOY giants raised gasps and eyebrows when they stopped traffic in the middle of Liverpool that morning, and strode up the steps of the Adelphi hotel. But these workers had made and donned their carnival costumes to raise attention for a serious issue, and in our picture, they raised support and signatures from fellow trades unionists attending the national conference of trades union councils.
That was six years ago. But the Remploy fight for survival goes on.

REMPLOY factories don't just provide a job and a living for thousands of disabled workers. They produce among other things protective suits that could save the lives of members of the emergency services and armed forces called upon to cope with chemical, bacteriological or radiation hazards.

Such are their designers' and workers' skills they have won an international award for this.

So why are the Remploy workers having to fight to save their jobs?

The last Labour government under Blair and Brown said it wanted to help disabled people into work. David Cameron's Con-Dem coalition perhaps less hypocritically puts the emphasis on getting people off benefit.

But under both New Labour and Tories the Remploy workers have seen contracts and jobs taken away, and now the state-owned Remploy factories are facing closure unless government policy is changed.

The General, Municipal and Boilermakers' union, GMB, which represents many Remploy workers, staged a lobby of Parliament to save Remploy back in October, and this week MPs will debate Remploy's future, on Thursday afternoon.

The union says hundreds of local authorities will come under the spotlight for failing to support the factories which provide disabled staff with productive work.

And MPs will be told that it would cost the Treasury less to keep the 54 sites open than to make 4,000 workers redundant.

Most Remploy staff who lost their jobs in 2008 are still on welfare, the union will say. Many of the factories have maintained a successful track record since 1946 but are being starved of contracts by councils and even their own management.

GMB national officer Phil Davies said: "The factories are rendered less economic by only being 50 per cent loaded with work, either because public bodies have failed to support them as allowed under EU rules or because their own managers are turning down work."

GMB members at Remploy were campaigning for a full quota of work which would allow the sites to remain open, he said. "Making uniforms for the armed forces, emergency services and medical staff and supplying schools would more than keep them busy," Mr Davies argued.

MPs will be told to answer for the failure of 201 councils which have refused to give work to Remploy factories. And the government will be grilled on its plan to end public funding for Remploy in April 2013 and to privatise the employment services it provides. All 54 Remploy factories will close if the scheme goes ahead.

The union is calling on the public to get involved by lobbying MPs and councillors to provide contracts for the firm.

Report Union takes Remploy fight into Parliament, Will Stone, Morning Star
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/113076

Further info:
http://www.gmb.org.uk/newsroom/latest_news/remploy_lobby_parliament.aspx
http://www.gmb.org.uk/newsroom/latest_news/remploy_parliamentary_debate.aspx

Remploy wins Award:
http://frontline.remploy.co.uk/media/remployfrontlinenews/globalregionalindustrynews/remploywinsawardforinnovativeprotectivesuit.ashx

Bahrain: free teacher trade unionists!

2011-12-10T22:24:00.001-08:00

JALILA AL-SALMAN with daughter after earlier release

Education International (EI), representing teaching unions in many countries, is calling for messages to the authorities in Bahrain, urging them to review the charges and convictions and commute sentences of all teachers, teacher unionists and students charged with offences related to exercise of freedom of speech and right to assemble.

The appeals of the Vice-President and President of the Bahraini Teachers Association (BTA) , due today, Sunday 11 December, are amongst EI’s concerns. Jalila al-Salman and Mahdi 'Issa Mahdi Abu Dheeb are appealing sentences issued in September by the military National Safety Court of First Instance to three and ten years’ imprisonment, for their involvement in peaceful protests last March. Seven other BTA board members are also on trial and 76 teachers have been sacked for similar baseless reasons.

A larger number of teachers are still suspended. Most BTA Board members and sacked and suspended teachers have had the opportunity to share their experience with Fred van Leeuwen, EI General Secretary, during his mission to Bahrain in November. All reported on the unjust treatment they suffered. The revision of the convictions is also highlighted in the strong recommendations of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) . On 23 November, it recommended the Bahraini authorities “to review convictions and commute sentences of all persons charged with offences involving political expression, not consisting of advocacy of violence, or, as the case may be, to drop outstanding charges against them.”

The TUC and Amnesty International also called for the release of Jalila al-Salman and Mahdi 'Issa Mahdi Abu Dheeb, two members of the Bahrain Teachers' Association (BTA) who were arrested during the unrest in March and April 2011.

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber has written to HE Rashid Al-Khalifa, Bahraini Ambassador to the UK, expressing serious concerns over their continued detention for exercising their rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly. He urged the Government to immediately release them and to hold to account those responsible for their arrest and possible abuse.

Jalila al-Salman and Mahdi 'Issa Mahdi Abu Dheeb, together with several other board members of the BTA, were arrested in March and April 2011. While their colleagues were released, they were brought to trial before the National Safety Court of First Instance (a military court) on 15 June on charges which include 'inciting hatred towards the regime', 'calling to overthrow and change the regime by force', 'calling on parents not to send their children to school' and 'calling on teachers to stop working and participate in strikes and demonstrations'.

After further hearings on 22 and 29 June - their trial was transferred to a civilian court and postponed until further notice.

Jalila al-Salman's house in Manama was raided on 29 March by more than 40 security officers. She was reportedly taken to the Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) in Manama where she remained for about a week during which she was reportedly beaten, including with objects, and held in solitary confinement. She is believed to have been transferred to the custody of the military and held there for around two months, before being transferred again to a detention centre in 'Issa Town in Bahrain. Jalila al-Salman's family were not aware of her whereabouts until soon after her transfer to the detention centre in 'Issa Town and have only been allowed to see her there on two occasions.

Amnesty International has reviewed statements issued by the BTA. One of them, published on 13 March, called on teachers and employees of the Ministry of Education to go on strike, and on parents not to take their children to school during large-scale demonstrations in Bahrain. Amnesty International has also listened to speeches delivered by Mahdi 'Issa Mahdi Abu Dheeb that made similar appeals. Amnesty says it has seen no evidence that either of them advocated violence of any kind in these or other activities.

Consequently, although the organization does not have the full details of the evidence presented so far in the trial, it believes that they are likely to be prisoners of conscience detained solely for exercising their legitimate rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly as leading members of the BTA.

Please go to the Amnesty International page for further information on this appeal and see ITUC Annual Survey of Trade Union Violations for information on trade union violations in Bahrain.

For Education International call to free Bahraini teachers:

http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/solidarityforever/show_campaign.cgi?c=1193

http://www.ei-ie.org/en/uaas/uaa_details/34

Another Martyr, another Mockery of Obama's "Peace Process"

2011-12-10T15:22:00.000-08:00

10 December 2011

ANOTHER Palestinian has paid the ultimate price for trying to hold on to his land, his village, his rightful family and national heritage, his people's rights and dignity. Mustafa Tamimi (28) died after being shot in the face with a tear gas canister by an Israeli soldier, while taking part in a peaceful demonstration in his own village, Nabi Salih., north-west of Ramallah.

Linah Alsaafin, a Bir Zeit University graduate, was in Nabi Salih on Friday, and her impressions are recorded on the website Electronic Intifada.

' “Ambulance! Ambulance!”

So far, there were three people who had suffocated from the tear gas, and three people injured by rubber bullets. I saw gas, and so assumed that it was another case of suffocation. But the cries got louder, urgent, desperate — quite unlike the previous calls. Along with those around me, we began running to where the injured person lay, 50 meters away.

Screams. “Mustafa! Mustafa!”

I ran faster. I stopped. The youth I was so used to, the same ones who were always teasing and joking and smoking, were crying. One turned to me and groaned, “His head. His head is split into two!”

My stomach plummeted and I forgot to breathe. Exaggeration, I thought. Impossible. Not here. More screams of “Mustafa!”

I saw the man lying on the ground. I saw the medic with one knee on the ground, his face a mask of shock. I saw his bloodied gloved hands.

Mustafa’s sister was screaming his name. I saw Mustafa. I saw the blood, the big pool of dark red blood. I saw the blood dripping from his head to the ground as they carried him and put him in a taxi, since the ambulance was nowhere to be found. I saw other the tear-streaked faces of other activists, and all I felt was numbness.

Mustafa’s sister Ola was still screaming, so I put my arms around her as she buried her head in my chest. I was babbling, “It’s ok, he’s gonna be fine, it’s ok” but she kept on screaming. Her screams and the disturbing reactions of those around me made my legs numb. Ola then left to go to the watchtower where the taxi with her brother was, and my state of shock crumbled as I gasped out my tears in the arms of my friend.'

http://electronicintifada.net/content/no-miracle-yesterday-nabi-saleh-mustafa-tamimi-murdered/10678

Situated amid the mountains north-west of Ramallah, Nabi Salih takes its name from the prophet Salih, whom the Koran tells us was sent to prophesy to people who hewed their homes from rock, like the Nabateans. A blue-domed building on the remains of Crusader type structures is identified by locals as Salih's shrine. Byzantine ruins have been restored.

Near this historic village is a natural spring named Ein Al Qaws ("the Bow Spring") which is owned by a member of the Tamimi family.

In 2009 settlers from nearby Halamish control over the spring and it's surroundings and prevented Palestinian access to their land. Halamish, also known as Neveh Tzur, is illegal not only under international law but under Israeli law too, since at least a third of the land it is built was privately owned by Palestinians. But it has been allowed to expand with fresh outposts, and is used by the military as a training centre for religious cadets.

People from Nabi Salih and the nearby village of Dir Nizam began holding regular Friday demonstrations for their spring, and against the Israeli occupation. In February this year volunteers from the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem filmed Israel troops making night time raids on Palestinian homes, waking children over 10 years old, and photographing them.

A B'Tselem report released in September says Israeli forces do not recognize the right of Nabi Salih’s residents to demonstrate. declaring their demonstrations illegal at the outset, sometimes even before the procession begins. The Israeli military routinely issues orders declaring the entire village a closed military area, blocks the roads leading to it, thus denying people coming from outside the village their right to join in the demonstration. The army and the Border Police deploy heavy force in the village even when the demonstrators are nonviolent and pose no threat. They fire enormous quantities of tear gas inside the built-up area of the village, which is home to hundreds of persons.

As Lina Alsaafin explains, Friday, December 9 marked the second year since the tiny village began its weekly demonstrations against the confiscation of the Kaws Spring. It also marked the 24th anniversary of the first intifada. People were expecting the army would use more violence than usual, but not that anyone would be killed.

'Mustafa, 28 years old, was critically injured after Israeli soldiers fired a tear gas canister at his face, and died at a hospital after his treatment was delayed by the occupation forces who had invaded the village to repress the weekly demonstration.

One difference that distinguishes Nabi Saleh from other villages with popular resistance committees, like Nilin, Bilin, Biddu and Budrus is that no one has been killed, or martyred in the protests. Beaten up, yes. Arrested, ditto. But never a death. Until yesterday.

Just before Mustafa went into the operating room, some good news came through. He had not suffered any cognitive damages to his brain, although he suffered a brain hemorrhage. There was a chance his eye might be saved. Relief washed over us. We tweeted, “please #Pray4Mustafa.”

I had pictured myself going to Nabi Saleh the next day, not the following Friday. I had imagined sitting in a room with weeping women, after passing by the somber men sitting outside. I had envisioned a funeral and an inconsolable Ola with her mother. Thank God there was a reassuring chance he would be ok. We’d make fun of his bandaged face, just like we did to Abu Hussam when a rubber bullet hit him under the eye a few weeks ago.

Then I got the call that Mustafa had succumbed to his wounds.

The soldiers laughed. They smiled. They took pictures of us, zooming in on each of our faces, and they smirked. I screamed at them: “Nazis, terrorists, vermin, programmed killing machines.”

They laughed at us as we screamed at them to let us through to where he was, unconscious in a taxi near the watchtower. They threatened us if we didn’t go back. We waved the flag with his blood on it in front of them. One of them had the audacity to bat it away. We shouted, “His blood is on your hands!” They replied, “So?”

I thought of Mustafa’s younger brother, imprisoned all these eight months. I thought of that brother’s broken jaw and his subsequent stay in the prison hospital. I thought of Juju (Jihad Tamimi), he of the elfin face who arrested a few days ago with no rights to see a lawyer after being wanted by the army for more than a year. I shuddered to think of the reactions of these imprisoned men from the village — Uday, Bassem, Naji, Jihad, Saeed – once they received the news.

I got the call just after 11pm Friday night. I was sworn to secrecy, since his family didn’t want to make it public yet. Anger, bitterness and sorrow overwhelmed me. I cried at my kitchen table.

The images are tattooed forever inside my eyelids. A bloody pulp on one side of his face. The pool of blood rapidly increasing. (Mama, there was so much blood.) His mouth slightly open, lying supine on the cold road. His sister screaming, her face twisted in grief. The young men weeping, looking like little boys again'.

In America, politicians bidding for the presidency are competing with each other as to who can be most "pro-Israel", and in doing so, denying any rights to the Palestinian people at all. Newt Gingrich says the Palestinian nation is an "invention" and does not really exist.

In Israel, Netanyahu continues to draw the encouragement that President Obama's talk of peace and "two states" need not be taken seriously, that Israeli settlements can keep expanding on Palestinian land and taking Palestinian water, and Israeli soldiers faced with a rightfully resentful civilian population can respond with brutality.

In Nabi Salih, a family mourns a son and brother whose life was taken for defending what was theirs, and a witness asks how as a human being she can be expected to feel anything but hatred for those who did this?

The Zionist settlers talk of imposing a "price tag" on the Palestinians for claiming their rights and upon the Israeli peace camp too.

What price can we impose, not just on those who pull the trigger, but those who give the orders, and above all, on those in the United States who could call a halt to this oppression and sacrifice, but for the sake of their egos and political careers, would sooner sentence Palestinians and Israelis to permanent hatred and war?

Colombo: Just One More Thing for Cameron

2011-12-09T03:47:00.001-08:00

RAISING TAMILS' FATE on London May Day march. Bell Pottinger have different ways to get across their message. At a cost, of course.

AS Prime Minister David Cameron arrives home from Brussels wondering which of the masters he faces is going to cane him the worst, his fellow EU chiefs of government or the Euro-Skeptics in his Tory party, he will doubtless be grateful for small mercies, such as attention being taken away from lesser issues looming, like the extent of private influence on his government.

Put out the flags for patriotism, though they are probably sewn in the sweatshops of some distant foreign land, our ruling scoundrels need their shelter. Cameron says he will look after "British interests", by which he means the City of London for whose financial role the rest of the country was sacrificed, its towering skyline a graphical symbol of debt. But whether we're talking the dollar, pound or Euro, we who are just have-nots know our politicians look after the haves, and especially those who have plenty.

What is interesting though is how far their services can be procured by the influence-buyers, so that not just the work of government but its policy is privatised.

In the United States we know that lobbying is big business, but it is nothing new, even for the mother of parliaments. In days of old a body such as the East India Company could buy a seat, MP and all, to ensure its interests were looked after. Parliament was reformed, more people enfranchised, and MPs given a salary; but the Attlee government under post-war austerity had to contend with a junior minister helping a pools company obtain more paper, in return for a three-piece suit and a holiday in Margate. Everything has gone up since then.

An undercover investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Reporting , published in the Independent, has exposed senior executives of the lobbying firm Bell Pottinger, on tape:

* Claiming they have used their access to Downing Street to persuade David Cameron to speak to the Chinese premier on behalf of one of their business clients, within 24 hours of asking him to do so.

* Boasting about Bell Pottinger’s access to the Foreign Secretary William Hague, and to Cameron’s chief of staff Ed Llewellyn and to his old friend and adviser Steve Hilton;

* Suggesting the company could manipulate Google results to ‘drown out’ negative coverage of human rights violations and child labour;

* Revealing that Bell Pottinger has a team which ‘sorts’ negative Wikipedia coverage of clients;

* Saying it was possible to use MPs known to be critical of investigative programmes, to attack their reporting for minor errors.

"There are a lot of people in Parliament who can't stand Channel 4 and can't stand Dispatches," Bell Pottinger's Tim Collins said. "So if there are any inaccuracies, even if they're fairly minor, you can work with some people who have a track record of not liking Channel 4, wanting to score points against Channel 4 [who will say:] 'Here is another instance of Channel 4 over-reaching themselves and putting out stuff they haven't properly checked'."

Besides using MPs, the company apparently boasted its teams could use "dark arts" to affect what information appeared on Google and Wikipedia, and the Independent also uncovered evidence of its lobbyists doubling as experts in the Foreign Office's prestigious Chatham House think tank.

'Tim Collins, managing director of Bell Pottinger Public Affairs, told the reporters he used to be Mr Llewellyn's boss in Conservative Central Office, and had worked with Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne in the Conservative Research Department. "I've been working with people like Steve Hilton, David Cameron, George Osborne for 20 years-plus. There is not a problem getting the messages through," he said'.

Bell Pottinger's chairman Lord (Tim) Bell, a former media adviser to Margaret Thatcher, has responded to the report through his lawyers, Carter Ruck, attacking the reporters: "The conduct of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism does not remotely constitute responsible journalism. It is an attempt by unethical, deception to manufacture a story where none exists."

A spokeswoman for the Prime Minister said: "It is simply not true that Bell Pottinger or indeed any other lobbying company has any influence on government policy."

Nevertheless MPs are asking for Bell Pottinger cxecutives to be called before a parliamtary inquiry into lobbying. They are not the only ones demanding answers.

Reporters from the Bureau posed as agents for the government of Uzbekistan, notorious for killings, human rights violations and child labour – and representatives of its cotton industry, in a bid to discover what promises British lobbying and public relations firms were prepared to make when pitching to clients; what techniques they use; and and how much of their work is open to public scrutiny.

Bell Pottinger bosses said their services didn't come cheap - a campaign might cost a £1 million to start, and £100,000 a day. Audits had to be prepared, though one remarked that nobody knew who had paid for their campaign on behalf of Belarus. They also boasted of how they had helped the government in Sri Lanka, facing international concern, indeed outrage at its treatment of the Tamil minority, including internment and 'disappearances'.

"We had a team working in the President's office. We wrote the President's speech to the UN last year which was very well received... it went a long way to taking the country where it needed to go," David Wilson, the chairman of Bell Pottinger Public Relations, said during the meeting with undercover reporters.

The company also attended a meeting of Tamil dissidents in London, the British Tamils Forum (BTF) said. Days before President Rajapaksa's arrival in London in December 2010, Tim Ryan, the chairman of Bell Pottinger International, and a colleague attended an open political meeting in Harrow organised by the BTF and the Nava Sama Samaja [New Social Equality] Party.

The Tamil Solidarity movement, which previously took up former Defence Secretary Liam Fox over his trips to Colombo and links to the Sri Lankan regime, has demanded to know what influence the government of Sri Lanka and its lobbyists might have had on David Cameron.

'The UK government has made no serious effort to bring the GoSL to account for the war crimes. Instead the GoSL is still considered a full member of the Commonwealth and will be allowed to chair the next summit in 2013. This should be prevented. The country should be suspended from the organisation. Cameron’s weasel words calling on the GoSL to “improve human rights” mean nothing for the oppressed Tamil-speaking people. We want to see action taken. We demand that Cameron reveals all his personal dealings with Bell Pottinger. We demand that the government shows the concrete details of the measures it has taken in relation to war crimes in Sri Lanka given that it’s ex-defence secretary was proved to be criminally close to the government. Disgraced former defence minister Liam Fox is a close friend of Rajapakse and defended the GoSL. Even though he has been forced out his foreign policy continues. Furthermore it appears that his method of backroom deals has not ceased either. We demand transparency in foreign policy dealings.

Nearly three years have passed since the major massacre took place in SL. 20,000 young people remain in secret torture camps, tens of thousands are kept in makeshift camps and there has been no proper resettlement. We cannot accept the continuation of this oppression. The Tamil-speaking people living in the UK should stand up to these rotten politicians whose morals is no better than the Rajapkses’.
That's just one more thing, as (detective) Colombo used to say. But if Cameron's not influenced by the lobbyists, as his office insists, we're left with the conclusion that the British government supports the repression in Sri Lanka as a matter of policy.

Rajapakse, David Cameron and Bell Pottinger – working together?
http://www.tamilsolidarity.org/?p=1971
Tamils chase Fox from his lair!
http://www.tamilsolidarity.org/?p=1758

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/caught-on-camera-top-lobbyists-boasting-how-they-influence-the-pm-6272760.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/we-wrote-sri-lankan-presidents-civil-war-speech-say-lobbyists-6272765.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chatham-house-lobbyist-link-with-leading-think-tank-6274538.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/the-arms-company-the-oligarch-and-the-expms-sisterinlaw-lobby-firms-wikipedia-hit-list-6274541.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/parliamentary-inquiry-into-lobbying-to-call-bell-pottinger-executives-as-witnesses-6274539.html

http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/

Couldn't Beijing Zoo keep Clarkson?

2011-12-07T19:57:00.000-08:00

FRIENDS in Edinburgh are rejoicing proudly that Scotland now has more pandas than Tory MPs, twice as many, in fact. Pity the Chinese authorities wouldn't consider a swop or we could have thrown in Jeremy Clarkson.

Tian Tian and Yang Guang, the giant pandas, each of them eight years old, arrived on a special chartered flight at the weekend and are due to spend the next ten years at Ediburgh Zoo, where it is hoped they may breed as well as proving a big attraction.

Clarkson, presenter of the BBC's Top Gear motoring programme, is in Beijing with fellow presenter James May and crew to make a new series from China. Just when we seemed to be getting on so well with the Chinese, as well. Some people have pointed out that the Duke of Edinburgh is getting on and a replacement might be needed to make cringe-worthy insulting remarks to foreigners.

Though I don't normally watch Top Gear, I did watch the programme Clarkson and his mates made last year driving from Iraq to Bethlehem, and it wasn't the Three Wise Men, no myrrh and frankincense, just mirth and ignorance, so I can see what they are getting at.

In fact, Jeremy Clarkson has done quite well upsetting people in Britain in the past week, starting with his charming suggestion on BBC TV that public sector workers striking to defend their pensions should be shot, and going on to write in his Sun column that -"foxy woxy and the birds’ should be left to ‘nibble’ at the ‘gooey parts’ of people who commit suicide by jumping in front of trains.

Appearing on BBC's The One Show after the November 30 day of action, £1 million a year presenter Clarkson claimed airily that the strikers had made it easier for him to get around town at speed (strange he'd missed the streets crowded with demonstrators and the police barriers on Whitehall). He then added quickly "I'd have them all shot. I would take them outside and execute them in front of their families".

It was not an impromptu, spontaneous remark. Clarkson says he had told the One Show producers beforehand what he intended to say. It would seem they didn't object.

By Monday, the BBC had received a record 31,000 complaints from viewers.

Evidently a lot of people who had taken part in the strike, many for the first time in their lives, did not find Clarkson amusing, any more than the relatives of suicides, or the train drivers traumatised by hitting human beings, appreciated his attempt to trivialise such horrific events as merely causing annoying delays in his train journeys.

It did not add to Clarkson's popularity to be reminded that, like former News of the World editor and Murdock executive Rebekah Wade, and our beloved Old Etonian Prime Minister David Cameron, who tried to pass off November 30 as a "damp squib", the BBC's motor mouth is a member of the "Chipping Norton set". ("Why couldn't he go to Chipping Sodbury?", the Oxfordshire Chippy's residents may lament. "Or better still stay in China" say those with little thought for our Oriental comrades' point of view.)

The Telegraph reported that a majority of its readers sympathised with what Clarkson said, which does not entirely suprise me, though many just regarded it as a joke. One boozy night in Fleet Street back in the 1970s a top Telegraph man staggered up to a polite picket line from the Society of Lithograph Artists, Designers and Engravers (SLADE) outside another newspaper and having heard they were defending union recognition, told them that in a year or so their unions would be smashed and they would be lying dead in the gutter. It seemed an inconveniant place to stash bodies, but this was around the time of the Chilean coup, and twenty-five years later our gentleman of the press was consistent enought to defend asylum here for Pinochet.

To remind us that what one in the limelight puts forward as a joke, others as yet more obscure may see as their path to fame, one of my friends on Facebook uploaded an item from the Belfast Telegraph on July 26 this year about two Brits admired by a rather impressionable Norwegian.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/norway-mass-killer-breiviks-praise-for-jeremy-clarksons-top-gear-16028126.html#ixzz1fbtQAogx

Anders Behring Breivik wrote in his manifesto how he liked Jeremy Clarkson's programme, and remarks he had made about the flag. The other Brit he admired, for her views on Muslims and their threat to "our" way of life, is the newspaper columnist whom my friends have dubbed "Mad Mel". Norwegian psychiatrists have now certified that Anders Behring Breivik is a paranoid schizophrenic and was not acting rationally when he killed 77 people. Pity nobody noticed anything wrong with Breivik before he went out with his gun.

But getting back to Jeremy Clarkson, here is the Mail online on Sunday, December 4:

There were growing concerns yesterday about Jeremy Clarkson’s ‘vulnerable state of mind’ and the precarious state of his 18-year marriage after he provoked a fresh storm of protest. The Top Gear presenter made offensive comments about people who commit suicide – the second time that he has been at the centre of controversy in the space of a few days.

One senior BBC insider, who asked not to be named, last night said Clarkson had moved out of the family home he shares with second wife Frances and wasn’t in ‘the best possible place at the moment’. He said: ‘There is a feeling that he’s in a more vulnerable state than he should be and that’s why his judgment isn’t A-grade at the moment.’

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2069679/Jeremy-Clarkson-vulnerable-state-judgment-just-isnt-A-grade-right-now.html#ixzz1fbxSsj8o

We'll leave aside comment about some of the Mail's own contributors and one columnist in particular, and note this is not the first time Clarkson has dodged rumours that he is in the doghouse over his ebullient personality not ensuring domestic bliss.

But some people suggested a more calculated motive for his performance on the telly, and if that was so it seems to have worked. Before he left for Beijing, Clarkson had a DVD to plug, and now the Guardian reports:

Jeremy Clarkson strike outburst: retailer claims DVD sales boost

HMV says sales of Clarkson's Powered Up have soared after he said public sector strikers should be shot

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/dec/05/jeremy-clarkson-dvd-strikes

If this was what it was about, what does that say about Clarkson, the DVD-buying public, or the BBC, of course?

Peace and good will, everybody.

Build up for a Boom - but not the economic kind

2011-12-02T14:35:00.000-08:00

FLYING KITE - Guardian November 3. Now Iranians have brought down US drone.

WHILE Britain and Iran go through the game of embassy row and expulsion of diplomats, the build up is continuing towards what would not be a mere war of words. Following renewed claims - which Iran denies - that it developing nuclear weapon capacity - both the United States and European Union governments have rushed to step up economic sanctions against Iran.

It is these measures, which as with Iraq, hit ordinary citizens, that led to angry Iranians sacking the British embassy in Tehran, in what the British government accuses was a state-sanctioned attack. British media reported that Iranian demonstrators chanted slogans about destroying "the Fox's den", and said this meant Britain. What they did not say was that the Iranians might have been alluding to former British Defence Secretary Liam Fox, who had to resign after reports about his friend Adam Werrity's contacts with the Israeli military and claims to have gathered intelligence on trips to Iran.

A month ago the Guardian front-paged a report that the British Ministry of Defence had signalled readiness to join a US-led attack on Iran, possibly a bit of kite flying from the MoD itself, either to test public opinion or divert domestic criticisim of its workings and costs.

But it is reported today that Iranian forces have brought down an unmanned US spy drone flying over their eastern border region. "An advanced RQ170 unmanned American spy plane was shot down by Iran's armed forces. It suffered minor damage and is now in possession of Iran's armed forces," Iranian officials said. NATO forces in Afghanistan said one of their drones had gone out of control and might have crossed the border.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/04/iran-shoots-down-us-drone

See also: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/02/uk-military-iran-attack-nuclear?INTCMP=SRCH
and John Pilger :
http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/iran/963-how-media-lies-oil-the-wheels-of-war-on-iran

It would be a poor capitalist government in this hour of economic difficulty that didn't take advantage of the build up for war to boost hardware sales in pursuit of that elusive economic recovery. Here is an item from the Morning Star last week:

Germany approves fourth nuke sub sale to Israel

Thursday 01 December 2011

by Tom Mellen

Berlin has approved the sale of a fourth Dolphin military submarine to Israel and will stump up a third of its cost, a senior German official revealed today.

Dolphin-class submarines are capable of launching nuclear-tipped missiles, and it is an open secret that Israel has nukes.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that parliament has set aside €135 million (£116m) in next year’s budget to subsidise the sale.

Germany has already sold three Dolphin subs to Israel — one half-funded and two entirely paid for by Berlin.

Two more are being built by workers at Germany’s HDW shipyard, which is a division of ThyssenKrupp AG.

Iran’s investment arm IFIC owns about 4.5 per cent of the firm, which has been tainted by its exploitation of slave labour during World War II in support of the nazi war effort.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s right-wing government has tried harder this year to break into the huge Middle East arms market, traditionally dominated by Britain, the United States, France and Russia.

Berlin recently approved the sale of 270 tanks to Saudi Arabia in a shady £1.3 billion deal and is planning to export £9bn-worth of frigates, armoured vehicles and border security systems to Algeria.

Der Spiegel magazine recently noted that Ms “Merkel is breaking with a traditional doctrine of German foreign policy.

“The fundamental principle used to be that weapons produced in Germany couldn’t be delivered to countries engaged in a conflict.”

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/112605

Israel is not the only proxy being brought into the act. As the Saudi-owned media site Al Arabiya reports:

"The Obama administration has proposed selling 600 “bunker buster” bombs and other munitions to the United Arab Emirates, which lies across the Gulf from Iran, to deter what it called regional threats.

Iran is widely suspected of seeking to develop nuclear arms through a program that Tehran says is for peaceful power generation only.

The proposed $304 million sale would include 4,900 tail kits built by Boeing Co that turn unguided free-fall bombs into guided weapons and 4,300 “general purpose” bombs, the Defense Department said in a mandatory arms sale notice dated Wednesday.

The deal would boost UAE’s ability “to meet current and future regional threats” and to help deter aggression, the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency said in the note to lawmakers.

The BLU-109 “Hard Target Penetrator” bomb, or bunker buster, is a 2,000-pound (900-kg) weapon designed to smash into buried enemy command posts, munitions depots and other hardened targets before using a delayed fuse to explode.

Iran’s nuclear facilities are widely dispersed around the country, some of them in fortified bunkers underground.

Boeing’s Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAM, is a tail section containing technology that uses global positioning system (GPS) data to home in on a target from up to 15 miles away.

UAE operates Lockheed Martin Corp’s F-16 “Block 60” fighter aircraft, the most advanced F-16 model flown.

Lawmakers have 30 days to accept or reject a foreign military sale after formal notification. None has been rejected to date after formal notification.

“The UAE government continues vital host-nation support of U.S. forces stationed at Al Dhafra Air Base, plays an important role in supporting U.S. regional interests, and has proven to be a valued partner in overseas operations,” the notice to Congress said.

The top U.S. military officer said on Wednesday he did not know whether Israel would alert the United States ahead of time if it decided to take military action against Iran.

Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Reuters that sanctions and diplomatic pressure was the right path to take on Iran, without ruling out military action as a last resort.

http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/12/02/180369.html

The British government has condemned what it calls the use of "state-sposored mobs" to attack the embassy. I can understand how indignant the Foreign and Commonwealth Office must feel. Leaving aside the not entirely explained circumstances of the famous Iranian embassy siege here in London, it is fifty years since the Abadan oil crisis, occasioned when the Iranian parliament decided in March 1951 to nationalise the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.

This was a popular move in Iran, where it was seen as a way for the country to controland develop its own oil wealth and use it to raise people from poverty. But the British government thought it outrageous to touch a profitable British interest. Foreign Office emissaries tried to persuade America that the Iranian communists, the Tudeh party, were behind prime minsiter Dr,Mossadegh, and that letting him nationalise the oil company "would be widely regarded as a victory for the Russians": what's more it would "cause a loss of one hundred million pounds per annum in the United Kingdom's balance of payments, thus seriously affecting our rearmament program and our cost of living."

British warships blockaded the oil port of Abadan, and the British cabinet imposed a series of economic sanctions on Iran. It prohibited exports of key British commodities, including sugar and steel, directed the withdrawal of all British personnel from Iranian oil fields and all but a hard core of about 300 administrators from Abadan and blocked Iran's access to its hard currency accounts in British banks.

The US and other states joined Britain in this dispute, one exception being Italy. In July 1952, the Royal Navy intercepted the Italian tanker Rose Mary and forced it into the then British protectorate of Aden, saying it was carrying "stolen petroleum". This scared off others and shut off Iranian oil exports.

The US government saw an opportunity both to stop nationalisation catching on in the Middle East and to step into what had been Britain's privileged monopoly in Iran. The Dulles bothers were a long-standing link between the State Department and Standard Oil, by way of the CIA. Using the Shah, selected ayatollahs and army officers, and hired Tehran street thugs, the CIA and Britain's MI6 prepared the coup that would terrorise the Tudeh and get rid of Mossadegh. The Yanks had the dollars and the Brits had the dirty tricks expertise. Busloads of supporters were brought in to the capital to reinforce the gangsters, and riot for the shah, and hundreds of people were killed. With the Shah secure on his throne, Mossadegh and his supporters locked up, and the SAVAK secret police set up to torture the Left, control of Iranian oil was taken by a consortium in which five US companies were now involved.

Further information: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

So the ayatollahs were left to consider that one day they would be the ones to gain power, using others rather than merely lending their support; and the British spooks and their Whitehall masters left with the feeling that they are the experts when it comes to organising mobs on the street for a bit of mayhem.

...or Law n'Order

JUST to make sure British industry is given a fair share of the publicity, here is a PS courtesy of the Independent on Sunday to our story about American tear gas in Egypt:

A British firm manufactured some of the tear gas used by Egyptian security forces battling pro-democracy protesters in Egypt's Tahrir Square the IoS can reveal.

CS gas canisters fired at civilians during recent clashes were produced by British defence contractor Chemring Defence, formerly known as PW Defence, the company confirmed this weekend. A spokesman said the gas is thought to have been sold to the Egyptian army more than a decade ago or, alternatively, reached Egyptian military via a third country.
The company, which said it has not directly supplied CS gas to Egypt since 1998, has not broken UK laws forbidding such sales. But critics say Egyptian use of British-made products to quash political dissent reveals “serious flaws” in the UK's controls on arms exports to the Middle East. Demonstrators in Egypt who found themselves caught in the stench of CS gas in the recent clashes on Mohamed Mahmoud Street on the south east side of Tahrir Square, said they experienced symptoms of burning, skin irritation, difficulty breathing, chest pain, and loss of feeling in their limbs. Many collected the discarded rounds after they had been fired during more than 120 hours of protests. Amongst those collected were the red-striped 38mm long range rounds produced by Chemring Defence, which the IoS has seen.
Serial numbers and lot numbers were seen on a number of canisters, which are being used to track their journey from the UK to Egypt. One had a manufacturing date on it of 1995. Ahmed, a 19-year-old law student, who did not want to give his surname, found his canister on Monday 21 November after he was gassed. He said: “They shot many canisters like this one at the same time... It causes so much tearing; it makes your chest hurt so badly. It burns when you're sweating and it causes you to shake.”
A spokesman for Chemring Group PLC - the company which owns Chemring Defence - said it did not dispute that it produced the canisters were produced by the UK company. But he said his firm has not supplied CS gas to Egypt since 1998, when products were sent directly to the Egyptian army under licenses from the Ministry of Defence, with a shelf-life of between three and five years. Chemring Group's board of directors include former Tory minister, Lord Freeman, chairman of arms firm Thales UK plc. The firm accompanied David Cameron on his arms tour of Egypt earlier this year.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/britishmade-tear-gas-was-used-on-egypts-protesters-6272117.html

How America exports freedom to the Middle East

2011-12-01T13:07:00.000-08:00

WORKERS HOLD UP TEAR GAS SHIPMENT AT SUEZ

AS people in Egypt decided this week who to vote for, or whether to boycott the polls and continue fighting against military rule, America's pose as champion of freedom and friend of the people was exposed in an unflattering light.

Workers in the port of Suez have intercepted a cargo of tear gas which the Egyptian Ministry of Interior was due to receive from the United States. Twenty-one tonnes of tear gas all told.

Medhat Eissa, an activist in Suez, showed reporters documents he says he obtained from a group of employees at the Suez Canal customs. The employees have been subjected to questioning for their refusal to allow an initial seven ton shipment of the US-made tear gas canisters enter the port.

A group of employees at the Adabiya Seaport in Suez have confirmed, with the documents to prove it, that a three-stage shipment of in total 21 tons of tear gas canisters is on course for the port from the American port of Wilmington.

Employees say the container ship Danica, carrying seven tons of tear-gas canisters made by the American company Combined Systems, has already arrived at the port, with two similar shipments from the same company expected to arrive within the week.

Egyptian authorities needed to replenish their stocks after firing tear gas into crowds for six days in the week before elections were announced.

http://english.ahram.org.eg/~/NewsContent/1/64/27956/Egypt/Politics-/Suez-port-employees-reveal-ton-US-tear-gas-order-f.aspx

First election results are expected to be announced tomorrow.

Meanwhile 23 political forces and movements have called a demonstration in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to honour the "heroes of Mohamed Mahmoud Street" and all those killed since Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) assumed power in February.

Last week, five days of bloody clashes in downtown Cairo between protesters and security forces – including police and army units – left at least 42 demonstrators dead and hundreds injured. Fighting was particularly intense on Mohamed Mahmoud Street, next to the square.

The organisers of Friday’s planned demonstration say the blood of protesters spilt since the revolution – including the blood of those killed in last month’s Maspero clashes – had paved the way for “a society based on freedom and social justice.”

Their statement, circulating on a number of online social-network pages, added that protesters’ sacrifices on Mohamed Mahmoud Street had forced the SCAF to announce a timetable for the transfer of power to a civil authority and forced the unpopular government of Prime Minister Essam Sharaf to resign.

Friday;s demonstration is being organised by the People’s Socialist Alliance Party, the Revolutionary Socialists, the presidential campaign of Mohamed ElBaradei, the April 6 youth movement, the Maspero Youth Coalition, the Egyptian Social Democratic Party and the Suez Youth Bloc, along with several youth coalitions from Upper Egypt.

Meanwhile, the Egyptian Revolutionaries Coalition (ERC) has called for a similar demonstration on Friday to honour those who were killed or who lost their eyesight in the recent clashes, calling it the rally for the “eyes of freedom.” Coalition spokesperson Amer Al-Wakeel said demonstrators planned to wear blindfolds in solidarity with those who lost their eyesight in the Mohamed Mahmoud skirmishes, during which police snipers allegedly targeted protesters’ eyes.

http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/28264/Egypt/Politics-/Revolutionaries-to-stage-rally-for-Heroes-of-Moham.aspx

(Thanks to London-based journalist Rachek Shabi for drawing attention to the tear gas story)

Fox's trail in Haymarket may lead to bigger prey

2011-11-30T13:57:00.001-08:00

ARRIVING at Embankment, Unite banners followed by that of Wandsworth prison officers. In several prisons staff held union meetings in defiance of ban on strikes.
Probation officers and Court staff were also on march, along with head teachers and members of the Chartered Society of Physio-Therapists - all those who according to Tories were just "militants itching for a fight".
And on a day when Cameron jeered at Labour for being "union funded", we got reminded of where the Tories get their funds.

WITH two million people on strike across the country yesterday, and many thousands, from teachers and nurses, to physiotherapists and prison officers, marching to within a stone's throw of Parliament. a small group of demonstrators invading an office building on Haymarket may seem just a sideshow.

So it is. But neither irrelevant nor insignificant. In fact the 'Occupy London' commandos may have picked a target that was more significant than they realised, or tame media are willing to admit. They should be congratulated.

The suprise action took place at Panton House, the headquarters of global mining company Xstrata, which occupies the third and fourth floors of the five-storey building. About 40 activists got into the unguarded building and raced up stairs, unfurling a banner on the roof.

Police kettled about 200 more people in the street outside, while territorial support group officers and others were brought in to remove those inside, who had taken up slogan chants about tax evasion and top bosses' pay. Some protesters said they were roughly handled and thrown down stairs by the heavy mob. About twenty arrests were made.

According to Xstrata's annual report its CEO, Mick Davis, received a pay and free share package worth £17.7m in the last financial year.

As one of those held in the police kettle said: "I'm here because the public sector is getting cut. All the people who are getting hurt by them are the poorest in the country. All the people who don't suffer are the bankers and the rich people."

In a press release Karen Lincoln, a supporter of Occupy London, said: "Mick Davis is a prime example of the greedy 1% lining their own pockets. In this time when the government enforces austerity on the 99%, these executives are profiting. The rest of us are having our pensions cut, health service torn apart and youth centres shut down. We refuse to stand by and let this happen."

http://occupylsx.org/?p=1725
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/nov/30/occupy-activists-xstrata-hq-london
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/8926752/Arrests-after-protesters-storm-office-block.html

But there is more to Mick "the Miner" (City nickname, bet he never got coal dust in his sandwiches!) Davis than his top salary. In the strange business which emerged this year leading to the resignation of Tory Defence Secretary Liam Fox, Mick Davis was one of three top Zionist lobbyists revealed to have funded the activities of Fox's associate Adam Werritty.

Davis, 52, is chairman of United Jewish Israel Appeal, a British charity which splits its contributions between charitable work in the UK and Israel. But that is just one of his favoured causes. Davis gave £150,000 to Conservative party central office over the last 21 months according to Electoral Commission records. He also gave £7,500 to the office of the education secretary Michael Gove in August.

Gove you may remember intervened to tell London schools they must not have anything to do with a Palestinian children's cultural event this year. The Education Secretary was also on TV yesterday criticising the teachers for being on strike over their pensions, and complaining that the BBC and other media were not doing enough to investigate the political past of union leaders like Unite's Len McCluskey. As though there was anything shady or hidden about the man we elected general secretary of my union, unlike the background of the education secretary's sponsors.

In June, Mick Davis was among a delegation that included Poju Zabludowicz, heir to an Israeli arms fortune and the chairman of the Zionist lobby Bicom, which met the foreign secretary William Hague to discuss the impact of the Arab spring on Israel. Zabludowicz's Liechtenstein-registered company Tamares, which owns property in Las Vegas and the West Bank settlement of Ma'alei Adumim, has been another generous donor to Mr.Werrity and the Tories.

The maverick former British diplomat Craig Murray is continuing like a terrier to worry the government with questions about Mick Davis' protege Mr.Werrity, his trips to Iran, to mention another topical subject, and how he helped arrange for Britain's ambassador in Tel Aviv, Matthew Gould to meet Israeli generals over dinner, and what they talked about.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/oct/18/adam-werritty-pro-israel-funders
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2011/10/matthew-gould-and-adam-werritty/

But the Middle East is only one corner of Mick Davis interests, helping Israel but a hobby you might say. According to Wikipedia, Xstrata plc is a global mining company headquartered in Zug, Switzerland and with its registered office in London. It is a major producer of coal (and the world's largest exporter of thermal coal), copper, nickel, primary Vanadium" and Zinc, and the world's largest producer of ferrochrome. It has operations in 19 countries across Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe, North America and South America. Xstrata has its primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It has a secondary listing on the SIX Swiss Exchange. Its largest shareholder is Glencore International plc, which has a stake of approximately 34%.

That last sentence really is interesting. It is like you are exploring a cave and think you have come to the end, only to find a small opening to one side opening up into a whole bigger cave system. A dark labyrinth.

"Glencore's history reads like a spy novel"

So said an Australian programme about the company.
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2005/s1300651.htm

We could pick up part of that thread from January 20, 2001, when hours before leaving office, US president Bill Clinton granted a presidential pardon to a businessman called Marc Rich, who had been indicted by then federal prosecutor Rudy Giuliano, and was on the US Justice Department's Most Wanted List. The charges against Rich related to illegal trading with Iran and tax evasion.

Rich, who began in metals trading, had got to know the international materials markets and during the 1973-4 oil embargo he found ways to buy Iranian and Iraqi oil relatively cheaply then resell it for twice the price to US companies. He had reportedly gained a friend and business partner in Ayatollah Khomenei. While the Iranian leaders might fulminate against America and Israel, they needed to sell their oil, and were not too bothered apparently by Marc Rich's profitable sales to America or his donations to the Zionists.

Allegations were made that Clinton had decided on the pardon because Rich's ex-wife, a shoe factory heiress, had donated money to the Democrats. But among other factors revealed, Israeli leaders including then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Shimon Peres interceded with the President on Marc Rich's behalf. So for some reason did Spanish King Juan Carlos

Despite the pardon, Rich decided to stay in Switzerland, living for a time at Zug then moving to Meggen. He is said to hold both Spanish and Israeli passports, and to have boasted of his work for Mossad. He has been awarded honours by two Israeli universities, Bar Ilan and the Ben Gurion University of the Negev.

There were rumours linking Rich with the London-based Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), This bank, used by the CIA to fund Afghan mujahaddeen and by Abu Nidal for arms puchases, was also implicated in the Iran-Contra affair, by which arms sales to the Iranian regime helped fund support for right-wing Contras in Nicaragua, thus bypassing US Congressional scrutiny. The BCCI was wound up amid scandal twenty years ago, leaving innocent creditors such as Asian shopkeepers stranded.

But Marc Rich and Co. AG survived , having become Glencore International plc a multinational mining and commodities trading company headquartered in Baar, Switzerland and with its registered office in Saint Helier, Jersey. It is the world's largest commodities trading company, with a 2010 global market share of 60 percent in the internationally tradeable zinc market, 50 percent in the internationally tradeable copper market, 9 percent in the internationally tradeable grain market and 3 percent in the internationally tradeable oil market.

Glencore has production facilities around the world and supplies metals, minerals, crude oil, oil products, coal, natural gas and agricultural products to international customers in the automotive, power generation, steel production and food processing industries.
(Wikipedia)

Glencore has mining interests around the world, from Colombia to the Congo, Katanga to Khazakhstan, .

"Glencore is also noted for its association with the publicly traded Xstrata mining group, also headquartered in the low-tax Canton of Zug, Switzerland. Glencore is reported to serve as a marketing partner for Xstrata. As of 2006, Glencore leaders Willy Strothotte and Ivan Glasenberg are on the board of Xstrata, which Strothotte chairs. According to The Sunday Times in 2005, Glencore controlled 40% of Xstrata stock and has appointed the Xstrata CEO, Mick Davis."
(Wikipedia again).

So what does it all signify? No good asking me. But having taken a glimpse at these affairs, and shone a torch briefly into that labyrinth, we must hope that people do ask questions and maybe someone better qualified may start to untangle the web,

Watching David Cameron on TV sneering about trade unionists funding the Labour Party, and accusing Ed Miliband of asking "trade union funded" questions, I reflected that at least the millions of working people who contribute to Labour through our unions are open and honest about how we earn our money and the way that it is spent. We pay our whack of income tax in this country, which is more than a lot of the Tories' backers can say.

Whether we, the mugs in their eyes, get as good value for money from our politicians as the billionaires make sure they get from theirs is another matter, of course.

PS A Footnote

I believe this is called serendipity, a happy coincidence, though not pehaps for friends and patrons of messrs. Cameron, Hague, Fox and Werrity, it is a remark by Robert Fisk in the Independent on Wednesday:

"Anyway, the Iranians trashed us yesterday and made off, we are told, with a clutch of UK embassy documents. I cannot wait to read their contents. For be sure, they will soon be revealed".

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-sanctions-are-only-a-small-part-of-the-history-that-makes-iranians-hate-the-uk-6269812.html

From the Battle for the Olive Groves to War in the Groves of Academe

2011-11-25T06:04:00.001-08:00

AS people in Egypt courageously attempt to regain the reins of their revolution, an Israeli strolling in Tahrir Square was surprised to hear more than one protester say that what they wanted was "democracy like they have in Israel".

They did not burst into a rendition of the Zionist Hatikva, which the Israeli Education ministry would like to impose in all schools; nor were they under illusions as to how much real equality they would enjoy as Arab citizens in Israel (which proclaims itself the Jewish state), let alone as to how much democracy the Israeli state is prepared to concede to Palestine, i.e. the territories it has held under occupation for 44 years.

If anyone needed a reminder of Netanyahu's attitude on the neighbour's rights, he has just reimposed the Israeli freeze on Palestinian funds, previously clamped when Palestine won UNESCO recognition, now imposed again because Fatah and Hamas have agreed on partnership. The Israeli government would sooner have them engage in civil war, even if it means Hamas in Gaza would not be bound by any peace that the Palestine Authority makes.
Peace? Who wants that? We got America backing us, ain't we?

What the people our Israeli reporter heard were trying to say simply was that they want the same kind of democratic rights in their country as Israelis were supposed to enjoy in their state, the right to criticise leaders and governments, to protest and strike, even to screw up as Israelis have done in electing lousy governments.

And what the reporter found ironic was that just when people in Arab countries were risking their lives for freedom, Israelis were facing the dimunition of theirs in the name of patriotism and security. The measures so far - the jailing of a journalist who went too far, the restrictions on funding of non-governmental organisations, the removal of a TV station's license - might not seem too exceptional, when each was taken on their own. But they are not being taken on their own.

"A nation which enslaves others forges its own chains" was an old adage which some thoughtful Israelis quoted as far back as 1968 when it became evident their government had no intention of voluntarily relinquishing the territories it had gained in the previous year's war. We might also remember Abraham Lincoln's realisation that America could not remain half-slave, and half -free. Israel has got away with it for 44 years, with American support, proclaiming itself "the only democracy in the Middle East", albeit not equally a state for all its citizens (it claims instead to be for many of us who are not), while ruling over the neighbouring people by brute force.

The Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine, guarded by Israeli troops, are untroubled by some of the laws which Israel boasts, such as on employment, discrimination or women's rights, and the right-wing settlers have only contempt for the democracy of ordinary Israelis. But these settlements and their yeshivot have become the bases for forays into Israel proper, fostering hate and terror against the Arab minority and others, including recently Jewish peace supporters, in a manner which Diaspora Jews will find all too reminiscent of fascist and antisemitic movements.

Veteran peace campaigner Uri Avnery has remarked that what he fears more than Israel annexing the West Bank is that the right-wing settlers will annex Israel.

Against the background of these tensions, it is interesting to see fissures opening in Israel's academic establishments. These do seem to run deeper than the rivalries and competition for funds that we might see elsewhere, even though funding is involved.

"Bar Ilan University is the only Zionist university left in Israel,” – asserted Professor Efraim Inbar, Director of that institution's Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, at a gala dinner of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) held last Tuesday night in New York. The ZOA are not any old Zionists, mind. Led at one time by liberal figures like Louis Brandeis and Rabbi Hillel Silver, they have moved sharply to the Right, denouncing other Jewish organisations for being 'soft' on such 'terrorists' as Nelson Mandela, and condemning Israel's decision to withdraw settlers and troops from Gaza, whose people they say should receive no US funds or outside support until they totally end opposition to the State of Israel.

Contacted by the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, Inbar stood by his claim, saying Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, for example, were “not Zionist” in his opinion. “There are many Bolshevik post-Zionists at these universities, who pack their faculties with similar-minded lecturers. The Israeli universities are overflowing with post-Modernists who undermine not only Zionism but academic truth itself.”

Inbar said that although he knows that there are also Zionist lecturers at the various Social Studies faculties, they are outnumbered. “An evil wind is emanating from these places,” he said.

Inbar’s comments were received warmly by an 800-strong audience that came to the Grand Hyatt Hotel in midtown Manhattan to see right-wing talk-show host Glenn Beck receive the “Dr. Miriam & Sheldon Adelson Defender of Israel Award”. Another award was given to House Foreign Relations chair Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who denounced the "dangerous Palestinian scheme" of achieving UN recognition and statehood, and praised Israeli West Bank settlements as "not an impediment to peace - but a solution for Israel’s survival.”

To really make up the evening, and thrill the audience, Republican presidential contender Michele Bachmann called for the US Navy to blockade Iran, and the Pentagon to prepare "war plans".

To be sure, Bar Ilan University has some claim to be outstanding. Among its more famous alumni is Yigal Amir, who is serving a life sentence for the assassination in 1995 of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin whom he considered a traitor for trying to make peace with the Palestinians. Though thousands of Israelis rally each year in honour of the murdered leader, some 14 per cent of the population said Amir should be pardoned, and last year Bar Ilan students partied on the anniversary of the assassination, though they claimed this was just a coincidence as they were celebrating the college term opening.

Some 70 prominent lecturers from various Israeli universities accused Bar-Ilan University of political persecution and denying lecturers promotion and tenure due to their politics, following the university's decision to deny tenure to Dr. Ariella Azoulay last year, and more recent decision not to promote Dr. Menachem Klein, of the political science department, to professor. Bar-Ilan dismissed the allegations saying "decisions about promoting lecturers are made solely on the basis of their academic achievements."

Azoulay, who has published about 10 books and numerous essays in prominent journals, said the university denied her tenure and promotion because of her leftist leanings. "Dr. Azoulay is one of the world's leading researchers in photography and visual culture," the lecturers' group wrote to the Council and Bar-Ilan's president and rector. In view of Azoulay's international recognition, "the university's decision raises a heavy suspicion of political persecution," they wrote.

Prof. Yaron Ezrachi of Hebrew University's political science department said "Bar-Ilan has learned to conceal political considerations, disguising them as academic processes. We fear the precedent of firing lecturers for radical political views of any kind, despite their international academic excellence. This could contaminate the entire higher education system in Israel."

A university which has attracted a different kind of attention is Ben Gurion University of the Negev, based in Be'ersheva. A report in the newspaper Yediot Ahronot says that a committee appointed by the Israeli Council for Higher Education has recommended closing the university's department of politics and government, on account of its "extreme leftist tendency".

We must remember that what supporters of the Israeli government consider "extreme leftist" might not strike everyone as particularly "leftist" at all, but even moderate criticism of the treatment of Palestinians, including that of Negev Bedouin, may be deemed so. What the department's critics seem to particularly dislike is that not only do lecturers express their own opinions, but the department encourages students to partipate in community activity off campus as part of their work.

It seems that the committee investigating BG University sought an unusually high amount of student input into its report, and this looks suspiciously like the work of Im Tirzu, the right-wing student outfit whose members have come from the army, and whose funds have been boosted by right-wing American support. Israeli Education Minister Gideon Saar is chair of the Israeli Council on Higher Education and a supporter of Im Tirzu.

http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2011/11/25/calls-for-closing-ben-gurion-university-department-for-alleged-leftist-bias/

http://972mag.com/the-context-of-the-bgu-report-assault-on-academic-freedom/28364/

One person in BG's politics department who has particularly angered the right-wing and brought the witch-hunters buzzing around Be'ersheba is Neve Gordon. An ex-paratrooper with war disabilities, he has been a director of Physicians for Human Rights, formed during the first Intifada, and is a member of Ta'ayush, Arab-Jewish Partnership, which has organisd practical solidarity such as food and medical supply convoys to villages under curfew.

A supporter of the Israeli peace camp and Palestinian statehood, Neve Gordon won a noted libel action against American-born Haifa academic Steven Plaut, one of the initiators of the Israeli campus witch hunt.

Then Dr.Gordon wrote in a Los Angeles Times piece on August 20, 2009 that he had decided to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement because Israel had become a right-wing apartheid state and he felt he had no choice but to support such actions. This led to threats by some US donors to withhold funds from Ben-Gurion University, and the university tried to distance itself from Dr.Gordon. Ben-Gurion University president Professsor Rivka Carmi, said, "We are appalled by Dr. Neve Gordon's irresponsible remarks, that morally deserve to be completely and utterly condemned. "We disapprove of Gordon's disastrous views and reject his cynical exploitation of the freedom of speech in Israel and the university."

Education Minister Saar called Gordon's article "repugnant and deplorable. The Israeli government has since legislated against support for boycott. But Professor Carmi was unable to persuade Dr.Gordon to quit, and the department promoted him to head it. Now Professor Carmi has had to defend her university against a broader attack.

Not that Ben Gurion University is encouraging resistance to the demands of the military and its state. It cut the pay of Professor Idan Landau who was jailed in May for refusing to perform army reserve duty. Professor Landau has refused reserve duty for the last 11 years and has been jailed three times, but this is the first time that the university has taken any action against him. King's College professor Shalom Lappin, known to some of us as a left-Zionist Peace (but not Now) type has joined academics from Israel and abroad in writing to the BG president, Professor Rivka Carmi, to challenge the university's decision.

Professor Lappin, who said he did not agree with Professor Landau's actions, nevertheless said he was "appalled" at the BGU response. He wrote: "Despite your insistence that this decision is not politically motivated, the fact that Professor Landau was singled out for this punItive action suggests that it was, in fact, a vindictive expression of political opinion, as well as a gross abuse of administrative authority. I strongly doubt that you would have penalised a faculty member who took a week off his/her academic duties to engage in political activities that you agree with.
"Nor, I suspect, would you have applied this sanction to a colleague who was absent from campus for a week in order to attend to family or personal business, and taught make up classes to compensate his/her students, as Professor Landau did."

The university response, written by lawyer Almog Tzabar, said: "Landau was not punished by the university nor did the university impose any sanctions upon him because of his political views or because the university is taking any sort of position concerning his choice not to do reserve duty.

"An employee is paid a salary for working. Since Landau was in jail, he was unable to work during his period of incarceration – and therefore is not eligible for the salary he would have earned during that period. Therefore, in accordance with solicited legal advice, it was decided to dock his salary for that period because he was not working.
"Nevertheless, above and beyond any legal requirements, since Landau did fulfil his teaching requirements, it was decided to dock 50 per cent of his salary for the time he was absent from work. Not only is this behaviour not improper, this decision reflects the university administration's cautious use of public funds."

http://www.thejc.com/news/israel-news/58346/british-academic-hits-out-israeli-uni-docked-professors-pay

http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/the-necessary-elimination-of-israeli-democracy-1.397625

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/arab-revolutionaries-look-to-israel-for-inspiration-1.397554

Will US change the Lockerbie script?

2011-11-21T20:20:00.001-08:00

JULY 3, 1988. IRANIAN AIRBUS brought down by US navy missile. Western media might have forgotten, others did not. Was Pan Am 103 bombed in revenge?

AFTER the overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya, with US eyes turning to Syria, and threats being made to Iran, a little question is bothering me. Will the US government and Western media be keeping to the pursuit of Libyan 'bad guys' for the bombing of Pan Am 103, among other crimes, or are we about to see a change of script?

At the beginning of this month it was reported that the Obama administration had made, or was about to make, a formal application to the new Libyan authorities for the extradition of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the man convicted for the Lockerbie bombing, who was released to return home to Libya on compassionate grounds.

The Scottish government which agreed to the release would not comment on whether it would oppose US moves. But Professor Robert Black QC, who set up the original Camp Zeist trial and persuaded the Libyans to let Megrahi stand trial under Scottish law, believes Megrahi was the victim of a miscarriage of justice, and he said the US would be acting against international law if they sought to try the man again.

The new Libyan government has said it will consider extradition requests, though earlier, during the fighting, the rebels had said they would not.
"We will not give any Libyan citizen to the West," Mohammed al-Alagi, the NTC justice minister, told reporters in Tripoli. "Al-Megrahi has already been judged once and he will not be judged again ... We do not hand over Libyan citizens, (Muammar) Gadhafi does."

http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/libyan-rebels-refuse-to-extradite-man-behind-lockerbie-bombing-1.381205

As we saw with Osama Bin Laden, the US does not always afford its enemies the luxury of a trial. But in this case their quarry seems likely to escape the talons of US "justice" whatever is decided, as still proclaiming his innocence to the end, Megrahi is reported to be geninely at death's door.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8730284/Libya-Lockerbie-bomber-Abdelbaset-Ali-al-Megrahi-maintains-innocence.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/03/lockerbie-bomber-says-role-exaggerated

If this is frustrating for those pursuing a hue and cry against the dying man, they might lift their hopes with the news that, following soon after the capture of Saif al Islam Gaddafi, who said Libya had only ever admitted "responsibility" (and not "guilt") for Lockerbie to get over international sanctions, another man, who might allegedly have had a much bigger role than Megrahi, has been captured. Whether asks for Abdullah al Senussi to be handed over, we will see.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8902861/Libya-the-executioner-Abdullah-al-Senussi-captured.html

Many people, including some with good reason to follow the Pan Am 103 case closely, have their doubts as to whether Megrahi - or indeed Libya - should have been in the dock in the first place. Several legal experts including the UN observer at his trial had strongly challenged the verdict, and there were signs that evidence against the Libyan had been fabricated.

Already in 2003 a former CIA officer had claimed evidence against Megrahi had been planted, and on Sunday, August 28, 2005 the Scotsman reported:

Police chief- Lockerbie evidence was faked

A FORMER Scottish police chief has given lawyers a signed statement claiming that key evidence in the Lockerbie bombing trial was fabricated. The retired officer - of assistant chief constable rank or higher - has testified that the CIA planted the tiny fragment of circuit board crucial in convicting a Libyan for the 1989 mass murder of 270 people.

The police chief, whose identity has not yet been revealed, gave the statement to lawyers representing Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, currently serving a life sentence in Greenock Prison.

The evidence will form a crucial part of Megrahi's attempt to have a retrial ordered by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC). The claims pose a potentially devastating threat to the reputation of the entire Scottish legal system. The officer, who was a member of the Association of Chief Police Officers Scotland, is supporting earlier claims by a former CIA agent that his bosses "wrote the script" to incriminate Libya.

The vital evidence that linked the bombing of Pan Am 103 to Megrahi was a tiny fragment of circuit board which investigators found in a wooded area many miles from Lockerbie months after the atrocity. The fragment was later identified by the FBI's Thomas Thurman as being part of a sophisticated timer device used to detonate explosives, and manufactured by the Swiss firm Mebo, which supplied it only to Libya and the East German Stasi.

It was later suggested that Thurman's technical expertise lay less in interpreting such evidence than in making sure it was found near the right spot. Ulrich Lumpert, the Mebo AG engineer who testified to the validity of this evidence, admitted in an affidavit to lying in court and stealing the object from his employer after the attack whereupon it was planted.

The Scottish police officer had apparently decided to approach lawyers with what he knew after Megrahi's first appeal failed. In June 2007 the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission granted Megrahi leave to appeal against his conviction for a second time. After initially appealing, Megrahi abandoned his second appeal in August 2009 as an ongoing appeal would have prevented him from being moved to Libya under the Prisoner Transfer Scheme which was thought to be a possibility in 2009. Then Megrahi was freed on compassionate grounds by the Scottish Government on 20 August 2009 following doctors reporting on 10 August 2009 that he had terminal prostate cancer and was expected to have around three months to live.

Martin Cadman, whose son Bill was killed in the Lockerbie bombing, said "I'm very pleased he has been released on compassionate grounds because I don't think he was the right person to be there anyway. It is just righting a wrong...I think he was innocent and he was not involved. I don't believe he should have been in prison and I'm very pleased he will be back home with his family very soon."^[31] Doctor Jim Swire, whose 23 year-old daughter Flora was killed said "I don't believe for a moment that this man was involved in the way that he was found to have been involved. I feel despondent that The West and Scotland didn't have the guts to allow this man's second appeal to continue because I am convinced had they done so it would have overturned the verdict against him."

There has been a great deal of recrimination between the US, British and Scottish governments over who agreed to Megrahi's release and why. US media encouraged relatives of the Lockerbie victims to feel betrayed and shout that the Libyan ought to have died in prison, and claimed that Britain had sought to appease Gaddafi so BP could win conessions in Libya. (that US oil companies felt jealous having been after the same contracts was not relevant of course). The British Labour government was happy to let those inept Scots take the blame. The Scots government said that London had encouraged them to go ahead with the release, a view with which senior mandarin Sir Gus O'Donnel's report concurred.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-12381612

The Mail-on-Sunday claimed to have seen secret documents showing that Labour had caved in to a Libyan threat. The Telegraph on the other hand said its evidence from onfidential letters and e-mails showed it was all about pursuing oil interests and trade.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8306228/Secret-correspondence-shows-British-helped-Libya-secure-Megrahi-release.html

What all assumed was that Megrahi had been guilty and properly tried. What few asked, least of all south of the border (where that Scottish policeman's evidence had scarcely been reported) was what would have happened if the case had gone to the second appeal, and Megrahi had won by presenting evidence of a frame-up. If the Libyan was not guilty, who was?

Before and after Libya was put in the frame for Lockerbie there were various theories advanced as to who had been behind the bombing, and why, ranging from South African intelligence through the Israeli Mossad agency (presumably intending to provoke a reaction against one or other of its enemies) to the all-purpose Abu Nidal. But the most plausible, and from knowledgable if biased sources, pointed to the Syrian-backed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, (PFLP-GC) led by Ahmed Jibril. Though one of the smaller guerrilla group, this breakaway from the better-known PFLP came to specialise in bold and technically ambitious operations. Jibril had been a Syrian army officer, and with Syrian backing came finance from Syria's ally, Iran.

On July 3, 1988, the USS Vincennes, a missile cruiser, having entered Iranian waters in the Straits of Hormuz, brought down an Iran Air A300 airbus, killing all 290 passengers and crew, including 66 children aboard. The US claimed its trained forces mistook the airbus for a much smaller Nimrod fighter about to attack. The US government never apologised for their action, and the officers and crew of the Vincennes were decorated when they returned from their tour of duty.

US and British forces were alerted to expect a reprisal attack after this, and it is possible that Mossad tipped them off that this could involve Ahmed Jibril. The PFLP-GC had allegedly undertaken to carry out a contract for revenge on behalf of Iran. The organisation had a cell based near Frankfort, and was said to have links with a drug trader working with the CIA. A bomb maker called Marwan Abdel Razzack Khreesat was part of the Frankfurt group.

On October 26, 1988, Khreesat was arrested and one of his bombs seized. Then Khreesat was mysteriously released. Former CIA agent Oswald Le Winter stated, "…pressure had come from Bonn… from the U.S. Embassy in Bonn… to release Khreesat."

Documents from the US Defene Intelligence Agency, dated 1994, two years after the Libyans were accused, still described the PFLP-GC as the Lockerbie bombers.

http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2008/12/new-qtions-raised-over-lockerbie.html

But by then both Britain and the United States had restored and improved relations with Syria, using its help in the Gulf War against Iraq, and were no longer desribing the Assad regime as a sponsor of terror. So if a villain was needed, Gaddafi would have to fill the part.

Now that things have changed once again, will America have to try and change the script?

One possible sign of change came in, of all places, the Jewish Chronicle, on September 27. Its politics are needless to say not my own, but it is worth quoting both for its openness (the author is not one of the paper's staff but a barrister specialising in criminal law) and because the author suggests the CIA had more than diplomatic niceties to cover when they stitched up the Libyans and Megrahi for the Lockerbie bomb.

Lockerbie: time for us to reveal the true culprits

By David Wolchover

The Arab Spring may have heightened tensions between Egypt and Israel but, on the upside, it also achieved Colonel Gaddafi's overthrow. Strangely, this could actually benefit the Jewish state - but only if Libya takes the initiative.

With Gaddafi gone, the world could recognise, finally, that the perpetrators of the Lockerbie bomb were not from the Libyan secret service, did not include the man who was ultimately convicted, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, and indeed had nothing to do with Libya. The world could learn that the culprits were the original suspects, a gang of Palestinian terrorists.

As it takes its first steps, the new Libyan leadership will likely want to remove the stigma of Libya's association with the atrocity of December 1988 and seek international acceptance of al-Megrahi's innocence. A democratic Libya could wield a good deal of clout if it applied the sort of economic and diplomatic pressures Gaddafi used to secure al-Megrahi's release on compassionate grounds to urging the Scottish and British governments to declare him innocent. And they may be pushing at an open door.

How do we know the true culprits were Palestinian terrorists? In July 1988, the battle cruiser USS Vincennes shot down IranAir flight 655 over the Straits of Hormuz. The Americans were steeled for a terrorist response and the Western intelligence community was tipped off, probably by Mossad, that a deal to carry out such an attack had been struck between Iran and Ahmed Jibril, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, "General Command". This was a Syrian-based ultra-extremist splinter group of the PFLP, with an active cell in West Germany. The deal was that Iran would pay them a bounty to destroy an American civil airliner departing from a European airport.

As a result, the West German police set up the "Autumn Leaves" surveillance operation, whereby a CIA proxy double-agent named Marwen Khreesat, an expert bomb-maker from Jordan, was infiltrated into the cell. He built a number of similar improvised explosive devices (IEDs) one of which was virtually identical to that which brought down Pan Am flight 103 a mere two months later.

The device was removed from under his nose and delivered to the cell's airport security expert, Abu Elias. Khreesat tipped off his control in Jordan and the police immediately swooped, rounding up members of the cell and seizing a second device, also virtually identical to the Lockerbie bomb.

"Abu Elias was never seized and the missing IED was never recovered, two facts enough in themselves to prompt the strongest suspicion. Combined with other compelling circumstantial evidence they plainly connected the cell with the bombing."

This is not conspiracy theory. It is non-contentious stuff, most of it given in evidence at Camp Zeist. Yet the judges turned a blind eye to the obvious and based their decision on a series of weak findings. What the Scottish judges did not appreciate was the utter horror Khreesat's CIA controllers must have felt in the aftermath of the Lockerbie tragedy: that a bomb made by their proxy in pursuance of his cover on their behalf was almost certainly used to bring down the Pan Am jet.

Therein lies the clue to why attention was drawn away from Iran and the PFLP-GC and why Libya became the scapegoat. But Israel has no need to defer to the embarrassed sensibilities of a handful of long-retired CIA staffers. Nor need it wait for pressure to build up from the new Libyan leadership.

Benjamin Netanyahu's government might not want to be seen too openly pressing for al-Megrahi's vindication and the corresponding condemnation of Palestinian extremists. Yet behind the scenes they ought to be attempting to secure that outcome. It can do Israel no harm for the world to learn that her enemies were paid $4.5 million to murder 11 residents of Lockerbie, and 259 innocent passengers, of all religions.

Source URL: http://www.thejc.com/comment-and-debate/comment/55429/lockerbie-time-us-reveal-true-culprits

Explosion shatters Iran's security, but Netanyahu worries for his own

2011-11-20T08:18:00.001-08:00

NOT A WHISPER ...but for crying out loud! Former security chief Yuval Diskin and Meir Dagan of Mossad. Netanyahu wants them investigated for blowing his war plans.

WHILE working its people up to be ready for war on Iran, with propaganda and air raid siren testing, the Israeli government is tightening screws on information and expressions of opinion at home. It is not always obvious whether the repressive moves are required for "security", or if the war threats and "security" are a pretext for repression.

With the UN's International Atomic Energy Authority expressing concern over Iranian uranium enrichment plans, although Iranian leaders insisted these were for peaceful purposes, there have been claims that both Israeli and British forces were being readied for an attack on Iran.

Veteran peace campaigner Uri Avnery has argued that Israel will not attack Iran, not only for the difficulties and retaliation it would bring, but because such an attack could not be planned without backing and help from the United States. He is hoping Obama will resist the clamour for war from US Republicans.

A huge explosion at an Iranian missile base on November 12 killed Major General Hassan Moghaddam and at least 16 soldiers of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Although Iranian authorities described it as an accident, some referred to Moghaddam as a "martyr", and in Israel the press coyly suggested that it was an act of sabotage the authors of which were unknown.

Although there are armed groups such as Mojahadeen active in Iran, with possible renewed US support, the scale and choice of target of the attack do strongly point to Mossad. Moghaddam, who was trained in China and North Korea, has been described as the architect of the country’s ballistic missile program. The Alghadir base where the explosion occurred, housed Iran’s Shehab-3 missiles, which are capable of reaching Israel.

Alex Fishman, reporting in the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot cites U.S. intelligence as saying the target was more advanced missile prototypes the Sajjil and Ghadr F. The new missiles would have longer range, being made from aluminium, and requiring less fuel.

If this was a Mossad operation they were either very lucky or very well-informed. Together with their ability to get the explosive device in so close to the general, this might explain why the Iranian authorities' embarassment made them claim it was an accident rather than openly express their outrage.

But the Israeli government too, though not concealing its pleasure at the result, was reluctant to admit responsibility, and not only for security reasons. For Prime Minister "Bibi" Netanyahu and his cabinet there are other worries than Iran, one being the new Palestininian initiatives at both diplomatic and street level, the other being dissent within Israel, stretching up from the social justice movement through an unruly media to the very organs of state. Right-winger Bibi and his Labour Defence Minister Barak must both have hesitated about giving nachas to Mossad.

A top investigative journalist, Uri Blau of Ha'aretz, could be facing seven years in prison for presenting the military in unflattering light. Among other things he wrote two reports based on secret documents leaked to him by a young woman called Anat Kamm who obtained them during her military service. The memos from IDF General Yair Naveh showed he approved targeted assasinations of unarmed Palestinian suspects, in the occupied or Palestinian Authority territory, rather than troubling to arrest them. This was in breach of rulings from the Israeli Supreme Court, but rather than look into the lawbreaking, the authorities have gone for the whistle blowers. Anat Kamm has already been jailed, to "make an example" of her for other young people who may come across confidential information during their service, the judge said frankly.

Meanwhile, as some commentators remarked, senior officers frequently leak or plant information in the press when it suits them, as well as disobeying the law, without too much trouble from judges. Reporters without Frontiers have pointed out that the law under which Blau is being prosecuted has not been used in 50 years.

Top reporters and editors from the Israeli media held an emergency conference on Sunday aimed at defending freedom of the press. It was called in response to a recent downsizing in Israeli media outlets, the pending closure of Israel’s second commercial television channel, Channel 10, and a bill toughening Israeli libel laws. Conference organizers said the event would be “opening shot to a series of steps, planned for the upcoming weeks, aimed at stopping the sweeping attack on the media.”

It is not just military matters that are making the government and politicians nervous about their "security". Against the background of this Summer's social justice protests, Netanyahu recently threatened the licenses of Israeli media if they published information from a leaked list detailing the riches of Knesset members.

http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2011/11/16/exclusive-list-of-wealthiest-knesset-members-leaked-bibi-threatens-licenses-of-israeli-media-if-they-publish/

The Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee has approved an amendment to the current libel law that, if approved by Knesset, would result in a substantial hike to the maximum damages paid and would loosen the criteria for slander and libel. Criticis of the amendment believe this will hamper freedom of expression and the independent press.

There has also been legislation introduced to impede the funding of peace, human rights and social justice organisations. The drive for this, complaining of "foreign interference" in Israel's affairs (and those of the West Bank) comes from right-wing organisations which themselves receive massive funding from sources like the right-wing Christian Zionist outfits in the United States. If they have no sense of irony, it is possible Netanyahu may be seeing flaws in raising this issue. He faces questions over donations he collected in the United States, in breach of Knesset rules. There has also been unwelcome publicity over money spent by Israel and its friends in influencing governments in Europe. View Halloo, as they say.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/netanyahu-freezes-bills-to-limit-funds-for-israeli-human-rights-groups-sources-say-1.396591

Besides legislation, there are other ways of dealing with communicators who offend. Keren Neubach was dismissed from her position as anchorwoman of “Mabat Sheni” (Second Glance), Channel One’s news magazine show. Neubach who held the position for three years, is considered highly critical of the government and many view her dismissal as politically motivated.

“I am concerned with the connection between the assault on the press and that on the judicial system,” veteran investigative journalist Ilana Dayan told participants of the conference. “Someone is afraid of dogged press and a critical Supreme Court.”

Channel 2 News anchor Yair Lapid warned: "An incontinent government is silencing dissenting voices." Raviv Druker, of Channel 10, said. "Both the government and the rich are a threat to free press."

Israel Police and the Communications Ministry cut off the broadcasts of Kol Hashalom radio station on Saturday, claiming that they are pirate broadcasts. Kol Hashalom says its offices, located in the Palestinian Authority, are not subject to Israeli law, but Palestinian law, and therefore the Israeli Communications Ministry does not have the authority to shut it down.

Kol Hashalom has been broadcasting for the past seven years from East Jerusalem, using broadcasting equipment in Ramallah and an operating license from the Palestinian Communications Ministry. The station was established by Israeli peace activists working together with Palestinian peace activists.

The station is intended to replace the legendary Kol Hashalom radio station operated by Abbie Nathan, but a slightly different Hebrew spelling was chosen to differentiate between the two. The original station’s spelling translates to “The Voice of Peace” in English, while the new station’s spelling translates to “The Whole Peace”.

According to the station’s operators, for all its broadcast history, they were never asked to stop broadcasting or to acquire an Israeli license. Their first communication of the kind was received on November 4, asking them to stop broadcasting, claiming that their operations are illegal. The station denied the charges and requested time to form a reply.

Station manager Mossi Raz, a former Knesset member for the doveish Meretz party, was called into a police station for interrogation on Thursday. While Raz was questioned under caution, he was asked to give orders to end broadcasts, or else he would be remanded by a judge and the police would raid the station’s offices.

Raz is certain that the decision to close down the station is part of a general attack on what the government regards as "left-wing" organizations. The station provided a platform for groups that are now under attack by the new law that would curb their foreign funding.

Likud MK Danny Danon recently turned to the Attorney General, demanding that he shut down the station, claiming that is broadcasting incitement.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/ministry-shuts-down-broadcasts-of-israeli-palestinian-radio-station-1.396513

http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/press_releases/1321799735

http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?ID=243797&R=R1

It is not only "left-wing" organisations and liberal media that are troubling the government. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman met on Sunday with Mossad chief Tamir Pardo in a bid to end the crisis between them which culminated last week with Lieberman's ordering his officials to cut links with the intelligence service. Lieberman, who has been under police investigation over his assistance to businessmen moving funds into banks in Belarus, has reportedly been classed a "security risk".

On Friday he saw Prime Minister Netanyahu on Friday to give him examples of Mossad's misbehaviour. He complains that Mossad has been bypassing his Ministry, communicating behind his back with some African states and with Egypt, Turkey and Jordan. He also claims that while Mossad received Foreign Ministry reports, they witheld their own reports from the ministry.

When former Mossad chief Meir Dagan stepped down this year he went on to launch an attack on Netanyahu and his Defence Minister Ehud Barak, describing them as "reckless and irresponsible individuals", who would endanger Israel's existence with their plans to attack Iran.

Dagan is no dove. As Mossad chief he authorised assassinations and planned attacks just like the one on the Iranian missile base.

But he has criticised the government's failure to seize the opportunity presented by the Saudi-backed peace plan which offered relations with all Arab states if Israel negotiated an agreement with the Palestinians. He warned that if the Palestinians pushed ahead for UN recognition, Israel could face isolation as well as another Intifada, and in desperation Netanyahu and Barak might choose to go to war with Iran. If they did, Israel would find itself at the centre of a regional war, with missiles raining down. "Better a bomb in the basement in Tehran than missiles on the roofs of Tel Aviv".

One Israeli commentator, noting Dagan was one of the "most rightwing militant people ever born here ... who ate Arabs for breakfast, lunch and dinner", said ""When this man says that the leadership has no vision and is irresponsible, we should stop sleeping soundly at night."

Worried about the public awakening, Netanyahu is not content with locking up journalists, and shutting down radio stations, but has decided to try and gag his former intelligence and security chiefs.

As the well-informed blogger Richard Silverstein recorded:

The Kuwaiti paper, Al Jarida who, the Guardian says, has a history of publishing authoritative stories using high level Israeli sources, that Bibi Netanyahu has demanded an investigation of leaks orchestrated by Meir Dagan and Yuval Diskin designed to sabotage his plans to attack Iran. This will bring about the unlikely scenario of the current Shabak director, Yoram Cohen investigating his former boss and its most recent chief, Diskin, and the former Mossad chief as well. Again, I can’t ever recall something like this happening. They may’ve investigated a general or cabinet minister, but two intelligence chiefs at the same time?

http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2011/11/03/bibi-orders-dagan-diskin-investigated-for-leaking-plans-of-iran-attack/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/03/israeli-pm-investigation-iran-leak?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

In his latest blog posting at Tikkun Olam, Richard reveals that the Israeli press have been gagged from revealing the identity of a suspect accused of threatening to attack Peace Now premises and supporters as part of the right-wing settlers' "price tag" campaign which has already seen attacks on Palestinians and mosques.
Apparently the suspect's mother is a senior police officer and his father the (Netanyahu-appointed) head of Shin Bet. This man shouted at reporters in court "DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?!" Well, they do now.

http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/

John Laings demo gets a result

2011-11-16T04:14:00.000-08:00

RMT'S STEVE HEDLEY enumerates points conceded by bosses

AFTER less than an hour demonstrating outside the offices of contractor John Laing in Victoria, central London, this morning, trade unionists achieved what looks like a good result.

Invited inside the company's Allington House headquarters to talk with a senior manager, three members of the RMT rail union re-emerged to report that the firm had now agreed to recognise the union, reinstate dismissed members, and give a reference to union rep Marciano Flora to help him fight deportation.

Laings, best known as a building contractor and developer, has expanded into services in the public sector and has the cleaning contract for London Overground rail. It was after cleaners had joined the union that management called a number of them to come in for supposed overtime on October 25, only to hand them over to UK Border Agency police for detention.
(see previous report http://randompottins.blogspot.com/2011/11/cleaning-up-with-help-of-controls.html)

Marciano Flora had been in the country several years, initially working for his brother in law's firm. Since taking a job with Laing he had applied for a new work permit, and was waiting for this to come through. Police who arested him admitted they did not know why he was being detained but had instructions.

Among those supporting today's demonstration, besides RMT members. with their banners, were Unison members from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), where cleaners organised in that public service union had a similar experience.

Freedom Riders add to Veolia's worries

2011-11-15T08:21:00.001-08:00

AS police in New York brutally cleared Occupy Wall Street protesters from Zuccutti Park in the small hours overnight, a small group of youth inspired at least partly by an earlier US protest were boarding a bus bound for Jerusalem.

They too were to be intercepted by police, as their simple, peaceful action against injustice posed a threat to the powers that be, and a problem incidentally for one French-based company whose name and logo have become all too familiar here in Britain.

The struggles are not unrelated, regardlesss of the awareness or wishes of participants, since it is the United States which, for all its President's supposed commitmen to "two states" is vetoing Palestinian recognition by the UN.

And the Palestinian activists, though they have studied the example of the US black freedom riders, who fought against racist 'Jim Crow' laws in the South, want it made clear they are not just contesting the Zionist settlers' sole monopoly of 'bus seats, but challenging the segregated transport system as part of the illegal annexation , ethnic leansing and settlement of East Jerusalem, which ought to be the seat of government of free Palestine.

Here is the report from the Palestinian news agency:

RAMALLAH (Ma’an) -- Palestinian activists boarded Israeli settler buses Tuesday in an action inspired by the American civil rights movement which resulted in several arrests.

The activists headed toward the Kohav Yakov and Psagot settlement bus stops and boarded a bus for Jerusalem. Israeli forces stopped the bus on the Hizma checkpoint and prevented it from entering Jerusalem.

Settlers left the bus while it was searched and the activists were removed and arrested. As many as seven were reported to have been arrested by late Tuesday.

The detainees were identified by organizers as Nadeem al-Sharbate, Badee Dwak, Huwaida Arraf, Basel al-Araj, Fadi Quran, Mazin Qumsiyeh, and Fajr Harb.

"We launch this campaign in the belief that we will not achieve freedom, justice, and self-determination unless we make the Israeli occupation pay, economically and politically, for its daily violations of our rights and dignity," a campaign statement said.

The campaign aims to "deepen the people's involvement in the popular resistance, in tandem with the movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel."

The activists said they would continue to defy Israeli forces by boarding Egged and Veolia buses, which are used by settlers, in an action inspired by the US civil rights movement.

They will continue to "express our firm opposition to the illegitimate colonial entity on Palestinian land, all apartheid practices, human rights violations, land confiscation, the wall, and the refusal to let refugee return to their homeland."

VEOLIA IN UK

In the UK, Veolia Transport was known under its old name Connex, but now Veolia is better known through its involvment in local authority contracts and waste disposal.

In a letter to the West London Waste Authority which groups several boroughs, campaigners say there is evidence that the company has "been guilty of grave misconduct in relation to international and humanitarian laws and norms". They cite evidence that the company operates discrimination in employment, as well as being engaged in controversial projects.

"Veolia Transport, a subsidiary of Veolia Environnement, is a leading partner in the CityPass consortium, contracted to build a light-rail tramway linking West Jerusalem to illegal Israeli settlements in occupied East Jerusalem. Once built, the rail system will cement Israel‟s hold on occupied East Jerusalem and tie the settlements even more firmly into the State of Israel. This applies not only to the settlements in East Jerusalem: the 'Ammunition Hill' station of the network will operate as the feeder station for settler traffic from Ma'aleh Adumim, a large Israeli settlement in the West Bank, and from Israeli settlements in the Jordan Valley.

"The line is due to open in 2011 and Veolia is responsible for operating it. With its involvement in this project, the company is directly implicated in maintaining illegal settlements in occupied Palestinian territory and is playing a key role in Israel‟s attempt to make its annexation of the Palestinian territory of east Jerusalem irreversible. Further, as a willing agent of these policies, Veolia is undermining the chances of a just peace for the Palestinian people.

"Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and the annexation of East Jerusalem are illegal under international law. This is clearly confirmed by numerous UN resolutions and by the 2004 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the Wall, which Israel has been building in the West Bank. The settlements violate Article 49 of the 4th Geneva Convention: “…The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies” as well as Article 53 forbidding destruction of property in occupied territory. In some cases in East Jerusalem these violations amount to war crimes, i.e. “grave breaches” of the Convention (see Articles 146 and 147), as they involve extensive appropriation of Palestinian property not justified by military necessity. These grave breaches are being facilitated by Veolia‟s part in the construction and future operation of the tramway serving the settlements. The tramway also constitutes a significant alteration of the infrastructure of the occupied Palestinian territories contrary to the Hague Regulations of 1907, Section 3, which are also part of international law.
In April 2010 the UN Human Rights Council declared the tramway and its operation to be illegal (A/HRC/RES/13/7 of 14 April 2010). The resolution was passed 44 to 1, with the UK, France and all the EU members of the Council voting in favour. The operation of the tramway is precisely what Veolia has a contract to do.

"Thus, through its involvement in the building and future operation of this tramway linking Israel‟s illegal settlements with West Jerusalem, Veolia is facilitating Israel's 'grave breaches' of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and is complicit in its perpetuation of those breaches. In other words, Veolia is involved in aiding and abetting on-going war crimes. It is also facilitating, exacerbating, aiding and abetting Israel‟s breach of the Hague Regulations.

"Veolia furthermore operates two bus services serving the same function as the tramway: supporting and consolidating illegal settlements and tying them more closely into Israel. These are services 109 and 110, operated by its local company, Connex. They link the settlements of Beit Horon, Giv'at Ze'ev, Mevo Horon and Ramot Alon to Israel. Part of the route was until recently an Apartheid road on which Palestinians from the West Bank were forbidden to travel, even though it passes through the West Bank. In June 2010 the ban was theoretically lifted, but in practice to date, with restricted access and egress, it is still unclear whether West Bank Palestinians can now use the services".

That last point seems today to have been clarified.

http://wembleymatters.blogspot.com/p/letter-to-west-london-waste-authority.html
http://www.bigcampaign.org/veolia/

http://electronicintifada.net/blog/adri-nieuwhof/veolia-keeps-silent-about-two-bus-services-illegal-settlements#.TsKtbfIWi1s
http://www.plutobooks.com/display.asp?K=9780745331591&CID=pluatw

History that's haunting America

2011-11-13T13:46:00.001-08:00

FRONTLINE TO PICKET LINE. US war vets line up to protect Oakland occupation.

AMERICA'S Occupy Wall Street movement has not only spread across the continent from shore to shining shore, but taken on new seriousness in the West Coast port city of Oakland, where police attacks on the protesters have widened their support, and led to a general strike action stretching from school teachers to longshoremen (port workers).

People were not placated by an apology from the mayor after an ex-marine was injured when police officers fired tear gas canisters into the crowd. As the Marine Corps paper reported:

OAKLAND, Calif. — A clash between Oakland police and Occupy Wall Street protesters left an Iraq War veteran hospitalized Wednesday after a projectile struck him in a conflict that came as tensions grew over demonstration encampments across the San Francisco Bay Area.

Scott Olsen, 24, suffered a fractured skull Tuesday in a march with other protesters toward City Hall, said Dottie Guy, of the Iraq Veterans Against the War. Olsen’s family members said the Marine Corps corporal served two tours of duty in Iraq.

The demonstrators had been making an attempt to re-establish a presence in the area of a disbanded protesters’ camp when they were met by officers in riot gear.

http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2011/10/ap-iraq-vet-critically-injured-oakland-protest-102711/

Fortunately Scott Olsen recovered. But news of the attack brought more ex-servicemen out to line up in protection of the protest camp, and stirred expressions of support from among serving military personnel.

Although some wild rumours had been flying around about "the marines coming", there is no doubt that ex-marines and other veterans have been turning up at occupy protests, not just on the West Coast but at Wall Street itself. Their participation is at least partly motivated by experience of the jobs market and health issues after the military has dispensed with their services, and has apparently taken extra encouragement since the AFL-CIO unions voiced support.

http://www.care2.com/causes/u-s-marines-protect-occupy-wall-street-protesters-video.html

http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/10/more-veterans-on-the-way-to-occupy-wall-street.php

We might also note that in a week when politicians and the media have been trying to turn poppy-wearing and Armistice Day into their own propaganda stunt, a group of ex-servicemen turned up at St.Paul's cathedral to meet with the Occupy LSX campers.

Although the British Legion and American Legion are different, both originated in the period after the First World War and Russian Revolution, when the ruling classes grew frightened that returning servicemen facing unemployment and hardship would form dangerous revolutionary material. One only has to look at photographs of the original Jarrow Crusade to see that these marchers with neatly folded capes over their shoulders were marching in step and used to it.

But for the United States, supposed land of safe and successful capitalism, the news of ex-servicemen siding with the people against the bankers, and coming into potential conflict with the very forces they served has a haunting echo of history. Next year will be the 80th anniversary of the Bonus March when unemployed ex-servicemen went to Washington to demand payment of money owed them from their First World war service.

The Bonus Expeditionary Force, as they called themselves, numbered 43,000 marchers, 17,000 First World War veterans. their families, friends and supporters, who assembled in Washington, D.C., in the spring and summer of 1932. Many had been out of work since the onset of the Depression.

Retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, who became famous for his frank and outspoken criticisms of US policy and the use made of the military to serve big business interests by intervening overseas, visited the marchers' camp to show support.

But on July 28 US. Attorney General William D.Mitchell ordered the veterans removed from all government property. First the Washington police moved in, and meeting resistance, opened fire. Two veterans were wounded and later died. Then President Hoover ordered the army to clear the campsite.

At 4:45 p.m., commanded by Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the 12th Infantry Regiment, Fort Howard, Maryland, and the 3rd Cavalry Regiment, supported by six battle tanks commanded by Maj. George S. Patton, formed in Pennsylvania Avenue while thousands of civil service employees left work to line the street and watch. The Bonus Marchers, believing the troops were marching in their honor, cheered the troops until Patton ordered the cavalry to charge them—an action which prompted the spectators to yell, "Shame! Shame!"

After the cavalry charged, the infantry went in with fixed bayonets and adamsite gas, an arsenical vomiting agent. Driven out, veterans, families, and supporters retreated across the Anacostia River to their largest camp. Hoover ordered the assault stopped. But General MacArthur, who regarded the Bonus March as a Communist attempt to take power, ignored the President and ordered a new attack.

(Perhaps a later President Truman was mindful of this episode when, fearing war with China, he relieved General MacArthur of his command in Korea, and MacArthur came home to a ticker-tape reception on Wall Street).

Fifty-five veterans were injured in the onslaught and 135 arrested. A veteran's wife miscarried. When 12-week-old Bernard Myers died in the hospital after being caught in the tear gas attack, a government investigation reported he died of enteritis, though a hospital spokesperson said "the tear gas did not do it any good".

The US public showed what it thought by dumping Hoover and giving a landslide electoral victory to Franklin Delano Roosevelt that year. In 1933 there was another veterans' march, which Roosevelt tried to defuse with a more compromising approach, though it was to be some years before he was forced to agree the bonus.

On the labour front, 1934 saw a West Coast maritime strike, which became a general strike in the San Francisco bay area, including Oakland. There was also the widely supported teamsters' strike in Minneapolis.

The two men killed when police opened fire on the Bonus Marchers in Washington were William Hushka , a Lithuanian immigrant who had served in the US Army in World War I, and Eric Carlson a veteran from Oakland, who had served in the trenches in France during that war. Both men are buried at Arlington.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army

Studs Terkel's Hard Times, an oral history of the Great Depression, has accounts of the Bonus March and its repression.