No, I am not 'Charlie'

NOR ARE MILLIONS OF MUSLIMS TO BLAME FOR A HANDFUL OF KILLERS.

NO, I am not 'Charlie'. And if  this nonsense continues much longer I might have to seriously consider changing my first name!

I am NOT 'Charlie'.  And if you want to know why I am not joining those generally good people who have unthinkingly hastened to identify with that awful magazine, here is one reason why:

I learnt a new French word from this cover. Les Allocs, from les allocations familiales, family allowances, and roughly translatable in a current British context as 'Benefits'.  We are used to British media and politicians whipping up hostility against so-called "benefits scroungers" and immigrants, but not to anyone suggesting the papers that target both are somehow left-wing or anti-establishment.

The 'Charlie Hebdo' cover refers to the "sexual slaves of Boko Haram", a subject whose humour is a bit above my intellect, then depicts a crowd of ugly women in Muslim attire, all heavily pregnant,  screaming "Hands off our 'Allocs'(Benefits)".

Tres drole, and very amusing.

Of course, I may not have grasped the hidden subtleties of this cartoon, nor be sufficiently au fait with sophisticated French thought and humour to understand that this was really aimed against racism and misogyny, rather than appealing to both; and to the age old bitterness against the lower orders and lesser breeds living and multiplying - "parish-fed bastards" as was the cry of the Yeomanry at Peterloo.

I don't know whether the liberating aim would have been what the thugs had in mind who attacked a pregnant Muslim woman in the Paris suburb of Argenteuil last Thursday, tearing off her veil and headcovering, and kicking her in the stomach for good measure. The young woman suffered a miscarriage and lost her baby on Monday. I don't know whether she appreciated the irony.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/19/world/europe/muslim-woman-suffers-miscarriage-after-attack-in-france.html?_r=0

I had been going to add another 'Charlie Hebdo' cover featuring a black-clad bearded Orthodox Jew with an extra-long proboscis talking about the Holocaust , which I had seen posted on the internet, but it appears this was a spoof-cover produced by supporters of the antisemite Dieudonne.  I don't know whether 'CH' itself has done anything as unpleasant, but I note that friends who are normally sensitive to anything resembling antisemitism elsewhere were trying to find excuses for this caricature,  so long  as they thought it was genuine.  Such was the wave of enthusiasm for unrestrained freedom of speech.

I am not "Charlie", and nor am I any kind of apologist for the gunmen. Since they are dead, we don't know for sure what their motives were, or those of whoever sent them.  I don't buy the "lone nutters" theory, for these killers were either well-briefed and efficient, or very lucky, managing to strike at the CH office just when an editorial meeting was taking place. Perhaps if the French security services had been as effective at surveillance of those who'd already come on the radar, and stopping them getting guns, both the 'Charlie Hebdo' attack and the supermarket siege might have been prevented.

Still, I don't want to indulge in armchair detection, still less to be smug about those inferior French cops.  The two worst shooting incidents in Britain, at Hungerford (1987) and Dunblane(1996), were carried out by local characters, both white and neither of them Muslim, obsessed with guns, and with legally held firearms. Since then the law has been changed. But Nigel Farage, who blames events in France on "multiculturalism" , said last year that the restriction on hand guns should be scrapped. Maybe those journos who hang on Farage's every word should remind him and his fellow gobshites that culture and headscarves don't kill, guns do.

As for the disgusting media baron Rupert Murdoch, who wants us to hold all Muslims responsible for the killings in France, I don't recall him as a 'born-again Christian' apologising for the actions of his co-religionist Anders Breivik in Norway, any more than for the Inquisition, the Nazi Holocaust, or the massacres of mainly Muslim people at Sabra and Shatila camps in Lebanon, and Srebrenica in Bosnia, committed by men proud to wear the cross.  But I do remember that it was one of Murdoch's former minions, ex-Fox News commentator Glenn Beck, who blamed Breivik's victims, comparing the young people at a Norwegian Labour Party summer camp to Hitler Youth.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/norway/8660986/Norway-shooting-Glenn-Beck-compares-dead-teenagers-to-Hitler-youth.html

The gunmen who attacked 'Charlie Hebdo' were not "representatives of the oppressed", however, and there is no point in misguided leftists appointing themselves defence lawyers, and dragging in everything from bombing of Iraq to joblessness in France to "explain" if not exonerate the gunmen.
As for those who killed customers in a kosher supermarket, their crime did nothing for the Palestinians, but came as music to Mossad ears, boosting Netanyahu's effort to persuade Jews to leave France so he use them to reinforce his armed camp. The real hero of the day, and some would say, true Muslim, was the young shopworker Lassana Bathily, from Mali, who helped people hide and saved their lives.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/paris-shootings-muslim-man-hailed-a-hero-for-hiding-hostages-in-jewish-supermarkets-walkin-refrigerator-9970045.html

Had the CH gunmen, or whoever sent them, really cared about France's Muslims, or been confident of their support, they could have mobilised a popular campaign against the paper's insults, instead of relying on guns. It might even have had longer-lasting results. But that would have involved convincing people, persuading them to act, and that their actions count. Once they are mobilised, they might want to take up other issues, like unemployment or exploitation. And as they gain confidence, and allies, they might be less likely to stay within the bounds of religion or outmoded authority. Who knows where it might end?

There are of course plenty of French Muslims and innigrants who are politically articulate and as capable of organising as anyone else. It is my guess that the last thing whoever planned these gun attacks wants is to encourage mass organisation or participation in politics. That two supposed heroes could find nowhere to hide among an estimated five million Muslims is significant. It also symbolises the kind of isolation their mentors would like to see imposed on the entire Muslim community.

That so many of my friends on the Left are torn between "free speech" fundamentalism and deferential respect for 'Charlie Hebdo''s intellectual pretensions on the one hand, and a
patronising assumption that the gunmen are legitimate expressions of an otherwise cowed,uneducated and inarticulate poor community on the other; with no attempt to look critically at either terror or bourgeois 'freedoms'.  These are two faces of the emptiness that lies today behind so much phrasemongering and "theoretical" erudition.

Blood and Oil on the Tarmac

TWO WHO DIED  Christophe de Margerie (October 20, 2014) and (below right) Enrico Mattei (October 27, 1962)

A top European oil boss who rejected calls to restore Cold War barriers against trade with Russia has been killed in a crash at Moscow's Vnukovo airport, after attending a Russian government-hosted investors' conference in Gorki, and within hours of meeting Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev on Monday.

Out of media player. Press enter to return or tab to continue.

Christophe de Margerie's corporate jet was taxying to take off late on Monday night when it collided with the airport's snow plough and then burst into flames. Fire engines extinguished the blaze but all four people on board the plane were killed. 

Early reports said Russian investigators accused the snow plough driver of having been drunk. But the driver denied this, saying he did not drink, because he had a heart condition.  Airport authorities are investigating further, and the 'plane's black box has not yet been examined.
   
Christophe de Margerie, 63,  had been chief executive of the French Total oil company, third largest in Europe, since 2007.  A statement from the office of French President Francois Hollande said: "Christophe de Margerie dedicated his life to French industry and to building up the Total group. He made it into one of the very top global companies. It said President Hollande valued de Margerie's independence of character and devotion to  France.

Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his condolences. Tass quoted a Kremlin spokesman as saying: "The President highly appreciated de Margerie's business skills, his continued commitment to the development of not only bilateral Russian-French relations, but also on multi-faceted levels.".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29699733


Among the first unofficial commentators on de Margerie's crash death was RT (Russia Today)'s highly unconventional business correspondent Max Keiser, who noted that the French oil chief had been one of the people who talked about "peak oil", meaning companies needed to harness all sources.  Keiser continued:

The last we heard from him, however, was from this July 5, 2014 Bloomberg story we covered:


“Nothing prevents anyone from paying for oil in euros,” de Margerie told journalists at the Cercle des Economistes conference in Aix-en-Provence, France. “The price of a barrel of oil is quoted in dollars. A refinery can take that price and using the euro-dollar exchange rate on any given day, agree to make the payment in euros.” The remarks from the head of France’s largest oil company are the latest in a debate sparked by an $8.97 billion fine slapped by the U.S. on French bank BNP Paribas SA (BNP) for transactions carried out in dollars in countries facing American sanctions. Read more at http://www.maxkeiser.com/2014/10/christophe-de-margerie-ceo-of-total-has-reportedly-died-in-small-plane-crash-in-russia/#WP4zstQqPavzBDQU.99

I’m sure it had nothing to do with his death, of course [insert nervous laugh], but here’s the second comment on that Bloomberg article:

Also someone take a life insurance policy on that guy I have a feeling Langley mercenaries will make someone rich

Read more at http://www.maxkeiser.com/2014/10/christophe-de-margerie-ceo-of-total-has-reportedly-died-in-small-plane-crash-in-russia/#8pL6IHYrTIrWxVmf.99

Langley, Virginia is the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency(CIA). In the United States, Forbes Business magazine did not rush into any speculation but had this to say:

Chatty and blunt, De Margerie didn’t hide his conviction that Peak Oil was a fast approaching reality, insisting at the time that the world’s producers would be hard pressed to ever grow past 95 milli on barrels per day. He may have revised that number upwards a bit in recent years, considering the booming development of tight oil in the United States, but his dogma remained the same as then: “There will be a lack of sufficient energy available,” he said. Because of this belief, De Margerie was tireless in grabbing new oil and gas opportunities for Total — while they were still available. De Margerie ventured out from Total’s headquarters in La Défense, the west Paris business district, to woo a who’s who of presidents, prime ministers, strongmen and dictators in places like Iraq, Iran, Uganda, Equatorial Guinea, Yemen, Angola and Burma. But none of De Margerie’s relationships have been more important than with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

This year De Margerie negotiated a venture with Lukoil to drill for tight oil in Siberia. And with Russia’s Novatek and China’s CNPC, Total is developing a $27 billion natural gas megaproject on the Yamal Peninsula. As De Margerie told Reuters this year, ”Can we live without Russian gas in Europe? The answer is no. Are there any reasons to live without it? I think – and I’m not defending the interests of Total in Russia – it is a no.”

I asked him in 2010 whether it was simply the case that international oil companies have no choice but to make deals with despots. “Bloody right!” he exclaimed. “Because we have not oil or gas. [...] This is why the French companies are always looking for partnerships.”

Sometimes he may have even crossed the line. In March 2007, a month after taking over as CEO, De Margerie was hauled in by French authorities for 36 hours of interrogation over a $2 billion deal with Iran in 1997 to develop its massive Persian Gulf gas field. In a 2007 interview with Petroleum Intelligence, De Margerie confirmed that he authorized payments of $40 million (for consulting and lobbying efforts) to middlemen–allegedly associates of former Iranian president Ali Akbar Rafsanjani and his son. When Iran is someday welcomed back into the brotherhood of nations, you can bet Total will be ready to build it some LNG projects.

Because De Margerie was such a wildly effective dealmaker over the past decade, he leaves Total in an enviable position. The company has arguably the best portfolio of development projects among the super-majors, with particular emphasis on deepwater developments in Angola. Despite some delays completing error-prone megafields like Kazakhstan’s Kashagan, these new ventures are ready to goose Total’s output significantly. Total will likely add 500,000 bpd of production by the end of 2017, outstripping all the big European oil companies by a long shot and resulting in 2.8 million bpd of production by then. Free cash flow is expected to blossom from $3 billion last year to $8 billion in 2015 and $15 billion in 2017. Bernstein Research analyst Oswald Clint, in a research note last month, called Total his favorite stock pick among the European super-majors.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2014/10/21/totals-ceo-de-margerie-dies-in-plane-crash-moustachioed-dealmaker-predicted-peak-oil/

Although a BBC report suggested Total's Russian operations had been hit by sanctions, others indicate that De Margerie was determined to go ahead and resist such pressures. After quoting his success in in expanding African fields, a report in the Guardian said:

A staunch defender of Russia and its energy policies amid the conflict in Ukraine, De Margerie told Reuters in a July interview that Europe should stop thinking about cutting its dependence on Russian gas and focus instead on making those deliveries safer.

He said tensions between the west and Russia were pushing Moscow closer to China, as illustrated by a $400bn deal to supply Beijing with gas that was clinched in May.

“Are we going to build a new Berlin Wall?” he said. “Russia is a partner and we shouldn’t waste time protecting ourselves from a neighbour … What we are looking to do is not to be too dependent on any country, no matter which. Not from Russia, which has saved us on numerous occasions.” 

Total is one of the major oil companies most exposed to Russia, where its output will double to represent more than a tenth of its global portfolio by 2020.

Total is one of the top foreign investors in Russia but its future there grew cloudy after the 17 July downing of a Malaysian passenger airliner over Ukrainian territory held by pro-Russian rebels. The disaster worsened the oil-rich country’s relations with the west and raised the threat of deeper sanctions.

Total said in September that sanctions would not stop it working on the Yamal project, a $27bn joint venture investment to tap vast natural gas reserves in north-west Siberia that aims to double Russia’s stake in the fast-growing market for liquefied natural gas. De Margerie said then that Europe could not live without Russian gas, adding that there was no reason to do so.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/21/total-oil-ceo-christophe-de-margeriekilled-in-moscow-plane-crash-say-reports

Christophe de Margerie is not the first European oil company boss to die in a plane crash after stepping out of line with the other, particularly American, oil interests and Western policy, and pursuing national economic independence though trading with the Russians.

In Italy, Enrico Mattei,  who was put in charge of the state-owned AGIP corporation after the liberation decided that rather than break it up among private companies, he would expand and reorganise it to develop natural gas resources for Italian industry and reduce dependence on imported fuels. ENI, as it became,  Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi (ENI), went on to negotiate important oil concessions in the Middle East and a major trade agreement with the Soviet Union. Mattei also pioneered the policy that oil-producing countries should receive three quarters of the revenue.

Although his politics were Christian Democrat, Mattei openly set out to break the grip of the 'Seven Sisters', the major oil companies of the world. He angered NATO, the US government and its agents within the Italian state when he went to Moscow in 1959, ignoring the Cold War to broker a major oil deal with the Soviet Union. He further upset European colonial powers, particularly the French, ironically,  by showing sympathy for independence movements and offering more generous terms for oil extraction than the big companies usually did.


On October 27, 1962 on a flight from Catania (Sicily) to the Milan Linate Airport, Mattei's jetplane, a Morane-Saulnier MS.760 Paris, crashed in the surroundings of the small village of Bascapè in Lombardy. All three men on board were killed.

The authorities said it was an accident. Many people suspected otherwise, and there were reports that evidence had been destroyed.

Wikipedia tells us:

On October 25, 1995, the Italian public service broadcaster RAI reported the exhumation of the human remains of Mattei and Bertuzzi. Metal debris deformed by an explosion was found in the bones. There is speculation that the fuse of an explosive device was triggered by the mechanism of the landing gear. In 1994 the investigations were reopened and in 1997 a metal indicator and a ring were further analyzed by Professor Firrao of Politecnico di Torino and explosion tracks were found.^[10] Based on this evidence the episode was reclassified by the judge as homicide, but with perpetrator(s) unknown.

 

Did "Deep State" order Kurdish women's murder?

WERE three Kurdish women murdered in Paris victims of a rogue Turkish state organisation out to sabotage peace talks with the Kurds and possibly bring down the Turkish government itself?

Sakine Cansiz, 55, a founder member of the Kurdistan Workers party (PKK) living in Europe;  Fidan Dogan, 28, president of a Kurdish lobby group, based in Strasbourg; and Leyla Soylemez, a young Kurdish activist, living in Germany, were killed on Wednesday, . None of the three women lived full time in Paris, but were visiting a Kurdish information centre near the Gare du Nord when they were killed.

It was reported yesterday that each of them had been shot several times in the head, which suggests a professional killer. They had their outdoor coats on, indicating they had either just entered the building or were about to leave. This also counters suggestions that they must have opened the door to their killer or that the assassin had to know the door entry code to gain access. It is possible they had been followed and/or that the killer was waiting for them to leave.

It has echoes of the murder in 1976 of Egyptian communist Henri Curiel at his home in Paris. Curiel, who was under secret state surveillance at the time, was about to step from the lift on his way out when gunmen who had entered the foyer. No one was ever caught for this murder.


The three Kurdish women were murdered on the same day that the Turkish press reported the government had reached an outline agreement with the imprisoned PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan,  to end the 30 years old conflict with Kurdish guerrillas in the south east of the country, which has cost an estimated 40,000 lives.

Kurdish leaders have rejected suggestions from either French or Turkish sources that the killing was the result of an  “internal split” among Kurdish militants. They blame the “deep state”, as both they and Turkish leaders have called it, a network of Turkish officials and senior army officers who distrust the elected government and are opposed to any concessions to minorities or form of Kurdish autonomy.

Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has himself referred to this "deep state" before, and whether it would allow him to govern. But Erdogan has been casting around this past week, claiming the murder in Paris must be part of a struggle among Kurds, and making diversionary accusations. 

Complaining that France's President Francois Hollande had spoken with Sakine Cansiz, Erdogan said that Cansiz, one of the foundrts of the PKK, had been placed in custody in Germany in 2007, but was released soon after."We notified French Interpol just two months ago," Erdogan said. "France didn't do anything about it. The French head of state must explain why he was seeing these terrorists,"

But reports in the Turkish press say Cansiz was in favour of the PKK ending its armed struggle, and had been involved in negotiations in Oslo between the Turkish state and the PKK. She reportedly met with members of the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MİT) in recent months.

According to the conservative daily Yeni Safak it was Sakine Cansaz's job to communicate to factions in European countries once she received information from Abdullah Ocalan.

The French police were initially reported investigating the possibility that the attack was a robbery or a dispute about money. There are reportedly a number of investigations into political fundraising from Kurds in France. But the women's handbags had not been touched.Police found a neatly packed suitcase in offices of the Kurdish Information Centre, which is on the first floor of a residential building in the Rue Lafayette..

After it was revealed that the women had been shot several times in the head, and that the gunman had used a silencer,  the view was strengthened that this was a professional killing.  French Interior Minister Manuel Valls said the slayings were "without doubt an execution."

Those who suspect this was the work of conspirators within the Turkish state remembered the murder of  newspaper editor Hrant Dink on 19 January 2007 outside the office of his journal Agos. Dink was an ethnic Armenian, and had campaigned for recognition of the 1915 masacre of Armenians in Turkey. A juvenile killer Ogün Samast was arrested, but many people refused to believe he acted alone, or without encouragement. A video clip was released showing him posing with two police officers. A suspect accused of helping Samast was linked to right-wing nationalists, and had been a staff member of the Gendarmerie intelligence service, JITEM.


Some 20,000 people marched through Istanbul last year on the fifth anniversary of Hrant Dink's murder, both to honour the murdered journalist  and demand that the authorities conduct a full investigation into those behind the murder.

Hundreds of Kurds have been demonstrating outside Turkish embassies in Paris and London over the murder of the three Kurdish women. Joining demonstrators in London on Friday, I ventured to one of the organisers that it was difficult to know exactly who might be behind this killing. "It is difficult," he agreed. "But we know the Turkish prime minister himself was talking recently about the 'deep state', and whether they would let him govern. We think it is the 'Turkish Gladio'" (a reference to the right-wing secret armies established in NATO countries during Cold War years).  France is a funny country...We know there were also Turkish threats against the Armenians there". 

  SAKINE CANSAZ

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/paris-murders-jeopardize-turkish-kurdish-peace-process-a-877025.html

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/03/12/120312fa_fact_filkins


http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/threat-of-sanctions-erdogan-slams-racist-france-over-genocide-bill-a-811118.html
^{http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/new-owners-of-turkish-deep-state.aspx?pageID=238&nid=37921} 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16632890

Torchlit Triumph, and a Woman of Valour

TWO WOMEN who "did their bit". Left, Colette Aboulker, decorated in Algiers, and Right, Noor Inayat Khan, murdered in Dachau.

SEVENTY years ago, Allied forces under the overall command of General Dwight David Eisenhower invaded north-west Africa, the Maghreb, under Operation Torch. British-led forces of the Eighth Army had defeated Rommel's Afrika Korps at El Alamein, and begun driving the Axis forces back from the borders of Egypt. By landing in the West the mainly American forces of Torch could join in clearing the Nazi and Italian forces out of the southern side of the Mediterranean, and prepare for invasion of Europe.

A big question facing them was what to do about the French. After the fall of France in June 1940 the Germans had left Marshall Petain's collaborator regime at Vichy in control of southern France, and of France's overseas departments and territories. Algeria, with its large European settler population, was a French colony, and neighbouring Morocco and Tunisia were counted as protectorates.

Though elsewhere General De Gaulle's Free French were fighting on the Allied side, and in France itself there was the Resistance, French forces in north Africa were firmly under Vichy command, and the Navy particularly after its ships were scuttled at Mers el Kebir was bitterly anti-British. As for the settler population, seeing its privilege rested on racism, many were far-Right even without Nazi encouragement, and belonged to fascist militias.

Yet the United States, which had maintained diplomatic relations with the Vichy government, and carried on trading with it in Algeria, was reluctant to trust De Gaulle or disrupt colonial rule overmuch in Algeria.

Nevertheless, on November 8, 1942, as the Allied landings began, a band of no more than about 400 poorly-armed rebels, some of them with military experience, others students and even schoolboys, set out to seize strategic buildings in Algiers, taking over the main post office, the police headquarters, telephone exchange and governor's palace, so as to completely disrupt the Vichy authorities and so far as posible neutralise or hinder resistance to the Allied invasion.

Many wore armbands falsely identifying themselves as civic defence volunteers, and leaders had fake orders authorising them to take over buildings. Once inside the central police headquarters a group took phone calls from the real volunteers, wanting to know what was going on, and summoned them to an emergency meeting. Arriving at the headquarters the officers were allowed in, and escorted to the cells where they were locked up for the duration!

The majority of the insurgents were Algerian Jews, some of them demobbed from the French army after France fell, others young people like Jose Aboulker, a 23 year old medical student who had contact with the underground Communist Party. Jose's sister Colette helped run the family house as headquarters on the night of the uprising. Later at the end of the war she was awarded the Croix de Guerre for her services nursing war wounded.

Although the Jews of Algeria had a history going back to Roman times, and had taken in both Berber converts and those expelled from Spain, in 1870 under the Cremieux Decree they were entitled to French citizenship, and thus came to be educated and think of themselves as French. This loyalty was not rewarded by amity from the settlers however, many of whom jealously guarded their status with a hatred of them both as natives and as Jews. There were anti-Jewish pogroms in several Algerian cities towards the end of the 19th century, after the Dreyfus Affair for instance, and in 1898 the antisemite Edouard Drumont, author 'La France Juive' was elected a deputy for Algiers.

In the 1930s Jacques Doriot's fascist Parti Populaire Francaise established a section in Algeria, and obtained funding from fascist Italy for it. Colonel de la Roque's Croix de Feu movement, not initially anti-Jewish, became such as it expanded among Algerian whites. One of the first actions of the Vichy regime was to abolish the Cremieux Decree in October 1940, and the following year its commissar for Jewish affairs, Xavier Vallat, arrived in Algiers to supervise enforcement of anti-Jewish measures seizing property, excluding people from jobs and profesions, and even expelling Jewish pupls from the schools.

General Maxime Weygand, the governor who signed the schools order, thought he might win support from native Algerians by suggesting that Muslim pupils might take the places of the Jews. It did not happen, and anyway Arabs were not impressed. As Ferhat Abbas, later a leadeer of the independence struggle, said:  
"That which you do to the Jews of Algeria, so perfectly assimilated to French civilisation, is of your own intitative and not that of the enemy who never sought the abrogation of the Cremieux decree. Your racism goes in all directions. Today it is exercised against the Jews. It is exercised every day against the Arabs"
The conclusion they drew from the abrogation of the Cremieux Decree was that you could not entrust your freedom to collaboration with the French.


The Vichyites could not get their own way in Morocco, where King Mohammed V insisted that his Jewish subjects did not come under French law, nor in Tunisia. But in Algeria the European population was largely inclined to welcome the measures, and but for logistic problems it is possible the Nazis would have been able to extend their Final Solution to that part of the Maghreb by arranging the deportation of Algerian Jews. As it was, thanks to the action on November 8, Algerian Jews were not only spared but made their contribution to final victory, by helping throw the Asix forces out of north Africa..         

 Not that the November 8 "putschists" were all Jewish. Among those who played a distinguished part were a group of high school students from the Lycee Ben Aknoun led by a cadet called Bernard Pauphilet. Surrounding the Villa des Olives they captured not only General Alphonse Juin, the commander in chief of French forces in north Africa, but Admiral Francois Darlan, the number two in the Vichy regime, who had been visiting his son in hospital in Algiers. Robert Murphy, the US consul in Algiers, rushed over to the villa with a letter from President Roosevelt. Darlan stalled, even managing to get a message out to his forces ordering resistance to the Allied invasion, In the end the terms of surrender ennabled Darlan to become governor, ruling Algeria with the Americans' support,

Not only that but the anti-Jewish measures remained after Algeria was "liberated", and so did the forced labour camps in the desert where Spanish Republicans, International Brigade veterans, Algerian political prisoners were held. When Darlan was assassinated by a young Frenchman, his successor General Giraud ordered the round-up of "suspects" , among them Jose Aboulker, and their despatch to these camps, while the Americans refused to interfere. It was not till a year after Algeria's "liberation" by the Allies that the prisoners from these Vichy camps began to be freed.

I'll be talking about the Algiers rising and its unsatisfactory aftermath at a meeting on Sunday evening, which by an appropriate coincidence also happens to be Remembrance Sunday. So if you want something to take away the taste of the statesmen's hypocrisy while still honouring those who fought, you're welcome to come along.
        
Jewish Socialists' Group meeting

Sunday 11th November, 7.30pm 
MIC Centre 81-103 Euston Street NW1 2EZ (between Euston and Euston Square stations)

"Lighting the Torch, Algiers November 8 1942"

Noor Inayat Khan 

STILL on the subject of remembrance, and of light -because that is what her name Noor means,  a memorial was unveiled in London's Gordon Square gardens yesterday to one of the bravest women of World War II, Noor Inayat Khan,

The daughter of a Sufi Muslim family from India, and said to be a descendant of the 18th century prince Tippu Sultan who resisted the British, Noor Inayat Khan was born on January 1, 1914, in Moscow, where her father was working. Later the family moved to England and then to France where Noor studied music and medicine, before becoming a successful children's writer.

In May 1940 the Germans invaded France, but Noor and her mother and sister got to England just before France collapsed, and here Noor joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force, training as a wireless operator. That together with her fluent French led to her recruitment by the Special Operations Executive(SOE).

Given the codename "Madeleine" she was flown to France on 16th June 1943, She joined a Resistance network in Paris, After members of this group were arrested by the Gestapo, her superiors fearing it had been infiltrated by a Nazi spy instructed "Madeleine" to return home. However she insisted that as she was the only radio operator left with the group she should stay, and keep SOE informed of what was happening. She tried to rebuild the Prosper group as it was called.

Noor was arrested in October and taken to Gestapo Headquarters. She was interrogated and although she remained silent they discovered a book in her possession where she had recorded the messages she had been sending and receiving. The Gestapo broke her code, and sent false messages to London, which ennabled them to capture three more secret agents landed in France.

Noor was taken to Germany and imprisoned at Karlsruhe. In the summer of 1944, Noor, and three other SOE agents, Yolande Beekman, Eliane Plewman and Madeleine Damerment, were moved to Dachau Concentration Camp. The four women were murdered by the SS on 12th September, 1944. In 1949 Noor Inayat Khan was posthumously awarded the George Cross.

See also:
http://randompottins.blogspot.co.uk/2006/01/agent-madeleine-princess-nora.html

 Her monument has been a long time coming, but welcome and timely, in a period of crisis, when the hatred and prejdices that led to the regime she fought and which murdered her and millions of others, are being whipped up again by the evil and unscrupulous. In honouring the memory of Noor Inayat Khan, as of the Algiers rebels and all who fought fascism, let us pledge to ensure that they did not die in vain.   .   

Annecy Murders: So far more speculation than investigation

QESHM ISLAND, Iran. Photo from Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. Murder victim Saad al Hilli was mechanical design engineer with this company.

THE horrific murder of a British engineer and his family while holidaying in the French Alps has been displaced from front pages by the final emergence of the truth about even greater horrors that happened in Sheffield.

Nevertheless the killing of Iraqi born Saad al Hilli, his wife Iqbal, his mother-in-law Suhaila al-Allaf and a passing French cyclist who might have been a witness, with al Hilli's traumatised small daughters Zainab and Zeena

only chancing to survive, is being investigated.

So far however we wonder how much is known, or we have been told. And how much that has appeared in the press or on TV is diversion, or even as at Hillsborough, disinformation. We heard that police were searching the al Hilli's Surrey home for clues, but not if they had gone to his workplace.

We heard of a "family feud", which does not seem to have amounted to much, and we are told that Mrs. al Allaf, who lived in Sweden, had a son who was subject to bouts of mental illness, and had threatened his parents before.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/9539370/France-shooting-alleged-violent-past-of-son-of-Alps-murder-victim.html

Yet it is evident that Mr. al Hilli was in fear of something more serious than a row with his brother. He went to a remote spot on a country road as though he had been told to meet someone there. Waiting for him was not a disturbed relative who lost his temper, but a ruthless professional hit man who killed the three family members with a bullet to the head, and then the cyclist who might be a witness.

The weapon used has reportedly been identified as a Skorpion machine pistol, favoured by Serb ethnic cleansing units such as Arkan's gang in the Bosnian war, and by professional criminal gangs in Serbia.

http://www.theweek.co.uk/crime/annecy-shootings/48966/gun-used-al-hilli-serbian-mafias-signature-weapon

Some Dutch students reported a well-dressed man "of Balkan appearance", whatever that means, staying nearby. So far as we know Mr. al Hilli had no Balkan connections, but since the wars some of the gunmen have gone freelance and would serve any state or company willing to hire them so long as the money was right.

However staff at Viking Camping Europa have dismissed the Dutch couple's account:

She dismissed suggestions that Mr al-Hilli behaved oddly during his stay, adding: "There was nothing strange. All families leave the campsite at all sorts of times to run errands, go to the shop, organise activities, that sort of thing."

And she said comments about a mysterious man described as appearing "to come from the Balkans" were "ridiculous".
She said: "That was an Italian man who was here. He left and got on his plane as was planned."

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/09/11/french-alps-shooting-walker-described-horror-arrival-witness-philippe-d_n_1873592.html

But what was the background to this killing?

"The mystery of the murders of the al-Hilli family in the French Alps has its origins in Britain, the French prosecutor investigating the case said today".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9541021/France-shootings-origins-of-massacre-lie-in-Britain-says-prosector.html

Mr Maillaud listed the three possible leads as a family conflict over money; Saad al-Hilli's sensitive work as an aeronautic engineer; and – intriguingly – his "Iraqi origins".

"The fact that he was born in Iraq, that he had family in Iraq, of course that's something that is of interest and we are asking ourselves if there is a link between that and his death," Mr Maillaud said.

The prosecutor declined to elaborate but complained the French investigators were finding it difficult to work with the authorities in Baghdad.

Newspapers in the Middle East have been speculating for days that the killings might have some link with the billions of dollars concealed by the late Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/alps-murder-focus-shifts-to-familys-iraqi-origins-8131190.html

Why just the billions said to have been salted away by Saddam Hussein, and not say the billions that disappeared from funds supposedly allocated for reconstruction by those who bombed and occupied Iraq?

An Iraqi friend had previously written to the newspaper giving her own thoughts on the "Iraqi connection":

Sir/Madame,

It is very difficult to read the horrific details of the Annecy shootings, described rightly by many media reporters as ‘targeted assassination’. The fact that this particular vehicle was targeted on this quiet road, and the shooting in the head of the adults has all the hallmarks of a professional killing. I fear Mr Al Hilli’s Iraqi nationality is at the heart of this case.

More 500 Iraqi scientists, professionals and academics (according to brussellstribunal.org) had been the subject of a successful targeted assassination very similar in nature to that of the deliberate slaying of Mr Al Hilli. What appears to be a concerted campaign that has not spared any community in Iraq, the assassination campaign started in Baghdad in May 2003 and continues to date. No credible investigation by any official party has ever taken place so far.

In Iraq, the gunmen who carry out the killing (and they rarely fail) would often ask bystanders to move away, before they shoot to kill their targeted victim.

While in Iraq where the Green Zone government’s least worry is to protect the lives of those who are best qualified to be critical of its performance, the assassins need not worry about leaving witnesses at the crime scene. In Europe it is a different matter, hence the assassinations of the other three adults. I call on the French investigators not to ignore this credible possibility, to widen the circle of their investigation and take the case to Baghdad. Who else benefits from the emptying of Iraq from the very section of its society that is capable of taking it forwards?

I am not sure whether her letter was published. It is now.

Another newpaper did focus attention on a possible connection with Mr.al Hilli's work:

Detectives investigating the shooting in the alps massacre are looking into whether Saad Al-Hilli could have been targeted over links to the defence industry.

Mr Al-Hilli was killed alongside his wife and mother-in-law last week. His daughters Zainab, seven, and Zeena, four, survived the killing.

There is growing speculation over the motives for the killings. French detectives are reportedly keen to question work colleagues of Saad after discovering that he was killed while working on a secret contract for one of Britain's biggest defence companies.

Mr Al-Hilli worked for Surrey Satellites Technology Limited (SSTL) near Guildford, and detectives are expected to ask colleagues about whether his work may have made him a target for assassination.

Mr Al-Hilli was part of a team involved in an undisclosed project linked to European Aeronautic Defence and Space. The company designs and launches satellites for clients who want an "eye in the sky" for commercial, civil or security purposes.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/9531436/France-shooting-was-Saad-Al-Hilli-assassinated-over-secret-defence-contract.html

Less responsible commentators had no inhibitions about speculating on the facts, from self-claimed Luton Town "supporters" for whom it little mattered so long as they could rejoice that a Muslim and his wife and mother in law were dead,

http://members.boardhost.com/lutonoutlaws/msg/1347281443.html

to former British diplomat Craig Murray, as ever irreverent, but well-informed, if sometimes inaccurate:

Sylvain Mollier, the ‘passing’ cyclist, was in fact a nuclear metallurgist who worked for a French nuclear company called Cezus (a subsidiary of Areva). Cezus fabricates and processes zirconium into metal and nuclear grade zircoaloy for nuclear fuel assemblies – it also has other applications in aerospace such as components and ceramics for missiles and satellites. Mr Al-Hilli was also a skilled aerospace engineer, on what looks to be his first camping holiday.

What is the probability that two highly skilled engineers managed be at the same remote place, at the same time, yet still managed to end up dead as a result of what looks to be a military style assasination?

As someone else pointed out in The Independent comments, the deceased were found by a ‘retired’ RAF officer who, we assume, will recieve perpetual anonymity as a witness. If the police are looking for a motive, try an intercepted rendevous by a security service fixated on denying a hostile power illicit nuclear technology.

Craig Murray added:

I have only one thought of my own I want to add at the minute. Al-Hilli was a Shia muslim and had been on pilgrimage to Qoms in Iran. What if it is indeed true that he was in possession of no especial nuclear or defence secrets to pass on to the Iranians, but the Israelis thought that he was? The Israeli programme of assassination of scientists involved in Iran’s nuclear programme is a definite fact. It makes as much sense as anything else at the moment, as a possibility.

http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2012/09/the-al-hilli-conundrum/

The only trouble is that the ex-RAF man has not received perpetual anonymity but has been named, as one Brett Martin, from East Sussex, and last night he was interviewed on BBC TV.

http://www.scotsman.com/news/uk/french-alps-shooting-massacre-like-csi-episode-says-witness-1-2526311

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19587311

As for Saad al Hilli, he was not a nuclear scientist nor even a technician like Mordechai Vanunu who worked in a nuclear plant. All the same, his own field of design engineering linked to satellites might well be of interest to rival military powers, and the satellites themselves can be used for surveillance and intelligence gathering about both economic resources and military, particularly nuclear weapon developments. The connection might not be quite as Craig Murray is suggesting, but he does have a point.

Read more: http://www.theweek.co.uk/crime/annecy-shootings/48941/police-probe-al-hillis-secret-meetings-annecy-killing#ixzz26OdJUBS8

Victims and Vultures in Toulouse

BEFORE and even after the victims of the Toulouse gunman were buried, the political vultures had gathered and fought each other over their remains. Rabbi Jonathan Sandler and his sons Aryeh(4) and Gavriel (5) were murdered at the Ozer Hatorah school on Monday, along with eight -year-old Miriam Monsonego.

The bullets came from the same gun used to kill three soldiers in Toulouse and Montauban, and because two of them were Muslims and the third of Afro-Caribbean origin it was widely assumed the killer must be a white French racist at first.

Instead the suspect was identified as Mohammed Merah, a 22 year old French Muslim, who reportedly claimed links to Al Qaida. Whether that organisation really exists, or not (as some people claim), it seemed to have lowered its sights a bit from high prestige buildings and spectacular targets to individual soldiers and small children at the nearest school. Merah said he killed the soldiers as a protest against France's involvment in the war in Afghanistan, and the Jewish children in "retaliation" for the deaths of Palestinian children at the hands of Israeli forces in Gaza.

The logic of a racist does not change much either side.

As police besieged the gunman's flat, officials said they wanted to bring him out alive. On Wednesday, speaking to negotiators through a walkie-talkie, Merah had promised to surrender. Then it seems the unemployed panel-beater, who grew up on a Toulouse housing estate and had resented a prison term for robbery in his youth, said he did not want to end his days in jail. He told police if he went down in gunfire he would "go to paradise" and if police died, "so what?" He said his only regret was he had not got to kill more people.

When two explosions in the night took out doors and windows it was rumoured police had gone in SAS-style and taken him out. But yesterday it was Merah who burst out firing, and wounded five police before he was gunned down.

After arguing about the background and responsibility for the killings, whether it was right-wing leaders like Sarkozy and Marina le Pen competing to generate an atmosphere of hatred, or yet another atrocity attributable to fanatical Islam, the politicians, press and pundits have been speculating who will benefit in an election period.

Eva Sandler, whose husband Rabbi Jonathan Sandler and sons Aryeh and Gavriel were murdered at the Ozer Hatorah school along with eight -year-old Miriam Monsonego, had a quieter as well as more genuine message. In a statement published on the Chabad website, she said: "There are no ways for me to be able to express the great and all-consuming pain… May no-one ever have to endure such pain and suffering."

But she added: "The spirit of the Jewish people can never be extinguished. To all those who wish to bring consolation to our family and contentment to the souls of the departed: Let's continue their lives on this Earth." Urging people to honour the dead by good deeds, she said people should light candles this Sabbath and on others to "bring more light into the world" and asked people to invite guests to their homes on Pesach (Passover) "so that all have a place at a Seder".

http://www.thejc.com/news/world-news/65626/toulouse-murder-widow-do-good-their-memories

Others were less pious in the lessons they wished to preach. When a known BNP supporter plants bombs to maim and kill Londoners, a Norwegian killer guns down young people at a summer camp. or an American Jewish settler fanatic murders worshippers in a Hebron mosque, we are told they are disturbed individuals who acted alone, whatever we know about their background. Not to mention an American soldier shooting children in Afghanistan. But once it was known the Toulouse gunman was a Muslim, and as the press said, of Algerian parentage, there was no holding back. French police looking for accomplices are holding three of Merah's relatives, while for the Jewish Chronicle's right-wing editor Stephen Pollard the Toulouse murders were just the "latest spawn of radical Islam".

http://www.thejc.com/comment-and-debate/comment/65468/toulouse-horror-latest-spawn-radical-islam.

There are questions to be asked, like how Merah, if he was a known extremist being watched by French security services, pace earlier reports, managed to stay loose, and acquire an arsenal of weapons before carrying out his attacks over three weeks. Reports suggest he was armed with an AK47, an Uzi, and several handguns beside the Colt 45 he threw out in exchange for a mobile phone. As he told police he had further weapons in a rented Renault Megane parked near his apartment building.

Since then French officials have been retracking, saying that though Merah had a criminal record and may have also been linked to Salafi religious extremists, they had no reason to think he was dangerous. But Sarkozy and his government are proposing to clamp down on "extremist" web sites and could use this episode to push through repressive political measures.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/french-officials-gunman-mohamed-mereh-dangerous-article-1.1049613

There is also wide concern among France's Muslims that because of the gunman's identity they are all being tarred with the same brush and stigmatised, and that unscrupulous political forces will use the affair to whip up more anti-immigrant feeling and racialism.
http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2012/03/22/les-musulmans-redoutent-que-l-identite-du-tueur-ne-soit-exploitee-contre-eux_1674150_3224.html

Seeing the victims of the school attack buried in Jerusalem, surrounded by the religious men in black hats, one could not help fearing that while the family's motives might be genuine and sincere, the tragic scene might be politically exploited by Israeli leaders, for whom taking in dead Jews is the next best thing to receiving live ones. I was reminded by contrast with the funerals of the six Jews that died in the Istanbul bombings some years back, and with the blessing of the Chief Rabbi of Istanbul, had their coffins draped in the Turkish flag. This was a rebuff both to the terrorists who wanted to end Turkey's traditional tolerance and the Israeli embassy who would have liked to place their own flag over the coffins.

A Turkish diplomat explained "Our message to the world was - they may be Jewish but they are our citizens - they are Turks and they died for their country. This is how we see them."

For the Israeli government, as for the Toulouse gunman, even innocent small children must be regarded as state assets.

A critic writing in Ha'aretz recalls how Ariel Sharon once had to apologise for suggesting France was no place for Jews. "But there are those who apparently have failed to learn from his error. 'Today we have an opportunity to tell French Jews that if they will choose to return to the land of their forefathers, they will find a warm home here,' Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom declared on Tuesday.

"Remarks like that are grease on the wheels of the anti-Semites and those who would deny Jews in France the right to exist. The same is true of the decision by the victims' families to have them buried in the Jewish state.

"Sarkozy, Hollande, and French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe can declare from Thursday until Friday that 'an attack on Jews in France is an attack on the 65 million citizens of the republic.'

"The Jew-haters are more convinced by what Shalom said".

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/toulouse-and-the-french-election-who-stands-to-gain-and-who-stands-to-lose-1.420072

While Sarkozy may be grateful for the events in Toulouse pushing unemployment and economic crisis off the front-pages for now, he is maybe less sure how the mood of unity against hate crimes and terror can weigh down his efforts to compete with Le Pen in blaming France's ills on immigrants and foreigners.

After he hosted various religious and community leaders, including the leader of France's main Jewish organisation the Conseil représentatif des institutions juives de France (CRIF), it was reported that CRIF had decided to pull out of a joint demonstration involving Jewish and Muslim groups against the Toulouse killings, citing tensions between communities. One might have suspected an Israeli hand in that decision, but one critic claimed it was the French president:

"Before they went into the Elysee on Tuesday they were for the demonstration, when they came out, it was canceled! Sarkozy probably told them to cancel because a march would be good for Le Pen and therefore bad for him."

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/toulouse-shooting-exposes-rift-between-french-jews-and-muslims-1.420273

A demonstration in Toulouse on Sunday is still announced on the CRIF's website.
http://www.crif.org/

Reading that fans of the Beitar Jerusalem football club had violently attacked Arab workers in a shopping mall this week, I thought at first this was another case of blaming the innocent, and using the Toulouse shootings as excuse for a racist attack. But I see that the violence in Jerusalem - for which police made no arrests - took place on Monday, before it was even known that a Muslim man was wanted for the Toulouse killings. A reminder that Beitar Jerusalem thugs, whose team takes its name from the right-wing youth movement and is linked with Netanyahu's Likud party, don't wait for an excuse to engage in racist attacks.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/hundreds-of-beitar-jerusalem-fans-beat-up-arab-workers-in-mall-no-arrests-1.420270

Article in French on Mohammed Merah's background:

http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2012/03/22/mohamed-merah-un-membre-actif-de-la-mouvance-djihadiste-internationale_1674086_3224.html

But also see:

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/french-intelligence-chief-toulouse-shooter-arrested-by-israel-police-in-2010-for-possession-of-a-knife-1.420420

Remembrance in Paris

ANNIVERSARIES are not always occasions to honour with pride, some of them are shameful. It was fifty years ago, on October 17, 1961, that hundreds of people were killed by the police, not in some dark corner of Africa or under a brutal Middle Eastern dictatorship, but in Paris, the 'city of light', under the French Fifth Republic.


France's day of shame came because, like other colonial powers, it had not extended its famed liberte, egalite et fraternite to all those it ruled. In Algeria people were fighting for freedom in their own way, attempting to wrest their country from the Army and the settlers. The war spilled over into mainland France. In August 1958 four policemen were killed in Paris, and the Prefect of Police ordered massive raids on Algerians living in the area, during which 5,000 of them were detained, many of them being held in the Vel' d'Hiv stadium.


That was where the police had rounded up Jews for deportation during the Occupation. But if anyone started talking about that, Prefect of Police Maurice Papon displayed no sign of embarassment. Why should he?

In the next few years Papon established a special auxilary force, many of its recruits themselves Algerians, to pursue vendetta against suspected militants. There were reports of torture. The Algerian FLN waged its own campaign against police and alleged collaborators, and against rival political or trade union activists. In August 1961 it resumed bombings against the police. The enraged police increasingly attacked anyone they thought looked Algerian, sometimes hitting people who weren't even from the Maghreb.

On October 2, during the funeral of a policeman killed by the FLN, Papon proclaimed: "For one hit taken we shall give back ten!" That same day visiting Montrouge police station he told officers they need not worry too much about what they were permitted to do by the law. "You also must be subversive in the war that sets you against others. You will be covered, I give you my word on that."

Three days later the prefecture of police announced in a press statement the introduction of a curfew from 8.30 p.m. to 5.30 a.m. in Paris and its suburbs for "Algerian Muslim workers", "French Muslims" and "French Muslims of Algeria" (all three terms used by Papon, although the approximately 150,000 Algerians living at the time in Paris were officially considered French and possessed a French identity card.

The French Federation of the FLN called upon all Algerians in Paris to demonstrate peacefully against the curfew, widely regarded as a racist measure, on October 17. Thousands of riot police were mobilised to stop them, metro stations were closed, homes were raided overnight, and some 11,000 persons were arrested, and transported by bus to the same internment centers used under Vichy. Others including Moroccans and Tunisians, were taken to police stations.

About 4,000 to 5,000 people managed to march from the Place de la Republique to Opera, peacefully, before being blocked by the police. The demonstrators turned back, but at the Rex Cinema the police opened fire into the crowd, then charged them. Several people were killed.

Elswehere, Algerians were thrown off bridges into the Seine and drowned, while others were beaten up and killed by "welcoming committees" of cops waiting for them at the police stations or detention places. It is not known how many people were killed that day, or in the following days when corpses kept turning up in the river. One witness said at least 200. The prefecture of police said just two. A French government commission in 1998 admitted 48, but those who have investigated found even official documents listed more than that.

A group of police who were sickened by what they had seen said:
" What happened on 17 October 1961 and in the following days against the peaceful demonstrators, on which no weapons were found, morally forces us to bring our testimony and to alert public opinion... All guilty people must be punished. The punishment must be extended to all of the responsible people, those who give orders, those who feign of letting it happen, whatever their high office may be... Among the thousands of Algerians brought to the Parc des Expositions of the Porte de Versailles, tens have been killed by blows from rifle butts and pickaxe handles... In one of the extremity of the Neuilly bridge, groups of policemen on one side, CRS on the other, moved slowly towards each other. All the Algerians captured in this huge trap were knocked out and systematically thrown in the Seine. A good hundred people were subjected to this treatment... [In the Parisian police headquarters], torturers threw their victims by tens in the Seine which flows at only a few meters from the courtyard, to keep them from being examined by the forensic scientists. Not before having taken their watches and money. Mr. Papon, prefect of the police, and Mr. Legay, general director of the municipal police, assisted to these horrible scenes... These indisputable facts are only a small part of what has happened in these last days and what continues to happen. They are known by the municipal police. The extortions committed by the harkis, the district special brigades, the brigades des aggressions et violences are not secret any more. The little information given by the newspapers is nothing compared to the truth... We do not sign this text and sincerely regret it. We observe, not without sadness, that the current circumstances do not allow us to do so..."

The authorities were more concerned with finding out the anonymous authors than with investigating, let alone punishing, the crimes about which they spoke.


In 1944 many police had taken part in the rising which opened Paris to its liberators. But during the Cold War years those seen as sympathetic to the Left were likely to find their careers blocked, while others who had been notorious collaborators and outright fascists were welcomed back.


Maurice Papon would be their man, and them his. Before the war, Papon had served the French colonial regime in Syria in a security intelligence role. Returning to France in November 1940 he chose to join Marshall Petain's Vichy regime, and was appointed to the prefecture of the Gironde region, in charge of Jewish Affairs. He worked with the Nazi SS arranging the deportation of Jews from Bordeaux to Drancy, and on to Auschwitz, and he administered Vichy laws enabling him to sell off land and businesses which had been Jewish-owned.


De Gaulle met Papon in September 1944, and somehow though his wartime role can not have been secret, the Vichyite Papon was able to pass himself off as a good patriot for long enough to get new jobs in post-war France and then Algeria. He was made prefect of Constantine in October 1949, spent some time putting down nationalists in Morocco in 1954, then returned to Constantine in 1956, where his authority was soon associated with repression, detention camps and torture.


On March 13, 1958, policemen demonstrated in the courtyard of police headquarters - later to be where bodies of Algerians were piled - demanding special high risk payments because of the war. Encouraged by a right-wing deputy called Jean-Marie Le Pen, 2,000 of them tried to storm the National Assembly, to shouts of "Sales Juifs! A la Seine! Mort aux Fellaghas!" ("Dirty Jews, into the Seine!, Death to the Algerian rebels!"). The next day Maurice Papon was appointed Prefect of Police.


The attack on "sales juifs" may have been aimed at politicians they did not like, but it was also a tradition for the French Right going back to the time of Dreyfus, and strong among both Vichyites and the colons in Algeria. Racist police had also more than once attacked people in working class Jewish neighbourhoods after chasing back Communist demonstrations.


On February 8, 1962 the Paris police under Papon's leadership attacked just such a demonstration, which had been called against the right-wing OAS terrorists. Police blocked nearby streets at both ends before charging the crowd. Demonstrators tried to take refuge in the entry of the Charonne metro station, but police pursued them into the station and hurled heavy iron plates (used around the bases of trees and on metro vents) down onto demonstrators in the stairwells. Eight people were crushed to death or died from skull fractures and a ninth died from wounds in hospital. All of the dead, except a sixteen year-old boy, were members of the CGT unions. A massive funeral demonstration drew between quarter and a half million participants. The dead are buried in the Pere Lachaise cemetery near the Mur des Federes. Police blamed the violence on the demonstrators.


Papon had meanhile been awarded the Legion of Honour by De Gaulle. Forced out of his police position after the kidnap and murder of Moroccan oppositionist Mehdi Ben Barka, Papon was found another job as director of Sud Aviation, the French builders of Concorde, again owing to De Gaulle's support. After May 1968, he became a deputy, and then Minister of the Budget from 1978 under prime minister Raymond Barre and president Giscard d'Estaing.


On May 6, 1981 details about Vichy past emerged, when Le Canard enchaîné published documents signed by Papon which show his responsibility in the deportation of 1,690 Bordeaux Jews to Drancy internment camp from 1942 to 1944. After a very long investigation, this led to his eventual 1995 to 1998 trial and conviction for crimes against humanity. In 1998, he was stripped of all his decorations after his conviction for crimes against humanity. Sentenced to ten years, Papon was released on ill-health grounds a few years later. He died at home aged 96.


If some things are a matter of shame, there are those like the anonymous "republican policemen" who testified to what they knew, and those who insist on remembering the victims and uncovering the truth, and that is a matter for pride. Among writers who have pursued the truth about the 1961 Paris massacre and related events is Jean-Luc Einaudi (see reference below). Another is the historian and Socialist Party senator David Assouline. This evening there is going to be a commemoration of the Paris massacre and honour to its victims, organised by among others, the Association of Maghhrebi Workers in France and the Union of French Jews for Peace, who say:

Fifty years ago on October 17, 1961, during the war in Algeria, the FLN had organized a peaceful demonstration in the streets of Paris to support the cause of Algerian independence. Hundreds of Algerians - men, women and even children - were brutally massacred. While many bodies were recovered from the Seine, others littered the sidewalk in front of the Rex cinema, while 50 dead bodies were piled in the courtyard of the police headquarters in Paris. Remember that the Prefect of the time was a ... Maurice Papon, the same man who was convicted of crimes against humanity for his role in the deportation of Jews from Bordeaux during World War II, when he was Secretary General of the prefecture of the Gironde. Between the anti-Semitic atrocities and massacre of Algerians - designated at the time as "French Muslims' - Papon and France, both of them, showed a continuity in their hate crimes. This year, October 17 will mark the 50th Anniversary of the "Great Ratonnade" a prelude to the independence of Algeria. A demonstration, called by the UJFP and many other associations, will be held to commemorate this dark recent history of France.

See you Monday, October 17 to 18 hours before the Rex cinema at the corner of the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle, and the Rue du Faubourg Poissonnière (M ° Bonne Nouvelle).
http://www.ujfp.org/

http://openlibrary.org/authors/OL69187A/Jean-Luc_Einaudi

http://www.david-assouline.net/

"Arrogant, unbending and vengeful" - Gaddafi? No, that's a description of the French Foreign Minister!

FRANCE's Foreign Minister Alain Juppe has said his government would support arming the Libyan rebels against Colonel Gaddafi,lining up with the US perhaps not just on policy but for the race to influence Libya's future. With David Cameron saying Gaddafi has got to go, and unconfirmed reports that British SAS forces are already out there, the pretence about limited aims of a "no fly zone" protecting Libyan civilians seems almost forgotten.

But hearing Alain Juppe's name on the news brought to mind things that should not be forgotten. This is his second time round in the job of Foreign Minister for France. He held the same position from 1993-5. During that time Britain and France had forces under the UN flag in Bosnia, mandated to safeguard humanitarian aid routes to besieged towns and later guard so-called safe havens.

They did not favour relaxing the arms embargo to let arms through to the Bosnians. British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd said it would "only create a level killing field". Even a supply of mine detectors was blocked. You could see a lot of Bosnians with legs missing.

It was Alain Juppe who accompanied Douglas Hurd to Belgrade to see Slobodan Milosevic. According to a report in Le Figaro they promised the Serb leader a free hand in eastern Bosnia. I have not seen this confirmed anywhere. But Foca and Gorazde came under siege, and then there was the massacre at Srebrenica, which had been a supposed safe haven.

After his career at the Foreign Office, Douglas -now Lord -Hurd moved into a new direction. He joined Pauline Neville-Jones, who had chaired the joint intelligence committee, at Nat West Markets. Together they went to breakfast in Belgrade and helped broker the deal for privatisation of Serbia's telecomms, for which they were well-rewarded. Dame Pauline has become Baroness Neville-Jones and is Minister for Security and counter-terrorism in David Cameron's government.

M.Juppe has had a more checqered career. From Foreign Minister he became Prime Minister, thanks perhaps to his support for Jacques Chirac in the presidential campaign. He also became leader of the Gaullist RPR. Chirac said Alain Juppé was "the best among us".

However, in November-December 1995, his plans to "reform" France's Welfare State caused the country's biggest wave of social unrest and strikes since May-June 1968, and he was billed the most unpopular Prime minister of the Fifth Republic. In spring 1997,the right-wing government lost the elections, and Juppe was succeeded by the Socialist Party's Lionel Jospin.

Worse was to come. The former RPR president campaigned to unite conservative parties, and became president of the Union for a Popular Movement (Union pour un mouvement populaire or UMP), and was its first president from 2002 to 2004.

But in 2004, Alain Juppé was tried for the felony of abuse of public funds, when he was head of the RPR and the party illegally used personnel provided by the City of Paris for running its operations. He was convicted and sentenced to an 18-month suspended jail sentence, the deprivation of civic rights for five years, and the deprivation of the right to run for political office for 10 years. He appealed the decision, whereby his disqualification from holding elected office was reduced to one year and the suspended sentence cut to 14 months.

Juppe considered taking an academic post in Canada while he was facing a bar from office. But in October 2006 he was re-elected Mayor of Bordeaux, a post he had held a decade earlier, and in May 2007 he was back in government, though he soon resigned again after running unsuccessfully in the 2007 legislative elections.

Though I've been surprised to hear Juppe's name again, I'm not half as surprised as the Rwandan government were when they heard he had once again become Foreign Minister. Rwanda's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Louise Mushikiwabo, has said that the appointment was a “bad surprise” for Rwanda.

The Mucyo Commission which investigated the French government's complicity in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi people found that he strongly supported the forces that committed the genocide.

According to the UN, about 800,000 people, mostly members of the Tutsi minority or moderate Hutus who opposed the massacre were killed in Rwanda between April and July 1994.

The Rwandan commission accused French military personnel of themselves killing Tutsis, and Hutus accused of sheltering Tutsis, and said they had left the Hutu extremist Interhamwe in charge of roadblocks where they could continue the killings. Its report named thirteen French leaders and officials as incriminated, including then president Mitterand, prime minister Edouard Balladur, and Foreign Minister Alain Juppe.
http://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/monde/le-rwanda-menace-de-poursuivre-balladur-juppe-vedrine-et-villepin_546276.html

France's relations with Rwanda had been improving in the last year, and officials have tried to impress upon the Rwandans that Juppe is a "changed man", and anyway subordinate to Sarkozy. Rwanda's Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwab is not convinced. "On a personal level, his twisted Rwandan journey since 1994 has not deviated; we have been observing him, including his negative reaction to the normalization of relations between France and Rwanda.”
http://www.newtimes.co.rw/index.php?issue=14553&article=38834

From Reims in France, Alain Gauthier, the president of a Paris-based genocide survivors’ advocacy group (CPCR) said Juppe’s return to a position he held from 1993 to 1995, only evokes bad memories for the victims of the 1994 Genocide.

“The man is one of those who is accused of supporting a genocidal regime, has never felt the slightest remorse or raised questions for his actions and that of the government in which he participated,” reads part of Gauthier’s statement.

“The victims of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994 may legitimately fear the return of such a man in power”.

In Kigali,the Rwandan capital, Evode Kalima, a genocide survivor and MP said Juppe’s come back was a cause of concern. “His return to that position causes worry because Alain Juppe is a cunning man, who is arrogant, unbending and vengeful,”

http://allafrica.com/stories/201103030007.html

Sounds just the man to be trusted in the leadership of a supposedly humanitarian and liberating mission

Sins of the Father, and the forgetfulness of Monsieur Minc

SPRING BREEZE at the Winter Stadium. Paris 1942

NEVER thought I'd write anything in defence of the Pope. Especially not this pope, with his evidently soft spot for 'integrists' and reaction in general. But the Catholics' Holy Father has himself come under a reactionary attack, from an odd quarter, and it is one that deserves an answer.

France's President Nicolas Sarkozy announced this month that his government was closing unauthorised Gypsy camps, which he claimed were centres of drugs, crime and prostitution, and was sending Roma back to Bulgaria and Romania. Hundreds of people are being flown back. So much for free movement of European Union citizens and the advantages for poor countries in eastern Europe of obtaining EU membership.

Incidentally, the Tory government in Britain is swinging its weight behind councils to shut down traveller sites and deny facilities, while the media have discovered that many Poles and other migrants who came here to work in the prosperous West are sleeping rough on the streets. I haven't checked whether the Beeb property programmes are still encouraging Brits to buy places in eastern Europe.

Anyway, Sarkozy was speaking at his first cabinet meeting after the summer break, amid growing questions over his leadership. Human rights organisations and of course Roma people themselves have criticised what is happening, and Sarkozy's political opponents accuse him of using the Roma immigrant issue to boost his flagging support.

The French government wants to cut public spending and debt, but is facing public resistance to its policies. Trade unions are warning of strike action against the move to attack pensions, and there could be a European general strike affecting France on September 29.

France already expelled 10,000 Roma last year, but this time it appears to be stepping up the operations, with over 100 "illegal" camps broken up and 635 people deported. Besides scapegoating the Roma for the country's social problems, the government is making sure people know about it. Immigration Minister Eric Besson said on Europe 1 radio last week that "around 950" Roma will have been repatriated by the end of this month.

Romania has questioned whether the repatriations comply with European law and the EU Commission has said it is concerned about them. From Bulgaria it is reported that the first batch of people to be flown back were not Roma, as expected, but ethnic Turks. The French government claims it is acting in accordance with European law by deporting people if they have not found work within a month.

The Pope, Benedict XVI, expressed his concern by urging, in French, that countries should "know how to accept legitimate human differences". The Catholic Church in France also condemned the mass deportations.

These criticisms were apparently too much for one of Sarkozy's top advisers, M.Alain Minc, who demanded to know by what right "This German pope" could speak as he did, in French? Minc told radio France Inter that by virtue of his nationality, the pope was "an inheriter" of the Third Reich. He considered the pope disqualified by "His insensitivity, as shown when he reinstated a revisionist bishop, his insensibility of the history, of which he is like all Germans an inheritor, not culpable but an inheritor",

Evidently Minc was referring to the Nazi Holocaust, and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Roma and Sinti gypsies in the Nazi death camps. But if the leader of millions of Catholics, and for that matter anyone else who is German, is considered an "inheritor" of the Nazi crimes, what should we say about other European nations who provided perpetrators, as well as victims, of genocide?

Let us consider a just-passed 70th anniversary. On 20 August 1941, French police conducted raids throughout the 11th District of Paris and arrested more than 4,000 Jews, mainly foreign or stateless Jews. French authorities interned these Jews in Drancy, marking its official opening. French police enclosed the barracks and courtyard with barbed-wire fencing and provided guards for the camp. Drancy fell under the command of the Gestapo Office of Jewish Affairs in France and German SS Captain Theodor Dannecker. Five subcamps of Drancy were located throughout Paris (three of which were the Austerlitz, Lévitan and Bassano camps)

On July 16, 1942 there took place Operation Spring Breeze, one of several aimed at reducing the Jewish population. More than 4,900 of the 13,152 victims of the mass arrest were sent directly to the camp at Drancy before their deportation to Auschwitz. Few survived. Children taken from their parents by the Vichy police often did not make it to the camps, being starved and ill-treated so they died without even leaving Paris.

Pétain and the Vichy regime willfully collaborated with the German occupation, and the police and the state Milice (militia) organized raids to capture Jews and others considered “undesirables” by the Germans in both the northern and southern zones. The collaborationist regime of Vichy France interned 30,000 Gypsies, many of whom were later deported to Dachau, Ravensbrück, Buchenwald, and other camps. About 16,000 French Gypsies died in the camps.

Other victims of French collaboration - apart from resistors of course - included refugee German communists, and Spanish Republicans, thousands of whom had been interned after Franco's victory, and were handed over to the Nazis when they arrived.

The Vichy regime was smashed with its German protectors, of course,. But by way of continuity, the Vel d'Hiver, winter stadium in which Jews had been rounded up for deportation was used again two decades later to hold Algerians, and the Vichy police chief turned Gaullist minister Maurice Papon gave the police their orders to kill Algerians.
http://www.fantompowa.net/Flame/algerians.htm

On 16 July 1995, the President, Jacques Chirac, ruled it was time that France faced up to its past and he acknowledged the role that the state had played in the persecution of Jews and other victims of the German occupation. Three years later Maurice Papon was found guilty of crimes against humanity.

I would have thought that M.Alain Minc, whose original family name was Minkowski, did not need Chirac to remind him of these unpleasant pages of history. Nor will he need telling, as an economist, that while many French people suffered under the occupation, and from bombing, some did well from collaboration, from contracts for detention camps and other rackets, much more profitable than the petty crime and street begging of which the Roma are accused.

L'Oreal is a well-known brand name in the news lately, not for the first time. Here's an earlier report from Forbes business magazuine:

Paris-resident Edith Rosenfelder, 76, filed a $30 million criminal suit against L'Oréal and German insurance company Badischer Gemeinde Versicherungs-Verband (BGV) in Paris in 2001 and is still awaiting her day in court. According to the suit, the Rosenfelder home in Karlsruhe, Germany was illegally seized in 1938 by BGV, before the transport of Rosenfelder's parents to Auschwitz. (Her mother died there. Her father died in Geneva in 1945.) According to the complaint, in 1954, BGV sold the plot of land once housing the Rosenfelder family's Victorian estate (the house was bombed during the war) to Schueller--Bettencourt was 31 at the time--though he knew it had been confiscated from its Jewish owners. By that time, German restitution laws mandated that property seized from Jews during the Nazi era must be returned to their rightful owners.

In France it is commonly believed that Schueller had close ties to the Nazi regime. During the 1930s, he is said to have hosted meetings of La Cagoule, a fascist group with Nazi sympathies, at L'Oréal's headquarters on rue Royale in Paris. Schueller eventually transformed the Rosenfelder land into L'Oréal's German headquarters. The site also stood behind the Gestapo and La Cagoule's headquarters. In 1991, he sold the property for $3.8 million to a German governmental agency.
http://www.forbes.com/2005/03/18/cz_sh_0318oreal_bill05.html

But the sins of the father did not stop L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt becoming France's richest woman, only to become centre of a legal tangle and scandal involving tax evasion and illegal political donations. Apparently it did not even deter Sarkozy's party from accepting 150,000 euros from this tainted source towards its election fund.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/21/loreal-heiress-tax-eric-woerth

Perhaps Monsieur Minc, the President's economic adviser, who has had his own problems over intellectual property, was looking the other way.

Or perhaps he chooses when to to forgive and forget.

Commando Kieffer, June 6 1944.

Above the quiet beach, these simple stones honour them where they fell.
They belonged to the Commando Kieffer, whose commander is depicted on depicted on the stone above. theirs. (r) .

The significance of their action is marked by the memorial in steel, the German gun emplacement they stormed, transformed into the flame of freedom.


OUISTREHAM, is just behind Riva Bella on the Normany coast,some 14 km. north of Caen. It was raining heavily when I arrived early one morning just before Easter, several years ago, and even after the rain stopped the beach was fairly quiet, apart from a few riders. It was not so quiet 65 years ago, when a different kind of rain was falling on Allied troops coming ashore here, at the eastern end of 'Sword' beach.

Because of Ouistreham's strategic position, by the mouth of the river Orne and the Caen canal, it had been heavily fortified, and the German guns could sweep along the beach.

It was given to 177 French soldiers under Commander Kieffer, part of the Royal Marines no.4 Commando, to be first to tread the Normandy soil and take out this obstacle. They left 40 men killed or wounded on the beach, and Kieffer himself was hit, with shrapnel in his leg, but carried on with his men. They were supported by a tank from the 13/18th Hussars of the 27th Armoured Brigade.

The German blockhouse was taken out, and by late morning. Ouistreham had been liberated.

Philippe Kieffer, born in Port au Prince, Haiti, and as his surname suggests, of Alsatian origin, had begun his career as a naval officer before he decided to persuade his superiors to let him create and lead a force modelled on the British commandos. They trained at Achnacarry in Scotland. Commander Kieffer was awarded a Croix de Guerre for his D-Day action and went on to be a Commander in the Legion d'Honneur.

Earlier in the morning that Ouistreham was freed, a battalion of the Oxfordshire and Bucks Light Infantry, part of 6th Airborne Division, accompanied by a Royal Engineers platoon and the Glider Pilots, altogether forming a force about the same size as the Kieffer Commando, made their glider-born assault to secure the Pegasus bridge, as it became known after the airborne division's winged horse badge.

Some Free French and British forces advanced inland towards Caen, but were driven back by counter-attacking Panzers. It was to be some months before the Normandy city, heavily bombed and suffering high civilin casualties, was finally captured.

On my second day at Ouistreham I walked along the canal to the new Pegasus bridge, and went into the old Gondree cafe besides it, which served the British airborne troops and claims to be the first place in France to have been liberated. The furniture seemed unaltered, but the coffee was fresh. I'd hoped to get some film for my camera too, but was out of luck till I got back to Ouistreham, so did not get any photos. I did get a postcard of the bridge which I posted to my old history prof, the late Austin Woolrych, who took part in the Normandy landings. I didn't realise it at the time, but I've since read that my Dad's old regiment, the Loyals, were engaged in the operation to secure the bridges, though he was on other duties by then with the Royal Signals.