Tory Liars and Labour Lords

ORGREAVE  For those who did not believe Thatcher's lies, the government had other convincing arguments.




HITHERTO secret papers from the Thatcher government have revealed the plans it made before the 1984-5 miners' strike, and confirmed what many of believed from the start, and many more people became convinced of  as time went on.

National Union of Mineworkers' leader Arthur Scargill was telling the TRUTH.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was LYING.

A document, marked "Not to be photocopied or circulated outside the private office", records a meeting at No10 Downing Street, attended by just seven people, including the Prime Minister Thatcher, the Chancellor, the Energy secretary and the Employment secretary.

The meeting was told the National Coal Board's pit closure programme had "gone better this year than planned: there had been one pit closed every three weeks" and the workforce had shrunk by 10%. The new chairman of the board, Ian MacGregor, who had made his name battling trade unions in the United States, meant to go further.

"Mr MacGregor had it in mind over the three years 1983-85 that a further 75 pits would be closed... There should be no closure list, but a pit-by-pit procedure. The manpower at the end of that time in the industry would be down to 138,000 from its current level of 202,000.

As a result, two-thirds of Welsh miners would become redundant, a third of those in Scotland, almost half of those in north east England, half in South Yorkshire and almost half in the South Midlands. The entire Kent coalfield would close.

The final paragraph of the document read: "It was agreed that no record of this meeting should be circulated."

A week later another document written by a senior civil servant suggested the same small group should meet regularly in future, but that there should be "nothing in writing which clarifies the understandings about strategy which exist between Mr MacGregor and the secretary of state for energy".


"If this document had ever emerged during the strike it would have been devastating for the credibility of Margaret Thatcher" because Mrs Thatcher and Mr MacGregor always maintained there were plans for the closure of only 20 pits, said Nick Jones, who covered the strike for the BBC..

 " It raises in my mind the question of whether there was a cover-up of these figures, and whether when we look back at what actually happened Arthur Scargill was right when he claimed that Ian MacGregor wanted to butcher the industry all along."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25549596

In the Morning Star, NUM secretary Chris Kitchen, who was a 17-year old miner at Wheldale colliery in West Yorkshire when the strike began,  said the revelation of MacGregor's hit list came as no surprise. Wrecking the coal-mining industry following the strike paved the way for privatisation of a raft of publicly owned industries - and led to today's energy crisis, soaring fuel bills and economic decline.


"We all knew it was not an industrial dispute, but a political dispute orchestrated by Thatcher and following the blueprint of the Ridley Report to destroy the trade union movement and pave the way for privatisation."

He said Thatcher and the government determined when the strike should be provoked - just as summer was approaching and coal stocks were high."We did not decide the timing of the strike. But the only option was to fight. If you just roll over you have no hope of winning. If you fight at least you have a chance."

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-4162-Thatcher-files-show-Scargill-was-right

Besides strikebreaking plans going back to Tory minister Nicholas Ridley in the 1970s, the newly released documents show the Thatcher cabinet considered using troops to break the strike. This was in July 1984 when it also faced a docks dispute. Fortunately for Thatcher this was avoided, and with it the feared possibility that power workers would react to the military bringing fuel through busted miners' picket lines.

In later years when workers in other industries said "Arthur Scargill was right", they were not just expressing sympathy for the miners and their communities, but ruefully acknowledging that thanks to other unions not backing the NUM, the Thatcher government and big employers were able to take on different sections of workers one slice at a time. Devastating an entire industry and the communities around it was a price the Tories were happy to pay to smash union strength, especially as they favoured finance capital and the City above all else. Globalisation means the rich can export capital and the country can import energy and goods produced in Third World sweatshops. Public services can be milked by private companies, though it is the users who are stigmatised as a burden, as the call is made for more cuts.

With Thatcher finally dead and buried, discussion of the released papers and memories of the strike have quickly led to consideration of who her accomplices were, and how did she get away with it? Neil Greatrex, of the breakaway Union of Democratic Mineworkers(UDM) which led scabbing, is serving time for ripping off miners' sickness charity funds. Serve him right, we agree. But there were others in the shadows who aided and encouraged the UDM, and some may still have managed their stealthy re-entry into the movement.

And what of the TUC? Its leaders refused to support any action in solidarity with the miners, adopting a neutral stand while leaving it to ordinary working people throughout the country to do what they could in collecting food and money for the miners and their families.

As for Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock, he was much readier to denounce the pickets and say he "detested" Arthur Scargill than he had been to condemn Margaret Thatcher. Putting this together with his attack on left-wing councillors like those in Liverpool who resisted the Tories, some people say the rot started in the Labour Party with the leadership of Neil Kinnock. Maybe so, but we should not forget that Kinnock was promoted as the "left-wing" half of the so-called "dream ticket" for leadership. Roy Hattersley, later to find himself overtaken by Blair's party as it moved to the Right , was the other half.

It was to some of the supposed Left - the Communist Party's "Euro"s - that Kinnock looked for ideas, and their part in prettifying Thatcherism, as well as their conduct towards the strike, should be looked at.

After the longest ever run as opposition leader, Kinnock never made it to Prime Minister, becoming instead a European Union commissioner and Baron Kinnock of Bedwellty. It was left to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown to say they followed in Thatcher's footsteps.

 But it is was another Labour Lord who caught my attention, well after the strike was over, by what he said. In 2003, during the Brent East by-election, in London, I was having a cup of tea in Alf Filer's house in Kensal Rise, when who turned up in the road outside but Labour's John Reid, MP, accompanied by a couple of large minders. Reid was serving as Health Minister at the time, and Alf stepped out to challenge him on something happening in a local hospital. I followed,

Possibly misinformed by his minders into thinking that we were supporters of Scargill's Socialist Labour Party (we were actually working with the Socialist Alliance, though the SLP also put up a candidate), Reid said something like  "Tell Arthur Scargill to come up to my constituency and see the damage he did to communities". Seeing us momentarily puzzled by this, he repeated that Scargill should come and see the communities he had ruined.

."But that was Margaret Thatcher!", I replied. Then as Reid looked as though he might have realised he had said something outrageous, I added "Oh I forgot -you lot have joined her", By then the minders were hustling him back into his car.

John Reid had started, like Arthur Scargill, in the Young Communist League. At one time he had a 'Marxist' reputation and an image in the Labour Party as a Glasgow "hard man", He became an adviser to Neil Kinnock. By the time I met him he had evidently softened enough to accept a Tory view of what happened to the mining areas. Anyway he is now Lord Reid of  Cardowan. 




A miner's views on Neil Kinnock



Neil Kinnock's "Favourite Marxist"
 

  Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign

Mustard Gas and War on Mingo County

WHEN US Secretary of State John Kerry spoke the other day about how weapons like mustard gas had been used in the First World War, and how nations had agreed afterwards to ban them, he was being a little economical with the truth.

In fact, both the United States and its rivals kept on producing and stockpiling sarin, the chemical successor to mustard gas, throughout the Cold War years, and it was not until 1993 that a UN convention was passed outlawing it.

And though Kerry referred to Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein and Syria's president Assad as the only three rulers to have used such gas against their own citizens (Mussolini used gas against Ethiopians), there is one country at least where World War I gas munitions were used against the people just a few years after the war ended. 

WEST VIRGINIA MINERS display bomb used against them

The Battle of Blair Mountain took place in a period of intense class struggle in the coalfields of southern West Virginia.  Beginning in 1870–1880, the mining companies had established company towns where the bosses' will was law. They hired private detectives to supplement the work of public law enforcement bodies keeping out the unions.  They used harassment and violence and they did not stop at murder.

Still the miners organised. There were a series of strikes. Employers routinely expelled striking miners and their families from the company homes. During the Paint Creek Cabin strike of 1912-13 the Governor declared martial law. Militants were hauled before military courts. The famous working class agitator Mother Jones was arrested for "inciting a riot" - she said she had merely been reading from the American Declaration of Independence.

The employers used 300 agents of the Baldwin-Felts detective agency as professional strikebreakers. The agents drove an armoured train through a tent colony of miners' families, opening fire with a machine gun, and killing perhaps 50 people. Similar methods led to the Ludlow Massacre in Colorado the following year.

 Early in 1920 the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), led by John L.Lewis, having organised much of West Virginia, turned to the southern coalfields, which remained largely non-union areas. Mingo County seemed  a good place to start. Unlike neighbouring Logan County where Sheriff Don Chafin and his deputies were fiercely anti-union, Mingo had some more independent, even sympathetic, elected officials. Cabell Testerman, the mayor of Matawan, was one, and he appointed 27-year old Sid Hatfield, a former miner, as town sheriff. 

As the union set about organising in Mingo County, the mine owners responded by firing and blacklisting trade unionists, and evicting them from their homes.  The UMW set up tent colonies for homeless miners' families. By early May some ,000 out of 4,000 Mingo County miners had joined the union. At the Stone Mountain Coal Company mine near Matewan, every single worker unionized, and was subsequently fired and evicted.

On May 19, 1920, 12 Baldwin-Felts agents arrived in Matewan. Among them were directors Albert and Lee Felts.  Albert Felts had already tried to bribe Mayor Testerman with 500 dollars to place machine guns on roofs in the town, which Testerman refused.  That afternoon, Albert and Lee along with eleven other men set out to the Stone Mountain Coal Company property. The first family they evicted was a woman and her children, whose husband was not home at the time. They forced them out at gunpoint, and threw their belongings in the road under a light but steady rain. The miners who saw it were furious, and sent word to town.

As the agents walked to the train station to leave town, Sheriff Sid Hatfield and a group of deputized miners confronted them and told the agents they were under arrest. Albert Felts replied that in fact, he had a warrant for Sid’s arrest.  Testerman was alerted, and he ran out into the street after a miner shouted that Sid had been arrested. Hatfield backed into the store, and Testerman asked to see the warrant. After reviewing it, the mayor exclaimed, “This is a bogus warrant.” With these words, a gunfight erupted and Sid Hatfield shot Albert Felts. Mayor Testerman fell to the ground in the first volley, mortally wounded. In the end, 10 men were killed, including Albert and Lee Felts.

Sid Hatfield became a hero to the union miners, who took heart that the bosses and their hired guns could be beaten. The union continued to grow, but so did the mine owners' determination to break it. The tension was expressed in incidents along the Tug River, where many miners and their families were camped. In late June state police raided a tent colony at Lick Creek, claiming they had been fired on. They shot and arrested miners, tore down tents, ripping them to shreds, and scattered people's belongings.

On January 26, 1921, the trial of Sid Hatfield for killing Albert Felts began. This trial was in the national spotlight, and it brought much attention to the miners’ cause. Hatfield’s stature and mythical status grew as the trial proceeded. Sid Hatfield posed and talked to reporters, fanning the flames of his own stature and legend. All men were acquitted in the end, but overall the union was facing significant setbacks. Eighty percent of mines had reopened with the importation of non-union labour, and the signing of " yellow dog" contracts by ex-strikers returning to mines.

 In mid-May 1921, a three day battle between union miners and scabs spread along the Tug River valley and was only ended by the imposition of martial law. Hundreds of miners were arrested and imprisoned. The miners took up a guerrilla war.

On August 1 1921 Syd Hatfield traveled to McDowell County to stand trial for charges of dynamiting a coal tipple (device used to tip coal into goods wagons). Along with him traveled a good friend, Ed Chambers, and their two wives. As they walked up the courthouse stairs, unarmed and flanked by their wives, a group of Baldwin-Felts agents standing at the top of the stairs opened fire. Hatfield was killed instantly, while Chambers' bullet-riddled body rolled to the bottom of the stairs. Over Sally Chambers' protestation, one of the agents ran down the stairs and shot Chambers once more in the back of the head point blank. As Sid and Ed’s bodies were returned to Matewan, word of the slayings spread through the mountains. The miners believed that Hatfield was slain in cold blood, and it soon appeared the assassins would escape punishment.

Enraged miners took up arms. Along the Little Coal River patrolling armed miners stopped a squad of Logan County troopers sent by Sheriff Don Chafin, disarmed them, and sent them running. On August 7, 1921, the UMW held a rally at Charleston, and presented a petition to the Governor. When he rejected this,  the miners began talking of a march to Mingo County, to free the prisoners and end martial law.   This would mean going over Blair Mountain and through Logan County, where they were bound to encounter better-armed force. Despite urgings of caution, they were determined to go ahead.

Up to 13,000 men began marching towards Logan County. In Kanawha County miners commandeered a freight train and headed to join them.  Meanwhile on Blair Mountain, Sheriff Chafin, financially backed by the Logan County coal owners,  set up defences, with an armed force of 2,000 men. 

As the first skirmishes broke out, President Warren Harding threatened to send in federal troops and US army Martin MB-1 bombers. After a long meeting in the town of Madison, agreements were signed to persuade the miners to return home. But this was just the beginning. 

Within hours of the meeting there came reports that Sheriff Chafin's men were shooting union supporters in the town of Sharples, north of Blair mountain, and that women and children had been hit. The miners turned back, many traveling in commandeered trains.

Chafin's private army, though outnumbered, had the advantage of holding higher ground, and being better armed. Planes were used to drop both explosive and gas bombs, munitions left over from the First World War, on miners near the towns of Jeffrey, Sharples and Blair. On orders from General Billy Mitchell, army bombers from Maryland provided aerial surveillance. 

Some of the miners had served in the army, and had the helmets and gas masks which they had kept for this occasion. Some of the gas may not have come far -it was manufactured in Kanawha County.

Battles continued for a week, with the miners at one time nearly breaking through to the town of Logan and to the Logan and Mingo counties. Up to 30 deaths were reported by Chafin’s side while the miners lost between 50 and 100, with hundreds more wounded. By September 2, Federal troops had arrived, and miners' leader Bill Blizzard felt he had no option but to advise the men to return home.

Following the battle, 985 miners were indicted for murder, conspiracy to commit murder, accessory to murder, and treason against the State of West Virginia. Though some were acquitted by sympathetic juries, many were also imprisoned for a number of years, though they were paroled in 1925.  At Bill Blizzard's trial the defence exibited an unexploded bomb they had captured as evidence of the government and companies' brutality. This helped in his acquittal.

In the short term, the battle was an overwhelming victory for the coal owners. Union membership slumped to a mere fraction of what had been gained, and it was not until the New Deal years of the late 1930s that the UMW recovered, and was able to organise southern West Virginia. But the battle had also raised much wider awareness of the miners' struggle, and much greater class consciousness which crossed boundaries, leading to the UMW's alliance with the Steelworkers, and the rise of the AFL-CIO unions as a whole. It also obviously raised the need for a political voice, though why US labour did not take that further is a good question.

David Rovics sings The Battle of Blair Mountain:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bufQDQ6SALQ

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

http://www.apwu.org/laborhistory/10-4_blairmountain/10-4_blairmountain.htm

http://www.wvhumanities.org/Smucke/smk_13.htm

http://www.blairpathways.com/2011/11/26/contemporary-songs-on-the-battle-of-blair-mountain/

Has African ghost come back to haunt Vauxhall Cross?

DELIVERED trussed up to his enemies. But who arranged Patrice Lumumba's death?
 

HAS the ghost of Congo's first elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, murdered in 1961, and revered ever since as a victim of imperialist intrigue and ikon of African aspirations for freedom, come back to haunt the headquarters of British intelligence, MI6, at Vauxhall Cross in London?

Lumumba was ousted by the CIA-backed Colonel Joseph Mobutu, having failed to subdue the breakaway mineral-rich Katanga province, and called in UN troops to restore order. The UN forces went everywhere except Katanga, and it was there that having been handed over to his enemies, the Congolese leader was killed by officers from his country's former colonial masters, the Belgians.

In 1975 the US Senate's  Church Committee looking into CIA operations went on record with the finding that spychief Allen Dulles had ordered Lumumba's assassination as "an urgent and prime objective". Declassified  CIA cables mention two specific CIA plots to murder Lumumba: the poison plot and a shooting plot. Although some sources claim that CIA plots ended when Lumumba was captured, records show that removing him remained a US objective. A CIA officer told another that he had disposed of the body.


A Belgian Commission investigating Lumumba's assassination denied that Belgium had ordered it but admitted culpability for failing to prevent it taking place.  In February 2002, the Belgian government apologised to the Congolese people, and admitted to a "moral responsibility" and "an irrefutable portion of responsibility in the events that led to the death of Lumumba".

Now a historian, Calder Walton, whose book Empire of Secrets has prompted claims of British involvment in the affair has urged MI6 to declassify its secret files on Lumumba.

It was after Walton's book was reviewed in the London Review of Books last month that Labour Life peer Lord Lea of Crondall wrote to the LRB to say that he had been told Lumumba was killed with the help of MI6.  He claimed he was told this by the late Baroness Park of Monmouth, who at the time of Lumumba’s death headed the Leopoldville station of MI6.

In his book, Walton, who until 2009 served as research assistant for Professor Christopher Andrew’s authorized official history of MI5, Defence of the Realm, says it is unclear who organized Lumumba’s assassination. He argues that “at present, we do not know [...] whether British plots to assassinate Lumumba [...] ever amounted to anything”. But speaking to The London Times on Wednesday, the historian and author urged MI6 to declassify its internal archives on the Congolese leader. He told the paper that MI6 must be placed “in the position it deserves in the history of anti-colonial movements in Africa and elsewhere”, but that could only be done if MI6 “releases records from its own archives”.


According to Lord Lea, what he was told by Baroness Park was that MI6 was worried that Lumumba might bring the Congo, with its important uranium deposits among other minerals, under Soviet influence. According to US records, Eisenhower was persuaded that Lumumba was a "communist".
If that was down to MI6 it would not be the first, or last, time, that the British intelligence establishment had worked up a "Red scare" to try and affect US policy.

Congolese uranium was important to the United States for military as well as economic reasons. But there were British interests in the Congo, and more specifically, Katanga's other minerals. In fact the British combine TANKS, originating around Tanganyika Ceoncessions Ltd., was a major holder in Union Miniere, the Belgian company which continued to own and run Katanga until it was taken over by Mobutu.

Lumumba was forcibly restrained on the flight to Elizabethville (now Lubumbashi) on 17 January 1961.[21] On arrival, he was conducted under arrest to Brouwez House where he was brutally beaten and tortured by Katangan and Belgian officers,[22] while President Tshombe and his cabinet decided what to do with him.[23][24][25]
Death by firing squad

Later that night, Lumumba was driven to an isolated spot where three firing squads had been assembled. According to David Akerman, Ludo de Witte and Kris Hollington,[26] the firing squads were commanded by a Belgian, Captain Julien Gat; another Belgian, Police Commissioner Verscheure, had overall command of the execution site.[27] The Belgian Commission has found that the execution was carried out by Katanga's authorities, but de Witte found written orders from the Belgian government requesting Lumumba's execution and documents on various arrangements, such as death squads. It reported that President Tshombe and two other ministers were present with four Belgian officers under the command of Katangan authorities. Lumumba and two ministers from his newly formed independent government (and who had also been tortured), Maurice Mpolo and Joseph Okito, were lined up against a tree and shot one at a time. The execution probably took place on 17 January 1961 between 21:40 and 21:43 according to the Belgian report. According to Adam Hochschild, author of a book on the Congo rubber terror, Lumumba's body was disposed of in an unmarked grave by a CIA agent.[28]

No statement was released until three weeks later despite rumours that Lumumba was dead.

Later that year it was the turn of UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold to die,  while on a flight to Katanga. His plane came down near Ndala, in Zambia, on September 18, 1961. Reports of a bright flash in the sky before the crash led to a UN investigation. There were rumours and accusations of a conspiracy. It is possible that new evidence about the murder of Patrice Lumumba might lead to reopening the case of Dag Hammarskjold's death.

But we are consistently reassured that British intelligence services, MI5 and MI6 do not engage in such things. And who are we to question the word of British officers, ladies and gentlemen?

Congo remains the prey of competing mineral interests, with proxy wars and child slavery used to take out the 'rare earths' valued by the electronics industry,  along the border with Rwanda, now a member of the British Commonwealth.

"MI6 link to Lumumba assassination"

Historian calls on MI6 to declassify files

How the UN fronted for imperialist conspiracy against Lumumba

Union Miniere

Patrice Lumumba


Dag Hammarskjold

UDM Charity Ended at Home

NEIL GREATREX, gone to jail and told to pay, alas DAVID HART, gone away 

AFTER Jimmy Saville, another "idol" of the Thatcher years, and this a live one though less popular, who has crashed down. Neil Greatrex might not have been a Christmas guest at Checqers, but as leader of the breakaway Union of Democratic Mineworkers(UDM), he served Thatcher's crusade by championing strikebreaking in the Nottinghamshire coalfield.

Instead, Greatrex became a guest of Her Majesty earlier this year when he was convicted for stealing funds that had been supposed to go to a retired miners' care home. 

This week the former UDM leader was ordered to pay back the £148,628 he stole from charity. He has been given 28 days to pay it back or face a further three years in prison.

The Charity Commission welcomed the order and sai it would serve as a warning to others.

In April, Greatrex was jailed for four years for stealing from the Nottinghamshire Miners Charity, of which he was a trustee. The charity ran a care home in Lincolnshire for sick and elderly miners.
Between 2000 and 2006 diverted £148,628 to two building companies and a joiner for work that was never done at the home. Instead it paid for items such as granite worktops and a pool for koi carp at Greatrex's own home.

Greatrex claimed in court that the diveretd funds were in lieiu of salary, though it had emerged in 2004 that he and a fellow officer were receiving salary packages worth £150,000 while leading a union with only 1,431 members.

The total amount he is now ordered to pay is £201,327.51, adjusted for inflation and including costs.
Michelle Russell, the Charity Commission's head of investigations and enforcement, said: "Stealing from a charity of money that's intended for people who really need it is a pretty awful crime.
"We are obviously really pleased that some of that money will be recouped and go back to where it was intended to be spent."

The commission said the money would either be returned to the charity or its beneficiaries or other charities. The order was made under the Proceeds of Crime Act at Birmingham Crown Court.

It might be interesting to compare the amount of coverage this affair gets with the way the media - and not least the supposedly Labour-supporting Daily Mirror hounded Arthur Scargill and the National Union of Mineworkers over phoney allegations of funds misuse during the miners' strike. (Admittedly for the Mirror this may have reflected attention away from what its then owner, Robert Maxwell was up to financially).
 
Perhaps now that Neil Greatrex is in serious difficulty some of the UDM's old backers could get together and have a whip round? One of the UDM's most helpful funders, if not inspirers, was the shady billionaire friend of Thatcher, David Hart, who provided not just funds but former SAS personnel to protect strikebreaking miners.


Two years after the strike Hart  formed the Campaign for a Free Britain,^[1]  with backing from Rupert Murdoch, and in 1993 he was appointed an adviser to Malcolm Rifkind as Defence Minister, a post he kept when Michael Portillo replaced Rifkind. He went on to be implicated in various intrigues at home and abroad, and undertook lobbying for Boeing and BAE. A report in the Guardian in 2007 alleged Hart had received £13 million in secret payments from BAE via an anonymous company registed in the Virgin Islands. 


Unfortunately for Greatrex, the UDM's past backer, who could surely have helped pay for the ornamental fishpond and other extras, died a year ago.  But you'd think his associates in big business and the secret state would be willing to step up to the plate and help poor Greatrex out. Or maybe not. These are hard times, and the government is attaching importance to us placing our trust in charity.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-17602275 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2136156/Greedy-union-boss-jailed-4-years-stealing-150-000-charity-care-home-miners-just-home.html 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/apr/03/neil-greatrex-guilty-miners-union-theft

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-20760736 

http://www.chad.co.uk/news/local/jailed-former-udm-president-neil-greatrex-ordered-to-pay-back-money-he-stole-from-charity-1-5230078

How Shall the Meek Inherit the Rare Earth?

THE British government has anninced it is suspending aid to Rwanda because of the African state's involvment in supporting M23 rebels in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of  Congo, but critics are asking what took them so long to recognise what everyone knew, and whether this is too little too late.

Rwanda, a former Belgian colony, applied to join the British Commonwealth in 2008, and was admitted in 2010. President Paul Kagame's move was seen as a break out of the Francophone sphere, after blaming France for complicity in the 1994 genocide which ended when his rebel army took control of the country.

Though the British government welcomed the new member to the club, and the Rwandan government boasted of the economic progress they had made and hoped to make, human rights experts raised doubts about the Rwandan government's record.Professor Yashpal Ghai, a Kenyan legal expert, argued that freedom of speech had been widely suppressed, the judiciary has "serious weaknesses" and political freedom is curtailed."We believe that overwhelming evidence, conveniently ignored by leading Commonwealth states, demonstrates that the government of Rwanda is not sufficiently committed to the protection of human rights and to democracy," he wrote in a report for the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative.

But it is Rwanda's interference in the Congo, and that of another Commonwealth country, Uganda, that has roused wider concern. They invaded twice, in 1996 and 1998, and in 2000 fought a "six day war"between them on Congolese soil, resulting in many civilian deaths, though the object was to lay hands on diamonds in Kisangani province, north-eastern Congo.

In late March this year a rebellion broke out among Rwandan troops in the Congolese army who complained that an agreement on March 23, 2009 to integrate them into the army had not been fully implemented. This was the start of the M23 force. A prominent figure in it is Bosco Ntaganda, a Tutsi Rwandan warlord turned Congolese army general, who just happens to be wanted on an International Criminal Court for war crimes.
(Liberation magazine, November 2012, article by Victoria Dove Dimandja)
        
There are rich prizes to be got in the poor and war-ravaged Congo - gold, diamonds, and oil, but above all, in eastern Congo, a less familiar explanation for war and rivalry - the rare eath metals. Not as esoteric as they sound, but essential to many of the hi-tech products that have become part of life today.

As a blogger calling themself "DINGO" put it dramatically two years ago:  
DINGO on Thu Nov 18, 2010  "Could anyone imagine that cell phones are tainted with the blood of 3.2 million deaths since 1998? Also, that the same thing happens with some children's video games? And that mega-technologies contribute to forest depredation and spoliation of the rich natural resources of paradoxically impoverished peoples?

In the case of these new high techs, it is Coltan that is at stake --the minerals columbium and tantalite, or Coltan for short. Tantalite is a rare, hard and dense metal, very resistant to corrosion and high temperatures and is an excellent electricity and heat conductor. It is used in the microchips of cell phone batteries to prolong duration of the charge, making this business flourish. Provisions for 2004 foresee sales of 1,000 million units. To these properties are added that its extraction does not entail heavy costs --it is obtained by digging in the mud-- and that it is easily sold, enabling the companies involved in the business to obtain juicy dividends.

Even though Coltan is extracted in Brazil, Thailand and much of it from Australia --the prime producer of Coltan on a world level-- it is in Africa where 80% of the world reserves are to be found. Within this continent, the Democratic Republic of Congo concentrates over 80% of the deposits, where 10,000 miners toil daily in the province of Kivu (eastern Congo), a territory that has been occupied since 1998 by the armies of Rwanda and Uganda. A series of companies has been set up in the zone, associated to large transnational capital, local governments and military forces (both state and "guerrilla") in a dispute over the control of the region for the extraction of Coltan and other minerals. The United Nations has not hesitated to state that this strategic mineral is funding a war that the former United States Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright called "the first African world war" (and we understand by world wars, those in which the great powers share out the world), and is one of its causes.

In August 1998, the Congolese Union for Democracy (Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie-RCD), launched a rebellion in the city of Goma, supported by the Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA). Since then, in a struggle in which, behind the myth of ethnic rivalries, are hidden the old colonial powers that continue to ransack the wealth of post-Colonial Africa, the war has been rife between two, loosely defined parties. On the one hand the RDC and the Governments of Rwanda and Uganda, supported by the United States, relying on the military bases such as that built in Rwanda by the United States company Brown&Root, a branch of Halliburton, where Rwandese forces are trained and logistic support is provided to their troops in the DRC, together with United States combat helicopters and spy satellites. The other party is made up of the Democratic Republic of Congo (led by one of Kabila's sons, after his father was assassinated by the Rwandese), Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe.

However, behind these states are the companies sharing out the zone. Various joint companies have been set up for this purpose, the most important one being SOMIGL (the Great Lakes Mining Company), a joint company set up in November 2000, involving Africom, Premeco, Cogecom and Cogear, (the latter two are Belgium companies --it should be remembered that DRC, formerly the Belgium Congo, was a Belgium colony), Masingiro GmbH (a German company) and various other companies that ceased their activities in January 2002 for various reasons (a drop in Coltan prices, difficult working conditions, suspension of Coltan imports from DRC) and are waiting for better conditions: Sogem (a Belgian company), Cabot and Kemet (U.S.) the joint United States-German company Eagles Wings Resources (now with headquarters in Rwanda), among others.

The transport companies belong to close family members of the presidents of Rwanda and Uganda. In these virtually military zones, private air companies bring in arms and take out minerals. Most of the Coltan extracted is later refined by a small number of companies in Germany, the United States, Kazakhstan and the Far East. The branch of Bayer, Starck produces 50% of powdered tantalite on a world level. Dozens of companies are linked to the traffic and elaboration of this product, with participation of the major monopolizing companies in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United States. As if this were not enough, the Trade, Development and Industry Bank, created in 1996 with headquarters in the capital city of Rwanda, Kigali, acts as correspondent for the CITIBANK in the zone, and handles large amounts of money from Coltan, gold and diamond operations. Thirty-four companies import Coltan from the Congo, among these, 27 are of western origin, mainly Belgium, Dutch and German.

http://golddetecting.4umer.net/t2876-rare-earth-metals-and-ground-noise http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-20545653

A UN report on Rwandan invasion of the Congo, which was supposedly in pursuit of genocidaires, war criminals who had taken refuge in the Congo, found that the Rwandan troops had not headed for the areas where these gangs were hiding out, but for the mines. Far from clearing out the genocidaires the invaders had teamed up with them to exploit those Congolese whom they had not killed and who did not flee. They enslaved local people, often children, to dig at gunpoint for the valuable rare earths.



Others were coming into Congo to get in on the act, the UN report said, "armies of business, commanded by men who carefully planned the redrawing of the regional map to redistribute wealth".
While the UN report recommended further investigation of companies including Barclays and Standard Chartered Banks, Coltam was going up in price as it was used in playstations. Former Labour MP Oona King remarked:
"Kids in Congo were being sent into mines to die so that kids in Europe and Anerica could kill imaginary aliens in their living rooms".
 (Victoria Dove Dimandja, Liberation magazine, January 2011)

. .
Some interesting recent exchanges took place in the House of Lords over Rwanda: For instance:

Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead (Labour)
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their assessment of the report of the involvement of the Government of Rwanda in the M23 rebel group in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and in particular of the involvement of General James Kabarebe, Minister of Defence of Rwanda.

• Hansard source (Citation: HL Deb, 13 November 2012, c286W)

Baroness Warsi (Conservative)

We are aware that the embargoed report by the UN Group of Experts has been leaked. It is not government policy to comment on leaked documents. However, we have consistently made it clear to the Rwandan Government, at the most senior levels, that we find the existing body of evidence for Rwandan involvement with the M23 credible and compelling. And that all such support must stop.

21 Nov 2012 : Column 1802


Lord Alton of Liverpool: Does the noble Baroness not recall that in September, in reply to a Written Question that I tabled, her noble friend Lady Northover confirmed that some £344 million is being provided in bilateral aid to Rwanda between 2011 and 2015? In that same reply, she said that Rwanda,

"must adhere to strict partnership principles",-[Official Report, 24/9/12; col. WA284.]

and that the Secretary of State was still considering whether those expectations were being met. Given what the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, just said about the fall of Goma-there are now 80,000 displaced people and refugees in that area-and what Ban Ki-Moon has said about using aid for leverage, will the Minister say whether we are reconsidering our decision to restore aid in that vast degree to Rwanda and who is arming and paying for the arms of the M23 rebels?
.
Baroness Warsi: I cannot comment on the last question that the noble Lord raised but, in relation to aid, in 2012-13 we have committed £75 million, of which £29 million is general budget support. The noble Lord will be aware that in July of this year, because of certain concerns that were raised, a £16 million tranche of general budget funding was not given over until September and, at that point, £8 million was given over as general budget support but £8 million was redirected to education and food. The next tranche is due in December and my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for International Development is looking at all these matters.
Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead: My Lords, does the Minister have a view on how the Security Council could accept yesterday that M23 is getting external support but then perversely claim that it lacks evidence? Does she agree that it need look no further than the new, well documented evidence provided by Human Rights Watch on Rwanda's provision of, for instance, logistical support and sophisticated weaponry to M23?
Baroness Warsi: We were heavily involved in that presidential statement at the United Nations Security Council yesterday. It was important that we raised our concerns, and we raised them. As the noble Baroness will note from that report, the support given to M23 is not entirely clear. Reference was made to it by the United Nations group of experts' report via a leaked report. It would be inappropriate for me to comment on that leak, but these are matters that we continuously discuss with Rwanda.

http://golddetecting.4umer.net/t2876-rare-earth-metals-and-ground-noise http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-20545653

http://bloodinthemobile.org/

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/democraticrepublicofcongo/9700471/Rwandans-fighting-an-illegal-war-in-the-Congo.html

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/93289

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201213/ldhansrd/text/121121-0001.htm

Victoria Dove Dimandja is a Congolese woman living in London and active in the Congolese Women's Group and Campaign "It must stop". See:
http://www.liberationorg.co.uk/

Marikana Manifesto

AT the TUC in Brighton two weeks ago a resolution was adopted condemning the shooting of miners by police and at the same time, reaffirming support for the South African NUM and COSATU. I was not surprised. I think delegates were relieved that the obscene charging of surviving strikers with the death of their colleagues had been dropped, and that they could condemn the shootings without having to face the capitalist character of the South African government or examine the relations with it and the mine companies of union leaders and political leaderships we had supported.

 I say "we", remembering the night we rounded off a branch meeting by going round the corner to a party at the ANC offices; the funds raised for elections, and the hostility which met those of us on the Left who sought a hearing for dissident African freedom fighters and socialist trade unionists.

Things have changed, and are changing, both in South Africa and here. A while ago I was in a jampacked meeting to hear two youth and community activists whose tactics in the cities could probably teach us a few tricks.

 But the old residue remains, and at my union delegation's meeting before the Brighton congress began one brother warned us of "dark forces"(!) at work in South Africa, trying to undermine the relationship between the South African Communist Party and the ANC. I don't think he quite got the terrified response he might have hoped for,(some people previously quite close to the SACP seem ready to end that relationship). But he was sincere, and I am sure he and others will be shocked and horrified to see the declaration below which has been forwarded to us by some South African comrades:

MINEWORKERS DECLARATION 19th September 2012 Marikana

We, the striking mineworkers, delegates from various Platinum, gold and other mines and mineworker communities, gathered here today, declare the following:
1. We stand in solidarity with the mineworkers, ex-mineworkers and their families in the rest of South Africa, Swaziland, Lesotho, in Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Zambia, Malawi, DRC, Angola, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Kenya, in West Africa, in Chile, in China, in India, in Italy, Spain and the rest of the world;

 2. We remember the hundreds of thousands of mineworkers who have died on the mines all over the world; we remember those who have died because of mine sickness such as silicosis. We remember all who face a daily death who still work in the mines. The capitalist mine owners become rich at our expense.

 3. We remember the dead, the injured, shot down by the police on the 16th August 2012

4. The ANC government is not our government; it is the government of the mining bosses, of the capitalists. This is the same in every country in the world- the government is the government of the rich.

 5. The police are not there to protect us and our families but to keep us as slaves to the mining bosses and their cruel system of exploitation.

 6. Our children have no future, we live shacks, the water is polluted, sewage runs in the streets, the few who work earn slave wages, because the mine bosses steal trillions of Rands and dollars worth of wealth from South Africa and the rest of Africa, every year. The migrant labour system is still there, it is just run by new bossboys, the ANC government;

7. The mines, factories and commercial farms should therefore be taken over, without compensation to the capitalists, and run by the workers,

 8. Parliament is a talkshop, covering the dictatorship of the owners of the mines and the international banks; the government and parliament are their local managers;

9. Black Economic Empowerment or Indigenization is a tool to by the international mining bosses and banks to bribe a section of the local middle class to manage this slavery system for them;

 10. No worker representative or official should get more than the average wage that skilled workers have achieved; all representatives and officials must be subject to instant recall by the workers;

11. The striking mineworkers general meetings will decide as a collective when the strike is stopped, suspended or when we take a step forward or a temporary step back;

 12. We stand in solidarity with the striking mineworkers at KDC Goldfields and any other mine that is on strike; we warn the bosses to meet their demands or face a full scale general strike on the mines; we call for a war committee of workers delegates from all mines to be strengthened and to continue to co-ordinate our struggles;

 13. We stand in solidarity with the striking coal mine workers in Italy and Spain

 14. We thank all the working class and activists around the world who came out in protest in support of us- you have shown the real meaning of ‘an injury to one is an injury to all’.

 15. We call for all workers to immediately remove all their shopstewards and leaders who sides with the ANC government and the bosses. Workers’ take control of your unions

16. At the same time we also call on all workplaces and working class communities to elect worker’s representatives, irrespective if they are in a union or not, permanent or casual, local or immigrant and in the community, the delegates should include the youth and unemployed. All representatives should be subject to instant recall by the constituency that elected them.

Our demands remain: • The families of the workers massacred by the police and the mine bosses must receive the wage and full benefits of that worker, as if he was alive; • A minimum of R12500 for all mineworkers in Africa. Workers are free to fight for more, such as R16070. All wages must rise when prices rise and not be bound by any agreement to wait for a year or years. • Arrest the police and their commanders who perpetrated the massacre. • Arrest the Lonmin bosses for their complicity in the Marikana massacre • An end to stealing by the mine bosses through transfer pricing; bring back the wealth that the mine bosses have stolen- here are the funds for jobs for all at a living wage, decent houses and services for all, free, quality health care for all, for free, liberatory education for all; equal pay for equal work- an end to casualization and labour broking. • Arrest all the mine bosses for theft .Stop the plunder of the wealth in Africa by Anglo American and other imperialist monopolies • Nationalize all the land, mines, banks, commercial farms, Sasol, Petro-SA, without compensation to the capitalists, place these under workers’ control. This creates the basis for sharing all work among all who can work, for ending all unemployment and low wages, for disbanding the ghettoes and building integrated decent housing and service for all, for free, quality health care for all, for free, liberatory education for all. • Disband the police and the army; for the general arming of the masses

The above programme sets the basis for the setting up of a working class party, that unites the working class fighters in South Africa, Southern Africa, Africa and around the globe. It is this new party that will lead the struggle for working class power and a Socialist workers’ state, indeed a federation of Southern African Socialist states and a Socialist Africa. The pace at which the workers’ states are integrated to become a unity will be determined by the respective working classes themselves, although we realize that the Anglo American and other mining monopolies keep us divided in different slave camps but for their sole benefit. No struggle for workers’ power in Africa can succeed if the workers in the USA, Britain, France, Germany, Japan and in other countries do not also embark on the struggle for working class power on their own home soil.

 Our mothers were kitchen slaves, our fathers were mineworkers, we want the current and future generations to be free. That is why we are Socialist; that is why we are Communist; that is why we are Trotskyist.

 I don't know the precise provenance of this document, whether it was produced entirely from the miners' own discussion, or penned by political activists and submitted for their approval. But whatever the influence at work it certainly does not read like something the companies or right-wing forces would provide, if they were secretly backing the strikers' union just to split the movement, as some people have suggested. This is not the language of the UDM or other right-wing unions that we know!

 As for that last paragraph about "our mothers" being kitchen slaves and so on, as our comrade in South Africa explains that poetic language is authentic:
"In the marches here, people sing: my mother was a kitchen girl, my father was a garden boy, that's why, that's why I'm a Socialist, that's why I'm a Communist'. maybe you don't know this song. At the parliament march, workers adapted the song to - my mother was a kitchen girl, my father was a mineworker, that is why I'm a Socialist, that's why I'm a Communist'- things just spring up in struggle".

Rachel and the Miners

"Only thing missing is Cat(erpillar) logo on the dozer". Otherwise, Carlos Latuff's cartoon sums up how judgment is widely seen.

ISRAEL and South Africa are supposed to be opponents.Leaders who claim credit for triumphing over Apartheid have rightly taken stands against what some - including some Israelis -dub "Apartheid Israel". But this week, for all their differences, South Africa and Israel appeared less like principled opponents, more like competitors in injustice.

Nine years after the death of American human rights activist Rachel Corrie, who stood in the path of an Israeli bulldozer in the southern Gaza Strip, an Israeli judge has delivered his considered verdict that the young American was responsible for her own death.

In South Africa, even before an inquiry set up by President Jacob Zuma had met to commence its work, the 270 miners arrested during the strike at the Marikana platinum mine have been charged with the murder of 34 colleagues who were shot dead by police.

The murder charge – and associated charges for the attempted murder of 78 miners injured at the Marikana mine near Johannesburg – was brought by the national prosecuting authority under an obscure Roman-Dutch common law previously used by the Apartheid regimr. .

The move came as the men appeared in court charged with public violence over the clashes at the Lonmin platinum mine on 16 August.

According to a police spokesperson the officers who opened fire were defending themselves after coming under fire themselves from a charging mob, who were armed and had already killed two officers and some strikebreakers earlier that week. But on TV we clearly saw police standing and firing automatic weapons, not attempting to take cover, while the crowd supposely advancing on them could not be seen.

In fact, post-mortem examinations revealed that most of the 34 victims of the police action on August 16 were shot in the back while a smaller number were shot while facing forward, Johannesburg's Star newspaper reported citing sources close to the investigation.

Over 150 complaints have been filed with the Independent Police Investigative Directorate over the alleged torture and assault in police custody of miners who were arrested following the violence.

Rachel Corrie was killed on March 16, 2003, in an area where Israeli forces were clearing a widening corridor between Palestinian homes and the Egyptian border, so their patrols could operate without interference. Earlier in the week she and other ISM volunteers had tried to shield Palestinian workers who were trying to repair a well. On the day she was killed the Israeli bulldozers were advancing on homes and vegetable gardens, destroying glasshouses.

The Israeki military said the bulldozer which killed Rachel Corrie was only clearing "vegetation and rubble", and that the driver, with limited visibility through a narrow armoured window could not see her over the pile of earth in front of his blade.

Eye-witness Joe Carr, another of the volunteers, described it differently:

"Still wearing her fluorescent jacket, she knelt down at least 15 meters in front of the bulldozer, and began waving her arms and shouting, just as activists had successfully done dozens of times that day.... When it got so close that it was moving the earth beneath her, she climbed onto the pile of rubble being pushed by the bulldozer.... Her head and upper torso were above the bulldozer's blade, and the bulldozer operator and co-operator could clearly see her. Despite this, the operator continued forward, which caused her to fall back, out of view of the driver. [sic] He continued forward, and she tried to scoot back, but was quickly pulled underneath the bulldozer. We ran towards him, and waved our arms and shouted; one activist with the megaphone. But the bulldozer operator continued forward, until Rachel was all the way underneath the central section of the bulldozer".

The driver said that if he had to do it again he would.

Nine Palestinians were killed that week. Because Rachel was an American, US officials said there should be a full inquiry, and Rachel's parents sought legal action.

Nine years later, Judge Oded Gershon of the Haifa District Court has produced a 162 page report from which my friend and fellow-blogger Adam Keller quotes a sample:

"The Philadelphi Route was the arena of constant war, of ongoing sniper fire, rocket fire and explosive charges. None other than combat soldiers ventured there... The bulldozer crew was conducting a clearing operation under fire. The late Rachel Corrie chose to take a risk, which ultimately led to her death... The deceased had gotten herself into a dangerous situation... She did not stay away, as any sensible person would have done. The deceased's death was caused by an accident which the deceased brought on herself, despite the attempts of the IDF troops to remove her and her friends from there... Under the circumstances, the IDF unit's conduct was impeccable."

Adam himself served in the IDF (and spent some time in the stockade after tanks he was guarding were mysteriously daubed overnight with the words "Down With the Occupation!"). He acknowledges that the corridor where Rachel Corrie was killed was indeed a battle zone, where Palestinians had vented their rage at Israeli forces maintaining the siege of Gaza, and men were killed on both sides.

'

'Still, Judge Gershon was certainly not accurate when he wrote that combat soldiers were the only people there, in the hell of the battlefield called The Philadelphi Route. Very many, civilians were there, too - men and women, elderly and children – in their thousands and tens of thousands. The civilians were there because it was their home, the only home they had - even if it was quite miserable. They had lived there before it became the scene of battle and before it came to be called Philadelphi. Many of them had come to live there because their original homes had become a battle zone in a previous war, the one which convulsed this country in 1948. And they stayed there, even when it had become the Philadelphi battle zone and the Philadelphi corridor became an arena of battle, even when some them got killed by the bullets of snipers and the explosion of explosive devices, because they literally had nowhere else to go.

'And then somebody conceived a brilliant idea. The man's name was Yom Tov Samia, and he was an outstanding officer in the Israel Defense Forces who climbed fast through the ranks until he became Commanding General South. And General Samia had an idea how to win the lost war along the Route. To take up "clearing" - a word invented by the Israel Defense Forces, the kind of word which armies make up to hide horrors behind neutral words - on a truly grand scale. To create a "sterile" space, completely sterile and without life, a kilometer or two wide. A completely flattened area with no houses and no people and no animals and no plants, nothing but soldiers and weapons of war moving in safety, as they could notice from far any possible threat and take action to neutralize that threat. In purely military terms, it must be said, there was some logic to this idea. Only, it implied the destruction of thousands of houses in which tens of thousands of people lived, half or three quarters of a city called Rafah.

'Probably General Yom Tov Samia would have liked to do it all at once, in one blow, to erase "shave off" all these thousands of houses in a single day and by the next complete the sterilization of the area. But this might have caused a bit too much of an international stir, become an instant item of "Breaking News" on CNN and other networks, and the political echelon did not give its approval. So the Caterpillar D-9 bulldozers were set to working by the good old method of creating "facts on the ground" bit by bit, acre by acre. Each time they erased and "shaved off" another row of houses, sometimes twenty, sometimes thirty. Usually the residents of these houses managed to jump out and run at the last minute, but some were not quick enough and were buried under the ruins of what had been their homes. In the city of Rafah, photos of those victims were printed and pasted on the walls, but media outlets in the wider world were not really interested.

'That was the time when volunteers started arriving on the scene, the people of the International Solidarity Movement, ISM. Yes, that organization to which Judge Gershon paid much attention in his verdict, stating that it was "abusing the discourse of Human Rights and morality" and that its acts are "violent in essence". Activists from Europe and America and all over the world came to the Gaza Strip and asked where Palestinians were most suffering from the occupation's harshness and were in greatest need of assistance and international solidarity. And they were told that Rafah was such a place. And they came to Rafah and were hosted by families on the very front line, where their hosts already knew that they were next in line for the D-9's.

'And there were activists who after months in besieged Rafah went to rest and freshen up in their own quiet and safe homes at Copenhagen or Barcelona or Sydney - or Olympia in the State of Washington in the United States - and when they returned to Rafah they found that the house where they had stayed the last time no longer existed, not a trace of it left, and the plot on which it had stood had become part of the sterile space. Another house, which had been further back, was now the new front line.

And then they decided to do what a person who cares, who cares very very much, could to do in such a situation. To go unarmed into the battlefield and arena of war called the Philadelphi Route. To stand with empty hands against tanks and bulldozers, and to scream and cry out towards those who did not really want to hear. To face empty-handed and unarmed the might of the Israel Defense Forces. To interpose with their bodies and interfere with implementation of the brilliant strategic plan of General Yom Tov Samia.

Maybe there is something in what Judge Oded Gershon wrote. A sensible person – the kind of sensible person which Judge Gershon himself is, and his friends and acquaintances - would not have done it. Judge Oded Gershon would certainly not have seriously considered facing with his bare hands a giant bulldozer, nearly as big as a house. "The deceased had knowingly gotten herself into a dangerous situation." There is no doubt that she did. A very dangerous situation. Jewish and world history marks a young boy named David, who knowingly placed himself in a very dangerous situation, facing a fearsome giant called Goliath. It might be that he was not a very sensible person, either.

'"The bulldozer driver and his commander had a very limited field of view. They could not notice the deceased" wrote Judge Gershon. One might add that also the commander of the commander had a very limited field of view, and even the commander of the commander of the commander. A very limited field of view, in which only the immediate military considerations and objectives could be seen. A very limited field of view in which human beings could not be seen, a living city could not been as it was being destroyed and razed and erazed and made into a sterile zone. A very limited field of view where it was not possible to see a young woman who followed the dicates of her conscience and came all the way from the West Coast of the United States to Rafah in the Gaza Strip, to risk her life in a desperate act of protest.

'At the exit from the Haifa District Court, Cindy Corrie, Rachel's mother, spoke to the journalists. Hurt and shaken by the verdict she said "In that home which Rachel was trying to protect there were children. All of us should have been there, to stand with her."'

http://adam-keller2.blogspot.co.il/2012/08/empty-handed-in-battlefield.html

But from Rachel Corrie, apparently responsible for her own death because, being a member of the ISM, whose actions though unarmed were "violent in essence", she chose to place herself in the wromg place and in the path of a bulldozer, we now move on to the higher case; of the striking miners who were guilty of charging away from the police, and placing their backs in the path of gunfire.

"The law is an ass", said Mr.Bumble. But in some cases, of the two, the ass is a much more worthy beast.

Massacre at Marikana

• photo from
  

  Workers International Network

AS distraught wives and relatives of missing miners waited in vain outside the morgue to see if their loved one was among those shot by South African police, the Lonmin bosses of the Marikana platinum mine issued an ultimatum to strikers to return to work today or be sacked.

"The final ultimatum provides rock drill operators with a last opportunity to return to work or face possible dismissal," said spokeswoman Gillian Findlay. "Employees could therefore be dismissed if they fail to heed it."


At least 34 workers were killed when police opened fire at strikers at the mine. The police said later that they had come under fire themselves, and two policemen had been killed in an earlier clash with miners said to be armed with machetes. In the scene we saw on television though the police show no sign of taking cover from gunfire but stand calmly in a row emptying automatic weapons at the crowd.

Workers at the mine about 60 miles north west of Johannesburg said they will press on with wage demands and slammed a return to work as "an insult" to their colleagues who were gunned down after police failed to disperse strikers on Thursday.

British-owned Lonmin is the world's third biggest platinum producer, but workers at Marikana mine and their families say it is time they saw some of the wealth that they bring out of the ground.

Thousands of miners and their families welcomed former African National Congress youth leader Julius Malema yesterday. He told the thousands who gathered at the mine that South African police "had no right to shoot."

Malema, who was expelled from the ANC in April for sowing division, said top-ranking ANC members had shares in the Lonmin company that owns the platinum mine and no interest in seeing miners earn higher wages. He called for President Jacob Zuma and his police minister to either resign or back the striking miners' wage demands.

Earlier Zuma had condemned the killings but made no reference to the handling of the situation by the police. "We are shocked and dismayed at this senseless violence," he said. "We believe there is enough space in our democratic order for any dispute to be resolved through dialogue without any breaches of the law or violence.

"We call upon the labour movement and business to work with government to arrest the situation before it deteriorates any further. I have instructed law enforcement agencies to do everything possible to bring the situation under control and to bring the perpetrators of violence to book." Zuma added: "We extend our deepest condolences to the families of all who have lost their lives since the beginning of this violent action."

"The British are owning this mine," he said. "The British are making money out of this mine ... It is not the British who were killed. It is our black brothers. But it is not these brothers who are mourned by the president. Instead he goes to meet capitalists in air-conditioned offices."

"President Zuma said to the police they must act with maximum force. He did not say act with restraint. He presided over the murder of our people and therefore he must step down. "

The South African Communist Party welcomed President Zuma's commitment to a full inquiry and warned that it must include analysis of the company's role in the tragedy, in its use of contract labour and sowing division among its workforce.

"It is not possible to understand the tragedy without understanding how profit-maximising corporate greed has deliberately sought to undercut an established trade union and collective bargaining by conniving with demagogic forces," it warned.

It looks as though the massacre at Marikana was planned and deliberate, rather than police panicking. In a widely shown TV clip a South African police spokesperson indicated that “We are going to end this today”. What they were planning to end was the encampment outside the mine, organised by the strike leaders the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Unions.

This has been presented as a clash between different unions, but what that ignores is the nature of the difference. The union which is accused of muscling in on the Marikana mine by "taking advantage" of workers' discontent is the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU). His voice shaking with anger, its leader Joseph Mathunjwa accused the Lonmin management of colluding with a rival union to orchestrate the massacre. Mathunjwa told the eNews channel: "We have to send condolences to those families whose members were brutally murdered by a lack of co-operation from management. We have done our bit. If the management had changed their commitment, surely lives could have been saved."

The union which management nave preferred to deal with is the more established National Union of Mineworkers in South Africa. Its founder and former president Cyril Ramaphosa, played a leading role in the negotiations which brought about the present regime to replace apartheid. He also persuaded the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) to shelve calls for a Workers Charter, which would have included workers rights, public ownership and land reform, in favour of adopting the ANC's so-called Freedom Charter. The ANC, in which Ramaphosa became a leading figure, adopted its calls for racial equality into the new South African constitution, but not calls for land redistribution or nationalisation of industry

Ramaphosa turned from trade unions and politics to business. He is an executive chairman of Shanduka Group, which has investments in the resources Sector, energy, banking and real estate. He is chairman of the Bidwest group and has directorships in Standard Bank, AngloAmerican and other companies. Ramaphosa is a member of the Coca Cola company's international board, and Unilever'Africa Advisory Council.

If he can find the time, someone has proposed him this year to take over as ANC Secretary General.

The former NUM leader is also on the board of Lonmin.

Julus Malema told his audience at Marikana:

"Lonmin had a high political connection that is why our people were killed. They were killed to protect the shares of Cyril Ramaphosa." He said that the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) was no longer a union that represented the interests of the workers but was interested in making more money. "NUM is not a union, it's a company. They hold shares in mining companies, that is why when there are problems in the mines they are the first to sell out the workers."

People listened intently to Maloma's speech, cheering his attacks on the government and his call for Lonmin to be taken into public ownership.

Aubrey Matshiqi, a research fellow at the Helen Suzman Foundation, said: "I think the people of Marikana, particularly the miners, see themselves as the manifestation of the gap between mineral wealth and socioeconomic conditions. The death of so many miners has amplified the extent to which Julius Malema's views on mine nationalisation resonate with the people in the area."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/18/south-african-miners-julius-malema?intcmp=239

The massacre at Marikana is not the first time the South African state has clashed with workers. All the same its scale has shocked working people in South Africa and their friends around the world, who invested so much faith and hope in the new South Africa that would emerge from the anti-Apartheid struggle.

What has disgusted as well as opened the eyes of a lot of people on the left is the way the supposedly communist Morning Star went out of its way to blame the militant union for the killing, with a report on Friday headed

NUM: Rival union 'may have planned' mine violence

and quoting Frank Baleni of the NUM and a police spokesperson saying strikers had opened fire first.

Since then the Star has tried to adjust its line, with an editorial saying nothing could justify the killing.

But the Communist Party here and in South Africa has invested a lot of support in the current balance of the South African regime, which includes CP members. Cyril Ramaphosa has ben at least an ally of the Party, and Jacob Zuma was on the Central Committee for some years. Only last month the President spoke of the important part the Communist Party still has to play.

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/122826
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/layout/set/print/content/view/full/121461

Canada in the Dock

WARNING SIGNS New badge alerts to Asbestos danger,
and (below) calcified Pleural Plaque, such as appear in
the lungs of people exposed to asbestos, and are
frequntly sign of mesothelioma to come.

ASBESTOS is one of those things we nowadays know is dangerous
(though some journalists purport to doubt it, I'd be curious to see whether they'd expose themselves to the risk to prove their point). Most of us probably assume that THEY (governments and people with responsibilty generally) are doing whatever they can to remove the danger.

On that we'd be mistaken.

At events last week for Mesothelioma Day, like the one I attended in London, we heard about people left exposed to the risk and often working without adequate protective gear, in countries like India and China. Canada was given a special mention, as a developed country whose government has taken steps against asbestos use at home but is willingly exporting the material.

On June 29, just one week before Action Mesothelioma Day (AMD) the Quebec Government announced that funding of $58 million had been provided for businessmen developing a new asbestos underground mine in the town of Asbestos, Quebec.

It so happened that organisers of the AMD event in MANCHESTER had invited Canadian Ban Asbestos Campaigner Kathleen Ruff to speak ( that is her in the centre of this clearly well-attended Manchester meeting). Kathleen explained the background to the Quebec provincial authorities' decision to hand over taxpayers' money for the asbestos scheme. Jason Addy reported that most of the delegates in Manchester were shocked by the news that the Province of Quebec was providing the bulk of the money for developing and operating the new mine. “It was interesting to see,” he said “how the initial response of surprise quickly became outrage as Kathleen explained the political machinations and financial tactics of Canadian asbestos stakeholders like Bernard Coulombe and Baljit Chadha.”

Knowing that most of Britain's asbestos fatalities had been exposed to Canadian asbestos, the people in Manchester were appalled at the thought that the lives of millions of people in developing countries would be endangered by Canadian asbestos for generations to come.

In LIVERPOOL, Laurie Kazan-Allen told the AMD meeting of the Cheshire and Merseyside Asbestos Victim Support Groups that Canada had run out of asbestos. " Instead of letting this toxic industry die a natural death, government funds have been injected into a financially-suspect and morally bankrupt scheme to construct new mining facilities in Quebec.” Naming names, she showed a photograph of Baljit Chadha, the man heading up the international consortium backing the Jeffrey Mine project and said:

“Let me conclude my remarks today by sending a message to Canada's asbestos businessmen; and I mean you Baljit Chadha and your investors, all of whom prefer to remain in the shadows. Be warned and be on your guard; the people of Merseyside and Cheshire are not done with you. We are as one when we say we will not allow you to profit while others die. You may have convinced Quebec's asbestos cabal to fund your dastardly project but that was just the first battle. The war over the new Jeffrey Asbestos Mine continues. This is NOT over!”

As a Salford lad with friends among the Liverpool dockers I know the amount of trade the North West used to have with Canada; and the strength the dockers used to have to act on behalf of working people on matters of principal, let alone when facing dangerous cargoes. We might reflect on how far we have all been set back by the way that strength was undermined. Hopefully my union, and the people of Merseyside and Cheshire, will see the advantage of muscle being regained.

As it is, our ability to act even through legal channels is being attacked. Once again we can see the link between health and safety and our democratic rights. As Laurie Kazan-Allen explains:

"From the discussions in Liverpool, it was crystal clear how important the assistance provided by teams at the Merseyside Asbestos Victim Support Group and the Cheshire Asbestos Victim Support Group had been to asbestos sufferers. Unfortunately, the existence of these and other UK groups has been put in jeopardy by impending reforms under The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill. With the country's asbestos epidemic in full swing, all attempts to curtail the essential work of these groups must be strenuously resisted."

Reports on AMD from:

http://ibasecretariat.org/lka-amd-2012.php

Wealth fears Workers in Kazakhstan

BIG companies operating in Kazakhstan, anxious to avoid the kind of bitter struggle that culminated in riots last Deecember, are giving into quickfire strikes by workers, according to a report by Robin Paxton of Reuters, on the Mineweb site.

Seventeen people were killed and hundreds injured when police clashed with striking oil workers on December 16, 2011. Dozens of people were arrested. The Kazakhstan unions, with support from those in Russia and the International Confederation, are urging the Kazakh authoties to review the cases, investigate allegations of torture, and remove legislation which makes it a criminal offence to "call for social strife", a law which they say particularly hits trade unionists.

With gold, iron, copper, coal and uranium to be mined, Soviet-era steel plants and single industry towns, Kazakhstan is potentially a very rich country, its $185 billion economy the largest in Central Asia.

Big mining companies including Glencore-controlled Kazzinc and London-traded Kazakhmys and ENRC, have reaped bumper profits on record-high commodity prices. They count some of the country's richest men among their shareholders. But the workers who produce this wealth say they are struggling to keep up with inflation, and that after they have paid higher rents and power prices they have not enough to feed their families.

State repression is not effective in quelling the unrest. Kazakhmys, the world's 11th-largest copper miner, found this out in May. Around 80 miners refused to leave the Annensky mine when their shift ended. More than 200 joined the underground sit-in. Also in May, steel workers held a rally to demand a 30 percent hike in base salaries on top of an inflation adjustment of 7.4 percent.

ArcelorMittal Temirtau, the world's biggest steel producer, paid its coal division employees an average monthly salary of $915 last year, an increase of slightly more than 12 percent on the previous year. IThis year, the company has offered both its steel and coal workers a 10 percent increase in base salary. It's a compromise that was accepted on June 19 by the coal miners' trade union, on the understanding that talks will resume when markets improve.

But that may be some time. As Paxton notes, "...the spectre of labour dissent has been compounded by a recent downturn in the market. Copper prices, for example, have fallen by nearly a fifth in the last year as concerns mount over Europe's debt crisis and slowing economic growth in China.

"ArcelorMittal's Temirtau plant faced an even more sudden shock to demand when Western financial sanctions on Iran closed the door overnight on a market that accounted for a considerable portion of the mill's sales last year.

"Vijay Mahadevan, chief executive of ArcelorMittal Temirtau, said the government had advised the company to resolve its labour issues peacefully. Talks with the steel workers' union are continuing."



Trade Unions Letter
(This can also be signed on line. See Labour Start site below)

Kazakhstan: Justice for oil workers!

In partnership with the Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Kazakhstan, the Confederation of Labour of Russia, and supported by the International Trade Union Confederation

Over a period of several months, court trials related to the tragic events in Zanaozen of 16 December 2011 have taken place. Many months of dispute between oil workers and the management of oil companies, with the connivance of the authorities, resulted in disorders, violence and the uncontrolled use of force by police, which caused the death of 17 and injuries to dozens of people. Not only oil workers were killed and injured, but also citizens of Kazakhstan who had no involvement with the labour conflict.

Dozens of people, whose involvement is contestable, were subsequently charged. Many of them were sentenced to different terms in prison. During the process, international observers, representatives of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and OSCE, human rights defenders and journalists recorded numerous violations in the trial processes. Almost all defendants and some of witnesses stated that they were tortured in the course of the investigation, but the trials were not suspended. The trials were conducted in an environment of extreme tensions and close to a state of emergency measures in the region.

The international trade union movement demands that the sentences be reconsidered, that all cases of torture and provocation be thoroughly investigated, and that national legislation that envisages criminal responsibility for “calling for social strife” and that is used selectively to put pressure on trade unionists, human rights activists and public figures, be changed.

http://www.labourstartcampaigns.net/show_campaign.cgi?c=1461

For Reuters report on companies etc:

http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page72068?oid=153934&sn=Detail&pid=102055


While international trade unions are calling for the end of repression, the Kazakh government has one well-known -and well-paid - one-time "Labour" leader promoting its cause and polishing its image, as best he can considering his own is so despised here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/kazakhstan/8982290/Kazakh-activists-urge-Tony-Blair-to-give-up-adviser-role.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/27/nick-cohen-tony-blair-kazakhstan
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17827773
Kazakhstan president sacked son in law after oil unrest:
http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2011/12/22/kazakh-president-sacks-son-in-law-after-deadly-clashes/#axzz1z8Mlr7Br

Which brings us to the Windsor Connection:

http://randompottins.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/prince-property-and-petroleum-profiteer.html